Denniblog

The Libong Dugong resort comprises a fetching row of palm-thatch bungalows lining the beach, and they could still fit me in for 400 baht a night. However I had made a mistake in my choice of accommodation. They didn’t know anything about the dugongs.

The Libong Nature Beach Resort—situated on the other side of Lang Kow Village—costs a little more, but it’s the real thing. Run by a retired professor, every baht of the profits goes back into conservation and training of local people. As Prof. Laurence put it, “if I wanted to get rich, I would write books!”

The resort uses local fishing boats for their tours and 70% of the money goes straight back to the fishermen who own them. Another 15% are taxes, which Professor Laurence insists on paying. He instils on his staff the importance of paying taxes and insurance. Things are very different here from the West.

The resort is about a lot more than dugongs and birds. There is a women’s batik group that now trades through Oxfam. Accounting is carried out by volunteers so that the books remain transparent. At present there is Simon, a Swedish web programming student, here for 3 months for “a bit of a change”. Sadly I failed to convince him to ditch the computers and study dugongs instead.

The resort is respectful of the local Muslim culture. You can buy beer at the bar, but there is no dancing or music and the bar shuts early. Pork is off the menu. The Professor is opposed to expanding the amenities which would attract more tourists but put a strain on both the environment and the community. Instead of scooters, he rents out bicycles. Plastic bottles are not used in the restaurant.

I don’t think I have to say that I was won over the moment I got talking to Professor Laurence and Simon. I moved my stuff across as soon as I could.

Watch this place for entries from Koh Libong which will (hopefully) appear from 15th/16th January, but may be a bit later.

I’m currently offline.

I’m still not the only farang in town (and far from the only German), but it felt like that at the Kasikorn Bank where they photocopied my passport and the bills. The whole operation took twenty minutes.

Next time I’ll use the ATM.

While I was still peering at my map, plotting the way from the bus station to the town’s only cheap backpackers’, one of the Germans called for the driver to stop at “Hotel Koh Teng”. They weren’t such flashpackers after all, although they carried unwieldy luggage.

The driver delivered us right to the door of what is a place after my own heart. It has some of the charm of the cowboy hotel we stayed at in Rockhampton, although none of its elegance. I booked two nights in a huge room with a ceiling fan, an ashtray and a stone floor on which to burn my mozzie coil and went to update my blog.

Look out for back-dated entries.

[P.S. Later last night I met American/Italian wildlife artist Francesca Owens. Go and have a look at her amazing art!]

Entries will be backdated. Scroll down.

The rain pelted down with renewed strength as we reached Nakon Si Thammarat. (The adage that the east coast of Thailand is sunny when the west coast is wet due to ‘different climate systems’ is rubbish. According to the Lonely Planet, the Andaman coast—where we were headed—is simply the wettest of them all. This is the dry season.)

We boarded the microbus to Trang to the drumbeat of rain drops on a tin roof. The minivan driver had delivered us directly to the correct shelter for the Trang service, thanks to the old man who’d sat next to me.

“Where is your destination?” he said quietly in flawless English, which took me so aback that I asked him to repeat himself.

“Trang.”

“Phuket?”

“No, Trang.”

“Phuket.”

“No sorry, Trang. I have a map.” I fumbled for my guidebook.

The old man peered at the map and said “Phuket.”

He really wanted to help. Perhaps he was conveying that I was making a mistake by insisting on going to Trang.

I pointed at the map. “Trang Islands. Very beautiful. Koh Libong, Dugongs. National park.” Remembering the colour map in front of the book, I turned to it. Perhaps it was clearer since I had marked both Khanom and Koh Libong with red crosses.

The old man fumbled around in his bag and—after a while—produced a pair of glasses.

“Ah…Trang.”

He gestured and I leafed back to the map of the Andaman coast. He peered closer, then opened his bag again and rummaged deeper, eventually pulling out a case which he opened with great care to reveal an enormous magnifying glass. “My eyesight is not so good.”

By now we were driving through Thakon and people were getting off in ones and twos.

The old man carefully stowed away the magnifying glass and addressed the driver while he put his glasses carelessly somwhere in the top of his bag. I was praying that he wouldn’t lose or drop them when he pulled out something else.

He had spoken quiety throughout, but now he was talking to the driver in the strong, clear voice of a much younger man. It carried right across the minivan. I only understood two words.

“FARANG TRANG!”

No sooner had he made certain that the driver understood than he hastily bade me goodbye and got out. I hope he hadn’t overshot is stop in his eagerness to help me.

So it was that we were conveyed to the cover of a roof with a fruitseller and ticket desk inside and the Trang microbus waiting outside.

