Luke Kennedy’s life was drastically changed by a grueling 15-hour bus ride in Thailand while carrying a limb that was so badly broken and infected that it was in danger of being amputated.
Luke spent the most of his youth becoming a seasoned gang leader and street brawler who has seen more murder and damage than a 23-year-old should have before departing on his weeklong vacation.
Luke’s journey turned into a horrific week of nursing his excruciating wounds while on the run from individuals he owed money to while urgently attempting to return home to Sydney after his partying spiralled out of hand during his first two days in Thailand.
This ultimately led to him being placed on an Australian bus carrying Australians from Bangkok to Phuket in order to board an urgent Qantas aircraft for evacuation in December 2008, when anti-government protests grounded most foreign travel.
Luke attempted to block out the excruciating agony from his damaged leg, which was in a cast and supported by his luggage in the bus aisle, for the whole nighttime bus ride.
He worried about whether the limb was too diseased to be saved after disobeying medical advice and leaving a hospital, which made every bump in the drive or someone tripping over his leg while using the restroom at the rear of the bus worsen the anguish.
He adds, “My foot was so swollen up with fluid that it was now difficult to move my toes.”
Never before had I felt so uneasy and afraid. After fighting with the agony and concern for seven hours, I was on the verge of tears.
I was breathing hard due to anxiety, which was fueling both the pain and the worry in an endless loop. An absolute nightmare.
Luke tells Daily Mail Australia, “It was torment, 15 hours of pain and simply so unpleasant.”
My tailbone had a friction sore, and the bus’s odours made my leg hurt.
The 37-year-old author of “Sex, Drugs, and a Buddhist Monk” explores the mishaps that brought Luke to this low point and how they led to events that changed his life.
Luke now sees the terrifying journey to Thailand as a series of events that were necessary for him to have.
He told Daily Mail Australia, “I felt like I was being hacked down.”
It served as a lesson that your ignorance and selfishness are what led to this.
This is the result of your failure to accept responsibility, of your failure to examine and sort out your issues.
“So cop this, cop this, cop this,” and “cop this, one thing after the other,” were the commands.
Luke was in Thailand for an improbable vacation at his brother Ruben’s suggestion so they could have one final adventure before Luke entered the military.
By the time Luke got in Bangkok, he was regrettably free of any restraint or sense of self-preservation due to the lure of duty-free beer at the airport and then free beverages on the aircraft.
He went on a wild spree, propelled by enormous amounts of drink, through the notorious bars and strip clubs of the city.
After a catastrophic motorbike accident, he was laying in a private Thai hospital with his broken leg and hip in two hazy days.
After learning that his travel insurance would not cover his medical expenses, he left the hospital.
At least initially, Luke was also being sought by enraged creditors including store owners who wanted to be paid for the motorcycle that he left damaged in an accident that he can’t recall since he was so inebriated, as well as by other people.
When Luke ultimately made it back to Sydney, he was taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where doctors discovered he had broken his hip, pelvis, tibula, and fibula.
In Thailand, where plates were placed to keep together his shin and hip, there was also a serious infection and a need to fix botched surgery.
Since the accident, Luke has also experienced jaw clicking.
He said, “The RPA took scans of my whole body and I informed them about my jaw.”
They said that nothing very harmful existed there.
“A little over a week later, I was in recovery when the hospital called.”
They said that after looking over my X-rays, they discovered that my jaw was dislocated.
I had to return to the hospital, where I was given anaesthesia and had my jaw properly set.
Even after all the difficulty his excessive drinking had created in Thailand, Luke continued to drink excessively after leaving the hospital.
About two weeks later, he said, “I had a night of inebriation.”
The plate in my shin was protruding from my shin when I glanced down when I woke up the next morning with my foot kind of on the bed and my leg elevated.
“I had to go back to the hospital and get another procedure,” the patient said. “I don’t know whether that was the best plate or if it was just me being a d**khead again.”
Luke eventually developed severe arthritis and required a total hip replacement.
Luke was no stranger to harm that he had perpetrated on others or on himself.
He was a seasoned street fighter who got the moniker “Punchy” for his proficiency with the fists. He was the head of a Sydney group that mostly engaged in drug usage and graffiti.
But not all of Luke’s adversaries fought just with their fists.
