Just Like Gadyukino Village

;“Let’s head over to Tesco Lotus and grab some fish for lunch.”
;Tesco Lotus is a massive supermarket chain, tailored to the Thai market—hence the "Lotus" in the name. They sell absolutely everything there, from cookies to washing machines. You can buy fish for next to nothing, and they’ll even scale, clean, and fry it for you on the spot. Granted, Thai vendors make a point of not salting the fish, but that’s nothing a splash of fish sauce can’t fix. We are no longer intimidated by the fact that it's made from fermented anchovies; we just politely refer to them as "aged."
;Having promised our cat a "fish day," I climbed into the sidecar of our trusty tuk-tuk (a cargo bike outfitted with a bright red canopy), and we set off.
;Once inside the store, Sasha decided he needed a light bulb to illuminate his sheet music when playing the piano. Choosing the right one is serious business.
;“Go wander around for a bit,” he said, sending me on my way.
;Lured in by a massive discount, I bagged up a mountain of tomatoes and cucumbers, grabbed a loaf of bread, and ordered a long, ribbon-like fish from the ice display. On the price tag, it was listed as "long fish with a hairy tail." The young Thai clerk cleaned it for me but spent a long time trying to understand why on earth I wanted to keep the head and innards.
;“It’s for the cat,” I had to explain using a combination of words and hand gestures.
;Meanwhile, Sasha was still standing over the light bulbs with a deeply profound expression on his face. Finally, he picked the smallest and cheapest one.
;Exhausted from the "shopping trip" but satisfied, we headed outside. A small crowd of shoppers had already gathered under the awning, waiting out a sudden downpour.
;“Let’s wait it out a bit too,” Sasha said.
;As soon as the rain let up slightly, we sprinted to the parking lot. My husband fired up the bike, and we headed for home.
;“Do we need anything from Makro?” Sasha asked as we drove past another supermarket—the wholesale one.
;“No, forget it, let’s just get home. I’m starving. Looks like it’s starting to drizzle again anyway.”
;However, "getting home quickly" was not in the cards. Traffic suddenly ground to a halt, forming a massive gridlock.
;“What’s going on over there?” I asked, annoyed.
;We noticed some cars and bikes making U-turns. The rest just stood there, resigned to their fate.
;“Water,” Sasha realized. “The road is flooded... Well, we're stranded.”
;Big C, the next major supermarket, was only about fifty meters away. A slow procession of vehicles was creeping toward it.
;“We could pull into Big C and wait it out there. At least they have a restroom and a cafe.”
;“Or we could park the tuk-tuk in their lot and just walk home from there. It’s only a half-hour walk,” I suggested, weighing our options.
;“No way. Let's hang a left before Big C and try to break through along the beach road,” Sasha decided. “Strangely enough, it sits higher than the ring road.”
;Turning off, we tore through a palm grove. The skies opened up again, raining cats and dogs. We drove for quite a while, completely alone. Are we doing something wrong? Where is everyone?
;“We should have stayed at Big C,” Sasha muttered regretfully, steering along the unfamiliar route out of sheer inertia. “We should have just holed up there.”
;I looked back. Looming behind us was a massive cement mixer truck. Well, at least we weren’t the only crazy ones out here.
;“I’ll let him pass,” Sasha said, pulling over to the side.
;The truck roared past us. Behind it, a whole caravan of various cars and bikes suddenly materialized. Our solitude was over. Unfortunately, right at the turnoff to the beach road, the giant truck got stuck, trapping us in a brand-new traffic jam.
;“I shouldn't have let him pass,” Sasha grumbled. “We should have stayed ahead.”
;Eventually, the behemoth turned off, and the rest of the traffic gradually filtered onto the coastal road. But up ahead, cars were making awkward U-turns one by one. Soon enough, we saw why: instead of asphalt, a muddy lake stretched out before us, with several pickup trucks already stalled dead in the middle of it. The beach road, alas, was also underwater.
;Turning around, we joined the retreat. My dress had been soaked through a long time ago, and I was shivering, but I tried not to think about it.
;Our casual grocery run had officially morphed into a survival thriller. For two hours, we alternately dashed along with the frantic crowd or sat paralyzed in gridlock. We hit new water hazards, doubled back, cut through side streets, and took shortcuts through residential yards. Oncoming drivers would wave their arms wildly to signal that the road ahead was blocked, sending us into another panicked U-turn. And the rain just kept falling...
;“This isn't Thailand, it's some godforsaken, washed-out village!” Sasha swore. “Did we really travel this far just for this?!”
;By now, we were much further from home than we had been two hours ago when we walked out of Tesco Lotus. Worse still, we were completely lost and had no idea how to get back to the ring road.
;“I shouldn’t have turned off,” Sasha groaned. “We should have just stayed back there. What do we do? What do we do?!”
;Over and over, we made desperate turns, carefully navigating around cars that had flooded out and stalled in deep puddles.
;“How do we get back to the main loop?” Sasha wondered aloud.
;Suddenly, I spotted a sign.
;“Sasha, down there! It says Tesco Lotus!”
;We shot down a narrow side street.
;“Where on earth is the ring road? The intersection should have been blocks ago,” Sasha said anxiously.
;Finally, we spilled out onto the main loop, and a wave of relief washed over us. At least we knew where we were. Half an hour later, we reached... Tesco, which now looked as welcoming as home.
;“Well, should we hole up here?” Sasha asked.
;“No, let's keep going while traffic is still moving,” I replied, desperate to get as close to home as possible. “We can make it as far as Big C, and if things get bad, we'll stop there.”
;Incredibly, over the last two hours, the water had managed to recede somewhere, leaving only puddles where the worst flooding had been. An island is an island, after all—sooner or later, the water drains into the ocean. Here and there, utility trucks were already stationed, pumping the floodwaters away through thick, long hoses.
;Before we knew it, we were passing Makro again.
;“So, are you absolutely sure we don't need anything from Makro?” Sasha asked suddenly, completely nonchalant.
;I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.
;“What’s so funny?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
;It was literally Groundhog Day.
;Then Big C came into view.
;“Well, should we pull in?” Sasha offered.
;“No way, let's ride it out while we can,” I countered. “If worst comes to worst, we'll ditch the tuk-tuk and hoof it.”
;“What if the water is chest-deep?”
;“What difference does it make at this point?” I pointed out reasonably, soaked to the bone like a drowned rat.
;We finally reached the large Buddhist temple. This was the lowest point in the area; during past floods, locals had literally paddled through here in kayaks, and Thai kids splashed around in inflatable tubes.
;“No, let’s not turn here. Better to try the detour,” Sasha decided, pushing onward.
;But the detour was a bust—up ahead, the ring road had completely turned into a lake, forcing us to turn around along with the rest of the traffic.
;“Alright, come what may, I’m going to try to push past the temple,” my husband said with a wave of his hand. “If we get stuck there, at least we're within striking distance of home.”
;And he bravely plunged the bike straight into the lake, cutting through the waves. The water looked more terrifying than it actually was, and by keeping our speed up, we managed to plow through the obstacle without the engine dying.
;“Whew! That’s it!” we exhaled in unison, knowing the road went uphill from here. “Yes! We made it!!”
;Sitting on our porch was a very hungry Tigra, meowing righteously as if to say, Where on earth have you two been?
;“Alright, stop yelling. We went to the store and brought you some fish,” I comforted him, unlocking the door.
;“Yeah,” Sasha chuckled, shaking his head. “Talk about a quick run for a loaf of bread.”
;Koh Samui
November 2010