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December 10, 2003

Down-time

Earplug time again. The night bus from Bangkok to Trat boasted a state-of-the-art onboard entertainment system, which played movies and appalling Thai pop music all night. Trat is the jumping-off point for the island of Ko Chang, where I intended to spend a few days not doing very much at all, just relaxing on the beach - after two months of constant travelling, I'd decided that I needed a break. The bus arrived in Trat at about four in the morning, and stopped just outside the fish market. I got off and sat down on a plastic chair next to a smelly stall where long slippery things were trying to escape from a metal tub. I hadn't slept and was exhausted. The ferry across to the island left just after dawn, and by 8am I was at Bai Lan bay, sitting by the water's edge, sipping coffee and gazing out over the sea.

A couple of weeks earlier, after saying goodbye to Anna in Mae Hong Son, I had taken a bus along the beautifully scenic road to the border town of Mae Sot. A few kilometres out of town the Moei river marks the frontier with Myanmar, and foreigners can get a temporary one-day visa to cross the border into the market town of Myawaddy. I spent a couple of hours in the town, which reminded me slightly of Kathmandu with its rows of little shops, shabby buildings and trucks and buses loaded with seemingly impossible numbers of people, baggage and animals. But my main reason for being here was to get a new 30-day Thai visa, which would allow me to spend a decent amount of time on Ko Chang before leaving Thailand for Vietnam - on returning across the bridge across the river to Thailand, I received the all-important passport stamp. From Mae Sot I continued south to the ancient capital, Sukhothai, where I spent a day cycling around the ruins, then to the modern capital, Bangkok, where I left my passport at the travel agency for a Vietnamese visa, and headed for Ko Chang.

Bai Lan bay is towards the south end of Ko Chang, and is one of the least developed areas on the island. There are only three or four guesthouse operations here, and all the accommodation is in simple bamboo huts near the water's edge. I stayed in a place called Bai Lan Hut; at its centre was a rambling wooden platform on stilts above the water, with low tables and cushions scattered around and a bar at one end. This functioned as the reception/restaurant/general chill-out area. When the tide was in, the steps at one end of the platform lead straight down into the sea. Further away from the water, just out of reach of high tide, were the huts - mine included a bathroom and a cat, who had already claimed the bed as his own. This was what I wanted - a place to just hang out and not do very much for a few days. I caught up with some reading, finishing Karen Armstrong's "Buddha", a very well researched account of what is known about Siddhartha Guatama, and an explanation of the main tenets of Buddhist philosophy. I resumed reading "Lord Jim” by Joseph Conrad at chapter 6. A few weeks ago I had given up with it, dismissing it as the biggest pile of tedious pseudo-psychological ramblings that I'd ever read. But now, somehow, I became hooked. All of the insights, the glimpses into the depths of the human mind, seemed to resonate and ring true - maybe it was being by the sea that did it, but by the end of the book I was a definite Conrad fan. I had picked up "Atonement" by Ian McEwan at a second-hand bookshop in Chiang Mai, and it turned out to be an ideal companion to "Lord Jim". Both books deal with a character who commits a transgression, a crime, and then spends the rest of their lives dealing with the consequences.

After a few days at Bai Lan, I moved north a couple of kilometres to Kai Bae beach. This area was slightly more built up, and there were a few posh resorts offering air-conditioned concrete huts on the beach, but I again opted for the bamboo bungalow. Every night there was a seafood barbeque, were freshly caught fish, shrimp and squid were roasted over coals by a man with Buddhist magic spells tattooed all over his body, and a belt of wooden penises around his waist. Every Saturday night there was a beach party with fire-dancers and a cheesy disco-ball that marked out a dance floor on the sand. I sat at the bar talking nonsense with a couple of fellow travellers, watching the drunken barman dance along the top of the bar before he fell off onto his head. Within a couple of minutes, he was back up there.

By the end of my stay on Ko Chang I was feeling revived. This was a time to reflect on all the things I had experienced since leaving London in October, to look back, and to compare notes with some other travellers. A holiday within a holiday. It was probably a good thing that I'd booked my onward flight before going to Ko Chang, or the temptation to stay there for many weeks, soaking up the sun and the beer, might have been too strong to resist. But at the beginning of December, I returned to Bangkok and caught a flight to Hanoi.

Posted by Steve on December 10, 2003 11:20 AM
Category: Thailand
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