Pictures are here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mcEuLpDZmuiLy3UP6
Greetings from Thailand, where if one more Thai guy calls out to me "Zidane!" I'm going to punch him in the face then shave my head,
Well, the last few weeks have been mostly focused on finishing the work on the island. We've reached the stage where all the heavy labor is done and the detail work like paint, ceiling tiles, and debris cleanup are all that's left. Strangely enough, I think this may actually have been my most dangerous month. Why? Two
words: Thai scaffolding. I think when they put the scaffolding up they expect the houses to be painted by circus monkeys. Balancing on a 3-inch wide beam 20 feet in the air while painting some eaves under a roof usually involves strategic placement of the ass cheeks, as I've found out. The only thing worse is when we try to build our own scaffolding. Oh... yeah, that's top notch stuff, I'm sure up to the highest OSHA standards. If you're ever in charge of a volunteer construction site, there's nothing better to keep annoying old guys occupied than to put them in charge of scaffolding construction. They'll use up about 3/4 of all the wood on your site, and by the time they're finished you would probably have painted about 4 houses, but it's worth it to keep from standing over your shoulder saying "That's not how I would've done it" or "Why do they do it this way" or "Why don't we have a [insert random tool name that is impossibly expensive or impractical in Thailand here]?"
On the plus side, the houses are rounding nicely into shape and from the exterior a lot of them look almost finished. We're having to move a lot of supplies and equipment around, so the last couple of weeks I've been able to drive the dump truck. That's right... dump truck. You know when you're a kid and you get one of those Tonka trucks and zoom it around your backyard. Yeah, I get to drive a real one of those. Oh baby, you wouldn't believe the turning radius on one of those things! I could probably parallel park it on Lombard St. Okay, maybe not. Still, the point is we're at the stage of construction where a lot of the ceilings and electrical are done, so we just have to finish floors and painting for many of the houses to be in move-in condition.
Actually, we've gotten so much done that a couple of weeks ago they told us volunteers to take a week off from the island so the contractors could catch up. We ended up becoming volunteer mercenaries, kind of like the A-team, working a couple of days each at different projects. We did some beach cleanup, which basically involves waiting for low tide and going out into the water to pick up chunks of concrete and other debris. Man, there are entire houses out there. We had to break an electrical pole into bits and dig it out of the sand underneath a couple of feet of water. It's pretty incredible to think that this stuff was planted into the ground somewhere inland, and that it's been over a year and it's still there. We also worked a day at Thap Tawan moving sand (about as fun as it sounds) and a couple of days at Nam Kem digging septic holes. That is so damn satisfying... knee deep in mud or clay, cursing at a future shithole because the walls are caving in on you, finally getting the concrete rings into place... that's a day's work, baby! Actually, we've gotten pretty good at it... the Nam Kem team asked us if we could come back and dig more but there was work back on the island for us.
It's been hard to keep up morale and keep people motivated the last month since we've mostly been painting, especially the long-termers who know what it's like to do much more satisfying concrete and digging work, so I've been doing my best to try to keep things interesting. In late December, we began to wage a campaign against all the other teams involving serial mooning, or b.a. as it's also known. We started off small... shoving a pair of ass cheeks out of the only functioning window on the shark while two others were pressed against the glass as we passed by Thap Tawan. But then, as the regular moonings became too banal, we tried to raise the stakes. One fateful morning, the planets aligned so that we were able to moon five (5) TVC vehicles on the way to work: 3 from Thap Tawan, the Thaikea truck and the environmental restoration truck. I thought that was the pinnacle, but I was wrong. Soon thereafter we strafed the crew from the Pakarang boatyard. The cool thing about that is that we had just helped them load up a boat on the trailer behind Scott's truck, and the entire boatyard crew was sitting on the boat with nowhere to hide or shield their eyes. It was magical. I may have been overzealous in my pantsing that day because one of the boat crew later claimed he could see my boys, but that is just part of the legend. The next day, on the way back from working at Thap Tawan, we had the first all-female mooning (thank you Bec and Tammy) on one of their trucks, which we later discovered was full of Australian christians and being driven by a pastor.
