An angry Thai woman and a midnight dip in the sea

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Day 14

To no surprise, we were back starting our day with a gorgeous complimentary breakfast spread. However, this staff was unaware of our necessity for a plethora of drinks. About 5 drinks a piece later and full bellies, we were ready for the beach. We took in some ample sun time and then headed out to explore the twin coves. We climbed a few rocks, walked the stretch of one beach, sweated to no end, and applied and reapplied some serious deet - straight Kemper style. Kemper is deathly afraid of malaria and dengue fever and never leaves a hotel room without ample amounts of deet on and to reapply. Lindsay thinks she is crazy but always thanks her later.

We arrived at the end of the first cove and had to back road it to the next beach about a mile uphill. Just when Kemper started to fade and second guess this decision, a pick up truck pulled up and asked us if we wanted a ride. It was a very nice Thai woman who worked at a local resort, so we jumped right in with smiles on our faces. Once again, things were working out. They dropped us in the center of town and we stumbled into a shop where we met a lovely Australian woman named Kim. After a long chat, we headed down to the beach for a drink. We heard Motown coming from a beachside bar ahead and knew we had to go there.

The "Flip Flop Pharmacy" became our resting place for several hours. At this local establishment, we sipped on margaritas, moved onto beers, met the german owners, kemper dj'd for a bit, and we experienced a husband and wife brawl which Kemper tried to intervene and make right. Need we mention the fact that the german owner was in love with lindsay? Okay, against kempers better judgement, heres how it all went down...

We arrived and the place was empty, but we were digging the tunes. We ordered our margaritas and dived into great conversation. Just as we were paying the bill and Kemper was in the restroom, Lindsay strikes up a conversation with one of the German owners. Here enters Roman. Roman initially thought we were lesbians. This was a concept that we assumed most people were thinking about the 2 of us traveling together and staying in all of our honeymoon villas. He was hilarious. And he was loving all that was Lindsay. We should mention that he was married and tried to tell Lindsay he had an open marriage. ummm no thanks! But we stayed and we drank more and we laughed. A few laughs later, the other owner came back to the bar. Mark was a little more disgruntled and German. Within a matter of minutes, a very angry Thai woman stormed into the bar screaming in Thai. Lindsay had her back to the situation the whole time and kept saying we should go. Kemper felt like with a talk or two, she could get this couple back on track. Nobody was encouraging this sentiment. But Kemper was ready to bring peace to the Thai east. After a few words of marriage counseling to Mark, Kemper headed to the bathroom with a slight bit of fear of his Thai wife. She knew that this was her window to bridge the gap. She tried to ease into conversation with her international sign language by greeting the wife's dog first. The wife shouted several times, "you no touch dog, not you!" And she ran off with the dog jumping on her scooter and driving away. Now it was time to go. Roman insisted on driving us back to our side of the coves, so we jumped into his pimped out escalade. He was blaring a live DVD concert of Adele. We sang along and semi enjoyed the ride. We held hands hoping we had not made the wrong decision by taking a ride from this guy. There were moments where Kemper questioned the direction we were headed, but all chalked up to paranoia. Something that creeped in frequently on our travels. Roman brought us to the place we expressed so much love for, "the jip shop!"

It was clear from the previous night that Jip and her family loved us as one of their own. So to no surprise when we showed up on night 2 and their family was eating dinner, Kemper felt completely comfortable approaching the table and sampling their crab legs. And they were delightful. Before Kemper ate all of their dinner, we placed an order for our own meal and told Jip to make us something good... Her choice.

Before you know it, the bartender and our server pulled up a seat and set up the Jenga tower. Unbeknownst to us, they were ordering beers on our tab, practicing their broken English, and joining in on the fun.
We took our time enjoying dinner, playing Jenga, and laughing with our new adopted family. Every now and again mama Jip would come by our table and hold up a few fingers to check on our sobriety. "You drunk! How many finger? Oh you not drunk!" When the number of fingers started to blur, we knew it was time to shuffle out of there. Our new young Thai friends volunteered to walk us back to our hotel. It was dark, we had no flashlight, and we had to scale some rocks to get back over to our side of the beach. Maybe it was mama Jip looking out for us once again, either way we were happy to have the escort. The local boys got us lost, Kemper was attacked by bats, but Lindsay pulled through and got us moving in the right direction. We will agree to disagree why it is always Kemper who has the confrontations with the wild. Birds, bats, mosquitos, sharks, cockroaches, flys, bees, spiders, frogs, ants, midnight burglars, and toilets have all "attacked" her on this trip. Magically Lindsay hasn't witnessed any of this. We digress. We make it to our pretty little stretch of beach in front of our hotel and we're feeling pretty hot from the long walk. Well lucky us...We were still in our bathing suits from earlier that day and there was a huge body of water right next to us. We did what made sense and jumped right in. The two Thai local boys followed our lead and ran into the ocean after us. It didnt take long before Lindsay insisted we make this a true skinny dipping adventure. So we swam away from the young/ barely legal and highly impressionable Thai boys and stripped off our suits for a "free" swim in the moonlight. We both agree the residents of our former hotel, "The Sanctuary," would approve. Lets not get carried away, this is not a chapter out of "50 Shades of Grey," rather just a couple of thirty something's proving they still have a little spontaneity in them. The older of the two boys ended up professing his love to Lindsay. We're pretty sure we made their night. Maybe it was the beers we bought them or our stellar Jenga skills? Maybe it was our free spirited nature or the possible flash of boob? We will never know. But as we stood under the stars dancing to Bob Marley blaring from our I-phones, we couldn't help but notice the ear to ear grins on their faces. In that same moment, Kemper and the youngest of the two boys saw a shooting star. It really couldn't get more magical. Kemper started shouting into the sky with pure joy, "I got you stars! I got you!" Now, lets be clear... There were quite a few beers consumed that evening and not even Kemper knows what the heck She was talking about. I think she was just feeling the moment, the shooting star, and just connecting to the sky in her own weird way. What really topped the night off was that this impressionable kid started repeating after her. Poor guy barely spoke a lick of English and now the little bit of English he is learning makes absolutely no sense. Pretty great stuff. We'll just safely say that Kemper is not moving to Thailand anytime soon to teach English... At least not to that island and not after a couple beers. Once we realized it was getting late and that these guys had been gone from the shop for awhile, we decided to call it a night. We said goodnight and made our way up to our room. As we walked up to our little bungalow, we busted out laughing picturing the boys arriving back at the shop soaking wet. Mama Jip was going to think we corrupted her boys. Oh God! We were mortified. We had already dealt with one angry Thai woman that evening. We didn't want to experience another. If only we could explain it was all innocent. Considering the language barrier and the sheer embarrassment of the situation, we knew it was time to get the heck off that island and move on to the next. We will always love Jip, her amazing Thai food, the best margaritas in Thailand, her warmth, her pet bunny, and her interrogation of our sobriety level.

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