Day 13 - Bugger the tour, I'm sleeping in!

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Day 13 - ok so it's all catching up with me a bit! I woke up when the alarm went off feeling really crusty. In no way up for a full day tour with a group of other tourists, so Todd went and saw reception to cancel. It cost us 30% of the tour cost, but it was worth it for the sleep in. Todd came back to bed and we crashed back out until 10:30. It was great! I woke up feeling better, but not wonderful, so we lazed around for a while longer then got all our laundry and stuff together from the past 2 weeks. We discovered that we can send the laundry out for 50 baht a kilo.....yes......this is amazing! We bagged it all up and Todd and Kalyb dropped it off to reception.

It was lunchtime by now so we wandered down to the restaurant and had some food. We had a lazy lunch and enjoyed watching the boats on the river and the birds and the general beauty of the river and then Todd and Corey went for a swim in the pool while Kalyb and I had another beer by the river. There is a small bridge just down from the resort and Kalyb was facing it, he looked up and said 'OMG, Mum look it's a cow!', I was like a cow? Where? I turned just in time to see this cow running at full pelt across the bridge amongst the scooters and tuk tuks! Alrighty then, don't know where he was going, but that cow was on a mission lol!

So after our lazy morning Todd and I were ready to head out for a walk to see what we could see, but the boys weren't keen so we left them in the room watching movies while we set out to find the famous Bridge over River Kwai. I stopped to pet the resident kitty cat on the way out, it's nice to have animals around that aren't strays, heaps of dogs and cats on the streets around here, we never are sure if they are owned or not, but they haven't looked starving or in poor condition, so they must be getting enough to eat.

So we headed out towards the bridge along the very narrow footpath and dodged the crazy drain grates and drooping power lines and barbed wire fences. Thailand really isn't made for pedestrians! It must be why the tuk-tuk, taxi trade is so huge. No-one really walks anywhere, and everyone is always surprised when you tell them you want to walk somewhere! But it's only a little over a km to the Bridge so walk we did, past lots of cool little restaurants and bars and shops. It was a really pleasant afternoon, and as we approached the Bridge the sun was just beginning to set, so we were able to get some beautiful photos! We walked across the bridge, stopping at various points to take pics, there is a large statue of a the Goddess of Mercy on the opposite bank and the sun setting behind it was just gorgeous. We continued our walk across the bridge and about half-way across we heard the train siren ad realised it was coming across now! This is such great timing, sunset AND the train. There are little niches in the bridge where pedestrians can stand to get out of the way of the oncoming train, so Todd and I took one each on opposite sides so we could take pics of each other. As the train passed the passengers stuck their hands out the windows for high fives as they went past, it was really cool. This old train was the one I had wanted to take from Bangkok, and it only crosses the bridge twice a day so I was glad to have seen it go across 😊 After it passed we continued our walk across, stopping to pour out a drink for the fallen on the way. When we got to the other side we decided against walking along the opposite bank and just went back the way we came. The base of the bridge has almost a carnival atmosphere, heaps of market stalls and street food sellers and all kinds of things going on. We didn't hang around long though, we decided to go back to the hotel to grab the kids and head out to the night market for dinner and shopping.

We made our way back to hotel, stopping at a funky little restaurant/bar on the way back for a beer. We also decided to share a little pizza to tide us over until dinner later, we ordered a "sausage pizza", and it was basically a pizza with hot dogs on it lol. It was actually nicer than it sounds, but yeah, hotdog pizza 😊

We also stopped at a little bottle shop on the way back to check for Jacks......Todd is going mad for lack of Jacks in this country lol. Very few places have it and it is CRAZY expensive when they do! Seems to be a big Johnny Walker realm in Thailand. We did find some Jacks in the bottlo, but it was WAY expensive compared to other spirits, so we passed. We also passed a bar with a big sign that says 'Jack Lives Here' right out front of our hotel......but Jacks did NOT live there, he didn't even visit occasionally lol. So strike 2 on the JD lol.

