Ton Sai Blows...

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hdTi7dDPxBwjFkgm8

Greetings from Thailand, where the question remains: How many Burmese laborers can you fit in the back of a pickup truck?

On the subject of motor vehicles, I've had an easier time than I expected adjusting to driving on the left side of the road. The hardest part really is using the stick with your left hand instead of your right. On a road trip to Krabi I kept grinding gears as I was downshifting from fifth to fourth and the crew was giving me all sorts of shit about it. I haven't killed anybody yet, which is sweet, but I ran over a dog in front of the 7-eleven in Bang Niang but I'm sure it was already dead. Nevertheless, my team was calling me "Dave the dog-killer" for a couple of weeks. Have I previously mentioned the lack of respect my team shows me? Just like when I was employed, except without the paycheck. Anyhow, I have my own car courtesy of Mercy Foundation which has been dubbed "The Shark." It's a long, gray, diesel P.O.S. station wagon whose insides have been completely gutted from several months of transporting volunteers. I wanted to paint some teeth on the front of it like those old fighter planes and maybe use the arc welder to stick a metal fin on the roof, but I think Dean plans on selling it when we're done. These are the kinds of things I come up with when given access to power tools and heavy equipment.

I consider myself lucky to have had a consistent crew without much turnover for the last month or so which has made it possible for us to really kick ass on the construction front. We've been pouring concrete almost every day and have some structure in place on every house we're scheduled to build. They gave me a group of 15 Singaporean students this week that brought my total to around 30 or so, and I stuck them immediately on painting and ditch digging duty. Damn Singaporeans. That's payback for that crappy $17 Singapore Sling at Raffles. Speaking of digging, Lee and JC were digging holes for a cess pit on house 12 when they found one of the old septic rings from the previous house buried three feet deep. We tried to work out how to get around it but there was no way, so I told them we had to crack through half of it in order to get the new rings in. We got the big sledgehammer out and after the first whack realized that the old ring was black, which means filled with shit. The look on Lee's face was one of pure disgust, and I've never seen a 230 pound man leap out of a trench so fast. But, it had to be done so we equipped ourselves with surgical masks and I had the brilliant idea of smothering Tiger Balm under my nose to mitigate the smell of crap, which actually made me tear up because every time I breathed out the mask would blow eucalyptus into my eyes. Anyhow, I got down in there and finished sledging out the concrete ring, then began digging out poop. It was kind of weird, all packed in there like a can of cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving, except it was all black and green, and apparently the previous homeowners really enjoyed their chilies. Luckily, no one threw up, although Tom did roll some crap down his back from some overzealous shoveling.

We took a weekend road trip down to Krabi a couple of weeks ago and got 12 of us spread out between two of the Mercy station wagons. On the way down we had a boom box playing Swedish pop, courtesy of Joakim and Sanna, and Rich had his acoustic guitar on which he and Chris composed the song "Working on Koh Kho Khao" to the tune of "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Everyone was taking turns making up verses, and apparently the easiest thing to rhyme with Dave is "makes me work like a slave." We stayed on Ton Sai beach in Krabi, which is great if you're a rock climber or a pothead, but Ray Lei beach, which is just south of there, is a much nicer white sand beach. Ton Sai's beach was complete shit, all rocky and craggy and you couldn't walk into the water without some flip-flops or something else covering your feet. I have to admit, though, that the limestone cliffs that surround the beaches are quite striking. You could easily spend an afternoon with a couple of beers just watching the climbers going up and down the cliff faces. We spent the Sunday on the beach in Ray Lei and were blessed with the only sunny day I've seen in the last three or four weeks. It's been nothing but overcast and rainy since it officially turned into the "dry" season. Anyhow, the only reason we went to Ton Sai was because there was a caravan going over from the TVC, and I'd heard for a month how great Ton Sai was from all these guys, but I should've realized that it's because you can get weed and space cakes at just about every bar along the beach. So we ended up surrounded by hippy stoner volunteers with their shitty firedancing routines, which reminded me of living in the Haight for some reason.

