Sunday, April 12, 2009

All Wet!

We took a snorkeling tour today. 4 islands, snorkeling, fishing, beach strolling and monkey feeding. Even the thunderstorm that passed over us didn’t dampen our spirits. I’ve seen better reefs in Turks and Caicos, these have been over worked by tourists and are not very colorful. At the second site however, people were feeding bread to the fish and they swam all over us which was awesome! I saw sea slugs for the first time. Some of them can be several feet long!
What are the odds that on a boat off an island in Thailand, that we would meet someone from our city in China? Exactly! Mr. Wang was so excited to hear us speak Chinese. His initial reaction? “Chang ge!”(Sing!). Yeah, we thought it was strange too. We declined but spent most of the trip with him and his family. For a retired, 60 year old man, he is very spry. We buried his son-in-law in the sand and jumped off the top deck of the boat together. He made sure we had his info and promised to see us again soon. I hope so!
I caught the biggest fish of the day. Now, considering only about 6 were keepers, and mine was about 10 inches long, it’s not very impressive. I think the most impressive part was the look on their faces when I pulled it in, removed the hook and re-baited with a squid head. The foreigner can fish! I taught Mr. Wang how to bait his hook and some British guy who was completely lost, how to cast his line. He never quite got it, and when I sent my sailing through the air, he put his rod down. “I give up!” It is very funny that something I have done all my life and is perfectly natural, can be so alien to other people. You should have seen the Dutch lady who turned green when I had to rip the gills out of a fish who swallowed my hook. Weird. I guess that helps explain our reaction to the Thailand New Year Festival. Being soaked in our street clothes and covered in white chalk is entirely alien to us. We were told that the best way to handle it is to slow down, let them hit you and move on. We did while on our scooters, and that allowed a man to put his chalky hands on my chest, not cool! I didn’t mind just the water so much, except when we were on the back of a truck with tarps down, holding our bags with cameras, mps players and phones, and they lifted the tarp, shot underneath, hung on to the back of the truck to dump buckets on us anyway. Note: Avoid Thailand during April 11-15! We were able to escape some by hiding out on the beach. How wonderful, that because of the protests, the Thai government has extended a three day festival until the end of the week! Stores were closed and no one made any money. Can’t have that! Will we make it unsoaked to the airport? Stay tuned…..


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