The Scenic Route: Thailand Casualties (Esl Yoga & Flooded hotel)

I (ginger) awoke in the night to Luc gasping with worry, "what's wrong," I asked hurriedly, "I thought I heard water," he mumbled almost incoherently and then resumed snoring. I listened to what was the distinct sound of somoeone in the hallway wading through water. The room was dark but the noise was convincing enough for me to crawl to the end of the bed, as I swung my feet to the floor they were met with ankly deep, cold water. Splash. Luc quickly re-woke asking what was going on and I just yelled in panic, "water!" "the baby!" referring of course to my netbook that I coddle and treat like a baby. I rushed to the side of the bed and lifted her from the floor and out of the water, soaked. Mother hell. As Luc turned the light on and I began wiping her off, he quickly pulled her plug from the wall and grabbed her from me as I opened her up and removed the battery. Man. We left her sitting like a triangle airing out for the recommeded 24 hours and when we attempted to wake her from her drowning induced coma she made a slight growl, possibly burp? And continued on as usual. Halleleuja. Luc's beloved pentax slr seems to have suffered a less favourable outcome, with it's mirror stuck i fear it may capture images no more. I still hold high hopes it may be repairable, but i fear they may be in vain. Nothing but our most valuable possesions suffered much, Luc's running shoes molded and smelled terrible, but everything else was fine after being washed. We slept on the bed turned island till the morning, when we went to the front desk to ask to have our room cleaned, they didn't acknowledge the flood in the slightest, almost acting confused we wanted our room clean. This is Asia.

Later that day we decided to attend a yoga class, an ashtanga inspired class in a second story studio taught by a brit expat. It turned out to be a perfectly acceptable and enjoyable class. The next day though We spotted a gorgeous looking yoga studio, made entirely of bambo, set outside and screened in. Not unlike the gazebo. It was also slightly cheaper, so we opted to try it out. The class was packed, filled with about half locals and half tourists. The instructor was a young Thai lady, she came into the studio and sat at the front, and without audible anouncement, other than a nervous giggle, started into a strange breathing exercise I missed nearly half of out of confusion. The class was said to be "hatha" yoga, wich means essentialy nothing other than it contains posseses. I quickly realized this was an ESL yoga class and there was going to be little to no guidance. We raced through poses like there was a list we had to finish, with no guidance other than the odd "left arm to right knee, no left arm, no right, inhale-kah....inhale-kah". It is common in Thailand for people to say either "kah" if you're a woman, or "khap" if you're a man, after every sentence, especially a command or question. This is normally fine, but coupled with a mouse quiet voice and very little instruction, "kah" was the only word I could make out. She also had confused "inhale kah" to mean the same as exhale, so we did a lot of filling our lungs, but not a lot of emptying. Made even less audible by a waterpump making a sort of wannn chounk sound often while still un-predictably. Despite the beautiful studio being screened in, there were hoards of mosquitos as well as almost un-bearable heat. Mid-way through the class, I heard someone say "fuck this, lets get out of here" and sneak out the back, that was strange. Even more bizare were two girls who took a few minute break to text on their phones before half heartidly jumping back in. Ginger succumed to a small laughing fit going as far as collapsing onto her mat when a poor girl fell over in a sort of wave like motion, trying to contort her body into the twister like posture the teacher was describing, laughing more at the situation than the girl herself, but the girl was not laughing and did not look at all impressed. The dumbfounded looks I received while looking around the room confirmed that I was not the only one having trouble. We finished the class unscathed despite many fairly dangerous postures being un-explained where people could have gotten really hurt. We couldn't and still can't keep ourselves from laughing about it. The next day we went back the original class with the expat, happy to do a class that we could follow.