Thailand II

Right now we are at a place called Railay Beach, which is near Krabi town on the SW coast of Thailand. And it is breathtaking. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It is a small peninsula covered in sharp cliffs and tropical vegetation, so you have the ocean, the greenery, and the topography all battling for attention. A lot of people come here to climb, and we might do some climbing. There is also snorkeling and diving, and yesterday we took a kayak around part of the coast.
Our hotel is pretty fancy by our standards—flush toilet (though it doesn’t always flush) and fan (though the fan is technically not working) plus the room provided towels, TP, AND shampoo and soap! Right? It is up a big staircase, so from where I am on the terrace it looks out on a great view of the ocean. There is also a pool. Our room is about $15 a night.

Getting here was interesting—we went on an overnight boat in which most of the space was taken up by thin mattresses placed side by side on the floor. Each one was maybe the width of a full-size bed and fit two. We kept our backpacks at the feet of the beds and all the tourists piled in there together and the lights went out as soon as the boat left, and really pretty much everyone slept (based on the general lack of noise). It was a great concept! Unfortunately, the boat ride ended at 4 am and we had to wait in a parking lot for an open-back truck to take us to a waiting station, where it took some two hours for the next truck to be ready to take us to a bus, where we sat unmoving for an hour before making the journey to Krabi for a taxi to the port and a long-tail boat to the beach. But it was worth it! So far this is my favorite place in Thailand. The island we were at before had great beaches and everything, but there’s just something about the cliffs that really takes this area to the next level.

The last place we were, Koh Phangan, is famous for the Full Moon Party. We arrived two days before it, and found that there were parties every night already. The first night we went to this pool party and I felt like I was the oldest person there—fine in itself, but the way everyone else was behaving was way too reminiscent of the awkwardness of the late teenage/early college years.

In general, the scene made me just a little uncomfortable. It reminded me of Spring Break in Rosarito, Mexico… where privileged white people descended en masse on this Mexican town, which had completely re-configured itself to receive them, feed them, inebriate them, and then clean up after them. I went to the market there and some of the vendors were floored that I spoke Spanish. They had learned to even accommodate their rich visitors linguistically, rather than the other way around.
Well, I don’t speak a word of Thai so I’m guilty on that front and many others. In Haad Rin (the beach town where the party happens), the shops are all made up of:

1. Restaurants that serve Western food at steep prices and play a continuous stream of American movies on big screens.
2. Shops selling neon colored shirts and shorts, hats, flip flops and an endless supply of summer dresses.
3. Massage parlors.
4. Tattoo parlors. Apparently they do NOT stop applying tattoos after a certain time of night, when alcohol can turn bad decisions into irreversible ones.
5. Motorbike rental facilities
6. Medical clinics. There were at least 4 on this island, a testament to how alcohol and motorbikes don’t mix.
7. Alcohol vendors. There are dozens and dozens of stands that are virtually identical except for the writing on the front, in which each vendor tries to out-do the other with respect to shock value and/or appeals to certain demographics. An example of the former would be “Free Fuck Bucket” to top “Me love you long time” or of the latter would be a surplus of, say, British flags.

So this town was basically a bunch of tanned/sunburned white 20 year olds killing time between parties. This was a difficult scene for me. Also, people were startlingly unfriendly! They would pass us without making eye contact, and sometimes even when I said hello they didn’t respond. One day we were trying to go to another beach and were unsuccessful hitching with SUVs full of tourists—though TWICE one pulled over and then pulled away before we could get in. It was unbelievable. I got so frustrated that I split with Carla and started running down the road, up and down steep hills. I eventually ran out of steam and it started to rain as I walked back, and vehicle after vehicle passed me without asking if I would like a ride.

Still, I had a blast at the Full Moon Party itself. A lot of people came in just for the party and they tended to be older and less single minded. Then there was a ton of loud music and people dancing. But the best part of the night was that Carla and I used glow-in-the-dark body paint on each other. We spent probably 2 or more hours applying it. We were both in sports bras and bikini bottoms, and I painted her exposed skin with vines and flowers. She painted my face with an incredibly detailed Dia de los Muertos-style skull and then painted an orange skeleton onto my body. It was definitely the winner, though we both got lots of attention. I am a definite convert to the idea of body paint as a party accessory!