They don’t call this the Land of Smiles for nothing.

At 6:15 it was still dark. The rain hammered against the bungalow with such violence that the main light flickered on and off. I’m not making this up.

It didn’t ease up much until seven, by which time I made it to the Supra resort restaurant under the cover of my rain jacket. The sea was calm but it had a scratchy look about it. The pale sun struggled to break through the clouds, making the water fluoresce an eery quicksilver against the gunmetal sky. What I had taken for hills were layers of monsoon clouds.

I thought I had chickened out back in Songkhla. I hadn’t.

The Supra waiting staff were eager to serve their only customer. Breakfast was on the table almost as soon as I sat down. It was heartbreaking to leave them.

With the rain increasing to monsoon strength once more, the receptionist told me that there was “no taxi”, not even when it eased off again half an hour later. Maybe Khanom’s sole moto-taxi driver was ill-disposed. I lucked out by scoring a ride with two German flashpackers who had ordered the only car taxi. They were true livesavers as I may have been stuck in uptown Khanom for some time.

We aquaplaned our way the hell out of there.

Still, as we pulled up next to the waiting Nakhon Si Thammarat minivan, I felt a pang of regret about not seeing more of the town itself, with its sodden fishmarket and nearby pier. There seems to be no way of staying here, even if I could somehow convey that I had come for the dolphins, not the beach.

*

In summation I don’t think I can do Khanom justice with my flying visit. Apparently, around June this place is truly beautiful with clear sparkling waterfalls, lush jungle treks and wats and caves to explore (on a side-note: isn’t it funny that the rains are always supposed to end in ‘June’? Takes me right back to Trinidad.)

Of course the dolphins are the main attraction. There are statues depicting them everywhere, and they look like bottlenose dophins. But if they can be seen from shore it should be kept that way. Following them by boat, even carefully, will interfere with their behaviour and feeding patterns and could endanger them. If there is really a pod of albino dolphins out there, that is something unique and precious and needs to be preserved.

It looks like tonight I’m bedding down in luxury. But I’m wary of that much luxury. There is a silk scarf draped over one edge of the bed that I don’t dare to remove or sit on. The intricatedly folded towels are like works of art; I won’t unroll them. The seashell curtain in front of the bathroom sounds like something is breaking every time I’m parting it, however gingerly. There are pebbles in the glass sea-shell sink. Pebbles. How could I spit on them? CNN on TV is everything I wanted to escape from. And the aircon means that I can’t light a mosquito coil.

I think I’ve set it to warmer than it is outside.

All I wanted after yesterday night was a bare patch of floor to sleep on…

I arrived in Khanom after a minivan ride from hell, with a spoiled little brat alternately pinching and kicking me; breaking out in screams of fury when I didn’t allow her to pull the glasses off my face. But it didn’t matter. I was glad to have arrived after what felt like a cross-desert trek. I jumped onto the back of a waiting scooter and let it ferry me off to the resort, not caring that it was away from the town, nor that the heavens opened and threatened to wash us off the road, nor that my first choice of accommodation—and only farang outlet—was closed.

I checked into a pink bungalow next door which had aircon and smelled of rose water and cost the same.

There was a shop with a small bar opposite where I got talking to some Germans. It turned out that most of the farang here are from south Germany, so I decided to dig out my neglected mothertongue and found that I would not regret it. The Germans had been coming here for four years and often saw the dolphins swim through the bay during late afternoons.

“But not if the sea is like this,” said one of them.

The sea was hidden by trees and buildings, so I asked the way to the beach but resolved to wait as the rain picked up again.

“Is the weather always like this?”

“Not usually. We can have sunshine, we can have rain. It will get better from mid-January.”

“Cheers.”

The other man cut in. “The best time to come here is June. It’s what we usually do.”

I pondered asking them why they were here now, but I was struggling to understand their heavy southern accents and so let it ride.

“Do you know why they keep those birds there?” his friend asked, by way of nothing in particular. He pointed to the cage hanging from the roof above us.

“Dunno. Good luck?’

“Not a bit of it. They’re weather prophets. See its backside? It’s rouge. Means the weather is bad. When the sun comes out, it turns greenish-blue.”

I don’t know whether he was having me on, but on that day all over Khanom the arses of the little birds remained a resolute ‘rouge’.

*

I made my way through a deserted resort and down the rough sloping sand to the beach. The place was as abandoned and desolate as Ampana. The sea was boiling. There was nothing on—or in—the water that I could see. No boats, no birds and sure as hell no dolphins. Far in the distance I could make out the pier where the fabled dolphins are said to congregate.

