Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for January 2008
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
'Let it be'
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I have created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/king of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being just 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be".
We are both legless!
****
You can email me anytime at: blog@leglessinthailand.com
'The Legless Blog' January 2008
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
So as I wrote on the forum yesterday: Being both an amputee and having BP now, I can now openly admit to being both 'absolutely legless' and 'two faced'
Cheers for now
Legless and two faced in Thailand
I walked a little further down the road in the direction of the guesthouse, but my amputated leg which I had chafed in Penang started really hurting, so I looked for somewhere that I could sit down, rest my leg and drink my beer. I was quite lucky and I found another small shop that was closed, but they had left a table and chair outside, so I quickly sat down, took off my false leg and started to relax with my beer. I could see the Ladda Guesthouse entrance diagonally across the road from where I was sitting, so I knew I only had about another 30 metres to walk. After finishing my beer and applying a handkerchief as padding for my leg, I put my leg back on and headed for the guesthouse.
The entrance for the guesthouse was small and there were stairs up to the reception, it took me a while to negotiate the stairs with my bag but I eventually got to the reception desk. I asked the girl behind the reception desk if she had any spare rooms available and I was expecting the worst and waiting for her to tell me that they were full. She told me that they still had two rooms available, asked me to sign in and asked for my passport and 200 baht (3 GBP) for the room. I felt quite happy, I had somewhere to stay now and she handed me the key. The next problem was that the room was up four more flights of stairs, but their security guard carried my bag up for me so I only had to carry myself, it took me a few minutes but I made it with relatively little pain from my leg. The room was very tidy and clean, with a double bed, a table and two chairs, a wall fan and a separate tiled bathroom with soap and towels, I was very pleased with it at the price that they charged.
After I had relaxed for a while in my room, I decided that I had to go out again and find somewhere to eat, so I went downstairs and asked the girl where I could find a cafe or restaurant. She told me to go back down to the road and just keep walking away from the station and I would eventually find the main food area. I did as she told me, but after a couple of blocks my leg was hurting again and I still could not find anything, as I was crossing the next road still heading in the direction that she had told me, I looked left and right also, I spotted a small neon sign off to the left, but I could not see exactly what it was, so I just kept on walking straight to where there were more lights. I passed a pub eventually and next to it was a large restaurant, but I took one look at the prices and decided that the pub looked better, so I went in. When I sat down I was given a menu and again the prices were quite high, but not as high as the one next door, so I ordered a beer and a Thai snack and relaxed a little again. After I had finished the snack and the beer, I had decided that this place was too expensive for me to carry on drinking in, so I paid the bill, went outside and started walking back the way that I had come before.
When I reached the next junction, I spotted the neon sign that I had seen before and this time I headed for it. As I got closer I could read the sign better and it just said 'I, Red' in English, this amused me slightly because it was very similar to my own name of 'I. Reed'. It turned out to be a Thai cafe/restaurant and there were many ordinary Thai locals sitting at the tables outside drinking beer which attracted me. I approached the cafe sat down at one of the outside tables and asked the person serving how much the beer was, I was very happy and relieved when she told me that the price of a large bottle of Chang beer there was 40% cheaper than the small bottle that I had just had at the last place I was in, also the food was very much cheaper and they had a better selection too. This was a good find for me and a great place to relax after the day's ups and downs, so after a good meal, I just sat there drinking beer and talking with the staff in Thai until the early hours of the following morning.
The following day, I went back to the railway station to book a ticket to Bangkok, but they didn't have any lower berth seats available that day, so I had to book one for the following day. Over the next two days 'I, Red' became my 'permanent local hangout', because they sold the good Thai food that I like, they had cheap beer and during the day they had a hot tea stall outside and as a rule, daytime I always drink lots of tea. The staff and especially the owner 'Daeng' were very friendly and attentive, so everything suited me perfectly, also there was a mini-mart just across the road from them where I could buy any necessities that I needed. So what started out as an unscheduled stop for me, turned into a very pleasant two days break, I was quite sorry to leave Hat Yai in the end. I have sketched a map on a new page on this website for anyone visiting Hat Yai who would like to know the location of the places that I have been talking about on this post, please click HERE
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
The 'Bell's Palsy' that I have now doesn't cause me too much discomfort really, just the eye that will not close gets dry quickly, I have to drink all liquids through a straw and I have to push food in through the left side of the mouth, because the right side of my mouth I can barely move and cannot open wide enough to eat normally. My nose on the right side seems to have contracted slightly and it is a little difficult to breath through that nostril.
