This is a story of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
I was invited to an event at Mae Ngat Reservoir. To get there required a boat ride of about
fifteen minutes out to one of the “houseboats” for a pleasant afternoon of
music, good food, and visiting with friends.
I got some good pictures.
The bad part was that I “missed the boat” in terms of how to
arrange transportation to leave the houseboat.
“This is my boat,” “you don’t belong on this boat,” “this is our boat” and “this is a designated
boat” were the excuses being used by people (westerners) as they left me behind,
although there was plenty of seating capacity remaining on each particular
boat. Denied access to one boat after
another, three altogether, I determined that escalating my effort was the only
way I was going to get back to shore. Just
as it was getting dark another boat came to the dock and I hopped on, uninvited,
which leads to the ugly part of this story.
There were zealous verbal attempts to get me out of the
boat, all of which I ignored. I was mentally
super-glued to the boat seat and no amount of protest was going to deny me my ride
back to the parking lot. These poor
people would just have to ride back with a stowaway, me, although I was in
plain sight. During the ride one fellow
turned around and began to re-iterate his dislike of having me aboard. So, I asked him if he could swim, because, as
I told him, “If you say one more word to me I’m going to throw you into the
water.” Yeah, that went over so well that others decided to join him. I told them all to go to hell or jump in the
lake because I was on the boat and there wasn't a fucking thing they could do
about it. Once you finally get aboard, being the biggest guy on the boat has its
advantages.
