Sunday, August 27, 2006

Nature's Wrath

Poor Tim. Natures not been very good to him in the last couple of days.

Enjoying ourselves in Cherating the other day, we spotted some cheeky monkeys. Probably the same ones that had helped themselves to a drink from a straw on a table across the way from us in an open sided cafe and the same ones still, who earlier had been up a tree which as we walked under kept shaking a branch and "dropping" his fruit. This time they were helping themselves out of a rubbish bin.

Thinking that this was an ideal photo opportunity we approached and Tim started snapping away. I suddenly noticed that one of them, the big one, wasn't looking very happy, leaning forward and showing his teeth. Now I'm no David Attenborough, but I'm sure that this monkey wasn't smiling to welcome us to his town. My fears were confirmed when in the next 10 seconds I found myself and a local passer by running down the road away from the evil monkey. Suddenly I heard a yell and turned round to see Tim laying in the middle of the road. As he had made a run for it he had tripped over his flip flops. These flip flops were apparently about to make our tetanus jabs worth the vast amounts of money we had paid for them, as the monkey was near to Tim and looked like he was about to attack.

"Agggh. Oh No," I yelled. "Oh My God". (As you can probably tell, I'm not much good in a crisis....)Luckily, Tim is and yelled at the monkey. This worked and the monkey backed off as Tim hobbled away unscathed apart from a few grazes.

My adrenaline was going, but Tim didn't seem bothered at all and in fact appeared quite casual about the whole affair. However, later as we passed the "crime scene" he seemed (as I was) a bit nervous and trotted across the other side of the road with nervous sideways glances at the monkeys which suddenly appeared out of the bushes. He started muttering things like," oh no they are after me now" and when it poured with rain that night he got an evil glint in his eye and said "Ha Ha, the monkeys will be getting wet," so I think the incident did get to him after all! It was quite scary at the time. I know they are smaller than us but I bet they have a nasty bite and this one was big and looked sinister. I can't help but chuckle now though when I think of it!

The next incident was on the Island of Kapas, a beautiful, idyllic little island with crystal clear waters. It's a great place for snorkelling, but unfortunately it is also a great place for jellyfish. We decided against snorkelling as we saw loads of jellyfish just in the shallows. Quite big pink things with really long flowy tentacles. Confirming our decision as a wise one, a girl who was working at our accomodation came back from being in the sea, shouting she had been stung all over. Although the stings aren't fatal we decided we didn't really fancy being stung so decided to just chill out on the beach.

In between chilling out, we decided to go for a walk up the beach. We had done this a few times. Kapas has lots of separate coves and beaches which you get to by walkways or climbing over rocks. It was climbing over these rocks where Tim managed to get injured. Suddenly I heard a yell. I thought Tim had stubbed his toe, but it turned out he had managed to get stung by a jellyfish! There was a small amount of water in between 2 rocks where he had been but there were two jellyfish floating around in it. He said it was really painful and his foot did look really red like it had really bad sunburn. After that he said he was going to sulk and he went back and decided it would be wise not to move from the verandah of our hut on the beach in case anything else happened. As he sat there something from a tree fell on his head!

That night as I laid under the protection of my Mosquitoe net I kept hearing Tim say,"Ooow', 'little buggars". In the morning he complained that ants had kept him awake all night nipping him and when we looked there were a load above his bed and bits of ant stuck over him.

So, all in all I think Tim might have had enough of nature. That might be why we are back in a town now. Maybe he feels safer.

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