Zofona > Zofona Seoul > Stories: English and Dutch > Our Korea stories > March 10: 2003

March 10: 2003

our holiday
Monday, March 10

This time a weekstory written by Christina. It’s more a holiday story anyway.
As you all know we went to Thailand for the month of February. It was a very nice holiday and we saw a lot of new things although it was our fourth time visiting Thailand. We rented a car and drove via Cha’am/Hua Hin, Chumpon and Krabi to Phuket. It was a nice trip also for our son Yde because we drove maximum 250 km at a time. We arrived always in the afternoon with lots of time for him to play before bedtime. Of course we ran into a police officer 5 minutes after we left Bangkok, because that is almost a rule during our holidays. This time we were following other cars entering a toll-way when a police officer stopped us. He told us we had done something wrong and we’d have to pay him 1000 bath (approx. 25 USD). Fortunately Jitze had asked the man from the rental company about traffic fines and this man had told him the maximum fine is 400 bath. We had done the same things as the other drivers in front of us and also the fine of 1000 bath was out of proportion so we asked the police officer to fill out his forms so we could take them to the police office. He said that we had to pay money to him otherwise Jitze did not get his driving license back. Well, that was looking like the old days in Kazakhstan. So Jitze told him he could keep the license and we would pick it up at the police station the moment we arrived in Bangkok again. The police officer finaly realized that we were not willing to pay him so he gave back Jitze’s driving license and our holiday began. The rest of our holiday was filled with sun, sea, tasty food, a drunken newly wed swedish guy named Pjetter who happened to be a bird watcher, a band in a hotelbar with a lead singer who liked to speak to Jitze in difficult-to-understand english, free cocktails on Valentines day, a Japanese lunch with the food&beverages manager before we left the Pavillion Queens Bay hotel in Krabi (he was dutch), the kind internet woman on Phuket Island who also did our laundry, the salesmen and –women at the beach who were entertained by our private clown YDE so they forgot to sell their products, the man from the beach restaurant who liked to talk about life and the lessons of Buddah and of course the brown dog who kept Jitze company while he was drinking large Singha’s on the beach in Cha’am.
On the 28th we went home to South Korea with a little boy who suffered from diarrhoea (we found out on the plain) and after our arrival one of our suitcases was missing. The belt had stopped with a few suitcases left on it and after thirty minutes, at the moment Jitze decided to fill out the missing lugage forms, our suitcase appeared on the belt. We took our belongings and we drove home where Lilly was waiting for us with supper and a homemade applepie. Even our diabetic cat Boy seemed to be happy when we came home and we were happy that he was still alive. It’s always nice to be home again.
Next time a South-Korea weekstory as usual,

Jitze, Christina and Yde