March 6, 2015
A Half Hour West, As the Hornbill Flies
Koh Chang - Paradise Island
Koh Chang - Paradise Island
Throughout our bike trip we had fantasized about ending on a tropical island somewhere in southern Thailand. For months we had quizzed tourists about their favorite island paradises. The consensus was......Koh Chang, a small island a couple hour's boat ride west of Ranong, Thailand in the Andaman Sea, or, only a half hour as the hornbill flies. After celebrating Chinese New Year in Ranong we shoved off for Koh Chang.
Other passengers on the ferry boat probably wondered why we were bringing our bikes to an island. I kind of wondered the same thing. However, simply being able to ride from our hotel in Ranong the many miles to the wharf was nice and knowing we could ride it in reverse, avoiding touts, tuk tuks or taxis upon our return, made it worth taking the bikes. We had heard rumors about trails on the island but we really didn't know if they were too rugged for us or our bikes. Our only luggage (panniers) needed the bikes. And didn't our bikes need a break on a beach too? It was obvious, we all needed to go to the island together as one happy family - a family vacation.
I got the distinct impression that many of the other foreigners on our boat were returning to Koh Chang. I suspected they had already spent a month out there, made the pesky visa run to Burma and were now returning to the island for another thirty days. They seemed excited but their excitement was different from ours. They weren't interested in how the muddy and polluted Ranong River waters were melding with the clean turquoise sea water in distinct ribbons of color as we chugged further out to sea. Their heads weren't craning to see the Sea Gypsy settlement as we rounded the north end of the island. They were interested in spreading their bodies across the bow of the boat like lizards, only they were more interested in working on their tans than warming their blood.
The boat made many stops pulling into idyllic little isolated beach after idyllic little isolated beach all along the west side of the island. Each beach had a small grouping of bungalows for rent. A few tourists jumped off the boat at each stop while supplies, mostly huge blocks of ice, were unloaded and carried to shore by employees of guest houses. The sand and water at each stop looked unbelievably beautiful. Andrea and I looked at each other with big smiles pasted on our faces our eyes wide. We were in for a relaxing week.
We knew nothing about accommodation on Koh Chang except what our friend Oded told us in an email just before we left Ranong. He said we shouldn't consider staying anywhere other than Mama's. That worked for us. We were nearing the end of our trip and we didn't want to research or have to think anymore. Mama's was where we were heading, the end of the line for the ferry boat on the southwest corner of the island.
The problem was that all the returnees seemed to be headed to Mama's as well. With so many tourists descending on Mama's we were a bit worried she would be out of bungalows. But we lucked out and got possibly the nicest bungalow Mama owned and the one closest to the beach. It was what we had been dreaming of for four months.
The waves lapped against the granite bedrock upon which the bungalow sat a few feet away. We had what seemed like our own private tiny beach and on the other side of it was simply jungle wilderness, actually a national park. Out on the blue sea bobbed cute fishing boats and way in the distance were other islands, uninhabited islands, where the sea was no doubt even cleaner, clearer, bluer. They were part of Myanmar's Mergui Archipelago and off limits to tourists but that didn't stop me from dreaming of maybe hiring a boat to take us out there one day. Say, a three hour tour around the islands.
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When we jumped off the boat at the larger beach the tide was so high we couldn't bring our bikes around the big rocks to our bungalow so we left them leaning against some other rocks, over there. It didn't take us long to get settled in our bungalow and then we went to see how our bikes were doing. To our surprise the tide had already gone out considerably, so far in fact that we could easily push our bikes on dry beach sand around the big rocks over to our bungalow. I wasn't familiar with such dramatic and quick tidal changes.
Our bungalow was simple, with its doorless bathroom and glassless windows. Who needs such things when one is in paradise! A hole in the wall at floor level let the shower and sink water run outside but the floor didn't slope quite right for that to happen so there was a permanent pond in the bathroom. But who cares! There was a mosquito net which was the most important thing since we had stored our tent in Ranong. And there was blazingly bright sun, enticing wave sounds, seagulls, gentle salty breezes, beautiful blue water and tide with attitude. Receding waves left riffles on the beach each with the darker, (lighter in weight), flecks of sand resting on top. It made the beach at low tide a vibrating affair of white and black sand; a different design with every low tide.
