Life in the Park Update:

My friend Man moved to Bangkok. At first the word at the restaurant was that he moved to Phuket, despite the fact that, that very day the rumours were flying around, I had talked to him on the phone and he said he was in Bangkok. Apparently then, according to everyone else, I didn’t know what was going on. I had been away for a few days, so I was out of the loop with park gossip. But three weeks later, no one had heard from Man and they all came running to me for the gossip update. So I informed them, Man lost his phone and wallet, possibly on a bus, somewhere in Bangkok. Not good. I miss Man, I want him to come back. But he will not be back. In other news… Last week I was going to the market with my friends Boom and Bahn. We were driving down the mountain, when we came across a falang guy who had fallen off his motorbike on the side of the road, a Thai man had also pulled over to try and help (So that's 3 Thai people, 1 hurt foreigner and me). The guy was here from Seattle, had rented a bike for the day to tour the park and was on his way back to town when he hit something and lost control of the bike, possibly he had a broken foot, a fractured shoulder and he had a few scrapes. He was here in Thailand alone, couldn’t speak Thai and didn’t have a cellphone. We helped him out, turns out he didn’t break anything but had some bad sprains and cuts. I became international translator for the afternoon…so that was eventful. Glad he’s OK. He asked how long it took me to become fluent enough to easily converse in Thai…that through me for a loop… Let's see, I was here for 6 months, then I left for about 3 years, I've been here for 4 months now... Fluent?... Ya, it’s not easy to converse in Thai :)