10 January 2006

Bringing you up to date

Hello again - we have had our mini-break, after the Phuket leg of the Thai Tour, and now it is time to get back on the road again - it will be good to be working again, especially as we will be working up in Khao Lak, where the Tsunami devastation was much greater, and where we feel we can be of real use.

To bring you up to date since I last wrote on 2 January - as I explained, the gigs we were hoping to do on 2nd and 3rd January didn't happen, as our "fixers" out here hadn't taken on board that the schools would be on holidays from the 1st to the 6th. (I did ask several times, as I assumed that the children would have at least a short holiday around this period. Hey ho!) We telephoned various organisations ourselves, to try and set up alternative venues, but it was too short notice for them to fix anything up that fast. So on 2nd January we got ahead with beanbag making and badge centre making, and I caught up with quite a bit of the paperwork that has been looming over me.

On 3rd January Jo, Haggis and I drove up to Khao Lak with San, in the van, on an accommodation hunt ... (Read details here: 3 January)

On 4th-6th January we were on our pre-arranged mini-holiday. (If I had been told the schools were on holiday at this time, we would have organised things differently!) See details here: 4-6 January

We returned to Laguna on the evening of the 7th. See details here: 7 January

Beanbags, paperwork and a move

I spend a lot of time catching up on paperwork and emails that have amassed while we were away, and check that all the Khao Lak dates are OK and make yet more beanbags and badge centres, and on the morning of 10th we wave goodbye to the lovely Laguna Sheraton Grande Hotel (thank you Zahid and Linda for arranging this free accommodation which really helped the CWI budget) and drive up to Khao Lak with San in the van. We JUST fit in all our personal luggage as well as all the props, costumes and equipment for the workshops - but we are going to have problems when we drive on to Krabi on the 22nd, as we will have Trent, Martha and their son with us then as well as all their personal luggage and props and costumes. No way we will all fit in!

Hot water is extra

We arrive at Krathom Khao Lak, our home for the next 12 days. We decide we need to have one room with hot water - this costs an extra 180 Baht (about £2.50) per night - but it is worth it, as the performers all need to wash their show costumes each afternoon when we get back from schools, and the men need to shave or they will look really too unkempt. We let Jo, Jake and Rooben have the hot water room and Haggis and I take the cold shower room, which is absolutely fine as far as I am concerned, as it is swelteringly hot and cool is what one wants. Our room is fine in principle, but we discover that none of the windows meet properly and that there are lots of holes in the bathroom walls, and that we are awash with mosquitos. However, we do a lot of hole-stuffing with loo paper and use almost a quarter of a roll of "gaffer tape" sealing up all the gaps, and, joy of joys, after a lot of "Rid" spraying, we have a mosquito free zone to sleep in.

There are no cupboards or shelves of any sort in our room, so we leave most of our clothes in suitcases and bang a few tacks into the walls to hang necessary clothes and Haggis's show suit up on. (The 3/4 length suit Hags had made in Kata has proved to be an absolute winner - worn with a white Rohan shirt (he has 2 - one soaking/drying and one on the back) it looks really good, and Hags looks incredibly immaculate in the shows, despite sweating buckets because of the heat. It's all very different here from the comfort of the Laguna Phuket, but we are used to this sort of travel from previous trips to South East Asia where we were having to economise - and in many ways it feels more real and appropriate considering what our journey and our work is all about.

No translator, no transport!

A worrying phone call this evening from Linda - the sponsor she had set up to cover the transport costs of the tour has dropped out - eek! No translator, and now no transport! We agree to all investigate the price of cheaper transport - maybe a songtheuw, or maybe a van we drive ourselves. I have a worried night, with my brain niggling away over our budget problems.

11 January