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