I should've known better than to listen to those guys anyway, I never go into the TVC office unless I absolutely have to. One day I went in there during the afternoon and saw about 25-30 people working, or at least trying to look busy, and I just keep asking myself what the hell they need all these people in the office for. Luckily I'm not on the mailing list for staff but Jeremy keeps forwarding me these inane messages they send out about toner running low, or clothes being deposited by the front desk, or my favorite message... a support group is being formed for volunteers to help them deal with trauma and they wanted to know which name (out of a list of 5) was best suited for the program. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be insensitive, but there are only 3 or 4 volunteers that were here during the actual tsunami and the vast proportion have only been here a few weeks. Maybe this was something that should've been established, I dunno, 9 months ago? I've observed the volunteer population, and I think the greatest trauma they encounter on a daily basis is where to eat or whether or not they're too hung over to go into work. It kind of reminds me of the crap people come up with in an office to justify their position when they don't have enough work to do. So anyhow, the only time I go into the office is on Monday nights when they have a general meeting, and that's only because I have to get up in front of everybody and give a status report. Most of the other project managers talk about how many boats they built or that they finally completed bathroom number 46 or some similar stuff that no one outside their group really cares about. I'm not crazy about public speaking, and most of it is a bullshit clapfest anyway, so I mostly end up making stuff up. I had a three-week streak where I mentioned something about Jeremy and his penchant for child pornography. I told the new volunteers that we had instituted Topless Tuesdays on the island. I came up with an open wound leaderboard and gave away a Stupid Injury of the Week award, although both of those have really tailed off since English Chris left town. I talked about how every member of my crew had been trained in the secretive art of monkey fighting, where the chief element is surprise. You never expect the tail. I said something about the average volunteer's worth being somewhere between a wheelbarrow and a roll of duct tape, because you get new volunteers every week but a wheelbarrow costs like 1000 baht. I said that Sanna was the strongest woman in the world in her weight class and that I saw her lift a cement mixer over her head. Anyhow, no one really laughs except my crew, and me of course, and that's all that matters.

As I mentioned before, I feel really lucky to have the crew I've been given, although I think that there's a checkbox on the volunteer signup sheet that says "Alcoholic" and if they mark it they send them over to the island. Last weekend a few of the team were drinking pretty much straight from Friday night until early Monday morning, with the highlight coming on Saturday night, probably in my top ten nights out ever. I won't get into too much detail since it would be boring in the retelling, but it included a spicy food eating contest, unsolicited karaoke, driving people out of three establishments, and breaking six glasses at the Marlin bar. Actually, one of the owners of Marlin bar told us the next day that it was one of the best nights he's had since he opened the bar. We've been good this week though and we still all have dinner together just about every night. I wouldn't mind having some more alone time, but it's one of those things where you figure you'll only have this one chance to capture this particular moment in time, so I might as well spend it with a great group of people. Supposedly we've gotten a rep among the other volunteers as the rowdy party group, which is not totally fair since I think it's only by comparison since all the rest of them are a bunch of stiffs. I'm friendly with just about everybody and some of the volunteers from the other groups tell me that we're cliquy (I dunno if that's the right spelling), which is probably true to some extent, but so are all the rest. People tend to hang out with who they know and who they work with, and not a lot of them make an effort to expand beyond their immediate circle. It seems like we're always the last to know when there's some large social event being planned and sometimes we don't even find out until after it's already happened. Maybe I should hang out more at the office. Nah. I try to make an effort though. Last night I sent a text message to all the other project managers inviting them and their crews to a pizza party/basketball/volleyball thing going on in Bang Sak put on by Mercy and only one of them even bothered to reply to me. So fuck them. I like my crew. Heh heh. I suppose I could look at it as justification for pulling off our pranks. We encased Nam Kem's truck in plastic wrap the other night, and we have a couple more planned for the upcoming week. Does anyone know if it's safe to give sleeping pills to a dog?

Anyhow, as one of the project managers I've been invited to the grand opening party for Le Meridien Khao Lak tonight, so I'll let you guys know how that works out. I'll probably have to cut out early since, well, I'm going to be surrounded by project managers and office staff. Who knows though, maybe I'll find some sugar mommy to put me up at the Meridien for a while. Heh heh. If I don't get a chance to talk to you, have a great holiday and happy new year!

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

Stop, Listen... and Love

Greetings everyone,

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/R7DjnnaYjBTcw4KD6

Last time I wrote I was still recovering from my brief dalliance with cross-dressing. Apparently, the hazards I'm facing in Thailand are not only due to conditions on the construction site. I now have to watch out for venom-spitting transvestites:
http://www.local6.com/news/5322040/detail.html
Thanks for the warning Gary.

