| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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On the hot
bus it wasn't pleasant.
As we were loading the bus, we bought some chicken and rice from a
hawker. They sell it in a tetrahedron wrapped in palm leaf (or banana
leaf). Someone also asked for a soda without ice. It was clear they
thought the Americans were nuts to drink warm soda, but we were afraid
of the water. You hear rumors that the water is safe in Hong Kong, in
Malaysia, and in Singapore. You even hear water is safe in Thailand. I
guess the real question is whether you are willing to risk your vacation
on a rumor the water is safe. From the beginning of the trip I have
been assuming that the water is safe nowhere.
Trang, we are told, is the perennial winner of the cleanest town in
Thailand award. In the heat and dust we were a little afraid we might
lose that award for Trang this year.
It is a long and dusty ride from Trang to Krabi, but some of the
vistas with the limestone outcroppings as background are worth it.
After about 150 minutes we pulled into Krabi.
Though you could not tell it from the first views, Krabi is a
prosperous town and right at the moment in the throes of election fever.
Trilors go up and down the streets with billboards on each side painted
brightly with political messages and a loudspeaker on the truck carries
the message to all the people. It is really tough to get away from
these noisy nuisances. You pass one on the road, you find another. By
calling we found there were rooms at a little beach resort called Ao
Nang Villa in the town of Ao Nang about a half-hour away by seelor. It
is right on the Andaman Sea, which is a beautiful setting even if beach
resorts aren't really my thing.
There are bungalows with three hotel rooms each. There are a few
problems with the room (so what else is new?). There is a constant line
of tiny ants in the bathroom up the wall of the shower. Also the toilet
does not do a really great job of flushing, but then few toilets seem to
in Southeast Asia.
The food is pretty good and pretty cheap and the service
occasionally borders on slavish. After dinner was a walk on the beach.
Barbara walked around looking for shells. Binayak and Steve went off
exploring. Evelyn and I just walked. After that we went to the bar
attached to the restaurant. Everyone else was watching The Package with
Gene Hackman. We were having a spirited discussion of politics and I
think one of the workers came over to quiet us down, though ostensibly
it was to meet her. He name was Kuhn (Thai for 'shrimp'--Thais all have
nicknames, she said). Kuhn likes going into Krabi for the disco. She
undoubtedly is popular there. She is very attractive.
October 18, 1990: We were up well before the projected breakfast
time. I suited up and went out for a morning swim. The water was
already warm and while sunrise was blocked by a karst, seeing the sun
rise over a karst is nothing to sneeze at.
For breakfast I had boiled rice and seafood, which was nice with
chili and vinegar. I tried to ignore the ant that was floating in it
(or more accurately, to forget about it after I fished it out). By
unanimous consent the morning's activity was to be swimming. If the
truth be known, the water is not all that clear--it is a bit murky--but
the scene is still beautiful.
It was with some trepidation that I go swimming when the sun is up.
I always burn badly. Either I cannot put on the lotion uniformly or it
gets washed off but if I swim in the sun, I will burn.
We lay down two bamboo beach mats we bought for the exorbitant
price or about US$1 each. I carefully painted myself with #15 suntan
lotion and went in swimming. After about 45 minutes I came out, lay
down on the mat, and once again applied lotion. As I was lying there
Evelyn asked, 'What did you do to your leg?!' I had felt no pain but
there was a huge red welt covering most of my leg. It just matched the
colors of the temple painted on my new one-dollar beach mat. On that
the picture was now less distinct. The paint was water-soluble. Nifty.
I jumped back in the water and got at least some of the paint off my
leg. I think at the same time I washed off the second application of
suntan lotion. I lay back in the sun and without realizing it gave
myself a nifty burn. Steve also got a good burn that morning.
Lunch was in the local restaurant. There were some dishes in Thai
that were not translated into English. I ordered one and the waiter
told me I didn't really want it. He suggested another. I let myself be
switched. However, he came back and said they couldn't make the second
dish. I said I would take the first dish. 'It has chilis,' he told me.
'Fine,' I said. It took forever to get the forbidden Thai dish.
Everyone else had finished. Finally it came. It was boiled rice, fried
peanuts, and a dish of a purple garlic and chili sauce. Pretty deadly
spicy. I ate it all and told the waiter it was 'a-roy' (delicious). It
felt as if someone had flayed my tongue with a potato peeler. It was
just okay and too hot for me, but a macho guy like me doesn't admit
that.
We went our separate ways that afternoon. I had a lot of log
writing to do. Evelyn napped. It turned out there was a power failure
so writing was neither that easy nor that comfortable. The sunburn was
starting to hurt a bit. That is one problem the Southeast Asia. The
rooms are either hot or freezing. Almost every night the rooms are too
cold.
I expected I would get all caught up in my log, but no such luck.
There is just too much to write about and the whole afternoon I didn't
get a full day covered on the log.