Then, last week, Dean took the two station wagons in for servicing and gave me the songtaw to drive around. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a pickup truck with an enclosure welded to the truck bed and benches lining the bed so it becomes a passenger vehicle. What it really becomes is the perfect mooning vehicle. There was only one group left to moon, Nam Kem, and I really wanted to come up with something special for them. Then, as if in a vision, it came to me... the Ass Pyramid. One fateful Thursday morning the opportunity presented itself, and we did not let it slip by. With Richard behind the wheel driving like Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, Luke, Tammy and I formed the first known Ass Pyramid in the Khao Lak area. Luke and I were on the bottom and Tammy climbed on our backs while we passed the first Nam Kem truck and pulled directly in front of them. What the hapless drivers were treated to was a triangular formation of slapping asses for approximately 30 seconds until we sped away. But that was only the appetizer. The main course was when we finally caught up to the big Nam Kem truck. We got at least a good 45 seconds of ass on them. I really don't think they appreciated the coordination and dexterity it took to balance three people on the back of a truck bed while pantsless and using one hand for slapping. Anyway, about a minute after we stopped laughing I got a phone call from Tilo at the TVC office and the first thing he says is "Did you just moon the Nam Kem vehicle?" Apparently, one of the people in the front seat of the truck was one of the Thai bigshots at the TVC and he didn't think it was so funny, so I got an earful about that one and ended up going to Nam Kem's worksite to apologize to him personally. It's not the first time I've made an insincere apology, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I mean, how can you not appreciate the planning and execution that goes into an ass pyramid out of the back of a moving truck?
Undeterred by my slight setback, I set about strategizing on one final magnum opus of mooning which I could pull off while I still had the songtaw. The perfect opportunity presented itself at last Friday night's TVC costume party held at an outdoor restaurant on the main strip. It was a couple of volunteers' birthdays so they thought it would be fun to throw a dress-up party where everyone had to show up dressed like a character from a movie. I didn't really feel like finding an outfit, so I jokingly said one night at dinner that I was just going to show up in my underwear and say I was King Kong. Well, after I thought about it a couple days it didn't seem like such a bad idea, but I thought I should probably do something more than just go in my underwear. So the day of the party I completely smeared myself in Vaseline, which was cool, and then put on a layer of shoe polish to make me more dark and ape-like, or at least that's what I was thinking. Turns out I looked more like "Just crawled out of the sewer man" or "charred corpse man" than King Kong, but it was already done so I went to the party. Anyway, back to the ass. So the party kicks off full swing, probably about a hundred people drinking and sporting some really creative outfits considering resources are limited, when me and seven other people sneak off to pick up the songtaw which was strategically parked only a couple of blocks away. I'm proud to say that we performed the first-ever recorded two-level songtaw seven-ass mooning, with four asses sticking out of the bottom row and three of us (Luke, Tammy and I) on the roof. Rich was driving and basically stopped directly in front of the restaurant honking the horn while we slapped away. I can only describe it as sheer poetry, a crowning achievement of human spirit and vision, really possibly the eighth wonder of the world. I'm not kidding, it was that good. I have it on video.
Anyhow, we went back to the party afterward and I wasn't in trouble, which was cool. Unfortunately, it was at this point that my "outfit" began to cause me some discomfort. First off, no one would come within three feet of me for fear of getting some kind of black greasy concoction on their clothing. Hey, it's not my fault about half the party was wearing white. Secondly, I smelled like shoe polish. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, my skin was starting to feel a slight tingle that at some point began to turn into a burn. At that point I decided it might be a good time to go home and take a shower, which turned into a 45-minute scrubbing epic to which I sacrificed an entire bar of soap and a formerly light blue towel, now slightly blackened. I can't imagine how I could've gotten that shit off if I didn't have the vaseline on.
I had a plan this week to moon the new volunteer orientation, but unfortunately it was foiled when they decided not to come to the island. I really don't care whether or not I get kicked out of the TVC at this point because I've given them my notice... Friday the 17th will be my last day on the island. I think it has a nice symmetry to it, I started on September 17th. I'm probably going to relax for a few weeks, get a lot of sleep, and then come back to the island for the official dedication ceremony on March 10th. After that, I'll be homeward bound I reckon.
Hope you're all doing well and I'll see some of you fairly soon.
As always, the Dude abides,
Dave
