Archive for April, 2002
I’m on a different island, but still in Thailand in the South Andaman Sea. The island I’m on is Ko Lipe, a very small island 4.5 hours from the mainland by boat. Arrived here yesterday…left Ko Lanta the day before yesterday, first taking the 2-hour boat from Lanta to Krabi on the mainland, then taking a 2.5-hour minivan south to the pier for Ko Tarutao and Ko Lipe. Since I arrived late in the afternoon I was able to get the last boat to Tarutao but had to over-night there and then get the boat to Lipe yesterday. That was fine with me because I wanted to see Tarutao anyway. All of the islands around here are part of Ko Tarutao National Park, the island of Tarutao being the largest of them all. You can’t get much more south in Thailand than Tarutao – it’s only 5 km from the island of Langkawi in Malaysia. It’s a beautiful island and apparently the location of the next SURVIVOR which is supposed to be filming here this summer.
It’s a 1.5-hour boat ride from Tarutao to the mainland. The only lodging available is at the park headquarters and they also rent tents so you can camp on the beach. I chose the tenting option. Very pretty beach – really big with white sand. I had just set up my tent and was watching the sunset with my tent neighbor Augustino (from Italy), when a big storm started brewing from behind the mountain. It was a fierce one! We got up to the park restaurant in time but the wind was so strong and the rain, lightening and thunder came out of nowhere! So much for a peaceful night’s rest in the tent on the beach. My sleeping bag was wet and so was everything else. Oh well.
I did have a good time passing the evening with Matt and Jim, 2 guys from the UK who have spent the past 6 weeks (partying) on Ko Samui and are now heading to Ko Lipe in search of some peace, quiet , and rehabilitation. They are characters.
So yesterday we all got the 1pm boat from Tarutao to Ko Lipe. It was a beautiful boat ride. The water here is so blue and clear! I mean, it’s that way all over Southern Thailand, but here it’s especially blue and especially clear! Ko Lipe is a paradise – the sea looks like glass it’s just so nice. Augustino, the UK boys, and I all got bungalows at the same place (there are only 6 places on the entire island) and then I spent the evening chatting with a really nice Swedish couple. They’ve been travelling for 8 months and have been to some amazing places. Today I plan to snorkle some, relax a lot, and just lay on the beach and soak it all in….
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Just to let you know, I’ve just finished uploading pictures from the past month, starting on 3.21.02 in Bangkok up until the latest journal entry of today. To view the photos, click on the Journal button above, and then navigate to the last record and go back from there. Hope you enjoy!
Sunset on Ko Tarutao
She SURVIVED!
Sunrise from my bungalow on Ko Lipe
April 18th, 2002
‘Every hour, every day, every week, every year you spend in a place, you take some of it away with you and you leave part of yourself there.’
– Guy de Maupassant
Well, I don’t have anything real dramatic to say to celebrate 6 months of travelling. But I did make a list of things that I miss and things that I don’t miss. It will be interesting to see if it changes in another 6 months. Here goes.
Things that I miss (in no order):
Momo, my cat
Toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese
Mountain Stage on NPR
Concerts and summer festivals
Having a computer to work on the website
Coffee sessions with Cathy
Shopping and doing flea markets with Nancy
Babysitting Jess and Morgan (my nieces)
Pop-pop calling on my birthday and playing Happy Birthday on the accordian
Being able to make my own coffee
Living with my mother (Oops, that’s supposed to go on the next list…just kidding Mom!)
Hiking with Gimpy Sr.
Things that I don’t miss:
Traffic
Stress
Office politics
Miserable people who hate their lives and always complain but never do anything to make it better
Paying $35 for a haircut
This beats working in an office anyday!
April 15th, 2002
April is the hottest month of the year in Thailand. It’s pretty brutal everywhere. And there is no escape either – no air con mall to spend the day in or air con movie theatres or air con restaurants. Well, in Bangkok yes, but here in the south there are none of those luxuries. If I can just get through 2 more weeks of it I’ll be ok though. And hey, being on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in the world isn’t such a bad place to be dealing with a little heat and humidity, eh?
So. HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! Or, in Thai, Sawadee Pee Mai Kah! Yes, ANOTHER New Year. It’s pretty crazy. The Songkran (New Year) celebration is a three-day event which started yesterday. Lucky for us in this heat, that the main form of celebration involves throwing water at everyone! And I mean EVERYONE! The Bangkok Post has been reporting warnings to business travellers for weeks telling them to carry extra clothes with them because they are sure to get wet on Songkran. Bangkok is supposed to be the worst – just complete insane water fights all week long.
Well, on Ko Lanta, we started yesterday morning at the Sanctuary, with an arsenal of water guns supplied by Hassan. A huge water fight ensued between the farang (foreigners), Hassan’s nieces and nephews, and the Sanctuary staff. Once we had completely soaked ourselves, we started looking for dry victims, and God help anyone who happened to be passing by the Sanctuary for an early morning stroll at that time! It was good fun.
