bonglonglong

I had the most BIZARRE day today.  Today, for about an hour, I became the leader of a tribe of sea gypsies, before fleeing for my life so that I wouldn't be sacrificed.

It all started when the kayaking company picked me up from my hotel at 8am this morning.  (I slept 12 hours last night, after an AMAZING dinner at an outdoor restaurant along the banks of the river last night.  I paid $2 for the whole thing.  Thomas, you'd have died.  The food here is SO amazing...)
 
Anyway, they picked me up and drove me to Ao Nang, the big resort town nearby where all the luxury hotels are.  I waited there for the rest of the group, who were all coming from the big resort hotels.  They arrived with our trip leader, Michelle, who is a "kathoey."
 
Kathoey is the Thai term for the "third gender."  Throughout Thai history, those boys who exhibited effeminacy after puberty were called Kathoey and were revered as people who contained both genders within them.  Often they were made into village leaders and judges.
 
These days, Kathoey often become Lady-Boys, which means they take hormones to grow breasts, generally have their private parts reversed, and live their lives as women.  It's so common here that the operations are top-quality and dirt cheap, and a lot of transgendered people from the US come here to have the surgeries done because it's a tenth the price that it is in the US, and they can skip all the psychological treatment that is required in the US before gender reversal procedures.
 
I'm not sure how far along Michelle was, but she had little breasts, hairy legs, and a large Adam's apple.  But she was hard-core into kayaking and had dirt underneath her toenails and fingernails.  I was a little embarassed to find myself wondering how to respond to her.
 
We were paired together in a kayak, because everyone else was a couple.  And she and I were the ONLY ones in the group that had any kayaking experience, so it was frustrating waiting for the others to catch up all the time.  (They were all pasty white, overweight tourists who bought all-inclusive package deals to Ao Nang.)
 
We kayaked through mangrove swamps and into these magnificent sea caves.  They had many entrances, so there was plenty of light in the caves to navigate by.  At one particular cave, we stopped to observe a colony of "walking fish" or mud skippers.  I've never seen anything like it, they're fish that have both lungs and gills, so they can live on land or in water for any length of time.
 
When the tide goes out, they climb up on the land and hunt insects, walking around on their fins.  If only Darwin had known about this fish when he was being called a blasphemer!
 
Anyway, as the day dragged on, the pasty tourists were tired and grumpy and wanted to go back to the floating restaurant along the river.  Michelle asked if I wanted to see more caves, and of course I said yes, so we let the pasties head back for beer and food, and we headed further upstream.
 
"You want to visit Sea Gypsy village?" she asked me.
 
It sounded cool, so I said, "Yes."
 
About 2 kms of paddling brought us to this village where the sea gypsies spend part of the year.  It consisted of shacks built on stilts above the river.  They all came out shouting to us when we paddled up, and I was a bit scared, but Michelle didn't seem phased. 

Sea gypsies speak their own language, but it was close enough to Thai for Michelle to understand and be understood.  They pulled us up out of the kayak onto their pier and rushed us into a small thatched-roof hut.  They brought in some foul-smelling ooze wrapped in banana leaves and insisted that we eat it.  I was surprised to find it sweet, but it smelled and tasted like rotten fish.
 
Gagging, I managed to finish the whole morsel...I didn't want to appear ungrateful.  But they insisted I have another.  And another.
 
By the time I had eaten five, I was feeling very ill, indeed, and realized that it was all going to come back up.  I glanced around for the most discreet place to do the deed, but the gypsies were all crowded around us, watching.
 
It was almost in my throat by the time I stood up and burst toward the door...but it was too late.  I threw up all over an old man who was sitting right in front of the door.

The gypsies all started hollering and jumping up and down.  They jumped at me, picked me up, and carried me to a little shrine in the middle of their village.  Michelle was following at the back, trying to figure out what was going on.
 
They placed a silk wrap around me and a headdress on my head, and started singing and dancing around me.
 
"I think the man you puked on was the tribe leader," Michelle said, "And they have some legend that says the new leader will arrive by boat and vomit on the old leader, signifying that he is here to take over."

Great!  "So how do I get out of this?  Can you convince them that I just threw up because of the sugary rotten fish thing they made me eat?"
 
Michelle talked to several of the gypsies, but they didn't pay attention to her.  Meanwhile, I wasn't feeling so well again, and ended up throwing up several times while these crazed gypsies danced around me.  Apparently they thought it was a significant blessing.
 
Half of the gypsies disappeared, and about an hour later, I was led to dry land where they had a huge fire going.  Michelle screamed at me that they indended to put ME in that fire, and that we had to get out immediately.  So I threw off the headdress and scarf and pushed through the crowd...(sea gypsies are very diminutive in size, and none of them weighed more than a hundred pounds)...and we were off down the pier toward our kayak.
 
They hadn't tied the kayak up when they pulled us up from it, so it was trapped in some mangrove roots across the river.  We dove into the river and swam to the other side, while the gypsies screamed at us from the pier.
 
Some of them got in canoes to chase us, but we were fleeing for our lives, so we paddled like there was no tomorrow until we got far enough down the river where there were other people in boats around...and we were safe.
 
APRIL FOOLS!!!

Yes, they even have it in Thailand!  Actually, I didn't waste too much of your time.  The story was ENTIRELY true until the part about the pasties going back to the restaurant for beer and food.  I, too, was exhausted and hungry, so we ALL went back to the floating restaurant for beer and food.
 
On the way back to the hotel, Michelle took us to this lovely hidden spring-fed pool in the jungle, complete with rope swing, and we swam for awhile.
 
Now I'm back in Krabi, about to go in search of another $2 dinner.
 
I wish you all a Happy April Fool's Day, and I'll write again soon!