These are some of my older travel stories I've managed to rescue from mass emails to friends and family.
The past few years, I've spent the most of my time bumming around Asia. Sometimes traveling solo, sometimes with friends (old and new). This particular post is from the south of Thailand, August 2008.
First off, my English has gone down the drain. I've spent the better part of a year now speaking only 'Special English' that I'm driving all my students insane. An example of Special English: rather than saying 'we're going to spend the night on the island of Koh Yao Noi', I say something like 'we go spend one night on ...' English speakers, Thai people....it all comes out the same these days. Even in my writing I have to catch myself from time to time.
Yesterday was Mother's Day here. Mother's Day falls on the day the current Queen was born, August 12th. It's interesting here, all the bars have to shut down until after midnight, not allowed to serve alcohol or play music in honor of the Queen, Mom's Birthday. We were in Railey Beach though, rasta culture, so the rules were bent a little bit....I had a beer on you mom!
Today was my favorite day on tour: the first day of our two day sea kayaking adventure. We paddled through a mangrove forest in the morning, watching the monkeys take their morning swims towards our kayaks. Every time we go through the mangroves, we get monkeys on our kayaks. They hop on board sometimes just to get a lift for a little while, but more often than not it's to steal your food if you brought anything with you today. I had to fight with a monkey for my orange peels today...but once that mama bared her teeth I surrendered!
The second half of the afternoon we were beached at a hidden beach appropriately named Mushroom Island (named for the mushroom shaped monolith at the northern end) and while my students all laid out on the sandy beach, me and the crew went fishing. Queen and I piled into a kayak with a plastic bottle and were on our way! We tied a plastic shrimp rig to some fishing wire, and tied the ends around the bottle to make a small rod. We kayaked slowly in circles around the fringe reefs, and bam! The minute the water gets darker you know you caught a squid and it's inking! It was sooo much fun!
We caught a beauty today, one as big as my forearm! Sure the kayaking staff caught a few more, but Queen and I did ok for squiding rookies. We're going to cook it tonight: the locals stir fry the squid and cook it with the ink for flavor....sooooo good!
Tonight is the best meal ever on tour: BBQ seafood dinner! We get fried rice, chicken bbq, prawns, crab legs, beef steak, chicken and fish stick (like hot dogs), BOILED POTATOES!, ooooh....can not wait! I haven't got many more stories these days, which is good right? No news is always good news. We fly up to Chiang Mai tomorrow and start the second week in the North: trekking, white water rafting, canyoning, elephant nature park, etc. I'm looking forward to that, I've been in the South so long I'm starting to look like one of the locals.
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