Deborah's Southeast Asian Adventure

So I ended up hanging out with the film crew and then deciding at the 11th hour NOT to go to the wrap party. I felt like I was 'crashing' it since everyone was tight with everyone else and had been working together for months. I did hang out with a group of them over cocktails. There's this whole community of mixed-race (Thai/white) actors and actresses who are never short of work since now the craze is to feature these people in TV commercial, soap operas and films. According to Tommy (the actor who plays the businessman who gets eaten by the crocodile), they've all grown up together or have been working together for years. Some of the interesting people: Pim, who is a 10-year old actress who is being managed by her British father, Amy and Maia, who are half Swedish and half Thai. They were accompanied to the party by their Swedish father who has fathered 13 (THIRTEEN) children, 11 of them with a Thai woman. They now live in southern Thailand.

So instead of the wrap party, I went to a karaoke session where I was the only non-Thai person in the room. Half the songs I couldn't follow due to them being sung in Thai but the other half I thoroughly enjoyed, singing along with hits such as "Zombie" by the Cranberries. It was a weird experience. Thais are really serious about karaoke (unlike most Westerners) and they belt out the songs like nobody's business.

Today, I went on a day-long excursion of trekking through the rainforest. Believe it or not, even I get bored of the beach at some point. About 10 of us jumped into a 4 wheel drive vehicle and headed to different locations. First, we went to an amazing hot springs deep in the rainforest which was so relaxing. The rocks were the colour of turquoise. Next, we headed to a place called Emerald Pond which turned out to be this swimming hole with clear emerald water where you could see the bottom as well as the fish swimming by. We visited a rubber plantation where we saw a demonstration of the back-breaking labour which goes into collecting rubber sap. Rubber is one of the main industries down here. The tour guide pretended to make a giant condom out of a sheet of rubber and proceeded to pass it amongst all of the guys until he came to this slightly shy British guy when the guide announced, "Oh, you probably don't use condoms anyway". I don't know who was more mortified: the guy or his girlfriend who turned five shades of red. Last, we went to a Buddhist temple in the rainforest called Tiger Cave Temple due to the fact that it used to be the home of a famous tiger.

I was surprised to find that there is a significant Muslim population down here in the south. There doesn't seem to be a lot of tension although apparently, earlier there was some unrest and military activity against Muslim activists. Apparently, this is one of the justifications for removing the military leader, Thaksin, during the coup a few months back.