Sorry to back track but I realised that I had not put anything on my blog about the scorpion!\u00a0<\/p>\n
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So…. I was walking back to the Garden Village guesthouse (in Siem Reap if you didn’t guess from the title)\u00a0one night after going to the shop.\u00a0 It wasn’t crazily late but was late enough to be dark and the road was pebble-dashed with puddles from a heavy rain shower.\u00a0 As I trundled along in my flip-flops I kicked something.\u00a0 It felt slightly strange, like not really heavy enough to be a rock.\u00a0 So, I looked down only to see a rather large black scorpion angrily holding its pincers up to me and arching its tail in a slightly concerningly confrontational fashion.\u00a0 This scorpion, other than looking slightly perturbed to say the least, was about 5 inches long!\u00a0 I took a very wide berth and decided to watch my step slightly more carfeully for the remainder of the journey.\u00a0 When I got back to the guesthouse I told a few of the other residents about my ordeal.\u00a0 Dane, being the ever-weird Australian, was quite upset that firstly, these things never seem to happen to him and that secondly, I had not picked the scorpion up and brought it back to show him!<\/p>\n
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I have this thing where if I start thinking about an animal then anything I kick or step on worries me as I think it’s that animal.\u00a0 I do this a lot with snakes, like when you are walking along and kick a twig and it does that whole flying in a snake-like fashion for a split second thing before your brain says, “twig” and settles down.\u00a0 In the scorpion case I was obviously paranoid about kicking another scorpion while I was walking back.\u00a0 Oh, I didn’t mention that about 10 seconds after I managed to get past the scorpion a local man literally jumped out of a dark alley and shouted, “hello lady” at which point I screamed and did about five steps of run as he split his sides with laughter.\u00a0 Anyway, going back to the whole mind association thing, I thought this was completely normal but everyone at the guesthouse assured me that it was infact not and that I was a freak.\u00a0 I still don’t (want to) believe them!<\/p>\n
I’ve often thought that I should consider wearing trainers more when walking around at night.\u00a0 I thought this firstly when it rained and the roads were literally hopping with frogs.\u00a0 Ewww I can’t think of much worse, although I guess they might have a greater chance of not getting squished by a flip-flop rather than a trainer.<\/p>\n
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While I’m on the subject of nature and backtracking to things I have remembered that I forgot (it made sense in my head) I’ll tell you about the sensitive plant story.\u00a0 Actually I’m not entirely sure that I did forget this.\u00a0 Maybe I actually remembered and have now forgotten remembering having only remembered recently that I had forgotten when I had infact remembered.\u00a0 Wow, you could write philosophical logic about that one!\u00a0 Actually, thinking about it I’m pretty sure that I did forget to put it on my blog and that my memory is of telling someone else about it in Siem Reap.\u00a0 Anyway, the amazing story I want to tell you about, which you probably won’t find that amazing, is about sensitive plants.\u00a0 When I was growing up my grandmother (Granny Green – my father’s mother) was a very keen gardener.\u00a0 One of the plants she grew was a small\u00a0plant with green leaves\u00a0(yes I know most leaves are green) which kind or curled up\/ pressed next to each other when you touched them.\u00a0 She told us it was called “sensitive plant” and I remember being fascinated by it along with my brother Ben.\u00a0 i.e. he was fascinated by it too, not that I was fascinated by him, although actually he did fascinate me; like\u00a0the way he managed to do things like crack his head open all the time.\u00a0 Okay, I think this is going to be my last entry today as my digressions are now even paining me!\u00a0 So anyway, when I was in Laos there were these plants everywhere that looked just like sensitive plant.\u00a0 I kept touching them but to no avail.\u00a0 In hindsight I must have looked completely insane stroking plant leaves, watching them for a second and then looking all disappointed before slowly walking away.\u00a0 Anyway, so I get to four thousand Islands and I’m on dolphin beach with Nora.\u00a0\u00a0 I spy another “sensitive plant” type plant and begin to tell her the story of how I had been touching endless plants in the small hope that they would curl their leaves up for me.\u00a0 As I got part of the way through the story I touched a plant and it WAS a sensitive plant.\u00a0 It was SOOOO cool and she was excited by it too.\u00a0 After that point I have found a lot of sensitive plants, including at the temples in Angkor but the first time was the best, as they say!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sorry to back track but I realised that I had not put anything on my blog about the scorpion!\u00a0 \u00a0 So…. I was walking back to the Garden Village guesthouse (in Siem Reap if you didn’t guess from the title)\u00a0one night after going to the shop.\u00a0 It wasn’t crazily late but was late enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}