We swam in the blue water, walked on the beach, took lots of photographs and collected shells. Mostly what we collected and brought back to our bungalow beach table were miniature sand dollars. Every single beautiful shell we found was occupied with a hermit crab. I threatened eviction many times but the crabs ignored me and clung tightly to their homes. There were loads of shells but the hermits all had the most beautiful and perfectly intact ones. We let them retain their showy little paradise homes - as temporary for them as our perfect bungalow was for us.
We talked about exploring the island. We'd go swimming in preparation to go exploring but then it would seem to be too hot and we'd either eat or go swimming again. We lazed around our bungalow reading and writing. We were always hungry. I'd ask Andrea, "Is it time for lunch?" She'd say, "We can eat whenever we want." Barefoot we'd climb the steep stairs to Mama's restaurant when we thought we were going to die if we didn't eat something. Any time of day Mama would cook us whatever we wanted and she was a great cook.
In the morning we adored the fancy expensive coffee we had as a treat. Andrea wanted sugar in hers and I requested sweet milk. The Burmese young man who looked exactly like Michael Jackson started to remember that. On the third morning we reached the top of the stairs and Burmese Michael Jackson ducked into the kitchen. A few minutes later he was at our table with a sly little smile and carrying a tray of our made-to-order coffees. As we sipped the rich brew we gazed from Mama's spectacular restaurant vantage point far out to sea to the daily parade of colorful fishing boats. Most had been out there all night. Sometimes four or five of them would tie together in a pod and anchor just off shore during the heat of the day. There would be no movement on board and we figured that was the time the fishermen slept.
One day as we were enjoying our morning coffee someone spotted dolphins passing by. One of the tourists was especially excited saying that he'd been coming to Mama's for several years and those were the first dolphins he'd ever seen. All of us - tourists, Mama and her three Burmese employees - gathered at the railing to marvel at their beauty and freedom. They were even freer than we tourists. They only had to watch out for nets, propellers, pollution, dwindling food sources and other things we couldn't even imagine. But we didn't talk about those things. We just watched them swimming north along the coast and silence came over us.
Mama was a middle-aged woman from Chiang Rai in the far north of Thailand. She had lost her husband to cancer eight years earlier. Her sister owned a guest house one beach back, as the boat delivers. She had recently lost her husband to cancer as well. Mama had not had an easy time making the guest house a success without her husband but, obviously, she had. She was proud of what she had made there but I think she knew it could all be blown or washed away in an instant. She was humble and soft spoken, a kind person. There was also a sadness about Mama that even the gorgeous setting couldn't erase. She told us she loved it there more than anywhere else in Thailand and she didn't want to retreat to Ranong as she did every summer during the rainy season when the stinking heat, dangerous storms and lack of tourists made it not worth staying. Even Mama couldn't stay in paradise all the time, or, maybe paradise wasn't paradise all the time. Mama didn't even have any desire to go on vacation with her only daughter and grand daughter anywhere in Thailand. She loved it right there at the beach no matter how hard the work.
Everyday Mama wrote on a blackboard outside her kitchen what seafood she had on hand that day. Barracuda, rock fish, snapper, shrimp, "big" prawns, octopus and squid usually made the list. Sometimes one of her Burmese workers would paddle a tiny boat out to the anchored fishing boats, climb the rigging and waken someone on board to see what fish were for sale. The squid was so fresh and tender that Andrea and I were contented eating it with nearly every rice or curry dish we ordered.
There was no internet and hardly any electricity at Mama's. A few simple solar panels on crude cement posts between bungalows made it possible for our bare lightbulb to glow for a few hours every night. The restaurant had some electricity supplied by a generator groaning back in the woods far enough away so as to not disturb guests. The one electrical outlet in the dining area was always festooned with recharging phones and computers every evening. Out to sea the boat lights moved slowly along the horizon. The evenings were as delightful as the daytimes except we were so tired from doing nothing that we always retired early. Then the next day opened again with the sound of lapping waves followed by bright sunshine, murmurings from the dining area above us and sheer delight of realizing where we were. Again we were hungry.
