Children’s Day
by Jenny Lovell
I arrived in Kuraburi on Thursday morning to begin my 6-month internship. After a couple of days of orientation, we had an office field trip.
On Saturday morning we took a ferry to the island of Kho Phra Thong for Children’s Day at one of the villages we work in. Getting on to the boat you had to watch your step because the pier was slippery and you could easily fall into the muscles that clung to the steps. Sharp as razors, those sneaky muscles!
We were in the lo
ng boat for about a half hour when we arrived at the pier and jumped out onto a pristine beach. Then we took a janky tractor to the village…I kid you not, the fan belt popped off half-way there and we had to wait for the driver to put it back on. I should have know this would foreshadow our ride home…
We got to the village where they had (once again) extremely yummy food! We all lined up and had our fill, then came the dancing and cute kids everywhere!
I took a walk down to the beach where you could see the devastation of the tsunami, even now, after 6 years. The coastal swamps and mangroves were beautiful, until I walked into a Jenny-sized spider web. I freaked out. Good thing I was alone and nobody heard me scream like that. I decided I would wait for another day to see my first Thailand beach.
On our way back to the dock, we crammed about 18 people onto our tiny tractor. About 10 minutes into the ride, the axle just couldn’t take any more. The wheel popped off and we all had to jump. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but the owner of the tractor was in a bad spot. He was very gracious about the accident, but I can imagine having his tractor out of commission will be a big problem.
When we got back to Kuraburi, we rented motorbikes and went for an offroad adventure. We went up the a waterfall and had a swim just before it got dark.
It was a great first weekend in Kuraburi for me!
