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It's 7:20 A.M. here in Hin Kong, on the left coast of Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand, and here I am poking away at my MacBook Pro keyboard and wondering why in the world a self-admitted lazy musician is awake. We're talkin' 5 hours before any musician with a choice even thinks about falling out of bed in search of a triple-shot expresso drink of some kind. Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining...OK, I am complaining, but you folks back in the frozen continent probably wonder why. Well, yes, it is paradise, we're surrounded by coconut trees, it's 25 degrees Celsius already, butterflies that look like a friggin' Disney movie are chasing each other around, Oh, and a multi-coloured parrot just flew by, so why am I bitching now? Well, here's the thing: it's noisy around here. Some guy across the road decided to fine-tune his motorcycle at 7 in the morning, sans muffler, because I guess you don't want to put the muffler back on until you're sure the baby is running sweet. How sweet does it need to run, pal, when the average speed around here is 30 kliks! Maybe you're the island's only hope to win the Isle of Wight this year!
All right, maybe I was already a bit touchy, because also across the road there's a rooster farm. Yes, not a chicken farm, or a poultry farm; a rooster farm, and you guessed it, they're all in training to be the next cock-fight champs of - Oh I don't know - Asia, I suppose. And part of the training seems to be a cock-a-doodle-do yelling match at 6 in the morning. What about sunrise, boys? Wasn't it supposed to be about sunrise? I feel like going out and buying up every egg on the island in the hope that they won't have enough left over to make any roosters, but I suppose the cholesterol issue would defeat me before I truly solved the problem.
Then there's all those other fine-feathered friends that don't know enough to shut their damn traps when I'm trying to catch a few zeds! You got your Heavenly Hob-tailed Hooper that goes hoop-hoop-hoop-hoop all day and all night at around 125db that makes me want to throw a few sleeping pills in the bird feeder in hopes that they'll snooze a bit during the night instead of hooping the blues non-stop. There's tweeters, caw-ers, squawkers, whistlers, and birds that are makin' shit up as they go.
I'm gonna digress here for a minute and tell you about a mynah bird in a cage that I met the other day that says "twenty baht - twenty baht" when you walk by. In English, mind you! And to digress even further (it's still only 8:20 in the morning and my coherent, organized brain hasn't kicked in yet) there's a common joke that the natives all seem to play when you ask them how much something costs: "500 baht," for something that should cost more like 20, then they smile and chuckle at you. I've had it happen at least a dozen times, although sometimes it's as much as 1000 baht, and you laugh back at the fellow and get down to more serious haggling. I wonder if once in a while a stupid gorby farang that's new in town actually pays the exorbitant price out of ignorance, so maybe it's worth a shot; don't ask, don't get, you know? OK, back to the noisy fauna.
There must be a whole lotta bugs around here, and I mean jillions and jillions, because when choir practice begins they make a colossal racket. Different bugs have different sounds, some of them like machinery gone terribly wrong, some like electronic warnings of impending air strikes, some right out of sci-fi. And although there are times when only some of them are singing, there's never a time when none of them are. But, hey, I'm not complaining...much...***FISH HEADS PIC****
we'll have to exchange sound files on this one ... my din's a handful of mosques within a 1 km radius.
A comment on this blog from a friend that we carried with us from our old site: "Calls to prayer five times a day ... find myself musin' on the muessin from 0400 'til right after the Sun sets.
I'm being followed by a big muslim, big muslim, big muslim (sung to Cat Steven's Moonshadow). In the best possible way".
January 24, 2009 | Donno |
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***SCREEN CAPS FROM BANGKOK TUKTUK ETC****
The Drivers...
Vancouver is home to some of the worst drivers on the planet. Of course, I make this judgment based solely on the traffic experiences of relatively few places, mostly Canadian cities and towns, and granted, I'm a paranoid passenger to say the least, I drive like a little old lady, (and I mean that strictly in the cliche sense, because I know some smallish senior ladies that drive a lot more like Lewis Hamilton than I do!), so whatever comments I have on how others drive should be considered biased. But when I sat in the back seat of the taxi from Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, I think I know how Yuri Gagarin felt when he was hurled into space strapped to a rocket ship.
