| . |
 |
 |
| . |
 |
 |
| related links |
| related links |
| The Wanderyears.net is proud to be supported by Lowe Alpine - makers of high quality outdoor equipment. Click logo to visit their site |
|
| this image: Ko Phi Phi |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Thailand is not a country I planned to stay in for long, but of course it didn’t quite work out that way. I was due to meet Matt, friend and former work mate from Herm Island, who was out on a pre-Christmas holiday.
I have travelled the country a little bit on previous trips, and with Thailand being so well covered now, it was a good chance for me to take a break from thinking about this website, and get some beach time. I was having a holiday. We wasted no time in getting out of Bangkok, and blazed a trail (actually, a very well trodden trail) south west for Krabi, from where a boat would whisk us across the sea to Ko Phi Phi (Ko means island, and Phi is pronounced as P – thus Ko P P). Despite peak season, we quickly found a place to stay – though it ain’t cheap. The days of low-cost sleeps in this country are over, at least in areas where everybody wants to be. |
| Phi Phi is a truly beautiful island, and along with the surrounding archipelago, has everything the most demanding tropical beach junkie could wish for. First impressions can be less than complimentary. On arriving at the little harbour, we are greeted by the usual mob of touts as we navigate the narrow passageways between shops, full of the customary tourist clutter. There are countless “production line” dive outfits, which employ westerners to stand around and drag new arrivals off the street. Amid the usual pirate DVD’s, Billabong boardie knock-offs, tattoo artist’s and pizza joints (everything a modern backpack needs), you could be forgiven for thinking the boat has dropped you off back in Bangkok. Thankfully, a short ride on a long-tail boat gets you to one of the other bays where development is low-key or non-existent. We chose Long Beach – it is a pleasant bay with deep water at all tides, has the cheapest accommodation and is close enough to make a trip into town not too much effort. It is possible to walk to civilization through the bush, though the track can be perilous and is not recommended at night. At low tide, you can get around the coast from one beach to another. Otherwise, it is a long-tail taxi, which will cost 80 baht/100 baht day/night each journey. When accommodation is three hundred each night, in comparison you do not want to be riding water taxi’s back and forth too much. |
| Daytimes were filled with beach, hiking, snorkelling, beach, and fishing. When the sun went down, the bars began to fill. I had one or two favourites, but I was surprised to at how relatively empty many of them were. I think part of the problem is that there are just too many bars and restaurants for beds available on the island. Nevertheless, it is peak season, as everyone keeps reminding me, and the beach or village are not nearly as hectic as some would have us believe. Ko Phi Phi was among Thailand’s hardest hit during the 2005 Tsunami. The evidence is still around, though the Thai spirit has got things up and running again quite quickly – you will not see anyone moping around feeling sorry for themselves. The little town occupies a narrow strip of land between two beaches, and lies at sea level – the swell rushed right over the lot, taking many buildings and lives with it. In the centre, some restaurants have a line up near the roof that marks the water level. I spoke with many that had lost their business. Ute, our fishing guide, explained the boat situation. “There were twice as many boats before the wave; now I have to share this one with two others. We each have it for a day to earn a living”. The number of fatalities here may seem insignificant in comparison to the losses suffered by Indonesia, but this is a small community, and of course, any loss of life is a tragedy for those involved. Nevertheless, Thailand goes on, and rebuilding is 90% complete. There is now an early warning system installed, along with some confusing signs marking an escape route to high ground – I would not want to be one of several thousand running along those narrow paths. |
| After Matt had left, I went through a difficult time that would stay with me on and off for the rest of my time in the country. Firstly, and rather inconveniently, I went down with tonsillitis. This is especially annoying when I do not even have any tonsils – I had them fetched out a few years ago. I have suffered from this before, and it seems to get worse every time. As the days go by, it gets harder to eat or drink and I get weaker and more miserable. There was nothing to do but lie down and wait to die. Things could not get much worse.