But then the real celebration began. We all piled in the back of Hassan’s truck bound for Ao Nang beach, a 2-hour drive by ferry and road back to the mainland. And obviously Hassan has done this before because he already had 2 big barrels of water in the back of the pickup! Somehow we packed the remaining space with 2 farang (me, Alana, Georgie, Aili, Ranata, and some guy from Austria), Hassan’s sister, Din and Phu from the Sanctuary, and about 10 nieces and nephews, all armed with water pistols, water guns, and buckets, ready to attack. Hassan drove the car and in the front was Din’s wife and baby too! I still can’t believe we drove 2 hours each way with that many people in the back of a pickup.
As soon as we got to the road, the action started. They should really do away with Songkran and just start calling it National Water Fight Day, because that’s exactly what it is! There were Thai kids lining the road with hoses, buckets, and water guns just waiting for pickups like ours to drive by. Then there were so many other pickups full of people and barrels of water too dousing us with water as they drove by. Complete mayhem! Talk about fun though…and the little kids were having a BALL!
On the ferry we had water fights with the ferry staff and the other people in other cars too. Back on the mainland there were even more people on the sides of the road and even more cars loaded up like ours! We had to stop at a gas station to get more water and had a huge fight with the guys working there too! Everyone was totally into it. And they’re all just laughing – no one’s getting angry or getting into fights like they would at home. They also like to wipe baby powder on your face when it’s wet because it looks funny I guess so everyone has white faces by the end of the day. The cars are all white too.
We had to stop one more time just before Ao Nang to fill up and then we were ready. Every single car in Ao Nang was a pickup full of people and water and it was absolutely completely INSANE! There was not one person ANYWHERE who was dry. Phu was so funny – he would say Sorry! (in English, to Thai people) before shooting and practically knocking them over with the force of water out of his gun. Then he would say’Happy New Year – Very happy, all Thai people Happy!’ Every time. Other cars had made really cold water by putting blocks of ice in their barrels and oh.my.God it was SO cold sometimes! It was also really fun to get the drivers because they were all safe and dry in their cabs but anytime one of them opened their window a crack, everyone would start throwing water like mad. Then the guy would just laugh!
Even more impressive is that everyone is totally sober…all day I only saw 2 people drinking beer. It’s refreshing to see people having good fun without needing alcohol to do it. Once the kids get home to bed though, I think the adults start their own party. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a hot, humid day on New Year’s in April in Thailand!
Early morning water fights on Songkran
Its open season at the Sanctuary!
The road crew is ready for Ao Nang
April 14th, 2002
Well, I did the famous Hin Daeng (Red Rock) and Hin Muang (Purple Rock) dive sites today! These sites are over 3 hours away by boat and are said to be the best diving spots in the South Andaman Sea. They are pinacles of coral and rock out in the middle of the deep blue sea and consequently there are often a lot of big game fish, sharks, and occasionally manta rays and even whale sharks at this location. It is sometimes referred to as’Shark’s Point’.
The ratio of divers vs. instructors was perfect today – 7 divers and 6 dive masters! It doesn’t get much better than that! At the first site, Hin Duang, we went to a depth of 28 meters – that’s the deepest I’ve ever been ( about 95 feet). My partner was Tash, one of the instructors, from New Zealand. She was formerly a dive master and instructor in South Africa for 2 years so she has lots of experience. We saw a lot of cool stuff including 1 leopard shark, 1 manta shrimp, a school of barracuda, 7 lionfish, 2 giant moray eel, 2 scorpionfish, 1 trumpetfish, and 2 cube boxfish. The visibility was very good and the best thing was that we were the only boat of divers there so we really had the whole site to ourselves.
Hin Muang was good too – at a depth of 21 meters for this dive. We saw many black-tipped barracuda, batfish, butterflyfish, 1 Oriental sweetlip, lionfish, and many, many anemones. Overall the dives were great, but I have to say that I think I liked the diving at Ko Bida out of all the locations I went to. They say that the visibility at Ko Bida can often be poor, but when it’s good, it’s really good. Well I think I saw it on a really good day! But these sites I went to today are apparently more famous in the diving world. Well, I’m happy to have got some diving done in Thailand for sure, but it’s getting a bit costly at $50/day, so I think I will hold off on any more diving until I get to Malaysia.
That is, unless they go to the King Cruiser wreck in the next few days…that one sounds awfully tempting – a boat that sunk in 1997 and is very shallow at 12 meters so a great wreck to dive through. Well, we’ll see.
By the way, the dive shop I used was the Koh Lanta Diving Center in Ban Saladan. Their website is www.kolantadivingcenter.com. I would highly recommend this shop to anyone. I felt that their safety standards were very high, their equipment was good, they had a low diver to dive master ratio, and all the staff were really helpful and friendly.
Leaving the pier at Sala Dan
On the dive boat
This is a very large (real) gecko!!! (outside my bungalow)
April 9th, 2002
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