Claire's Infamous Mishaps

Ah yes, my mishaps…Aaron’s delight. There have been many, as could have been expected, but I will try to stick to the highlights.

1. While attempting to find our way to an elusive subway stop at night in the middle of a not-so-nice section of Guangzhou (not-so-nice is a bit of an understatement; we managed to traipse through some type of loading dock with Chinese night laborers unloading large sacks of unknown contents and staring at us in a way that could only mean either that we appeared to them as an apparition, or that we were most definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time), I found myself ankle-deep in a puddle also of unknown contents. Judging by the stench emanating from my soaked feet (flip-flops were apparently a poor shoe choice that evening, as well as on many other occasions), it appeared that I had stepped in human excrement. Lovely…

2. During our trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge (TLG), I stepped in quite a bit of mud. This was not a surprise, as it had been raining for days before we arrived. But I seemed to be completely incapable of balancing on the stones that would help me avoid the mud, causing me to question the functioning of my inner ear. Precariously perched on stones, over and over I slipped off them and plunged into deep mud. On one such occasion, my shoe (no, not the dreaded flip-flop, but my wonderful Merrill—more on Merrill to come) sank so deep in mud that it got lodged in, and out came my foot sans shoe. My momentum caused me to put my shoeless foot back down into mud. I retrieved my shoe, took off my sock, and spent the rest of the trek that day with soaking wet, muddy feet and shoes, and without one very muddy sock, which Aaron was kind enough to stow in his backpack. Thanks, Aar!

(A side note, since we are on the subject of shoes, I will take this opportunity to inform you that unbeknownst to me before I left, I brought with me on this trip possibly the two worst pairs of shoes I could bring. Both my flip-flops and my half sandal-half sneaker Merrills (the latter cost me some good money!) have caused me to slip and slide along if the ground is even slightly wet. I have lost my balance too many times to count, and in order to avoid falling (my success rate is, oh, somewhat less than 100%), I am forced to walk both at the rate of and in the style of someone three times my age.)

3. More mud awaited me on our trek through the rice paddies of Sa Pa. This trek was, in many ways, more challenging than Tiger Leaping Gorge. TLG was a cardiovascular challenge, but Sa Pa was mentally exhausting and stressful. There were times when we suspected that our tour guide was lost, particularly when she led us ACROSS a rice paddy on an extremely narrow path. I did gymnastics for a short time as a child, but I was never very good at the balance beam, surprise, surprise, and it took all my energy not to plunge into the muddy depths far below me. Unfortunately, shortly after successfully navigating the paddy, I found myself knee-deep in mud after slipping off yet another rock. The cumulative effects of a stressful trek and getting up close and personal with yet more mud brought forth a small tantrum. I stopped in my tracks and announced that I was done, which of course was ludicrous. I couldn’t just stay out there, and we had gone so far at this point that I couldn’t really turn back. So, on I went, with more mud-encrusted clothing and a scowl.

4. Crossing the border between Vietnam and Cambodia was an experience. We decided to take a boat trip along the Mekong Delta that included a river border crossing into Cambodia. During our border crossing, we got caught in heavy rains. I am sure you are all dying to know which shoes I was wearing. Well, since the monsoon caught us by surprise, I was in my flip-flops, which are only a slightly worse choice than the Merrills. Trying to keep up, I slipped and fell into, you guessed it, a pile of mud…carrying my 10 kilo backpack plus my smaller backpack. I was one big muddy mess, and trying to stand up with all that extra weight on me was nearly an impossible task. Got to the boat, which by the way, had the distinct feel of a refugee boat, with the shades drawn to keep out the rain and about 20 people trying to squeeze in. I went to the back of the boat to attempt to clean off my pants with the moist towelettes that my mother and our various flight attendants had provided me, and then change in the bathroom. One of the crew members saw me pathetically wiping off my pants and tried to help me by repeatedly filling a bucket with Mekong Delta water (not exactly the cleanest) and dumping it on my pants. The poor guy was trying so hard to clean my pants without touching my ass, where the vast majority of the mud was. It was really very sweet. The bathroom on the boat was a tight squeeze. Trying to get out of my soaking wet pants and shirt and into some dry clothes made me look like an unemployed contortionist. Oh yeah, and the bathroom had no roof, so the clean dry clothes I was laboring to dress myself in quickly turned into soaking wet (though still clean) clothes. I emerged from the bathroom looking very much like I had nearly drowned while in it, and I don’t think I fully dried off for the entire 6 hour boat journey.

5. While admiring the ancient temple and trees at Ta Som, one of the temples close to Angkor Wat, I inadvertently stumbled into the lair of a vast community of red ants, the biting kind. I must have looked like I was having a seizure as I tried to rid my arms, legs, and feet of these pests. It was reminiscent of that NYE Phish show at Big Cypress, when Jeff was just as brutally attacked by the vicious red ant cousins in South Florida. I kept all of my clothes on, though.

6. How it is humanly possible to breathe underwater makes about as much sense to me as how an airplane manages to leave the ground and stay up in the air until the pilot directs it to come back down. So, needless to say, I was a touch nervous about learning how to dive. On my first open water dive, my resolve was tested when I nearly drowned. I managed to jump off the boat with all my gear in place and emerged at the surface to a hissing serenade from my low pressure inflater hose. I asked the Dive Master Trainee assisting on our course if anything was wrong. He thoroughly inspected my gear and assured me that it would be fine for the dive but suggested that I tell our instructor when we get back on the boat. Thus reassured, I began my swim out to where our dive would begin. But I was having some trouble keeping afloat. Aaron, placidly swimming along, began to look somewhat concerned, so as my instructor came into view, I informed him that something might be wrong: I was sinking. I showed him the hose, and he took one look, then very calmly told me to take off my weight belt and give it to him. One of the things we were told to do in class if there is a problem is to drop your weight belt so you can float, so despite Janson’s calm voice, I knew there was a problem. So with two weight belts and a very nervous Claire in tow, we made our way back to the boat to get me a new BCD. For those wondering what became of Claire and diving, I jumped right back into the water with a functioning BCD and inflator hose and am now addicted to diving.

7. Most recently, I was eating my breakfast at the beach bar next to our hut on Koh Tao with some resident chickens for company. I turned my back for no more than 4 seconds, leaving my breakfast momentarily unattended on an adjacent tree stump, when I heard some clucking and feather flapping. I turned around to find the top half of my baguette on the ground with a beak sized chunk taken out of it!

All right, I think you get the point. I am a magnet for mishaps.