Nuts, Huts And Monkey Butts

I am enjoying my penultimate Chang beer (6.4%) as I recap the adventures of the past few days.

Sunday began rather early with a 7 a.m. departure on a package tour of three days and two nights in Khao Sok National Park. The driver made a few stops along the way which I wasn’t too thrilled about since it wasn’t part of the advertised itinerary, but the end result (the lake) more than outweighed the overly lengthy process of getting there.

We stopped at a market (there was no pressure for us to buy so it wasn’t a scam), the official Tsunami memorial (not where I was the other night), a field where two medium-sized fishing boats washed up after the 2004 Tsunami (1.3 kilometers from the shore), the Khao Sok National Park visitor centre (we didn’t actually visit the Park on the whole trip) and somewhere for lunch.

In short, I bought some amazing cashews and pistachio nuts at the market, I appreciated seeing the memorial wall, I wasn’t that bothered with walking on the now-decrepit ships, I still question why we visited the Visitor Centre if we had no plans to visit that part of the Park and I enjoyed my lunch until my stomach developed a mind of its own. For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I threw up. I remember thinking the shrimps were a bit undercooked – perhaps that was why? Luckily I made it to a toilet but the only luck was that I saved embarrassment. The toilet was Thai-style – a hole in the floor with no toilet paper and an unpleasant odor which made an unpleasant experience even more so. Fortunately, after a few moments, I was fully recovered and well enough to get on the long-tail boat for the 90 minute trip to the over-water bungalows.

As soon as I saw the chance to stay in a hut over the water, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. It is my hope/wish/dream to stay in an over-water bungalow in the South Pacific with either a see-through floor or a hole in the floor which can be opened to reveal the fish swimming underneath; maybe when I hit the big four-oh.

There were a dozen or so small huts – about ten feet by ten feet – tucked away in a far corner of the lake where the water was perfectly still. The interior of the hut included a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. That was it. No flat-screen TV, no toilet or shower, no ceiling fan, no electricity. I was in group of seven people, six of whom were German (and only one of them spoke English). It wasn’t long before I was speaking German to each of them, albeit in small, broken sentences.

We swam in the lake and took canoes out in search of wildlife. I found a small inlet in the lake and parked my canoe to listen for monkeys in the trees. Sitting perfectly still, I was startled by a huge tree monitor (lizard) which slid down a nearby tree, causing me to look overhead in a panic for snakes. The bamboo leaves started rustling and the monkeys (or perhaps they were gibbons, chimpanzees or macaques) were “monkeying around”. It was a lot of fun to watch them fly through the air. Enlarge this photo to see the monkey in the treetop.

It took me a while to relax enough in order to fall asleep. Between the noise of the animals in the trees and the thought of what kind of creatures were probably in the hut with me, along with the fact that the hut was constantly moving, even if only slightly (although more so when someone was walking to/from their hut) there was a lot to occupy my mind. It turned out that I slept better than the rest of my group who had similar concerns (as I learned at breakfast the next morning). Breakfast, by the way, consisted of a runny-sunny-side up egg, a pancake in the shape of a heart and some toast. I don’t eat any of those things (I gave up bread at Thanksgiving for the rest of the year) but having little choice, I ate the runny egg and the pancake which was delicious. It was Thai-style – probably made with oyster sauce as is just about everything here. I was afraid to ask in case it was fried in pork fat or made with curry.

We went on a boat-safari to look for wildlife – the hornbill in particular. We saw some but they were so far away it was hard to tell what I was looking at. After another quick swim, we walked through the forest for two hours, seeing termite mounds, cicada nests, limestone caves, giant mushrooms and of course lots of trees. Lunch followed and then I was dropped at the Rainforest Jungle Resort while the rest of the group left the region having finished their part of the package tour. Not everyone knew about the option to do one night in each of the two locations.

