As previously mentioned, my travels have always been...interesting. A definite adventure. But sometimes adventures don't always go as planned. In Chapter 11, Brianna comes up against a creature she isn't very pleased to see. During my travels, I have also come across many creatures I would rather never have met. There were giant flying beetles, ants that infested our room, sand flies that gave me hundreds of bites, tiny geckos that stared at me from the walls, and cockroaches that I never really saw but knew were there. I dream about the day when I can travel without bugs.
However, more than the bugs, the part of this story that I enjoyed sharing was about the bun. If you remember my adventure with my friend watching "dork tourist extraordinaire" and travelling on the longboat of doom, that trip led us to a gorgeous resort unlike anything I'd ever seen. Unfortunately, my friend became extremely ill the day before and on the way to the resort. She was very, very sick on the ferry, and the longboat ride was torturous for her. Sadly, I picked up the bug that evening, though she was better, and was horribly sick the next day as we went on a fantastic boat tour throughout the Andaman Sea. It was awful. I was dehydrated, needing bathroom stops at least every half an hour, but we were on a boat and there was nowhere to stop for hours at a time. I was in horrible pain and so very exhausted, though I still managed to go snorkelling. I was very scared of the fish but my uncle, who is Asian, told me, "Just come swim by me! Fish don't like Chinese food."
When we arrived back at the resort, I went to the fancy restaurant with my friend and my aunt and uncle. They brought a bread bowl and I took a bun and took one bite, but was so sick, and mentally felt loopy, that I just ended up staring at it. For a good 5-10 mins I stared at the bun until my aunt and uncle suggested I should go lie down. I walked out of the fancy restaurant on the beach and started toward the private room/hut my friend and I were staying in, but couldn't remember where it was. Since they don't have cars on the island, a staff member in a golf cart drove up and asked if he could help. I don't think I formed a coherent sentence, but I did show him my key with the number on it and he helped me into the golf cart and drove me to my hut where I promptly went inside and fell asleep.
When my friend came back a few hours later, she found me lying in bed, sleeping soundly, with a bun held tightly in my fist. I never did put it down on the journey and I often wonder what that golf cart driver thought. Not long after she arrived, I woke up and we decided to watch CSI, since it was the only thing we recognized on TV. It was dubbed into Thai with English words on the bottom. I was so mentally out of it that I stared hard at the characters and finally yelled, "But they don't even look Chinese!" My friend bust a gut laughing at me, bun still in my hand, and I passed out shortly after informing her that the toilet in our room was going to hate us.
Later in the evening I woke up and decided to order room service since I was finally feeling a bit better and was hungry. I ordered a sandwich and another staff member in a golf cart drove up with our snack. He handed me a clipboard with a paper for me to sign for the food with a tip option. In my sickly state, I couldn't for the life of me figure out the conversion rate from dollars to baht, so I just wrote down a random number and hoped it wasn't outlandish or cheap of me. I ate my snack and went straight to bed. The next morning my uncle paid the tab and was not impressed that I basically tipped the guy a month's salary. It wasn't that much in Canadian Dollars, but he said the economy has issues when people tip too generously because the workers feel they have enough for the month and they quit and go home and then return the next month for their jobs back. I had no idea. I still have no idea what I actually tipped him, or if I ever paid my uncle back. Oops.
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