Island Tour

This trip has worked out well. Next month will be my one-year anniversary in Bangkok, but I’d yet to visit the islands. It’s not that I haven’t been travelling – I’d spent parts of the first four months of the year on four different continents - but that was also the problem, too much long-haul and not enough exploring in my new backyard.  So knowing I wouldn’t be needed in the office for a span of two-weeks, I bought a one-way ticket to Krabi and ended up with a pretty diverse adventure.

Koh Phi Phi

First stop was Koh Phi Phi - made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio and The Beach – and my quest to finally get dive certified after talking about it for years.  The island didn’t disappoint in terms of beauty, but I felt like I met my 20-year old self there laughing at my wheelie bag and refusal to get on the bar for some shots and drunk dancing.  Of course I mocked the jar of peanut butter she still carried to make up for all the 10am breakfasts she could never get up for. We battled over her disappointment of my private room devoid of bunk beds and a litany of European languages yapping from corner to corner.  I asked if she ever wore shoes, she asked if ever wore a bikini.   In the end we made peace and parted on good terms – her wishing she could afford the dive class and me photographing my certificate. 

I overnighted in Phuket Town, a former Portuguese trading port with colonial architecture, quirky shops and art galleries. This was my city stop and my B&B was one of the funkiest I’d ever stayed in. http://www.quiphotel.com/  It was full of whimsical furniture (think Alice-in-Wonderland), Americana collectibles and electronics that could have been pulled from my parent’s basement – rabbit ear TVs, short wave radios and turntables. The reception desk was a converted car. Hanging on the wall outside my room was a giant aerial photograph of the New York skyline which made me wonder if somewhere in Manhattan there sits a hotel boasting photos of Phuket. It’d be like some alternate universe with really nice symmetry.

Paddle!!

Next, I headed out on a two-day overnight kayaking adventure in Phang Nga National Park. We paddled on flat waters circling limestone islands, explored hidden lagoons full of mangroves and battled a monkey who stole pineapple from our lunch. Just me, the guide, two British med students and random encounters with fisherman, heron, egrets, kingfishers and a rare white-bellied sea eagle. Oh yeah, and the fruit bats who attack the local’s mango and rambutan trees at night then dangle in their secret bat lair by day.

After five days of physical exertion I booked myself into a 4-star luxury resort on Phuket’s Panwa Cape.  I was upgraded to the Honeymoon Suite  on arrival (don’t know why) and entered as the sun was setting across the bay. There were fireworks and a giant Buddha statue, a la Christ the Redeemer, sitting on the hilltop opposite. It was so perfectly relaxing I immediately extended my stay and never left the grounds, refusing to commit to anything more than daily spa treatments. Of course that was really my plan from the start, to do nothing... I was in the islands just to trade my dining room office for a sun-soaked balcony with sea view work set-up…. And yes, I got stuff done. I learned that to-do lists melt like ice cubes in the tropics, vanishing with ease under solar powered dedication.

I arrived at my last stop today – a small beach community at NaiYang wedged between a National Park and the Phuket airport. (That does sound a little counter-productive, but it's really nice to enjoy my last few days without stressing over potential traffic jams on the way to the airport.) The town is really just a single lane road following the shore, canopied by trees and buffered from the Andaman Sea by a beach of golden sand.  Restaurants and huts line the road with women offering outdoor massages along the beach.  I love the vibe and simplicity – it’s probably the last scene I needed without really knowing it. All in all a well-balanced trip.

Update: I wrote the above section last night but didn’t get a chance to post it.  Below is an update from today…

I’m in a little bungalow that steps right out onto the beach.  I took a walk along the road today and found an old dilapidated hotel across the street.  It was some big Miami style art deco construction from the 80’s with giant balconies that the jungle had reclaimed. It was beautiful in a haunting way and eerie how some of the foliage looked like planned window boxes with flowering greens spilling over the edge.  I wandered around wondering why it was abandoned and wrote it off to the same economic collapse that’s left hundreds of half-finished buildings littered through Bangkok and the hillsides of Phuket.  But the longer I stayed the more uneasy I felt. It was obvious that this hotel had been finished- there were light fixtures, teak wood ceilings and the hotel’s name in grand, but fading letters.  This place had been finished, this place had had life.  There was something unsettling about the way tiles and wiring peeled from the ceiling like water damage….

Crown Nai Yang Suire Hotel

Tsunami.  A quick google search confirmed it.  The water had risen to the second floor and standing before it made the magnitude of devastation so apparent. I saw the water so high, the force of it so strong. Superstition and a lack of funds prevented the hotel from being either renovated or torn down.  So now it stands as a ghost hotel tangled between nature and development, a tragic reminder. 

Ironically, at least one current listing for it still exists. Would you like to book a room? http://www.sbyphuket.com/hotel/phuket/naiyang/crown_naiyang/crown_naiyang.htm

Tsunami

Sometimes my nightmares consist of tsunamis, churning waves and drowning.  Often I’m sitting in front of a giant floor-to-ceiling plate glass window looking out at some magnificent view when the waters rise up violently and shatter the glass.  I am caught in the tumbling force of water, somersaulting and sinking. As a child I was told if you die in your dream you die in real life. I now know this isn’t true. I have drowned countless times in countless ways, but for me there’s always an escape – an alarm clock, my cat or just a panicked return to waking.

