"Surat Thani"

Surat Thani is a middle sized city, not really a tourist spot, but there are backpackers' hostels and hotels to serve the vagabonds coming through. We walked around in the city center, looking for a way to get out of there that same night. But since it was already 9 PM, we could not find anyone who would take us to the Khao Sok National Park, about three hours away. We had to spend the night, and ended up crashing in a relatively expensive hotel (The room was about 11 USD). After leaving the luggage in the room, we headed out to find some food. Almost everything was closed, but we did find a decent place to eat. I also found a car owned by a Norwegian company, "Telenor". The car was decorated with their logo, but had some other strange name written on it. I don't know if this is because they operate under a different name in Thailand, or if it is a smaller company that they have bought, and wanted to keep the value of the name recognition.

Looking at the menu, both Paul and me settled on Chicken and potato in curry sauce. We were both craving potato for some reason. Maybe we were a little fed up with rice and noodles, but whatever it was, we were looking forward to that potato. As the lady who took our order came up to us, we had a hard time not to laugh. She was a somewhat fat one, about 50 years old I guess, and she stopped about 10 feet/3 meters away form us. She could not hear what we said, and we could not hear her. She planted her feet firmly to the ground, and started reaching her ear towards us, and we almost had to shout, I still don't know why she did this, but we saw here do it to other customers as well. I did order some plain rice also, just in case the potatoes would not fill me up. About two minutes later, the rice arrived at the table. So did the watermelon shake I ordered. By the time our food showed up, my rice was of course cold, and I asked them to reheat it for me. They took it out, and five minutes later they had not brought it back. I realized that the one who took it out did not speak English, and probably thought I never ordered any rice. I had to order a new one, and it was there in one minute. What then happened made Paul laugh so hard he could not stop it. The rice they brought me was the same one as last time, just that now it was even colder. What a mess. We started eating, and the food was great, but there was one thing missing. We could not see any potato in the dish. Paul did not get a single piece of potato, but I at one point in the middle of the meal almost jumped of the chair, as I realized a piece of assumed chicken turned out to be a tiny chunk of sweet potato. That was it though. No more potato, and back to the rice, once again.

The next morning we got up early, got on the bus, and were ready to go trekking in the national park. About half way to the park, I started talking to a girl in the seat in front of me. It turned out she was form Connecticut, USA, but her cousin lived in Mill Valley, right south of where I lived in California. Her cousin went to a school where I had several friends, Branson, and even if I did not remember her cousin in particular, I know that I know her friends, and that I probably have met her. This really is a small world. When talking to this American girl, who by the way goes to the same school as two other girls on the bus, that also completely by random, she reminded me about one thing. I found my self swearing loudly in many languages as I realized that the sand painting I bought in Siem Reap was missing. I must have left it in the hotel in Surat Thani. I am still regretting not shipping it form Bangkok, but I wanted to wait until I reached Singapore so that I could gather up some more things to ship home. No matter how much it sucks, I knew I was going to lose that painting at one point. Another time, as rushing out of a TukTuk it came loose from my bag, and if it had not been for the very nice TukTuk driver, who knew where I was going and came back to me with it, I would have lost it before Surat Thani.