Thailand II

Sam- living the island life on Phi Phi


After Songkhram - the water festival during Thai new year




Floating away on Phi Phi (where 'The Beach' was filmed).











Ko Phi Phi again - and a standard shot of a Longtail boat.















James Bond island (The Man With The Golden Gun) ....


Many caves to explore via Longtail boat ....


... or via kayak.

Limestone karsts off Krabi.


Hours of kayaking fun.












It's always important to be seen with the correct traveller apparel in order to be graded as a sufficiently rugged backpacker by peers and wannabes (the actual hardcore travellers are presently hitchhiking around Uzbekistan on a five dollar a day budget - not relying on huge tourist infrastructures, ATMs, the internet or everyone being able to speak English).

This aside, it's important for the rest of us (who do rely on these things) to look disdainfully at suitcases, airline luggage labels, indications of sunburn, clothing that's not weighted down by zips, people with large cameras hanging from their necks, or anyone reading a trashy novel that looks new.

We're assisted greatly on this latter issue by the locals who hardsell whichever countries book of the moment that all independent backpackers must have (and who all therefore independently decide to buy).

On our first visit to Thailand we found we were encouraged to read about the various innocent westerners who ended up in Thai prisons. "Welcome to Hell" by Colin Martin describes his fight for life inside the Bangkok Hilton. Now that he's free he's still fighting for readership against the competition:
* "The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison" by Warren Fellows,
* "Forget You Had a Daughter: Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton" by Sandra Gregory
* "Go to Hell: The True Tale of an Innocent Man's Struggle in Bangkok's Nightmare Prisons" by Sebastian Williams etc etc.

"The Ravens" by Christopher Robbins could bring to mind A.A. Milne and Winnie The Pooh. Kids would be disappointed to instead be reading the book of choice in Laos about the pilots in America's secret war. As always there was plenty of photocopied competition.

Following a similar theme to the above, Vietnam couldn't be outdone for the predictable subject matter the street pedlar's thought we should be reading (e.g. the recommended reading list in the ubiquitous photocopied Lonely Planet).

Cambodia had the classic "Off The Rails in Phnom Penh - Inside the Dark Heart of Girls, Guns and Ganja" about ex-pats by the ex-pat Amit Gilboa. This rested uneasily alongside the various Khmer Rouge classics such as "Brother Enemy" by Nayan Chanda or the book-in-a-title "The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79" by Ben Kiernan.

Goodness knows what Malaysia's must-read for backpackers was .... but now we're back in Thailand - and in the South of Thailand - and "The Beach" still reigns king.

"In our ever-shrinking world, where popular Western culture seems to have infected every nation on the planet, it is hard to find even a small niche of unspoiled land -- forget searching for pristine islands or continents. This is the situation in Alex Garland's debut novel, The Beach. Human progress has reduced Eden to a secret little beach off the Thai coast .... we are however such products of our Western culture that we cannot help but pollute and ultimately destroy the very sanctuary we seek".

We stepped into our small niche of spoiled land in Krabi, the capital of the Krabi province, but were pleased to find it empty of tourists. The next day we headed to the nearby beach of Ao Nang (or Costa Del Ao Nang). It did qualify as a paradise beach with palm fronds, white sands and tranquil azure waters lapping gently over the feet of 3,000 pot bellied, sun burnt, loud, beer swilling tourists (reading their bought-for-the-holiday trashy novels).

After a very short while we joined a queue of people at one of the large tourist offices on the beach front (playing the loud music) to enquire where the quiet and less touristy beaches were. Alex Garland's "The Beach" - it's easy to say that an idea or concept for a book isn't particularly inspirational after it's been released to the world.

In fact though there are doubtless lots of stretches of beach that are devoid of other tourists and where ours would be the only footprints in the sand. Unfortunately we also wanted a cheap and easy way to get there, accommodation, a choice of restaurants, a chance to do some on-line banking and check the FTSE is still over 6,000 and the ISA tracker fund is still therefore in good profit. Finally we'd ideally need a local to be on hand to rent out some nice two person sea kayaks.

Next to Ao Nang is a beach called Railey - this is on a small peninsula that's isolated by soaring limestone headlands and steep jungle valleys that make it assessable only by local 'longtail' boats. With the spirit of adventure we headed off on the longtail ... alongside a bunch of sunburnt English lads drinking beer and talking about last Saturdays Premiership games.

Sea kayaking through the limestone nooks, crannies and caves was plenty of fun and provided a good source of 'if only they could see us now' moments ('they' means you).

From Ao Nang we headed out to Ko Phi Phi (pronounced Pi Pi) - an island south enough from Phuket to be similarly exposed to large waves from the west (a website on the subject says .. "To those who have not seen the effects of the devastating tsunami, it is now very difficult to imagine the damage done on boxing day 2005").

Phi Phi has two islands (Phi Phi Ley (uninhabited) and Phi Phi Don (very much habited)). It didn't take us long to jump into the bath on Phi Phi Don (and we got to share it with some god and goddess like people, also some horrendously ugly people, plus a few boats). The water was so shallow (therefore very warm), so clear and so [add choice superlative here]. 'The Beach' was filmed on Phi Phi.

The next day we hired a sea kayak again and paddled out for forty minutes. Feeling a bit cramped and tired we decided to get out and stand up for a while (the water being about knee deep for miles around). Outside of the cover of land the sea developed proper swells - so we went from being the embarrassing duo who hired a kayak to paddle in the bath, to the outdoorsy adventures who were more intrepid than the other people who'd previously walked past us exchanging pleasantries as we tried to look cool whilst getting an oar stuck in the sand.

The first day of Songkhram was marked on Phi Phi by a large bucket of water being thrown over our heads a few footsteps from our bungalow door. Walking around the small paths (no roads on the island) there seemed to be some parallels to be drawn from the recent Iraqi war .... all the westerners had enormous water cannons which they wielded Rambo style. The locals could fight back with plastic bottles with holes in the lid. The westerners had a definite goal in mind though (the beach) and so the locals were able to pick them off in ambushes along the way. Added to this, and unlike the Iraq war, the locals also had chemical weapons!

Our first dousing was quite a pleasant experience - the Thai weather in April is steaming so it's refreshing to be cooled every few footsteps. Realising this, the locals started putting huge blocks of ice in their ammunition stores. Being doused with ice water took 'refreshing' several steps too far.

After Phi Phi we headed further north to the easy-to-pronounce Phrang Nga (Pran-ga seemed to do the trick - until a little while later when we found we were being herded onto a bus to Pha Ngan (an island off the east coast famed for it's full moon parties).

The Phrang Nga province is famed for it's limestone karsts (the same as Halong Bay in Vietnam, Yangshuo in China and probably a few other places). We took the day tour - not at all because we were sold on seeing 'James Bond Island' from The Man With The Golden Gun ..... If an island could sink under the weight of tourists and tourist junk stalls then this one would be a memory.

After a few days in Bangkok (new glasses for Sam, some CD's, DVD's, brand name T'Shirts etc) we made our way to the airport.

So now we're in the UK - back in the world of alarm clocks, 'health and safety' and political correctness, direct debits and supermarket runs. We've just been stung for £25 for some light bites and a couple of rounds at the local pub. It looks like petrol is almost at £1 a litre.

Our mission is jobs, marriage and try for kids asap. Before this we need to lie down and close our eyes.

postscript - here's a link to a free game download site, or at least it's free once the URL is added to another web site (for their google ratings etc). It's Game http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/ and I'm hoping I can now download Bridge Delux II with Omar Sharif for free for my mum. Bless, what a smashing son I must be.