There was a huge turnout for Jeremy's farewell bash. A bunch of us went out to dinner together and they let Jeremy and me cook our own dishes in the kitchen.
Jeremy made Massaman curry and I got to make some papaya salad. The best part was that the papaya came off a tree they had growing back behind the kitchen.
After the restaurant, we headed over to the Fisherman bar, which is usually crowded on a Friday night anyway, but there were probably about a hundred people there. Anyhow, as you can imagine there was a slight bit of alcohol involved with the leaving-do, and with Jeremy being the guest of honor, he was toasted approximately every 47 seconds. By about midnight he had partaken of just about 26 buckets, maybe 8 rounds of beer, and only he knows what else (or does he?). It's at this point that he decides he wants to make a speech to the entire gathering, so English Chris, Rich, and I tell everybody to shut up while Jeremy climbs on a chair and proceeds to spout five minutes of the most rambling, incoherent, and incomprehensible nonsense I've ever heard, and I've been to meetings with Eric Siegel (inside joke). Three of us are holding him up on the chair like a tripod because he keeps swaying from side to side. Just as the audience's interest is waning, Jeremy finds renewed vigor. "I have one more thing to say!" he shouts. He takes a long breath and stares over the bar. "Just remember this. I want you to Stop... I want you to Listen...." He takes a long pause and points his finger at the audience ".... and I want you to LOVE." At this point the entire bar erupts. It was as if some higher being had channeled the drunken body of Jeremy in order to deliver this profound message to the assembled masses. This point was further illustrated by the fact that as soon as he said the word "love" he fell off the chair and into a group of about 5 people. It was madness, people were cheering for about a minute, everybody was talking about it the next day, and the thing is Jeremy didn't remember any of it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

About an hour later, after we were all thoroughly inebriated, Jeremy decides he wants to give another speech. Well, there's no way he's going to top the one he's already given, but since it's his last night we're going to give him some leeway. As he climbs up on a chair and begins to talk, this jackass climbs on the bar starts shouting him down saying "nobody wants to fucking hear it" and other comments to that effect. So Richard decides that he's not going to have any of it and decides to take matters into his own hands, grabbing the guy around the waist and yanking him down off the bar. So now the guy's buddies get into it and English Chris starts squaring up with one of those guys. They're yelling at each other, tensions are flaring, and, as we learned the next day, turns out Rich was grazed by a punch from the first guy. So I go in there to try and break up Chris and the other guy, I manage to get Chris away from him and the guy starts to square up on me and get in my face. Now normally I consider myself a lover and not a fighter, but I suppose a few Changs and an insult to your friend can change that pretty quickly, so I find myself right up in this guy's face just talking all sorts of shit. I know, fighting is stupid and all that, but I'll tell you that I've never been that ready to throw down in my life. This idiot was continuing to talk shit about Jeremy so I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising up, my heart rate climbing, and my hands forming into fists as I'm yelling at this dude about an inch away from his face. It was kind of nuts, I just wanted to destroy the guy, and all it would've taken was a move from one of us and it was on. Luckily, four or five people jumped in and separated us, most of them being women, who are uncannily gifted at making guys feel stupid for wanting to fight, so I managed to calm myself down pretty quickly. English Chris and Rich were another story however, and I spent most of the rest of the night keeping them in one corner of the bar so that nothing would flare up again. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have been the best idea to open up my tenure as project manager on the island with a massive brawl among the volunteers, but I have to admit it was kind of cool to see the crew rally together in that situation. Plus, those guys had it coming, I think we showed remarkable self-discipline. Well, except for the drinking until 6 am part.

That was probably the most exciting thing that's happened the last few weeks. On the island I'm getting used to my new responsibilities, I've already managed to oversee a screwed-up floor and a crooked support column, so just be thankful that you're not getting a Thai house constructed under my expert supervision. I did learn how to mix concrete this week, which is a lot of fun but physically exhausting since each of those cement bags weighs probably 80 pounds or so. One of them opened up on me as I was lifting it and spilled its contents all across my shirtless body. I don't know if you know how well cement sticks to sweat and particularly body hair, but I looked like Santa Claus' hairy Italian cousin. I'm still getting the hang of this construction gig, what can I say? What I *am* good at is screwing around, so I organized a 3 am pirate raid last week on one of the other groups. We filled the back of their truck with sand and left a coconut with a skull and crossbones drawn on it, seeing as how we're the construction pirates and whatnot. Nobody knows it's us yet and we're planning some other raids, so don't say anything.

I also managed to weasel my way into a room at Le Meridien Khao Lak on Friday through the Mercy Foundation, which was way, way sweet. Some of the Mercy folks had been building a playground with this group called Kids Around the World who were staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak and crazy Dean offered me an extra room they had for Friday night with the stipulation that I have no "female roommates." I don't know what kind of reputation I have with the Mercy folks that they feel that they would need to make that expressly clear, and it sucks because the best part of having that kind of rep is earning it so it's definitely undeserved. Also, what's the point of staying at Le Meridien Khao Lak if you can't flash around your room key and use it to pull, but that's a minor point I suppose, and just having written that last sentence completely contradicts the previous one. Let's move on.

