Euros Ate My Dollars

A little while ago, Brittany posted an announcement that we’re now able to sell Euros Ate My Dollars T-shirts through a company called CafePress.

When the T-shirts went on sale, we didn’t have anything in the way of a product sample from CafePress. Since then, my beautiful, supportive, fiscally liberal mother ordered herself the black version of one of the T-shirts, and we’ve discovered that the color fidelity on the black shirt leaves something to be desired.

My mother called CafePress to complain that the colors looked muted on her shirt, and they are sending her a replacement in gray, so we’ll soon see how that looks. Until then, if you’d like to buy a T-shirt, I would recommend choosing one of the lighter colors.

And if you’ve already received a dark shirt only to find that the color printing proved disappointing, then please note that CafePress seems to be willing to make the issue right. Give them a call at 1-877-809-1659, explain the difference between the online product photo and the actual shipped product, and hopefully they will work as hard to fix the issue as they did for my mother.

Updates to come, as soon as we can get a lighter version of the shirt in for inspection.

Shiny. Shiny and new and big. That’s America.

Driving home from the airport, I was amazed at how wide the roads are. How you actually have room to drive on them. How clean and new everything seems. How open and spacious it all is.

There are things I appreciated immediately after landing in the great big U.S. of A. I can read that entire sign! I know how to work a pay phone! I can eat uncooked food and not get typhoid! And there is so much diversity here! Any given crowd is full of so many colors of people. You don’t really appreciate how great that is until you experience being an outsider in an ethnically homogeneous country.

Other things were harder to adjust. For one, our conversational skills. After eight months of conversing only with each other or non-native English speakers, we basically know how to communicate using three phrases: “can do” vs. “can no do,” “have” vs. “no have,” and “same same” vs. “same same, but different.” That plus wild gesticulation. Ben tried to order a bagel in New York by making a circle with his forefingers and thumbs, showing the formation to the cashier and asking loudly, “Have bagel? BAGEL?” In San Francisco, I accidentally thanked a woman in Thai (“khap khun kaa”). A woman who happened to be Asian. She looked at me like she couldn’t decide if she should be offended or if I was just a crazy person.

For eight months, we’ve had to approach any given conversation like a puzzle: how can I communicate with this person? How can I determine if and how much English they speak? How should I pantomime what I need? It’s been difficult to abandon that mindset. Not only do ALL the people I talk to understand me perfectly, they share my same accent and vernacular. It is mind-bogglingly easy to get anything I need here. I almost miss the challenge!

Although it was nice to go away for eight months and pretend like real life doesn’t exist, my happy little bubble popped when I walked in my mom’s house and saw the massive pile of mail waiting for me, mostly foreboding little white window envelopes with my name printed in scary, black ink. With every envelope I opened, I became more depressed. It was all, your-car-insurance-is-due-you-should-pay-your-student-loan-get-this-credit- card-what’s-your-credit-score?- your-mutual-fund-lost-money-are-you-saving- for-retirement-don’t-forget-to-get-your-oil-changed-your-health-insurance-is-
outrageously-expensive-pay-pay-pay-pay-money-money-money-money-money…

So I turned on the TV to escape for a while and everything is all Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

I suddenly felt stifled and claustrophobic, so decided to walk with my dad around our neighborhood. This didn’t help either.

The houses are so HUGE. I was amazed that this had never struck me before. I always thought my parents lived in your typical, no-big-deal, suburban neighborhood—which they do. But, oh my GOD, no one needs a house this size! Seriously, I’ve seen how many hammocks can fit into a small, bamboo hut. I’ve seen entire extended families living in these huts. They don’t have studies. They don’t have formal dining rooms. And, yet, somehow, they survive.

Then I see three-person families driving massive SUVs. Why? Why do they drive such big cars? And if they are going to, can’t they at least offer rides to people? I mean, you could fit at least 25 more people on those things—inside, on the roof, hanging out the window… Otherwise, get a motorbike. A family of five can fit comfortably on a motorbike. Really!

I’ve appreciated the opportunity to view my homeland objectively for the first time in 26 years. But my first impression was not a good one: everything—everything—in this country is about MONEY. During my first few days back, this was a constant source of hopelessness for me.

