#2170 the hat story

One of my favorite things about Thailand was how nice the people were. Polite, civil, friendly, always smiling, quick with a joke: everyone we encountered was wonderful. Let me give you an example.

On Valentine's Day, MT bought me a straw hat from the gift shop at the hotel in Krabi. (I had a hat with me, but it was so floppy that I couldn't see and it bugged me.) I thought the new hat was cute and fun and it made me feel a little sassy.

The very next day after I got the hat, we went out to Krabi Town for an excursion. I took the hat with me because we were going to be outside all day and I wanted the protection from the hot hot sun. While we were admiring the mangroves along the river, a gust of wind yanked my fancy hat right out of my hands. The hat tumbled along the sidewalk and became lodged under a long stage that had been set up for a festival that had been held the night before.

Our cute guide, whose name I unfortunately either can't remember or never knew, offered to shimmy under the stage and retrieve the hat, but there was no way we were going to have him do that. I just wrote the hat off as easy-come-easy-go. I was bummed about it and disappointed with myself for not keeping a firmer grip on the hat, but the windy gusted unexpectedly.

Why wasn't I wearing the hat, you may be asking? Because the wind was gusting unexpectedly and it had come loose from my head a couple of times, so I was just carrying it.

Fast forward three days. We are leaving Krabi to go to Phuket and our guide (a different person but the same tour company) meets us at the pier. She says to me, "I have a gift for you!" I'm excited because who doesn't like a gift? We get to the van and she hands me the hat that I thought was lost! I guess the guide had gone back later and retrieved it somehow. Isn't that the nicest thing? I couldn't believe it! I teared up a little at how thoughtful and kind the kid had been to remember the hat and make an effort to go get it.

I wore the hat a little bit, but I had replaced it with a hat that had a strap that wouldn't blow away. When it came time to leave Thailand, I almost didn't bring the sassy straw hat home because I'd have to carry it and/or wear it on the plane. In the end, I couldn't leave it behind because it had a second life. So I carefully toted it home, keeping it mostly uncrumpled along the way.

Until we got to San Francisco, that is. I had to put it in the bin to go through the x-ray scanner and somehow it fell out of the bin and got crumpled in the machine. I saved it and tried to straighten it out, but it's a little worse for wear now. 

 I still like it though! I'm pretty sure I'll wear it this summer during volunteer time.