So we get the day off on Friday because of the dedication for the playground, which was great because there were 50 or so kids there from the local school in Bang Sak. They built slides, monkey bars, and a row of about 12 swings. They also put in a basketball court, which is great because we all know how much basketball is beloved by Thais. After the ceremony I went to check into the room at Le Meridien Khao Lak, which, if you didn't know this already, is an experience unto itself. They bring you cool lemon juice and a cold towel as you're sitting on a couch waiting to check in. Then they personally escort you to your room to show you the various amenities, features, and general whatnot in your luxury pad. The bathroom is encased in glass so, if you wish, you can raise the curtains and look out across your room out to the balcony and accompanying view as you're taking a shower, or a bath, or a dump. The balcony looked out onto the enormous pool complete with waterslide, and as I was remarking on this, the woman laughed and said "That's the kids' pool. We have three of them, the large one is behind the lobby." Of course, the kids' pool! How foolish of me.

So what did I do after check-in? I went to collect the rest of my team, of course. We fit 12 people into The Shark (my car), pulled into the parking lot, and walked through the service entrance toward our block of rooms where everyone got changed. We spent the rest of the afternoon crashing the various amenities offered at Le Meridien Khao Lak in a scene reminiscent of Caddy Day at the Bushwood Country Club pool from the movie "Caddyshack." I spent the night on a plush king-size bed and woke up the next morning in time for the 600 baht breakfast which is free for hotel guests, complete with fruit station, cereal station, pastry station, Thai food station, western food station, omelet station, waffle station, and real coffee. And, to cap it all off, I have to say that few things are more gratifying than taking a dump in a luxury bathroom. So I took two. Then I spent up until one minute before checkout watching HBO.

That's about it for now, I'm sure I forgot something but this message is already long enough as it is. As always, the Dude abides, Dave

P.S. Don't forget to Stop, Listen, and LOVE!

From Dean to Queen

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cp1HrHQsgy8DA972A

First, a clarification from my last message. I didn't mean to imply that Chan is an evil person, merely that evil things seem to happen to me when he's around or directing me to do anything. But he's a volunteer as well, he likes to giggle, and he has a cute kid so I just want to make sure that you know he's not actually evil. Of course, I've never been to his house, so he could have a pentagram and a sacrificial chamber in his basement for all I know, but he doesn't seem evil.

The same can't really be said for Dean, though. He might actually be evil. He's the head of the Mercy Foundation group that's doing all the construction here in Khao Lak and he has ADD. Seriously, he has some kind of diagnosed hyper ADD... and he likes to drive the Bobcat. Suffice it to say, Dean has acquired a reputation with all the folks working on the project as a kind of dangerous but well-meaning psycho. The first time I witnessed this in person was when a small group of us was cleaning up debris from one of the houses and putting it in piles. They burn pretty much everything here in Thailand so Dean was trying to figure out how to set fire to one of the debris piles. He decided to get a bucketful of gasoline and douse the pile in order to make sure it caught fire. I was about a hundred feet away still clearing debris when all of a sudden I hear this whoosh sound and turn just in time to see this fireball rising into the air. That was the first and only time I've seen Mica sprinting, which looked somewhat like when Scooby Doo and Shaggy were running from a ghost with a lot of shuffling but not much progress, and she was at least five steps in front of Dean. Seems as though he thought it was a good idea to light the pile from a couple of feet away. Next image I have is of him on a table with morning glory being applied to his burns by some of the Thai volunteers. As far as my personal safety goes, the worst he's done is almost sever my achilles tendon by chucking three or four shovels toward me, but I seem to have some sort of Dean shield which helps prevent injury. Of course, if both Dean and Chan are in the same area, I'm not sure which would be the stronger force. Let's hope we never find out. Anyway, last week he almost ran over four volunteers with the Bobcat. Then later in the week he took a group of us to one of the waterfalls after work, and on the way we almost got in a head-on collision with a large truck while he was trying to pass another car. Going uphill. Into a curve. This is only the stuff that I've witnessed myself. One of the other volunteers named Seth told me that he was riding back from Krabi with Dean when he suddenly stopped, pulled the car over, jumped out, ran after a mangrove viper that was hanging out by the side of the road and started poking it with a stick.

Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'll be working a lot more closely with Dean since I've been asked to take over as project manager for the island construction project after Jeremy leaves next week. Yes, times are desperate on Koh Kho Kao, they'll take pretty much anybody. So if any of you want to come out and dig, even for a couple of days, just show up at Khao Lak Seafood at 8:30 any weekday morning and I'll put you to work. I can guarantee you one thing... you will stink. How much more tempting can I make this offer? Just think about it... most people pay hundreds of dollars for spa treatments. You get, for free, a mineral mud bath while digging out a cesspool. Not tempting enough for you? Well, have you tried our concrete facial? Come to Koh Kho Kao spa! Of course, the unfortunate corollary of this "promotion" seems to be that I'm going to have to get a cell phone. But I did find out that you can get the entire text of the bible sent to you via SMS, so you know what I'll be wanting for Christmas.