When I arrived at Koh Phi Phi in Southern Thailand I wasn’t sure how, if at all, it had been impacted by the Tsunami in 2004. I was naive in hoping it had been spared or that maybe just one of the two main beaches was affected, but the island is shaped like a dumbbell with mossy, limestone mountains weighting the ends and anchoring the sandy strip that connects them. Beaches run the length of the strip on both sides. They are divided by a buzzing community of hostels, cart vendors, open air bars, dive shops and local families who live in between. When the waves came they flooded straight across, wiping out everything from beach to beach.

As I walk the island's interior I think about that day. There are no cars here, just a maze of narrow alleys lined with flimsy buildings that block the breeze and corrode beneath the sun. The stone walkways feel like claustrophobic chutes and I wonder where I’d run. The options are limited and my panic seems real.

I watch the locals going about their routines. What was that day like for them? Those here now… those who survived. There's an elderly man sweeping fruit peels from the cobbled path, a teen pushing a towering cart of bottled water, a woman selling ferry tickets to safer shores. Each has a story, a decision, a moment of chance or luck that allowed them to still be here. Their great escape. How? I wonder about their loved ones who didn’t make it. Are they grateful or regretful?  

Just how much does this island grieve beneath the stalls of leather bags and seashell bracelets? Do the tattoo parlors recognize a different kind of pain? I won’t pretend to know the horror or sorrow, but even so I am moved. I am saddened by the immensity of loss. I ache with empathy and compassion. For them it’s ten years past. For me it’s only just today.

I am told it was the tourism community that brought Phi Phi back to life.  That travelers and Western volunteers played key roles in returning to the island to clean up and rebuild.  I’m told it was the dive companies who took charge of clearing the waters, retrieving trash, debris and broken pieces of life from the seabed.

  

Gazing across the bay I can’t imagine how the clean-up was even possible. The volume and scale must have been devastating, the contents of just one mini-mart seems like an overwhelming burden to clear, add to it hundreds more shops, restaurants, hotels and homes. Unlike other holiday communities where locals simultaneously rely on and resent the temporary masses rolling through, I'm told Phi Phi has nothing but gratitude for its steady stream of visitors. Tourists are welcomed and valued as the source of recovery. I can’t say if this is true, but the people are certainly friendly.

Today, there’s not much sign of any of it – just a small family resort built from reclaimed wood with four memorial longtail boats. Each is named in honor of a loved one the owner lost.  The market stalls and massage houses are back as they were before. Pierced college students flirt and chug beer in the sand where churning waters tormented so many. Cats mew and scratch in the trees that survivors clung to in panic. Fire jugglers spin lit batons teasing guests with near misses on beaches where victims fought for air. Pounding rhythms of youthful dance parties wipe out any lasting nighttime echoes. Life has moved on and the locals have appeared to let go. If you weren’t thinking of it you may never know it happened, but that would be a sadder story yet. 

Unexpected

I’m sitting at dinner fighting phantom bobbing and rolling from spending most of the past three days on a boat or under water doing a dive certification. My dinner companion sits at a desk halfway round the world connected to me by the blanket of wifi that covers Koh Phi Phi. I send her photos of my beachside table with its evening views, plastic chairs and floral tablecloth. My pineapple salad, journal and Lonely Planet creep into the shot.  I have traded work-from-home for work-from-beach.

We chat across the miles as I eat.  A Call to Prayer sings out from the neighboring mosque and tangles with the pounding bass of Eminem that escapes from the karaoke club on the other side of me. Unexpected. This is Thailand.

Set among the overflow of tattoo parlors, elephant print pajama bottoms and wrinkle-free backpackers, I realize the shopkeepers all greet me with a Chinese ‘ni hao’ and not the Thai ‘sawadee.’ My feet are constantly wet from sun-proof puddles in rainy season. They navigate an island devoid of motor vehicles where abrasive honks are replaced by the whimsical chimes of a bike bell. Crowded families of three pedal by or maybe it’s the woman with the Pomeranian balancing on the handlebars. Tonight it was a young girl cycling past at bedtime in her nightgown.  Unexpected. Unexpected like the man carrying a monkey dressed in yellow corduroy pants held up by bright red suspenders. Or the endless restaurants offering a mix of Thai and Italian cuisines. Nothing more, nothing less and nothing to explain it.

A man takes my photo and speaks to a friend in a language I don’t recognize. He tells me it’s Nepalese. He grew up there and also Burma. I guess he’s 25.  Now he lives in Phi Phi, runs a small shop and specializes in languages - Nepalese and Burmese, plus Thai and French and Italian and German and Swedish and Spanish and more he doesn’t mention. He says he learns them because not everyone speaks English and that Chinese is a struggle. Unexpected. He deserves so much more for his efforts.