My depression reached a climax when I accompanied my mom on an innocent visit to the local grocery store. Everything was so big and well-lit and organized and excessive and expensive, and instead of making me grateful, it sent me into a fit of tears. Because, you know, people in Laos don’t even HAVE grocery stores; they slave every day in the heat, growing rice to feed their families. And here I am trying to decide between varieties of imported feta.

On the way home, I called my friend Allison, who I knew would give me the virtual slap in the face I needed. She did, by telling me that I better get my shit together before her wedding reception on Saturday, in a threatening but jovial bridezilla voice. And it’s true. ’Cause if an aisle full of sugar cereals will make me break down, crystal stemware and floral centerpieces will really put me over the edge.

I’ve tried to keep in mind that so many of the people we met were happy—happier than most people I’ve ever met here at home. I mean, how can you survive something as terrible as the Khmer Rouge as a child and still welcome someone into your home with a huge smile and a delicious meal?

I’ve also been listening to “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” a lot.

No matter how many financial troubles you think you have, no matter if you consider yourself average or “middle-class,” keep in mind that you are UNFATHOMABLY rich to the large percentage of the world’s population.

In an effort to make me feel better about having so much STUFF, the day after I returned I went on a purging rampage. I attacked my closet and the many packed boxes littering my room and starting throwing things away. Ben came over to find several giant bags full of clothes outside my door, and me running frantically around my room tossing things into them. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Giving away my stuff because I HATE ALL OF IT,” I growled. He ran away and probably had a serious discussion about my sanity with my family.

I’m better now. A bit more readjusted. I promise.

I also wanted to purge my wardrobe because I am seriously incapable of deciding what to wear on any given day. Having spent months with only one pair of shorts and three shirts to choose from, I can’t handle so many options.

I’m also incapable of making ANY decision without Ben by my side. For eight months, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I’ve had Ben beside me, giving his input on every decision. I don’t know what to do with myself when I turn around and he’s not there.

When I reactivated my cell phone, I promptly called Ben, not realizing that I hadn’t talked to him on the phone in nearly a year. Our first phone conversation went a little something like this:

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“This is weird.”

“Really weird.”

“You should probably just come over.”

Needless to say, returning home has taken more getting used to than I anticipated. After a little handy internet research (what did people DO before Google?), I’ve been able to take solace in the fact that we’re not the only long-term travelers experiencing reverse culture shock.

But I don’t want to make it seem like this readjustment period has been all bad. There are certain things that I will forever be grateful to my home for providing. Things like toilet paper. And drawers. Drinkable tap water. Reliable electricity. The comfortable feeling that no one is trying to pickpocket me.

Our friends decided that the best way to re-acclimate Ben and me to Virginia culture was to tailgate at the NASCAR race last Saturday. In hindsight, our acceptance of the invitation might have been a little hasty. I saw enough ass-cracks and distended beer bellies (how do they get so big? Why do they wear them with such pride?) to last me a lifetime. But that story, along with a couple other surprises our family and friends had in store for us, is for next time on EAMD.

Wow! We’ve been back home for four days now, and although we didn’t mean to go that long without posting an update, my defense is that we’ve spent fewer than 24 hours awake. Because as fun as flying from Bangkok to Tokyo to San Francisco to New York to Virginia sounds… it’s less fun. More exhausting. More likely to make you question the warped outlook on life that led you to believe that yes, taking FOUR flights to get home rather than two IS worth saving $100 or less. But first of all…

Jeers to United Airlines for expelling me from the window seat I helped myself to on a half-full ten-hour flight over the Pacific. I had just gotten myself situated with blanket and pillow when a flight attendant popped up and asked me to go back where I’d come from. I tried to explain that I was only looking for a spot where I could lean my head against the wall in hopes of falling asleep, and seriously guy, how big a deal can it be when the plane is only half full? It might be a different story if we were still parked at the gate, but I think it’s safe to assume that take-off was just about the last opportunity for anyone to suddenly show up with a ticket for this seat.

My pleas for any semblance of sanity fell on deaf ears because it turns out that I’d unknowingly wandered into the ultra-elite United Economy PLUS section of the aircraft. Seeing as this not-ready-for-business-class player has the same exact absence of legroom, same exact television screens, and same exact smell on the seats as the undignified United Economy Minus section, I can only assume that the distinguishing characteristic of United Economy PLUS is an enhanced snack box. PLUS the comforting reassurance from United Airlines that no matter how much you may hate your life, you ARE still better than somebody.

