It wasn't until I saw the faces of the staff working the front desk that I realized how bad I looked. They looked at me in horror and in broken English asked if I needed the police or an ambulance. I don't blame them really. My hair had been knotted into what could only be compared to a birds nest after hours of salt water and heavy winds. I was dirty and sticky. My skin was red like a cooked lobster. I had dried blood running from a cut on my knee down my calf. And my shirt was covered in blood that they must have assumed was mine. If I had seen someone looking like me stroll into a hotel after dark, I would have tried to call the cops too.
Lets start by saying, I'm fine. I don't want to worry anyone (that's you Mom). I actually had a great day. I met a very sweet family from Belgium who took me in while we toured Phi Phi and Money Islands. The hour long ride by speed boat to Phi Phi Island was exhilarating. We would regularly hit decent sized waves which caused us to fly up out of our seats, but the conversation was excellent. I made fast friends with the kids, Innes and Lora.
They were adrenaline junkies like me. Snorkeling was interesting, but we could only do it for so long. When we just couldn't take it any more, we found a cliff that we could jump from. It was only about 30 feet high, but getting to it was quite the challenge. You had to climb up a natural rock barrier, trek through some jungle, avoid the cute but angry and thieving monkeys, then swim through coral to get back to the boat.
Now I'm sure the part of the last sentence that caught you was the park about the monkeys. On Monkey Island, they are abundant like dogs are on the mainland, or for an analogy closer to home, like Hipsters are to Oregon. They are cute and not at all afraid of people, so when one sat a few feet away from me and reached towards me with his tiny, human like hand, I naturally tried to take a picture. His cuteness was merely the camouflage to draw me in. He immediately jumped at me and grabbed my phone and bit into it. I stood there horrified, wondering if 1. I would get my only means of communication back, 2. If it was broken, and 3. How I could be so stupid. I've seen Outbreak! I knew no good can come from contact with a wild monkey! But when the monkey realized it wasn't food, he shrieked and threw it at me forcefully.
About midway through the day I started to feel the beginning of a sunburn come on. So I went to apply my sunscreen, but it ran out before I had fully protected myself. I decided at that point, I'd stay out of the sun as much as possible to make up for the lack of protection. And while this seemed like a great idea in theory, in practice it just didn't add up. By the end of the day, I'd been cooked. My flesh was aching from the burn.
I was very ready to head back to the hotel by the time it was ready to leave at 4pm. It would be an hour boat ride back and I was sticky from the salt water and all I wanted to do was shower. But what should have been an hour long ride back doubled when our skipper beached us in the most glorious of fashions. The tide had rolled out, the water in the only river leading back to the marina was only chest deep and, in an attempt to stay as high on the water as possible, the skipper was "driving it like he'd stole it." But like every good movie where a stolen car is being raced through a city, there is the inevitable crash scene. The skipper took a turn too big and we found our way up almost entirely in the sand.
We were rescued about an hour later by another boat. This one smaller and able to get through the shallow water, but because of the positioning, we had to climb onto it. I got a little cocky while trying to climb in and slipped and fell straight into waist high sand, and apparently hit a stick as well because a pain shot up my leg. When I was hoisted from the sand, my knee was bleeding.
We finally made it back to the marina and crawled back into the van that would take us back to our hotels. But before reaching the first hotel, which was Innes and Lora's stop, we hit a dog. At first, the driver refused to stop. It wasn't until I put my hand on his shoulder and made him pull over that he finally did. I wasn't about to let that dog die, and when I got out of the van, Lora and Innes hopped out with me.
We picked up the little guy and took him to safety. Innes gathered first aid supplies while Lora searched for a vet. I sat and held the scared and hurt dog, holding its wounds in an effort to stop the bleeding. We gave it food and water and disinfected and bandaged up the wounds, but we couldn't find a vet. As it got dark we got desperate, this dog was sweet and gentle and as cute as can be. We didn't want to leave it on the streets, so Innes decided that he would care for it and take it back to Belgium with him.
I can say I've had better days. But this one was amazing. Despite all the bad things that happened, I made some great new friends, and together, we saved a dog. And in my book, that's a pretty great day.
No comments:
Post a Comment