We didn’t really stay out that late. We weren’t drinking—all together I think the two of us had maybe 3 beers total on the island, both because it was expensive and because we were enjoying the fruit shakes and Thai iced teas so much that alcohol seemed extraneous—so after a certain point it was just clear how drunk everyone else was and it was kind of a turnoff. Someone puked on my shoe. That’s a first. We saw a couple fighting and stood watching them for a few minutes in confusion, because it looked like the fight was based on her trying to remove his shorts and him not wanting her to. We started being approached not by people who just wanted to ooh and aah over our get-ups, but who wanted to drape their sandy, sweaty arms over us and slurringly convince us to hook up with their buddy. Another funny thing was guys who tried to impress us by name-dropping skeletal elements. “Oh wow. Clavicle, radius, ulna, carpals—you did a great job!”

We were in bed by 2:30 after scrubbing off whatever paint didn’t fall off from the sweat of dancing. I woke up at 7 and went back to the main beach, and the party was still going on! Some Americans I had talked to the night before were sitting on the beach, and I found out that they had pulled an all-nighter by necessity; they didn’t have accommodation. They had come in the day before and were just waiting on the day’s first ferry to leave. (My reaction: next time I’m doing it that way! Carla’s reaction: that sounds like torture).

I had spent the 2.5 days leading up to the party mostly feeling uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable with the scene of privilege-meets-natural-beauty-and-cheapens-it, and I think I was also feeling some serious Nepal withdrawal. As many of you know, I’m not great at sitting still. So the Nepal lifestyle (get up and hike!) suited me better than the Thai tourist one (sit on the beach and read). Plus I missed our friends from Nepal, the doctors. We had spent a lot of time with them and it was hard not having them around all of a sudden. But the day after the party, I ended up sleeping in a hammock and reading for a lot of the day and it felt pretty good!

We finally left our bungalow in the late afternoon, and went to Haad Rin beach. There, Carla saw three guys messing around with a volleyball and said, “looks like the need a fourth to play!” She jogged towards them and called out “It looks like you guys need a fourth!” And they ignored her. For a second I was like, this is unbelievable—more rude people! But then she caught their attention and one of them gestured to her that they were deaf. So the four of them went to the nets and had an awesome game of 2 on 2 (all four were great players) while I kept score. And it was just so much fun!! The guys could all mouth words, though I didn’t hear any of them speak at all. They’d ask me what the score was and I’d speak it while holding up fingers to show. Carla and I cheered and everything as usual, but ours were the only voices. After the game, we sat and chatted with them for a while, using gestures, lip-reading, and a single piece of paper and pen. They all seemed like really great guys and we got their email address and might see them here in Krabi.

We had paid for two more nights but the next day we decided to move on that night. I wanted to get motorbikes to explore more of the island but Carla was turned off by all the tourists with bandaged limbs from where they had fallen. Just when we were debating what to do, we saw three French guys Carla had met earlier renting bikes, and we ended up riding on the backs of their bikes over the island to a much quieter beach. I really enjoyed the ride! Man, there’s something about flying over terrain with the wind in my face that really gets me, whether it’s on a bicycle or a motorbike. We were out there till evening, and then we had to really scramble to get all our stuff packed and get to the boat, but it was a really nice day and a great way to end our stay there.

This post is in the wrong order but it brings us up to speed! The plan for today is to join an afternoon-evening tour for snorkeling, seafood, sunset and swimming with some phospholuminescent shrimp. P.s. we’re just a ferry ride away from the place where the movie The Beach was filmed, and we’re going to go check that out tomorrow or the next day.

I fly out in 8 days and I’m really excited about that. I don’t know if it’s because the end is near or just because it’s been so long, but I’m running out of steam for traveling. Which I’m kind of grateful for—we’ve talked to some people who are going home and sound really depressed about it, which makes me kind of sad. I’m glad that I have so many wonderful people and things to go home to!