The Keys are in Thai

Considering that the Germans and Filipinos have no street cred in Thailand, my language skills are rendered useless here. Thai computers apparently like to speak in Thai, which makes my internet experience tantamount to me, in monkey form, trying to play the piano with mittens on. I'm just pushing a lot of pushie button thingies and trying to not ruin the box.

This is trip number two to Thailand, which was preceded by a trip to Malaysia and will follow with a trip to Cambodia, and before you start thinking that I'm such a world traveler, I'd like to defend my vicious travel habit by saying this: blame the airlines for making flights cost only $30. It is amazing how cheap it is to travel for days and days and days. It is so cheap that a $3, hour-long massage on a beach starts looking quite expensive.

This vacation was a precursor to the giant vacation to come, which I like to call "joblessness in America." It began in Borneo where I hiked a mountain and thought the pain afterward would never, ever go away. Of course I read up on this hike before the trip, of course I did. I'm not so stupid as to just climb mountains the world throughout before reading about them and finding out if the climb will most certainly or only probably kill me.

The literature swore it was an "easy mountain to climb," which meant only that it was easier compared to other mountains. Like Everest.

Mt. Kinabalu was certainly more than a jaunt. It was a tall, difficult, rocky, mountainous mountain that left me and my seven companions wheezing and panting and crying for mommy. What made it bearable was that the seven who went with me are some of the most wonderful people on this planet, and surely ranked as the seven best people on that mountain. They outranked all of the Korean package tourists, the western Malaysian girls school students, and even our guide who had hiked Kinabalu 500 times but still succumbed to amoebas on our summit to the top.

Dan, Shauna, Kevin, Rudy, Heather, Andy, Nicole and I conquered the mountain, and we remembered this for eight days thereafter when, with each step, at least one or all of us was guaranteed to moan and wince in deep regret. We could only descend slopes and stairs, however slight, by sidestepping and holding on to guard rails. The pain was so bad that I'll describe it like this: I wanted to cut my legs off and replace them with wooden pegs so that I would never feel pain like that again. That's about how it felt.

But the pain subsided, and we spent the next few days walking in the jungle and seeing snakes and orangutans and thieving monkeys and birds and bugs and trees that can kill you. It was spectacular.

Because we are now island people, all of us volunteers, we decided that we needed more islands instead of jungles and mountains, and that's how I found myself on a white sandy beach in Thailand over the past few days. It was everything I expected: hot, sandy, white, boring, and without a lot to do. Such is the nature of islands, and I don't want anyone telling me I take hot, tropical, beautiful beaches for granted. I do not. They are hot, yes, and beautiful, yes, but based on my experience they don't do a whole lot to inspire productivity. And with all of the chickens and dogs and whining babies, they don't do much for relaxation either. It's true.

But we were there just long enough to remember why we left our respective islands in the Philippines in the first place, and now we are safe and sound back in the noisy, dirty, tourist-infested city of Bangkok. Ah what relief.

If this trip proved anything, it is that beer in the Philippines really is that cheap, and despite my complaining, the English there really is that good...and as far as beautiful, hot, tropical islands go, well, maybe I shouldn't complain too much. I'm told that they might be hard to come by in Washington State.