The Dog Incident

The day had been going pretty well up until this point.

I went back to my hostel, grabbed my dirty clothes, and dropped them off at a laundromat. Very productive. Very responsible. So naturally, I decided my next activity should be walking up a mountain.

There was this giant statue at the top of a hill overlooking the city, and instead of simply taking a taxi like a normal person, I figured I would walk up to it.

This was a mistake.

I was almost there, walking up this random back alley staircase, when I passed a dog. He looked completely uninterested in me. Just a local dog going about his day.

Then, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, he decided to bite the absolute life out of my leg.

It hurt, obviously, but apparently my reaction to getting bitten by a random street dog is just, “Well that sucked,” and continuing up the mountain.

I found another route so I wouldn’t have to walk past him again and kept going.

I was getting pretty close to the top when another dog spawned in.

I genuinely don’t know where he came from. One second I was alone. The next second there was a dog barking at me and coming down the stairs.

At this point I decided maybe we were done with the mountain.

I started running back down the stairs and came to a turn. Perfect. I’ll turn here and lose the dog.

Obviously, around the corner were three significantly larger and significantly angrier dogs.

Great.

So now I’m running down some random staircase in a foreign country, swinging my bag around and yelling at a pack of dogs while they chase me.

Somewhere in the chaos, I dropped my hat.

Once I finally got some distance between us, I looked back and saw one of the dogs proudly tossing my hat around in its mouth.

Awesome.

At this point I had been bitten, chased off a mountain, and robbed by a dog.

I was trying to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do next when this girl and her grandma started yelling down to me from the rooftop of their house.

They were trying to help, but there was one small problem.

We did not speak the same language.

Eventually I tried to go back the way I had originally come from, except the first dog was still there. Grandma pointed toward a stick in the woods and essentially suggested I grab it and fight the dog.

I appreciated her confidence in me.

I did not share it.

Thankfully, the girl eventually brought me back to their house and let me use their WiFi to call an Uber. She waited outside with me while it came, and we managed to talk a little bit despite the language barrier.

She was incredibly nice. Maybe she could tell I was slightly traumatized. Maybe inviting confused foreigners into your house after they lose a territorial dispute with the neighborhood dogs is just standard hospitality there.

Either way, when the Uber arrived I tried to give her some money for helping me, but she wouldn’t take it.

And just like that, my mystery savior disappeared from the story.

Now, you might assume that after all of this I gave up on seeing the statue.

You would be wrong.

I took the Uber directly to the top of the mountain.

I had already been bitten. I was seeing this stupid statue.

The view was actually pretty cool.

Not worth the dog bite.

But pretty cool.

After walking around for a little while, I came to the realization that being bitten by a random street dog in a foreign country might actually be something I should deal with.

So I decided to go to the hospital and get a rabies shot.

But first, there was unfinished business.

From the top of the mountain I could see the staircase where I had been attacked. I cautiously looked down it and, somehow, about 80% of the way down the stairs was my hat.

The dogs had abandoned it.

This was my moment.

I quietly made my way down the stairs, grabbed the hat, and immediately bolted back up.

Against all odds, we had recovered the hat.

A taxi happened to be nearby, so I jumped in and headed to the hospital.

Two and a half hours, a lot of Google Translate, and several very nice hospital employees later, I got the first of what I was told would be five rabies shots over the next month, plus some pills.

The entire hospital visit cost $126.

Honestly, not bad.

I Ubered back to the hostel, ready to finally call it a day, only to discover that the laundromat had closed.

So my clothes were now being held hostage too.

At this point I accepted defeat, walked around the block, found a local restaurant, and ordered ribs and fries. They were pretty good. The BBQ sauce was a little weird, but after spending the afternoon fighting dogs and retrieving stolen property from a mountain, I wasn’t feeling particularly picky.

Now I’m back at the hostel, I have my hat, my leg has been vaccinated, my clothes are somewhere else entirely, and I am very tired.

Tomorrow morning I begin my backpacking journey.

So things are going great.