First of all, the driver was in the front passenger seat instead of where he should have been, and somehow he had managed to have someone install a steering wheel there. Maybe they took the real one out and moved it, because it was missing. So, since he had his steering wheel on the wrong side, he seemed to think it gave him license to drive on the wrong side! And do you think they have seat belts in the back seat of a Thai taxi? Na-unh!
And why did they bother to paint all those dotted yellow lines (5 or 6 sets of them) on the road, because in no way was our driver or anyone else using them as any kind of guide to keep them pointed in the proper lane. I looked up the word "lane" in my trusty Thai-English dictionary, and guess what: nada! Oh, and by the way, everyone else had that steering wheel conversion thing going on. Somebody must be making a fortune doing that work! Well, I guess what with the economy being in the toilet and all, a little ingenuity is a matter of survival.
After almost a week in Bangkok, though, I have to offer my grudging admiration for the tuk-tuk, motorbike, scooter, taxi, and ordinary civilian drivers in this city with a daytime population of 15,000,000 people. They have a flow, an awareness 360 degrees around them, and they seem to know to the millimeter where their vehicle ends and someone else's begins. There aren't just a few testosterone assholes cutting everybody off, everyone cuts everyone off as a matter of course, and they do it smoothly and with great civility. Nary a paint scratch or creased fender did I see, no ambulances and cop cruisers speeding to the scene of another pile-up on the freeway (in Vancouver, a city not one tenth the size, you can count on a half dozen per commute, and if it's raining, double that, and if it's snowing, don't even go there!), and all this with a calmness that's downright eery.
Truth be told, though, the way they drive in Bangkok is truly a magnificent ballet. And yet, if a driver from Canada, even one that had a good driving record, was plunked down here he/she wouldn't last ten minutes. It would be like someone who didn't speak or understand a word of Thai trying to discuss the finer points of Thailand political science with a native who spoke no English. But that's just it: there is a culture of driving here that is known to all, and somehow it works.
On the island of Koh Phangan that driving culture exists as well, with a few local twists. Most of the vehicles here are small motorbikes and scooters, with a few songthaews thrown in; a songthaew is basically a pickup with a metal roof over the back and benches for passengers. They operate much in the same way as the combies in Mexico, that is, they aren't metered, and they pick up anyone along the way looking to book a ride. The price for a ride can vary between 50 and 500 baht for the same distance, depending on factors like: is the driver likely to get more customers along the way? Or was that the last boat from the mainland? Or "you look fatter than most, so that'll put more wear and tear on my truck", or factors that I haven't been able to determine yet. (Incidentally, a THB, or Thailand Baht, is worth about 3 1/2 Canadian cents, so 100 baht is $3.50.)
It's not unusual to see an entire family, mother and father and two small children, riding a 100cc motorbike at the same time, none wearing helmets. But even the babies seem to know how to hold on, and the ancients even seem to prefer side-saddle on the back seat. Mind you, they don't break the sound barrier while riding like that - 40 kilometers an hour is about right for most folks. Some of the young blades torque it up a wee bit, and of course some of the drunken farangs really move along, but a lot of them have the road rash to prove it.
But with the taxi(songthaew) prices being what they are, the way to go is to rent a scoo-tay, because these small bikes can be had almost anywhere, for example, at the resorts, at real estate rental offices, or at stand-alone establishments dotting the roads everywhere. We're renting one for 2500 baht a month, about $88.00 CAD, and throw in another $40 bucks for gas and you're mobile. That's less than a latte a day!
Most of this island of Ko Phangnan is pretty flat, but there are a couple of hills that these small bikes won't get one person to the top of, let alone two. It makes a consideration when looking to rent in these areas, or visit particular sites, but there are boats that can get you there from the outside (but mind the weather, 'cos they only go when it's nice - as it has been since we arrived here towards the beginning of January.)
Living on Hastings street in Burnaby had the sonic disadvantage of the Harleys give'n'er up the hill in front of our condo, but here, even though there aren't too many hogs, there are a LOT of those little bikes, which at times can make this island paradise a noisy place. Oh, and talkin' about the noise... that's another story...
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We've been on Koh Phangan for a little over 2 weeks, and we're getting pretty brown and relaxed.
