Steve also is an owner Mermaids Dive Center, one of Pattaya's larger dive centers. They have 3 boats, and today Steve was taking his friends out on the middle-sized one. That means it had a place to set up a grill, and it had a commode, but unlike his larger one with the ballroom and casino, this one only had a single covered deck, and a pilot house with a roof above that you could climb up on for relaxing in the sun.
But, our ship was definitely sturdy and seaworthy. As Steve informed me, "Hey, this ship has been on the bottom three different times... and she's still with us." (At least he waited to tell me that as we were pulling back into port at the end of the day.)It was a moderately cloudy and windy day, and we noticed that all the local fishing trawlers were gathered in what I shall call "storm formation"... grouped together on the leeward side of the islands. There was a storm coming, but we weren't going anyplace where we couldn't zip home (or swim home) to port in a jiffy.
First stop was basically the middle of nowhere... but apparently some 20 meters below us was a coral reef with lots of fish. Poles were broken out, squid bait was put on hooks, and lines were dropped. The only person who had any luck fishing was Steve, who was fishing Thai style: No pole... just a fishing line with several baited hooks and a sinker.
p.s. Thai lesson for the day: "Falling fish" is how you say "fishing" in Thai. "Falling fishing pole" however... that's a raunchy sex act.
Bob was along with his chef and cooked up hamburgers and ribs on the grill which was great, since the only other alternative was the squid bait, and the little 6-inch orange fishies that Steve was reeling in one every 2 minutes. (Well, one fellow did catch a puffer fish, but since those are poisonous...) So, in between bouts of sea sickness Bob (and his ill chef as well) managed to throw together some great burgers.
From there, it was off to the island. The island apparently is a place where the Thai Navy drops of recruits (of the special ops variety, I am assuming) to play Survivor for 6 weeks. In order to go ashore, we had Steve 2 (not Steve 1 of TQ2) swim ashore with beer and cigarettes as an offering to the natives. They didn't have grass skirts and spears, but they were certainly impressed at the white man's peace offerings. Passage ashore was granted. (If you look real close at the picture above, you can see a little dot on the beach wearing blue jockey shorts and a snorkel carrying a plastic shopping bag. That would be Steve 2.)Actually, we kind of wasted our beer since only 4 out of the 12 of us went ashore. It was about a 100-yard swim to the beach, and once you got there, you realized that all of the ribs and burgers and beer were back on the boat. Still though, I went ashore since it seemed like a waste to come all this way to an island and not mess around on the beach some.
(This was when I realized I was glad — after the fact — that Steve didn't tell me until after we were back in port about his triple-sunk-but-not-for-long boat story. Before having tried swimming for the beach, back in the boat, I was thinking, "Well, we're only a half mile from shore. I could swim that no problem." After the 100 yards to shore, I nearly had an aneurysm... and that was wearing fins on my feet. Jeez I'm out of shape.)
Anyway, I skipped rocks, enjoyed inspecting the massive amounts of coral on the beach, and looked at all the sea urchins (don't step on 'em!) in the water. Then it was back to the boat (more slowly, pacing myself, easy on the heart) for ribs, and more beer.
I had invited Monday to come along, but she couldn't get off of work, so I went alone. This was probably just as well because Thai ladies just... well... as best as I can figure it is this: If it involves (a) sun, (b) saltwater, (c) walking, (d) eating non-Thai food, (e) any more than 20 minutes away from their friends, family, television, or bed... it's best just to leave the Thai ladies at home.There were 3 Thai ladies dragged along on this adventure: All of them were hot, seasick, and miserable. That's OK though: They suffered in silence while the rest of us joked, fished, ate, and made merry on the high seas, bouncing and bobbing about without a care in the world in our thrice resurrected pleasure cruiser.
We made it back to port after our 3 hour tour. The weather didn't get rough. The tiny ship was not tossed. The courage of our fearless crew wasn't needed. The minnows we managed to catch weren't lost ... and Ginger, Maryann, and Mrs. Howell climbed back onto the dock, gave one last retch, each punched their boyfriends square in the gut, and that pretty much was the end of the adventure.
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