Final Days in Thailand; Heaven in Hat Railey

We took a three hour bus ride to Krabi and a taxi to the pier where we ate spicy pad Thai and waited for our longtail boat to set off for East Railey. As our boat arrived, we could see rock climbers on the limestone karsts. A tractor with a trailer attached to it pulled up near our boat, and we were transferred to the trailer and brought to the beach to avoid the boat getting stuck in the mud at low tide.

Hat Railey was more what I had in mind when I thought of Thai beaches, but even though this was a peninsula, you can only reach it by boat, and it was therefore expensive. We found a bungalow for 450 baht a night and then went exploring. Down the pathway from our bungalow was a beautiful cave called Diamond Cave, which was very spacious inside with dramatic stalagmites covering the walls and ceilings. There were small cave-like hollows in the limestone further along the path and macaques played in the trees along the way. When we reached the waterfront, the tide was starting to come in amidst the mangrove roots, and we had a fruit shake and dinner before heading back to our bungalow. There was a campfire near our bungalow and we spent time with some other travelers before heading to bed.
 

 

My hives were almost gone at this point, and I slept well and woke up late in the morning. After a banana shake and banana and chocolate pancake for breakfast, I set off on a trail behind our bungalow for Ton Sai Beach while Malone stayed behind to rest. The walk to the beach through the jungle was tough, with really steep hills, but it was green and beautiful. Out of the jungle, I reached the bungalows of Ton Sai, a community that seemed to cater more to young backpackers than did East Railey. The beach was more beautiful, too. It was heaven when I arrived. I put my pack down beneath a pandanus tree and went in the greenish-blue water, which was clear all the way to the limestone islands and blue sky. From the water, I could see the angled limestone cliffs lining the beach, with plams and mangrove trees in between. I read and wrote and swam as the tide went out, and eventually Malone joined me. As the water retreated toward the horizon, rocks appeared on the surface as the sandy bottom was exposed.

We sat at a beachfront restaurant and had fruit shakes before walking across the rocks at low tide to West Railey. This beach was the largest of the three, and there were waves, so we swam in the warm water. When it started to rain, we collected our things and walked back across a short path between West and East Railey for dinner and rest. We were met with a beautiful sunset and sky when we returned.  These were our last moments in Thailand and a very peaceful way to end our stay in that country. The following day, we would cross the border into Malaysia.

Phang Nga and Phuket

The ferry back to Chumphon thankfully did not make us lose our breakfasts. We took a train to Surat Thani and then a mini bus to Phang Nga. We arrived in the evening (travel took up a great portion of many of our days!), found a hotel, and shared noodles and street pancakes for dinner. At this point, most of my body was covered in hives—the very beginning of many days of itchiness and accompanying depression. Originally I thought it was from snorkeling; maybe there had been jelly fish in the water or I brushed up against a coral or something. As the hives spread and covered my body—nearly everywhere but my face—I hadn’t a clue what they were from.

On our first morning in Phang Nga, I bought a new camera with money I had borrowed from my mother (the beginning of my debt that has only grown since the trip!). Malone and I then rented bikes and rode them 8 kilometers to Sa Nang Manora Forest. It was beautiful and void of tourists. Biking there, everyone on the street waved to us and shouted “Hello!”; it was probably rare for them to see foreigners like us riding past. The ride was beautiful, with blue sky, limestone peaks in the distance, banana and rubber trees, and nice homes with flowers everywhere. When we got to the forest, we parked our bikes and began to walk down the path, past a creek and some small waterfalls, where we stopped to cool off. Thai families swam in the small, cool pools in their clothes, so we kept ours on too and enjoyed the cold water, with fish nibbling our feet.

We sat on the wet rocks and played with a stick bug we had found before walking along a path into the jungle for about 2 kilometers, with buttressed trees, small caves, beautiful ferns, and the creek by our side. We followed two young Thai men on the hike, and they were very kind—we could tell they were looking out for us and willing to help us up the steep parts and show us the caves. I was grateful for my new camera, but the hike and bike took a lot out of me, and I was feeling pretty ill. It was at this point that I realized my hives were probably a reaction to my malaria pills, which I had been taking for about a month and a half at this point. Why did I have a sudden reaction to them after taking the pill for so long? I don’t know, but it was a good three or four days after the hives began appearing that I knew to stop taking the medication. It would be another week before the hives disappeared. In any case, when we biked back into town, it had started to drizzle, and I wasn’t feeling well, so I went back to our hotel while Malone went on to explore some more. I tried to get a watermelon shake in a café across the street, but the owner wouldn’t let me have it because she said it was bad for my stomach! It was all that I wanted and she refused to sell it to me. I was frustrated, and itchy! I felt better after we had noodles for dinner and hydrated.