We had decided to meet and go into Krabi for dinner. We did so and
grabbed a seelor into town. It was pretty much dark by the time we got
there. Steve wanted to see if he could get Listerene. We picked a
place for dinner recommended by the Lonely Planet and it was still
around. It was a restaurant owned by a Chinese. He was impressed that
we wanted local dishes and that we ate everything that he served. I
found that I was coming down with a cold (probably the same cold Evelyn
had a couple of days before), but I still gave a good account of myself
at dinner. We had, among other things, fried tofu, seafood in oyster
sauce, and clams in the shell.
After that we walked around town. There was a night market where
we got some sweets. I got some cookies to pass around. We passed a
movie theater and looked at the posters. Both films looked like they
had something to do with lost civilizations in the jungle with sexy
women. One had ten warrior women in brief leopard-skin outfits. The
other looked like a rip-off of H. Rider Haggard's She.
We went to some stores. In one Steve bought a bathing suit.
Getting back to the hotel proved to be more of a problem than we had
expected. The seelors stopped running at 6 PM. Most of the possible
rides we found were more than we really wanted to spend. We eventually
decided we had to pay a bit extra. We went back to the hotel, freshened
up a bit, and had a drink (I had a fruit shake). Then we went to the
office and arranged for a tour to Phang Nga for the next day. While we
r
were in the office I noticed that a newspaper had an ad for the UNIX
operating system with a Philips Electronics product. But UNIX has come
to Thailand. A woman in the office couldn't figure out why we were so
interested in the ad. We told her it was our company's invention.
October 19, 1990: After a quick breakfast we grabbed a seelor for
Krabi and the tour of Phang Nga. Only four of us went. Binayak had
rented a motorbike the day before and had to return it, so decided to
meet us in town. He did.
The rip to Phang Nga is a long one on bumpy roads. It is most
likely getting dull hearing about karsts, but they were there in
abundance. There was lots of farmland. I guess this is as good a place
as any to note how they tether a cow in Thailand. They apparently drill
a hole between the cow's nostrils. To tie up the cow they thread a rope
between the nostrils and tie a knot in it. Must be painful for the cow.
We got to Phang Nga about mid-morning. This area is supposed to
have the most impressive limestone mountains in the area, many growing
right out of the sea. The tour takes you to so-called 'James Bond
Island.' It is called that because it was used as Scaramanga's island
in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.
The minibus pulled up to a small town with lots of hawkers offering
Coke and Sprite and beer. You file into a narrow boat where you sit two
abreast. It takes you into a mangrove swamp that looks like something
out of Creature from the Black Lagoon. In the background you can see
distant limestone out-croppings.
Eventually you get to a karst with a natural water tunnel under it.
It looks like something out of Land That Time Forgot (okay, last film
analogue for a while, I promise). It opens out onto an open waterway
punctuated with dozens of karst formations rising right out of the
water, with little or no beach. As the boat continued we started to see
the tops of some of the karsts shrouded in clouds. It had been a hot
two weeks and a little rain might feel good. In another few minutes it
did. A cool rain blew through the boat. Just when it was becoming too
much of a good thing we got to James Bond Island, really three karsts
including one only a few feet across at the base and maybe twenty-five
feet high. It was called Nail Island though it was really part of Bond
Island. On Bond Island were a horde of souvenir hawkers with their
wares covered with cloths to keep them dry. More tourists stood huddled
in the protection of indentations and caves in the limestone. Some of
the hawkers walked among the tourists trying to sell their goods. Boys
carried monkeys and hawks for those who would pay to be photographed
__________
* UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX Systems Laboratories.
with the animals. Most of the tourists were waiting out their sentence
on the island. We had been given a half an hour which under normal
circumstances might have been too much and with the hiding from the rain
was considerably more than we wished. I bought some dried squid while
we waited and handed it to the group. When our half hour was over it
was back into the squall. By now the rain and cold had become
unpleasant and in fact the cold wind blowing through the boat was
becoming very unpleasant. I had a cold and a light cotton shirt with
nothing under it. Everything was getting drenched.
Cold and miserable, we stopped for lunch at a Muslim fishing
village and had a mediocre lunch of seafood. More bugs in the rice.
There was a soup, some fried shrimp, a whole boiled fish, and pineapple
for dessert.
After lunch we were given a half hour to walk around the souvenir
stands (providing kickback opportunity to the tour company).
After our half hour we boarded our boat with dampened seats and
enthusiasm. I think that they probably cut the sight-seeing a little
short because none of us were really in the mood to see more karsts in
the rain. They returned us to the dock and we reboarded the minibus
where we were told we would be seeing a reclining Buddha in a cave.
There was a fence in front of the cave and monkeys climbing around the
entrance shaking down the visitors for peanuts which could be had for a
modest contribution. Now it is bad enough when you see a lone adult
monkey putting out his hand for a peanut. What really frosts my cupcake
is when a mother monkey comes along with a baby hugging her chest and a
plaintive look on her face. I don't know how monkeys ever learned to
mimic human plaintive looks. Anyway, the monkey comes complete with sad
plaintive look. So you fork over a peanut and--guess what--the mother
eats it. You ever see one give the pender to the papoose? No! If you
ever see the mother give the peanut to the baby you can call me to tell
me about it ... collect. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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