True to the spirit of our trip we packed as much as we possibly could into our final 24 hours in Thailand. We had decided to kiteboard only in the morning so we could go on one last group motor-scooter adventure in the afternoon before we had to turn in the bikes at 6:00 pm that evening. After packing our bags and moving them to 'regular' (as opposed to 'deluxe ocean view') rooms for the final night, or half a night, since we were planning to leave at 1:00 am (we would have just stayed in our original rooms except they were no longer available by the time we'd decided we wanted to stay at Golden Pines one more night) I went off for a final morning of kiteboarding with Max and Owen and Darcy and Eddie made another trip to the laundromat. Did I mention how peaceful Darcy said the laundromat was?
The way we'd left kiteboarding the previous afternoon Owen was riding independently, Max had briefly stood up on the board, and I had not yet tried to get the board on my feet and get out of the water with it, having donated some of my shared time with Max to Max, who seemed to have the best chance of the two of us to actually get up and riding before we had to leave.
So on this final morning Owen was again off on his own, practicing trying to ride upwind and getting better at that, only having to come back to the beach once in a while to walk upwind so that he wouldn't ultimately blow down past the sandy beach to where there were rocks and there was no safe place to land.
Max was ready to continue his progress and get up and stay up and ride and I had lain awake much of the previous night imagining my turn to try to get up out of the water and dreading being successful at that and riding out a ways and then crashing and losing the board and having to deal with everything by myself and get back in somehow.
As it turned out, I tried to get out of the water twice, and got up briefly both times before I immediately crashed and had to struggle back to shore (after struggling out from shore in pretty big waves in the first place) and again I decided to donate the rest of our join lesson to Max, who had gotten up riding several times and was able to go for longer and longer stretches each time, and was completely proficient at taking care of himself when he crashed away from shore, which was pretty much the point of all the exercises we'd been doing up to that point, because when you think about it that's pretty much what's going to happen when you do finally get up and riding: you're going to go away from the shore and when you fall then it's completely up to you to get yourself back one way or another. So Max is well on his way: he can get up and riding on either side (left or right) and knows how to handle the equipment and himself and everything he needs to do in the water. It's just a matter of experience for him now, whereas I need more practice getting up and getting started.
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| The scene at Squid Beach. There were a lot of kiteboarders there in the morning but they tended to drop off with the wind in the afternoon. (This photo and the next three from the D/E collection) |
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| Shaka Max. |
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| Owen walking upwind along the beach with his instructor from the previous morning. |
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| I'm just happy to be out here with my boys and seeing them be so successful! |
The next one is Max getting up, briefly, for one of his first times. It was tough taking pictures out there because the sun was so bright it was hard to see the screen of my phone (which is also my camera) so I didn't always know what I was videoing. Most of the time I just tried to point it in the right general direction and hoped for the best.
Here's Max getting up again, with the yellow kite, and riding for a ways. Then he crashes shortly after I zoom in on him:
So the kiteboarding was a resounding success, and I was well satisfied when we finally helped our instructors pack up the gear for the final time and we headed back to the hotel to meet Eddie and Darcy.
For the final afternoon we'd planned another group scooter expedition to the national park which encompassed the terminal stretch of the nearby river. To do this we had to ride inland a bit to where we could cross the river on a bridge, then circle back around to the coast where the visitor center was. At that point we were only about 2-3 km north of Squid Beach as the squid flies, but more like 20 km (guessing) as the scooter scoots.
We took the nature trail through the mangrove forest. I learned (from Darcy, and confirmed by signage at the park, that contrary to what I'd thought I'd learned in my previous terms teaching environmental science!) that 'mangrove' is not a distinct tree species but rather an adjective describing any type of (saltwater?) wetland tree or shrub with lots of buttressy roots to support it.
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| Owen posing with mangroves. |
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| About halfway around the mangrove nature walk loop was a tower you could climb for a view. This was taken from there. Owen seems to be having an inordinately good time on this nature walk! |
After tearing Owen away from the mangrove forest we headed back toward the hotel but decided to stop for a bite at a little open-air roadside restaurant Darcy had noticed during the ride in. It turned out to be very nice (no, not that "Very Nice") and felt "authentic" because it was inland on the side of a fairly busy but otherwise unremarkable road and didn't seem like a place tourists would likely end up often. So it felt like we had really acclimated to the local culture at this point. Okay, maybe that's stretching it a bit, but we had certainly come a long way in a little over a week at feeling comfortable getting around and exploring and negotiating the most basic requirements of existence (which included ordering drinks).
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| Final meal all together, a (very) late lunch, or was it an early dinner? It turned out to be an early dinner for Eddie and Darcy but a late lunch for Max, Owen, and myself as the three of us went out later for a final trip down the beach by bicycle and tried yet another new restaurant a little further along past "Im Sook". This last one turned out to be not quite as nice as Very Nice or Im Sook so that was a sign that we'd found the best dining spots on the beach already (at least closest to us). It sure was fun riding bikes (under our own power again) in the warm night with the boys, though, feeling the warm off the gulf breeze and listening to the surf crash as the locals all gathered on the boardwalk and grilled some food and/or ate from the roadside market stalls. |
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| This was the bathroom at our final group restaurant. I finally took this picture because I wanted to document the kind of conditions we'd found during our stay in Thailand. While the hotels had running water and flush toilets (although in the first hotel there was a sign asking us not to flush toilet paper for fear of clogging the system, but rather deposit it in the 'bin' (small trash can) -- Yuck!) many of the places we'd found at the national parks and restaurants just had a trough with a bucket next to the toilet and you had to scoop a bucket of water (or two?) into the toilet when you were finished to flush it. But one thing they ALL had in common - and this was the strangest part to me - was the spray handle you see mounted on the left side of the picture. When I originally saw this in the first hotel I thought it was just for the maids to clean the bathroom. But some of us theorized that it was meant to be used like a bidet, which I couldn't actually believe because I'd tried actuating it in the first hotel so I knew that it produced a voluminous high-pressure wide-angle spray and I couldn't imagine anyone using this on their own nether parts and not emerging from the bathroom completely soaking wet. However the lack of toilet paper (come to think of it) in many of the bathrooms seems to argue in favor of that interpretation. There: don't you wish you'd quit reading this blog with the previous post? |
We slept most of the drive back to Bangkok and arrived at the airport at 4:00 am. My companions' flight was at 7:20 and my first leg was at 8:40. While everyone else checked in at the counter for ANA airlines I went off to find my China Southern check-in counter. It turned out they wouldn't let me check in until 6:15. Meanwhile the rest of the group was all ready to go with their boarding passes so we had to part ways as they went through security (I couldn't go with them because I didn't have my boarding pass yet). I was sad to see them go. I resigned myself to reading my book as I waited to be able to check in. I emailed everyone the picture below asking if anyone wanted water. This was kind of an in joke because we'd been fairly obsessed with water on this trip: its inventory, procurement, transportation, and consumption. And here I was with two large "refill" bottles and a personal use bottle with Owen's trademark green cap leftover. I drank as much water as possible before I would have to abandon it to get through the security check. I ended up leaving one large unopened refill bottle with the security plastic still covering the twist-off cap in a luggage cart for some lucky incoming traveler to find.
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| Water anyone? |
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| I wish this trip never had to end! |
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| By Guys! We sure had a great time! |
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| Everything's better with bunny ears! |
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| And one more for the skies. Safe travels! Until next time... |
Bon voyage, all. May our paths converge again sooner rather than later!
Chris
