Pictures are here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LXgHDE6XTgQkK8mr9
Greetings from Thailand, where happiness means a hot shower. The year here is 2549, which means we are like 500 years ahead of the rest of you idiots and have far superior technology available to us. The large, public bonfires, exposed wiring and squat toilets are just a ploy to throw you all off. In fact, I am currently writing this message while orbiting around Alpha Centauri in search of minerals to power the new fusion-driven longtail boats. I'm not sure exactly why the year is 2549, but when in doubt, the answer is always "The King."
Things have been going really well on the island as far as the housing construction goes. Friday we finished pouring the 2nd story columns on house 7, and today we poured the final columns for the final house we're going to be working on. I'll have to admit... the Dave got a bit emotional over that one. It's the first big milestone for completing the island project. Also, I love to pour the concrete. Lastly, and most importantly, it means all we have left to do is paint, which is somewhere between listening to Gilson for three hours and rubbing a cheese grater over my face on my list of favorite activities. In other construction news, a few weeks ago I almost destroyed a cement mixer while trying to move it with the Bobcat. The wheels were stuck in concrete, and thinking that brute force always wins out, I just tried to lift it up regardless. The result... a cement mixer minus a front axle. No problem, though, we put the mixer up on cinder blocks, like some kind of redneck mixer. In other island news, I found out a few weeks ago that, since I work on Koh Kho Khao, and apparently three consecutive monosyllabic words are too much to master, people around the office and volunteers from other worksites refer to me as "KKK Dave." On top of that, there's some crazy Thai local that's been hanging out around the worksite with us "helping out" with some of the work. He's a short, chubby, toothless fella who likes to walk around barefoot. Anyway, I was standing around during lunchtime the other day, minding my own business, when he comes up to me, points to my earring, moves behind me, grabs both my hips and proceeds to have mock anal sex with me, cackling all the while. Yes, one of the highlights of the volunteer experience... interacting with the locals!
I found a new place to live which is off the main road but only like a 10 minute walk away. It's huge... it has a front room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, and I only pay about $150 a month. And... it has a hot shower. The first hot shower I've had in two months. Oh, baby... splendiferous. There are a couple of drawbacks to the place, though. Apparently there's some insect wild kingdom shit going on, or maybe they built the bungalow over some sort of indian burial ground or something, because the place is swarming with ants, spiders, cockroaches, caterpillars, and, my favorite, leeches. One night I had a few people over in the front room and when I walk in there after going to the bathroom I see 6 people, grown men and women, huddling to one side of the room and pointing at the wall on the opposite end. I look over to see this large, disturbing arachnid... it had about a 4-inch legspan, and they were not those needle-like skinny legs, they were thick, man! So these guys are all looking at me like I have to do something about it, and I'm thinking "Damn you bitches, I'm cooking you dinner" but it was apparent they weren't going to do anything. I mean, Lee is like 6'1", 240 lbs, used to play rugby so he looks like he's been hit in the face a few times with a cast-iron skillet, and he's standing on a chair like the housewife in one of those old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Anyhow, I go outside and grab my flip-flop so I can smash that thing, and I tried to smack it a couple of times but it would just sprint, and I mean sprint, into one of the corners of the room. So I grabbed two (2) cans of insect spray,one in each hand and layed into the spider. The thing was just laughing at me. At this point, as a last act of desperation, I grabbed this long, thick stick I had in the room, and just tried to beat it to death. I mean, I was smashing this spider, giving it a few whacks with a large stick, and nothing! I thought at one point it was going to take the stick away from me and start chasing me around. Eventually, I managed to stun it enough so I could kill it, but I've been sleeping with one eye open ever since.
As far as the xmas holiday goes, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the holiday season here in Thailand. Why? Because there is no holiday season. No incessant commercials on TV, no near-brawls in the stores, no advertising bombardments on billboards in the street... none of that crap. So, to be honest, christmas day kind of snuck up on me. I was wearing a santa hat all day and when I was in a convenience store one of the Thais came up to me and said "Merry Xmas!" I mean, he literally said "xmas." A couple of volunteers organized a dinner with actual turkey, so about 50 of us turned up at this outdoor bar with a view of the beach for the meal. They even organized to have an elephant come to the party for about 15 minutes, which is not as good as the original rumor that Ricky Martin was going to be there, but still not bad. I decided that, since I could, I was going to go shirtless all day on christmas, and I did. So as not to show bias, I bought everyone on my team the same gift: a bowl of Cup o'Noodles from 7-11. I also gave out 60 eucalyptus nasal inhalers to all the volunteers at the party, just because the thought of giving out 60 nasal inhalers made me laugh. Then I went around and made them all pose for pictures with nasal inhalers inserted.
