Kanchanaburi

I will let the picture tell its own story here, this is where we went last weekend.  

Erawan National Park, Erawan Falls:

The Yellow Knife

I have toast for breakfast every day, (thanks mom).  

If you know me at all, you know that I am a space cadet.  I do things like lock my keys in my car, leave the groceries at the checkout, and I have even forgotten to turn in a finished paper during class, many times.  

Our toaster in the office burns your toast unless you stand over it and watch it.  The timer doesn't work, so unless you're right there waiting, you're going to get black toast.  And guess what? I ALWAYS forget to wait.  So for the first few weeks of school, it became well known that Erin is a burner of toast and must be watched.  Which is nice because now I never burn my toast, someone always says, "Erin, toast!"  And I run across the room.  

My point is that everyone, including the Thai teachers, knows that I eat toast every morning.  

I use a knife to spread the peanut butter on the toast.  I wash the knife and put it away.  This is what happens every day.

But every day I would come into the office in the morning and there would be one, or two, or even three dirty knives on my desk.  At first I thought, "huh, that's weird, I thought I washed that."  But, knowing that I am forgetful, I would just wash the knife/knives and go on with my business.  

Pretty soon though, I realized that no, I definitely didn't use three knives yesterday, this is weird.  So, being my paranoid self, I came up with the theory that the Thai teachers would find the dirty knives in the clean pile, and assume that I was the one who hadn't washed them properly because I am the one who is known for eating toast, (lots of other people eat toast in the office, but I'm the only toast celebrity).  

So I would run to the sink and scrub the knives with extra soap, always cursing to the mysterious person who really wasn't washing the knives properly.  I went around thinking that the Thai teachers all thought that I was a slob who can't wash her own dishes properly.  I never said anything to my colleagues though, because there was this little doubt in my mind, "I am forgetful after all.  Maybe I did leave those on my desk..."

So this morning, I decided I was going to get to the bottom of this.  I used the sole yellow knife to peanut butter my toast, and then washed it, repeating to myself "I'm washing the yellow knife, I'm washing the yellow knife..." so that I would remember for sure.

At three forty-five, I started cleaning off my desk in preparation to leave, and I looked down.  There, lying on my desk, was a dirty yellow knife!!!  NO!

I started yelling about the creepy knife and Amy, who sits next to me, burst into hysterics.  Apparently, she has been putting dirty dishes on my desk for the last two months, and I have never noticed.  All this time I've been thinking that all the Thai teachers hate me and have this whole knife conspiracy thing going on, and really it was just Amy, who didn't feel like washing her dishes and knew I was too spacey to notice.  

I thought back to all the times I found dishes on my desk and thought, "huh, what did I eat?"  

Bwahahahahahahaha!  We all had a good laugh.  And then I began plotting my revenge...

Like a Lion

Quote from one of my fifth graders the other day:  "Teacha, your hair is so beautiful, like a lion!"

Hahaha!  Stupid humidity.

Perhentian Island (sorry so long!)

Friday night, Simone, Ryan, and I, backpack-encumbered and eager to start our next adventure, merrily walked down our Soi and onto the main road where we met Star and hailed a cab to take us to the airport.  I am getting pretty good at hailing cabs, if  I may say. 

The airport is made mostly of glass, so it is very shiny.  Star calls it the Shiny airport.  Simone and I had ordered delivery, vegetarian Italian food, to mark the special occasion, but I found a coconut at the airport and sipped it blissfully.

The air conditioning in the airport was so cold it was almost unbearable, and since I was wearing my usual Thailand ensemble of shorts and tank top with flip flops, it was a pretty miserable wait.  Thank goodness we brought our sarongs and used them as blankets. 

Our flight to Kuala Lumpur was perfect, and I was only a little bit scared (thank you valium). 

We landed in Kuala Lumpur at about 3am, and had about a 3 hour layover.  We were so tired, so we all fell asleep sitting at McDonalds, where I had just eaten not one, but two hash browns and two pancakes with syrup, both of which cannot be found in Thailand.  We wished each other a groggy Happy Fourth of July as we boarded our flight to Kota Behru.  In Kota Behru we were immediately greeted by a ticket agent who sold us round trip boat tickets and a taxi ride to the dock, which was about 45 minutes away.  The nice thing about Malaysia, we noticed, is that all the prices are fixed, so you don’t have to worry that you are being swindled (because even if you are there is nothing that can be done).  The swiftwater boat ride was exhilarating, and I was relieved that the driver asked us to put on Life Vests.  As we flew across the South China Sea, the water got more and more blue, and it was so clear we could see the sea floor from the boat. 

