More Monday Adventures

It's Monday again. I just wrote about how I went caving last Monday. Today we choose another adventure, this time, it was kayaking. We see people do it from our river side bar location and I've heard people talk about how many times their kayak tipped, but I didn't really think it would happen to me. Until it did.

The river is moving pretty quick (rainy season strikes again), but my life jacket was strapped on tight. What I didn't anticipate was getting stuck under the kayak as we rushed past bushes. The whole reason we tipped over was because of the freaking bushes. Claire and I had ended up heading towards them and we were frantially pedaling trying to get away from them and then as we headed into them, we leaned to avoid being hit in the face by them, but we leaned too far and then we were in the water. Under the kayak. When I got out and my head was above water I was terrified because I still couldn't breath as I was choking on the water I'd inhaled. Claire and I were holding on to the boat, trying to keep our feet up to avoid hitting them on buried bolders and we made it to one of the guides. He helped us flip our boat over and we managed to climb back in. We even caught up to our water bottle and rescued that. It was terrifying. But that was just one small part of the 2 hour journey. The rest was gorgeous and we managed to stay in the rest of the time even through the "rapids."

Another of our 5 boats flipped and that one was even scarier. They were also near a huge rock and bushes - stripped bushes, lots of sharp painful sticks. They were trying to hold onto their boat but they were being rushed by the current into the bushes. The guides were screaming "Swim! Swim! Let go of the boat!" Finally they heard and did. They swam to one of the guide's boats and hung on. The other guide had pulled over and "parked" his boat on a small bank. I'm not sure how he got there, but he made it to their boat and swam it back. Meanwhile, Claire and I and two of the other guys, unable to paddle upstream had "parked" ourselves in a slower part of the river by holding on to more of the aforementioned stripped bushes.

Did I mention it was fun? Because really it was, it wasn't scary the whole time. We had moments where we were all splashing each other and laughing at Hoon and Min because they both lost their shoes in their escapade.

The craziness will continue in a different form. Tonight we're heading to the local wat to teach the novice monks' English class. Must remember not to touch the monks. (Um, last week I tried to shake one's hand before I remembered... embarassing!)