대한민국

You might have to take a sprained ankle serious. Especially if you are travellers walking close to forest and far from cities with a huge backpack with a tent, sleeping bag, camping equipment and some food in it, you have to be more careful while walking.

“Consult a doctor for serious injuries”.

When your ankle is sprained, if you are in a beach only accessible by boat or trekking, you might have to wait till the next day under full moon on a beach where turtles lay their eggs.

Then finding a “public hospital” in a country where you are a stranger, getting lost among signs in an unknown language, finding a wheelchair, queuing…

We don’t have an x-ray because of its price and the queue. Anyway, probably it is not broken; it will get better soon… We go to Kuala Lumpur the following day to wait for our plane to South Korea. We just rest in the house of our friend Adida. She is in England at that time.

Of course, we couldn’t foresee the injury before buying the tickets… We will spend two days in a huge city, Seoul, with an injured foot… Then we will take our plane to Russia… Should we go back to Turkey? Wait, wait, we will deal with it somehow.

Adida’s friend takes us to the airport. We are lucky that we have friends in foreign countries and not alone.

In Seoul, we stay with our friend Yongmin, far from the complexity of the city. This is a return visit. We hosted him in Istanbul, 2 years ago.

We see concrete blocks placed behind each other in an order when we look out from 20th floor. Seoul looks like a crazy and busy city, but actually everything is very calm. People getting out of a football stadium look like they just left a religious ceremony, not a football match. They stop at red light with their flags and queue for the bus.

The foot doesn’t look like it will be healed soon, we didn’t have an x-ray, and we don’t know what’s happening. Yongmin’s mother, a nurse, just involves in the situation and takes us to a last technology hospital. She doesn’t let us to go to a public hospital; and she pays the bill of the hospital for us after hosting, cooking, welcoming us… We don’t know how to say thank you…

X-ray, ultrasound… “Ankle ligament tear detected”.

After being punished for not pressing on it for three weeks, Yongmin takes us to palaces, and up to a hill where we have a panoramic view of Seoul. We also ate baklava in a Turkish Restaurant… And also succeeded to find vegetarian street food… Thanks to Yongmin, we had an amazing one day in Seoul.

In the morning, with full of love in our heart, we say farewell to our family in South Korea and go to the airport.Immediately a wheelchair is brought, and ride by the person until we insist that it is not necessary.

Just after we get on the plane, Russia replaces “far” Asia. Long beautiful Russian hostesses, Russian language…

View of Baikal Lake before landing… The biggest, the deepest and the oldest fresh water lake on earth…

The foot needs to rest for 3 weeks, without being stepped on it. We were lucky until now, we will find a way for it…