And finally here is the story of the race from the island to Phuket:
Our Amazing Race/Survivor experience began when we pulled into Trang in the back of a huge covered truck with benchs. Before we were allowed off Captain Ron, who came up with the tasks for this leg, gave us a riddle. Whoever could solve it first was allowed to look at the race sheet 5 minutes before the other teams. Katherine with her quick wits gives the correct answer and the Red Team wins the first challenge!
We grabbed our detailed sheet with destination points and tasks that had to be completed and quickly studied the first few things on the list. We found out we had to go to Krabi and find “Tiger’s Eye View” to climb as a team a total of 3000 steps. Katherine wandered around to find out travel options, while I gathered our bags together and Gary and Ashley listened closely to the race details, as Ron went over the sheet. Katherine came back with a little info that there was a bus going to Krabi, but she wasn’t sure what time it was leaving.
After Ron released up to go, our team split in different directions. The main reason behind this was that an added rule to this leg was that any team could water ambush another team, getting them all visibly wet within a minute, which would result in 20 minutes of stopping where ever the ambush took place. This option was in honor of the Thai New Year festival, which happens tomorrow, on which huge water fights happen in the streets and everyone gets drenched.
Gary and I wandered out to the road to find a minibus or taxi or map or anything helpful to get us to Krabi. I asked a huge group of people if anyone spoke English and fortunately one lady did. I asked her the fastest way to get to Krabi and she said a taxi. As I asked where we get one of those she pointed across the street. Gary and I looked but didn’t see any marked taxis. I again asked her where, and she waved at some guys that were waving at us across the street. I was thinking this was rather odd because no taxis were in sight, but we decided to go check it out anyways.
After dodging traffic to get across the busy street, we asked the guys where to get a taxi. They said right here. We still looked because all we was were really old, big, grey Datsun cars, if you can call them that. We said how much, and when he gave us a reasonable price we said ok, and Gary ran back to grab our bags along with Katherine and Ashley, who were also highly confused when they arrived at our unmarked car. Fortunate for us the car/boat had such a big trunk 3 of our huge packs fit back there and we only had to sit with one laid across our laps.
The drive to “Tiger’s Eye View” was interesting as we attempted to complete another one of the tasks on the way. We were assigned to look up scripture references to each of the 101 ways to worship that we came up with on the island. Gary and Ashley had their Bibles open with the pages flapping in the wind, Katherine was writing down the references on another sheet, and I was trying to keep the list from blowing out the windows and read out the ways to my teammates. It was quite a task, involving a lot of teamwork, but was successfully completed before reaching Krabi and right before the rain poured down.
Pulling into Krabi 2 hours later, we still didn’t know where to go to find “Tiger’s Eye View”. We had our drive stop near a tourist shop, while Ashley and Gary ran in to find out where to go. We found out it was a place called Tiger’s Cave Temple and promptly paid our driver a little more to take us there. Pulling up into the place, it wa
s still pouring down rain, which would make for cool yet wet step climbing. To complete this task 2 team members were required to climb up the 1237 steps to the top of the temple and the remaining number of steps to bring the total to 3000 had to be climbed by the rest of the team. Our plan was for Gary and I to climb to the top, while Katherine climbed the 526 remaining and Ashley gaurded the bags.
The climb in the rain was kind of difficult. We had to be careful not only because of the slippery steps, but also because the stone steps weren’t all uniform and some were very high and steep. Not to mention we had to watch out for the swarming monkeys (that supposedly were not very nice and would steal food–as we were previously warned–making me grateful that maybe it wasn’t a monkey in our bungalow). About 3/4 to the top we passed the Lime guys coming back down. Only 1 team was ahead of us. After about 40 minutes or so we reached the top and looked around to answer some required questions. Gary said a short prayer, and we came down as quickly as was possible without dying on the slippery steps. On the way down we passed Yellow coming up and Blue right at the bottom.
Thinking there could possibly a water ambush waiting for us at the bottom, Gary hung back while I ran to Katherine and Ashley and told them we were done. They said a taxi was on the way. About 10 minutes later it pulled up right as the Yellow team was coming down. We saw a water ambush coming as they filled up buckets and drenched Katherine, Ashley, and I. I yelled at Gary to “RUN!”, as Francois and Clara took off after him. He just had to outrun them for a minute and luckily did. We piled into our taxi and drove down to pick up Gary.
Now we had to make our way to Phuket where every team member was instructed to “Kee Chang”. We figured out this was an elephant ride. We hoped to get there before the place closed, but that would be quite a task considering we were about 2-3 hours away and it was late afternoon. We were still hopeful as we jammed out to Mariah Carey’s greatest hits in the plush, leather interior taxi.
About 5:30pm we arrived at Siam Safari and jumped out to do our best convincing to let us ride the elephants. We got shut down and were told to come back in the morning at 8am. We did see that there was another teams bags there and we assumed that the Lime team had made it in time to elephant trek. Bummer for us. However, as we were about to drive out we saw the brown team riding back in on the safari truck! Confused at first we came to the only logical conclusion that they had come straight to the elephants and were going to back track to the temple steps, since they didn’t close. Interesting strategy, and expensive.
