"God damnit Surat Thani!" I said to myself, as I waited in the hospital emergency room.

But lets back up a bit. My contract begins on March 1st, but classes don't until the 15th. What that means is complete insanity, as I get paid for knocking off to Southern Thailand. I'm due back on the 12th to do some planning and meetings, but until then... hello vacation. (Again)

I had planned on going down to Hat Yai, a largish city near the border to Malaysia, then popping on down to the border itself. I'm starting to reconsider, as apparently things are a little tense down there. They sometimes suspend train service (as in today), and even when they don't there are a lot of security checks and soldiers. But this could be outdated info, we'll see how it plays out.

Anyway, I took the overnight train and shared a cabin with Pravit. A nice fellow, he's a bank manager with a son who is studying English. He also pays a ton of money for his tutor, and wanted to hire me instead. In return, I can stay at his house for free. That'd be interesting... a live-in tutoring job. Anyway we exchanged info and kept in touch. He got off about an hour or two before me, while I was fast asleep. But he called later that day to see if I made it okay. (Aww). Being Thailand, the train was 2 hours late.

Seriously, Thailand. I can understand buses running late - you can't control other people on the road. But for god sakes, you're the railroad company. Everyone on the route is you. Get it together.

There's not much to do in Surat Thani. I saw a park on an island I wanted to visit (it's nice), then the City Pillar. Essentially that, it's this pretty temple clad in white. Also nice. The only other sight was the Monkey University. Yes, that's a thing.

See apparently, picking coconuts sucks. So they actually train monkeys to do it. They of course, ship them off to Monkey University to get their Bachelors of Coconology. (Or Coconomy?) The course is 6 months, and when you visit the nice lady puts on a show about how it's done. They're trained to first twist them, then bite the stem if that doesn't work. Afterwards I got to play with the smaller ones, which is AWESOME. Monkeys are cool. They just wanted to climb on me, and I fed them the coconut they harvested earlier. Which also, is the best coconut I've ever tasted.

My high monkey opinion (which would make a good band name) was shattered shortly after. On my way back, I stopped to eat lunch at a local place. They made a dynamite curry. Anyway at one point the owner comes out with his monkey. I guess monkeys are normal here? So we were chatting, and the monkey just decides to climb on me. Alright. The owner didn't seem to react. I kept eating while he sat on my shoulder and chilled. After a minute, he decided to leave. And as you do, jumped into my lap, screeched, bit me on the chest, and left.

The fuck? So I open my shirt, no blood, but it hurt quite a bit. The owner apologized and ran to put some antiseptic on it. Which honestly is the least you could do. So I left, and at first didn't think much of it. But I called the monkey guy at the school (yeah, I have a monkey guy), looked on the internet, and the overwhelming consensus was "Get it checked out".

God damnit Surat Thani. So I went to the hospital, where there are people with serious injuries. I felt like an idiot walking in and saying "So, a, uhhh... monkey bit me." But they had a doctor check it out, consult with his staff, and said "It's almost fine for sure, but we're going to give you a rabies vaccine to be safe."

Immediately I thought back to childhood, when rabies vaccines were 6 giant needles in the stomach. Apparently that's old skool. It's still a lot of needles, but small ones in the shoulder. Then my next thought is, this is going to cost a fortune. Turns out even though I need to go back for 4 follow up treatments, they're only about $13 each. Annoying, but god, can you imagine that in the US? I'll take Thailand's medical system, thank you.

Despite one asshole monkey, the others at the school were great. I took about 100 photos, and now's a good time to sort them. I'm on the road to Krabi, a beach town about 3 hours away. If there are any monkeys, I'm leaving.

You. Fuck you.