Other than all of that, things are fairly normal. Except when people see that one side of my face has dropped and they ask me what the problem is, I just stoop over and point to the distance and shout "It's the Bells! It's the Bells!" doing a Quasimodo impression to try and bring a little humour into my present condition.
Cheers for now
Legless with Bells in Thailand
I was going to continue today with the story of my journey from Penang, but yesterday evening a strange thing happened to me. The right side of my face suddenly started drooping and felt paralysed, I couldn't close my right eye or move the right side of my mouth and when I tried to drink, the liquid just spilled out of my mouth on the right side because I couldn't control the right side of my mouth at all. My first thought was that I was having a stroke or something similar, because I have heard that a stroke just affects one side of your body, so I checked my body and everything was fine, only my face had a problem. I was tired anyway, so I thought that maybe if I sleep everything would be back to normal again in the morning. Well I was wrong, I woke up today and it was even worse, I had even less control over anything on the right side of my face at all and it was drooping even more.
I decided to check some of the medical sites on the internet to see if I could find out exactly what was wrong with me and I found out quite quickly what I had. I have a medical problem called 'Bell's Palsy' and apparently this affects about one in every 5,000 people, there is no medication for it and it is not a permanent or dangerous thing, it is just a damaged nerve at the back of the neck and it just takes time to heal, usually about two to three weeks. I found a very good website about this on the internet at: http://www.bellspalsy.ws and they have a lot of information and advice about this condition on their website. So now I just have to put up with this for a few weeks, at least I know that it will get better, unlike being legless.
Cheers for now
Legless with bells in Thailand
On the train to Butterworth that day everything just went as normal, there was nobody in the seat opposite me, so I just read through my book 'Legless in Thailand' and was trying to think of ways to improve on it for a future 'Second edition'. I was feeling very tired from my early start to the day and the rushing around in Bangkok for my passport and also my leg was still hurting, so I took my false leg off and later when they made the sleeping berths, I fell asleep quite early. The following morning I woke up, looked at my watch and then opened the curtain and was surprised to see that it was after 8 am and we had still not reached Hat Yai yet, normally we would be at Padang Besar, the border stop by now, so we must have been delayed somewhere during the night. When we arrived at Padang Besar about two hours later, I made sure that I was one of the first people off the train because I thought that it would take some extra time transferring to my new passport there, but the Thai immigration lady just wrote quickly in my new passport and stamped me out very quickly and efficiently. I was first in line at the Malaysian immigration kiosk and they just stamped my new passport and gave me a 90 day visa-on-entry and I was the first passenger back to the train. I took this opportunity to sit on the platform, wait for everyone else and smoke a few cigarettes, because smoking is not allowed on the train and we still had a three hour journey to Butterworth ahead of us.
We eventually reached Butterworth at about 3 pm Malaysian time so the train was quite late. I slowly exited the train and set off for the ferry terminal dragging my bag behind me on it's wheels, the long, slow, upward incline to the Butterworth ferry terminal is difficult for me on my false leg normally and today it was really hurting, so I just took my time slowly, because time is something that I have plenty of. The entrance to the ferry is through automatic gates that is coin operated and cost RM 1.20, I always keep this change in my pocket from the previous trip just for this purpose. The ferry arrived at Penang ferry terminal about twenty minutes later and there it is the complete opposite of Butterworth, I had a long, slow, downward incline to the exit at the main road and my leg was really painful by the time I reached the road and I could feel that the skin had broken somewhere on it, so I sat down on a small bench there, took off my leg, cleaned up the blood from the chafed skin and applied a plaster that I always carry with me. After a short while, I refitted my leg and walked to the bus terminal about 60 metres away. I always use the bus now, even though there are a lot of taxis available, the bus costs just RM 1 whilst a taxi costs RM 10 and I know that bus number 203 goes to Chulia street and stops opposite the Blue Diamond Hotel that I always stay in.
On arrival at the Blue Diamond Hotel all the staff greeted me because we are all old friends now, but they told me that the only room that they had available that night was on the first floor and that they would move me back downstairs to a more convenient room the next day. So Lee carried my bag up to my room and I slowly followed after him up the stairs, the room was directly opposite the stairs at the top so it wasn't too bad for me, even with my painful leg. Lee placed my bag in my room and was just leaving, when I called him back, opened my bag and handed him a package and said "Happy New Year". I had brought him and his friends a bottle of Thai whisky and he was quite pleased with it. When I go to the Blue Diamond Hotel in Penang now, it is like going to my second home, all of the people there Lee, Leg, Lan, Flamy and the owner Low Chi are not just friends, they are more like family to me now and we all help each other if we can. Lee left and I just relaxed on the bed in my room for about ten minutes, then I made my way downstairs, sat at one of the outside tables at the front of the hotel and ordered my first bottle of Guinness, which went down very well. Guinness is my favourite beer and it is difficult to get and very expensive in Thailand, so I always look forward to my first Guinness in Penang.
