PACE

My bungalow was right at the back next to the forest/jungle, which is, as I found out later, inhabited by monkeys.

One day, I was sitting in my bed reading a book when I heard some steps right outside, so I think – ‘Andrew must be coming back’ – when I look up , I see a monkey walk in the door. This isn’t any cute little thing either. Its a large male monkey staring at me. So, I sit up to scare it away and it just looks at me and growls! bearing its teeth! I’m thinking ‘holy shit, I’m going to get attacked by a monkey.” It stops its growling and runs up to the table in the room and steals a bag of mangos. I’m still in shock from the fact that a monkey just ambushed me, but I’m still thinking ‘hey, I walked all the way to town for those mangos.’ So, I grab a broom and go to retrieve, but the damn monkey had already tore into both mangos and was calmly eating them right there at the bottom of my stairs, as if to spite me. The two females came out, 1 with a small baby clutching to her, so I threw them a banana, which the bastard male tried to steal. The picture below is the female with the baby peeking in the room.

So, that was my first run-in with the monkeys. The second time might have been worse. I was making a b-line to the bungalow at top speed, for a stage-3 emergency had suddenly set upon me and I had dire need to drop a dirty, dirty, deuce. So, I am almost at my place, looking upon the steps, when I see the monkey under the stairs. In my haste I think nothing of it and proceed.

The monkey does his little sideways aggressive monkey shuffle and bars my way. I’m thinking ‘theres no way this monkey is going to block me out of my own house, and certainly not at this particular junction in time…’ So, I proceed.

As soon as I take a step forward, he extends one arm to the ground in front of him and crouches all the way down, cat-like, in some sort of monkey attack pose. Again, I’m thinking ‘Holy shit! I’m going to get attacked by a monkey.’

So, I retreat and gathered a few bottles, which I then used as projectiles to scare the foul beast away.

Anyway, on another note, I ended up staying on Ko Phi Phi for about 12-14 days, something like that, with a grand total for accomodation being $75 U.S. dollars. Don’t listen to guidebooks. If you want to go somewhere, just go, you’ll find something. ‘No Cheap accomodation on Phi Phi’ is all we heard before we arrived. The only thing from the guidebooks that is true about Ko Phi Phi is one statement in the Lonely Planet that says ‘Ko Phi Phi is so beautiful, it’ll make you cry.’

On yet another note, there are now signs for tsunami evacuation routes on the island. Some of these point you absolutly nowhere, and I saw some being used to advertise bar specials… If the water suddenly gets sucked out to the sea, head for the hills, thats about all I know.

In Phi Phi we stayed at what was called Phi Phi Hill Resort. We had a bugalow way up on the cliff, over looking the ocean. The restaurant was high, overlooking the water and two great islands. The sun set between them every night. This was on Long Beach, about a 35 minute walk along the way back to the village. The path along the coast was huge bounders broken up by small stretches of beach as you headed back into town. After navigating the rocks a few a few times you got to learn the terrain & this made it alot quicker, plus we could do it by night and save a few dollars that we would have been given to taxi boat drivers to take us into town.

The town itself (locals referred to it as ‘the village’) was fairly small in relation to anything else. There were only 3 main pathways, which were lined with dive shops, bars, pharmacies, restuarants, eateries, tattoo shops (thai bamboo tattooing, they use the bamboo pole to tattoo you), clothing stores, and travel shops. There were no cars or motorbikes on the island at all, so the air was really clean and the only noise was from the boats or music from the bars.

You must keep in mind that this is the same island that got hammered by the tsunami to a huge loss of life. People here are rebuilding their lives, and many of the locals say, with little help from the government.

We met a handful of people living on the island who survived the tsunami. All of those who survived lost people close to them. We me a girl who climbed a tree when the wave came and lived. While she was up on the tree her leg was impaled by a branch, probably propelled by the wind or tumult of water. 5 minutes into talking to her she showed us photos of her leg when she was in the hospital. There was basically a hole straight through her thigh about 3 inches wide.

Anther guy, Choy, owned a business that was worth a couple million baht. He got 20,000 baht (U.S. $5,000) in compensation. After the tsunami he started writing songs about the island and the feelings that were inside him after the tragedy. He said we was tossed around the streets by the water ‘like he was in a washing machine.’ Miraculously he came out with only a few cuts, although his girlfriend was lost, along with many friends. He’d been through all this and still remained positive. “All I can do is look forward to the future”, he said.