Maybe I should have bought a fake driving licence on Kao San Road so that I could rent a scooter, or maybe they won’t ask to see a licence since schoolchilodren are riding around on them. But then I remembered that the farang place that rented bikes was closed. As things stood, it was best to wait for calmer weather.

I went to get my binoculars and scanned the sea until the rain made me seek shelter in the deserted beach bar.

At last, I was the only farang (OF) in town. This was not the best time for it though. I had managed to avoid one drunk and was trying to stay out of sight and unnoticed, although the few people who passed by all waved cheerily enough. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself because I was dog tired and didn’t feel like chatting and would be an easy target for any thief. Unlikely though that was (this isn’t Makassar), I couldn’t take any chances. I have also found that—even at my ripe old age—I’m by no means safe from pick-up artists.

This turned out to be true when a man sat down next to me. But I was in luck, because I was no longer the OF. I was watching the bags of the other farang in town who was off to locate the bus terminal down the street, in a hury to get to Ranong for his visa run. Everybody on a visa ruin is in a hurry, as if that somehow makes the ordeal pass quicker. Presently he returned and the man who sat next to me got up and left without greeting, clearly conceding that I was somebody else’s property.

We relocated to the bus terminal and drank strong, sweet tea until the sun rose and the farang was whisked away. I found that I felt lonely without him. I paid for the tea and got my directions with the change (“Khanom? Go across, other side!”) Within moments I was directed to a bus which didn’t say ‘Khanom’ on the side but, according to the Lonely Planet, would probably drop me at the junction from where I could get a moto-taxi. There were more farang here and I realised that I wouldn’t be able to recognise ‘mine’ even if he was among them. The tiredness was beginning to tell.

Just as we were about to leave, a minivan with ‘Khanom’ written on it drew up next to the bus. There was a direct service! For a moment I was tempted to get off, but it was too late. My backpack was stowed away and we were rolling.

We were all of us marked, those who had been on the night boat. Barely awake, slumped into our seats, some snoring. The cheeky conductor boy wasn’t slow to pick up on it as I handed him 100 baht. “Twenty change?” He grinned and cocked his head. “OK. Donate. I donate!”

I hope he’ll go to university rather than grow up to be a con-artist.

Because I was so dozy, I didn’t pull out the guide book or find the right map until we had passed Phanom, the last town before the Khaosok National Park a hundred kilomentres to the west of Surat Thani, which was where all the farang were going. No wonder that I thought the journey had taken a bit too long. There were hardly any houses around here, no traffic and no service stations. Instead the landscape rippled with spectacular limestone peaks. According to the Lonely Planet there were ‘at least’ two minivans a day going from the park back to Surat Thani. Great.

It had been 16 hours since I had last seen a loo.

I got off the bus as soon as we were near a place that sold water. I was prepared to hitch, but no sooner had I been spotted that a local man took me under his wing. It turns out that the yellow structures by the roadside aren’t shrines but bus stops. I sat stifly in the shade, eyeing the road and grabbed my backpack when I saw a bus approach, ready to throw myself in front of it.

“No, no!” shouted the man who’d kept an eye on me from a nearby stall. “Not that! You wait, you see. Ten minutes.”

He was right. Almost exactly ten minutes later a minivan slowed down and hooted. When he saw me signal, the driver got out, ran around the van and opened the door for me.

There was some shuffling, but at first it seemed fine. We just moved closer together even though the berths were quite narrow. Two Chilenian girls got talking to the guys on my right and settled in as the berths filled up.

“If one sleeps with the feet next to the other’s heads, we could fit three into the space for two,” I said, “but I don’t think it works for the locals since it’s offensive to point your feet at someone’s face.”

“You’re right, else they’d try to fit twice as many people in here,” said sailor-boy who had the space next to mine.

But he turned out to be wong. And we weren’t taking twice as many. The Thai women who were settling in next to me had booked a grand total of two berths between them and were trying to fit in all five of them. It would have worked, if two of them hadn’t been supersized—by which I mean clinically obese.

We were still mostly sitting up and chatting. There was a marine on board (Isn’t there always?) and we stared in disbelief as he proceeded to attach a heavy duty canvass hammock to the pillars in the aisle. Who but a marine travels with a heavy duty canvass hammock? While people were squirming on the deck below him, he lay down in comfort, watching a movie.

We were underway. Carrying twice its assigned number of passengers, the boat listed heavily in the swell. The last time I had been in a boat this crowded, it almost sank off the coast of Zanzibar. That didn’t worry sailor-boy who lay with his hat pulled over his eyes, already half-asleep.

“Don’t worry, this is normal,” he drawled. “Trust me, I’ve crossed oceans. If I panic, panic.”

