Well I'm here and what a fantastic place. its soooo hot and humid which is such a change from the kiwi winter.
Yesterday was a classic first day in a new country. I reset my watch and put it forward making the date wrong so i was thinking it was a Wednesday and took off to register us for the regatta. A 45 min taxi mission and 30 mins wondering around a strange resort to find race hq closed and a sign come back tomorrow.
I walked past a health spa they invited me in gave me a cool towel and let me have a look around. I wasn't so keen for a mud mask at this point so i headed into town Chalong bay to try and locate our boat.
I sat with some locals who called me a taxi, they invited me to go fishing with them that evening. random!! I declined and 1 hour later the taxi was still not there so i set off on foot. a tuk tuk driver saw me walking (bopping) along listening to the ipod and gave me a ride into town, it was much further than i thought and i would still be walking now if it wasnt for him.
I walked along the pier and was stopped by two Thai bankers who wanted a photo with me they then gave me a tour of the beach in their flash car which was hilarious to say the least. I remembered my mission and took off down the jetty. I found our boat and called out to Adek the captain to pick me up. (see photo) he rowed over to me with a deflatable with 1 oar against the wind, i was laughing my head off when he arrived and he had a smile in return.
We went over to the boat and had a look at all the sails and fittings, we serviced a winch that was full of old black grease and then dove into the water to clean the hull. I was not expecting the water to be warmer than the air but it was as warm as a bath no kidding. As we rubbed the bottom you got up a sweat underwater unreal.
Adek the skipper is from Malaysia and i don't think they had compulsory swimming lessons like i had a Westmere primary school. bear in mind he as sailed for 3 days to get to Thailand, so he rigs up a line from bow to stern donns a life jacket ties a rope round his waist and to the boat and leaps in to help me. He turns to me and says i can swim a little but i like to be sure that i wont float away. (legend)
Adek and i had a beer then took off back to the pier. He offered to take me shopping in Kata beach and then back to my hotel. We boosted off on the little motor bike, free for all roundabouts blind corners hills where you have to get off and push elephant crossing signs!! we saw it all. We stopped found some shops bargained for some cloths which by the way I'm really crap at i just want a price and to pay. i tried my best I got two shirts and a singlet for a great deal but the girl new it was a tough deal and you could tell that she was a little disappointed which made me feel stink then the next shop i went into i got some shoes still feeling stink i didn't barter so hard and this shop did well out of me and i still felt stink. lose lose situation! oh well on the positive side i got some mean cheap cloths.
We headed down to the beach to meet up with an Irish dude and 3 Norwegians. We had beers in a beach side bar with raster's smoking joints next to us and hundreds of people surfing right in front of us.
We donned our motor bike once more and headed for home. I looked up to see a massive Buddha under construction on top of the tallest mountain. I couldn't take my eyes off it, so massive what a feat. As i was looking on my hat came off in the wind. we stopped and turned round to pick it up. i jumped down from the bike swooped up the hat and saw a massive elephant in the bushes next to me. There was an elephant trek going on and i was so impressed to see this beast no less than 20 metres from me, a real elephant!!!
So that's the first installment from Thailand and i hope the adventures keep on rolling in. Today I'm off to register us (second time Lucky) and we start racing Thursday.
keep you posted from Robbs
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