Weekend adventures
I am sooo happy. It is incredible to live on my own. Never knew it could be so much fun. No parents worrying about what time I am coming in. No one to tell me to clean up my room... Now I am the one telling myself to clean up. Haha. Complete freedom and 100% responsibility. I am starting to get to know what and who is around town.
My weekend started early. Well so it felt because I went out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening. This is all thanx to my sweet Thai friend. We had a blast this weekend.
Thursday
I am on a mission to find out where I can exercise so he showed me a cheap gym after that we ended up in a Chinese temple in Phuket bay. They have this thing that they do where you shake a holder with a bunch of long sticks with numbers on until one falls out. The number that falls out will lead you to a card with encouraging words on. Of course these words were all written in Thai. Luckily my friend is Thai and I relied on him to translate it. At first he had a hard time to understand what it means and it said something about the water flowing through the rocks. We had a good laugh about it and eventually he figured it out: “you have good fortune in yourself and you don’t need to find luck in reading this card...” Okay I am a bit confused will ask my friend to interpret it again.” Mmh, now comes the question of course. Is it okay for a Christian to go into another temple and read her “fortune”? Well I don’t see it as reading my fortune. It’s just a message on a paper and part of the Chinese culture. What do you think?
Friday
Friday we went to a festival in Phuket town. It was held in “the old town”. This is a place where there are many old buildings. Usually this street is completely dead but because of the festival they cordoned the street off and people where stampeding to get a taste of the delectable Tai food sold on the side of the road. This ranged from coconut ice cream, deep fried chicken, shrimp cakes, coconut bakes and delectable cakes. There was a place where you could write something on the street. Proudly South-African I wrote “I love South Africa.”
The festival became too crowded and we made our way to a beach party in Patong. It was a roller-coaster ride to get there. The road leading to Phatong from Phuket town is very steep up and down. Sitting on the back of a small motorbike, going 10km/hour praying that we get up the hill was an adventure in itself. This grew a lot of faith while adrenaline was pumping. Going up was okay because I only had to hold on to my friend as to prevent falling off because of the steep hill. But going down and around the sharp corners took my breath away. I reminded myself that he is Thai and he has a lot of skill lifting lots of people on a motorbike. So this should be easy peasy for him.
He got us there safely. The music pumping drew us to the beach party. People were dancing drinking out of buckets. This is the funny part. When you are young you play innocently in the sand filling your bucket with sea sand and making a sand castel. But it seem like as people grow older they don’t leave the childish things behind. They just find a different use for the things they used when they were a child. Like putting alcohol into the bucket instead of the sand. People really are fascinating.
I have been looking forward to some good DJ music for a while and this over exceeded the expectation I had. People moved to the beat of each song happily jumping around singing with, taping their feet and shaking their hips. The beach party ended in the early hours of the morning and the DJ moved to a club. Of course, charging a small fortune to get in. We rather decided to enjoy the quietness of the beach and listen to the waves crashing.
These are moments I want to freeze in time and say: “Thank you Lord for an awesome friend”. Moments like this is what makes life truly special. I also know that my time in Thailand is very short and a lot of people I meet here I might never see again. They only share a small part of my life and I want to treasure each moment I have with them.
Saturday
The day was laid back. I decided to hit the road and go to a beach I have never been before. I ended up at Surin and Lamsing. Stunning and yet again stunning. Even though the beaches were packed with forang (foreigners) it was so quiet. I could see people taking their first rest after a whole year of working hard in Europe with no sun. They were so happy to get sun on their skin that some of the women decided to go topless. At least they had their g-strings on. Not a pretty sight. Especially those women who are a bit more advanced in years and don’t have the ‘support’ they used to have when they were younger. At Lamsing I had a sweet Iced coffe while enjoying the shade and the view of the beautiful blue ocean. At times it’s good to take a day to yourself and see where the road leads you.
I rushed back before sunset and grabbed a meal with a friend, then headed back to my flat where my Thai friend picked me up again. This time we were off to Kata. Trying to find ska-bar (a friend of a friend celebrated his 30th b-day). We had no clue where it is and after driving around for an hour in Kata (this time with his brother’s car) we found it. Well worth the journey of getting lost. It was tucked away in a small street at a beach hidden away from the busy streets. This small rasta-bar was packed with friendly faces. Some of them familiar others complete strangers. I had some good conversations and was encouraged by a particular young man who looks like a really solid guy. He has his dreams ahead of him and already his next step planned out. Believes in himself and wants to make a success out of his life. I love listening to people like that. They encourage you to re-evaluate your life and ask yourself: “where am I heading? What are my goals? What do I hope to achieve in life.”
A successful weekend with lots of fun and good times. Now I am ready to take on the week... teaching 5 year olds.
posted by ansie @ 8:14 AM
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