We wake up and the birds are singing. I can just hear the melody of the rooster's crow from down the street as the sun rises. Then abruptly comes the loud crow of the neighbor's rooster who sits in his cage literally on the other side of our bedroom wall. It's as if every morning he suddenly chokes on something and still feels the need to compete with the smooth normal wake-up call of the rooster down the street. But the sound that comes out is a rough loud coughing choking sound in which causes you to think that at any moment he may keel over and die. Thus is a typical Saturday morning for T and K. No sleeping in for us. :)
Saturday morning is not Saturday morning if you don't have pancakes, right?! We enjoy a lovely breakfast topped with fresh tropical fruit; something we often don't get to have as much in the States. Apart from seeing a large cockroach crawl on our floor (which T kindly got rid of) and a bag full of ants because we left some food in the bag from the night before, things were going pretty smoothly. K goes out to have a chat with the neighbors as T tries to find out why his new motorbike won't start.
After T has toiled with it for several hours, our neighbor finds out there is a problem and easily fixed the problem in no time at all. Yeah for great clever neighbors! T and K go in for a rest but the electricity decided to go off for a while which means instant rushes of heat that flood the house as there are no fans or AC to keep the air cool. No water for cooking or bathing. So we hang out outside as do most of the neighbors because the electricity is out at their houses as well. What are we to do now? It's Saturday, we would like to relax a bit, but all of a sudden we smell something. It smells like a dead animal. At first, we think it's probably a cat that got stuck in our roof. This is typical here. But no, it's something else.
Our neighbor called it a "musang" which when I looked it up in the dictionary, turned out to be a type of cat, but not just any cat, a civet cat! Our neighbors said they like chicken or fish and it's common for them to be roaming around! WHAT IS A CIVET CAT? Anyone know? Well, this is one. One that died in our roof. Thank goodness we didn't have to kill it. It was already dead. Our good friend J decided to help T with getting it out and thr
owing it in the dumpster. Needless to say, it was hard to eat lunch that day.
After our motorbike was fixed and the maggot-infested cat monster was disposed of, T and I decided to go a little ways outside of town to chat and get some good quality time together.
I decided I would get up the guts to drive the motorbike instead of just ride on the back with T driving. I need to learn so I can drive myself when I need to. However it's a bit tricky to balance the bike if you're going slow with a rather heavy husband on the back. This is no motorcycle, it's a motorbike! But the trip was quite successful except when I had to pull off the road for a large truck to pass me. Sometimes you feel like this little dot on the road and that these huge vehicles could easily crush you. We survived!
We got to the restaurant that overlooks the beach on our island. It's a beautiful view and great to just grab a drink and have some good conversation.
After a while of relaxation, we saw a large patch of smoke rising from the trees not too far away from where we were. A fire truck passed and a few minutes later, the smoke died down a bit. Our waiter said it was a hotel. This was the hotel that many of our friends go to to relax or that guests often stay at when they visit us. So we decided to go check out the scene.
Normally in the States the police would have everything blocked off. But we knew that we would be able to get as close to it as we wanted. When we arrived at the scene, the police along with many local people were just watching a few men spray with a fire hose to try and finish putting out the sparks. They could only get one fire hose from one out of 3 fire trucks to work. This is also typical. We've also heard that it might take the fire truck up to hours to actually get to the place where the fire is. After making sure everyone was ok and seeing if we could help or not, we made our way home. I let T drive this time. The electricity was on by this time so we decided to stay in our home and watch a movie. As we turned on the movie a huge sigh excaped from our mouths. What a day! But not that abnormal for us. :)