I had written last week that I had a massage in the jungle and I was staying in hotel in the jungle. Well last night I REALLY stayed in the jungle. I think the photo says enough. The interior was far more advanced than the hut on the lake (I had a toilet, a fan and some lights) but it also had way more creatures living rent-free such as frogs, geckos and several insects I am hoping weren’t roaches.

I was fused into another tour group for today (four more Germans, surprise-surprise). We went river rafting in the morning, monkey feeding before lunch and elephant trekking in the afternoon. The rafting was good – I had a guide to do all the rowing so I was able to sit and enjoy the ninety minute ride. He pointed out a couple of snake curled up in trees and some strange birds along the way. I didn’t like the elephant riding as much as the last time (three years ago) because the elephants didn’t look like they were treated well. I felt sorry for the animals actually. We trekked through the river, passing rubber trees being sapped, so I learnt. I also learned that each elephant has only one trainer and answers only to the trainer’s voice. Elephants are highly regarded in the Kingdom of Thailand and may not be owned by anyone other than the King. All elephants are rented from the King, other than, of course, those in the wild, of which there aren’t enough as there should be.

Well, the day is over and so is my trip to Thailand. Tomorrow I will make the 26-hour journey home, starting with a 4 a.m. wake-up call. If you see me on Thursday and I am crankier than usual, I’ll be using jet-lag as an excuse.

Look On The Bright Side

I moved hotels today. It wasn’t much of a move actually. After checking out, I confused the concierge by declining a taxi (I only had to walk two properties over on the same beach). I needed one more night to stay in the area before my three-day-two-night trip to Khao Sok National Park and the new place was half the price of my second hotel (which was nearly half the price of the first).

In the late afternoon, I took a taxi today to a nearby town to watch the fifth anniversary Tsunami memorial service. The event was sub-titled – Look On The Bright Side. I don’t really see a bright side to hundreds of deaths and displacements and losses of livelihood, but I think they probably meant something like “let’s look to a brighter future or a better tomorrow”. It is not uncommon for Thai-English translations to not work out too well.

I arrived one hour early so I could wander around the local market which consisted of hundreds of stalls in typical Asian style (frenzy-mania). On offer was: hot meals, cold meals, fruits, fried insects, nuts, raw fish, raw meat and fresh spices – and of it was unpackaged and uncovered. Oops – not true – the food was covered – with flies. There were also stalls selling pirated DVDs and CDs, belts, perfume, handbags and clothes, in addition to countless souvenir booths. All prices were negotiable.

I walked over to the anniversary service hoping I had missed most of the speeches and religious elements (I knew I wouldn’t understand them anyway); I was mainly interested in witnessing the lighting and releasing of the 2,552 commemorative lanterns. I think it is perhaps impolite of me to say that the service was totally boring, but it was. Most of it was delivered in Thai and it took too long to get to the reason 90% of the crowd (of at least three-thousand people) was there – the lighting of the lanterns. I based my estimate on the fact that once the lanterns were lit, most of the crowd queued for the one and only bridge connecting this field to the main road. There was still another 30 minutes of entertainment planned: singing, dancing and traditional Thai puppetry.

I have no doubt that Thailand doesn’t suffer from a crippling fear of lawsuits the way we do in North America because there is no way the release of such lanterns would ever happen at home. The lanterns were actually plastic bags with a hole at the bottom, the edge wrapped around a wire rim. A candle was lit in the middle of the base and it quickly become a bubbling pool of hot liquid (some of which dripped from the sky onto my arm). The build-up of heat caused the bags to inflate and eventually take off. Most of the lanterns sailed high into the sky but the odd few got caught on telephone wires or trees, still alight. All have landed by now, littering the rainforests and the sea and probably setting a few fires in between.

Paradise Found (and Nemo too)

Christmas Day is just about over for me. It was strange enough being in a tropical country for the holiday (which I have grown up to associate with snow), but even stranger to be wishing my fellow travelers a Frohe Weihnachten (which is Merry Christmas in German). The majority of tourists here in Khao Lak are German and Swedish and as such, the rest of the passengers on the snorkeling trip to the Similan Islands spoke German. So much so, that our guide was fluent in German and my waiver was as well. It was a scramble but the staff found an English version for me.

