12-4-10: Sick, Take 3

Today was markedly better than the previous two days, sick wise.
Robert woke up feeling much better. We still didn't do much other than
journey out to eat, but that was progress. We even did a little bit of
wandering while looking for places to eat. We made a short jaunt to
our normal rice soup place for breakfast; this time we mixed it up by
getting iced tea, too!

Gin

We play gin at every meal; I always win. We play for points: aces
high, low or in between, but always count for 15pts, knocking when
your deadwood is under ten is an allowable and deadly strategy even
though your deadwood counts against you, you get points by catching
the other person with deadwood, highest score wins. When we started
the trip I did not like gin, now it is all we play and I like it very
much. It is a comfortable and comforting routine. Halfway through the
trip, we started keeping score and ever since then, after a slight
hiccup in the beginning, I win every time. This distresses Robert, but
try as he may, I am unbeatable. He also doesn't fact check my posts.

Next we returned to the guesthouse to recharge from our outing. We are
taking it easy until we can be sure that Robert is out of the woods,
not that he ever was in the woods to begin with.

Guesthouse Amenities

Although it doesn't fit well in the story here, I will cover it now
nonetheless. We are happy to only be paying 200B for our room, but
perhaps we could have sprung for the 300B room, which we regretfully
opted not to see, this one was good enough at the time. Reason being:
the bathroom is sort of gross. First, the toilet flusher-scooper. In
Thailand, even when there is a western style toilet (as there
typically is in western-oriented guesthouses), it often has a manual
flusher, namely you. There is a bucket of water, with a tap directly
above for easy refilling and a scooping floating on the water or set
nearby. Although this system can be off-putting at first because you
have to touch the scooper, every scooper and water basin we have seen
has looked very clean. So even though there isn't the option to flush
with the toe of your shoe, I have been just fine with the manual
flush. However, this room's scooper was below par. It s improperly
weighted so that the handle floated in the water and had mildewed from
being left at some point during it's life in a bucket of gooey water.
Now we had to use it to flush?! Bleck. I used a two finger pincher
method to touch it and washed by hands afterwards, but it got old
after a while.

Second, leaks. There were three dripping sounds in the bathroom. The
hose to the sink dripped, which splashed impossibly small droplets of
water on you when you used the toilet. (so small, it took me a while
to locate the offending drip, just perceptible) After I found it, it
was much more noticeable. The spigot to the flusher bucket dripped,
loud plopping drops into the bucket. (until I moved the bucket, but
the bathroom isn't so big, so for showering we had to move it back; it
was a constant battle) The third leak wasn't truly a leak, it was just
the standard noise of the drain: drip, drip, drip. We kept the door
closed to dampen the noise, but it leaked through. Third, floor. The
floor to the bathroom was always wet because the only window was
sealed and couldn't circulate the air, so no evaporation, or only very
slow. Gross. Fourth, shower head. The shower head was so clogged with
minerals that it sprayed all over the bathroom, frequently wetting the
toilet seat, which was unpleasant in and of itself. There are no
shower curtains here, the bathroom is the shower. Perhaps you can
think of it as having a toilet in your shower. This simplifies
plumbing because then there is just one drain in the corner. They were
nice enough to put a pipe between the sink and the floor, though, so
your toothpaste water doesn't drip on your toes. Thanks! (aside from
all these complaints, we did enjoy our stay)

On the up side there was free wi-fi, sometimes. It was best from the
porch, but the mosquitoes at night were brutal, driving us inside.
Sometimes we could even get it from the bed, but that was only
occasional. Also in the plus column, the room was secure so we didn't
have to sleep with a bug net.

The final and perhaps most annoying amenity or lack thereof was the
laundry service. We paid 50 baht to have some clothes washed, but when
they returned, they still smelled like us - sweaty us!! So no clean
clothes to speak of. I will repeat, however, that the place was still
decent enough for us and we enjoyed our time there.

Pizza, pizza!

For lunch we tried to get pizza at the TravelFish recommended place,
Baan Pizza. It was closed, so we would have to come back for dinner.
Instead we went to a random cafe and got Pad Thai. Robert is convinced
that all food is poison, even food from a restaurant, so it has become
a little challenging to convince him to eat. Today, though, he
finished his food way before me, so I realized he must be feeling
better. Now back to the guesthouse to rest. Robert posted a million
pictures (surpassing the "post by email limit") and a hyperbolic
Facebook status, garnering lots of concerned comments about his
health. We never in the least suspected that he had chikungunya or
dengue fever - he just ate some bad food. It is also worth pointing
out that he didn't update his status the two days prior (because he
was sick), so posting now was an indictor to me that he was feeling
much better, to the point of wanting to needlessly alarm home and brag
about his "near death" experience.

Then we ventured out for pizza. The ambiance was nice. The couple next
to us dressed up for the evening even! I'm pretty sure she bought a
new dress and had her hairs did; they were braided in a low curl
around her head. We just put on more dirty clothes and trekked over.
We split a big Chang (beer) and a veggie pizza, complete with
"obergines." Misspellings on Thai menus never cease to amuse me. They
were going for aubergines, which non-Brits call eggplant. The pizza
was very thin, but they were on the right track. Maybe I am just
craving Parlor with the Austin gang.

Overrun!

Tonight is Saturday night and the town is overrun with Thai tourists.
The walking streets are difficult to walk, but the people watching is
superb. As we walked the streets after dinner (another sign that
Robert is on the road to recovery), I thought about how I would
describe the experience here so that you could enjoy it just as much,
but I was at a total loss. What details do I need to remember to make
it real? I want to get a small notebook to jot notes in during the day
so I can try to recreate the scene, but even with a notebook, this
would have been too overwhelming I think. Lots of wooly hats and I
discovered that the extra-long ear flaps are actually mittens! Of
course. So cute.

There was a scarecrow in the street. A woman touched it. It touched
her back. She screamed and ran away. It was the highlight of Robert's
night. We were laughing so hard in the moment that we didn't think to
take a picture and when we scraped together some change and went back
to take a picture, scarecrowman was gone. Sad day. We just glimpsed
paintman, a man I had seen (while Robert was sick in bed) standing in
the road, frozen, next to a paint can and a sign, "help me." By the
end of the night, he is painted all sorts of colors.

Home to sleep.