Many business trips to Asia were longer than one or even two weeks, meaning there was always the question of what to do during the weekend. One favorite place if the Friday/Monday destinations were around Thailand, Malaysia, or Singapore, was Tioman Island in Malaysia. Tioman Island is a tropical paradise just an hour’s flight from Kuala Lumpur. The island is very small, and is basically one forest-covered hill sticking up from the sea, with beaches around the edge. The terrain means it is very hard to build roads – in fact, to get to the hotel from the airport, we had to take a small boat.
On one of these visits I went snorkeling. Not far – we stayed very close to the beach. There was lots to see: the coral was very close to the beach. Besides colorful tropical fish, there were also sea urchins. Sea urchins have sharp spikes sticking out as a defense mechanism, much like a porcupine. I’ve always been careful around sea urchins, but this time a wave pushed me around and in an effort to steady myself my hand landed on a sea urchin. It was painful, but I didn’t think too much of it. However, I did decide to mention it to the dive gear shop manager when we returned the rental gear.
The man asked to see my hand, looked at it for a short while, and then his face broke into a large grin as he said: “Ha, ha, now I have to beat the crap out of you!”. My colleague and I looked at each other, puzzled. He repeated: “Ha, ha, ha, I’m going to beat the crap out of you! Come with me!”. This was very curious! He took me to the back where he looked around for a piece of wood. He found one and told me to sit down with my hand stretched out. And sure enough, he started to beat my hand right around where the puncture wounds of the spikes were!
Only then did he explain what was going on. Small pieces of spike had broken of and were lodged under my skin, too deep to take out. Doing nothing would likely lead to infection as the spikes are venomous. The beating he gave me served to break up the little pieces of spike into even smaller pieces that would then be harmless. I guess you learn something new every day!