Riding the Lightning

I’ve always had kind of a weird aversion to meeting new people.  And before jumping directly to the explanation that accuses me of being unsociable, hang on for other, perfectly logical reasons.  First of all, and I am working on this, I have a tendency to give a terrible first impression.  I don’t mean to come off as a bitch, I promise.  Jane seems to think it’s because I stand with my arms crossed and often appear “standoff-ish.”  I swear I’m working on it!  Second, and I think I get this from my dad, but I tend to be a bit of a wallflower until I can get a pulse on the people and the situation.  I’m not one of those people who are bubbly right out of the gate, and that probably adds to the poor first impression.  I’m not judging, people, I’m observing.  Give me time!  And third – meeting new people is exhausting.  I’ve got to hide the crazy and be likeable right out of the gate which is difficult since, admittedly, I’m kind of an acquired taste – one of those people you need to get to know to love.

Riding in boats with girls.
 (L-R): Emily, Stacy, Carlyn, me, Ali, Lauren

Okay so now that that’s cleared up, I was understandably a little hesitant to join in on the activities of last Saturday.  A few months back, we met two girls from Dublin who are teaching English in Krabi.  We’ve had dinner with them a couple times, but haven’t hung out other than that.  They suggested that we rent a longtail boat for the day with a friend of theirs, their friend’s boyfriend and the boyfriend’s friend.  We could bring our own food and drinks and just make a day out of it.  The whole idea of being trapped on a boat with people I barely knew and people I didn’t know at all was daunting, but I didn’t want to be a buzzkill, so I put on a happy face and joined the fun.

If I’m being honest here, I was kind of expecting to have a miserable time.  And sometimes, you see, it pays to have low expectations.  The amount of people and alcohol involved kept increasing to the point where I was sure I would be the only sober person hating life on a boat full of wasted, happy strangers.  None of this turned out to be true.  No one got wasted.  No one was sober though either, though.  The strangers are no longer strangers and they were awesome.  AND – and this is the kicker – I had a blast. 

Have I mentioned I live here?  :)

This always happens.  The course of events is usually as follows:  1) I whine that I don’t want to do something.  2)  One or both of my parents tells me to do it anyways because they’re sure I’ll end up having a good time.  3)  Nine times out of ten, I have a good time and have to come home to tell my parents they were right (which is almost more annoying than how annoyed I thought I’d be in the first place).  This time my parents weren’t prodding me to do anything, but damnit if I didn’t have both of their voices in my head anyhow.  Thanks guys.

The boat took off from a really, really, really disgusting little muddy place in Aonang.  It smelled like a petting zoo AND a sewage treatment plant all at once.  BUT once we got out of the cesspool near land, the water was beautiful crystal cerulean.  Absolutely gorgeous.  The day was beautiful, Carolina-blue skies all around. 

Our first stop was at some random giant rocks in the middle of the water.  It was apparently a good place to snorkel, so four of us jumped off the boat to splash around with the colorful fish.  Those left on the boat kept tossing hunks of bread at us in the water so every few minutes we were swarmed by these adorable little green and yellow fish. 

Snorkeling pit stop

Cute, cute fish

After snorkeling, our boatman, who was a friend of one of the Thai guys on the boat with us, took us to another totally random island.  We had no idea where we were, and when I asked, the name of the island sounded like a noise a goose would make right before it gets eaten by a goat, so I can neither remember nor pronounce it.  Anyways, it was this little spit of land that was basically our own private beach!  It was unbelievably hot though so we spent a good deal of time in the water.  We swam out a bit to an area of rocks where two rope ladders hung down into the water.  We climbed up the ladders and onto the rocks where we did our best Tom-Cruise-on-the-side-of-a-building impression and then jumped off into the water.  Looking up from the water, the jump wasn’t actually very far at all – probably maybe just twenty feet, but when I was standing on the rocks looking down at the water, it was scary!  After baking in the sun for a while, we headed to Poda Island where we piled our towels and blankets together and whiled away the afternoon with Thai beer, rum with pineapple juice, and lively conversation. 

Private little beach

After returning to Krabi, we were having too much fun to let the evening end (read between the lines: We weren’t quite ready to switch to water) so we planned to shower and head back to check out the Aonang nightlife.  We are normally the perfect guests in our hotel, but that night we blasted music and tore through our clothes like monsoons, dancing and singing as we got ready to go out.  It was a Saturday night though, and after dealing with undomesticated chimpanzees all week, we needed to unwind!  By the time we got down to the night market for dinner though, the wind had picked up and it smelled like rain.  Undeterred, we sat down to dinner under the umbrellas and no sooner had we gotten our food that it started to pour, and we learned the unfortunate truth that the umbrellas were useless.  The customary thing to do in a situation like this would be to say, “Hey there, we’re getting drenched; let’s get the heck out of here.”  But like I said, we hadn’t switched to water yet, so we had no real issue with sitting there getting utterly soaked.  We did, however, have enough sense to 86 our going out plans in light of the fact that our mode of transportation back to Aonang was on motorbikes which aren’t so rain-friendly.

When we got back to our rooms, we had to literally ring the water out of our clothes.  As we dried our rain-drenched hair in nothing but our bras and underwear, Stacy made a keen observation:  “We are every guy’s fantasy right now.”  Truth.  We totally were J