We found a quiet little "resort" an easy five minute walk from the main town of Thong Sala, called "Pha Ngan Villa ***http://phanganvilla.net****. We moved there from another spot up the beach because they were cheaper and our bed was way way too firm. We were super happy to discover that this new resort was cooler and cleaner, the beds a bit softer, that they were kinder, more caring, true thai buddhist-like, with much more of a family feeling. All in all, wonderful helpful folks (the main faces are Port, Noe, Lak, and the rest of the staff are the kind of genuine good people you'd love to know), and it would give me great pleasure to recommend them as a safe, easy, warm, wonderful, caring and inexpensive place to stay while on Koh Phangan.
I've been house hunting and have learned a lot about the island, the pace, and the politics such as they are. Many folks indigenous to this island (and thailand) are buddhist, and as such, very laid back, philosophical, and honest. But, here and there, you can see where buddhism is starting to take a back-seat to the evolution of greed and capitalistic gain- the west's great gift to "3rd world nations".
We decided that the area near the northern town of Chaloklum would be a quiet and cheap as an out of the way / off the beaten path sort of place. So we set about trying to locate a rental in that area. I drew up a list of possibilities covering Chaloklum and other areas, and gave it to Malee, a great person I found online from *****http://phanganisland.com***** who is working as an agent/liason with regards to house rentals. Like anywhere in the world, but especially here, there can be many surprises in terms of added-on unexpected costs.. the universal horror stories, so we decided that using an agent like Malee would save us big-time headaches and mystery costs, as well as the fact fact that she's thai, and runs an enterprise relying on word of mouth and repeat business.
She called me back and took me to see some houses in the Wok Tum and Hin Kong area along the island's west coast on day one, then day two, we drove up to Chaloklum over hill and dale and falling-apart roads. We arrived at a beautiful thai teak house whose owner had that slight mamasan predator look on her face, and the price miraculously bounded upwards from 9,000 bahts per month to 15,000 bahts for 3 weeks ...hummm. We all smiled, and I responded through Malee that we'd call her back soon. "Blow me" I thought to myself "you manipulative old cow".. out loud I said all the polite thai words of thanks and appreciation. I could easily read the surprise on Malee's face when the price jumped, and knew that she was as disappointed as I was, if perhaps for different reasons.
It would seem that Chaloklum is not to be, as far as a house rental is concerned, at least for our 1st month on the island.
Once again on my motorbike and following Malee back southwards towards the town of Thong Sala, I decided that the third house Malee showed me on day one of house hunting would suffice for a month, giving us more time to find a cheaper quieter location.
So we've moved in and discovered that the house comes with a couple of dogs, including 2 beautiful females - that miracle of miracle both seem to be spayed, and a gorgeous black&white spotted male we call... "spot". ***SPOT?GILIEGIRL PICS***We're still trying to figure out where they come from as they're all very healthy and seem well cared for... but we're no closer to figuring that one out, nor their real thai names, but our security couldn't be better. No one gets within 100 feet of this place without a pack of sleek dogs demanding to know the what-for, and see some ID.
The house also comes with a couple of ghekos, some unobtrusive ants, and a real hot water shower. The kitchen has enough stuff in it to actually cook a meal, and the market in Surithanu is about a four minute walk away. The beach is a one minute walk down the sand road behind the house, and as night approaches, a concert of insects tune up for a steady performance with few intermissions.
On friday nights, a karaoke bar, somewhere to the north of us, cranks up the thai tunes and the thai's go wild singing mostly in key to a thumping bass, and the sound floats across the little bay and up our hill until they shut it down at 2 am-ish. So we're learning the slight thai variance to the pentatonic scale by the drifting sound and osmosis. I find myself humming a cross between asian melody and modern american blues, as I try to discover the true thai-ness inherent in their melody, that slight something that makes it foreign to our ear.
Ted's been playing slide guitar and harmonica pretty much everyday (that little martin loves him), while I've been working on connectivity, software, and website issues. We've almost finished the DIY steady-cam rig, which with a tiny bit of tweaking will be awesome, but I suppose the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, in a steady smooth shot.
Today I got the file transfer happening from the camera's sdhc card into the computer FCE4 editing program without that effing error icon flashing in my face (I've had on again off again success; we're definitely on again!). Next will be the learning curve of making this program do what I see in my head, as opposed to fumbling through data and pulling out my hair.