After making our elephant appointment, we asked our driver to take us to a close cheap hotel. We found one easily and dropped off our stuff in order to complete the other tasks before day break so all we had to do was elephant ride and swim to victory. We went ahead and rents snorkelling equipment because the last task was for one team member to swim out to a close island and retrieve their team’s flag, while making sure to describe 2 types of fish seen on the way.
After renting equipment we took a taxi to Phuket town to complete the rest. Ashley and Gary went to the internet to find the Buddha teachings that apply to Jesus, translate a verse into Thai, and find out what the fruit that is not allowed into some public buildings or elevators was (we had to find and eat some of that). In the mean time Katherine and I had to find and buy for less that 400B (about $10) a “loud frog”, “ball that was a cross between a volley and soccer ball”, and an “appropriate t-shirt”. Getting some assistance from an English speaking guy in a store we quickly found the wooden frogs, wicker ball, and t-shirt.
Meeting back up with Gary and Ashley we grabbed some food and then went on our search for the Durian fruit (which is really stinky) and items for my least favorite task. We got to the food market and after some asking and searching we found the fruit. We then had to find silk worms and roaches, crickets, or locusts! Each team member was required to report on the difference in taste and texture of a silk worm vs. a roach, cricket, or locust. Gary had seen some roaches already, but they were huge! We searched around for smaller insects, but that is all we could find in that market. We bought 2 roaches for good measure, just in case we didn’t find anything else.
We then found a taxi to another market and asked for bugs and worms. Ashley had drawn a picture of a bug and a worm because many didn’t speak any English and was yelling, “You got worms? I need worms.” Finally we ran into a lady that knew what we were talking about. She told Gary that her friend could take him on the back of his motor bike while we waited. It was about 11pm, so we agreed because we were desparate to find some creatures to eat before everything closed. Things worked out well as Gary came back with some locusts, beatles, and worms doused in chili and salt….mmm.
We took everything back to our hotel to feast upon smelly fruit and insects. I made sure to get something to chase them with and some peanut butter to possibly dip them in. By this time it was really late, and I was ready to get this done so we could ride elephants in the morning and swim out the race. Gathering my courage I ate the worm first, which wasn’t too bad. A little like a McDonald’s french fry, but not that good. The locust was a little harder to get down. I bit in to get the taste and then swallowed the rest whole. Sick out! Never thought I would be eating bugs unless I truly went on the real Survivor!
The next morning we got up to get to the elephants. We had some trouble finding a taxi driver that understood we wanted him to wait while we rode so he could take us to the beach right when we were done. Finally a driver agreed. As he dropped us off about 7:40am, we noticed another team’s luggage already there. Worried about a water ambush we stayed apart and realized they weren’t hiding to get us, but had already gotten on the ride, and it wasn’t even 8am yet! Luckily they took us right as we arrived and we found out they were only about 5 minutes ahead of us. What we didn’t know is that they let the Lime team on at 7am that morning!
We took a safari truck up a couple miles to get to the area with the elephants. We boarded the back of them from a platform and sat in a seat on their backs with a driver sitting right behind the ears. The ride was so much fun. Not the smoothest mode of transportation, but not many people can say they rode an elephant in Thailand on their birthday! Along the way we saw the blue team up ahead, we were gaining ground. Our elephants must have been the speedy ones because by the end we were getting off right after them. Again suspecting an ambush we stayed away. Now the blue team got in their vehicle before us and headed back down to the drop off place. Knowing they would probably try to ambush us when we got down and were all stuck in the truck, we got sneaky and asked the driver to let Gary out on the road down a ways so he could hide. I’ll never forget the look on Chad’s face as he jumped out of the bush, running at us with an open water bottle, as he realized Gary wasn’t with us. I’m talking pure excitement to utter disappointment in .5 seconds. Good thing we are the smart team.
The blue team still managed to get out of the parking lot before us because as we look around our driver, who we had told to wait, was gone! We didn’t know what to do because the snorkelling stuff to swim was in the van! We decided that Ashley and I would go on, since I was swimming, and try to get some equipment at the beach. We were already a good 5-10 minutes behind the blue team. Katherine and Gary would wait for our driver who would hopefully show up by 9am because that’s when he thought we would be done.
We pulled up to the beach after a 15 minute drive and I got more and more nervous and I hadn’t seen any places to rent gear. We needed it to report on 2 types of fish found on the way. Luckily (yet somewhat unfortunate) when we arrived the Brown and Lime teams had just finished. The brown team was kind enough to lend me their gear. As I jumped in the water to swim quite some distance in a current to the island to get the flag, I wondered what had happened to the blue team and how we beat them there. I knew they had to be somewhere close behind so I kept this in mind swimming as fast as my flippers would paddle. After about 15-20 minutes I reached the flag and stopped our time. Thank goodness Katherine and Gary had shown up right before that (with my original gear) so that we could officially stop the clock. The blue team was right behind us and had gotten lost on the way. The yellow team was there about an hour later. What a fun, exhausting, interesting, and gross race!
