It's a chopper baby
We took one of those forms of tourist-cattle transport from Koh Tao to Bangkok. We bought the ticket on a whim from the place we had our laundry done and later got reprimanded by the dive shop we'd been using. They sell the same tickets. She didn't hold it against us though and arranged for a taxi to bring us into town to catch the boat. It was about 24 hours of ferry and bus travel with an ear infection and a hangover (we met this Irish couple who introduced us to the bucket--A pint of Thai whisky a drop of coke and a a red bull--and a laid back bar on the beach--before we got to the little hickish town of kantharalak. We met Les, a man who'd gone to High School with my mother and has lived here for 13 years or so. He picked us up at 8 am and we spent the next two days with his family, Ya, Benz, Jackie and Tony.
As luck had it, Les owned two Honda choppers, and trusted my professed riding ability. Ya dropped the kids off at her mother's and we took a trip into town. Got some drops for my ear and that progressively felt better over the next few days. We rode around on some other business and finally decided to ride south to a curious national park that likes to charge foreigners inflated admissions prices at each new bend or rise or sight. It was flat and straight and devoid of the potholes that littered the road from Les's farm into town, so we got going. A stupid idea since the helmets we were wearing were unreliable at best and the paper thin clothing and sandals provided little other protection. But the speedo was broken, so each time I had to hold onto the helmet because we were going too fast, I looked down and saw that we were only in fact going 0 km/h. It reassured me.
The way people drive in this part of Thailand--right near the Cambodian, Laos, Thai border--is casual. If you want to pass someone, do it and don't worry about. The other cars and bikes and tractors and motorcyles and scooters and carts and trucks and buses will move towards the shoulder or slow down or some safe combination of both. Otherwise they will sound their horn and let you know they don't intend to do any such thing. The bike had some get-up to it, so I was able to negotiate this sort of situation and keep up with Les, who was givin her ahead of me.
We got the discount, two foreigners, one resident alien and a Thai citizen for the price of three Thais and one foreign child. Somewhere up the way we had to pay another 20 - 50 baht, this one confused me, before being stopped just short of the Cambodian border where Cambodian's wanted another 200 baht each to continue up to the ruin. Les was appalled by the racist principle behind it and I bought a pair of sunglasses so rocks would stop hitting me in the eyes on the way home. We settled for an overlook into the three countries where Les and Ya spoke to some Cambodians about dead bodies below the cliff we were standing on and Traci and I tried to follow and stared out over the vista.
Les's kids were great, if a little high-maintenance. A little standoffish at first, they lost all inhibitions when I started throwing them around. First with flips and then around in circles. I swung them in between my legs and around in poor dance moves. We played my favorite game of all, wheel-of-children, where they lie down and I spin them until their pupils become the size of soup bowls. They loved this game even more than I did.
The two girls are good dancers. They get it from their mother, who is great dancer, natural rhythm. Ya wanted to go dancing the last night we were there so we went down town and for a little while were the only people at a bar with a band playing maudlin rock anthems. At set break Ya got them to dance music and soon we were all dancing and drinking bad 'blended imported spirit' that was called whisky on the menu. At the end of the night, there was a fight, over jealousy between boyfriend and girlfriend. She hit him with a chair, he hit her. They went outside. By this time we were dancing on the stage, the whisky all gone. Transvestites were getting their groove on in these banistered platforms. Outside the man and woman are still fighting, then he hits her, grabs her face and throws her to the ground, kicks her. Now it's getting uncomfortable, the scene inside is not jibing with that outside. Nobody is doing anything. Our jaws dropped and getting down off the stage and going outside and Ya waving it off, then talking to the girl and soon everbody is outside, the party is over, the fight is over. The guy who was sitting on his scooter looking tough with his side crowded around him while his girlfriend yelled from the stairs amidst a different crowd was gone. Attention shifted to us. The lead singer called me handsome, I said he was too. One girl was calling us lovely, Traci a super star. The Transvestites were talking to us introducing themselves. The lead singer made sure to point out the obvious, to which one replied "noboby know, nobody know!" We droved back out the potholed road to the farm ending the strange night.
