Day 127: Stir Crazy

Chilling out. That was what was on the agenda today. And.... Mission accomplished!

Beth seemed to be feeling better this morning. We were both up early and sitting in the "family room" for a couple of hours until we dared knock on the kids door at 9 - they'd just woken up. That was a well needed twelve hours of sleep for them.

The boat rolled out after breakfast, tooling through the backwaters and we watched the activity around us. The scenery changed to a more secluded area close to lunch time. I saw four heads in the water, two covered with fishing nets and thought "what the hell is that?". It turned out to be four guys working on setting up a large fishing net around a section of water with floating greenery inside.

By lunch, Beth seemed to be getting her appetite and legs back. We stopped and tied up to a palm tree and were served lunch on a banana leaf in traditional style. Robin and I did the right hand eating thing, practicing the three finger upside down pinch and thumb shovel. It's actually nice after you get used to the feeling of squishiness in your fingers.

After lunch, while the boys were eating their lunch and relaxing, Robin had a moment of craziness while we were listening to music. I only caught a bit on video, but it went on for some time, much to the amusement of the occasional canoe passing by and the rest of her family. We chalked it up to being a little stir crazy! :-)

The afternoon was much of what we'd already seen, until we turned into a narrower channel. The bank and surrounding area was getting a lot more dense and lush, and we'd catch the occasional glimpse of bright green rice growing in the fields behind the canal walls.

One moment, we were staring at the river under sunny skies, and the next moment we were getting hit with a windy rain squall.

It was pretty crazy how quickly the rain came on, and even crazier when fifteen minutes later we were back to sunny skies.

We played a lot of asshole presidents after that... this boat trip is a lot like camping, with far less work. We are really enjoying the kids as they are in a totally relaxed mood. I told Abby today how proud I was of her on this trip - she has far exceeded our expectations and continues to surprise us... She has become so adaptable, rolling with the punches and engaged. She said in response... "I know, I've surprised myself!" - that's pretty cool. When this was happening, Robin was surprising us by actually getting into a book and finishing it. Sweet!

We tied up for the night near an area with about 30 other boats spread over half a kilometre of shoreline. We were right next to a group of young guys who looked like they'd been drinking for a while. Raja, the captain came up and he basically gestured "should we shut the rain guard to block the view to these guys" - yup, good idea. They weren't too bad and I was hoping they'd be lightweight enough to have had their fill in the early evening.

It rained a lot at night, which seemed to keep the mosquitoes down. Beth is very chatty (I'm having trouble stringing two words together on this blog!) so it would appear she's close to back to normal. Thank you baby Jesus.... Or Ganeesha.... Thank you!