Barking at shovels

Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 19:30:34 -0800 (PST)
From: colin roald 

Well, I've bounced back and forth across Phang Nga Bay a couple of times, but I've finally found the little island beach "resort" I'd been looking for, with friendly hosts, cheap bungalows ($5/night), a tiki bar and a volleyball net. Have done a lot of travelling in the last few days, since leaving Penang, through beautiful country -- turquoise waters and sheer-sided green limestone cliffs -- and by a ridiculous number of different means.

Let's see:
- a trishaw (bicycle rickshaw) from my Penang hotel to the dock
- harbour ferry across the channel
- train to Phattalung, Thailand
- songthaew (kind of a Thai microbus -- the Geo Metro of minivans) to bus stop
- air-conditioned Greyhound-style coach to Krabi
- moto to hotel
- songthaew to Ao Nang beach
- longtail boat from beach a couple hundred yards out to the express boat. A longtail is a narrow wooden boat about 20-30 feet long, with a very distinctive kind of outboard motor -- it looks a lot like a small car engine mounted on a pivot at the stern, with a 10-foot driveshaft sticking straight out the back to the propellor. The engine and the shaft all swivel as one unit, and the propellor can be lifted entirely out of the water, making it easy to maneuver in shallow water.
- express ferry 2 1/2 hours across Phang Nga bay to Phuket
- largish Toyota minivan from Phuket pier across the island to Patong Beach -- tourist central, then back the next day.
- another express ferry, 1 1/2 hours back to Ko Phi Phi in the middle of Phang Nga bay
- another express ferry, 1 1/2 hours southeast to Ko Lanta.
- pickup truck across rough back roads down to Nice Beach.

I'm going to try to sit still for a few days now, I think.

All of these places are beautiful. Patong is very built up, with ritzy hotels for package tours, and a large calm bay for jetskiing and parasailing. I was in the mood for something a little quieter, though, so I tried Ko Phi Phi. The place is just stunningly beautiful, with cliffs overlooking a small beach village and reefs with thousands of tropical fish that you can just swim out to from the beach. I spent a few hours snorkelling yesterday, and saw tropical fish of all descriptions -- it was like swimming in an aquarium. A couple of times large schools swam through me (if you see what I mean). I saw tiny fish and big fat fish and neon blue and green and yellow fish and striped fish and spotted fish and long skinny torpedo-like fish and tall thin sail-like fish, and huge sea urchins and scallops and starfish and sea cucumbers and a sea snake, and probably some other things I've forgotten. It was stunning.

The price I paid is that I forgot to reapply my suntan lotion often enough, and now my back is toasted as crispy as it's been in years. Am going through a lot of aspirin and aloe vera today.

Ko Phi Phi is a funny place -- there are no cars at all, just a few tuk-tuks (motorbikes with big cargo-carrying sidecars). A lot of cargo is moved with big low-slung handcarts. The "street" is basically a wide brick-paved sidewalk -- like two sidewalks that met in the middle with no street in between. Awnings from the shops on either side frequently overlap. The place is frantically under construction -- at one guesthouse I tried to stay in yesterday I was told they didn't have any rooms now, but if I came back in a couple hours, they might have finished the new bungalow. You constantly hear hammers and saws going at it.

I probably would have stayed there, except it's also completely overloaded with travellers. I wound up in a crappy room with a broken sink, for which I had to pay far too much money, because I was just lucky not to have to sleep on the beach. So I left yesterday and headed to Ko Lanta, which is far more congenial. I played some volleyball with a group of half travellers and half locals (including a tiny Thai Muslim girl wearing a headscarf, who had a wicked serve) and stayed up around a bonfire talking with a group of Norwegians and Swedes.

Am having a good time, painful sunburn notwithstanding.

PS. If any of you are forwarding this to someone who I haven't thought to send to directly, please let me know and I'll go ahead and add them to my list.

   c.


--
colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno.  you never
roald | get a chance to call it back.  (christopher baldwin)