Kyle said I was expending one of my American points on buying the little butter waifers, with their chocolate colored cream centers, and only because I said they somewhat resembled E.L. Fudge cookies. I protested and after eating a few I outright disagreed because they in actual fact tasted like dark toast and furthermore their packaging and price were clearly Thai. AND furtherestmore, I set the most of the baggie next to the sleeping monk on the train we were taking when we got off. I hope they didn't contain gelatin or pork, but I'm nearly certain they did.

That was two nights ago. I didn't get to touch the monk. Women aren't allowed to touch the monks, and even though I'm not a woman, I suspected the rule might apply in my case as well, because of my mustache.

If giving something to a monk, a woman is supposed to put it directly into the monk's receiving towel, careful not to meet flesh to flesh. No thanks! Talk about feeling unworthy. I was happy to just tuck the cookies between his sleeping bottom and the crusty leather train seat.

This is our second morning in Prachuap Khiri Khan, and yesterday was full of incidents. I had my closest encounter so far with the child sex trade! We did a lot of climbing and hiking and beach combing.

First we set out on foot for the glittering wat (temple) that can be seen from anywhere in town on top of the nearby Mirror Mountain- named for a little arch at the top that early locals suspected was reflecting the sky, not showing the sky on the other side!

We walked along the beach to the mountain, examining hermit crabs and various clam, oyster creatures, debating the origins of all the little holes in the sand. Kyle said clams were eating and pooping the sand, but I was certain there was more to it, crab villages etc! Kyle criticized my opinion, declaring it not based in science. I still believe, however, that his four years of zoological and environmental studies courses cannot have given him every answer, and that very few scientific "facts" can really stand up, when all is said and done, to my personal instincts.

Arriving at the base of the mountain, we were met with the promised hordes of monkeys, although they were much more fanged and menacing than the travel guide had insinuated. Entertaining though, yes! The little ones were precious but you couldn't get close. Only when they were being groomed did you have any hope of getting in close, and that's when I made my move! I touched the monkey! Just on the tip of his finger with the tip of mine, and he recoiled like a viper, but I touched him. Mostly if you reached out to them (and didn't have a banana in your hand) or looked at them too long, or tried to take a picture or anything, they turned wild, baring inch-and-a-half fangs, slapping the ground, preparing to lunge. It was genuinely terrifying a couple of times, a lot of times. If they saw your banana, and you weren't giving it to them, they were going to get it. And then peel it quickly and then shove the whole thing down into their neck-sack, which seemed unlimitedly stretchable. It was a glorious and most-enviable sight.

We mounted the mountain, taking care to both exploit and not be bitten by every monkey we passed, explored the mediochre wat then found the treacherous trail and steel ladder down the steep side to view the "mirror" arch. Spectacular!

We followed the trail all the way down, had some grouper for lunch which was good, but very spicy, and we were both pretty lip-burned for an hour or so. I had to concede and use the ice they've been offering everywhere, and even drank the water. So now if I'm gonna get it I've got it, and I'd already had it even before that, so why be too cautious? A fellow gets thirsty.

Back on the beach, trekking to another distant wat and alleged cavern wat for exploring, we met a woman with a spoon and a small household colinder working her way down the shore-line. She was digging for clams! She showed us how to identify the particular tiny air holes they make in the sand that gets washed in with the tide each morning, and then how to dig down with a spoon or shell and find them. Kyle got bored after a while but I was really into it. I found dozens! Only a few of mine really pleased her though, earned that heart-warming "Oh! Oh! Big-size! Big-size, you okay!" Most were pretty tiny and I wondered how they were even worth cooking and shelling and all that. After about an hour of local grocery shopping we moved on, for a long, uncertain while, looking for the wat we weren't sure existed.

We finally did find it at the end of the next bay, and it was breathtaking, very new seeming and with a few monks wandering around tending house. One was chasing after a few geese with a giant bamboo spear, and he even hurtled it after them a couple of times. I thought he was really trying to hunt them, to spear the flesh! How could it be?! But no, it turned out he was just ushering them into their cage the only way Buddha taught him, with violent thrusts of a bamboo spear.

There was a new shrine being built and it was pretty epic and unbelievable, but we wandered up the hill-mountain and discovered some old ruins of a wat that was no longer in use, and it was probably the most beautiful and awe-inspiring experience yet. To see it all, with the lush vegetation growing over it, but still with its beauty and splendor, mesmerizing. Kyle said he felt like Indiana Jones! I felt like Captain John Smith, and I couldn't wait to find a living person to baptise.

We entered the small cavelet and were a bit disappointed that it didn't seem to go anywhere. The book had mentioned a reclining Buddha... all we saw were bats and a few eerie white Buddha statues the exact size of people, filling a few niches in the wall.

We were just turning to head back, breathtaken again at the old workmanship, the shells and mother-of-pearl inlays in the concrete structures, when we noticed another path leading farther up.

A thousand more steps later and there we were! The mouth of an actual and huge cavern! Inside we saw two immense reclining Buddhas, at least twenty meters long each, and then deeper, with Kyle's head-lamp we explored even larger caverns, totally dark but for a tiny hole in the cieling letting a tiniest drop of light. There was a small golden grinning Buddha image perched up a medium-sized mound of rubble, and we climbed up and had a moment of the Universe in the dark, in the smiling presence of that Buddha, alone, silent, surrounded by so much space and so much stone, so much emptiness and so much density. We was breathless and breathing and perfect.

Tired after our long day's adventures, we wrangled a couple beers in the little fishing village by the wat and then tried to arrange a tuk-tuk back to our hostel, but there were not actual tuk-tuks operating. A woman flagged down a motorbike with a sidecar and three old ladies for us, and they agreed to take us. For 150 Baht! Our breakfast this morning, for example, cost only 20 Baht, and most of our meals together cost only 120 or so. So, our eyes met, and there was the shared "oi!"! But we were already in the thing, so okay, okay. We both felt pretty alright about getting ripped off by three laughing crazy old Thai ladies in their barely running motorbike.

Oi! I've got to go pack and be ready for the train in twenty minutes. What happened next with the ladies was funny, then frightening, then bizarre, but I'll have to finish telling it later.

Oh and the night-market where we ate as kings! Oh!


Thailand's gracious mother,
Kanny Kan DeWitt