Far-fetched reunion

So my first trip to Thailand (and first time abroad) was in Nov/Dec 2003 with Brad for about 6 weeks. Part of that time was spent up north near Chiang Mai practicing buddhist meditation at a wat (temple); the remainder was spent rock-climbing in the area where we are now near Krabi. It can be a bit of a scene, with all the physically honed bodies of visiting climbers and the end-of-the-day imbibing and socializing that usually goes along with that. I remember being much more interested in spending my non-climbing time with Thai people vs other western tourists and/or climbers. And as a result, I got close to several Thai people who live in this area. I stayed in touch with only one, Lee, but for a very short period of time via email (her first encounter with such, as I got her lined out with a hotmail account before leaving). Marrie and I had no definate plans to include this particular part of Thailand where I climbed all those years ago in our route. But once we arrived in Krabi (a hub for accessing some of the islands of the andamen sea), it was hard to resist revisiting this place that I had such fond memories of. And I had foresight enough before leaving home for this trip to load some pics of the friends I made in 2003 just in case the opportunity was there to seek them out.

So despite no contact in over 9 years, no email/phone number (Lee had long since let her hotmail account lapse. And to this day does not email still!), certainly no social media/facebook...with just the pictures on my phone (9 years old mind you) and a rudimentary (at best) use of spoken Thai...it took just 2 days of travelling/asking around, going from one little town, finding someone who recognized one or more of my Thai friends, getting further clues to follow up on, going to the next little neighboring town, showing the same pictures to different people, getting stronger responses of recognition (indicating that we were getting 'warmer')...until at last we knew we had to be close as the directions being given were with body language (ie pointing) vs spoken language. And a couple of Thai fellows told us to follow them and rode a short distance to where we found Lee at her house...who seemed to recognize me right away and genuinely happy to see me.

I thought it was a longshot at best when we undertook the mission, had no expectations to locate anyone. Marrie likes a good search and a good human-interest story better than most, and so made the perfect accomplice in the mission. Lee married an American climber in 2004 and has a 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter. We all had dinner together the following night and Eleanor was a very well-mannered guest and very interested in playing with the older kids. All in all, a pretty satisfying mission accomplished!