One morning after several days of gazing at the hazy grouping of magical islands in the distance and while enjoying our coffee, Andrea said, "You know, that three-hour tour of Gilligan's?" Coffee almost came snorting out my nose but I tried to be serious. She continued, "That's not very realistic because you wouldn't be able to get very far in an hour and a half. That's out and back, right? Three hours total? How could you get lost on an island where no one ever found you in only an hour and a half? They were out there for years!"
I laughed, "It was just a stupid TV comedy series!" Several times in the preceding days I'd mentioned to Andrea that it would be fun if there was a sight seeing tour to those islands. I always added, "You know, maybe a three-hour tour or something." I guess it had gotten her thinking. But, actually, those islands seemed so remote that maybe a small crew could be undiscovered out there for a long time. I wanted to go out there. I wanted to be undiscovered.
After enough days of talking about exploring the island by bike had gone by, one morning we pulled our vacationing bikes out of the bungalow kicking and screaming and jumped on them. We rode right from where we had been swimming earlier in the morning because that dramatic tide was already out. We rode around the big rocks and onto the wide, low tide, hard-packed, vibrating black and white sand beach and then inland onto the trail that Mama laughingly referred to as, "The Big Highway." We found it to be rideable for the most part. The trees were a mix of planted rubber trees (scraggly), tropical jungly trees and old cashew nut trees. Cashew nuts, in the raw, are odd things especially to someone from Minnesota or Oregon. Each nut appears to have been stuck on the end of large bulbous fruit as if it was an afterthought. Let's see....we've got this fruit so maybe it needs this funny little squiggle at the end! For some reason (unknown to us) most of the nuts on the trees on Koh Chang had not been harvested.
We stopped in an old cashew nut orchard to listen to the many birds singing. It was such a symphony that I dug out my audio recording device. As I was recording, a flock of hornbills flew in unexpectedly. They intended to feed on the fermenting cashew fruit. There were at least twenty five of them! We had never seen hornbills in the wild so we froze with our heads treeward. Hornbills are enormous birds, front-end-heavy with their prehistoric looking bills. When they landed on the branches most of the overripe fruit plopped to the ground. (The plops are on my recording.) The cashew fruit was well into the fermentation phase and I wondered if it was happy hour for the hornbills. I watched closely for tipsiness. Now that would be a sight, a hornbill hanging upside down on cashew nut tree branches or trying to fly with that bill getting in the way. But I didn't see any such behavior. Even on a sober day it looked like a difficult task to maneuver those long bills, things, I would think, that should have been evolved out of existence by now. We crouched close to the ground for quite some time watching the hornbills feed. We didn't see any odd behavior due to drunkeness. I guess hornbills can hold their fermenting cashew fruit. They were simply being their exotic selves in the cashew nut grove and we, in awe, thought, 'This certainly is not Portland, Oregon'. Hornbills in the wild - cashew nuts in the raw!
We found one tiny store in the middle of the island which acted as a general store for the entire island. They carried the bare necessities plus a big ripe papaya with our names on it. On our ride we also found a temple and a school both seemingly deserted. The entire island seemed sort of deserted. I'm sure the absence of motorized vehicles helped that feeling as well as the intense heat. It's hard for us to do much in high heat and humidity. We stopped short of the Sea Gypsy fishing village at the north end because we didn't want to be just more tourist gawkers of which I'm sure they have seen plenty. The Sea Gypsies are the Mokken people who have lived and fished the area for centuries.
Our bike ride exploration of the island (nine miles) left us even happier to be back at our bungalow flinging open wood shutters, jumping into the blue sea a few feet away, mesmerized by sparkling sunlight on floating leaves, being ravenously hungry and climbing the few steep steps to where delicious food and views awaited. Some of the fishing boats closely resembled pirate ships but instead of thinking about that fantasy I again laughed at the thought of Gilligan and a three-hour tour out there.
In short we were having a great vacation on Koh Chang. We even started calling it vacation; a relaxing vacation at the end of our vigorous vacation. I don't know if it's what depression era parents instill in a kid or if it comes from growing up in Minnesota surrounded by strong work ethics but I had never integrated the concept "vacation" into my life. I always used my two week paid vacation time to return to Minnesota from Portland to help my parents with their household projects. More recently, (the past fifteen years), my lengthy trips in Asia have been so rigorous that I've never once considered them vacations.
One time my fortune in a fortune cookie read, "You might have a vacation in Canada." What? "Might!" You can't put "might" in a fortune!! Either it's going to happen or not. What kind of a fortune cookie company was that! I dated that fortune and held onto it but the vacation in Canada never happened. But this place...this was different. There was no "might" involved. We weren't required to do anything and there wasn't any internet to muck things up either. We immersed ourselves in doing a whole lot of nothing except being there enjoying nature and each other's company. I was finally learning what "vacation" meant.
But there was one little problem at Mama's. Germans. All the guests, except for us were Germans. Now, don't get me wrong and I want to avoid generalizations too. It's not at all that I think Germans are an automatic problem. I've always liked meeting travelers from Germany. The vast majority of German travelers are well educated, interesting, adventurous people. They have things figured out and are logical. We Americans have quite a lot of similarities with Germans having been settled by so many Germans hundreds of years ago. And German travelers speak English quite well which naturally leads to better communication. When traveling, communication is what it boils down to. I always make a point of thanking anyone who speaks with us in English as their second language. Since I'm half German I feel I understand the mindset - I'm part of it. Minnesota and Wisconsin are full of people with German ancestors, full of bratwurst. I think Spaten beer is some of the best beer ever made!
But this problem was new to me. The German travelers staying at Mama's were mostly of a class I had never run into before. I think they were more working class with maybe less education. But they still had their mandated-by-German-law eight weeks paid vacation and it seemed that most of them were spending all eight weeks right there at Mama's. They seemingly had no interest in learning about Thai culture. All they desired was to smoke as many cigarettes and drink as much beer as they could every day. They also talked among themselves incessantly in the dining area. They hardly ever left the dining area. I think they were basically people who hung out in bars wherever they were. Rarely did they even go down to take a swim. And they didn't know English well enough to carry on conversations with us which meant that they had no interest in us because they knew we weren't going to speak German with them. They smoked so much that we couldn't sit in the beautiful dining area most times of the day and impossible at night. Instead we had to sit at a table down a few steps and off in a separate area. It was kind of odd that every single one of the guests besides ourselves was a German. They must come there every year.
I can't come down on them too hard because being from America I really don't ever expect anyone to speak another language other than their own. Americans don't. And who wouldn't dream of returning to Mama's after their first visit? I didn't blame them for being there or for being who they were. What bothered us was all the smoke and the complete disregard for non smokers. Andrea had even told some of them that she couldn't be near smoke because of her lungs having been compromised by asbestos exposure. They understood what she was saying. They understood perfectly as they lit more cigarettes. It seems they knew really well the meaning of "vacation". They were going to do exactly as they pleased and no one was going to get in their way.
One evening we were settling in to eat dinner at our table far apart from the main dining area. From our perch we noticed a small light moving quickly across the beach. It was coming towards our end of the beach. Seconds later a funny little shirtless Frenchman popped up into the dining room with a huge smile on his tight tanned face. Everyone seemed to know him and in unison greeted him with a German accented, "Bonsoir" . He made his way from table to table greeting each person with dual kisses. I looked at him closely. Was he a celebrity? Was he famous? No, well, I had never seen him before. He wasn't staying at our guest house either. Ours was Mama's German Guesthouse not Mama's French Guesthouse. He had come to eat at Mama's no doubt because Mama's food was better than at the other two guest houses.. He noticed Andrea and me but because WE were so standoffish sitting far from the rest, WE must be antisocial.
The French man sat at a table full of other French tourists who had also come to Mama's to eat dinner. He was the center of attention and the most animated at their table. They all lit up cigarettes and smoked passionately, which, curiously, drew a distinction from the machine-like smoking style of the Germans. The French group blew smoke up into the air above their heads as if they were savoring every last bit. I know a few words of French so I knew they were discussing food. Of course they were talking about food, and, with great passion. They gesticulated wildly as they exclaimed and I waited for cigarettes to collide in midair. It was as if the cigarettes made their entire conversation complete. Wine would have made their conversation complete had there been any. Then their seafood meals arrived and they ate...passionately. The shirtless little man ate quickly, jumped up, ran down the stairs and walked back across the beach as quickly as he had come. He had never taken off his headlamp the entire time.