So to everyone who questioned my motives for living in Germany for three weeks this summer to learn German, HA! I’m using it!

My day began at seven a.m. (long before most people I know back home had their Christmas Eve dinner) with the usual noise of the many birds of the jungle cheerfully chirping around me. The bus trip to the pier was only twenty minutes and following a quick cup of tea, we boarded the “Similan 9” for the one-hour trip to the Islands. Each time I do one of these oceanic day-trips, I swear it will be the last. I am not great with sea-movement (I am still dizzy and I have been back at the resort for over two hours) and I don’t like salt water. Still, if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t have done it.

The nine islands which make up the Mu Ko Similan National Park are mostly uninhabited, thus they comprise of primary (otherwise known as virgin) rainforest. The sand was the whitest and softest my feet have ever felt. It was like baby powder, only softer. I would have liked to have taken some sand with me to show everyone at home but one of the few rules of visiting the Park was that we “take only photographs and leave only footprints”. Sadly some of my trip-mates were not so considerate.

The biggest success of the snorkel trip was seeing a turtle for the very first time. I can happily say that I am done with snorkeling. It would be awesome to see a manta or one of several other non-fish sea creatures, but a turtle has been atop my underwater list for as long as I can remember, so it’s all good. As an added bonus, I saw many “Nemo” fish too.

Upon returning to the hotel, I was too tired to go out to eat. I gave myself a few options: shower then go to bed, go to the Italian restaurant to erase my guilt for the internet incident or go to my favorite hut on the beach for a cold beer and a sliced pineapple. I chose option three (hey, it’s the thought that counts), with what’s left of my John Grisham novel. By “what’s left”, I am referring to the fact that nearly half the book fell out. It seems that the glue keeping the pages intact melted in the intense heat of the sun. The good news is that the part that fell out was what I had already read; the bad news is that I can’t really pass this on to someone else to read like I have with the previous two JG novels. It’s kind of funny reading a 598 page novel which starts on page 243.

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the tsunami. There is a memorial event at 6:30 a.m. where 1,000 monks will gather to receive alms (in this case, dried food given to them by Thai Buddhists), while family members are encouraged to also bring photos of lost loved ones. I don’t mind the early start but I can’t decide whether or not to go. There is a large billboard nearby advertising the event so I think that tourists are welcome, but two people at reception advised against is as it is a Buddhist ceremony and I inferred that it would not be proper for me to attend. There is a second ceremony in the evening where 2552 floating lanterns will be set free. I was advised to attend that instead.

Have a great Christmas meal everyone. In addition to the pineapple, I just raided the hand-made Christmas stocking left on my pillow from the housekeeping staff. In it was a selection of baking including: an almond crescent, a chocolate cookie, two gingerbread men and some other cookie that was about 800% sugar with extra sugar on top. I’ll be bouncing off the walls in a few minutes. For the record, I didn’t eat the chocolate cookie…

Actually, Yes, I WOULD Like Cheese With My Whine.

I moved on Sunday from Phuket to Khao Lak which was to be about 90 minutes by private car. I probably spent more than 90 minutes trying to sort out the drive. I found a service online which gave me a quote that was about 30 dollars less than one which a man at the hotel’s concierge gave me (everyone’s on commission) but I left it really late to book so I was nearly ready to settle for the safe-bet. The online service required pre-payment with PayPal and I was a bit skeptical; I mean if they never showed up, what could I do? Well, after a lot of hassle getting online, getting my PayPal password sent to me and writing back and forth with the car service company, I set up the booking. To my relief, the driver showed up twenty minutes early and was extremely professional. She drove with two hands on the wheel almost the entire time at a moderate pace without any death-defying overtaking. We even arrived a little bit early.

Initially, I was rather disappointed with my new resort, despite reading a dozen of the more than 80 excellent reviews at TripAdvisor.com. There was nothing really wrong with the new place, and had I gone there first (thus, not comparing it to the Sheraton Laguna) then I am I sure that I would have loved it instantly.

The Merlin Hotel in Khao Lak is a collection of villas in the jungle with four pools and even fewer steps to the beach than the Sheraton. The beach here at Khao Lak is unspoiled, clear of tourists and dotted with only a few huts marketing food, drinks and massages. Having been here three days now, I have come to really like The Merlin. It doesn’t have the lagoon, the golf-cart shuttles around the resort and the luxurious guest rooms, but it also doesn’t have the crowds or high prices.

Being in the jungle, one must expect to see jungle-y things in the dark hours of the night. While eating dinner at a nearby outdoor restaurant, I was visited by several frogs, geckos and millipedes along with a huge green flying insect with wings big enough to give to a small child to wear for Hallowe'en. There were ants in my bathroom big enough to carry my book and towel down to the pool but I wasn’t sure how to command them to do so, so they got squished instead.

Enough about bugs (except that I officially hate mosquitoes more than ever), I have had trouble connecting to the internet. Not being a tourist-haven (this region was most damaged by the 2004 Tsunami and the tourists are still slow to return) there isn’t much call for wireless here – or so I thought.

Of the four actual restaurants in the street (actual means those that have concrete floors, a roof and pay rent), one – the Italian – advertised free wireless internet. Not wanting any Western food for the whole trip (honest, I’ve eaten Asian food every day since I arrived), I chose the grossly over-priced Italian just for the wi-fi connection. They gave me the security code (a very complex 1-2-3-4-5) and I surfed until my battery died. My primary objective was to set up some day-trips for the 25th-28th and find somewhere to stay from the 26th-30th. I sent e-mails to leave messages but I ran out of time to collect replies.

Since the restaurant had only two walls, I knew I could return the next day to tap into the wireless system from the street. Then, I could quickly check to see if I had any replies from the tour companies I wrote to. Well, this system wasn't fool-proof. The only message I got was a set of evil eyes from a man who must have been the manager – realizing I was “borrowing” their internet waves from afar. He subsequently arranged to shut their network down which in retrospect is really funny because I totally deserved that.

Getting the hint, I returned to my hotel where I asked the reception agent about their internet charges. I roughly remember it being about $30 for an unlimited day-pass or $12 an hour (which couldn’t be broken up and used a few minutes at a time or I would have done that from the start). Luckily (or so I thought) the agent saw my laptop in hand and informed me there is free wireless in the hotel’s evening lounge. Duh! Why didn’t I ask in the first place? Off I went.

The unlucky part (in addition to STILL not having the reply I want) is that the local cover band was attempting to perform in the lounge. By attempting, I mean that they can’t sing, play instruments or entertain at all. Simon Cowell would not know where to begin with them, they were so bad. I hope the drum machine collects most of the fee they will receive. It seems the female singer, who is slightly better than completely brutal, learned her English pop songs phonetically, so there are random pauses for the bits she couldn’t figure out and weird lyrics for the bits she thought she deciphered. I respect her attempts for singing in a foreign language, but the vocals just ain't right.

Of the two men, the one on the guitar is either joining in with the other two for the very first time, having his very first-ever guitar lesson right here, right now or he just plain stinks. His playing sounds more like he is trying to tune up his guitar during the songs – or as if he hears a note on the drum machine that he recognizes and then hurriedly plays every note until he gets a match. Of course, the song has progressed by the time the match is made so you can guess the rest. I won’t even go there on the third guy. I can’t tell if he is trying to harmonize or if he is just so off-key but either way, he is no doubt doing his part to ensure that the only people in this beautiful outdoor lounge that seats about 100 are six other internet surfers like me, desperate to get online, offline and then away from the entertainment.

I have just re-read this entry and realized that I have been very harsh and very critical of the band so I wish to make a retraction.

The band turned out to be very entertaining.