I dragged my blanket and pillow back to United Economy Minus with the rest of the riff-raff, where I was happy to stumble upon an empty string of five seats. I stretched out there between a couple of of my flea-ridden proletariat brothers, and managed to sneak in a few hours of sleep.

Cheers to Jetblue for making our trip home 12 hours shorter than expected. We landed in San Francisco around 11:15am PST on Tuesday, with a ticket to New York on the 11:30pm flight that night. We knew there was a 12:50pm flight to New York, but we didn’t book it because it would have been more expensive to fly in the middle of the day. Upon landing in San Francisco, we decided to visit the Jetblue counter on the off chance that we could talk them into letting us fly stand-by on that 12:50pm flight.

We were expecting a drawn-out begging session as we approached the counter. But when I explained our situation to the attending employee, his response was simply: “Sure. No problem.”

Brittany and I looked at each other. Really? Just like that? I mean, we both knew in our hearts that there was just no way things could be that simple. And yet, not only did he print us off boarding passes for the 12:50 flight to NYC without hesitation, he also immediately checked our luggage straight through to Virginia AND printed us off boarding passes for the first connecting flight from New York to Richmond. Maybe Vietnam lowered the bar, but I think we’re both still in disbelief over the level of customer service we received that morning. Either way, cheers from two newly-converted Jetblue customers for life. Did I mention they serve up a lethal combinaton of Doritos Snack Mix and ESPN on all flights? SCORE.

As expected, being back home is proving to be a bittersweet experience. I already miss the sense of adventure that only comes with being on the road. On the other hand, it’s an amazing relief to know that tonight you’ll get to sleep in the same bed you slept in last night. And that you don’t have to navigate imcomprehensible bus schedules and shifty taxi drivers just to get to that bed, all in a language you don’t really speak.

We were warned to watch out for the culture shock of the return to our native soil, and so far, I’m finding that it’s striking in unexpected ways. I have to keep reminding myself that yes, it’s really OK to brush my teeth using water from the tap. I find driving by a shopping center or strip mall to be a startling experience. And I’m seeing supermarkets as overflowing cornucopias of abundance. Everything is BIG in the United States, and there are SO MANY CHOICES. And I still haven’t had the courage to set foot in a Wal-Mart.

From culture shock to photos I still haven’t uploaded to the tales from the road we haven’t yet told (which Brittany alluded to in her last entry) we have some writin’ in us yet. So stay tuned, there’s more to come…

It’s almost over. Sigh.

We reluctantly left our beach paradise, boarded our very last overnight bus, and arrived in Bangkok (for the third time) this morning. Today, we’ve done some last minute shopping, indulged in our favorite Thai street foods, and kept each other from flipping out as best we can. Early tomorrow morning, we’re boarding a flight that will take us to Tokyo. Then one to San Francisco. Then New York. Then Richmond. Four flights. Thirty-six hours. Yeah, it’s really going to suck.

I am giddy to be returning home. We absolutely cannot wait to see our friends and families. I’ve realized during this trip just how lucky I am to have such wonderful people at home TO miss. Thankfully, we’ll have many opportunities over the coming weeks to see everyone — weddings, graduations, birthdays… First up (as in NEXT weekend!), I’m honored to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of my dear friend/former college roommate, Allison, to Evan, who’s a pretty cool dude even though he went to Virginia Tech. I can’t believe we’re all grown up and getting married. Long gone are the days when I’d overhear Allison, alone in her room, making fart noises with her hands and laughing to herself.

Do you know what else I’m doing at home? I’m going to get in MY car and DRIVE it. I’m going to turn on the radio and be able to understand what they’re saying. And if I want to call someone? I WILL. I’ll reach into my bag, pull out my cell phone, and call them. Playing this scene in my head right now is blowing my mind.

On the other hand, I am desperately sad the trip is over. So much so that it makes me feel sick to my stomach whenever I think about it. I’m terrified that I’ll never be able to do anything like this again, and that I’ll forget all the things I came to learn were important to me over the course of these eight months. Mostly, I’m just going to miss waking up every morning with no idea what the day will bring.

Because we’re not ready to let go of our trip JUST YET, we’re going to continue posting from home in sort of a “Tales We Never Told” series. We also have many videos we never uploaded. So, stay tuned!