On the work front, the house construction is going very well. Last week we had a contest to see who had the most open wounds, but they only counted if they were currently hurting. I was leading the pack with 11, but Jeremy got a couple that day so I think he passed me. I'm usually very absorbed in the task at hand so I seldom stop to think about why I'm here or the people I'm working for while I'm actually working. It's nice when one of the people whose home you're building stops by and thanks you, asks you where you're from, wants to know more about you, etc. When we were digging septics one afternoon we took a break and found that our cooler had been stocked with snacks and beer by the villagers. You'll get a story here or there about what happened during the tsunami, not usually from the people themselves but secondhand. Kung, who ferries us back and forth to the island every day and for whom we're building house 13, actually found his brother's corpse the day after the wave hit. One of the Thai workers, an older woman, stopped one evening and chatted with a group of us for about fifteen minutes through one of the volunteers that speaks some Thai and thanked us for coming all this way to work for Thailand. Almost everybody asks you why you're doing it, so I tell them that I like to dig. Then every once in a while something will hit you that you can't escape from. I was digging this hole last week for a foundation, and let me tell you something that fucker was really, really pissing me off. There was all sorts of debris where I was digging so I was pulling out bits of floor and concrete. We're building over the lots where houses used to be so it's normal to be finding these types of things, but in this one I actually found a column that ended in a concrete footer. So there are two or three of us working this footer with a pickaxe and a chisel, then I get in there bashing the column with a sledgehammer, which is really fun by the way but very tiring. Anyhow, we get this footer out of there and I'm clearing the debris with a shovel while everyone else goes about their business when I step on something that doesn't feel exactly like debris. So I reach down to pick it up and I come up with this little plastic toy. No big deal, just some figurine, but clearly a kid's toy, and at that point I came really close to losing it. I mean, you guys know me, I'm usually about as emotional as a lawn chair, but I was standing there, covered in sweat, mud and bits of cement dust, standing barefoot in a four-foot pit, physically exhausted, and I was really not expecting to come up with a kid's toy. That was a rough one for the old Bresh-man. I had to just get rid of it and keep on digging to try and put it out of my mind. Those moments are kind of tough, but they're few and far between and the rewarding times outweigh them by far.

For the past week or so I've been following Jeremy around and trying to figure out what the hell it is that I'm going to do when he leaves. I figure the best thing to do would be to imitate him, so whenever someone comes up and asks me a question I'll say "It's up to you." See, it's a win-win situation because they feel like you're delegating authority and you don't have to actually come up with any ideas or answers. He's a genius! But basically I've been running around taking notes and figuring out how to do 2nd story floors. So last night for Halloween there was a big to-do since people around here will use any excuse to get together and pound beers. Of course, we had not thought of any costume ideas so it was left up to my last-minute stroke of genius to come up with something. Let me preface this by saying I'd had a couple of beers with dinner. So I said Jeremy and I should go as two ladyboys, but he said that there would already be too many guys in drag and it would be lame. So my next genius idea was for us to go as The Abusive Husband and The Wife Who Doesn't Listen, which would've worked except we didn't have the right makeup to give me a black eye. So we used the same concept and got Jeremy to dress up in boxers and a wifebeater and I went as Jeremy's Bitch, which is pretty much what I've been the last two weeks anyway. So Mica had a great time applying eyeliner (which is really, really freaky by the way), lipstick, and nail polish, and I used the curtain from my room as a dress, and I am never ever ever going to do that again. Never mind the fact that I was the ONLY guy in drag at the party. My dress kept falling down and I got felt up once. Then the dress was making my ass look big. Then everything tasted like lipstick, and no one appreciated the nail polish since it was so dark. Helloooo! I'm making an effort here! Wait... I lost myself for a minute. Okay then. Many beers later, I woke up this morning (late) realizing what I'd done and I was like Lady Macbeth trying to get that freaking nail polish off. Ugh... I'm going to see those pictures on the internet, I just know it.

Anyway, that's what's new with me. As always, the dude abides, Dave

Evil Chan

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iBNJHixYPJSJUKSQ8

Greetings from Thailand, where men are men and women are also men. My name is Dave, and it's been four weeks since my last ping pong show.

