The time I accidentally walked into a crime scene in Thailand

There was a club that we frequented whilst on Koh Chang called Ting Tongs.

It was always full and had live music playing most nights before the late night partying really set in and the dance music blared. There were neon paintings on the walls, an old tree growing through the middle and a tree house style loft with precarious steps (no bannister, not totally ideal when drunk) leading to a small secret seating area and pool table.

On that particular day, I’d gone and got my first Thai massage on the beach with J, we’d played frisbee and drank beer on the sitting with our toes in the sand afterwards. Someone stole my bikini bottoms from my washing line and wore them down the beach on his head, so a portion of my afternoon was spent chasing and eventually tackling the culprit to retrieve them.

Later on, H and I had gone to a nice place for dinner.

We joined up with the bunch of Welsh lads and their newly arrived friend for drinks.

Like I said, we’d been to this place frequently, and it often got messy, but not as messy as this night.

Someone got so drunk he pissed himself all over the dance floor and exclaimed it was ok because “he was wearing swimming shorts”, but no harm was done, a little grossed out we just laughed it off and carried on with our night.

We’d been having a good time and were in high spirits, things took a darker turn however when we left.

We walked giggling down the road, and suddenly I was looking down at the floor, and walking through blood.

Not a little bit of blood, a lot of blood.

I looked up and looked around. I saw locals gathered at a restaurant staring at us. I assumed perhaps they had killed a chicken.

B was apologising for the lads being loud.

Now confused and a little on edge, we walked further up the road, and then blue lights appeared.

They were bright, blinding, disorientating.

Once my eyes adjusted, I saw more than one police van and several officers pull on on motorbikes.

We are not entirely sure what happened, apparently, it was a fight and someone pulled a knife. Some people said that the person was not fatally injured, but then a lot of people gave me a stern look and told me to stop asking questions.

The pace of the island continued as normal the next day as if nothing had happened. There was no dark atmosphere, even on the street of the event. It all seemed very surreal.

But I kept thinking about it, and how I’d never seen so much blood.

Everyone said it was the first anyone had heard of such a conflict happening there.

It left me wondering whether perhaps I had dreamt it up.

J joined the Welshies shortly after and they headed back to Bangkok. H and I backed off the throttle a bit and spent some down time on our following evenings with a quiet beer and wandering the beach at sunset.