Sitting drinking my beer, I took my leg off to let it cool down a little, because I knew that I had to walk again soon, I had to arrange for a new Thai visa for my passport that day. Sitting in the Blue Diamond Hotel with my leg off is quite a normal sight for everyone there, my nickname in Penang now is 'Legless' anyway, they even write that name in the register and on the room board at the hotel and everyone there uses that name when they talk to me. After my first bottle of Guinness was finished, I refitted my leg and started to wander down Chulia Street to Parvez book store just 70 metres away, the Indian personnel that work there arrange and take care of Thai visa applications and I have used them many times now. After sorting out my visa with them, I hobbled back to the hotel, sat down at my usual place at the front again and without even asking me, the girl at the counter brought me a fresh bottle of Guinness, because they all know me and my habits now. Evenings at the Blue Diamond Hotel are very enjoyable, they have live music jamming sessions there led by 'Leg' and I sometimes join in the vocals myself, so my time in Penang always seems to go by very quickly.
My visa was ready for collection two days later and even though I was enjoying myself, I knew I had to get back home fairly quickly because my funds go quickly in Penang compared to being at home in Thailand. So I arranged with Low Chi to book a mini-bus to Hat Yai in Thailand for the following day. The mini-bus arrived at 3 pm the following afternoon, I grabbed my bag, said good bye to all of my friends there and left in the mini-bus to go to Hat Yai train station where I would catch the train that evening back to Bangkok. Well, that was the plan anyway, what happened next in Hat Yai, I was not expecting and I shall tell you about that in my next post. I have written about my experience in Hat Yai on a new page on my website if you want to read it now, please click here
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand and Penang
I just returned from my trip to Penang yesterday evening, a much longer trip than I expected and I have quite a few things to talk about:
On 14th January, I awoke quite early in the morning and set off for Bangkok, initially I had to try and get my new passport from the British Embassy there and then continue my trip to Penang. On the train to Bangkok I phoned the embassy to see if my passport was ready to be collected and they just told me that my passport was still being processed at the moment. I explained on the phone that I was travelling that day and I needed it urgently, they just replied that they would try to complete it quickly and phone me when it was ready.
When I arrived at Bangkok train station, I had just 90 minutes to go before my train left for Butterworth (Penang) and the embassy had still not phoned me, so I decided to go to the embassy anyway and find out what was happening. I arrived at the British Embassy at 13:45, just one hour now before my train departed, I went to the consular section, looked inside and it was full of people waiting to be attended to. They have a ticket machine at the door where you get a ticket with a number to be called to the counter, I quickly got a ticket, looked at the number, then looked at the number being displayed and attended to at the moment and my number was way down the queue. I managed to find a spare seat, sat down and was watching how slowly the people were being attended to and thinking to myself "I am going to miss my train today, what do I do now?"
Still sitting there in the embassy and now feeling a little depressed at the thought of missing my train and the extra money that it would cost me for a visa overstay and to change my train ticket, when behind one of the counters a quite attractive lady appeared and looked around the room, spotted me, smiled and nodded her head to me, then turned around and left the room again. I thought that it must have been someone who worked at the embassy who knew me, although her face was vaguely familiar, I couldn't recollect really knowing this lady, but thinking about her was a pleasant distraction from just sitting there, thinking about my situation and getting more depressed. About two minutes later, this lady appeared behind the counter again, looked directly at me and smiled again, but this time she waved her hand and beckoned me to one of the counters, as I got closer to the counter, I could see that she had a couple of passports in her hand which she gave to the person on the counter, smiled at me again, turned around and left the room.
The gentleman behind the counter dealt with me immediately, he had two of my passports in his hand, both old and new, and they had arranged for me to jump the queue. I quickly checked and signed for my new passport, thanked them and left the embassy as quickly as I could, grabbed a taxi on the road outside and managed to get back to the train station with a good twenty minutes to spare, so I had a much needed cup of tea at my regular tea stall in the station there and now started to relax a little. I looked at my new passport whilst sitting drinking tea and memorised the new number, issue and expiration dates, this is a habit of mine I like to keep these facts in my head. About ten minutes later I went to the train, found my seat, stowed my case, sat down and took my leg off which was a little painful now after my dashing around, then really started to unwind as the train started to pull out of the station.
