333: HOMESTAY

Driving my tractor-cart into the sunset

The island of Don Daeng was where I really felt like I had to rough it.

We started off with the funniest ferry ride I have ever taken. Basically the ferry was made of a platform attached to two fishing boats, and with 6 plastic chairs on top for the people to sit on. The chairs weren't even attached to the boat!

Cute little children followed us as we walked around the village. They would pick some flowers, run over to me and give me the flowers and smile, then run back to the gardens to pick even more flowers! I had a mini bouquet of flowers after a few minutes.

I loved the little boy holding his carrot!

Instead of a hotel, we had a homestay for the night with a local family. This meant very rustic accommodations - no aircon, no running water, squat toilet in the outhouse, etc. We had spent the early afternoon climbing the ruins of Wat Phu, and combine that with 40 degree weather well into the night with no shower (due to lack of running water) - imagine how dirty, sweaty, and sticky I felt!

We had an amazing home cooked dinner, some of the best food I had on my trip (but I suspect it was flavored with MSG). That night, as I crawled underneath the mosquito net into bed, I was surprised by a never ending supply of BUGS all over the mattress!

Our mattress and mosquito net

Jen and I spent about half an hour killing the bugs, with Jen spraying each bug with DEET and me squishing the bugs using toilet paper. I think we were keeping our roommate awake due to our squealing, because after awhile, she said, "If I were you, I would roll up those blankets into sausages and put them on the foot of the bed, since that's where the bugs are coming from. Then you should sleep." We took her advice and rolled up our blankets into sausages, but it wasn't very much help.  There were still more and more bugs coming in. I just ended up using the blankets to squish even more bugs. We eventually had to give up because we were never going to kill every single bug on our bed.  I had a hard time falling asleep because I kept imagining the bugs crawling all over my body.

I woke up in the middle of the night and it was freezing. My first thought was that I should use the blankets that the homestay family had provided for us, but then I remembered all the squished bugs that were now attached to the blanket. Then I thought I could grab a sweater from my backpack, but then I remembered the giant spiders and grasshoppers that I had seen in the room before going to bed and were now lurking in the dark. I turned on the flashlight and found a squished bug on my hand and I tried to scratch it off, but I couldn't get it off my hand. I scratched and scratched, but there was no way I could get it off. I gave up, grabbed a thin long sleeved shirt from my tote bag (which was thankfully under the mosquito net) and fell back into my Gravol-induced sleep.

I suppose I am not made for living in the outdoors. I woke up with little ant (?) bites all over my legs, but it's better than the surprise that one of the other girls got in the middle of the night. She woke up to a cockroach crawling up her pants!

Would I go back to Don Daeng? Yes...if I could stay in the hotel down the street from my homestay!