Land of Clean
When picking up my breakfast snack in one of the ubiquitous 7-11 stores this morning, I briefly felt my sense of reality shift—the ‘dim sum’ in the little oven were the same as in Taiwan. And also as in Taiwan, the friendly check-out girl will give you a plastic bag and a straw with every purchase; actually you might get two such sets when you buy a small bottle of water and an even smaller bottle of milk. The girl was about to put my little dumpling into a third bagand gave me a vacantly surprised look when I raised a hand and then pointed at my daypack. I smiled, transferred the thing into the milk-bottle bag and stuffed both inside. But whereas Taiwan and Sri Lanka are in danger of suffocating under a blanket of plastic bags, in Thailand the rubbish is miraculously whipped away and recycled. That is a pleasant surprise—everything is clean. I have yet to see a cockroach on the meticulously swept floors in the guesthouses, although it may be a different matter in the Ko Tao NMP longhouse accommodation. With cleanliness comes the absence of smells and meticulous hygiene extents to food and water. Get this: all the water offered in even the cheapest noodle bars is safe to drink, and even more remarkably, all the ice is safe—made under government control from purified water. So go on and try one of the carefully carved wedges of pineapple that are displayed on a bed of naked ice by the street vendors. They are fine and particularly delicious here. Even the salads are fine.
Shame that these things are never around when needed. Back at the Hat Yai bus terminal, I was whisked straight onto the next bus to Satun, only managing to quickly pick up a bottle of water on the way. I glanced longingly at the fruit vendors across the street—no time! As the bus rolled towards Saturn, I looked down on pyramids of pineapple wedges, papaya and melon on their beds of sparkling white ice and then onto papaya treas pregnant with fruit. At least it reminded me to check food availability in the Ko Tao NMP: very little. I resolved to stock up on everything.
Denni