Thursday, I did a half day of rock climbing.  Railey Beach, which is near me, is known for its climbing.  The beach is only accessible by boat.  It has such a weird vibe to it which I didn’t like much.  It’s like a Rastafarian, a hippy and a rock climber met on a beach.  The climbing was good and it felt nice to be on the rock again.  But I pulled a quad muscle part way through.  That might cause a problem for climbing in two days – I booked two days of climbing.  I wondered how they would know to take me back to my hotel after I did the boat ride.  As I was leaving the climbing shop, they gave me a red nametag thing around my neck and put me on the boat.  I felt like a little kid who had been given a nametag and sent off to school.  It worked, a taxi was waiting on the other side and knew me by my red tag.  I did have a neat experience where I had the distinct feeling, “Oh, I live here”.  It was subtle, but it was as if a small part that was resisting, let go.

Yesterday my leg did not feel miraculously better as I had hoped it would.  All my other muscles were sore too.  I guess I got a good work out climbing the day before.  I had signed up for a jungle tour today.  The people in my tour were less than fun.  It was 4 Europeans, 7 Thai Muslims and a family of 3 from India.  I’m becoming more and more convinced that Europeans are just snooty.  The Muslims didn’t even acknowledge me.  The Indians were nice to talk to.  We went to a hot springs waterfall.  I really enjoyed that.  We also went to the Emerald pool which was a mineral springs with tons of Thais swimming in it.  It was also enjoyable.  There was lunch which was Thai or Halal and too spicy for me.   I didn’t really like it, and (foreshadowing) it didn’t like me either.  Then they took us to the Tiger Cave Temple.  It doesn’t have actual tigers, that’s another temple somewhere else in Thailand.  I didn’t see a cave either.  There was a bunch of stairs you could climb to see a big Buddah.  Of course there were, they seem to like to build things on tops of mountains and I seem to climb them even though, it looks like the same Buddah I’ve seen in other temples.  I didn’t listen too closely to the tour guide when she said how many stairs.  I should have.  At about 600, I asked someone, how many stairs?  Oh jeezee, I would not have done this if I had known it was 1260 really steep stairs to see a Buddha statue.  So, enjoy the pictures I took, because I worked very hard in the heat to get them.  The way down was just as hard since they were so steep.  I could barely move my legs by the time I got down.  I felt dehydrated and horrible by then.  Next was elephant riding.  I’m am against this so I didn’t pay to go.  Another couple didn’t pay either.  Shortly after everyone took off on their elephant ride, the put the three of us into another van full of other people and took us back to our hotels.  The ride back went winding down steep streets way too fast and I felt sick to my stomach by the time I got back.  I never get car sick.  I tried to nap, but was rudely awakened by the need to throw up.  This continued roughly every hour through the rest of the day and all night.  Really, Life?  What do you want?  I was just beginning to feel better and was trying to rebuild my strength.

Today I woke in so much pain.  All my muscles hurt from climbing the other day and now my stomach muscles hurt from being sick all night.  I tried to eat some yogurt, but didn’t feel much better.  The owner of the guest house I’m staying in offered to drive me to the doctor.  That was real nice.  The doctor asked a bunch of questions, gave me some meds and sent me on my way.  I didn’t do much today, slept a bit, tried to eat a little and rescheduled the tour I was supposed to do tonight.  I canceled climbing yesterday.  I feel a little bit better, but not great.  How am I ever going to survive Thailand?

Then to add to all of this, I find out my mom’s husband has been put into hospice care.  My brother went out there yesterday to help with finances and paperwork.  One of my cousin’s sons was killed in a car accident.  Big stuff is happening back home and I’m complaining about some bad food. I find my brain trying to put all the information into categories and boxes and make sense of it all, but it’s having a hard time doing it.  I’m not sure it even knows how any more since that’s the old way of doing things.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore