Tales From a Female Traveller

My Grandmother Was a Splasher: My time in the islands

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So I know it’s been some 3 or 4 weeks since my last post and I honestly am sorry for not updating, but it’s been a bit of a busy world for lil’ ol’ me of late. As you know, after B went back to Sydney, I decided to travel a bit of the Islands starting with Phuket. After Phuket’s charms wore off I moved onto the island of Krabi which I ended up liking very much apart from my crappy accommodation.
KRABI
Called the Star Guest House and located right across from the main pier in Krabi Town, I picked it right out of the Travel Bible at the last minute because I slept my way over on the boat, not giving myself enough time to locate somewhere appropriate to stay and when I arrived I immediately kicked myself for doing so. Despite its blue and yellow coloured paintjob, the Star Guest House could have been re-named Star Hovel, for it literally was the best of a bad bunch. But I refused to pay anymore than 100 baht a night and I was sick of all the taxi drivers trying to get commission by taking me to hotels they had struck deals with and the staff were so friendly that I just gave in and decided to stay.
The first night was a little rough as my room was just a wooden box with old fashioned shuttered windows with no glass in them, a small light overhead and a bed… that was it. Not to mention the Irish girls that decided to sit on the rotting balcony all night and gossip about everyone they knew back home (why is it always the Irish keeping me awake??). You see, my little box happened to be directly off the rotting balcony and they took up residence right outside my little hole of a window, so they may as well have just come and sat on my bed for they were that close to me. So my mp3 player sure did come in handy that night.
It’s been strange travelling in countries where people do not sleep. Right outside my little Star Hovel was where the locals set up the night market, which is really just all night food vendors, so you get used to constant noise. Not only do people not sleep, they eat at any time of the day, including having their main meals at 3am. It’s almost as if they eat so late (or early as it may be) because during meal times that we are accustomed to, they are working in their shops or tending to their houses or farms, so they seem to eat at odd times. There is also no set time to eat anything. Feel like a coke and some green curry for breakfast? No worries!!! Or how about some fruit and yoghurt for dinner? You name it, you can get it anywhere, anytime. There is no concept of accepted scheduled meals and anything goes so it’s not so strange to eat Pad Thai at 6am for breakfast, and a lot of the time meals are accompanied by beer, great news for all those alco’s out there. So basically, if you’re an alcoholic, middle aged, single man who’s rapidly approaching his used by date in the western world, you can come to Thailand and live like a King!
Have I set the scene for you yet?
Krabi Town wasn’t as bad as it seems though. The central part of town is where the main shopping hub is and it covers quite a few blocks and also houses a relatively small 3 storey department store with its very own KFC. It’s like walking into a K-Mart, Wal-Mart or Grace Brothers store that has never been tidied which makes for a pretty hectic looking department store and feels more like Paddy’s Markets than Grace Brothers…(yeah yeah, I know it’s Myer now but hey… I’m clinging). There are stalls all over the place and the bottom floor is home to a Coles or Woolworths like store and a bunch of tables showcasing the newest seasons make-up, a Pharmacy where almost anything is available over the counter, a Dairy Queen (A Wendy’s for my Aussie readers), a KFC with only Zinger flavoured chicken... can you imagine that.. NO original recipe!!! Maybe the Colonel doesn’t trust the Thai’s not to rip it off like they do everything else and sell it at record prices….. so it’s pretty much just like shopping in a mall at home. Strangely though, the main square boasts traffic lights that are held up by Neanderthal looking statues…. really , they’re Neanderthal statues… I asked around to try and find out why an Island in Thailand has statues of cave men as the main square attraction but no one seemed to know anything about it.
I found a nice café up the street from my homely Star Hovel and frequented there for breakfast which almost always blurred into lunch as most of the time it rained and it was nice sitting with a book and unlimited pots of tea to watch the world go by with. I did however, go on a nice little sea kayaking trip which I booked through the lovely women at my Star Hovel. I was the first to be picked up in the morning and met an Englishman named Steve who taught English, an American girl travelling alone and had the pleasure of running into that wonderful couple from Manchester, Nine and Paul. For those of you just tuning in, I met Nina and Paul on a horrific bus ride from Bangkok to Phuket and ran into them in Patong Beach where over a bucket…. Yes you read right… a bucket of Sang Som Whiskey and 7 bottles of Red Bull I managed to get myself completely blind. Can’t remember much after I stood up and walked from the Tiger Bar, but I’m pretty sure it was one of the best nights of my life… I am never, however, touching another bucket.. ever... ever again unless it’s filled with water to save some kids from a buring house fire, but that aside… NEVER! (think neon yellow Exorcist like vomit and you get the idea). So anyway, back to the Sea Kayaking… turns out I was the only moron who chose to do a half day tour while the others all got to paddle off in this big group. It suited me because I only had to share the kayak with the guide so my vision wasn’t blocked as I tried to take photos. It’s a fairly long paddle out into open water and then you enter a Canyon in which the mountains are like nothing you’ve seen except for in travel brochures. My guide cut up and fed me unripe pineapple and as my stomach twisted I watched him throw all the off cuts straight into the water arguing with myself about whether or not to say anything about water pollution, but it was better than throwing things like plastic bottles into the water which won’t break down over time. (which I’m sure they do, but like any westerner with a so called “superior” value system, I didn’t see it so I decided it didn’t bother me that it was bio-degradable material instead of those plastic bottles). The Kayak trip itself was cut relatively short, because after my guide tried to convince me that there were crocodiles underneath us a massive storm hit. We paddled on for a little while until it was raining so hard I could no longer see the pineapple of my conscious floating around me. It was just too hard to see anything at all so we decided that it would be better to start paddling back to shore as it was quite far out. “You no worry.” He would say to me. “We no fall out.” He would reassure as the ripples we paddled through earlier turned into a massive swell that nearly capsized us more than once… I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I could care less about falling out of the kayak, as long as my camera stayed dry I was peachy, and thanks to the dry bag they gave me at the start it did. Could you imagine if we had’ve actually capsized… crocodiles and large swell aside… the only thing I would have worried about saving would have been the camera… SAVE MY BABY!! We even stopped on our way back to shore to fish out of the water a plastic 2L coke bottle, so my conscious was restored and I felt all big about my environmental awareness-ness again.
After a few photos posing like a moron with my paddle my driver took me back to my Star Hovel and during the hour drive I almost died from exposure. I had no change of clothes (because when the hell else has it EVER stormed in Thailand, rainfall every afternoon, sure... but a full blown typhoon like storm.. forget it) and I was soaked to the bone, so sitting in the space cab of a ute with the air con on freezing wasn’t the best thing for my health. I was even that cold after I showered back at the Hovel that I had to upgrade in clothing from a wife beater singlet to an actual T-shirt!!! Imagine that. That afternoon I sat on the rotting balcony (seriously, it really was rotting, the floor had massive holes in it and the railing was literally rotted away, but I figured if the Irish girls could sit on it all night without falling through the floor, then I was safe) and read Lonely Planet’s “The Kindness of Strangers” and met a really nice German girl whom I seemed to have a lot in common with, married friends, travelling alone, single.. blah-de-blah… it was nice. But I decided to leave my comfortable little hovel in exchange for 3 days of rain on the infamous Kho Phi Phi Island (where they filmed the Beach).
KHO PHI PHI
Kho Phi Phi was great, and the walk up to the view over the island was breathtaking, but I have to say that I had THE worst room in all of Phi Phi… can you guess why? Let me help you. You see… my room… which was located on the ground floor, was directly under a room an Irish couple were staying in. Yes… that’s right…. Irish… and this time… it wasn’t pool sicks bashing on the floor above my head or gossip about why the best friend of a cousin’s sister is sleeping with her mother’s pool boy or whatever, it was the sound of hell. That’s right… hell. I think he must have lost every single item he ever had and each time he would try and find something he would yell out “Where the fook is moy belt?”…or something to that effect, she would reply with something like “holding oop tha paants yer waarin!!!!”, and when they weren’t arguing about a lost item of clothing, they were… literally… fooking. If you get my drift, so that fabulous mp3 player came to my rescue once again. I’m going to take a stab and speculate that all the missing clothing pieces were possibly due to the fact that they were ripping them off each other more-so than actually wearing them. So… it went something like this…. Drag a few items across the floor boards, bitch that you can’t find your socks, give up looking and get busy, sleep, wake-up, drag a few more chairs across the floor boards, bitch that you can’t find your shirt, get jiggy with it.. etc etc… you get the idea… So it’s safe to say that I put off going back to my room as long as I possibly could.
On the morning of my check out I had gotten everything ready quite early to get off the island as quickly as I could and as I opened the front door, guess who was walking down the steps from the room directly above me? I panicked and quickly slammed the door shut so as to avoid the awkward moment I would have had the displeasure of sharing with my noisy Irish neighbours. The realisation for them that I could hear everything they did and the embarrassment for me not being able to look them in the eye would have been too great, so I didn’t risk any form of awkward obligatory hello’s and promptly hid behind my door until they were far enough out of sight and couldn’t relate me as their neighbour. It would have been like having to see your parents after you had accidently walked in on them the night before… **shudders**…. Don’t snigger, you’ve all done it!!
KHO SAMUI
Next stop was Kho Samui, the island most travellers use as a stop over or home base to attend the Full Moon Parties on Kho Pangan. I spent around a week and a half on Samui and stayed on the second most popular Lamai Beach (Hat Lamai, the first is Hat Chewang but was way too crowded for my liking) which I actually liked the most out of all the Islands I had stayed on. Lamai had all the things Chewang did, only on a smaller quieter scale and welcomes families rather than 18 y/o school leavers looking for a place to party. Lamai is not without its Charms though and on my first day there I ate at the Outback Restaurant where I had a social learning exchange with my waitress. We talked about how much we make and about our families and she even helped shed light on why many Thai women opt for western men in favour of Thai men. She told me that she was at one time married to a Thai man and had fallen pregnant with their first child, but he had come home drunk one night and beat the crap out of her which caused her to lose the baby. After that, she decided that she wasn’t going to put up with it, divorced him and vowed never to marry a Thai man again. She is now happily married to a middle aged Western man. So things aren’t always as it seems. It’s so easy to judge the things that you see in Thailand and the things that go on between middle aged western men and young Thai women but when you hear stories like that it sheds a whole new light on a socially frowned upon situation. Sure there are lonely, western men out there looking for companionship at any cost, and sure there are gold digging young Thai women looking to find a western man to give her and her family a better life, but there is also a large number of legitimate couples, and in a lot of cases, it’s due to the fact that Thai men seem to be abusive to Thai women (This is, of course, a vast generalisation). The conversation I had with my Outback waitress was quite enriching and both of us came away with a greater understanding of each other’s cultures and when I saw her again a few nights later we chatted away like old friends.
Lamai also has a more quiet beach compared to the supposedly more popular Chewang and the beach’s sand changes from one end to the other. In the Northern end the sand is formed by large grains the size of rice which give a nice massage to your feet as you walk, and to the southern end where Grandmother and Grandfather rock is (massive rocks on the shore in the shape on men’s and women’s genetalia strangely enough) the sand becomes so fine that it’s like powder between your toes. The water is warm and blue, the sand is white and the sky is spotless and of a night you can see the lights from the fishing trawlers. Most nights you can sit on the beach and watch the impressive colours that the electrical storms create out at sea, but it barely rains and if it does it’s mainly in the afternoon, and even then, it’s only for about 20 minutes. I stayed in a hut on the northern end of the beach called Beer’s House the first few nights and moved to a private room on the southern end of the beach called the Sea Breeze the rest of the time which was a great place. Great service, great rooms, great part of the beach, great spot in the main street and great people. Because I had booked in a few days early, the bookings got mixed up and the room I was supposed to get (a fan room with no private shower) went to someone else and to make up for it they gave me an air con room with a private shower for 300 baht less than the normal price, so I was more than happy. The owner was also happy that I didn’t yell and scream about the mistake and was only too willing to give me a discount on an otherwise out priced room.
I pretty much lived like a local in Lamai and even tourists were approaching me to ask for directions (which I could actually give), I became a regular at the Rising Sun Restaurant for Breakfast and a fixture at the evening movies showed at the Will Wait Restaurants at dinner time. I attended Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) and cheered on little kids as they bashed each other’s brains in where I once again ran into Manchester couple Nina and Paul and ended up having drinks with them and another couple at the Bauhaus Bar til early morning. I also became a part of a group of travellers that come to Lamai every year. One woman, Marina, has been coming to Lamai for the past 15 years and is well known by the infamous Elvis whose show I attended and had a great time. Marina is actually the inspiration for the title of this post, for one morning at breakfast, which was always the time to talk about everything and anything, we got to chatting about Thai bathroom habits. I couldn’t work out for the life of me how on earth the Thai’s can go to the toilet with ZERO toilet paper, use the hose, bucket of water, and scoop provided and manage to come out completely dry which spun Marina into a storey about her Grandmother. Apparently when she was younger her Grandmother lived with her family and coming from an old Italian family she has similar bathroom practices to the Thai’s… “My Granny was a splasher.” She stated quite matter-of-factly to responses of hysterical laughter from myself and Julie. “She would go to the toilet and I would stand outside and listen to what sounded like a Tsunami, and when she would come out she would be completely dry, but the whole bathroom would be covered in water!!!” This was all too much and the stitches we gained from laughing so much was the only thing that ended the conversation for we fell into that “laugh so hard it was silent” laugh that we could no longer go on because we needed to come up for air. To this day I still haven’t been able to shed light on how the Thai’s can stay so dry after visiting the loo. It remains a mystery. So Samui was probably my favourite Island so far and one day I will go back and spend another few weeks just lazing about on the beach.
I also scammed my way into renting a moto. I wouldn’t normally lie and cheat to get anywhere or anything but I sure as hell was not going to give anyone on a tropical island my passport and made up some bullcrap story about how it was “lost” and my “friend” in Bangkok was bringing me a new one after I had applied for it via the internet… and this only came about after I was refused rental by a few Thai women. So when I came across a motorbike shop run by a couple of English guys I knew I had bagged a winner… I had to leave my NSW driver’s licence, but hey, having that getting stolen and re-birthed is way better than having it be my passport, rendering me stranded on an Island in the middle of South East Asia. After my little scam worked and I had a little triumph dance in my head, I happily rode around to all the other beaches going as far as The Big Buddha and back which took most of the day.
KHO PANGAN
I had decided that I was going to attend the Full Moon Party on the 9th despite my vow not to before I started my holiday, but without someone to travel with I was left to my own crazy devices and organised a speed boat to Kho Pangan through the Sea Breeze. Normally, there’s a party on Hat Rin (the beach on Kho Pangan) practically every night and anything is an excuse to hold a shindig; a full moon, a half moon, a quarter moon… hell even no moon!! If you’ve ever heard about a Full Moon Party then everything you have heard is 100% correct. Sex, Drugs and Techno music til you drop, and if you don’t want to partake in the first two options then you won’t be persecuted or shunned because pretty much anything goes, so I danced all night and drank very very little and guess who I ran into again? Yep! Nina and Paul from Manchester!! Amazing that on a beach of 20,000 people I end up running into the same people I bumped into on all the other islands. After Nina and Paul decided to call it a morning one of the guys from the group, Alex and I had to try and catch a speed boat back to Samui and it literally took hours. There are no wharfs on Pangan and instead of bringing the boats all the way to shore like they do to drop you off, they moor halfway out to see. So you have to wade through sometimes chin deep water just to get close to a boat only to find they won’t let you on because it’s not the boat you came in on. Alex and I tried so many different boats and were turned away so many times and time was running out because the last boat was at 7am and it was 6:30, the sun had risen already and there were hundreds of other people trying to get on the same boat. When the Sea Breeze boat finally came we had to push our way through the angry crowd just to get to the ladder and there were so many people doing the same thing that one guy actually got pushed under the boat. You’re so busy trying to get to that ladder that it’s easy to forget the propellers from the motor could knock you out of cut you open and as this poor guy went under, nobody seemed to notice. I have no idea if he was okay because I was hoisted up by Alex who had already gotten on the boat and I was too busy trying to keep my bag and camera try that it was too hard to check. The boat ride itself was hell. We were placed right up the front on these hard wood chairs and the stupid driver thought it would be a good idea to drive in the wake of the boat in front of us, so every time the wake hit our boat, it would lurch up out of the water and then slam back down again making this horrible cracking noise and all I kept thinking was that I hope we didn’t capsize. Apparently a few months ago that’s exactly what happened and everyone on board died. I can see how as the boat drivers seem to have little to no knowledge of sailing nor safety and the life jackets that they provided rarely fit if they actually had buckles to do up. So I was praying that my boat would come into Samui Safely. By the time we got back I was so cold that I had a hot shower (or as hot as the water will go in Thailand which is really only Luke warm) and hopped straight into bed where I slept until about 2pm.
When I had recharged after a full 24 hours of partying I decided to take a walk to the Muay Thai training ring and was invited to come back for a personal lesson by the number one trainer in Thailand. Unfortunately I was leaving the next morning and would be unable to attend my lesson, but the hospitality was there and I would have loved to have my own lesson in bashing someone about the head and body. When morning came I readied my things and said goodbye to Samui. It had been a good home for the week or so that I was there and I can see how people can come back 15 years in a row and still find it interesting. Goodbye Samui, hello 15 hour bus trip to Bangkok.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 12:54 am