A couple of weeks ago as part of our volunteer group project I was able to go to a local elementary school to donate some art supplies and spend some time drawing with some of the kids. The school was constructed out of what look like temporary barracks by the Thai army. At first, the kids were a bit apprehensive about having some large foreigners waving pencils and crayons at them, but after a while they began to warm up to us. I'm not sure of the quality of psychiatric care in Thailand so I didn't want any of the kids to grow up with self-esteem issues stemming from my visit, therefore I made sure that I let every kid know in my broken Thai that their drawing was very good, even though some of them really, really sucked. Hey, not everyone can be Picasso. The kids were free to draw whatever they wanted and there were many pictures of landscapes, sunsets, Pokemon, and various Japanese anime. The kids seemed to really like it when I drew them a couple of Spider Man pictures, which on the now puts "Drawing in the margins of my notebook" a few notches higher than "Calculus" as far as high school activities that have been useful to me. Lots of the kids were very eager to draw tsunami pictures, which I found kind of odd. I think it's great if they find it cathartic, but I hope they weren't doing it because they thought that's what we wanted to see.

On the work front, it's been a frustrating couple of weeks because of the rain. We're at the tail end of the rainy season and storms will rise up out of nowhere, soak the town for half a day, then leave. This can be especially annoying when you've spent an entire day digging 3x3x4 ditches for foundations and find that they are completely filled in with water and dirt the next day. I had the idea that we should dedicate a group to finishing cesspool work before the end of the month, which of course now means that I'm in charge of finishing cesspool work by the end of the month. So there's a lesson I should've learned from corporate America... keep your ideas to yourself.

Some airline group showed up with 18 volunteers for a couple of days to help with some of the work on the island as well. When I heard that 18 flight attendants were going to be precipitating on my location, naturally hopes were high. I was having visions about some "Women of the sky" issue of Playboy that I've... heard about. Well, it's possible that these ladies could've been in Playboy, maybe in the June 1952 issue. They were really loud and very American, and after two days at the worksite thought they had figured everything out. Well, this crew of cacophonic harpies soon found out what they were in for when we went to dig holes at the island! Still, they showed up for a few days and put in some work on the housebuilding, and their organization donated a hundred grand toward the building of a playground, so my hat's off to them.

Work-wise, we're making a big run to try to get a lot of the houses on the mainland done before the inauguration ceremony at the end of the month. I've spent a lot of quality time dropping off cesspool (they're not really septic tanks I've been told) lids with the local construction supervisor, a guy named Chan. He doesn't speak any English but when he needs you to do something he'll unleash a flurry of gestures and then look at you and giggle. Hee hee hee... how about moving a 150 lb concrete ring? Hee hee hee...I need you to repaint the side of that house. Hee hee hee... dig, bitch! Now, I don't know if he's actually said that, but I'm watching him. Anyway, one day last week this giggling harbinger of doom asked me and another volunteer named Mark to help him move a cement mixer. Mark is a very cool guy who's a cross between Dr. Evil, a vampire, and a hyperactive monkey. So we get to the place where the mixer is located and help him raise up a hoist and attach a winch. Through a series of gestures he explains that we want to lift up the mixer and lower it into his pickup truck. Since the mixer is on a slight incline we're going to need to raise and lower it a couple of times before we get into position. Well, during one of the raisings while I'm adjusting the position of the mixer so we can lower it, one of the feet on the hoist tips over the cement mixer and hoist tilt over and fall on top of me. Now, I'm not good with numbers, but I'd guess the mixer weighs about 500 pounds and the hoist maybe a couple hundred. Everything occurs in slow motion, or maybe due to my finely-honed catlike reflexes it just seems that way. Maybe I've got some kind of spider-sense. Bresci-sense. Anyway, I duck around the falling hoist and the mixer falls just in front and to the right of me, but being on an incline, proceeds to roll over on top of my leg. Well, ever since those Samoans did a number on me that Thanksgiving day playing football, my leg has been more flexible and I'm able to worm my way out from under the mixer. Chan and Mark are a little bit freaked out, but hey, no harm done. We finally get the mixer on the truck at which point Chan looks at us and indicates that he'd like us to climb into the cab and hold on to the mixer to make sure it doesn't fall over on the ride to the new location. Since I am an idiot, I don't really see the downside of this plan, but Mark seems to have the instinct of self-preservation and says "No way!" So Chan takes a breath, looks at both of us, then starts giggling. He goes into the cab of his truck and pulls out 30 feet of rope which he uses to fasten the mixer to the truck, then he giggles again, climbs in the truck, and drives off.