The day after xmas was the tsunami memorial, which I've had a million questions about, and I have to be honest with you, it really didn't mean that much to me. I mean, I wasn't here when the wave hit and I don't really feel any sort of personal connection with that particular event, even though it's the reason that brought me here. For me, the things that get to me are more like when I was riding on the ferry with Amnat from House 16 in Bang Sak (he lets us use his truck) and he was telling me about how he lost his wife during the tsunami and he was left alone with his two kids, and that anytime I come back to Thailand I'm welcome to come stay at his place. That means something to me, not some kind of dog and pony show. It didn't help any that the ceremony they had in the morning was, to be honest, very cold and unemotional. They set up a stage in Bang Niang in front of the police boat, the weather was blazing hot, and there was one speech by some kind of deputy prime minister that lasted about 10 minutes. Then there was some kind of rugby scrum to place commemorative flowers by the police boat, and that was it. Mica had some very strong negative feelings about that ceremony which were actually published in The Guardian in the UK (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1674037,00.html),
but honestly I was glad it was short because I was drenched in sweat. The nighttime ceremony, which was the one with the princess and where they lit all the lanterns, got a lot more coverage and is probably the one you all heard about. I didn't go to that one, but the people who did said it was very well done and that the lanterns were spectacular. Still, like I said, for me the anniversary was sort of an abstract thing... I would've been more like a voyeur at the ceremony and not really a participant. One of my friends who is a volunteer was actually a tsunami victim (she was seriously injured and she lost her boyfriend) and she spent most of the day going around to various memorials in the area. Clearly, her experience and her point of view on the anniversary are going to be different than mine, and I know that she had a bit of a rough time with it, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.
A few days after the memorial I was driving back to my new bungalow, which happens to be up the road from a Burmese camp, when I saw that the road was blocked by some kind of commotion. So I pulled up and saw that there was a truck surrounded by Burmese, and in the back of the truck was a group of white people chucking food and supplies to the Burmese workers. I just turned off my car and sat on the hood for a while, waiting for these guys to finish up. At first I was thinking that it was great that someone was paying attention to the Burmese, who essentially are the cheap labor in Thailand. They set up these aluminum siding work camps and live for months or years in Thailand while supplying the construction labor for most of the projects going on. They only get paid a couple hundred baht a day, at most. It was a bit strange, though, because there were these three white people standing up on a truck chucking food to the outstretched arms of maybe 50 Burmese, and it made for a strange and perhaps a little disturbing visual image. Still, I was glad that they were at least getting something. A few minutes later, a truck zooms by me honking its horn and forces its way through the crowd of Burmese and next to the other truck. An obviously agitated man, whom I recognize as Scott, the boatyard project manager, jumps out of the truck and starts yelling at the people handing out supplies. So I get off my hood and make my way toward the commotion, and by the time I get over there Scott is right in this other guy's face and they're just screaming at each other. Apparently, Scott thought that this was really not the best way to distribute food and that it was demeaning and condescending to the Burmese, and that the way they were distributing the supplies was unfair to those who could not physically force their way forward. Well, the other guy didn't take that very well, and these two are about an inch from each others' face, and I'm thinking there's going to be an all-out fracas any minute. Then they started dropping f-bombs and challenging each other to take swings at one another, so I kind of stepped between them and without really saying anything just tried to pull Scott away from the scene. I think the Burmese were more confused than anything at what the hell these foreigners were yelling about. Scott finally calmed down a bit and got back in his truck, and the other guy climbed in his truck with his people and drove off. Ever since then I thought that I could definitely see Scott's point, even though he handled it poorly, so I wondered if I should've been angry about what was going on instead of just sitting back and observing it. I did think it was great that the Burmese were getting something, but in retrospect there was no need to make a big show of it like that. They could've headed into the camp and dropped off the supplies to be doled out by whomever is in charge there. Still, I just couldn't get fired up about it.
For new year's I took a caravan of people to Krabi in my car, The Shark, which is on its last legs. The back license plate is hanging on by one screw. Two of the inside door panels have come off. The rear windows don't roll down. The front driver's window rolls down but won't roll back up unless you lock the doors. When you brake the steering wheel wobbles. The gas tank plate is off its hinges. The aircon vents in the back of the car don't work. The front passenger seat belt sticks. The stereo is broken. So, really, it's a pleasant ride for all, especially for three hours. Anyway, I won't get into too much detail, but I highly recommend spending new year's on the beach. There was the requisite firedancing, and the requisite Chang, and as for my personal experience... I was a dancing slut. I mean, I danced with whomever would dance with me... men, women, monkeys... I didn't care. I'd have to put it in my top three new year's.
Ever since that night, though, I've been fighting this cough and sore throat which has been dogging me for a few days now. I thought I remembered Jeremy telling me to buy some medicine with a dragon on it because it had opiates in it and would knock you out overnight, so I went to the supermarket and found a bottle of the stuff. So afterward I go for dinner at a small restaurant next to the supermarket where they know me and the guy asks me how I'm doing and I tell him I'm not feeling so well. He says something about taking medicine and I whip out the bottle and show it to him. He looks at it for a minute, moves away for better lighting, continues reading, comes back over to me and says "For lady." Then he starts laughing. He walks back into the kitchen and I hear this chatting in Thai and more laughing, and after a minute or so his wife comes over to me and says "Medicine for lady!" Then she writes out something in Thai for me to take to the supermarket and get instead. So for the rest of dinner I'm getting these sideways glances from the staff, and then a couple of their friends come by and I see them pointing over at me and laughing, so I don't think I can eat at that place anymore. Then when I tried to return the lady medicine to the supermarket they wouldn't take it back. I asked Bum to translate it for me, and when she read the box she just laughed hysterically for a couple of minutes before telling me that it's for a woman's period, which I suppose makes the dragon on the box an appropriate emblem.
So that's what's been going on with me. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but as usual I've written more than I intended. Hope everyone's doing well and...
happy festivus!
As always, the Dude abides,
Dave