The next day, after we finally woke up and wandered out to our verandah, the first thing we saw was the little French guy bobbing around in the water in an orange life vest. We squinted into the sparkling waves. What was he doing? Oh, he was stringing out a net! He was stringing it across the entire swimming area! We immediately became irritated. "That's a swimming area!," I said indignantly as possible. And what is he doing stringing a gill net out there anyway? The fish are for the locals to catch not some privileged tourist.
Initially I gave him the benefit of the doubt because in the past I've seen French tourists buy poor street kids meals in nice restaurants in Laos. More than once I've seen the French do good things for the local people in poor countries. But I was still mad at him for disrupting OUR swimming area. He looked so silly out there bobbing along in his life vest trying to untangle the net so he could string it dozens of meters.
Despite the net we decided we were going swimming right where we had swum before. We swam aiming right at the French fisherman's net. The Frenchman got visibly nervous. I could tell because I was wearing my new prescription sunglasses. As I got close to the net, acting as though I wasn't going to stop, he finally said, "Ah, I have net. I have big net." I was my belligerent half German, all American self and said, "I don't care. Isn't this a swimming area?" No response.
I swam right over the top of the net without any problem. He seemed a little irritated that I had disrespected his net but, no harm to his fishing had been done, I swam on without looking back. I swam out further into the sea than I had in the past. I guess, I was making some sort of point? I swam out so far that I started to get scared. One should never let oneself start thinking about sharks when swimming in unfamiliar seas. I glared at the French fisherman in the distance and thought that if my leg got eaten off it would somehow be all his fault. His French need to experience, first hand, local fishing practices. To experience life to its fullest and as passionately as possible! Yeah, yeah. If my leg suddenly was eaten from my body I was going to scream as passionately as possible too. I swam back to shore as quickly as I could while sending out vibes to all fish in the area to not come anywhere near the French fisherman's net. May his net be empty - sans poisson - at the end of the day and may he be passionately disappointed.
But, no. Later in the day the French fisherman moved his net to block the main swimming area at the larger beach and he caught a few little snake-like fish. I thought they were way too small to keep but he was unbelievably excited. He ran up and down the beach with the long little fish dangling limply in his hand excitedly showing anyone he met.
Around dusk we were back at our table. It was becoming our table - the one set apart from the main dining area. Again we saw the little light moving quickly across the beach towards Mama's. The little Frenchman bounded up the stairs with his headlamp shining. All smiles he greeted everyone except us and then he invited a select few to his fish fry on the beach. He flew down the stairs and walked so quickly back across the beach I would have had to sprint had I been with him. But I wasn't with him in any way. A few minutes later we saw a fire on the beach and we muttered about how he was taking food from the poor local people and using the limited firewood and just who was HE who thought HE could do such things, just come in here and do whatever made him happy! What about a license to fish, huh? I bet he doesn't have one of those! Where did he get his net? I hope someone at his guest house didn't loan it to him! No need to encourage him. Why doesn't he give his catch to the people who live there? That fire is causing pollution!
We seethed on Paradise Island all because of a super happy little wiry French guy.
But we managed to still have fun. On our last full day we hiked through the adjacent national park seeing no snakes. We had been told there were snakes on the island, poisonous ones, and one person staying at Mama's told us he found one in his bungalow. After hearing that, I used a flashlight at night if I went to the bathroom. The drain hole through the wall was an open invitation to any creature. I also didn't jam my hand into our dark panniers that had been vacationing in a pile in our room.
But we didn't see any snakes on the trail to a deserted beach. We swam in an area where the water was particularly clear allowing us to see all sorts of tropical fishes. I collected dried salt from rock crevasses and we made believe we were stranded on a deserted island. I listed all the things I was going to make from bamboo and coconuts. I was saying I could scoop fish right out of the sea with my hands when Andrea asked me which character I thought I was. After some thought I had to say I was probably Gilligan. I wasn't the professor, even though I had just collected salt and was thinking about constructing things from bamboo. I wasn't the skipper and I certainly wasn't Thurston Howell III.
