Buckets & flip-flops

---

Still hanging out at lonely beach. After the sun went down (it's absolutely regular at 6pm in these tropical climes), I stepped out for an evening with my pals Bidi (german) and Melina and Mike (french). We were having a lot of fun, bar-hopping along the beach. All the bars there are open-air so no excessive heat or smoke. It is customary at these bars to leave your shoes/sandals/flip-flops outside when you go in...not sure entirely why, it's a Thai custom at Buddhist temples but bars are a far cry from a temple despite whatever worship at the porcelain altar might be going on. So Bidi lost his flip-flops. Some reveller must have put them on by mistake. We had a laugh (schadenfreude, as the germans might say) and consoled him that they were cheap enough, and it was only a walk along the sandy beach to the next club and eventually back to his bungalow. Then it happened to me! A pair of sandals I'd brought from Canada, and was not particularly attached to, vanished. My logic was that someone with similar shoes and blurred vision had accidentaly repo'ed them so I reciprocated by appropriating the closest approximation I could find. Yeah, bad karma I know. Buddha gonna kick my ass.

Did I mention The Bucket? Possibly the cause of all this shoe-related havoc. Aside: my first night out in Mexico, a million years ago, a waiter appeared and asked "hey man, you want a bucket of beer?" I visualized a pail of foamy suds and said "yeah, let's go!" Alas, my disappointment
when the bucket in question was merely filled with ice with a few bottles stuck in. Enter the Thai bucket: a plastic pail full of highballs and ice (thai red bull+vodka is quite popular, also Sangsom thai rum & coke) with 8 or 9 straws to be shared with your friends. Somewhat the antithesis of
responsible drinking, but there it is. So we ordered a bucket, which led to further buckets. The music was hit-or-miss, but when it hit I got up to shake booty a little, as did the others. Kind of a rotating party around a series of buckets of booze. Now, the Thai girls quite like my hats, and a cutie who was dancing nearby me snatched mine and danced away with a come hither look. I, being rather possessive of my headwear gave chase. Af0ter recapturing my fedora we sat down, bucketside for a drink. We were joined by her friend, a ladyboy wearing a comically huge blonde wig of tight curls. (s)he grabbed my hat and I retalliated by grabbing the wig but it really worked better the other way around so we swapped back. I stepped out (wearing the proper hat) to the toilet only to discover that some rogue had absconded with my pilfered sandals! I lamented my plight to the Thai girl and she asked where I was staying. I explained, she said "ok, I give you ride, I have motorbike!" Sold! We bid farewell to her wigged-out friend and left for the evening. A charming woman, on the way to breakfast we stopped at a shop selling flip-flops.

Ko Chang is mostly untouched mountainous rainforest in the interior with beaches around the edges. That day we went to see a waterfall in a national park --- usually I seek out hot springs when on adventure, but considering the tropical climate waterfalls are equally refreshing. Differential pricing, my ticket cost 400 baht, hers was 40. Well, I suppose her taxes support it, um, assuming Thais pay income tax? It was quite a hike up, about 45 minutes up a _very_ rough trail (all rocks and tree roots, up and down, up and down) but it was quite lovely when we finally arrived. Despite living on the island for several of years, she'd never been there. There were cool pools for swimming full of Russian tourists but we were not appropriately attired so we gave it a pass. Smitten was she, and taught me some terms of endearment in Thai (tee-lak = my darling) but it started to get a bit heavy the next day. On my wrist she tied a woven bracelet she had obtained from her local buddhist temple and then she hand-washed my dirty clothes. I appreciate the bracelet as a keepsake but I knew it was time to go.

---