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Published: November 16th 2009
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Look at the drop on this sidewalk
We actually had to side-step to get down from it. It's about 3-feet high. Day 15 - A Rest in Surat Thani
We stayed a day in Surat Thani, because J’s knee really hurt and we were exhausted anyways. J recalled that he’d injured that knee seven years before in a car accident, making me feel a little less bad than I felt about the injury being my fault. J spent most of the day in bed, I spent the day walking around, enjoying the waterfront and the bustle of the homely city.
We, of course, ate at the 99 Baht Buffet again, this time bringing enough money to pay. This time we also noticed a teenage boy, paid to swat a stick with streamers attached above the food, to ensure bugs did not have the chance to land. Unfortunately, he was waving this stick around so much, with such great vigor, that sometimes it was dusting the floor. And sometimes it was dusting the food. Ewww.. Luckily we noticed this after we’d finished eating. And we’d mostly cooked the food we'd eaten from the buffet at our table grill anyway, so that was a plus.
Women working the buffet commented on my jean short-alls and my ethnic Hmong purse, asking where
I bought them. Alright! I thought my outfit was only cool inside Laos, and nowhere else in the world. But apparently, it was also cool in Thailand. The jean short-alls are a very hot look with lady-boys right now in Laos. Despite the fact that I am not a lady-boy, I think they are a riot and a real throwback to the eighties so I also wear them. Most Thai women are enamored by expensive American brands, easily copied in Thailand, and wear their shiny fake brand-name purses with pride. I had previously thought most Thai women saw my Hmong purse to be an ugly traditional relic.
After a restful day, we went to bed around 12:30. About an hour later, J got up to use the bathroom awakening me when he yelled, “Babe, you better come see this.” I heard rushing water but couldn’t imagine what it was, and I also really didn’t want to get out of bed. But I did, and as I put my foot on to the floor, I discovered the floor was wet. Why was the floor wet? The floor was wet because there was three inches of water on the bathroom floor.
Why was there so much water on the bathroom floor? The butt-sprayer had exploded from the wall.
(For those of you not in the know, the butt-sprayer is a little water hose, positioned right next to the toilet, that is used instead of toilet paper to clean the bum. Very popular in Asia.)
The butt-sprayer lay on the floor, and where it had been, water exploded from the wall. Like crazy! J was trying to stop the spray with the palm of his hand. Quite unsuccessfully.
I flipped the light switch to discover the entire room was flooded with three inches of water. I rushed around the room, moving all our wet belongings off the floor and on to a counter. I was so sleepy and didn’t immediately have any idea what to do. J told me to run downstairs and tell reception what was happening. I did, and the receptionist was awake, but she didn’t speak any English. I mimed the situation to her with enough intensity that I think she knew it was something serious. She called an elderly janitor, luckily on-duty and also awake, who followed me back up the stairs. Once we reached my floor, we could see that the hallway outside my room was flooding. He pulled open a box on the wall that opened to reveal the water pipes, just outside the door of my room. And he shut off the water supply. Smart!
Then the old man came in to our room and saw all the water that had already accumulated. He ran back downstairs for supplies. The receptionist then ran upstairs, her heels click-clacking all the way up. Barely blinking at the scene in front of her, she held up a room key and said simply, “Change room.” Very calmly. No apology. No concern. We, on the other hand, were sort-of freaking out. Our stuff was everywhere. Wet. And we were sleepy.
We moved everything upstairs, to a new room, including our bikes. Once I got over that initial shock, I couldn’t stop giggling at the situation. The butt-sprayer exploded off the wall in the middle of the night, flooding the hotel room as we slept. Not the shower, not the sink, the butt-sprayer. And it all happened in the course of one hour.
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