He had recieved much kindness from strangers. His instruments, including a djembe drum were destroyed – a Swiss guy ordered the skin for the drum from Africa and remade the djembe for him as well as giving him a Swiss army knife – An Austrian man brought down a portable studio on computer, took him into the jungle on op of the mountain here, and there they recorded and album of all Choy’s songs. The album is on DVD and also plays footage of Phi Phi Island. Its called ‘Andaman – A Lesson of Loss.’ [Ko Phi Phi is in the Andaman Sea] We were blessed to meet Choy for breakfast at a cafe in town. He played and sang a few of his songs for us using my guitar.

There is evidence of the Tsuname still, but really you dont even notice it, being overwhelmed by the natural beauty of the island.

Every day I would walk out of the bungalow in the morning and walk down the path towards the restaurant, stop and stare out at the water shimmering with bright sunlight with the 2 minor islands in the background. From the edge of the hill was a beautiful view of the water changing from crystal clear to a light blue-green to a darker blue.

The blue-green area had amazing coral, great for snorkling. You could rent a mask and fins at our bungalow and step right out into the water to snorkel. Huge coral formations froma few feet down to the deeper water, which looked to be about 30 ft. down. Some of the coral formations were really giant, 6 feet hight maybe and just as long around, bunches of these on the sea floor and schools of yellow & black fish were swimming around you. Some of the fish were neon colored vibrant green, blue, and purple.

If you swim out a couple minutes you come to a rock formation known as Shark Point. Alot of the dive shops took tour groups out there to swim with the sharks. We met a guy, Christopher, from Switzerland who told us about it and we were lucky enough to live right there so we just rented snorkels and swam out with him. Christopher happened to be a Dive Master who worked in one of the dive shops, so he took us out at the right time of day and told us how to behave around the sharks.

We were to swim together in a group, slowly and not make any sharp movements with our hands. This way we dont scare off the sharks and its a bit safer to be in a group. They’re never had an attack, but sharks are sharks. One guy was out snorkling by himself and he was circled by about 15 sharks. He got scared and wam in. We didn’t see 15, but I did see 2, one of which was pretty big, maybe a 5 footer.

The food on the island was pretty amazing. Fresh fruit all day. Papayas, pinenapples, coconuts, mangos, bananas, all so fresh. We ate alot of fruit and fresh fish. They brought in fresh fish every night and had them on display, usually snapper or tuna. You could check them out and pick the one you wanted and how to cook it – steamed with different sauces – the Thai spicy sauce was good, or fried, Chinese style or Thai style , or a few other ways.

We’d usually meet people during the day since Andrew was constantly chatting people up on the beach, so , at night we usually had a group of people with us for dinner. During the day we’d hang out on the beach, drink some coconut shakes, sit under this huge beach tree for shade, or go for a swim, or sit in the sun. The water was crystal clear all the way down and really warm with white powdery sand and shells. If you picked up a handful of sand and ddrapped it in the water, it would just kind of disperse to the bottom, wouldn’t even make the water cloudy. I think the sand is the reason the water was so clear.

People on the beach were really easy to talk to, probably they were enjoying the place as much as I was. Theres no stress. No one walking around bothering you or trying to sell you stuff. Everyone is just friendly and laid back. If you wanted to talk up and talk to someone you could just walk up and say ‘wow, this is beautiful, isn’t it?’, knowing they are pretty much on the exact same page you are.

The Story of Danny & Treawk Galaxywalker

“You’d never seen a table of people take something so well…just like it was commonplace. All of us just kinda nodded our heads like – ya ok, right, why didn’t I think of that”

-“What’d he say?”

“He said he came back to his room one night a little while after Sept. 11th and felt like ‘man, the world needs a change, needs some different energy,’ so he just walks out to the room where his friends are and says ‘look, from now on I’m just gonna be called Treawk Galaxywalker,’ and that was it. He just didnt have much more to say after that.”

The day before I met Sandor, a Dutch guy who had been living on Phi Phi for about 5 months, working in a dive shop. Sandor was bout 5’10” or so, thin with one ear gauged out with some big black swirl earring thing. He played 4 nights a week in an Irish pub in town, where I met him the previous night. I ended up talking with Sandor that night and we met the next day and practiced a few songs at the dive shop, which we played together in teh bar that night. [Breaking the Girl, Big Empty, Wish You Were Here] Breaking the Girl ended up working out pretty well for us, can’t go wrong with a little old school Chili Peppers.

The bar was set up, actually buit from the ground up by Keom, a 24 yr old from Ireland. After the tsunami he came over and built the bar from the ground up (or what was left of it), decorated it, got it running, and was now managing it. It happened to be his last night when I was there. He flew in his buddy Finn from back home, who was a DJ and worked the sound for the nights they had live music and DJ’ed the rest.

So I had just gotten back to the room from playing the set with Sandor when Andrew, the International travelling preacher I had met a few days ago in Krabi, comes back to the room. Andrew is quite a character in his own right – travelling through the world by God’s hand, prayig in toungues, getting resqued by angels and such – but I’ll explain Andrew later.