Today was also my birthday (jan19th), and it was a beautiful day, sun beaming down with none of the overcast hue that's been hanging on/off over the island since we arrived. We decided to drive up to the north in the late afternoon, to Chaloklum, to see if we could finally eyeball our old friend the north star, who's been evasive behind a thick patch of palm trees, a mountain range, or, as was the case tonight, behind clouds that hung low on the northern horizon, while above our heads, exclusive of the northern star, was a riot of starlight and planets richly illuminating the inky black night. We'll keep looking for our north star, but I think we may not see it for quite a long time.
This island in Thailand has a grace that I find myself captivated by, unique and unlike anywhere else I've traveled to on this planet. Each day unfolds with a new mystery, new beauty, new sounds and sights to discover. A culture that reveals itself like a slow scintillating striptease, until perhaps, one day in the distant future, she'll stand before us totally naked, and we may find ourselves with a greater insight into the who what and why of her. And in doing so, she will reveal a greater depth into the who what and why that lingers in the heart of each of us.
I'm in no hurry, and am definitely enjoying the light and shadow that make up the mystery of this slowest of reveals, this sexy life affirming dance that I can only hope lasts forever.
Our world, far to the east of us, now seems.. well ... a world away, and I still have a "to do" list that includes paying my IATSE 891 union dues, forwarding a new mailing address to those that need it, banking, socan, .. and other stuff that's probably quite important but has little or no allure to get 'er done. I know that eventually I will (due to the edge of capricorn that tries to rule me), but in the meanwhile, we're taking each day as it comes, and finding much joy in the great and small things, including contact with friends and family in that world that is hazy and far away, somewhere to the east of our present sunrise.***BEACH NEAR PHAGNAN VILLA****
Comments from old site:
Sounds like you are having a wonderful time, I am really enjoying reading your blogs. I feel like I am reading a traveller's guide and feel relaxed at the end of each segment! We are both so thrilled that you guys have found your way there and are enjoying all of the new adventures. I find myself looking forward to the next installment. Mind how you go......Pamela
January 20, 2009 | Pamela
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Now, we're leaving the big city. Goodbye Khaosan Road, Bangkok, and hello long long ride to a beautiful island nestled in the gulf of Thailand, in the deep south not too far above Thai / Malaysian border, with the equator hovering somewhere nearby.
Another tuk-tuk ride, with the tuk-tuk groaning under the weight of our baggage, brought us to the train station. Feeling a little bewildered, we found the number of our train, then our assigned car, and finally the train pulled out of Bangkok with greater ease than we had anticipated. The only catch was that once on the train, we discovered that we had seats/beds in different cabins, but we managed to make a trade and got to travel together.
The train chugged out of Bangkok at a little after 5pm and rolled through the sprawl of Bangkok's suburbs and slums as the sun lowered into the horizon, bathing the sprawling poverty in a golden glow. The slums rolled into fields, which rolled into towns, which rolled into a darkening night. Our train cabin mates were Carmen and Luca, who owned a store on the island of Ibiza, Spain, and were on their sixth trip in one year importing Thai crafts and clothing into Spain. As far as cabin mates go, we couldn't have been luckier.<br/>
Our train conductor, on the other hand, was the most crotchety, fascist, dictator, whom we all thought was a functioning drunkard-control-freak-bastard, and I'm actually being quite polite. He was the lone turd in the orchid garden, but even as a turd, he was too bitter to ever fertilize... karma...
We met some fine young Swedes on the train who were desperate to know how the junior world champion hockey turned out.. Ted, the man in the know, explained that the Canadian junior team had taken gold for the fifth year in a row.. Go Canada.. We gave the most enthusiastic Swede our Vancouver Canucks hat, and it was incredible to watch his handsome young Swedish face go from near tears to total ecstasy in the time it takes to put a hockey ballcap on a head. His joy was infectious. I can still hear him cooing "Mat Sundin, The Sedin twins, Matias Olund..", half of our team appears to be Swedish, and I think we just fostered the Canucks' newest biggest loudest proudest fan from Sweden. And he looked awesome in that Canucks hat!
