living on a thin line
Monday, May 12th, 2008sabaidee ka, dear readers. i’m STILL on koh tao enjoying (for the most part) my little bit of paradise. the bits i have not enjoyed so much include torrential rain storms, 100 mph winds (or at least it seems like they were that gusty), and the flying around of detritus (palm fronds, dead coconuts, sand, and various flora from up high and down low) during same climatic madness. another weird feeling i’ve had during all of this drama is that i am the only person remaining, and have been the only person for a couple of days now, at my bungalows besides the thai owners and few burmese workers. they all go to sleep fairly early and i suppose are used to the monsoons, but i am unused to such chaos from the heavens and i have found that sleeping through the night is challenging at best. fortunately, my bungalow is made mostly of cement but the thatched conical roof with its fiberglass windows way up high in the cone make me wonder just how secure these parts of the structure really are. so far, knock on bamboo, nothing has caved in or flown away, but the areas between cement and thatch are open, as are the windows which only have a few jail cell-like bars keeping out the larger critters and covered by thin curtains, allowing all manner of smaller debris to fly up and into my room. each morning i discover a whole new pile of small leaves and bits of seaside debris covering my floor and blanket. i have also had a late-night visitor when the winds and rain have been very heavy: a cute little gray rat. he/she is very scared of me and hides between the bed stand (the bed is up about 3 1/2 feet from the ground on a cement block with a thin layer of linoleum between it and the mattress) and bamboo bathroom wall (the latter being simply stalks of bamboo cut in various heights of about 5 to 7 feet. because thai plumbing cannot handle toilet paper, we have to toss our used paper into a bin and flush our business down with buckets of water. these buckets are usually placed right next to the loo so one can easily “flush” right after doing one’s business.
[read on]
karen_shelver