He was stabbed twice, the first time injuring his lung and requiring hospitalisation.
For nearly a week, Luke had to have a tube inserted into the side of his body to syphon blood from his lung.
The other stabbing used a shattered bottle to stab the victim in the skull. I needed 100 staples to keep my skull together and surgery to reconnect the top of my right ear.
When Luke and his buddies were spray painting graffiti near Melbourne rail lines, one of his friends saw a train take off his arm and “half his hand.”
Drug usage had a negative impact.
He said, “I did saw a buddy of mine drop dead on ecstasy right in front of me.”
Luke now makes it his life’s work to prevent young people from making the same errors he made.
Luke, who is mostly based on the Gold Coast, makes inspiring speeches at schools, youth gatherings, business events, and jails all around Australia.
After starting a gym with his ex-partner after moving back to Sydney, he developed his business by coaching adolescents there.
I was invited to talk with some of the children, and I discovered I was connecting with them strongly,’ he added.
“Many of them were interested in the amazing tales, which gave me the connection, but then I would weave some lessons and some magic in there which would assist them much,” the author said.
Luke urges his listeners to discover their own self rather than those fabricated out of ego in order to impress others or convey a certain impression.
According to him, “I demonstrate how we enter this life in that unadulterated condition with limitless options and potential for anything we choose to do in this life.”
I demonstrate to them how the false sense of self affects our mental health and happiness with tales and slides.
“These labels, these unfavourable beliefs—they begin developing the ego, the false sense of self, and begin preventing us from reaching our full potential.”
Therefore, it is about them and who they are at their core because they are morally and ethically aware. They just need to start listening to it and tap into it.
Alan Sykes, a boxing coach in Sydney, served as Luke’s mentor.
Despite having shown promise as a boxer prior to the disastrous Thai trip, Luke was slipping back into his old habits after the navy rejected him due to his wounds.
“Alan told me,” “We must return you to the gym. We must reschedule your training “Luke said.
“I resumed my training.” I wasn’t able to move about for a long. But he was aware that I needed to rediscover my passion.
Luke went on to triumph in 2010, taking home the NSW amateur light heavyweight boxing crown.
He entered me in the state championships in my first game back. Luke remarked, “Alan simply knew I needed some concentration in my life, he just knew I needed some direction.”
“He thought I was ready for it, but I didn’t,” she said.
When Luke began to write about some of his experiences, another, more productive channel became available.
After posting on an author forum and beginning to write some short tales on his phone, Luke claimed that he had become an author.
Many writers rejected it, claiming that I needed assistance with my storytelling, my punctuation, my grammar, and other such things.
However, this amazing lady editor from Melbourne read it and sent me an email saying, “Look, you do need some work with your structure, but you have some depth to your narrative telling.”
“We collaborated and got started on a book, and that alone altered the game for me,” the author said.
Currently, writing is a huge love of mine and a way for me to express my creativity.
not being very patient Luke self-published his first book, which, according to him, did “extremely well,” but only had a small audience.
But Rockpool Publishing, for whom Luke authored Sex, Drugs, and a Buddhist Monk, became aware of him as a result.
Later this year, Rockpool will issue the first self-published book, Redemption Road, in Australia, the US, and the UK. It focuses more on his previous gang life.
The main premise of “Sex, Drugs, and a Buddhist Monk” is how Luke discovered better techniques to still his racing thoughts after learning spiritual principles.
Luke thinks that the “seeds” he “planted” in Thailand eventually grew.
In the previous 12 months, he added, “I’ve had some huge experiences that have brought me to my knees and unravelled a lot for me, answers from my history, my childhood.”
Without addressing the issues that lay behind that—my triggers, my traumas, my unconscious beliefs, and my wounds—our old behaviours would constantly take control.
Despite the fact that his journey to Thailand ended in disaster, Luke believes it was crucial in shaping the person he is now.
It was one of the nicest things that could have happened to him, he said, looking back on it now, many years later.
15 years have passed, and I am no longer that guy.
“I’m a guy who is now devoting himself to give back to a community from which I have benefited much.”
The Choice for Love by Barbara De Angelis, according to Luke, taught him a valuable lesson: “Our greatest achievements in life come not in what we learn, but in unlearning of what’s not benefiting us.”