Moped Troubles

Why did the mosquito cross the road? To get to the giant dinosaur lizard and the monkey on the other side. To you, this might sound like a joke, but to motorcyclists in Koh land this is reality. On Koh Lanta, we decided to rent mopeds, which might have been the best or worst decision we ever made. You can see many people zooming around on mopeds. It can't be that hard, we thought. After about 10 minutes of inevitable struggling trying to turn them on, we were off, sort of. It took a while to get used to driving on the other side of the road, but we got it eventually. We passed sandy beaches and restaurants. We went up a steep hill and the moped was lurching, but we just figured it was because there were two people on it. To our horror, when going up the next hill the moped stopped and wouldn't turn on. We had no clue what was happening, but we just hoped we were out of gas. My mom and I stayed on the top of the grassy hill while my dad and brother went and got gas. We had passed the gas place before. They were mostly a handmade, crooked, wooden shelf with clear glass bottles full of gas. There was a hand painted sign over the shelf. If the sign wasn’t there, you would assume it was some sort of alcohol, or apple juice. A round of Bacardi gold, anyone? We peered into the gas tank to see it was bone dry. Apparently the rental place gave our mopeds to us with empty gas tanks. Beep, beep—many troubles ahead!