5,000 Baht Reward - Missing Camera!!!

Let’s get the “bad” out of the way. A small tragedy has struck . . . I’ve lost our digital camera somewhere between the Pai minibus dropoff and Breeze of Pai Guest House. I’m offering a 5,000 Baht reward (~$150 US) for the safe return of the camera. Needless to say, I’m quite pissed off at myself as I don’t believe the camera was stolen, simply lost. I think it fell out of my backpack or I left it on the minibus . . . either way, I’m a complete (fill in the blank). Hopefully, my reward, which I communicated to the minibus company, will result in the miraculous return of the camera. I'm not betting on it.

Enough already, let’s get on with the “good”. Where did I last leave off? Let’s see. We spent 5 days on Phuket (pronounced Poo-ket, thanks for the inquiry) doing just about nothing. We both got a little too much sun on the nose and cheeks, but if that’s the biggest problem we’ve got, life is good. We took a small break from the beach on Friday to go to the Johnnie Walker Classic golf tournament, held at Blue Canyon Country Club on the north end of the island. This was not in the plans, but we saw the tournament happened to coincide with our visit to the island . . . . we were watching a little bit of the first round coverage on TV Thursday evening, and I noticed that there was damn near nobody there. Guys like Ernie Els, Adam Scott, and Colin Montgomerie were playing with a handful of people following them. Anyways, we headed up to the course Friday morning, bought a couple 300 baht tickets (~$17 total) and watched a little golf. We saw Montgomerie and Scott finish on 18. Shortly after, Ernie Els made his way to the putting green to warm up a bit. On his way back to the clubhouse, he checked my wife out. No kidding . . . the polite smile he was giving to most spectators turned into an even bigger smile and prolonged gaze when he saw Megan. Not cool Ernie!!!! Alas, Megan consoled me, reaffirming that she was not attracted to bujillionare professional golfers. Unemployed engineers are her type. Moving on, we followed Mike Weir and Retief Goosen through the front 9. Afterwards, we jumped ahead to 12 to watch Els and Craig Parry through 17, then we dropped back to watch Weir and Goosen finish. If you’re into golf, it was a very cool experience. Goosen is my new personal composure mentor. That guy’s the coolest cucumber alive, never phased by a thing.

Enough beach/golf talk. Next we caught back to back 12 hour bus rides from Phuket to Bangkok, Bangkok to Chiang Mai setting the Guiness World Record for longest continuous self-inflicted bus journey in history. Once again, not that bad . . . lots of reading and games of gin passed the time nicely. We laid over in Chiang Mai Sunday night, then caught what seemed to be an incredibly short 4 hour bus ride to Pai.

Pai is something else . . . a small farming village (population 3000) about 100 km east of the Burmese border, situated in a beautiful river valley, surrounded by forested hills. It’s the stuff postcards are made of (we’ll definitely get pictures even if we have to buy a new camera before leaving). We’re staying in a little guesthouse on the bank of the river, Breeze of Pai, simple place with very friendly staff. Today, we rented some bicycles and did a 12 mile loop around the valley . . . highlights include the 1) Pai Canyon, where I got to enjoy watching my wife clamber up and down steep, narrow trails, 2) a WWII memorial bridge over the river, the bridge was constructed by POWs and local villagers under Japanese oversight, 3) some hot springs, which reminded me of Hot Springs, 4) some elephant camps, which we’ll organize an elephant jungle ride sometime during the next week, and 5) a Buddhist temple on a hill, 365 steps up to be precise, overlooking the valley and town, very pretty spot.

Let’s see . . . . moving ahead, the plan is to stick around here for at least another week. There’s more than enough to do (Thai cooking classes, hiking, and plenty more of exploration on the bike).