Landed on a tropical island: Suicide or not?

Els van Wijlen has been living for more than 30 years with her husband 'de Kuuk' in a small village in Brabant. In 2006 they visited Thailand for the first time. If possible, they go on holiday there twice a year. Their favorite island is Koh Phangan, which feels like coming home. Her son Robin has opened a coffee cafe on Koh Phangan.

Suicide or not?

On Thailandblog I see this headline on June 26: Dutch woman (26) dead after jumping from hotel parking garage in Chiang Mai

What?? Guilty of my sensationalism, I quickly read the story.

The coverage raises a lot of questions and makes me think of that night Hook told a mysterious story. Hook is a Frenchman and he led a rather adventurous life before settling down as a bartender at a resort on Koh Phangan 10 years ago. There he slowly serves his cocktails and ice cold Singha in the termite-eaten beach bar. Usually he doesn't say much, preferring to listen to his music and the customers hanging on wobbly bar stools at the uncomfortable, too high counter.

He tells in English with that typical French accent, one of his stories from the time when he and a friend drove from France to Africa in an old Peugeot. Of course they were stranded in the desert and only through the help of the nomads he is still alive.

Not so that English doctor who, as Hook says, was very popular with his patients in Africa and who had a new clinic built together with 2 business partners. Proud as a peacock, the doctor walks up to the high-rise building every day before construction activities begin to quietly observe the progress. Then he calls his wife to update her on the progress of the construction.

Until that day when he falls off the roof. He's dead.

The police assume suicide and inform his wife, who lives in England. She does not believe that her enthusiastic and lively husband committed suicide.
Heartbroken but determined to sort out the matter herself, she flies to Africa. She doesn't get much wiser from the police, but through the grapevine she hears about a voodoo priest. A very difficult to approach man with a great deal of prestige and a fearsome reputation, who, they whisper, speaks the truth.
Via via via via the English widow makes an appointment with the voodoo priest. After the necessary rituals that no one dares to say anything about, he tells the truth:

That the doctor's two business partners decided at the end of the construction period to get rid of the doctor, sell the property and share the profits.
That the building's cash-strapped black guard succumbs to pressure from the business partners and a significant sum of money and promises to get the job done. He will push the doctor off the roof during his daily round.

The widow is stunned. But the voodoo priest knows how to tell her even more. He says that the killer will turn himself in to the police within 2 days and that the business partners will both be dead within six months.

The next day she visits this poor black guard who pushed her husband off the roof. When she says that she has been to the Voodoo priest and that she knows the truth, he turns white, immediately goes to the police station and turns himself in.

A few months later, the woman reads in the newspaper that two people died in a one-sided, mysterious accident. The two victims were driving a car on a straight road and the car flipped over out of the blue. The two men turn out to be the former business partners of her murdered husband…..
Yeaaaa, says Hook, zis is e troeoeoeoe sturgeon, Africa is e strrrrrrreeenzj keuntrrie.

I well remember that this story made an impression on me and that we drank just one more to celebrate life while listening to Voodoo Lounge by the Rolling Stones with Hook.

Today I read again the story of the fallen woman in Chiang Mai. I search the internet for more information. The sad story leaves a deep impression and I would like to wish the relatives a lot of strength.