In the morning we got pancakes at the market, then back at the hotel, an elephant walked into the lobby! Malone paid 20 baht to feed it some sugar cane. The elephant stuck its trunk out expectantly, took the sugar from Malone’s hand, stuck it in its mouth, then immediately stuck its trunk out again for more. It reminded me of the end scene in A Clockwork Orange when the main character is being fed in his hospital bed. It was funny to see the elephant just strolling down the street in Phang Nga, though.

After the elephant departed, we were picked up in a truck along with other people who would be on our tour of the bay for the day. Since we were leaving Phang Nga right after the tour, we left all our luggage at the tour office, which was right next to the bus station. We were then shuttled to the pier, from which we disembarked into a longtail boat. Most of the people in our group were speaking French, so we didn’t talk much to them. Malone and I sat near the back of the boat, where the motor thrummed in our ears all day. There was a canopy over the boat, but I was still in the sun for most of the day, and this was one of the few times that I got pretty sunburned. Our journey began with a tour through the mangrove forest that lined the bay. The mangroves seemed thick and healthy. We saw a common water monitor lizard swimming, a white-bellied sea eagle, and several otters in the water.

When we finished passing through the mangrove forest, we entered into the bay—Ao Phang Nga—where we were met with open turquoise water, sun, waves, blue sky, and towering limestone formations in different shapes and sizes climbing out of the water. We spent a good portion of the day in the boat, just absorbing these formations, and the view was never tiring. We stopped for a lunch of fried rice on a beach that was partly shaded by the limestone behind it but partly in the sun nearer to the water. The water was deliciously warm, crystal clear, and wonderful to swim in. We stopped at another limestone island, where a spacious cave stood with sparkling formations and a crevice at the opposite end through which we could see the other side of the bay.

 

 

 

Back in the boat, we passed under two caves, where the ceiling was decorated with stalagmites and the green water lapped at the limestone walls. We stopped again at an island, made famous by a James Bond movie and therefore known as James Bond Island. It was a pretty spot, but no more remarkable than any other limestone tower, and not nearly as special because it was completely overrun with tourists. Skimpily clad people posed in sexy positions in front of the limestone tower while Muslim vendors, covered from head to toe, were subjected to near-nudity and poor behavior.

We moved on from the crowded place quickly and stopped at the Muslim fishing village, pausing along the way to see a 3,000 year old painting on a cave ceiling. They were the colors of mud and showed pictures of fish and men. The fishing village was a village built entirely on stilts in the water with a concrete pier and walkway where villagers sold fish and souvenirs. This place was also touristy, but much more genuine than James Bond Island, with longtail boats docked, nets hung in the water, and villagers gutting fish for sale. Scales covered the walkway. I was growing tired of looking at the same shells and necklaces and sarongs for sale when a woman approached me and shoved a diapered gibbon into my arms and asked for my camera. I knew she was going to ask for money once she took my picture holding the ape, and while I did not necessarily approve of the subjugation of the poor creature for profit, it all happened so quickly. He was adorable though, and very soft and light. After I returned the gibbon, we walked back through the village to our boat, which returned us to the pier as dark storm clouds filled the sky.

We were transported back to the bus station and got on a bus to our next stop on the Thai Peninsula: Phuket. It’s actually pronounced Poo-ket, but really, fuck it—we were in for a terrible several days in that town due to my hives, which has only gotten worse, and a migraine headache that consumed Malone for days on end. When we arrived, we looked initially at the hostel where Leonardo DiCaprio stayed in the movie The Beach, but instead chose to stay at the Thalang Guest House which seemed much cleaner and came with a complimentary breakfast. This was a good choice, because we spent most of our time in Phuket in the hotel room—Malone sleeping in the dark and me showering about 3 times a day because the hot water on my skin was the only thing that slightly relieved my itching. I also spent a great deal of time on Skype trying to change my flight to come home early—that’s how desperate I was for medical attention to my hives and how homesick they made me. Needless to say, I was unable to change my flight. The hives lasted a good ten days before disappearing and I had never experienced anything quite like it. Other than access to some good food in Phuket, we spent a few hours at Patong, one of the popular beaches, but it was so overrun with people that it was impossible to judge the beach’s beauty. And it was HOT. There were many nude bathers; I watched a Muslim woman giving a massage to a completely naked European woman and wondered about people’s respect for other cultures and places. Indeed, Phuket was not the place for us, and after a visit to the hospital for a new anti-malarial (where the motorbike driver charged me twice as much as he said he would after I stood arguing with him for a good 10 minutes), healing our wounds, and resting, we moved on.

