Workin'

We went for an orientation on Monday at the Tsunami Volunteer Center. TVC is up on a hill just south of Khao Lak's main drag nestled in the rainforest. We stood around getting our pictures taken for ID badges and drinking coffee with the seven other new volunteers until there was a quick meetng in which they told us some dos and don'ts (1. Don't touch any Thai person's head. 2. If you're a couple, don't hold hands or show affection in public, etc...) and then we loaded into the back of a pick up truck and we were off.

We toured the villages that had already been completed to get an idea of what we would be building, then we went to the boat yard which is where TVC had built longtail boats for all the fishermen who'd lost their's in the tsunami. They'd replaced all the boats and were building a huge yacht in which to sail around the world. It was pretty fantastic.

We saw two enormous ships that had been pushed a mile inland by the wave. It was incredibly odd to see a 150 foot long police boat in the middle of a field.

Then they took us to lunch where we met the folks we'd be working with. We all made smalltalk until someone put two and two together and realized there were two Massachusettsians on the crew. They called over to Louie, who had been somewhere else (napping, playing with the kittens? I don't know) and it turned out we knew each other. Wild.

That was about it. We went back to our bungalow and had some beers and braced for an early day of hard labor under the hot and punishing Thai sun.

Oops.

Khao Sok is pretty quiet and pretty quiet was just what we were... Oh, holy crap, I completely skipped over a very important part of our trip. For some reason I mixed up the order in which we did what we did.

Ok, insert this between Kantiang Bay and The Next Thing I Know...

When we left Kantiang bay we headed not for Khao Sok but for Khao Lak. An important distinction. We spent two weeks in Khao Lak building houses for folks who had lost their homes in the Tsunami of December 2004.

When we first got to Khao Lak we walked around in flip-flops with our enormous, three-months-worth-of-stuff backpacks on our backs for about an hour and a half trying to find a place to stay. K spotted a bunch of bungalows behind a restaurant set back from the main road but we couldn't find the proprietor and so we soldiered on, checking many different places, none of which compared to the ones behind the restaurant. So we went back and hung out until a hilarious lady appeared. She spoke six or seven words of English and I had recently mastered "hello" and "thank you" in Thai so our conversations were largely gestural but she knew what we were looking for (white people with backpacks don't often peddle magazines or salvation in Thailand) and she set us up with a cute, quiet bungalow in the palm tree crowded garden.

We hit the beach.

The beach in Khao Lak was nice but not as idyllic as the beaches on Ko Lanta. No matter, we loved it all the same. We arrived in town on Friday and work didn't begin until Monday so we spent the weekend lazing at the beach and drinking Singha on our porch. It was by all accounts a great weekend.

Hard Drinking Monkeys

We walked through a forest of banana trees and other tropical flora to the banks of a little river. At an oxbow there was a swimming hole and a bunch of local kids swinging from a rope and jumping in. The tourists were less adventurous, preferring to watch from the water. It wasn't until we swam out into the middle of the swimming hole that I noticed the monkeys; literally hundreds of all ages climbing in the crevices of the 75 foot high cliff. The little ones would form lines of three or more holding onto the tail of the one in front of them. It was fantastic.

Then an eel bit my ankle.

I thrashed and shrieked and made for the rocks. Once there I turned around and Kristy looked concerned.

Kristy: What the hell?

Me: A fish just bit me!

Kristy was a bit calmer than I but she started swimming in increasingly frantic circles until she finally headed off in the opposite direction as I had, towards where we'd left our stuff.

Me: Uhh.

Kristy: I'm getting the hell out of here.

The locals thought we were hilarious. There was one guy who was pouring capfuls of whisky and offering them to the monkeys who were far more interested in the bananas other people were dishing out. Chuckling he handed me a full cap and I drank it and it was foul and perfect.

I summoned the courage to leap back into the water and back into the water I leapt. I tried to look cool as I swam at a breakneck pace towards the safety of our spot on the rocky beach. I'm sure I failed at looking cool but I did make it back successfully and without any more eel bites.

We left in search of food...