It was a mistake to think that –because they can, and did. I woke with a start at something like three AM, with intense pain in my neck. I often wake during a particularly lively dream, and so I cursed myself and lay back down. You know how it is; the first few seconds after waking are always a bit blurry. Now awake, the pain was getting worse; something was on my neck. I grabbed a blanket and clamped it tight over the painful area; whatever it was, I needed to catch the thing in case it was poisonous. I sat for a while, not sure what to do. I whimpered a pathetic call for help, but neighbours were either sound asleep or still out partying. I could feel the cool sensation of the venom working its way through my veins, down my arm and the entire right side of my body to the leg. I couldn’t sit here any longer, I needed to find help. I headed for the beach, hoping to find a local. Instead, I found a couple of dope-heads sat outside their bungalow; and I will say this – I have never been so happy to bump into a couple of hippies. I garbled out an explanation – “Far out man”, and asked them to watch carefully as I peeled the blanket away. We needed to see the thing, but I was wary of agitating it and causing it to bite again. “Yeah man, no worries”. The blanket slowly came away. “Wow man, you’ve been bitten” they observed with astounding astuteness. “I f***ing know that, what is it”? Whatever it was, it had made good its escape. At that moment, I felt definite movement on my back, under my T-shirt. I carefully peeled it off, and my hippy friends immediately started freaking out, which did little to calm my nerves. I am laughing now, as I write, at the sight of three grown men screaming like girls, one wearing only his underpants. I would have laughed then, if I wasn’t so shit scared. |
| I launched into a dance routine that would put Michael Jackson to shame, and it fell to their feet and scuttled away. It was time for them to dance; “Maaaan, Whooaa, I hope it doesn’t go in our bungalow”. Quite frankly, I didn’t care where it was going, as long as it was away from me. It was a giant Centipede, and not a very friendly one at that. I had all the information I needed, thanked my new longhaired friends for their brave assistance “Yeah man, its cool” and loped off to find local advice. I did not think these things were dangerous, but the increasing numbness in my body was cause for concern. I found help, and it came in the form of a slice of lime. “Vely few piple reac to bite”, he assured me. “It hurt for twelve hour, put lime on bite”.
I returned to my bed and, after a check for critters, which would become my nightly routine, lay down feeling rather sorry for myself. But at least I had forgotten all about my tonsillitis for the last hour. |
| You cannot keep a Timo down for too long, and in the days leading up to Christmas I could feel myself getting better. I had been joined by Joseph, my fellow adventurer from that night on the Great Wall of China. By Christmas Eve, I was fit enough for a few beers, and I rather felt I had earned them too. The next few days were filled with more snorkelling and hiking and fishing, and a trip out to Ko Phi Phi Leh – the famous island used as a set for that cult backpacker movie, The Beach.
I don’t know why Leonardo De Cappucceno had to swim there, because we hired a boat with no effort at all. He must be really stupid. I must admit, I was a little bit excited about going, I had spent the last two weeks looking out at its iconic shape and I do confess to quite liking the film, especially the French girl. Our boat passed through a narrow gap in the sheer sided cliffs and into a bay. Coming early, we had thought, was the solution to beating the crowds. For once, this theory had proved right – but it was not just the tourists that hadn’t turned up; the sea had gone too, it was low tide. I never really worked out how it is so, but in the tropics, a high tide gives the classic aqua marine water, yet when low, a sludgy and rather smelly mess, and that does not fit in with anybodies image of The Beach. What is more, there was not a French woman in sight. Our boat grounded a long way from shore, and we had to walk inland. Leonardo never had to suffer such an indignity. |
| I have to say, the rest of the experience did not get a whole lot better; we had to pay a large fee to land on the island, and “the beach” did not actually look anything like “the beach”. Somebody in Hollywood either had the use of a large and complex computer, or hallucinogenic drugs.
