Motorbikes and finding Mikes
The blue skies here are just amazing as the sun sets it makes me wonder if the locals takes these things for granted or if they too think them beautiful everyday.
It has only now started the long and sunny days associated with the dry season here in Thailand. Well long as in 12 hours long. No daylight savings here and there doesn’t seem to be much point to have it. The sun rises at six and sets at six and in between you have 12 wonderful hot hours, especially midday! The Thai people don’t like the sun at all. Long sleeves and umbrellas and always hiding in the shade. From a tourist’s point of view this is strange behavior. The beaches are only covered with white bodies trying to get brown. But then again where is the incentive for the Thai people. For them the whiter the skin the more beautiful. It’s quite funny how it is the reverse. Everyone IS brown so to have whiter skin is like a tan is to us.
When the sun sets at 6 you are quite thankful as you can cram a lot into a day when the temperature is 32–35 deg. Even sitting in the shade counts as doing something. On our last days on Koh Phi Phi we managed to squeeze in a few hours on the beach. We went diving off Koh Phi Phi Lae. This was Mel’s and mine first real dive together, where we didn’t have to do silly exercises and could enjoy the diving for what it was. It was wonderful. The first dive was a wall dive. Koh Phi Phi Lae has sheer rock cliffs that just drop into the ocean. We followed the east side of the island around from one bay to the next. It was absolutely amazing to be 20 metres under water and to look up to see waves crashing on the cliffs. We spotted a couple of moray eels, thousands of tropical fish of various varieties. Clown fish, angel fish, jelly fish, butterfly fish, chocolate fish, tinned tuna, you name it we saw it. But the highlight of the whole dive and one of the most amazing experiences in my life was an 8 foot leopard shark that swam right by us. WOW! It looked ever so graceful. You see sharks in pictures but to be right there with one in real life!!!!! For those family members reading this and thinking either “Oh god it could have eaten him!”, or “Oh damn it didn’t eat him” then don’t worry they have no teeth. We swam around the cliff for a bit longer and when out of air we surfaced and went to Maya Bay for lunch. Now Maya bay is where they filmed “The Beach” and unfortunately it looked nothing like the beach in the movie. Apparently they shipped in tonnes of sand and palm trees for the movie and then just ripped them all out at the end. The bay itself is just magical. Blue waters and unfortunately you got the feeling there was more coral in the waters about 2 years ago before the tourists came. Mel and I explored the bay with our snorkels during lunch. The second dive was great too. We swam through an underwater cave. You don’t realise how noisy it is underwater until you go into a cave or something then there is just silence. There were schools of fish in the cave and we literally had to swim through them. You could see the expression on their faces. It was almost like they were hanging out and chatting or doing what ever fish do, and then suddenly they looked at us the same way you would look at a fish that just floated through your living room with scuba gear on. Or it was just like in the movies where the outlaw walks into the saloon and the music stops and everyone stares mouths open wide.
The next day we said good bye to Koh Phi Phi and we went over to the pier to catch a ferry across to Koh Lanta, yet another island. We got the the ferry nice and early and when it arrived we watched the thousands of tourists push and queue to get on the boat. Mel and I just sat and watched eating our pineapple and sipping our drinks. What is it that makes people feel compulsed to queue in line for hours on end. 30 minutes later once everyone was on Mel and I got up from our seats and walked straight onto the boat, and as we were last to get on our bags were on top of the bag pile so we were first to get off.
Koh Lanta is a completely different island. Well it’s got beaches just like the other islands but here the tourists are definitely outnumbered by locals. We decided on some bungalows while on the ferry and squeezed into the back of a ute cab that was heading there. The roads consisted of dust and rocks and the driver seemed to be aiming for the potholes. The roads went from bad to worse and at one point we were climbing a rock cliff face at .5 km per hour. We went to these bungalows under the pretense that if we didn’t like them the owners would drive us to anywhere we wanted to go. We were just glad to be somewhere. The bungalows were simple simulation thatch huts with a wooden mattress. No I am not kidding about the wooden mattress. A genuine bonefide mattress with flower patterns and all but with two bits of wood inside that presumably had some kind of soft stuff in between them. We were also fortunate to arrive on the night of the “Resort’s” bar opening night. This consisted on the music being turned up so loud the whole beach could hear and the resort owner letting off a few rounds from his gun (into the air we hoped). The next day Mel and I walked to the other end of the beach to the “Waterfall” resort. When we left the owners made us feel really bad and didn’t even say goodbye, which was a shame because we actually wanted to go back there for dinner and drinks now and then but once we left we didn’t want to risk getting poisoned or being accidentally shot by the owner celebrating the 2nd or 3rd night of the bar.
