Snake Bite!

I’m in Bang Sak with Trevor and Kory and we decide to go to Khoa Lak. So we start heading that way but we keep stopping at various places that have accumulated water to swim. Drainage ditches, rivers, ponds, etc.. Just before arriving in Khao Lak we see a row of brand new houses. “Wow, those are new!” we note. About that time we notice a ditch with some water in it that has a layer of moss on the surface. For some reason we all jump in even as we are saying to each other how unsafe it is and how there might be snakes. Just then a snake jumps out and bites me on the neck and face! Instantly I can’t breath very well so I ask the guys to go get some help. Pretty soon a man walks up calmly with his wife and starts putting some sort of medicine on my face and neck. At this point I realize that I can breathe normally again. “Me Pen Ha Mai?” I ask. He responds to tell me, no, I’ll be ok, it won’t be a problem. So I get up and follow him back to his shop to say thank you. A European man is apparently working there and he just hands me three receipts! The first two are for 481.50 baht each and the third one is for 37 baht totaling 1000 baht! So then I look up and realize that his shop is called “Snake Rescue!” So I try to talk to the European but he does not understand English! He keeps trying to explain something using a toy snake. Frustrated I walk past him to the thai man and I ask him “Ani pen allay khrup?” (what is this for?) and he responds “Ani pen yaa, leew ani pen service charge” (this is for the medicine and this is the service charge.) “And the third one?” I ask. He points to a picture on the receipt that shows a man building a fire. “But you didn’t even build a fire!” I argue. So he excuses the 37 baht charge. So I pay and Trevor asks “wanna go to a hospital?” To which I respond “Nah, lets go see a movie!”

Explanation: After writing this out I can identify several different real life situations I have encountered that apparently my brain has morphed into one event. My dealings with the European in this story are similar to a restaurant we visited in Khao Lak over Christmas, The Happy Lagoon. A European man works there for some reason and he is never any help! My dealings with the Thai man and the confusion with the receipts appear to come from a situation that occurred when I put my car in the shop recently. A $15 oil change visit turned into $240 in repairs and then I found out later he never got around to actually changing the oil! And finally, my swim with the snakes probably comes from many treks into the jungle with Trevor and Kory to find abandoned resorts, island lookout points, vines for climbing rocks, etc.. The brain is a funny thing.