French Helmick

YeeHaw! What if your name was French Helmick!!! Well, last sundee we met the craziest kid ever. His name was Mike McDermott and he was awesome. He grew up in the back woods of Pennsylvania with his Grampie French and his Grammie Ruth Anne for parents. Neither of them was literate- literally, couldn’t read. They grew up in the depression and worked instead of studied. They live, to this day, with no running water and, can you believe it, no computer! So basically it was like meeting a peer, raised by people from 2 generations ago, who is therefore strangely uneducated for an American of our age. He literally has never had anyone to direct him in life or tune him in to 21^st century life. It was so fascinating talking to him. Not only that but Alex initiated a gospel talk with him; sadly he turned down the Book of Mormon, he had a book, Hannibal. Slightly different caliber of literature, but at least we could be friends.

Sunday we arrived in Phuket, Thailand after taking a bus from Ranong, Thailand (our little border crossing experience town). We ended up staying in the OnOn hotel, very cheap and comfortable, where they happened to film part of The Beach. We woke up Monday morning to the beautiful sound of pouring rain. Not to worry though, it cleared right up. We went to a beach in Phuket, called Patong, where we rented a big huge 400cc motorcycle for four days. We then proceeded to hit the road to Krabi Town!!!

It was timeless, our own Motorcycle Diaries. Riding out of Phuket into the sunset, Alex at the wheel and me hanging on for dear life behind. We consolidated our essentials into one backpack and left the other behind. So there we were, Alex looking cool as always, and me on the back with a big huge back pack, crooked sun glasses and helmet, and one of those roller coaster smiles where the wind pulls your skin in all sorts of crazy directions. It was awesome. Although, our soft butts were feeling the heat after 3 hours of riding when we finally rolled into Krabi.

Two years ago Alex lived and climbed in Krabi for a month. He was spilling over with nostalgia when we got there and had tons of memories to share about his adventures as a 3 musketeer with his friends Nick and Dan. It was cool to finally be able to see everything he’s described for so long. Railey beach is a really famous cove for climbing and you can only get there by taking a ferry. Alex and I went there on Tuesday and he showed me all his old climbing haunts. We also got caught swimming in the ocean during a crazy rain storm and it was super cool. We even saw a real live twister out in the ocean. Don’t worry Mom, it wasn’t dangerous. We went on a slippery crazy jungle hike too that was really fun. We didn’t end up climbing cuz it was too expensive to rent all the gear and stuff but we did slack line on the beach with some Brits. Ha! we saw a leemer running around on the beach too! So weird. No better way to end the day than with crazy hot som tam(papaya salad) for Alex and Tim Tams (chocolaty goodness) for me.

Wednesday we spend four excruciating hours in an internet café. But! We came out with amazing return tix to China. We realized that morning that in a few days we were about to cross over to the southern hemisphere, into Indonesia, and that Beijing (where our return flight leaves from) is really pretty far away from there. Yah, and the $700 one way tickets to Beijing we were finding were really terrifying. We considered scrapping Indonesia and returning to China by land, lots and lots of 12 hour bus/train rides, until Alex struck gold! $60 tickets from Bali, Indonesia to Kualampur, Malaysia and $100 tickets from Kualampur to Tianjin, China (right outside Beijing). Hallelujah! We raised our eyes skyward when we found those! Imagine that, $100!!! That’s like going from Alaska to Hawaii for $100!

Shish Kabob! It seems like my posts get longer and longer every week. Ok, I’ll try not to be so long winded. Some highlights!

Stumbling on a community “track and field” competition with tug of war as one of the events. Very fun to cheer the kids on! Also fun to be such a novelty, we were really in the back woods.

Discovering the undiscovered! A beautiful little Thai resort village with an amazing shore line and national park. Not another falang (white person) in sight. The beach was called Pak Meng and it was STUNNING!!! The stray dogs were also stunning, but in a different way. Alex carried around num chucks for protection, in case he had to initiate a ninja battle to save me from the dogs.

We found ourselves a lovely private beach, while searching for a cave, where skinny dipping was most certainly allowed. Not that we would have participated in such revelries. Oh, and there were these awesome crabs that made sandy dip n’ dots all over the beach.

We had to drive the motorbike 6 hours back to Phuket!!! It was awesome though. We then took a night bus back to Bangkok, slept like bums on benches in Lumpini park when we got there, avoided the heat in the fancy mall, and took to the airport at 6pm for flight to Jakarta, Indonesia. Unfortunately the flight was terribly delayed and we waited another 6 hours in the airport. We then arrive in Jakarta at 4am and camped out in front of the LDS church there from 5am to 8am.

Church was super awesome and the people there were so kind. So kind that one amazing family, the Keys, invited us to dinner. Dinner led to laundry, which led to a shower, which led to an amazing nights sleep on the most comfortable bed we can remember. It was definitely a much needed rejuvenation after two sleepless nights and stomachs craving mashed potatoes. It was fun to play Barbies all day with their daughter Ella too. Oh, p.s. a girl in the ward was in my Ecology class at BYU, how BIZARRE is that.

Indonesia is cool, will fill you in all about it next week!!!