By the dock of the pond, Turtle Island

I guess timing might be useful for framing this story. At this point, we had been in Southeast Asia for more than a month. On March 9th, we took a bus from Siem Reap to the Thai/Cambodian border, then a mini-van to Bangkok (I remember this being a very cramped ride), then a taxi to the train station, a train to Chumpong, a ferry to Ko Tao, and a taxi to Sairee Beach. Did I miss any forms of transportation? It was a long journey—we were coming from Cambodia, all the way west and then south down the Thai peninsula to one of the first islands in the Gulf of Thailand. When we got off the mini-van in Bangkok, it was interesting to be back in the city. The place we had stayed originally was near the train station, so we were familiar with the area and ended up eating at Hong Kong Noodle, where we had begun our adventures. We met up with two guys from Slovenia (if I remember correctly) and shared some of the transportation costs with them. The train was an overnight train, and it was freezing cold aboard. The passenger next to me was snoring so it was hard for me to sleep. (I’m not sure why Malone and I never seemed to be able to sit together.) The ferry ride is tied with the bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vientiane for worst travel. I took Dramamine before we got on the ferry, and I was fine for the first hour or so, but I then proceeded to throw up four times. Malone beat me—she threw up six times. We later found out that this ferry ride took place right after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan—perhaps the rough waters were a result of the earth’s activity there.

In any case, we made it alive to Ko Tao, “Turtle Island.” We found a place to stay at The Wind Resort, right on the beach. We soon learned that everything on the island was almost twice as expensive as on the mainland. That was still fairly cheap, but we were on a budget at this point. When we checked in, we took showers and naps (it had been a rough night), then woke up and had lunch downstairs and read on the beach in the late afternoon sun. The bay at Sairee Beach was calm and blue, with longtail boats in reds and yellows and blues and greens anchored close to shore. There were tree-covered mountains to either side of the short but pleasant beach. Lazy dogs slept in the sand next to us, and restaurants and dive shops lined the beach. Women walked up and down the beach selling sarongs and jewelry. As the sun set, we walked along the beach to find the best deal for a snorkeling trip for the following day, but we ended up booking one through our guest house for 650 baht (about $20). Dinner that night was sweet and sour tofu with tomato, onion, and pineapple. I didn’t take pictures of the food I ate while in Asia, but apparently I made pretty good notes in my journal!

The next morning, we had finally recovered from our travels. However, we carefully chose our breakfast, hoping it wouldn’t later end up as fish food. We were taxied to the main beach, Mae Hat, to get on our snorkeling boat. The sea didn’t seem as rocky as the day before, and we managed to avoid getting sick the whole day, though we did feel queasy at times. For some reason, we had the top deck of the boat to ourselves. There were too many waves to anchor at Shark Bay, one of the best snorkeling spots, so we stopped nearby instead. I didn’t realize that we weren’t at Shark Bay, however, and I brought my camera into the water to get some great shark pictures, but it was at this point that my camera met its doom. I had tested out the underwater camera case the night before and everything had been fine, but within three seconds of entering the water, the case was completely filled. Back on deck, I failed to revive my little green camera, may she rest in peace. To top it all off, as soon as I re-entered the water, I immediately saw a black tip reef shark. I didn’t follow it because I thought there would be many more, but I didn’t see another one all day!

We stopped at four different reefs to snorkel. The last two, Mango Bay and Japanese Gardens, were more spectacular than the first two. The visibility was poor because the water was so choppy, and many of the corals were dead, but I did see some living corals, colorful Christmas tree worms, sea cucumbers and sea needles, parrotfish, rabbitfish, and wrasses. I also saw blue sea anemones with small anemone fish hiding inside. All of the reefs were clustered against the rocky shores of the island, and though I had been expecting more beauty and life and diversity, I did get a splash of the wonders I had seen at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

The rest of the boat got off at a small island for a few hours, but since Malone and I hadn’t bothered to bring along the 100 baht landing fee, we stayed on the top deck of the boat, eating the lemon cookies, watermelon, and pineapple that was provided. I swam and snorkeled for a little bit, but back aboard the boat, Malone spotted a young male green sea turtle coming up for breath. If anything was going to brighten up my day after ruining my camera, this was it. But it would have been so nice to take a picture—he was so close to our boat! Ah, well. I had more sea turtles in my near future. That was it for us at Ko Tao. It was a rainy evening and we knew we couldn’t afford the island lifestyle, so back to the mainland it was! Plus, I had mysterious itchy spots appearing on my stomach and back...