Once my father and I were on a jet ski on a beach in Pattaya. This wasn’t our first time on a jet ski there. My sister or I would usually tag along with our father whenever we were on vacation in Pattaya. However, on this particular day, things didn’t really go as planned.

My father was driving it normally as he usually did. Riding the waves, I clung on to his waist, laughing at the excitement of when we bounced off from the waves. My father was taking a turn, maybe because he wanted to return back to my mother and my sister as we were far enough from the coastline already. During the turn, something went wrong. He ended up tipping the jet ski over, throwing both of us off of it.

I splashed up to the surface of the deep, dark ocean, swaying my arms to keep myself afloat and avoiding sinking into the eerie abyss of the ocean floor. I could hear my father around me, in a much more panicked state, frantically trying to keep himself afloat as well. Unlike me, my father didn’t know how to swim. I worried for him, hoping he would manage to keep himself afloat as we were left surrounded by the seemingly never ending ocean.

My father somehow moved towards the flipped over jet ski and clung to the side of it to help make it slightly easier to keep himself above the bottomless ocean. I followed him too, swimming towards the flipped over jet ski and clung to its side before eventually climbing on top of it not too shortly after realizing it was possible for me to do so. I felt myself unable to breathe properly, my shoulders stiff, my jaw clenched and my heart hammering against my chest. Over the sounds of my heart I could hear my father’s consistent shouting, asking me if I was okay. I yelled back that I was okay, my voice sounding much more relaxed then whatever was the state of my mind. It was as if my voice hadn’t caught up to what was happening right in front of me.

In my head, my thoughts slowly got more irrational the longer we were there without a sign of anyone coming. I wondered if the lifeguards would be able to see us from this far out. I wondered if they’d ever come, if we’d be stranded here, alone with the suffocating, somber, dull blue ocean that encircled us. The minutes stretched into hours, my heartbeat growing increasingly more and more agitated.

Eventually, we could spot a lifeguard on a jet ski coming towards us. The lifeguard stopped their jet ski nearby and dove into the ocean to help transport me and my father onto their jet ski. Throughout the journey, the lifeguard who was driving the boat yelled questions at my father, asking us how we got there, what happened, did my father have any experience?

My father seemed to calm down a lot more as he seemed to be laughing, maybe out of nerves from nearly drowning. It made me feel a lot more calm, my heartbeat calming and my shoulders relaxing. I let out a sigh of relief, throwing my head down and looking down at the gentle teal blue waves of the ocean's surface, closing my eyes and emptying my mind.

Would I ever end up going to this beach again? Probably. But would I ever want to ride a jet ski with my father again? Probably not for a very long time.