Ripping My Body to Shreds

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The rest of last night was hell. The walk back to the guesthoue was a battle with mosquitoes, and it only got worse as I got closer to the Paasook Resort where I'm staying (resort! hah!). It was a ruh to get inside my bungalow as I was being eated alive. Even when I got inside the bites didn't stop...although they lessened. At least the elctricity was working. Oh, did I forget to mention that electricity is only available from 6:00 pm until like 3 am? They have to use generators because there isn't any other power. Anyways, I prepped for bed, turned off the lights, turned on the fan, closed the mosquito netting, and waited to fall asleep. It didn't happen. Understand, I NEVER have trouble falling asleep, and I NEVER wake up at night. Well, the fan was squeaky, very very squeaky, and the frogs outside were not in chorus. I can't even begin to describe the sound of the frogs. There were the usual bullfrogs that let out a low gutteral waaamp-waaamp, and the smaller frogs with higher pitched croaks...but then there was some animal, (maybe a frog?), I assumed it was a frog, but it sounded like a cross between a dying cat and the poorly oiled wheels of an old wooden roller coaster. Horrible. I woke up several times to the frogs, and then woke up before sunrise to the cocka-doodle-doo of a rooster underneath my bungalow.

I officially got up at 7:30. I figured the climbers got up early to go climb, and I wanted to find a climbing buddy at breakfast, so I hopped over to the cute restaurant where I had dinner the previous night and ordered a breakfast of scrambled eggs. I was the only one awake - very funny. I guess climbers here don't get up early? It turns out they chill out - a lot, and climb occasionally. When the waitress arrived with my eggs she stroked my hand and smiled at me. Flirty or just odd? Doesn't matter - she's not my type, to put it nicely.

Well, I didn't find a climbing partner in the morning, and decided to just boulder on my own for a little while. (Bouldering is climbing without ropes, but you only go like 10 feet up). I then dropped by one of the climbing schools and set up a guide for half the day, starting at 1:30, for $26. I decided to kill 2 hours by walking over to a climbing area and checking it out. I ran into a guy from Norway taking his two buddies who had never climbed to a beginner's wall. I joined them, and when we got to the wall I slipped on a slippery rock, slicing a big gash in one toe, and cuts on the bottoms of other toes. Shit. All I could think was 'I hope this doesn't affect my climbing' followed by 'I hope it doesn't get infected'. I belayed the guy teaching his friends, but then had to run back to the climbing school for my lesson. Luckily my med kit had antibiotic ointment, so I grabbed that, and then headed off to the school. They put me on a rock right next to the bar, and 20 feet from the water. RIDICULOUS climb - a 6B (not that that means anything to any of the lot reading this). A lot of it was undercut, but with giant stalactites hanging down, like in Vang Vieng. I climbed the first climb with a little, and then they put up another 6B. Very very hard. I couldn't finish the last 5 feet. What a bummer. They sent a local guy up to remove the last 'draw', and he moved like a monkey - unbelievable. I learned that he had never climbed before, ever. He works at the bar. Whattt? Then his buddy tried the climb, and made it as far as I did. The locals are totally natural climbers.

A local named 'Elliott' asked me if I wanted to climb some more in a different area, so I joined him on a 6A called 'chicken little'.

That's about all for today. Oh, I scraped up my arms, put a gash in my ankle, and have holes in 4 fingers. Oh well. Tomorrow I'll see if I can rent a kayak and kayak out to a cool little island in the distance!

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