A day of challenges.

Thursday 18^th Feb 2016.

The wedding is tomorrow, and today’s activity was to go out on a charter boat, fishing, swimming and snorkeling, so last night was the last big fling for the bride and groom, and from the looks of them both this morning, they took the saying ‘go hard or go home’ fairly seriously. But, there’s another saying ‘what’s happens on tour, stays on tour’, so let’s just say the bride was too unwell to come out with us on the boat and the groom was nearly the burley-boy for our fishing attempts.    

There were drinks consumed at a ‘ping pong’ bar, but apparently there wasn’t a ping pong ball to be seen. The stories from the witnesses had us all cringing and laughing at the same time.
Our adventure started by having to get a taxi out to the Rabbit Resort at Jomtein, where the majority of the group are staying. There are 3 of us staying here at the Bayview and the 3^rd person had been out to the Rabbit earlier in the week, so had the advantage of knowing the lay of the land. The taxi called up by Reception arrived and the porter told the driver where we had to go and the driver said 250B. I was a bit surprised as I expected 300B, as our organizer had told us. Great, let’s go! He was a very good driver and drove us right to the door of the Rabbit, which was also a surprise. 

We had a short walk down the road to the next challenge of the day. Climbing a metal ladder from the beach onto the longtail boat that was going to take us out to the charter boat. 

off we go!

Challenging because we had 3 older ladies with decreased mobility, one unable to walk any distance so used a wheelchair and the other 2 took turns in another chair. This is going to be interesting……… Thankfully, between the very helpful boatmen and the fellas in our group, we were all soon on board, on our way to the next challenge! Transferring onto the main boat! Challenges R Us!! We were all soon on board and under way, towing the longtail behind us, complete with boatman sitting in it. The boat had 2 undercover levels and a half deck above these exposed to the sun. No-one stayed up there too long!

our charter boat

After about an hour of chugging along, we stopped to do some fishing and kept the boatmen busy baiting our hooks and removing the fish as we caught them. Just as well the fish were biting, we were told we had to catch lunch! What luxury to have such service! If fish had eyebrows, that’s where I managed to hook one. Poor little fishey. The crew cleaned them all and they went into a wok to be deepfried. 
 
We were soon under way again while lunch was prepared. Meanwhile, the eldest lady in the group took ill, my diagnosis was heat stroke as she had been sitting for a long time in the sun and hadn’t had any water to drink. Her daughter was convinced it was motion sickness and after several vomits decided that she had to take her back to shore. A speed boat was called for and by the time it arrived, the lady had recovered quite well from being iced down and sat in the shade. Still, she was taken ashore and I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow now to find out how she is. I’m sure she’ll be fine. I hate to think how much the retrieval cost………

Lunch was enjoyed by all and next thing on the list was snorkeling and swimming. Back into the longtail with our gear and we were taken toward the shore of a national park island and dropped on a reef. That was great fun, the coral wasn’t anywhere near as colourful as ours back home but the fish were plentiful, but again, not as colourful. I guess we must have snorkeled for about half an hour and people started heading back to the longtail – back to the main boat. There was a slide off the back of the boat. Next challenge! I’ve never done that before and it was such a lot of fun. Trevor had been taking video of us all going down the slide but then he told me he didn’t film me, so I’d have to do it again. Somehow, I managed to hit myself in the face with my watch and cut myself near the eyebrow. Fish Karma!! Nature got me back……………. How many challenges can there be in one day?? The challenge was on to jump from the 2^nd level of the boat and several people had already done it and I decided I was going to as well. I got up there and was being barraged with all sorts of advice on ‘how to’, but the bit that really caught my attention was ‘point your toes’ and I stopped to thing what would happen to my ankle if I got this wrong. I’d already managed to bang myself in the head, I wasn’t prepared to risk hurting my ankle again. 

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Ratty was sooo right!

The ride back to shore was fairly quiet, many staked their claim to a deck chair in the shade and had a sneaky nap. 

the nap area, well used on the way home.

Others sat in quiet contemplation of the sea and our adventures. It was after 5.30 before we were on dry land again and then the rush was on for those going to the cinema to see Dead Pool in Gold Class. We talked about it last night eating our ice cream and as soon as they mentioned pillow and blanket and you get to lay down, I thought “no way”, I’ll be asleep before the first few scenes! So glad we opted out, instead we had a relaxed dinner at our ‘regular’ restaurant down the road and even managed to score a crepe on the way home! Sadly not Nutella, but chocolate which was almost as good. What a great way to end a great day! 

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