So, he comes in laughing and telling me about how he met some guy that calls himself Treawk Galaxywalker at dinner that night. [The name is a combo of ‘tree’ and ‘hawk’] Andrew had just trekked back from Long Beach in the dark, which is about a 35 minute walk along the beach/boulders and a pretty decent outing during the day even. “Man, I just gave myself a mission, you know? Thats how I motiviated myself. I just said ‘right, you’re in the army on a night mission to invade the town.” We both bust out laughing. Most anything will make us laugh at this point. We are on a natural high from easy living on the island. So I tell him about my night with Sandor and he goes on about his dinner with Galaxywalker and some other people, one of whom was a professional poker player named Steve Calbo. A 24 yr. old from San Diego, who had made about $270,000 last year playing poker, mainly online. Steve was almost all the way through law school when he started playing poker. He applied the principles of study he learned the to poker, studying nearly every poker book that is out there. He says he plays about 2-4 hours a day, I think he said on Poker Stars, and one other one. I, of course, had to question him relentlessly on his play, tactics, study, and strategy, which I did in full the next night at dinner.

Theres something about people like Galaxywalker, or this other guy, Danny we met. They’re full of life. Both Galaxywalker and Danny were bronzed from the sun and in really good shape. Although they were both 40 somethings, they looked like at most they could be 28 or 30.

I mentioned this to Andrew, noting that people back home who are over 40 are nothing like this. “Thats cause, man, those people are dead! They’re gone man! Their pasty. They’re not eating right, they’re stuck in jobs they hate, they’re nto living their dreams, man. When you live your dreams it energizes you. People like Danny or Galaxywalker, they may not neccissarily be doing the right thing, but they’re living, man, and they believe in what they’re doing.”

Danny was another one of these people. We met him outside the Reggae bar in Phi Phi, handing out flyers. Danny is tanned, about 5’8″, has an intense, wide-eyed gaze, and sports short dreds. He’s originally from Australia. He’s 43 or something, and fit as anything. Runs 10 km every day and does yoga. He also smokes 40 bongs a day.

Within 5 minutes of meeting him, he’s telling m how he went up into the mountains and smoked ‘copious amoutns of hashish’ with the Buddhist monks. “You’re up there with these monks, right, and you’re smoking pipes on the top of this mountain – the monks use it for chanting, right, so you’re up there and you take a few hits (mimes hitting bong) and watch the sun go down, right, then you take a few more (mimes again) and go back in and all sit around this long table and eat this huge meal, right. Then later you go back when the stars come out and hit the pipe (mime) and just look up and see it all man – It’s not as good as [some place in Australia*], I mean there you see galaxies, man. I always tell people, you have to go to [same place*] if you like constellations. You have to go to [same place] , its spiritual, man.”

Andrew interjects with “Thats where I had the revelation of God, mate.”

Just then a girl and a guy walk by and Danny reels off “Hey, welcome to the Reggae bar”, and hands them a flyer. The girl takes it and says something to her boyfriend in another language. Danny says something to ehr and she says “You speak Hebrew?!”

They had and excited conversation in Hebrew and then when they walk off I ask Danny about it and he says ‘Oh ya, I speak a few words.’ I say, ‘sounded like more than a few words, how the hell do you know Hebrew?’ He tells me its actually an ancient form of Hebrew specific to some small Biblical town in Israel and that he picked it up while he was travelling through Israel for a few years. ‘You travelled through Israel!’ I ask. ‘Ya, I’ve been through the whole country top to bottom.’ He had been through places this girl hadn’t even been. ‘Ya, I could tell exactly the region of Israel she was from just by looking at her, right, thats why I knew to speak to her in her own language. Its a bit different, I learned the older, more ancient language when I was there.’

“So, you know any other languages?” I ask. ‘Ya, a bit of this, a bit of that…I get by.’ We were off to get some dinner, so we told Danny we’d see him later. ‘Alright, see you later, and if you’re looking for a bit of smoke…’ [smiles]

Turns out Danny had been travelling for 14 years or something ridiculous, had been around the world 5 times, and had been to every country on the planet except Greenland and Iceland.

The next day he told me some crazy stories about how he ‘did the run from Nepal’. Meaning he picked up a bunch of hashish from the monks in Nepal for really cheap, strapped it to his body and flew it to Amsterdam to unload in the cafes. ‘You just gotta be cool man, like you’re just going through..cause thats all you’re doing..just going through.’

After dinner and all that I walked back to the bungalow, which was cliffside, overlooking the ocean and two islands. There is virutually no air pollution out here and the sky is packed with stars, as I look up a shooting star just rips across the sky. With that I call it a night.