family hike

So yesterday we decided to be eco-tourists here in Phuket. We wanted to go hiking in the jungle and try and find a trail to one of the peaks on the island (about 400 meters high). Everyone we talked to said you couldn't walk through the jungle because there were no trails and the woman at our hotel looked at us like we were from mars when we said we wanted to walk up the mountain. She strongly discouraged it.

In the end, it worked out amazingly well. We walked along the road looking for an entrance into the woods behind the hotels. (We even asked a few people for directions and they all gave us the same 'no, you're crazy for even asking' look). Finally, Jonathan noticed a little road heading toward the jungle and said we should take it. We didn't have any better ideas so we went with it. The road turned narrow and then turned into a path and then a 2 track and then a single track. Along the way, we ran into a Thai gentlemen on his little scooter bike who asked where we were going (we were clearly lost if we were on this path). He got off his bike and drew a trail map in the dirt of where the different trails could take us.
In the end, we made our way all the way to the peak (where there is a 50m tall buddha statue). It was about a 10 mile hike and all the kids (and mom and dad) were pretty knackered by the time we got back to our hotel.

Near the top we noticed the sign in the picture. It seemed like a simple little advertisement for food and drink. Then you read it again and you think 'did that say bombs, fuses, and batteries?' So the Chinese create crazy signs by choosing strange words and then misspelling them. The Thai just write crazy things with pretty good spelling that you just don't understand.

Final disconnected story. At dinner yesterday we were talking about something irrelevent and Nathan seemed lost in his thoughts. After a bit, he enters the conversation by asking 'what is the holiday where we give up wearing underwear for awhile?' There was a bit of a prolonged pause as Dee and I tried to figure out if we misheard our son or whether we've just done a bad job parenting him. My first thought was that maybe this was something his teacher at school had mentioned. This may seem like a strange accusation of a parent toward a teacher, but it made sense to me. Nathan's teacher is not a christian and thinks the christmas celebration is just another example of american cultural imperialism. To fight back against the American Christmas tyranny, she has instituted the concept of festivus: a holiday for the rest of us.' Complete with the 'airing of the grievances' ceremony with all the 5th graders. (if none of this sounds familiar, you need to watch more seinfeld) So if it makes sense to get 10 year olds to 'air their grievances' (it took us awhile to explain to nathan what a grievance is and why you might want to air them) then maybe there was some type of celebration where underwear was sworn off.

So after snapping back into the moment, we asked Nathan what he was talking about. He said, 'you know the time in the church when you give stuff up'. 'So you mean Lent'. 'Yeah, Lent'. And all I can think is what have we done. But then I was consoled by the thought that if giving up wearing underwear is an act of piety, than Jonathan is the holiest 7 year old I know.