WEDNESDAY 11 June 2008
Oh my God it’s early! 5am should not exist in any culture!
Early up – Back to meditation
Breakfast – Back to meditation
Small break – Back to meditation
In the morning we were allowed to take part in a Buddhist tradition of giving alms to the monks. Basically this means that people living in the villages around the temples all stand outside with a bit of food that they have prepared in order to give it to the monks as they pass walking around town. Monks are not allowed to work for money so no shopping or cooking is allowed either and in exchange for the food, they give blessings to the people in the street. Its quite kewl and it was nice to be included in this 1000+ year old tradition and shown how to do it. After our blessing we were allowed to eat.
Fortunately we were allowed to talk again after breakfast. What’s the first thing out of Deeds’ mouth? “God this coffee is shit! My tongue is all fury”. Hahahaha. She did have a point. Although I never actually punished myself with any, everyone else was agreeing/complaining in unison! Ok so the coffee was really bad! The rest of the food was pretty good though.
We were again split into groups and sent off for informal chats and a Q&A session with a monk. Very interesting. Just after lunch it was time to leave. I mean it was fun and all but I think 24 hours of OOOooommmm and Buddhism is enough for starters. It was time to rejoin the sinners.
We were taken back to Wat Suan Dok where we could take our own transport back to our vacations. Deeds got us a tuk tuk with the directions “Home James!” On the way we saw Mad Dog. “STOP!!!!!” Ok maybe we just don’t learn or maybe we are simply determined to have a cracking time in Mad Dog. Whatever it is we waltzed in there and plonked ourselves on some bar stools and ordered what I think were well deserved Mai Thais. Yummy. A Mai Thai after a good meditation retreat goes down like a home-sick mole! Next to us was another traveler, Brent, a kewl Aussie bloke. After about 20 minutes of back and forth banter he hit the road cos he had a trekking plan meeting to attend and he needed to find a working ATM.
Despondent with Mad Dog again, Deeds and I walked out knowing that there was a kewl pub down the road that served GREAT Mai Thais. It was a bar that we sat at before the Muay Thai boxing a few days earlier. We weren’t there for very long before Brent came wandering by and after a quick exchange of “HAHA! Are you following me? No you are following me”, I asked him in for another “quick” drink and that was officially the beginning of the end. Power drinking started there. He missed his trek plan meeting but these accommodating people made a special arrangement for him. He eventually disappeared to make his plans for his trek the following day.
Deeds had this wonderful idea of going to a waterfront Restaurant. She really is gifted with some great thinking! Although the restaurant was fairly quiet it was really good. Deeds spotted a boat moored to a jetty and said she wanted to go eat down there. So up we got and off we trotted asking the waitress to come and serve us down there. It was awesome. Just the two of us on this boat and our very own waitress that I never realized, cos my back was to the jetty, never left and just waited on our every need. Now that’s service.
Stumbling out of there after polishing off a bottle of wine each not to mention all the booze which had been consumed earlier, we needed transport. Nothing. Not a tuk tuk in sight. We have to walk? In this state? No ways. Along the way, which I wasn’t sure about but Deeds is like a GPS - great at direction, we come across a parked up tuk tuk. On the side of the road at a little table is this little tuk tuk’s driver drinking arguably as much as us. It took a bit of positive Deed persuasion to get this guy to drop his mates and give us a ride. I have no idea how much it was or where we went but it was a kewl ride. KEN LEEEEEEEEE! (For all you Angolans! Remind me to show you the video).
Somewhere along the way, Brent had called us as agreed after his makeshift trek meeting and off we went drinking again. I think this is why I don’t like Aussies that much (said in jest). They force me to drink. A lot! We must have played 30 games of pool, patted an elephant walking in the street (as you do in Thailand? – Remind me to show you the photos) and managed to polish of another shed load of beer.
Around 2pm we figured that we should probably call it a night, either cos we had plans to go “Fly With Gibbons” (to be explained later), or our livers were kicking us in the back. So much for one or two quiet ones!
Hic, Burp, Fart, ZZZzzzzz. I’m a lovely drunk!
