Before coming to Thailand, Nicole said that she imagined it being a land of gold and exotic animals and so forth. I think it's definitely turning out to be like that, along with some of the foreign location standards, such as the occasional swindler, funny living conditions, and the smell of fecal matter warming in the sun.
So tomorrow we'll be trying to get over to Cambodia, the details of which we haven't quite figured out. Obviously God loves us, but hopefully we don't learn the hard way to not press our luck one of these times.
We'll pick up the story on last Wednesday when Nicole and I were gung ho about trying some of the world class diving, or at least snorkeling since that's all we knew how to do. We got on our trusty rented scoot and headed over to the Northwest corner of the island, which is supposed to be the prime snorkeling spot. Always determined to get the best deal, we him hawed about where we wanted to rent our gear, and finally got suited up in our goggles and flippers. The beach with snorkeling is absolutely gorgeous, with a little island off the coast only connect by a sand bar. The water is a beautiful blue and is shallow for some ways out, there are already lots of snorkelers in the water. One way that someone told us to do it was to commission a water taxi who would have the gear. Since we weren't about to pay someone to ship us to a place we could very well swim to, we spotted a place were the taxis were stopping with passengers and started wading/swimming in that direction. It was the worst idea ever. Turned out the water stayed about two feet deep for about 300 yards, which is just barely enough to swim in, since walking in flippers is ridiculously difficult. The further away from the shore we got, the scarier became the scenery just inches below our bellies. It started out as a funky plant here and there, then we started seeing these sausage-looking things. I thought, 'huh, sea worm, thing....not the most attractive underwater creature, but that's okay.' Pretty soon there were lots of them, and they were getting bigger. I was trying to just ignore the weirdness and swim, but it was getting harder to paddle with my hands and not be afraid that I'd swipe the nasties with my hands-- keep in mind, still two, maybe three feet of water.
I finally decide to stand up and look for Nicole. She was still swimming head down, but her movements were getting more and more erratic. Pretty soon she started flailing and her head came up sputterring "Aaahhpppfpfpf.... Grant! pfpfpppff.... What are you doing?!!!.. pfpffp.... the Blubs! prpffp! SO DISGUSTING! Aaahhphppfpfpfp...Grant!pffpppfpfp!" All while trying to stand up in her flippers, and, as I found out later, terrified of stepping on or touching the "Blubs" (the black sausage creatures I mentioned earlier). When we were both standing and had regained a bit of our composure, we found ourselves about halfway to our destination. In order to avoid more blubs, we changed route to the sand bar that went out to the mini-island. We got there and walked out to the island on the sandbar and thought it looked like an abandoned pirate treasure island. It really was kind of creepy.
Our 'ideal' snorkeling spot was just off of the island, so we were going to try to get there by land. We walked along and the trail got crappier and crappier. We were barefoot walking on shards of seashells and coral and it was not fun. We got to an empty broken down beach bar at the end of the trail, and the way out to the water was over a field of jagged rocks. I went ahead to see if there was any saving the trip, but found that the jagged rock continued under water, but it was also camouflaged and slippery. Again, the water stayed shallow for a long while before the real water. We decided to forget the whole thing, and started walking back on the rocks, also not fun. Nicole sliced her foot on a particularly malicious rock and I fell over and cut my hand on another, and we found ourselves very discouraged with blubs to our right and jagged rocks to our left. We opted for the blubs and when we finally got back to precious land we concluded that there was no saving the snorkeling experience on Koh Pagnan. I ventured out where there we other snorklers just to make sure and pretty much found coral, blubs, and an occasional fish. I guess Cabo just spoiled us.
To recover we went for a long scooter ride and did some window shopping. We eventually got back to our beach and rented a sea kayak from a weird dutch lady that ran a bar for all her dutch friends. She was casual and called me 'Love'. We kayaked as far out to the ocean as we dared--still without leaving our bay, but we did draw some funny onlookers from the anchored fishing boats. We finished up the day reading our books at a restaurant that had a seaside bamboo patio adorned with Christmas lights. I was a nice way to end a grueling day.
The next day was our trip back to Bangkok, and we were not looking forward to it. Luckily this one turned out much smoother than the last. We were sitting at the pier waiting for our bus when this guy in a red tank top, short shorts, and at tiny pony tail that the length of his hair didn't merit drive up on a scooter and drop of an 11-year-old kid and a suitcase, then drive off. The abandoned boy looked like this wasn't ideal, but also not unusual. He looked at us and said "Parlez-vous francais?" I said "Un peu" and laughed. I spent the next 15 minutes racking my brain for memories from my class time with Monsieur Le Prof, but hardly anything came. So we sat the 3 of us in relative silence, until we figured out that we were at the wrong pier. The kid's dad came back and they traveled together, which was kind of relieving for us. We ran into another lady Spaniard we had met getting lost on the island who introduced herself as Sara. She was super nice and said that she didn't participate in the infamously unsavory half moon party that had happened the night before, which many of our fellow travelers were obviously still recovering from. We all sat together on the ride, and when she found out that we were married she was really impressed. We started talking about the church and just happened to have a pass along card in Spanish! She seemed really interested and was excited to stay in touch. It's nice to meet people like Sara and Calem (the British kid I gave my Book of Mormon to on the way to the island) in our travels. There are people who are just good.
