Adventures By Design

In which the travelers complain about muesli and overcome their fears of scooting.

This morning we woke up and went for breakfast. We ordered muesli, which Twe thought would include fruit, and yogurt with oats and nuts on top. Unfortunately when it arrived there were no oats and nuts in evidence, so we just had yogurt with fruit, which was kind of watery, but not so bad.

In the middle of breakfast a storm blew in, so we retreated to our hotel room for some much-needed quality time catching up on our blog. After that we headed to town to meet our new friend Pink. We walked for over twenty minutes before a local man took time away from mixing cement to build his house, and offered to over-charge us for the ride. Initially, he asked 150 baht, which we countered with 100, until with great reluctance he agreed to 120 baht. We consoled ourselves that it could have been much worse: Tracy and Rebecca routinely paid 140 baht one-way!

Once in town, we wandered through the market, looking for the dive shop that Pink is staying at. When we finally found it, we were told that we had just missed her, literally, and that if we looked down the street we could see Pink’s pink shirt walking away. We gave chase at the top speed allowed by the weather: we sauntered after her. We felt silly walking behind her, never really gaining on her, always just out of earshot, but nonetheless entirely unwilling to expend the extra energy required (and heat generated) to actually catch-up. Eventually, she turned a blind corner and gave us the slip. We searched in vain, but couldn’t find her so, like lions stalking the watering hole, we returned to the dive shop where we knew Pink’s lunch awaited her. Within minutes her small frame arrived.

She was happy to see us, and we chatted with her over a lovely pizza. She is a writer of travel material, and she suggested that we could edit some of her work. She wants to write an article for an in-flight magazine which would be published in Thai and English. How exciting! Adding her to our friend Mark and Ric’s aunt BA, we are collecting quite the stable of writers in our lives.

Pink was despondent and bored because she couldn’t go diving today. Her dive shop did not take the boat out to the islands today because they did not have enough people to cover the costs of running the boat. Tomorrow they are scheduled to go, but since Gin and I are moving to a new hotel, we can’t go with them. On Monday, however, we are planning on joining them to go snorkeling. We’re really excited to get back in the water and swim again.

With the over-priced trip into town, and the paucity of taxis, tuk-tuks, and the like, we realized that the island life demands that one rent a motorcycle. You just can’t get anywhere without one. With the help of King, Pink’s dive shop colleague, we rented a 100 cc scooter. It has been 15 years since Ric drove a motorcycle, and even when he did, he wasn’t all that comfortable on it. So, with great trepidation, he straddled the savage beast and bound it to his will. Of course, as Ric’s mom can vouch for, what good is a biker without a biker bunny bouncing on the back, so Gin clambered aboard and we were off.

We drove steadily out of town until we reached the area known as Long Beach; it is a long beach. This is the most popular beach on the island, as it has the nicest sand and is generally free of rocks. Although our current beach, Klong Khong, is nice, it is too rocky and too far from the pier where all the diving launches from. Plus, we aren’t all that impressed by the hotel staff here: they are noncommunicative, dysphoric, and unschooled in the preparation of muesli. We shuttled from hotel to hotel, inquiring about price and viewing the rooms. After what seemed like hours, we narrowed the search down to a short-list of hotels that had the right combination of price, features, and general atmosphere that we want. We didn’t actually put a deposit down on anything yet, and tomorrow we are going to return.

Gin’s spots are looking much better, thankfully. She hasn’t used her bugspray for a few days, and while her spots aren’t gone, they are fading. The initial line of marks she discovered on her arm have almost completely cleared up, so we think it is just a matter of time before she’s back to her undotted self.