The train rumbled and jiggled through towns shrouded in the mystery of night, but the smells of fields, industry, and Thailand came through whenever the train slowed or stopped. We shared some food, beer, and cigarettes, and eventually we climbed into our narrow beds, shivering from the excessive air-conditioning, and awoke at 3:30 am, wondering if we were near our stop, Sarrithani, and wondering how the next leg of the journey would unfold. Would we be wandering around looking for a bus, a person, a taxi..? Would we find help?.. As it turned out, it couldn't have been easier. We stepped off the train and into/under the wings of one of the best mother hens I've ever met. She shepherded us into a cafe, and explained that her bus would take us to the ferry at 6am.
The bus left at 6am with swiss/germanic precision. The bus made one stop in the town of Sarrithani to load up with some extra passengers, and the remaining cargo space on and under the bus was crammed full of mysterious bins and baskets destined for the island of Koh Phangan. By the time we pulled out of the stopping spot, there was not one speck of cargo space wasted, including the space in and around the stairs leading up to the passenger seating area (picture a clean/modern almost double decker bus- people in comfy reclining seats with a thin floor between us and a world of baggage and plastic bins with newspaper lids). I could feel the added weight under us as the bus moved on and headed for the ferry terminal.
We could see our ferry, engines chugging, like a fat racehorse in the starting gate, just waiting for us to dash onboard before ringing the bell and heading out into the shimmering waters of the gulf of Thailand. The shapes of island mountains rising straight up out of the turquoise waters were like the japanese paintings that my eyes pored over as a child. Shapes unlike anything I'd ever seen in the flesh.
The boat chugged through the waters and the mainland disappeared into the haze of our wake.
Pete, an expat british gentleman whom we met on the train, filled us with information about living on Koh Phangan, the "do's & don'ts of Thai island living. He runs the island's only windsurfing rental/school, and his history with regards to windsurfing is a story unto itself.. I used to sell windsurfing boards in Montreal way back when, and have an appreciation for the stories he told of his initiation into windsurfing, the star status he attained, and now the quiet joy of training the next generation of sailors, and of dealing with the yahoo's, the good & the ugly tourists.. but Pete's story is a massive chapter that I could never do justice to , so we'll just have to hope he gets around to writing the book that he hinted at.
So, here we are, arrived at our second Thailand destination, the place we hope to make into our home for at least 2 months.
We stayed at a resort type place for 5 days of unwinding and just catching up with ourselves. On day 2 on Koh Phangan, we quit smoking and decided to lay off the beer for awhile, and started our bootcamp of sit-ups and push-ups. By day 5, we've more the doubled the number we can do, and are noticing that it's all so much easier. We've even added coconut weights into our loose regime of exercise. It sure looks funny, but it works.
We've filmed some of the monkeys that are the coconut-work-horses, as they choose and toss the ripe coconuts down to the ground from dizzying heights. Rumour has it that they will occasionally try to hit their handlers with coconut projectiles to get out of doing the work. A coconut falling from those heights would concuss you at best, or just plain out and out kill you, so it takes a sharp handler to stay one step ahead of the monkeys and their cunning devious ways.
Today we rented a motorbike and toured around the island (right hand drive - Ted thankfully forever whispering "stay on the left" in my ear). We headed up north to the town of Chaloklum (20 different ways to spell it?) where the sea was crashing onto the beach, unlike the gentle lapping we've witnessed so far along west coast of the island. A big loop brought us north, then west, and then around heading south back to where we started from, then, feeling brave and experienced, we decided to head as far south as we could go. As far as we could go, was 3/4's of the way up an exceptionally steep hill that our little 110cc could never manage to climb, even after Ted jumped off the back of the bike. We just didn't have the horses to make it over that hill and around that bend. So the very southern tip of the island will remain unexplored for now. Tomorrow, we hope to hear back from Malee, our rental agent, that our chosen house near Chaloklum is available... but another day might slip by before we get the word on our next abode.. it's all good...<br/>
I've decided to start (have started) a photo journal on the dogs and cats of Thailand. As it builds, you'll start to see why the thought presented itself. And I'll explain the idea further as it crystallizes and takes shape on the page.<br/>Learned a few more words in Thai that bring big beautiful smiles whenever we use them. In a sense, it's all "a work in progress", and we're loving the ride. |
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