Been there! Done that!

Yes, am excited as always when it comes to holidays and traveling! Especially when I don’t (really) have to burn a hole in my travel-gear. Lemme qualify that.. no ridiculously-expensive airport tax, more-than-ten-dollar-just-for-a-visa charges. Just minimal charges for a long tailed boat ride, perhaps motorcycle ride and of course a place-for-my-40kg-body to rest, refresh & relax. Anyway, having spent the last holidays in Nepal highland -enjoying its snow-capped mountains-, the plan is to hop on the islands in Andaman Sea or at least take a stroll along the beaches. (Nope, snorkeling and diving are not part of the agenda. Well, not that I hate d-cute Nemo and gang.. just that I don’t even know how to float myself, let alone swim or dive). Did I just announce that to the whole-wide-world? Not that I care, anyway.

D place … I have not mentioned where exactly the place is, have I? Andaman Sea is such a wide area that covers roughly 1200 km long (north-south) and 650 km wide (east-west). And do you know that there are 576 islands in the Andaman Islands, 26 of which are inhabited? A good geography lesson, heh? Actually I just realized that too. Thanx to wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Sea). Anyway, the plan is to spend time at Ko Libung and Ko Mook (in some sites it is spelled as Ko Muk). Ko Libung is the biggest of the 2 islands (about 40 square kilometers), mainly inhabited by Muslims.

Paying the price for not planning… As the place is kinda small and not as popular as Phuket/ Phi Phi/ Tarutao, I was confident that there was no need to book the resorts/bungalows in advance. And was also confident there won’t be any problem getting a taxi ride from Satun (another small town in Southern Thai) to Trang (before you can get to the Hat Yao pier).

Well, I was proven wrong from the very beginning… firstly we (oh, yeah, there is the other-half, J) waited for almost 2 hours for a taxi, to get to Trang. We were contemplating if we should take the bus. But on second thought (perhaps forth), we decided not to. You see, it’ll take 2 hours to reach Trang by taxi. But double that if you take the bus. I tried to concentrate reading “King- Hearts in Atlantis” (the one that I carried since my Nepal trip) but was distracted by the Oh-is-that-our-taxi that passed by. We were told by a lady (who was sending off her daughter to Trang) that Monday is also a new year for the Thai people. That was the first signal that the weekend will be a hectic-crowded one. But our holiday-excited-contaminated-minds failed to recognize the signal.

The taxi finally arrived and we paid 350 Baht for the ride (pay first before you hop in). The lady helped to explain to the driver that we intend to go to Ko Libung. Oh, in case you are wondering why we had her spoke to the driver on our behalf …Majority of the Muslims in Satun don’t speak Bahasa Melayu (Malay language). And we don’t speak a single word of Thai (ok, does Tomyam Kung count?) to which they found ‘funny’ as we do look like them too (physical appearance). So, you can imagine how greatful we felt when the lady helped explained to the driver. We told her we can find our ways in Trang and there is no need for the driver to drop us at the pier.

The strings of laughs and questions… so, we finally left the taxi stand (too small to be called a station) with the lady’s daughter and another guy. Being crammped in a taxi ride, we guess it’ll be rude if we don’t start communicating with the other riders. So, we used the simplest form of communication – smiling. And the responses we got was strings of questions or something that sounded like questions in Thai. And we just replied with more smiles (to a point where I felt we were grinning more than smiling). And they kept talking, looking at us, questioning and laughing (lasted at least for 10 minutes). The laughing cum talking finally stopped when the taxi came to a halt at a taxi stand and the driver waived to a guy at sitting at the bench (obviously another taxi driver). Another strings of Thais were exchanged between both the drivers and the other 2 passengers. And both of us were.. you guessed right – confused!!

No more comm. breakdown, finally! (at least for that moment)… After being totally ignored from the conversation, we were finally spoken to. Oh, yeah the other driver spoked to us (let’s call him driver 2). Apparently he speaks Bahasa. Well here goes:

• Driver 2: Nak pi mana ni? (where are you guys going?)
• J: Nak pi Libong. Naik kut Hat Yao (going to Libong through Hat Yao pier)
• Driver1 to Driver2: in Thai … have no idea what he was saying
• Guy to Driver2: also in Thai …
• Driver2 to us: Dia boleh bawak pi Hat Yao kalu nak (he can bring you guys direct to Hat Yao, if you want)
• Me: berapa? (how much?)
• Driver2 to Driver1: in Thai …
• Driver2 to us: 600 Baht
• Me to J: Expensive, almost double than this taxi ride. It’ll cost just 60 Baht if we take public van
• Driver2 to Driver1 and vice-versa: in Thai.. (it was chaotic)
• Guy to Driver2: in Thai (gosh! what is happening?)
• Lady’s daughter to Guy: in Thai (grr.. am losing my patience here)
• (I bet he can guess what we were saying)
• Driver2 to us: Tak mahal. 6 ringgit saja. Bawak pi sampai Hat Yao. (not expensive, only 6 Ringgit and you will be sent direct to Hat Yao)
• J to me: If 6 Ringgit then ok ahh?
• J to Driver2: Ok.
• Driver2 to Driver1: Ok… more in Thai

Everyone laughed again!! And so did we. But I had no single clue what we were laughing about. Perhaps acknowledging the successful communication between the 2 parties, or was it 5 parties?
to be continued….

Tags: Andaman Islands, Andaman Sea, Food, Local Transport, Thailand

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.