We found ourselves back in Bangkok and went to see the remaining sights there. The grand palace and temple of the emerald Buddha that is here were absolutely stunning. This is where the whole land of gold thing comes in. You'll just have to see the pictures, but the place is incredible. Huge, ornate structures intricately elaborated in every cranny, all accented with gold leaf. The predominant belief is Buddhism, with strong Hindu influence. It reminds me of Peruvian Christianity, which ends up being a Christo-Incan creole. Lots of donation to the temples and monks going on around here, but from what I understand, giving to the church is one the most effective ways of getting good karma. We also saw a museum dedicated to the current queen, who became responsible for re-defining traditional Thai dress, since most of it was driven out with colonialism. I'm constantly impressed by the Thai people's pride in their heritage, culture, and tradition. They have thousands of Wats, hundreds of museums, and writing and art everywhere. We took a round about way home and inadvertently found a chinese dessert shop where Nicole could reminisce in Chinese with some folks there and introduce me to some Chinese food. We also took a bus out to a random location, saw a communist party rally at the capitol and walked a long, long way home. I had us take a wrong term and we were a long way from home, desperately wanting to not walk any more and needing a bathroom. I prayed in my heart that God would help us make it back when it started to rain, and then as if a desert oasis, we saw the glorious golden arches come around a corner. McDonalds had American food, but more importantly it had a bathroom. We said a prayer of thanksgiving and drowned our sorrows in cheeseburger combos. The rest of the walk home didn't seem so bad.
The next morning, early we set out on another trek, this time to Ayutthaya, where supposedly the inspiration from King Louie's hangout in the Jungle Book came from. We opted for a train ride, which turned out to be very quaint and fun. We found bikes to rent right outside the train station and were soon pedaling around the ancient capital city of the kingdom of Siam. We got through about the first ruin site before we felt like the sun had beat us to a pulp. This was the hottest day we've had yet in Thailand, and the sun was brutal. We stopped somewhere for lunch, but weren't really even sure if it was a restaurant. They didn't speak English, and their menu was in Thai without pictures. The owner guy had me talk to someone on his cellphone to place an order, which he translated to the owner. Meanwhile Nicole was becoming more and more frightened by the things she was seeing in the kitchen, and the fact that no one else was eating there. They didn't have what I ordered since I had to shoot in the dark anyway, but we took that as an excuse to leave. We still both woke up in the middle of that night with crazy diarrhea anyway--which was kind of funny since we had to run down the hall of our guest house in our underwear just to get to the bathroom, take turns, and share toilet paper. We bought a bunch of weird fruit from what I would stereotype as a Thai hippie and made our way around the village, sweating our heads off. The ruins really were incredible, and we had fun riding around and watching the people take elephant rides near the grand palace ruins. I liked thinking about how you only usually see elephant from 100 yards off in a cage, and here they were walking in the street, Nicole almost even got run over by one while she was taking a picture of something else.
Today has been a lot of fun. We took a bus, then the metro to church since the bus that Google suggested never showed. The meeting was way fun, probably the most international ward I've ever been to. Everyone's story was really interesting, and it was great to be with the saints. We found a yummy dim sum restaurant right after the meeting (ha! ironic, right? We managed to not buy breakfast and dinner today, though) with wi-fi and tried to plan getting out to a Bangkok suburb to see June, a Thai exchange student that Nicole's sister, Heather, had become good friends with last year. Nicole was facebooking with her--we had no other way of communication-- when her Kindle died. We kind of thought we knew how to get out there, so we headed toward what we thought was the bus terminal. There actually was no bus terminal, but various Thai people on the street pointed us toward a bus that might get us close. We got on board and drove for a while. When I showed the fare collector lady the address that we were going to, she told us to get off and get on another bus. The fare collector on the bus asked us where we were going, and I said "Rattanathibet" She said something in Thai that I interpretted as "We're in Rattanathibet, Where in Rattanithibet?" I showed her the address in our book that June had sent us over facebook and she had no idea where it was. She didn't really know what to do with us. She asked some people about the address, a few people passed our notebook around, all of them handed it back and shook their heads. Nicole and I just looked at each other and laughed. We had spent about 2.5 hours getting this far and now no one could tell us whether we were even close. We just told the collector that we'd get off at the next stop and she wouldn't charge us. We wanted to find an internet cafe or something. The closest thing was a Toyota dealership. We walked into the service office and they scrounged up someone that spoke English well enough to communicate. He came in and asked what he could help us with and I said "We're lost." Thai people are really friendly and willing to help, and soon we had the whole office arguing over directions, what bus we should take, etc. We were pretty sure we could take a bus, but the English speaker offered to talk a cab driver into taking us for 100 baht, which is about $3.35. When he saw that we were determined to save money by taking a bus, he asked us to wait and disappeared out of the office. When he re-emerged he said that he'd arranged a ride for us, and he and one of his buddies took us to June's house in a brand new Camry. I laughed the whole way. I said "You are too nice! Don't you have work to do?" He replied "No man, it's Sunday!" They drove us down the freeway, into a neighborhood, through some winding roads, past the guardhouse at the entrance of the community and right up to June's front gate. When the guards were asking the drivers where we were going we realized we didn't even know June's Thai name, or her last name. Anyway, by a great miracle we arrived at their house, and they treated us to a tour of the neighborhood and a Thai feast with some of their extended family. Luckily everyone knew at least a little English, except for her old Aunt who fortunately knew a bit of Mandarin! We had a great time with all of them and they were so wonderful. Probably one of the funnest things we've done since being here. We found out that June asked her dad to go wait at the bus station for us, which she messaged us after Nicole's Kindle had died. He said he didn't wait too long, but he also offered to drive us back home. We stopped by the grand palace in Bangkok and took some great pictures of it lit up at night. They gave us some heartfelt hugs and 'Sawadee's when dropping us off, so thanks Heather for sharing their family with us!
Was the mini island called ko tae nai?
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