CIEE Security Guard (hired to be at the office at night), roughly 7pm: "Can I go to my older brother's house to help him process his rice tonight? I'll be back at 9:30pm."

Lara and me: "Sure, can I come?"

Six or seven villages and two meals later, I am sitting on the floor with the security guard, 2 or 3 cross-dressing go-go dancers (not sure about one of them), a large family, a gay 22-year-old neighbor, and a man who unconditionally refuses to comprehend anything that I say in Thai, even though the only thing he can effectively communicate in English is the word "baby". It is now that I learn that the security guard has already had 6 (20-oz.) bottles of beer and a quarter bottle of rice whiskey today.

9:45pm rolls around, and we begin to think about going into the rice fields. Eventually, we are throwing bales of dried, harvested sticky rice wrapped in bamboo ties into a large truck, or basically a portable rice mill. Extremely fun for the 4-7 minutes that I got to help. But I am exhausted and want to go home to sleep.

Two beers, one shot of whiskey, one very sensual same-sex "I love you," 17 "I have to go back to the office now"s and 4-600 "baby"s later, I am riding on a motorcycle with a falling-down-drunk security guard, and we safely return to the office by midnight.

That is the story of how I got kidnapped.