Coconuts

I saw the craziest thing today, riding my moto up over the mountain back from a gorgeous beach. There was a man walking an ape on a long leash. As I sat and watched, they went to the base of a tall coconut palm, and then the man gave some commands, and then the ape scurried up the tree and started picking coconuts and chucking them down to the guy. Wow. So, how do they do it when they don't have a trained macaque handy? Those palms are really tall.

And I saw a group of women and children gathering around a mountain of coconuts busting their butts removing the outer casing from coconuts. It's the second time I've seen a Thai sweat. The first was a woman working in a blazing hot kitchen. Did I mention what furnace this country is? Even here on Ko Pha Ngan, it's always blazing. It's got to be 95 every day, and since it also rains a bit every day, it's so humid your sweat has a hard time going anywhere.

Wow. Brit gap year kids. Wow. If you all think I party a fair amount, try these kids. It makes the Scottsdale job look like a pilgrimage to a nunnery. Not really any drugs, but plenty of drinking. That's probably got something to do with the shoot-to-kill policy that their charming prime minister introduced a few years ago. The cops knew who was who, as police generally do, and they'd knock on the door, and as soon as it opened, shoot them in the face and walk away. Something like 2000 drug dealers were executed in a very short period of time. Don't tell this to George Bush. He might get some ideas. And apparently crime skyrocketed immediately afterwards. It's basic economics. When the supply gets extremely small, the price gets extremely high, and the existing addicts can no longer afford their fix. Ergo, many resorted to crime to supplement their income.