My boyfriend and I named the gecko: Lumphini—Lump for short.
I don’t actually have a boyfriend, but to cancel my friend’s room reservation and share my room (cheaper), that’s what he told the front desk staff at Dream Valley Resort in Ton Sai. He figured they’d be more accommodating. It worked. I guess they’re suckers for young love.
He was pretty nonplussed when I told him we had a gecko sharing the room with us. I’d been waiting to name the little guy until he arrived. It felt like a room christening. “What should we call him?” I asked. He told me about a park in Bangkok near where he’d stayed called Lumphini park. It had giant lizards. Seemed fitting. So “Lumphini the gecko” it was.
My first thought had been to name him Benny, but I guess Lumphini was better. Calling him Lump for short is a nice compromise, as though I’m in a real relationship. I don’t even know what that means anymore…I think, in fact, that my relationship with Lump will be longer than most of my relationships of the heartstring-pulling variety.
Speaking of lizards, I saw a giant one on the beach by Sunset Island where I went deep water soloing the other day. We’re talking 2-feet-long, and legs that move like choo-choo train wheels—first up, then forward, then back, as though it were rolling its shoulders with each step. It was slow and creeping and beautiful. Apparently they move really fast when they want to, which the guy who went into the bush to pee found out when one darted in front of him.
I saw my first monkey the other day, too. Well, my first four monkeys. They were swinging from the trees above me as I walked back from the beach in the morning to my bungalow. They climbed across the cables in the air, looking menacingly at me. I didn’t walk under them. I heard they can be mean, but maybe that’s just on Koh Phi Phi island, and if I was a monkey that lived on an island as abused by tourists as Koh Phi Phi, I might be mean too.
Razor sharp teeth were enough to keep me at a good distance, but they didn’t bother me. And, Laura, haven’t you always wanted a mon-KEY? That’s a joke I remember from highschool with a friend I haven’t seen in about a decade. But I’m glad I finally get to write it. It makes no sense to anyone else. I think it’s either from Clone High the television show, or the Barenaked Ladies song, or some movie that I pretended I knew but never did. I’m much cooler now than I was in highschool…maybe.
Why, no, I haven’t always wanted a monkey, but I was awfully tickled to see four swinging above, their long, straight tails more like an angry dog’s than a soft, friendly kitten’s.
I was also happy I wasn’t the one who found the scorpion in the changerooms by the swimming pool by the bungalows of the Dream Valley Resort. And that I didn’t have to shoo away the monkey that invaded the same resort at breakfast with a big broom (the shoo-er had the broom, not the monkey…).
Speaking of breakfast…more on the food to come.