So this was the start of my last trip to Penang and it really started off quite well. When I have written on my blog about the British Embassy in Bangkok before, I have always been complaining about them, but this time they really went out of their way to help me. So giving credit where credit is due: 'Thank you! To all the staff that helped me at the British Embassy in Bangkok on that day.'
More about my legless trip to Penang tomorrow!
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand and Penang
I am heading back to Penang again tomorrow, hopefully. I say 'hopefully' because I have my ticket already but what I don't have yet is my new passport. I applied for my new passport at the British Embassy in Bangkok on the 20th of December, but they haven't phoned me to say it is ready yet and now it is weekend and they aren't working. It is a four hour train journey for me to Bangkok tomorrow and whilst I am travelling to Bangkok in the morning, a Thai friend is going to try and collect my passport for me, if it is ready, then meet me at Bangkok train station with it and if all goes well I just board another train and head for Penang. Why are things never easy for me? http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/bluediamond.html
If anything out of the ordinary happens, as they usually do to me, on the journey or whilst I am in Penang I shall let you know about it when I return next Saturday.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand and Penang
Still legless and alone in Nangrong in 2003/2004. My website was named www.reedinter.co.uk so the first pages that I put on my website were to offer services under the name of Reed International Thailand. The services I offered were the things that I knew best and had most experience of and because at that time my book 'Legless in Thailand' had not been published, I couldn't put the book on my website yet, so I just put pages about computers, Thailand information, advice and travel services which were all businesses that I had been involved in before.
I still didn't know exactly which business to try and concentrate on though and the word 'Legless' was still foremost in my mind. So I started going through the possibilities of different businesses that I could start using this word in the name and at first I thought about travel services in Thailand. I was the local office/agent for DTC Travel - Bangkok in Pattaya before, so I started to think of names for a new travel service business and I came up with: 'Thailand Legless Travel services', 'Legless Tours and Travel', 'Legless Tourist Information and Advice', but none of these seemed to have the right ring to them and I also wasn't sure if I had enough money at that time to install a new airline reservation system for ticketing.
Next I turned my thoughts to catering, before my accident I had a restaurant in the tourist destination of Koh Lanta, an island resort in Southern Thailand, the restaurant's name was The Catfish Restaurant and it did quite well, as a fairly inventive chef on the side, I produced some unique dishes that were very popular. Thinking along these lines, I started thinking about the name for a new restaurant business, again based on the word 'Legless' and I came up with: Legless Cuisine, Legless International Cuisine, Legless Bar and Café, Legless Meeting Place and Legless corner house. But once again money, or more correctly the lack of money was the stumbling block for me, I had the ideas but I didn't have the money to put them into operation.
Still more about my ideas in my next legless input.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
Continuing with my legless ideas. Still living legless and alone in Nangrong a few years ago, I had to decide what business I was going to do, I had a little income then from a pension that the Royal Air Force had brought forward for me after learning about my legless disability, that was enough to live on in Thailand, but I needed something to do and a way to generate some extra cash if possible.
So I sat down at my computer and started to write my first book 'Legless in Thailand', an autobiography of the last few years of my life, including the accident that left me legless. There were two main reasons that I wrote this book, the first and most important reason being that I had to clear from my brain the painful memories that were driving me slowly insane day by day and secondly it also gave me a little bit of an interest back in life again, a feeling that I had not had for a long time. I then set up my first new website on the internet 'www.reedinter.co.uk' I chose this domain name, it being a shortened form of 'Reed International Thailand', which was my first idea of a name for any new business that I did.
As an electronics/computer engineer by profession, I never thought previously that I would ever become a writer/author. I did do some contract work as a technical author for Philips Company in Holland at one time, but I never thought before that I would ever write a book of my own. When the first draft of my book was completed, I realised that I had to give it a title, not just any title, but something that related to the story and that would catch people's attention quite easily. That was when I first thought of the title of 'Legless in Thailand' and I started to really think about the word 'legless' and how it related to me and my present situation quite well.
The first draft of my book then being completed, I had to find some other things to do to occupy my time and to try and do some new business for myself. Then the business name of 'Reed International' that I thought of before faded into the background and the words from my book 'legless' and 'Thailand' were foremost in my mind. If I had the funds available at that time, I would have registered a company named 'Legless Thailand Co. Ltd', but I didn't have enough funds to do that, so I just decided to get myself recognised for these words internationally on the internet and that is when I really started with my legless ideas.