Things did, however, get a whole lot better when we continued our boat trip around the coast. We passed a couple of communities who live in makeshift homes, built from bamboo poles and clinging precariously to the cliffs. They live here to harvest the Cave Swift nests, which fetch a high price in cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore for birds’ nest soup. The men in this business scale heights that would leave most of us feeling giddy, with no ropes or safety gear. Further on, we entered a lagoon that really did fulfil my image of tropical nirvana. Too shallow for any vessel larger than a long tail, there were only a few boats inside. We passed through a narrow gap, to reveal a lagoon with water so clear it felt like our boat was flying. In places, a narrow strip of brilliant white sand, and all around sheer cliffs climb straight up two hundred metres. Spending time in here was, personally, the only real reason to visit Phi Phi Leh. You can keep The Beach. |
| With Christmas out of the way, I made a daylong dash to the east by boat, taxi, bus, taxi, boat and taxi, and ended up on popular Ko Samui. Sitting in the Gulf of Thailand, the weather on this side had been a little bit temperamental, but I was on a mission to catch up with some old friends for New Years Eve. I used to work with Martin; he was the shepherd on an estate where I was gamekeeper for three years. Along with his partner Steph, they are nearing the end of a round-world adventure. Gary and Jessica completed our team for a long night of silliness and dodging low flying fireworks. The beachfront was packed with revellers, every bar and restaurant laying on the music and fireworks, for several kilometres of Ko Samui’s coastline. Doing brisk trade were the guys selling fire-lanterns, the red paper things heated with a flame that rise up into the sky – multiply these several thousand times over and you have the most spectacular sight of a night sky filled with glowing red dots. The fireworks, however, were to be avoided. Any idiot could buy a range of weaponry from the corner shop; the size of the rockets would have even President Bush trembling with excitement. As Martin pointed out, being the confirmed Pyromaniac among us, but nonetheless a safe one (such a thing?), people were setting these things up wrongly and too close to the crowds. Consequently, they often flew directly into the people with a spectacular and frightening low-level explosion; I cannot believe somebody somewhere did not die that night. It was a crazy scene. |
| With all that out of the way, people quickly filtered away to resume their individual trips, I said goodbye to my friends and settled down for a week of catching up with writing and being depressed. I rented a cheap bungalow on a quiet beach, far from anywhere where I could not get distracted from the task. |
| Over the last few weeks, on and off, I have been through some weird times. Getting ill had not helped, but there was an underlying problem niggling away at me. And I didn’t know what it was, exactly. I do not really know if you could call it depression as such, but certainly, I went through periods of feeling low and deflated, anti-social and with total loss of enthusiasm for the journey. I even considered going home at one point. For one thing, I was a bit bored of Thailand and the party scene, even though I was “on holiday”. It is nothing like travel, and I was feeling like the wheels had fallen off my trip. In addition, I was being plagued by scarily vivid nightmares, so realistic they kept me up all night. This made me lethargic by day, as soon as I tried to write I nodded off. I was getting nothing useful done. Speaking to a doctor, we agreed the likely culprit; the Larium anti-malarials I have been taking are known to cause these side effects in some folk. I have used them before over a shorter period, with no problem apart from the weird dreams, but now I suspect the stuff is building up in me. One thing was for sure though; I had to take some action to improve my overall frame of mind. I decided to keep up the drugs a bit longer, for catching Malaria in Indonesia would be no pick nick, but pack up my gear and get moving; it was time for a new country and some new experiences. I was sure that part of my problem was that I had been stagnating too long without a real cause, for I am not always so good at relaxing. The self-imposed isolation had caused me to meet nobody interesting lately, for the only other guests were the usual old European men with their eighteen-year-old Thai girls. It is not a pleasant sight, at least now, maybe when I get to sixty I will get one myself.
Being on a boat with my backpack, going somewhere, was like a shot in the arm. Almost straight away, I felt much better, and I was determined to leave behind my problems and get the show back on the road. I was heading south to Malaysia, to stay with an old friend, from where I could concentrate on organising the upcoming challenge of crossing Indonesia and getting a boat to Australia. Funny, I have had much fun in Thailand before, but this time it wasn’t to be. I enjoyed catching up with friends, some great seafood and frolics in the sea, and plenty of moments to be happy about, but overall – I was glad to be moving on. Some time later, I heard that Martin had finally decided to make an honest woman of Steph, and asked her to get hitched. They have been together about eight years and I guess Martin thought the trial run had been sufficient now. To you guys, you make a great couple, and I wish you all the luck in the world (and Steph, you have the patients of a saint)! |
| Don't forget - another country means an updated country profile page |
| Joseph, I know you are gonna hate me for this.... but it was just too good not to use! I hope you got home safely.... |
| ......as always.... hover your pointer over image for description |