100415 Thaikarl - another day, more adventure

friends,

tok woke me early today.  "wake up, take shower! eat breakfast! we must go!"  arrrrgh. but wake up i did, took shower, ate breakfast, got dressed.  we motorbiked a ways up the road to a relatives house.... and waited around for an hour.  that happens alot.  tok likes to get ready and go so WE aren't the one holding up the program.  even if it means we wait around an hour at someones house.

eight of us got in the back of the pickup, and 7 more in the cab - tho some of that number were small kids and a baby.  more than two hours drive up into the highlands west of where we live.  it's the last day of songkran festival, so allong the way we got doused, dumped, on, hosed, splashed and deluged with water by crowds and sometimes gangs of people waiting by the side of the road for people to come along.  no going around them either.  soaked over and over.  but it's warm as usual, and the hot air blasting past the truck feels like sitting in the face of the furnace outlet.  just when you would get dried out almost, we'd go thru another little village and get doused again.  wee hee!  the really heinous tossers use ICE WATER.  that gets your attention as it soaks thru your crotch.

we disembarked at toks grandmothers sisters house.  she's 96 years old, blind, can't hear well, and so skinny you'd think she'd blow away.  but everyone talked with her and handed her babies.  we ate food (8 different dishes on the floor, plus sticky and regular rice).  i chilled in the hammock for a while, and tok came to get me to go fishing.  that was interesting.  they netted hundreds of little fish from the water hole left in a nearly dried up water course.  when we got back, they cleaned the junk out of the nettings, wrapped handfuls of the little fish in leaves and roasted them out back.  tasty with sticky rice.  i napped on the floor for a while with six other people.  hot part of the day indeed. (photos in the gallery here)

they had a water ceremony for the old ladies, and for some of the not-so-old people.  more food and ice water, and we were back in the pickup for the long drive home.  it's a bit hard on the body being folded up in the back of an open pickup, with hot wind blasting you, a young girl full of energy singing and playing with everyone.  and of course, getting soaked again along the way.  the ride back seemed a lot longer than the ride up.

tomorrow, i think i'll just hang out.  Hah!  hopefully the shops will be open and i can get the tubing to finish my shower plumbing - pictures to follow.

gorgeous the life!
Nu