More about these legless ideas tomorrow.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
After my accident in May 2001, I spent the following six months or so in hospitals, in both Thailand and England and I was eventually released from hospital in England in October 2001 with my first prosthetic (false leg). I made my way back to Thailand as quickly as I could after leaving hospital because the only person that I had any real feelings for was in Thailand and I hadn't seen her for the last three months whilst I was in England, also everything that I owned in the world was in Thailand. So I flew back to Thailand and five months later I settled down in a small town named Nangrong in the North East of Thailand and started to recuperate a little from everything that had happened to me.
The intervening five months are covered in detail in my book 'Legless in Thailand' and this just being my legless blog, I don't think that it is necessary to repeat that part of the story on this post. After I settled into my new accommodation in Nangrong legless and alone now, one of the few possessions of mine that I eventually recovered out of ad hoc storage was my old computer system, so I decided to try and get myself organised again and design myself some new internet websites, which is what I used to do prior to having my accident. I wasn't inconvenienced physically too much being legless then, it was just something that I had to accept and try to make the most of.
It was at that point in time, when I was just sitting alone with a beer early one evening going over my present situation in my mind and alternating my gaze between my computer screen and the stump of my amputated leg that I latched onto the word 'legless' and I decided then that I would use this word as the key to anything that I tried to do in the future, because I was physically legless anyway and it would help to keep me focussed. I then started typing on my computer keyboard and started making a list of 'legless ideas' and the more beer I drank the easier these ideas formed in my mind.
I think that is enough for my legless input for today, because the subject of 'legless ideas' that I have had will take me quite a few days to write and post onto this blog.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
Being left legless after my accident in May 2001 and not being a defeatist by nature, I decided to try and use my new disability to my advantage in some way if I could, not from a sympathetic point of view, but I decided to use the word 'legless' and some 'legless ideas' to my advantage if I could, hence this 'Legless Blog'. The first thing I did back then was to entitle my first published book 'Legless in Thailand.'
Then one day in 2004, at an interview that I was invited to on a local Bangkok radio station, on-air the interviewer said to me that, although he really enjoyed reading my book, he didn't agree with or like the title that I had chosen for my book, he went on to say that it would give people completely the wrong impression about my book at first sight and that they would just think that the book was written by some drunken foreign tourist who thought that all the Thai bar girls loved him. He went on further to say that my story was not like that at all and that it was a very good read indeed. He paused at this point during the interview, looked at me directly, started smiling and said to me "I know exactly what you are trying to do, even though you really are legless now, this title is just a marketing trick isn't it?" at which, I just smiled and nodded at him. Off-air we had a very good chat about my book, but on-air there were thousands or maybe even a million people listening to us, so I had to be very careful about what I said on the radio.
More about my 'legless ideas' tomorrow.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
Getting back into my legless routine after the holidays, doing my usual SEO work for my websites and using the different keywords involved, after a while it came to me that I am becoming very visual in the major search engines for keywords using the term 'legless' in them. This is fine with me because Legless being my nickname, being physically legless anyway and with the legless title of my book, this word does really describe me and my work.
So I hope that being quite high profile and legless on the internet isn't classed as being a criminal offence anywhere. Joking aside now though, I hope that this will help more people to find my websites and this blog more easily.
Cheers for now and Happy New Year!
Legless in Thailand and on the web.
We are well into the new year now and this is my first input for this year. New Year's eve I just spent on the farm listening to some music and drinking what was left of my whisky after Xmas with a few beer chasers. I have an advantage when it comes to drinking, because I am already legless and have a good excuse for falling down.
Since then, I have been modifying many pages on my websites and removing all of the Xmas and New year decorations from them. I have been going through all of my email, deleting all of the spam, replying to the important ones and keeping the scammers happy by replying to them too and acting like a normal gullible target to them. On the subject of scams, I think I won about four or five lotteries that I never entered over the holidays, the fictitious amounts involved totalling to approximately ten million dollars, aren't I lucky!!
Nothing much else interesting to talk about really, just getting back into the routine and hopefully I should be receiving my new passport from the embassy within the next week, because I have a train ticket booked for my next trip to Penang on 14th January.
I hope everyone reading this had a good time over the New Year festivities and I sincerely wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year.
Cheers for now
Legless in Thailand
To my blog Archive for December 2007
To my Legless Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
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