Monsoons, pictures and an epic story

Monday night I experienced my first monsoon! I think I mentioned before that all restaurants are pretty much poles holding up a roof with no walls. So we are eating at Shaam’s palace, when all of a sudden it just starts pouring. I have never seen more rain in my life. The ground immediately floods to about ankle deep, and it feels like you are under a waterfall. I of course am enthralled but all the Thai people just keep going about their business like it’s nothing. About 30 minutes later, it stops instantly, the ground dries in about 5 minutes and it was as if the whole thing never happened!

I FINALLY was able to put up pictures. Here are the links to the albums.
Koh samet: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014592&l=2e2b1&id=83901952
and other: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014511&l=41216&id=83901952

Warning: The Koh Samet Album has some extremely inebriated photos (sorry mom) but in all fairness you would be inebriated too after a week straight of grammar and phonology.

And now…the epic story. I am going to preface this story by saying that Scott is allergic to shellfish (which happens to be an ingredient in 99% of Thai food (I think you know where this is going). So, Tuesday night, the group goes into town all together in a large van. Scott, Matt and I decide to seek out the one Laundromat in Ban Phe, since we suck at hand washing. We convince the driver to drop us off there, thinking it was closer and we could just meet everyone for the ride back. Well, this Laundromat turns out to be about 3 miles from the drop off spot, and also completely in the Ghetto. We were the only white people there. To make it worse, there are no dryers (sort of defeating the purpose). We decide to wash the clothes anyway. We go to get dinner while they are washing, and Scott gets fried rice. All of a sudden he starts coughing. Matt and I are like ”crap we are going to have to carry him 3 miles…oh god”. Scott says “I just have to make myself throw up then take my allergy meds” so I walk him down to the beach. He then says “Tami don’t listen to me puke”, so I turn around, plug my ears and sing the only song I can think of at the moment (which happened to be “if you like pina coladas”). Scott pukes and is fine, so we head back to the restaurant to get Matt, then to the Laundromat to grab all of our wet clothes. We now have about 15 minutes to get to the pick up point to get a ride back. We are clearly in the ghetto, so we can not find any taxi’s and if we walk, it would take at least a ½ hour carrying all of our wet laundry. Suddenly three guys on motorcycles pull up and offer us a ride (or at least said something in Thai that seemed like a ride at the time). Thinking it’s the only way to get back, we each hop on one (remember this country has no helmets, traffic laws, or speed limits). We pile the laundry on, and go. I probably dug holes in this poor Thai man’s back I was holding on so tight. It was the most terrifying 5 minutes of my life. :luckily we were able to tell them where to take us in a broken Thai English mixture and we get to the pick up spot just in time. We hop in the van right as a lightning storm/monsoon starts. Needless to say, we got back alive thanks to some nice Thai motorcycle men. Unfortunately after unloading and sorting all of our laundry I discovered that I am missing 2 pairs of underwear…which are probably being sold in the ghetto of Ban Phe as I type this. Oh and my laundry is still wet and completely sucky. At least it was an adventure and Scott didn‘t die! I will never get on a motorcycle in Thailand again!

Anyway, this week is kind of busy school wise, so I probably wont have much to write about for a bit…but I think we’re heading back to Koh Samet to do some hiking this weekend, so that should be fun! Enjoy the pictures…MISS YOU ALL!!