We’ll see you in Virginia…

Finding your perfect Thai beach is a balancing act. Tip too far in one direction, end up in a place indistinguishable from Myrtle Beach save for the fact that two-thirds of the bars are named Same Same But Different. Too far in the other direction, and you’re acquiring dengue fever five to seven times per night in a poorly patched tent next to a castaway who insists his name is Marley.

Our shared vision of the perfect Thai beach fell, if you can believe it, somewhere in between. We wanted to spend the final days of our trip reflecting (read: napping) on a quiet beach, with plenty of space to ourselves. Unfortunately, we also have a common addiction which must be fed, and we call that the internet. For reasons unknowable to man, geographic isolation and internet connectivity tend toward mutual exclusivity. The sad truth is that if “Marley” could connect us to WI-FI, we’d probably hunker right down between the mosquitoes and his blacklight on whatever deserted island he’s currently annoying.

But he can’t. So on one of our last evenings at Railay Beach, we spread out the maps and guidebooks, and tried to locate our perfect Thai beach over a couple of coconut shakes. I was reading up on all the islands with names that seemed hardest to pronounce, figuring other tourists might be too self-conscious to try to buy boat tickets there, when Brittany suggested Ko Pha-Ngan.

My first reaction was to laugh. Ko Pha-Ngan is home to the monthly Full Moon Party, a world-famous all-night rave that attracts up to 20,000 people at a time. When I envisioned peace and quiet, Ko Pha-Ngan was the last place that came to mind. But Brittany put the map in my face, and I began to see what she was getting at.

The Full Moon Party is limited to the SE beach of Hat Rin. On the northern side of the island, our map showed another beach, and this one accessible only by boat. This “Bottle Beach” looked to be separated from the rest of the island by impassable jungle, making it a promising candidate for virtual isolation. But at the same time, its location on the developed island of Ko Pha-Ngan meant it was likely to have our highly coveted internet access. Could it be that our perfect Thai beach lay right in the belly of the beast? We decided to find out.

Getting from Railay to Ko Pha-Ngan was an all-day pain in the butt. By the time we landed on our new island, it was 10:00pm, and we quickly learned at the port that no boats would run to Bottle Beach this late at night. In the interest of getting to Bottle as soon as possible, we hired a taxi driver to take us to the north side of the island and drop us off where we’d be able to catch the first boat in the morning. We found a $6 bungalow, and went to sleep.

The next morning, we dragged our bags down to the waterfront, and bought passage on the first longboat heading around the island perimeter to Bottle Beach. Twenty minutes later, we approached the shore and immediately saw that Bottle fit our vision of near-isolation. The beach was only half a kilometer long, and I could see just two people on it, reading books together on a bamboo mat in the sand. Luggage held high, we waded ashore, and immediately split up to do our typical accommodation reconnaissance.

When we reconvened thirty minutes later, we had both made the same chilling discovery: while bungalows here were quiet AND affordable, each one of the limited internet access points was charging 5 baht per minute. That adds up to $10 per hour, a rate eclipsing anything we’d seen from even the most opportunistic French cafes. And as if anything in the world could possibly be worse, dining options were limited to about three hotel restaurants, all of which apparently chose to make up for their affordable room rates with astronomically expensive food prices. We’ve never been a slave to restaurant prices thanks to our stubborn insistence on buying as much food as possible in local supermarkets, but we were blindsided by Bottle Beach’s cunning when we made another revelation: there IS no supermarket.

“Well, that’s it then,” I concluded. “We’re not staying here.”

Brittany didn’t need convincing. The only problem was that we’d dug ourselves into something of a hole. Simply getting to and from Bottle Beach is a tricky endeavor, and getting to another island altogether would require the better part of a day. We realized that this was our likely fate, but in an effort to delay the seemingly inevitable, we decided to check out one more beach on Ko Pha-Ngan before giving up on the island altogether. So a mere two hours after arriving on Bottle Beach, we were wading our way into another longboat, and shoving off once more. This time, toward the East, and to some sort of bay that our map labeled: Ao Thong Nai Pan. I didn’t know how to pronounce it either, so I pointed east and grunted. And once again, we were off.

When our longboat turned into the bay, we saw that it contained two distinct beaches, separated by a tall rocky outcropping. I would later learn their names: Hat Thong Nai Pan Noi and Hat Thong Nai Pan Yai, and that the two beaches do function entirely independently of one another. But when the boat driver paused the engine at this moment to ask which one we wanted to go to, the only difference I could see between the two was that one looked bigger. Hoping that bigger meant more likely to have a supermarket, I unknowingly pointed to Hat Thong Nai Pan Yai, and the motor roared once more.