This week there was some kind of bug going around the group so a few of us had to take a day off or so to battle the flu. There was a party Wednesday night because one of the volunteers who's been working here for the last 10 weeks was leaving, a guy named Steve who ends each sentence like he's asking a question. I was very proud that as a group we were sharing some American cultural traditions with the local Thais by introducing them to a beer bong. I don't know what it says about me that I have more pictures of people drinking beer bongs than I do of my day in Firenze.
Other than that, probably the most exciting thing that happened recently was some guy asking me if I wanted to buy viagra on my trip to Ranong to cross the river into Myanmar and renew my 30-day visa. Maybe I could've used it when I was propositioned by a Russian bisexual. Good times!

As you can probably guess, I'm planning on staying in Khao Lak another thirty days. There's a lot of work left to be done in order to get people into their houses and I think most of it is going to have to get done in the next month. There are a few of us staying longer, the hardcore four-week group being me, our Thai liaison Mui, and Mica, a wee Scottish lass who likes gnocchi and cradle-robbing. Ha ha ha! I'm going to pay for that but it was worth it. In the four weeks I've been here, I've already seen a lot of changes in the area. Where there used to be just soft dirt and earth in front of the stores has now been freshly paved over with asphalt. There are probably a third more stores open now than there were a few weeks ago in anticipation of "high season" which begins in November. I really hope for the locals that there is a high season, but to me it doesn't look like this place is ready to handle a significant influx of tourists. Things are moving quickly though so we'll see how it looks in a month. I figure we'll have done our job if this eventually turns into a place that I won't want to visit.

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave

From Thailand with Love

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/chGJCvcxvPdQyBzWA

Greetings from the only man who could go to Thailand and get constipated,

The last time you probably heard from me I was either in Italy or on my way there. For brevity's sake, I'll relate to you that the most interesting/exciting thing that happened to me during my month in Italy is that I ripped a mole off my abdomen while surfing and I had to spend a couple of days getting surf wax out of my chest hair. So I'm not doing that again without a rash guard. I also flipped a kayak about 300 yards from shore and had to drag it back in behind me while I was swimming. That was a lot of fun.

After a couple of days in London visiting my brother, I landed in Bangkok where I was picked up by Pop, my buddy from Keynote. He's a Bangkok native and offered to me a place to stay at his parents' place above their hardware store in Chinatown. Pop was great... he drove me all around Bangkok to show me some of the sites. We went to see some muay thai fights at Lumphini stadium and we tried to get me in for the Thai price by having Pop buy the tickets but they stopped us at the door and we had to pay an extra $30 because I'm a foreigner. The next day we went to a floating market where we rented a longboat and a guide took us up and down this warren of canals browsing through floating food stands and shops. We visited a couple of large temples including the one with the 200-foot-long reclining Buddha. Pop insisted that I burn some incense and pray with him, although I explained that I'm pretty sure I'm already going to hell. Pop's family then treated me to dinner on a river barge that floats up and down the Chao Praya giving brief tours of Bangkok. I ate some fish stomach soup, which tastes a lot like a cross between tripe and shark's fin soup.
The highlight of my Bangkok sojourn, though, was my excursion to Patpong to witness the ping-pong show. How could I leave this city without seeing perhaps its most renowned tourist attraction? Without going into too much detail, the next time a woman tells me she has a headache I'm going to put things in perspective by reminding her that I'm not asking her to put anything sharp and/or flammable in there.

The last couple of weeks I've been here in Khao Lak which was the area of Thailand that was hit hardest by the tsunami. The coastline here curves outward and forms a mini-peninsula, and the wave hit that area at about a 45 degree angle. If you want an idea of what happens, take a bucket of water and chuck it against a corner of your bathtub. You'll see that the water swirls around and forms a sort of whirlpool before heading toward the drain. Well, imagine that on a massive scale. There are a few fishing boats and a police boat that made it 3 kilometers inland and have been left there as a sort of monument to the disaster. The area is clearly not as bad as it was 8 months ago, but there's a lot of work left to be done. There are a lot of families that are still living in makeshift camps so we've been working our asses off to build them some housing. We're working with this group called the Mercy Foundation that's responsible for building 52 houses in the area. Most of the work that we've been doing has involved cutting down and tying rebar to make the steel supports that will frame the houses before pouring the concrete. We've also spent a couple of days working on a nearby island mixing and pouring concrete into the molds. My specialty so far has been digging holes behind some of the constructed houses and dropping in septic tanks.
There's been a lot of rain so in some areas I've had to drop into an existing tank just to clear it of dirt and water. Let me tell you, it was a long van ride home for the other passengers that day, which also earned me the nickname of Septic Boy. Probably the coolest thing I've done is learned how to drive a Bobcat, one of only ten in all of Thailand. I'm not sure how I lucked into that one, but heavy machinery is now one of the skills I can put on my resume. It's very hot and humid and I usually end up drinking about 5 liters of water a day. I should probably take more breaks than I do but I don't like it when other people are working and I'm not. This is probably the hardest I've ever worked in my life, but I'm loving it. Khao Lak is really laid back. I've met some extremely cool people not only in our group, among other volunteer groups, and among the Thai locals as well. There's this one Thai guy named Ken who's a digging machine. He's like half-man half-hoe. I've picked up some words here and there and now I think I can offend people in five different languages.