I loved staying with Les and his family. It was a welcome break from the backpacker trail where it seems we will spend most of our time. 6 weeks may sound like a long time here, but we feel rushed. a month for each country is a more adequate time. As it is, we're having to stick to few places, easy places due to long travel times between.
And now here we are in Vang Vieng Laos. More on that later, hopefull with pictures. No time left today.
As luck had it, Les owned two Honda choppers, and trusted my professed riding ability. Ya dropped the kids off at her mother's and we took a trip into town. Got some drops for my ear and that progressively felt better over the next few days. We rode around on some other business and finally decided to ride south to a curious national park that likes to charge foreigners inflated admissions prices at each new bend or rise or sight. It was flat and straight and devoid of the potholes that littered the road from Les's farm into town, so we got going. A stupid idea since the helmets we were wearing were unreliable at best and the paper thin clothing and sandals provided little other protection. But the speedo was broken, so each time I had to hold onto the helmet because we were going too fast, I looked down and saw that we were only in fact going 0 km/h. It reassured me.
The way people drive in this part of Thailand--right near the Cambodian, Laos, Thai border--is casual. If you want to pass someone, do it and don't worry about. The other cars and bikes and tractors and motorcyles and scooters and carts and trucks and buses will move towards the shoulder or slow down or some safe combination of both. Otherwise they will sound their horn and let you know they don't intend to do any such thing. The bike had some get-up to it, so I was able to negotiate this sort of situation and keep up with Les, who was givin her ahead of me.
We got the discount, two foreigners, one resident alien and a Thai citizen for the price of three Thais and one foreign child. Somewhere up the way we had to pay another 20 - 50 baht, this one confused me, before being stopped just short of the Cambodian border where Cambodian's wanted another 200 baht each to continue up to the ruin. Les was appalled by the racist principle behind it and I bought a pair of sunglasses so rocks would stop hitting me in the eyes on the way home. We settled for an overlook into the three countries where Les and Ya spoke to some Cambodians about dead bodies below the cliff we were standing on and Traci and I tried to follow and stared out over the vista.
Les's kids were great, if a little high-maintenance. A little standoffish at first, they lost all inhibitions when I started throwing them around. First with flips and then around in circles. I swung them in between my legs and around in poor dance moves. We played my favorite game of all, wheel-of-children, where they lie down and I spin them until their pupils become the size of soup bowls. They loved this game even more than I did.
The two girls are good dancers. They get it from their mother, who is great dancer, natural rhythm. Ya wanted to go dancing the last night we were there so we went down town and for a little while were the only people at a bar with a band playing maudlin rock anthems. At set break Ya got them to dance music and soon we were all dancing and drinking bad 'blended imported spirit' that was called whisky on the menu. At the end of the night, there was a fight, over jealousy between boyfriend and girlfriend. She hit him with a chair, he hit her. They went outside. By this time we were dancing on the stage, the whisky all gone. Transvestites were getting their groove on in these banistered platforms. Outside the man and woman are still fighting, then he hits her, grabs her face and throws her to the ground, kicks her. Now it's getting uncomfortable, the scene inside is not jibing with that outside. Nobody is doing anything. Our jaws dropped and getting down off the stage and going outside and Ya waving it off, then talking to the girl and soon everbody is outside, the party is over, the fight is over. The guy who was sitting on his scooter looking tough with his side crowded around him while his girlfriend yelled from the stairs amidst a different crowd was gone. Attention shifted to us. The lead singer called me handsome, I said he was too. One girl was calling us lovely, Traci a super star. The Transvestites were talking to us introducing themselves. The lead singer made sure to point out the obvious, to which one replied "noboby know, nobody know!" We droved back out the potholed road to the farm ending the strange night.
I loved staying with Les and his family. It was a welcome break from the backpacker trail where it seems we will spend most of our time. 6 weeks may sound like a long time here, but we feel rushed. a month for each country is a more adequate time. As it is, we're having to stick to few places, easy places due to long travel times between.
And now here we are in Vang Vieng Laos. More on that later, hopefull with pictures. No time left today.
posted by The Principal at 5:00 PM
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