We walked back to our bungalow on the bone dry trail stopping briefly to cut bamboo to make useful items. We saw some monkeys too.
Then, at the point when the Germans were completely ignoring us and the French fisherman didn't ever look at us, our time on Paradise Island had come to an end. We thanked Mama for allowing us to stay in the bungalow closest the water, for her great cooking and for building such a beautiful place. We told her that we would tell other tourists to come stay at Mama's. To our surprise she said, "Please don't tell any Germans." She laughed, we laughed, there was nothing more to say.
Mama and Burmese Michael Jackson helped us carry our bags and bikes out to the arriving ferry boat. A few tourists from the other two guest houses on that beach were also going to leave and were wading out to the boat with their backpacks. The French fisherman had come down to the water's edge to see one of his friends off. He was smiling from ear to ear and waving wildly to his departing friend. I was standing close to him so I got a good look at his face. I saw true happiness. It was kind of an enlightened look on his face and I had a twinge of remorse that I had dissed him so. He looked like a very nice person. He was smoking passionately but still, I kind of wished I either spoke French or he English and that we had another week or so to talk things over. I was starting to like him. How could I not like someone so thrilled to be alive on this earth, at this time, on this beach? If I had been staying longer maybe we could have become fishing buddies.
As our boat plowed through the blue waters my eyes and thoughts again wandered out to the hazy islands on the far horizon. Again I laughed thinking of Gilligan.
As implausible as getting hopelessly lost on a three hour tour for the crew on Gilligan's Island it was equally absurd that for three years - three seasons on TV - they couldn't figure out how to be saved. Of course in real life no one wanted the show to end. I didn't want our time on the island to end either.
I think I remember an episode, (Yes, I loved Gilligan's Island when I was a kid. And I saw all the irony maybe even better as a kid than I do now.), where the professor made a nuclear reactor from coconuts but episode after episode, year after year, he couldn't figure out how to make a raft out of coconuts so that everyone could get off the island. But if he had figured out how they could leave, then the whole conceit would have come tumbling down and the series ended. (Note: It's ironic that the show in real life was cancelled spur-of-the-moment while all seven cast members were on vacation, real vacations.)
["I didn't know this Gilligan analogy would go this far," he says looking straight at the camera.]
But maybe in our real lives we are the same and we don't want OUR show to end. We go along with what is familiar to us because we don't want change. Change is scary. We don't swim way out into the ocean for fear of sharks but we've never actually seen sharks out there. No one has ever mentioned sharks. "But" is always lurking in our minds. Maybe we shouldn't go on vacation for fear of what might happen to our jobs. But maybe we should go on more vacations for the opportunities that might arise.
Some of us are in prison with the door wide open. We can leave at anytime. We can change. We're looking right at something but maybe we don't see it the way it truly is. But it's right before our eyes! How can this be? How can we not see it? I can't see dim stars if I look directly at them but if I look off to the side my peripheral vision makes them out. I don't understand how this can be but I go with it. Then it's a matter of training my brain to see peripherally more clearly.
A very good friend explained something to me. He said that we see something in a photograph and our brains lock onto that image. But there is something else more major going on in the photo that we don't at first see. When, directed by someone or if on our own, we look more closely we finally see what else is going on in that picture. Then an interesting thing happens with the brain; it can't go back to the original view we had, it can only see the larger picture. The instant we see the whole, we can't go back. He said that someone had explained to him that that's how enlightenment is. Once we realize the whole shebang we can't go back to the way we were.
I thought about all of these things as we moved across the water on our way back to civilization. I thought about what a great bike trip it had been and what a perfect way to end it on a tropical island. I finally got to experience a vacation.
Then I couldn't help but overhear the two women seated on the bench behind us. One woman said to the other, "He first came here seven years ago and loved it so much that he decided he didn't need to see any other part of Thailand. He's been back every year since and he comes directly here. I guess he stays for three months every winter. He told me that he has found his paradise." The other woman agreed, "Yes, it sure seems so."
I didn't turn around. I knew who they were talking about. I just smiled, passionately.
Lovebruce
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But storm or no storm, at least they were all feeling adventurous enough to set out for a day of exploration. And despite the harrowing encounters with head hunters, I'll bet that each member of the group would do it all again.
4 years ago