On our second day we just sat in hammocks and read books. Really hard stuff. We did some snorkeling and managed to find some fish. We almost swam into a couple of cuttle fish, man those are ugly fish. The Waterfall resort is just wonderful. Simple but we live in a coconut grove where everywhere you look is monkeys or giant lizards or other wild life.
The next day we wandered out of our resort and down the road/mountain terrain. After 30 minutes of walking/climbing we came across a village and decided that walking in the midday sun is not such a good idea. We stopped and bought some pineapple and decided to rent a motor bike for the rest of the day. And it wasn’t even my idea. I just want to make that absolutely clear that it wasn’t me who suggested we rent a bike. Anyway after a brief instruction from the shop owner on how to ride one which involved him showing me where the horn was we were off. Well we were off after I asked where the gears were. But no worries after three hills and almost riding off a hill into the jungle I had the hang of the bike and Mel definitely had a good hang on me. Needless to say we didn’t fall off. Well I didn’t. After doing a wheelie up a hill I looked around to see Mel standing as far away from the bike as she could get. As impressive as my wheelie was it was purely by accident and I learnt not to kick the bike into first gear while going up a hill full throttle. Eventually we found some flat paved roads that lulled us into a false sense of security. Mel became official speedometer and pothole and hill spotter. I should design an automated Mel for every car or bike. The constant “arrgh slow down” and “Lookout for the hill” and “There’s a chicken” worked wonders on my bike skills. It could be a tactile thing too. Your seat grips you harder the faster you go and every time you you hit a pothole these paddles mounted on the side slap you. On the ride home I navigated the roads like a pro.
We stopped off at “Tiger Cave” where there are some caves but no tiger. Well we didn’t actually find the cave. We wandered down the trail and wound up in someone’s back yard. We dropped the bike back, after visiting a couple of beaches and having a game of soccer on one, scratch free (both the bike and us). That night we had dinner at the restaurant at the resort but as the restaurant was full we found ourselves relegated to a table on the beach. It was nice. We watched the waves come up the beach and by the time we had finished dinner they were breaking on the other side of our table. It was so nice to be sitting in the surf eating dinner by lamp light. The moon was up and stars abound in the sky.
The next day we stepped into the twilight zone. We had been putting off a walk into the national park south off us because it was an hour walk but it was the only place on the island where you could get cell phone reception. We wandered 5 minutes from the resort on the way when at a rather hairy river crossing we spied another foreign couple coming the other way on bike. I said hello and the guy asked where the waterfall around here was. I took off my sunglasses and realised it was Mike who I studied computers with 6 years ago. Mike had moved to London 5 years ago and since then we lost contact. We kind of stared blankly at each other for a few minutes and then sat down at a small shop for a coke. It was odd because I was going to look Mike up when I got to the UK and Mike and his wife Carole were leaving London and were on the way to New Zealand also looking forward to looking me up. They even arrive in NZ the same day we arrive in London. Mel and I worked out the odds on us bumping into each other and it worked out to be a 1 in 420,000,000 chance. The next day Mel and I moved to their Bungalows and we caught up on 5 years or so. We went out for drinks to the “Reggae Bar”, a great bar where you can sit outside on cushions. The toilet there has resident chickens, its kinda spooky. We wondered if you selected the chicken you wanted for dinner. Man it still hasn’t sunk in how bizarre that was. A dirt road in the middle of Thailand and there is Mike and Carole. Since then we have traveled to Trang together and Mike and Carole have continued on to Malaysia. Life never fails to surprise me.
Well Mel and I are both in Trang now. A very non-touristy place. In fact we are stared at by all the locals as a bit of a novelty. There isn’t much to do here but it was the closest place with a train line heading for Bangkok. We will be leaving the beaches in a couple of days to head for northern Thailand. There is only so much you can take of beaches and sun. I will write again soon so next time you don’t have to wade through four pages of trash. It will only be two pages of trash.
See ya
V
PS Mel is no longer official spell checker as I just ran a Hotmail spell check and it picked up on 175 words spelt wrong that Mel missed. Perhaps I should just learn to a) spell and b) hit the keys properly.