James and Cat’s Jazz-tastic Journey!

(James thought of that title.  He’s just started his dive course and finished reading ‘From Russia With Love’… I bear no responsibility)

When we last left you we were on the stupidly expensive island of Koh Phi Phi, vowing that we would leave as soon as possible as it was killing our budget.  We ended up spending five nights there!
On our wanderings about town we happened across a rickety looking shack with a hand made sign outside declaring it to be a ‘Batik School’.  Not one to judge a book by it’s cover, I went in and got chatting to the guy who ran the place.  He was a young looking Thai guy (though that’s no indication of his age, he could have been 50, Thai people just seem blessed with youthful looks) called Bay, who’d lived on the island for ten years and had owned a batik shop before the tsunami, but had invariably lost everything when it struck.  He’d finally been able to get together the money to build a new shop and buy new equipment but he hadn’t been open very long, and apologised profusely for the lack of batik paintings on the walls and the and the general ‘rough and readiness’ of the place in general.  There was no need to apologise, however, as he’d already won me over! The batiks he did have up were amazing, and he was so friendly and helpful; when I was enquiring about a batik course, he said it was a one day thing, but if didn’t want to get up early I could spread it over two days, he also assured me that it didn’t matter whether or not I could draw because “if a picture is made with feeling it will be beautiful… drawing doesn’t matter, it’s feeling that matters”.  Excellent!

So, I arranged to go back the next day and start my course.  I spent the evening scrawling various designs in James’ notepad, constantly frustrated that I couldn’t draw the way I wanted, but I let myself be comforted by Bay’s words, and the next morning I went to his shop confident that I could make something awesome!

We started off with a cup of tea, a fag and chat about life in general.  Then, to business.  (I am now going to give you a blow by blow account of how a batik is made, whether you want to know or not!)  Firstly you take a plain white piece of cotton and pull it taut over a wooden frame.  To make it stick Bay used the technique of melting wax over the frame, leaving it to dry, then placing the material over and using a coin to rub the cotton onto the wax and make it stick.  Then comes the drawing!  You sketch out your design in pencil (a rubber can be used so it didn’t matter about mistakes, thank god!) making sure not to press too hard or you can still see it when you’ve finished.
Right, ok, I was thinking, this isn’t too hard… then comes the wax!  Bay used a small gas canister with a grill on top to heat his pan of candle wax until it was runny and smoking.  The tool used to apply the wax, was simple yet effective.  A long handled device with a hollow ball at one end with a hole in the top (into which you pour the wax) which tapers into a narrow tube which is used like the nib of a pen.  Not a great description I know so I found some pictures  These are the closest I can find to what we were using…. though I’m sure there’s less primitve devices out there… but I quite liked primitive!
Then it’s just a question of filling up the ball and drawing over the sketch in wax, being careful not to spill any drops onto the picture (I managed to do this twice… I had a really shaky hand!) and taking care to empty and refill the ball every couple of lines drawn, in case the wax drys and clogs up the applicator.  It took me forever! I was so slow, and my hand was shaking like that of a recovering alcoholic!  But Bay was very patient, and said my all mistakes could be fixed, and considering I was new at this, I was doing very well.
The wax only takes about five minutes to dry and then you can start painting.  This is the fun bit.. the paints are water based.  From what Bay was saying, he imports them in powder form from Malaysia (I think he said they come from some kind of tree) and they cost him 15 quid a kilo!  He then does some witchcraft with water and boling and voila.. there is paint!  There’s just so much you can do with them… depending on how much water you use it changes the shade of the colour.. if you put water on the cotton first it gives it a pale eerie look, and if you drop small clumps of salt on the paint when it’s still wet, it makes an almost cloudlike pattern.  I should probably explain, that it’s not really painting, you just daub a line of paint on and watch it spread across the cotton, filling up all the gaps to the wax.  It’s so cool.
Then it’s just a question of waiting for the paint to dry, applying the fixing agent (so you can wash it without the colours running), then putting newspaper over it and ironing the wax off.  Leaving you with crisp white lines and bold blocks of colour. 

I had so much fun doing it, and I am quite pleased with the final result.. it may not be perfect but I did put a lot of feeling into it!

So I spent two days doing that, and eventually we left Koh Phi Phi, getting a boat over to Krabi, then a bus to Surat Thani.  We spent one night in Surat Thani, to break up the journey, then the next morning got a boat over to Koh Tao.

This is where I end my part of the story… tune in in the next couple of days to hear James’ enthralling tales!

Much Love x

Well, since our last post we have been on a mega journey! 

We left Chiang Rai on the 13th… we got a four hour bus to to Chiang Mai, where we spent a couple of hours playing pool and at 6pm got on a night bus down to Bangkok.  We arrived in Bangkok at 6am the following morning, checked straight into a cheap hotel and SLEPT!!  We spent one uneventful night in the BKK then jumped on ANOTHER night bus down to a little town called Hat Yai.  Well, we first arrived at Surat Thani at 6am, then it was another four hours on a mini bus to Hat Yai! 

The plan was to head into Malaysia, spend a few nights in Kuala Lumpour then travel over to the Perinithian Islands on the East coast, for James to do his diving.  However, after the mammoth amount of buses we’d take in the last few days, we just couldn’t face any more!  We only have two weeks left before we fly back to India and we decided we didn’t want to spend it on a bus!  We did however need to  do a visa run, so when we arrived in Hat Yai, we jumped on a another mini bus that took us to the border and we succesfully negotiated our firs visa run…. on arriving at the border we were approached by a man with a motorbike who charged is the equivalent of about 90p to drive us over the border and bring us back…. deal done!  It only took about ten minutes, but now we have another 30 days in Thailand… if only we could use them all! 

We spent a night in Hat Yai, and planned what we were going to do next.  We eventually decided, after much deliberation to head to a little island called Koh Phi Phi (Pronounced Pee Pee, hence the highly amusing blog title) off the Andaman coast, this was the island that was worst hit by the tsunami.  It seemed perfect, a chance to put something back into their economy and help the place back on it’s feet in our own small way and James could do his diving.  So today we got a bus from Hat Yai to Krabi , then a boat over to Phi Phi. 

The island is MAD!  It in no way needs any help from us in geting back on it’s feet… it has them firmly planted in the tourist trade already!  The place is flourishing, which is good for the locals but not so good for us… it’s the most expensive place we’ve been in Thailand, worse even than Bangkok.  There’s loads of ‘two week tourists’ here, wheeling their enormous suitcases to their luxury resorts.  We’ve found ourselves a reasonbly priced room, relative to the rest of the island, but double what we’d usually pay.  James has also decided not to do his dive course here, as it’s 40 pounds more expensive than on Koh Tao.. which is where we think we’ll head next, maybe in a couple of days.

We have had some VERY bad luck however… on the night bus from Bangkok to Hat Yai we were robbed.  I had my phone stolen from my bag and there was about 30 pounds missing from the wallet.  James also had his credit card stolen from his bag (and the gits have tried to use it) … excuse my language, but, THEIVING BASTARDS!!!  Sorry, had to get that off my chest! 

So that’s what we’ve been up to, sorry this is quite a brief blog, but like everything else on the island, the interweb is very expensive, so I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short.

We’ll let you know of any further developments… you should take a look at a map though and see the travelling we’ve done over the past few days… it’s a hell of a long way!

Bye for now
Much Love
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