Tasting and Complaining

The Thai prime minister is being forced to step down because he hosts a cooking show, and apparently, this is in direct conflict with his ministerial duties. No one's talking about it in Krabi, though, the southern Thai beach province where we're currently shacked up.

Lacey and I are pretty sure that the other members of our group think we're puritans. We've been going to bed really early, don't like going out on the town with them, and both have been wearing one-piece bathing suits. We've decided to cultivate this image for entertainment purposes, and it's also useful because we don't really feel like hanging out with them.

We have been having a wonderful time, though. Elephant riding our last day in the jungle was great, especially on the way back because I got to sit on the elephant's neck. His name was Hamun. My legs dangled down behind his ears, and I rested my hands on his head. Elephant skin is terribly rough of course, but also covered with bristles, a bit like a boar. First though, we sat on a seat thing fixed to his back like a saddle, which involved a lot of bouncing around and trying to shift our weight. I somehow thought it would be more glamorous, like a maharajah or a dignified Queen Victoria or something, but riding on Hamun's neck was much more graceful, for both of us.

When we got to Ao Nang, the town in Krabi where we're staying, it was raining. This is because it rains more during September than any other month of the year in Krabi. Again, we did not bother to check this while we were making expensive decisions about where to go on vacation. Still, it's very nice here. Today we took a boat snorkeling beach tour of nearby islands with the rest of our group, and actually lucked out with partly cloudy weather. I am now bright pink despite repeated sunscreen applications. We went to the beach where the Leo DiCaprio movie of a few years back, "The Beach" was filmed. It was sort of disappointing, because there was a lot of litter on the beach, and this seems antithetical to Leo's "I'm such an environmentalist" stance. OK, so it's not solely DiCrapio's fault that the beach has fallen on shabbier times. But it is sad.

The rest of the tour was lovely and quintessentially tropical. The snorkeling was decent to very good, and the scenery was definitely wow-worthy. Limestone cliffs in weird formations, gravity-defying foliage, and twenty-five different shades of blue.

On our way home, we ran back into the clouds that'd been hugging the coast all day, and the weather turned very quickly. I joked to Lacey that it was just like
"The Perfect Storm" which was funny until the boat crew busted out the lifejackets and insisted we put them on. I'm not exaggerating when I say the ride back was extremely intense and slightly scary. It hailed on our heads, I got hit full in the face by the tops of many, many waves, and I think my ribs are now compounded into my tailbone from so many slams of my butt into the seat. The ride was exciting in an "oh my god we're going to die but not really" kind of way, and once we'd arrived safely on shore, I decided it was a safe bet that we're more badass than Leo. Yes, for sitting through a storm and occasionally shrieking. To console ourselves, and partly for medicinal purposes, we drank hot chocolate laced with Thai brandy when we got back.

Malaysia is next, the day after tomorrow. Ten hours on a bus. Ugh. Hooray for snacks and sleeping pills.