It’s funny the little things you take for granted living in a developed country. Water for instance: water is something that is always there and always will be. I used to get so frustrated with people in Colorado who would actually buy bottled water, because Colorado is one of the few places that actually has really good, drinkable tap water. It’s right there in your kitchen, and plastic bottles are SO bad for the environment. Save that bottled water fund for when you go somewhere where drinking the tap water would probably kill you. Welcome to Thailand. Except even tap water is scarce right now, we have to have it shipped to us from Chumphon. That’s right, this island has no water.
We have a nice jacuzzi on our patio now which we wasted no time in filling up, something that will end up costing us a pretty penny due to the fact that shipping water is expensive. What we didn’t realize as we were filling it was that the drain was still open. It wasn’t until I left on an errand, and was driving back up the hill to find a nice little stream trickling all the way down to the bottom that I noticed. The origin of that stream? our jacuzzi. We got in a fair bit of trouble from our land lord for wasting Koh Tao’s precious water supply. Not only did we let half the water drain out of the pool and all the way down the hill, but none of us knows how to care for a pool, so despite the chemicals we randomly threw in with the hopes that we were doing something right, our jacuzzi is now a brilliant shade of algae green. All of us are afraid to drain it and get in more trouble so we currently have a nice algae pond on our patio. It’s gone past green and is turning the shade of black coffee now.
Because our fancy shipped-in water is so expensive, Dive Shop A held a meeting with us the other day to tell all of its employees that we are not allowed to drink the shop’s water. That water is for customers only. We’re not allowed to bring in water bottles and fill them up with the jug or anything. So that’s cool, run all your employees like dogs and don’t keep them hydrated. That just seems messed up, but what do I know being a privileged white girl.
I had two days off in a row which was the most time off I’ve had since I arrived here. Two days out of the water gave me time to appreciate just how hot it is! I love the heat, it’s why I moved here, but wow, when you’re the kind of person who is used to freezing constantly and you suddenly find yourself waking up in pools of your own sweat, you know it’s hot. I’ve never been the cold shower kind of person, even in Roatan I had to have a hot shower at the end of the day, but I’ve suddenly found that the showers don’t even go cold enough to cool off. Best bet is to take a shower as cold as it’ll go and then stand under a ceiling fan directly afterwards. It’s nice for a moment but you’ll be sweating again by the time you’re dry. There is no such thing as dry here.
Even diving is barely enough to cool off. I can dive four times a day in nothing but a bikini, which should be enough to drain a person of quite a bit of body heat, and still feel comfortable at the end of the day. I even did a night dive the other night without a wetsuit and was fine. The first few feet of water along the shore before it gets too deep heats up to the temperature of a hot tub by the middle of the day. It’s awesome to never be cold, but at the same time it’s a little weird not having any way of cooling down. Now that we’re in our new place it might be time to crank on the a/c (speaking of being a privileged white girl).