During the shorts-soaking walk to shore, I looked back out over the water, and noticed that the rocky outcropping between the two beaches extended farther into the water than I’d realized from a distance, effectively making this area a bay within a bay. The beach looked to be twice as long as Bottle Beach, but looking up and down the kilometer of shoreline, I could count only five people. Once more, we split up for recon. But this time, we would quickly discover that we’d happened upon exactly what we didn’t know we were looking for.

Sand: white.
Water: clear.
Internet: $4/hour (phew)
Food markets: multiple
Restaurants: competitively priced
Bungalows: beachfront. With hammocks.

Sold. And speaking of bungalows, we chose one that sits all the way at one end of the beach – the opposite end from where the boats land. Down here we found the most isolated part of the beach, and relief from any unwanted boat engine noise that might interrupt our much-anticipated hammock naps. We have an overhead fan rather than A/C, but opening our wide glass doors lets in a sea breeze that renders the idea of both extraneous. And with the end of the trip now in sight, we let ourselves indulge in some uncharacteristic high-rolling: choosing a beachfront bungalow set us back $20 a night!

As I’m writing this, we’ve been here at Hat Thong Nai Pan Yai for ten days. Of course, the original plan was to stay for only five days before moving to Ko Tao for snorkeling… but that went out the window on the first afternoon here. So what do we do all day? Absolutely nothing. We eat breakfast in plastic chairs on the sand, we read books that we check out from a hotel down the beach, we swim in the bay when we get hot, and we take walks to open-air restaurants when it gets dark. Oh, and we get visits from Mama in the afternoon.

Mama is a Thai woman who walks the length of our beach every day, with two baskets slung over her shoulder, and a wet black dog by her side. What’s inside the baskets is a daily mystery: she always has fresh mango and watermelon to sell, but she could also be carrying some chocolate cake, banana muffins, sugar donuts… the list goes on. We were reading in our hammocks the first time Mama paid us a visit, and she caught us by surprise. Someone is here to bring us donuts, chocolate, and sticky sticky mango? We were loyal customers from Day 1.

Maybe a little too loyal. At first, we just referred to this woman as “our friend” or “snack lady.” Then, around Day 4, after I had just purchased a large mango from her basket, she began to peel and cut a second one. Confused, I started to explain that I only wanted one, but she put it into my hand and said, “You buy every day. Mama give.” Since that day, whenever we hear the shout of “hello babies!” approaching from the sand, we know it’s Mama.

As luck would have it, April’s Full Moon Party fell on the 20th, right in the middle of our stay on Ko Pha-Ngan. And while we had initially recoiled at the thought of The Biggest Rave in the Universe, we would soon meet four Irish travelers with other ideas. But our Full Moon Party experience is another story.

Our only stipulation was that we didn’t want to do anything. We didn’t want to learn or visit or experience. We wanted to sit and read and write and swim and eat and relax. Where was unimportant.

Our decision to go to Krabi was kind of random: we wanted to start at a beach on the Andaman Coast, we’d heard good things from other travelers, and we knew it wasn’t as expensive or crowded as the other, more famous Thai beaches (notably Ko Phi Phi [The Beach beach] and Phuket). But we had no draw to Krabi in particular other than that we’d read somewhere that Krabi’s West Railay Beach might be the most beautiful beach in Thailand. Which, for us, was as good a reason as any to make the trip.

We’d been so caught up with our to-do list in Bangkok that we hadn’t researched what would happen when the bus dropped us off in Krabi Town at six in the morning. How do we get to Railay? I think it’s only accessible by boat? Where is the dock? We anxiously stood at the bus station in the early-morning dark, hoping someone might come up to us and give us an idea.

Luckily we weren’t the only ones milling around the bus station, and Ben eventually approached a girl rifling through brochures. Her name was Yla, she was from Germany, and (thank God), she’d been here before and knew exactly what to do. Despite the guy at the nearby tourist office claiming that there wouldn’t be a pick-up truck heading for the port for another two hours and even then it would be 200 baht per person so we should really take this taxi now for a mere 250 baht per head, Yla knew better. And she turned out to be right: a truck pulled up shortly after and, for 50 baht each, took us to the dock.

