Rebuilding Thailand

Sunday!
A day off from digging holes, or pouring concrete, or building walls.
So how did I decide to unwind? By watching Top Gun of course (I mean really what else do you do when you’re in Thailand and it’s not NFL season?).

I forgot how good that movie was, it was full of intense action, great lines: “That’s Iceman… It’s the way he flies, ice cold, no mistakes.” (OK they’re way corney now, but supercool when it came out), and Kelly McGillis was fucking HOT! Incidentally that was the first movie I ever saw tongue kissing in… Whoa! I also heard later on that she couldn’t get any work afterwards because it had come out that she was gay. (fucking homophobic people, if the world needs more of anything – it’s got to be lesbians)

Then I went to dinner with some of the other volunteers. Dinner turned into drinks at Cert’s bar. And it was an early night for me (i.e. I left before 4 AM).

As I was walking up to my door my phone rings and what the fuck do you know it’s Chris!!! My best friend from back home…
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This place is very charming. One of the most charming places in the world I think. I can only explain it like my first impression of New Mexico. They call New Mexico “The Land of Enchantment” and I found out very quickly why. The place is “other-worldly.” I came across moths the size and shape of hummingbirds minus the long beak, You can look at the same landscape and the shadow from the clouds falling on the ground morph what you are looking at within just minutes. Everything there was dazzling and new. My experience of being there describes the awe and freshness of being here. Of course this is a jungle rain forest mountain range hugging a long stretch of white sand beaches. Both of which beg to be explored. Like last week my friend Richard and I took a hike to explore the rain forest mountain which is in my backyard. We rode in as far as the paved path would take us and then we began our hike along the river that headed to the top in hopes of finding a hidden waterfall. I don’t think I’ll forget our time together as we hiked up the mountain and poor Richard ill equipped on the mosquito repellant department surrounded by a cloud of mozzies as thick as the grey clouds above us supplying a constant drizzle on our heads.
But that’s just the shit of it all… (more…)

One of the Thap Tawan village elders Seewai invited us to go octopus fishing one day. I had no idea how to catch an octopus (moy wai in Thai) and the night before I had visions of heading out to sea in a longtail boat and snorkeling down with spearguns and fighting huge octopus. So morning comes along and a couple of us collected at the road to wait for Adam who told us he’d be by before 5:45 in the morning. 6AM goes by and we haven’t seen him yet. With my motor bike I rode down the way to see if there were anyone else waiting and ran into Josh and Jen who were still waiting also, I rode to Adam’s and found the truck still there which meant he was still asleep. Scrambling when woken up he yells at me that it’s only 4 in the morning. After pointing out to him that the the sun is up and since we are so close to the equator the sun usually rises around 6 in the morning. He then mutters something about his phone being wrong and throws on some shorts and runs outside. Well, on the way. Then we get out there late and Seewai was waiting for us. He took us out to the beach where there was no boat waiting, no spearguns for us, no snorkels. ”

What were we going to do?” I thought as Seewai just kept walking out to the water which was pretty well receded as it was low tide. So everyone just followed him. We walked out to the offshore reef and saw some really cool things on our way out we saw plenty of sea slugs (which apparently you can jerk off and they will cum all over your hand… Nice), we saw about 5 puffer fish that were just chilling out in the reef and puffing up when we sloshed by, lot’s of crabs, in fact we caught those as bait for the octopus.

This is how we learned to catch an octopus: You take a piece of crab meat and stick it on the end of a string or piece of seagrass. Then you look for small holes in the sand in the reef areas and stick the crabmeat in the hole. Wait until the octopus comes out and then you stick it with a long metal prong. Then string them up and take them home to cook them up. One of the girls, Koi, had her own unorthodox way of catching them; She let them catch her. We walked up to her and an octopus had wrapped itself around her leg!!!

It was a fascinating day out on the reef. The morning light gave way to the harsh mid-day sun, and we made our way back to shore.

Along with missing the summer tour of Dave Matthews Band one of the things I thought I was going to miss was seeing Anakin transform into Darth Vader. Well I didn’t have to worry too much because as it turns out, the whole world is just as crazy for Star Wars as we are (OK they don’t dress the parts here). And Darth, Yoda, Obi Wan and the rest of the gang were coming to me. Only if I were so lucky with Dave Matthews… (more…)

In paradise I think one is prone to adopt a flavor of carefree living. A lot is forgotten including our own human-ness and fraility as humans.
Ben is 18, he is from England. I doubt he ever thought that in this paradise he would have to confront that fraility.

But there I was, watching him bleed out of his cracked skull… (more…)