So now is the part that everyone will already have read about. We get back to the hotel and grab the kids and decide to get a tuk-tuk to the markets. It's only about 2km to the market, but it's dark and like I said, Thailand isn't really made for walking! They don't really seem to have taxis in this town, not cars anyway. There is only tuk tuks.......so we ask the lady at the hotel reception to call us one. As soon as we saw it drive up we knew it was a bad idea. Unlike the tuk tuks we have already taken, which were much sturdier things, this was basically a scooter with a sidecar with benches in it clipped on. But the driver said 'yes yes!' and piled us in. The hotel we are in is on the riverbank, so there is an incline to get up to the road, not a particularly steep incline, but an incline. The scooter starts up the hill and we can hear the engine just screaming. The guy is leaning forward into it but I reckon he knows we aren't going to make it! We are laughing in the back going omg, we are going to blow the motor on this thing when we tried to stop and re-arrange the weight......he managed to say 'overbalanced' before we all felt it.......with the lack of forward momentum and us being on an incline the guy had put the brake on.......and since the thing couldn't roll backwards down the hill, the whole thing flipped over onto it's back! I swear it happened almost in slow motion, I said 'are we going backward?'...then THUMP. I'm laying on my back and Corey, who was sitting in the front, was standing up over the top of us. Luckily he wasn't thrown clear, and the only real injury was my elbow, which I must have put behind me to keep my head from cracking the pavement. So we had to crawl clear of the busted arse tuk tuk and I was checking the kids and Todd to make sure everyone is ok, and they are. My elbow hurts and I am a bit dazed but otherwise ok. I think I may have been in a slight amount of shock though because I was giggling uncontrollably at this little mishap, and whilst it was pretty funny in retrospect, I think I must have been a little hysterical. The staff from the hotel must have heard the crash because they are running up the hill to help. When they get there we assure them we are ok and the pick the tuk tuk up again and the driver motions for us to get back in!!! No way in hell!! We tell the guy that we are just going to walk and he again tries to get us to get in the bloody thing again and I am just not having it. The driver did notice my bleeding elbow at this point and tried to get me to go back to the hotel for some first aid but at this point I just need to get out of there. So I say to Todd let's just start walking! So we do. I probably shouldn't have, we should have gone back to the hotel, but we decided to press on to the market. It took us half an hour to get there, by which time I had a thumping headache, which is a shame because it actually seemed like a really nice market, but we only got through a few stalls before I needed to head back. We stopped at a chemist on the way and got some antiseptic for the elbow. We got back to the resort where we were, of course, the talk of the town. The receptionist insisted on providing some first aid so I waited while she cleaned out the wound and then put on some betadine.

We went and had dinner and a stiff drink or 2 in the restaurant and I started feeling a bit better. I laughed with one of the waitresses about what had happened, she has been very friendly our whole stay and she was concerned about what happened and I reassured her we were fine. We talked about what happened though and when I said the staff had run out really quickly she said, 'Oh! They must have seen it on the cameras!' I didn't realise there were cameras, I said OMG, do they keep tapes of the camera footage? Video? She started to understand where I was going with that and her eyes lit up! Oh yes! She said. I said I definitely need a copy of that video and she promised she would go to reception after her shift to find it. She asked me what time we left, and it turns out, I had the exact time recorded on my phone when I took a pic of our driver moments before we fell over lol. So she had a mission and after we ate I headed back up to the room while Todd went up to the 7-11 to get a few beers for the room. On his way back from the shop he saw a group of about 8 hotel staff gathered around the computer screen chatting loudly and laughing.......yep....there they were laughing at our video haha. So he stopped and laughed along with them and recorded the video from the screen on his phone. Good times, good times 😊

Anyway, we hung out in the safety of our room the rest of the evening and had a few drinks. All's well that ends well 😊

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Comments

[Stacey]

Thank you
Hey Kris! It’s Christmas Eve here, 3:30am, I’ve been up for 4 hours with a toothache ugh! But you put up 2 blog entries in this time and I love reading them!!!! Usually it’s the first thing I read for the day. A well written distraction! Love your work.