Well, not really. He took us to a random beach they called the port. There aren’t really any docks, per se, in Thailand. To board the longboat from Krabi’s “port” to Railay Beach, we had to hoist our luggage in the air and wade into the sea. Which was nothing we aren’t used to, and good, actually, as Ben hadn’t bathed in a few days.

Railay is a tiny isthmus jutting out into the sea. I have no idea what an isthmus is. Anyway, limestone cliffs surround the beaches on all sides, so you can only access it by boat (which meant a welcome reprieve from all those godforsaken motorbikes). West Railay is the famous beach, and this is where the longboat dropped us off. We could immediately see why it was so appealing: soft, white sand stretches between two rocky cliffs cradling a calm, turquoise sea. But along with all that beauty comes hefty prices. Thankfully, walk five minutes across the isthmus and you reach East Railay. It’s not a good beach (no one swims there) but the accommodation and food prices are noticeably cheaper. We rented a tiny wooden bungalow on the highlands. Even though it had no air-con and no hot water, the fact that it had a flushing, western-style toilet justified the price for me.

I knew that Thailand’s southern beaches weren’t going to be a cultural experience. They are unfailingly tourist destinations, their indigenous populations having long ago been pushed aside to make way for large, farang-catering resorts. What I didn’t realize was that they also take advantage of farang pricing. For instance, a plate of pad thai whipped up on the streets of Bangkok will run you ten baht (about 30 cents). On East Railay, that same plate of pad thai will cost you 60 baht and on West Railay, it’ll cost you 90 plus baht. Granted, $3 is a fine price for an entrée, especially at a beach resort, but after knowing what it should cost, it’s hard to swallow paying anything more. After eight months of seeking out where the locals go to eat, it was a hard habit to break. The locals don’t eat here, at all, because they don’t live here. That didn’t stop us from asking every Thai person we came across—a harder concept than anticipated to convey. (“Excuse me, but where do you eat? … Yes, I know, I see that restaurant, but where do you eat… Yes, you…. No, not right now, just in general… You don’t eat? … Yes, but where? … ‘No’? What do you mean ‘no’?”)

But we’d vowed not to worry about anything during these precious last days, so we didn’t waste any time: our first afternoon in Railay found us lying on the beach, in the shade of a palm tree, fast asleep.

And that’s how exactly how we spent all of our days in Krabi. And it ruled.

Want to know something about Thailand in April? It is HOT. As in, the hottest place I’ve ever been, in my life. The moment you step outside, the heat is ON you, like a tangible presence, and every pore instantly doubles in size and starts dumping sweat.

There’s no use trying to look presentable. Make-up slides off my face like butter, my clothes are soaked, and my hair frizzes up to three times its normal size. When this happen, Ben, who I’M SURE loves me no matter WHAT I look like, says sweet things, like, “your hair looks like an animal.”

Thankfully, the ocean here feels like bath water, so when we weren’t snoring or reading on the beach, we were escaping the heat in the sea.

Krabi is famous among the backpacker crowd for one reason: rock climbing. Those limestone karsts make for some of the best outdoor rock climbing in the world, and there are climbing companies all over Railay offering equipment rentals and lessons. Ben and I hadn’t come here for this reason and hadn’t really planned on climbing. In fact, we were obstinately refusing to do anything during these last few weeks. But as I saw traveler after traveler hiking out to the cliffs in all their gear, and then scampering up rock faces like it was the easiest and most fun thing EVER, my interest piqued.

So when we ran into Yla one night in front of Gecko Bar and she invited us to go climbing with her the next morning, I said, why not? Not wanting to be shown up by a girl, Ben decided to conquer his fear of heights and tag along as well.

We met Yla and her rock-climbing instructor, Cho, at his shop, Good Day Rock Climbing, early the next morning. There, Cho fitted us with harnesses and special way-too-small shoes. We walked over to some popular beginner cliffs where Cho taught us how to belay, the special harness knot, and the terminology we’d need. Then he motioned towards the rock wall and said to Ben:

“Okay, go.”

