Pictures from Thailand

This isn’t a post about Thailand. I’m not about to show you all the tropical amazingness I found there. I’m going to talk about one person, and one camera.

I spent my first full week in Thailand on the beach on Tonsai Bay in Krabi (south of Bangkok and north of Phuket).  I got there on Christmas Day and left on New Years Day.  So many experiences, so many feelings, so many beautiful amazing memories.

I can be a bit careless about things sometimes, so I was extra careful to not lose my room key, wallet, camera, etc. However on my last night on the Island, New Years Eve, my camera managed to slip out of my awareness.

Throughout my week, I had made good friends with a man from New Zealand named Julz and he happened to be with me when I realized it was gone. I had to leave in a hurry to catch the boat that would take me to the car that would take me to the airport, and he reassured me he would ask around for it, never once worrying that he wouldn’t find it.

He found it.  And it wasn’t like here in the States where he just walked to the bar we were at and they checked their lost-and-found. No, this is third world island life. Julz walked to the bar we were at and asked about it every day, twice a day.  He switched bungalows to “apply added pressure” and lived at the bar’s resort for the rest of his stay there. He was finally handed my (broken) camera, pretty sure they’d already sold it and then had to get it back from the neighboring village.

By then though, I was North in Chiang Mai and he was still in Southern Thailand.  He lived in India and I lived in the US. He would be traveling but he would mail me my camera.

It’s been about a year since then.  He had left Thailand and moved back to Kashmir and was trying to stay alive. Julz, my friends, is a real-life-pirate hunter. He’s not chasing down people who pirate music online. He actually searches for actual pirates in the Middle Eastern seas and hunts them down.  

The last time I heard from him was June. I started doubting he was ever going to send it and by now, had resigned myself to stop thinking about it all together. He said he was going to send it but hadn’t. I trusted him but it wasn’t happening.

Then tonight, a box arrived.

Julz who’s been living in dangerous countries fighting pirates and Typhoid mailed me an entire box of presents from his travels, not the least of which was my long-lost camera.

I am blessed. And speechless. And GRATEFUL!