Mowgli For A Day

Before heading back from town last night, I stopped into a spa to enquire about massages, choosing the place mainly due to their billboard out front which boasted a review from The Lonely Planet. It wasn’t until today that I realized they could have easily made that review up; what are the chances that TLP would hear about it, let alone do anything?

The spa’s reception was at the end of a twisting path in (which felt like) a jungle. Convinced it was OK, I booked an appointment for today and they offered a driver to collect me at the hotel, at no charge.

The driver was about twenty minutes late but it didn’t matter to me or them. I was greeted with another “welcome drink” (ice-cold jasmine water) and a cold, scented facecloth. The clerk confirmed my booking – a two-hour Thai aromatherapy massage with 30 bonus minutes on the feet – gave me my invoice, had me choose my oil (lemongrass all the way!) and had me follow the therapist further through the jungle to the bamboo hut.

The hut, made in traditional Thai style had three walls. The missing wall revealed the jungle and the lagoon. Very cool! The massage took place on a thin mattress on the floor and much like the massage from the beach it involved a lot of pulling, twisting and kneeling. You know how you usually listen to a CD with soothing sounds and chirping birds when you get a massage in the city? Well, between the gentle breeze swaying leaves on the trees, and the natural sounds of the birds and the frogs, such a CD wasn’t necessary.

I jumped in the outdoor shower and returned to the main room to find a pineapple smoothie and fresh fruit plate waiting for me. I sat with my legs dangling off the edge of the floor for about ten minutes, enjoying my snack. No one rushed me out of there; I probably could have stayed all afternoon.

STOP Means GO!

Two things of extremely minimal noteworthiness happened today. Once you read the second item you should realize why I bothered to write about either.

After breakfast I took a canoe out onto the lagoon for about an hour. Nothing special happened. I didn’t tip over; I didn’t see any neat wildlife; in fact I didn’t really see anything at all.

My other point of action was that I took the advice of Mr. Quinn, which was to have a few beers for him. I didn't want them; I only had them to do a favour, so Brad, when I get home, you owe me 120 Baht (which comes to just under four bucks US). Thanks.

Three cold beers, consumed very quickly after a full day in the sun with no lunch gave me quite the buzz – which added nicely to the twenty minute walk in the dark I had to take to get me from town back to the resort. I tried to write this with the slurred language I’d likely use if I were speaking rather than typing but the damn spell-check keeps correcting me…

The traffic is crazy here. Thailand has those red, octagonal-shaped signs with the letters S-T-O-P on them, but they must mean something different here because not one car stopped. Crossing the street is a bit like playing Frogger. Good thing I skipped school as much as I did to hit the arcade…

Spinal Rippage And Other Fun Tales

Today’s treat was a Thai massage.

One hour on a stern mattress under the thatched roof of a big hut right on Bang Tao beach was quite the bargain; only 500 Baht (USD 15). Actually, that is rather expensive for Thailand. I have no idea how much of that fee will go to the massage therapist but I was sure to give her a few extra baht as I hope most people do.

The solid woman of approximately 40 squeezed, prodded, squished, bent and pulled all of my joints as I lay fully clothed next to dozens of other tourists on similar tables enduring similar types of torture. The Thai massage is a rather interactive one. The therapist sat on the table for most of the time although there were moments when she straddled my lower back and for a short time, she actually knelt on all fours (her knees on my hamstrings and her hand on my back). She worked my muscles with her fingers, palms, elbows and feet, pulling me one way but pushing in another. I can still hear the clicking of my spine as she held my shoulder down while twisting my bent leg in the opposite direction. Click-click-click…

This wasn’t the total pretzel-torture I recall from a few years ago but that isn’t a bad thing. I am a bit more stretched out and a lot less stressed out. Lying in the sun all day can be stressful you know.

Afterward, I drank a few beers and ate some fried squid at the Reggae Bar much further down the Beach as I read a John Grisham novel, watching the sun tuck itself neatly into the ocean for yet another day.