There was a moment’s silence as the boat bounced off a particularly large wave.

“Also there’s lots of boats around here. Easy Mayday.”

“Yeah,” I said. “If you have the means to signal Mayday.”

“Sure, they do. They all have shortwave radio.”

Dream on, sailor-boy.

But I kept my worries to myself. At least back in the day we didn’t have mobile phones, just a whistle that was useless in the stiff breeze. I wondered what the reception was like out here. I wondered if the marine had a satellite phone.

My problem was that I’d had the squits all day and my stomach was decidedly delicate. While the others bedded down, I sat and stared at the swaying lights of the night fishing boats all around us. How embarrassing to be the only one on board to be potentially seasick (apart from the toddler who’d thrown up earlier, into a plastic bag).

Every time the boat caught another swell, sailor-boy (who had given up pretending to sleep) regalled us with another mini-lecture about seamanship. Now it was my turn.

“If you’re feeling sick, keep looking at the horizon. It’s the most stable point.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, rubbing at a kink in my neck from keeping my head turned towards the window for the last half hour or so. Only eight more to go.

It got worse when people fell asleep. Still unable to lie down, I conceded my space and found myself squeezed like toothpaste out of a tube by sailor-boy on my right and the convention of fatties on my left.

Somehow I managed to lie down uncomfortably on my side and got 90 minutes of doze with people constantly prodding, tickling or stomping on my feet. Eventually I had enough and resigned myself to spend the rest of the journey upright. I had lost the battle against the bulge. I’m no lightweight, but the woman who now lay flat on her stomach next to me, snoring, not only occupied my entire former berth but oozed across numbers 38 and 40 to either side.

At least our arrival time went town from six a.m. (as the agent had told me) to five and now to four as the lights came back on. Maybe the swell had pushed us along.

We were in port.

I gave the touts the slip, regretted it briefly when confronted with Thai-only signs, but managed to stumble across the night market which gave me back my bearings.

Everything was closed.

It was ninety minutes until daybreak.

I was the only farang in town, but only for the 15-odd minutes which it took the pick-up driver to deposit me at the pier. There I was joined by about a hundred others and a handful of Thai.

At first it was civilised. Everybody was assigned a number and pointed to their place on the upper or lower deck. The berths were narrow but clearly marked, with clean sheets and pillows and a life west in the rafters above (almost) every one. I got there early and swapped my ticket with that of a Dutch girl who wanted to sit with her friends.

Then the boat began to fill up and the first un-numbered tickets started to appear. Soon the flip-flop attitude took hold as everybody flung themselves down wherever was free.

The commotion began.

Apparently the boat—licenced to carry 125 passengers according to the writing on its side—is routinely overbooked, but unlike with flights you don’t get bumped up. You’ll get to wait for another day.

In order to secure a berth you will need to go to the ticket office at the pier early in the morning to get a booking number. Passengers who turn up early for departure are assigned the remaining numbers. Omit either of these steps and you’ll be left high and dry.

A Thai businessman carrying a laptop bag found that out when he saw a farang sprawled in his place.

“That’s my place. I got number this morning!”

“So? I got my ticket yesterday evening. There’s someone in our place, and they claim there’s someone else in theirs. Just find somewhere free.”

“You don’t understand. I got number this morning. Where your number? Show me your ticket.”

“Chill man. Just find somewhere to sit.”

“Your ticket! Show me your ticket!”

For a moment, violence hung in the air. The Thai man threatened to fetch his bodyguard and then the captain. Himself not small, he drew visibly closer.

The farang sat up straight and it was clear that he was no pushover in the gymn either, or maybe the dojo. Finally we persuaded him to give in. I was relieved about that. I believe the Thai man was in the right, yet he had to put up with this kind of hippie nonsense every time he took this trip. What do you make of an environment where farang out-number Thai ten-to-one? Sooner or later the situation will come to blows. Its either that or they’ll have to run Thai-only services.

Everyone settled down. I was even more relieved when I noticed that the man was joined by his wife and toddler.

Whose fault was it? It wasn’t entirely the farang’s as he had a numbered ticket and some dickass up ahead had started a chain of unofficial swaps which now forced several dozen of them to shift. Yet he should have acknoweged that the man had the right reservation and moved on.

It was partly the fault of the guy who directed everyone onboard. He’d started to scrawl asterices on the remaining tickets and continued to wave people on.

But it was mainly the fault of the inept agents who sell tickets all over the island without booking. Very few tell their customers that they’ll have to book the places themselves at the only official ticket office by the pier. At least my agent had arranged for me to arrive early.

So I lucked out. Right?

Wrong.

(To be continued)