As the island came into view, I kept telling myself it wasn’t real.  The azure skies float above jungle swathed hills as white parrots dart in and out of the greenery.  Below, palm trees mingle on the ivory sanded shore, where the shimmering turquoise water lounges serenely.   Paradise.

We hadn’t yet reserved accommodations, a little worrisome on a holiday weekend, but we lucked out, as some girls were just checking out of a bungalow at one of the best places on the island (for the price).  The bungalows were situated among tropical greenery and ours had a little porch, perfect.  The floors were plywood and there was a creature that lived in our crawlspace and scared me at night, but we really didn’t care where we slept.  The electricity turned off between 7-10am and 4-7pm, which was tricky but workable.

After a quick dip in the warm waters, where we saw many little tropcial striped white fish,  we all crashed until dinner. 

The next day we hopped on a small boat to go snorkeling with our Malay guide.  We thought it would be just the four of us, but then we drove a little down the beach and picked up two more passengers, Sian and Richard, a British couple who had been traveling for about three months and planned to continue until their money ran out.  They were delightful and hilarious, we couldn’t have asked for more lovely company.  I was super nervous about snorkeling after reading so many Shark Attack stories in Reader’s Digest as a kid, but Sian was so sweet and she and Richard made sure to point out all of the cool things they saw. 

 Ryan, me, Simone, Star, Sian, and Richard

The tour included stops at turtle point, shark point, and the coral garden.  I promptly decided that I would not be getting out of the boat at shark point. 

Since I was a little scared, I was afraid to follow my friends too far from the boat, so I soon found myself cautiously swimming around by myself.  I was mostly nervous about jellyfish, because they are hard to see and I was afraid they would kill me, or at least hurt me!  As I was looking around, a large flash of white caught my eye.  I looked over and saw a shark almost as long as me, just a couple feet away from where my legs dangled.  I thought when we were talking about seeing sharks that they would be little sharks!  Terrified, I looked up to see if anyone else was around.  I didn’t want to swim away because I’ve heard that splashing around attracts them, and I was afraid to yell shark because I was worried the shark would hear me! I know, not logical at all, but my brain wasn’t working well because I was so scared!  I saw Simone and swam carefully over to her.  I did not want to look back and see where the shark was.  “Shark I saw a shark!”  I half whispered to her. 

“Really?  Where?” She actually wanted to see sharks.

“I don’t know! I don’t want to look!”

I was afraid to swim back to the boat by myself so I just followed Simone around, never looking back under the water for fear of seeing the shark again. 

Apparantly, black fin reef sharks are harmless, information that would have been best shared before I got out of the boat.

After my brush with death, we went back to turtle point, where we saw a huge turtle and swam right up to it!  It was an amazing experience to look right into his beautiful brown eyes.  I can’t even put into words how exhilarating this was.  We were close enough to touch him, and swam along with him for a while before he dove back into the depths.

Dinner is at 7, and then they play a movie while you eat.  We met up with the British couple, and watched My Best Friend’s Girl with Dane Cook, which was still pretty amusing the second time.  We had a try of Orang utan, a kind of rum that can only be found on Perhentian Island, its really just moonshine.  It was a crazy night.

The next day we were all exhausted from the night’s festivities and we just lay on the beach and relaxed.  Poor Ryan got horribly sunburned from our snorkeling expedition and was very ill all day.

At breakfast I met a man named Yusef, who had lived on the island for fourteen years.  He has dreds down to his waist and his skin was almost black from the sun.  Yusef offered to take us out snorkeling the next day, and as we chatted it became clear that he was an expert would make an awesome guide.  I told him I was afraid of the sharks and he said he would hold my hand.  haha!  I also asked him about the jellyfish and barracudas, and he assured me that everything is relatively harmless.  He even touches the jellyfish!

We took a walk through the jungle to get to the other side of the island and watch the sunset.  I saw lots of bats, and a black and yellow spider as big as my hand!  No joke!

Ysuef took us snorkeling the next day, and it was one of the best days of my life.  We swam with TWO giant sea turtles, and I swam with sharks!!! Big ones!  Yusef really did hold my hand the whole time!  haha!  And he really did touch a jellyfish!  My favorite fish were the parrotfish, they were brilliantly colored pink, yellow, turquoise, purple, and green fish.  Soooo beautiful.

Yusef, the best snorkeling guide ever, on his boat

Notice the pirate flag! :)

I had Maggie Mee  for lunch, a yummy vegetable soup with Ramen noodles.  Mmmmmm!

The last night on the island was a raucous one, and ended with a midnight swim under the full moon, or at least it looked full.  

In the morning, we enjoyed an island sunrise, as our boat to the mainlaind left quite early.  A perfect, absolutely perfect vacation.