I should establish our previous experience. Ben and I both had only been climbing once before, coincidentally together, at a large indoor gym at my brother’s sixth birthday party. So…twelve years ago, as high school freshman, and way before I ever called Ben my boyfriend. I’d invited Ben and my friend Kelly along to make being surrounded by 15 six-year-old boys bearable. Kelly, possessing a confidence I’ve never had, scrambled up the wall like it was nothing. I went next, got about half way up and, tired and afraid, opted to climb back down instead. Ben got about ten feet in the air, refused to go any further, and was hoisted down by his belayer.

So when Cho said “go” Ben looked at him, bewildered. “You mean, climb? Like, now?” he said.

“Ha ha, yes! Climb!” Cho responded.

“But… okay…”

So Ben walked over, put two hands on the wall, and pulled himself up.

We both surprised ourselves by actually doing it, all the way to the top, not falling once, the very first time. (Although we both had trouble with the “okay, now let go!” command once we’d reached the top).

Outdoor rock climbing is very different than indoor: it’s harder, the holds aren’t smooth plastic so it can be painful to grab them, it hurts when you slip and slam into the rock, and you scrape your legs to pieces on jagged edges.

But it’s FUN. It’s really, really fun.

I’d be on the cliff, 30 feet in the air, stuck. “I can’t go further! I don’t see how!” I’d yell down to Cho.

“Yes! Yes, you can! You just need to stand on your right leg, swing around and grab hold of that rock with your left hand.”

And since his advice requires releasing what seems to be the only thing keeping you from falling, you think, there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m doing that.

But you do. Because there’s nothing else you can do. And you know what? Nothing happens. Making such a seemingly reckless decision and then being surprised by what your own body is capable of is astonishingly liberating.

I don’t think there’s a sport in the world I’m more suited for, which doesn’t say anything favorable about me: my disproportionately long arms and legs can reach seemingly out-of-reach holds, and my monkey fingers and toes are perfect for clinging.

Ben fell a time or two (he insisted on relying on his arm muscles to pull instead of his leg muscles to push, much to the consternation of Cho). But once you do fall, you realize how unexpectedly un-scary it is and his fear of heights quickly dissipated.

“How did you get past this point?” he’d call down to me after being stuck in the same spot for ten minutes.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I’d say, squinting up at him. “I think I put my right foot in that crevice near your arm and grabbed hold of the rock above it.”

He’d try it. “Okay, my body won’t DO that. Any other ideas, chimpanzee girl?”

We had so much fun we wanted to climb with Cho the next day as well. Unfortunately, Good Day Rock Climbing was closing for the week. Why? Songkran of course!

We knew that the Thai New Year, or Songkran Festival, was coming up because people had been telling us “happy new year!” for a week now, and most Thais had used the weekend holiday as an excuse to take off work starting Wednesday. We didn’t have to be reminded of it the next day as, the moment we stepped onto the street, a man ran up to us with a bucket of water and dumped it on our heads. “HAPPY SONGKRAN!” he shouted, gleefully, running away to claim another victim.

And that’s how the Thais celebrate their new year with the most awesome holiday tradition ever: a giant nationwide water fight.

Everyone in Thailand comes out on April 13th armed with something—buckets and scoops, hoses, water guns. We saw toddlers who could barely walk carrying water guns bigger than they were, and the toothless old women who sell us barbecued corn sprayed us with Super Soakers. We were sitting at a bar the night before and, at the stroke of midnight, the DJ came out from behind the booth and sprayed everyone on the dance floor with a water hose. At first you try to avoid it, but there’s no getting around it: you will be soaked within ten minutes of leaving your house. They take no prisoners: what you don’t want wet, you better leave at home (meaning we couldn’t really get pictures of the event). Even us tourists get in on the action. We saw an elderly British woman crouching behind a tree on the beach, wielding a water gun and mumbling, “I’m going to get those buggers once and for all!”

To add to the absurdity, everyone has white streaks all over their face, as to keep evil spirits away in the coming year, it’s best to smear talcum powder all over everyone’s cheeks.

Seriously, though, is this not the best holiday tradition you’ve ever heard of? You can run up to complete strangers on the street and soak them with water and it’s not only acceptable, it’s encouraged. Don’t tell me there’s not more than a few people you’d like to douse with water if given the opportunity.

By the way, according to the Thai calendar it’s something like 2500, so technically I am currently in the future.

As gorgeous as it is, Krabi, with its massive resorts and boats full of daytrippers, wasn’t exactly what we were looking for in our Thai beach getaway. We found that at Ko Pha-Ngan…