On the leisure side of things, we're staying at the Khao Lak Palm Beach resort, which looks like a 5-star kind of place until you walk about a hundred yards down toward the beach and realize that half the bungalows were completely destroyed and are just now being rebuilt. The place won't be officially open for business until the beginning of November, but they have an arrangement to let certain volunteer groups stay at reduced rates. They have a pool, which is nice. I'm loving the Thai food and trying to stay away from the Chang beer, but it's like an abusive relationship... I just keep coming back for more. Damn you Beer Chang!
Last weekend a bunch of us went and stayed a couple of days on Koh Phi Phi, which is a butterfly-shaped island 30 miles away from Phuket. The tsunami hit the island from both sides and almost completely wiped it clean. It looks like a lot of development has been done the last few months, though, and I think it'll be back to the way it was before in a few months. We rented a longtail boat and went over to Phi Phi Lei for some snorkeling and to check out where they filmed the movie "The Beach." We had to snorkel up to a cave and then walk through the center of the island to reach Maya Beach, which is THE beach. The sea was very angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli, so there were no boats that could approach the beach from the water and four of us were there all alone. It was gorgeous. There are cliffs rising up a couple hundred yards on both sides which look like outstretched arms encircling the beach out to the sea, and the inlet between the arms is shallow and mostly protected from the weather. It reminded me of a fjord the way the rocks projected straight up into the air. The sand is white and fine and the water is probably about 80 degrees. On the way back a storm came up out of nowhere and the longtail boat navigator (his name was Sulu, I'm not kidding) had to steer us through 2-3 meter waves. If you've ever been on a longtail boat then you know they're not exactly designed to take on that kind of sea, so there was a period of about 15 minutes where I was pretty sure we were going to capsize. It was like a rollercoaster ride as we would peak up on top of one wave, slide down its back and be immediately on top of another. I wasn't shitting bricks or anything because we all had lifejackets and I'm confident in the water, but you never know when someone could hit their head or something. Plus, there were a few in our group that aren't exactly comfortable in the water, so it wouldn't have been fun to deal with three or four panicky people. But, yadda yadda yadda, we survived, the boat didn't flip, and I'm sure the story will be embellished to include sharks and giant octopi as it gets retold. Other miscellaneous fun stuff: I got into a chili-eating contest with our Thai group leader, which we ended up tying. We didn't eat the chilies straight-up, we ate them as part of a papaya salad, and we both went through two of them. He told me that the second salad had thirty-plus small chilies in it. You guys know how I get when it comes to these kinds of competitions, so I wasn't going to let him beat me, but the rest of the group pretty much ordered us to stop, which I was thankful for the next morning. Believe me, it was much worse coming out than going in. Well, you haven't really been to Thailand unless you've had diarrhea and a venereal disease, so I'm 1 for 2. I ate some frog for lunch yesterday, which was pretty tasty but had too many bones.

Anyway, I'm sorry for rambling like this but I had a lot to say. I'm really looking forward to another couple of weeks of digging septic tanks and bending steel. I like bending the steel, it feels elemental. We're already senior staff here after only a couple of weeks so who knows, I might stay longer and take over the entire operation. Heh heh.

As always, The Dude abides,
Dave a.k.a. Septic Boy

Carnevale di Viareggio

When people think of Carnival, they typically think of the one in Rio. There's a less well-known one that's been happening for a hundred years in my home town of Viareggio. It's just like the one in Rio, except with less T&A and a reduced chance of acquiring a venereal disease. Hey, it's February, it's cold in the northern hemisphere. Don't worry, if you want VD there are plenty of Ukranian strippers around.

Anyhow, the city pretty much shuts down to party for an entire month. On four consecutive Sundays they have a parade of giant papier-mache floats along the beachfront in order to judge which is best. The winner gets something like 100K euros. Everyone dresses up in costumes, and other days of the week a different part of the city shuts down to have a big outdoor party. Between Carnevale and the beach in the summer, it's no wonder about half of the kids who live in Viareggio flunk out of school.

Other minor highlights include learning the subtleties of squatter's rights in London at Stefano's place, and enjoying a meal in Rome cooked by a top chef on the Italian version of the Food network.

Enjoy the pics...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8M1faJDRW7oCviMu9