I am loving Thailand. The country is beautiful, the people are beautiful. We are working with the Corinne people. The Corinne are the people I have seen pictures of before who put the metal rings around their necks, and keep adding rings as their necks stretch. I remember the Guinness (brilliant!) Book of World Records had one of thes women in it for being the human with the longest neck. If I remember correctly, her neck was 18 inches long, the more I think about that, the more I think I am wrong, but I would love if someone corrected me on this. I guess the head does not actually move up to stretch the neck, the people don’t actually get taller, the rings push the clavicles and ribs down. We are eating great food and having a blast.
I have had trouble focussing on writing since we have been here, because I have been having so much fun hanging out with the guys. I need to say thank you to everyone who helped get Rusty out here on this adventure. Especially my father in law, for his generous financial support of Rusty, and through that, me. I wonder if he was concerned at all for his daughter? This whole harebrained idea called the world race has been amazing learning experience, and I believe totally life changing.
The only issue is the heat. I sit in this humidity and this heat and sweat. I think I am melting, but I look in the mirror, and wish I would melt a little. It is hot and humid. Everything we do makes us sweat.
We are all staying in the upstairs of a house in a village. Last night, while I was reading, I heard what sounded like a helicopter crash. I absent mindedly asked Linnea if she heard it, but there was no response from my bride. So I kept reading. Then I saw a motion out of the corner of my eye, what the heck was that? I sat up, a dung beetle was climbing up the wall 3 feet from me. This was a BIG bug. It looks like what I think is called a rhinocerous beetle. With the huge pincers. I got up, because I wanted to catch it and terrorize my wife with it. Linnea asked what I was doing…uhhh, nothing, I said. So of course this increased her curiousity.
I had no idea if this thing bit or was poisonous, so I tried to grab it by its backside. As I tried this, Linnea had sat up and had just seen what I was doing as my fingers made contact with the big bug bum. As I tried to grab the hard shiny insect with the same respect I would offer a snapper turtle, it hissed like a ticked off cat. This caused Linnea to emit a blood curdling scream. You know, who ever heard a bug make a noise like that? I jumped as high as I did the time my arm hit the live wire in Utupampa. Then I decided to use my Mountain Hardware Hat to scoop it up to show everyone else.
I went out our bedroom, the honey moon suite, and walked out to the large common room where the guys sleep and everyone hangs out. I carefully showed everyone the bug, and our Thai national contact, who is a Corinne man named (or whose name is pronounced) Wieliepong, was sitting talking to our american contact, Ray, and he wanted to see the bug.
I showed it to him and he grabbed it with his bare hands and played with it, then had Stephanie hold it, and if a girl was going to hold a bug, then I needed to also, and then Josh did too. I guess they tie a string to these bugs and use them like kites when the bug tries to fly away. These bugs make so much noise with their huge wings.
This morning this bug was dead on the upstairs porch, missing his tasty abdomen, I wonder where it went?
