Day 230, Patong, Thailand
At dinner last night the girls were talking about the 2004 Tsunami, and whether our condo on the 11th floor would have been affected, and how. They speculated what would be the best plan of action should one happen while we are here. Conversations on what to do in case of horrible happenings like a terrorist attack, tsunami, crash plane landing, aren’t my favorites. But I’ve found that when the girls voice their hidden concerns, they feel lighter.
Paul and I were having coffee when the pipe under the sink exploded. It took us a few minutes to understand what was happening, all we could hear was a rush of water. I rushed to collect all the towels and threw them into the water, but they looked more like the effect of throwing little paper towels into a river, a silly attempt to hold back the water. When we rented in Paris the owner told us where the water shutoff valve was. I was wishing we had asked this owner. From now on
we likely will.
Paul rushed to get help. As water was gushing out, I was trying to get all of the laptops and other electronics to higher ground. I woke the girls up, and said, there’s water everywhere you need to get out! Madi sat up and the first thing she thought was TSUNAMI! Well, not a citywide one, just our own little personal one. As the water was rising, now I was afraid that it would touch electricity somewhere and I told the girls to stay out of the expanding puddle that was now spreading
into the hallway and bedrooms.
We didn’t have time to grab anything by then, and just sat in the hall. Paul arrived with someone from the building and he turned the water flow off in the hallway outside the apartment. He just waded through the mess, no concern about electricity. Lars the Norwegian owner of the apt. showed up within minutes. He owns three units in the building, and took us upstairs to the larger penthouse unit he owns, to hang out in while they cleaned our place.
Our place smelled like it had just been cleaned, and no sign of any water. Paul had left his reading glasses on the table before our quick exodus, and we couldn’t find them anywhere. Everything else had stayed put, but those were gone. we didn’t think much about it, and went to lunch.
This part of the world seems to have an abundance of Indian and Japanese restaurants, both of which I love. For lunch we had Indian food. Quite a few advertising trucks came by with platforms of fighters, clapping boxing gloves together in sharp banging sounds.
In the evening Cali and I walked down to the beach.
