Beaches, Beaches

Now, getting one's hair cut is not necessarily that much of a treat in most countries. You go in, say hi and explain how you want to look when you leave, someone fixes it and you pay. In Thailand that's not quite how it works. I went into the first barber I could find. An old women greeted me with a big smile and the words "150 baht". "Hm", I thought, "that's about twice what I'm paying for my room at the hotel". So I went to another place. An old man didn't smile at all, but said "80 baht" and grabbed me. I was pushed onto a chair in front of a mirror, and a young woman appeared from behind a curtain and started massaging my neck and shoulders. "Hm", I thought, "have I come to the wrong place?". But no, there were scissors hanging on the wall, so this probably was a barber shop and this was the custom here. After a few minutes I was ready for stage 2, the cutting part. At home I go to a place where a man cuts off a suitable amount of my hair in about 5-10 minutes, and I'm happy with that, most of the time. This woman spent about 40 minutes, cutting one hair at a time, it seemed. It was very, very thorough, and I looked neat enough to easily get through the customs without being checked, even in Singapore, I estimated. So, I was ready to get up and pay. But no, this was not the time for that. First I had to be shaved. And the shaving was thorough. Actually, my facial hairs was so scared by this woman that they didn't show up again until almost three days later. At last it was time for the finishing massage of head and shoulders. I happily paid my 80 baht for that. Remind me to get my hair cut every time I'm in Thailand.

The rest of my stay on Phuket was pretty uneventful. I spent 15 baht on a songkhaew (truck) ride to the west coast and Karong/Kata Beach, where I met a German couple who turned out not to be a couple anyway and spent some time with them. I was a bit embarrassed when I bumped into a small "god house" with my backpack, and all the tiny gods fell down on the ground. The people living in the house whose spirits lived in that small god house came running out, screaming at me and quickly picking up the spirits and apologizing for their discomfort. Hopefully I didn't put any curse on them or anything. I'll never do it again.

Phuket is a beach, there's nothing special about it. Yellow sand, huge waves great for surfing, a stay at the tourist hospital costs 4700 baht + medication per day, fair accomodation can be found from under 100 baht. Club Med has a huge complex here, destroying most of Kata for all others than their oh-so-paying guests. An hour of extensive thai beach massage was rated at 200 baht, and by the time the masseuse starts walking around on your back, you feel really, really relaxed.

I slept really well with my newly trodden back, but was awakened by loud thumps, seeming to come from just outside. It was the owner of the bungalow that took care of the number one tourist killer in Thailand: Coconuts. In 1995 48 tourists were killed by vertically meeting coconuts attracted by the center of the earth. Scary thought. An incredibly large spider was watching me with a healthy appetite from the wall just outside the mosquito net. It reminded me that I needed to shave. My days on Phuket went by slowly, with nice conversations in German/English and comfortable hours fighting the waves on the beach. I almost exceeded my strict maximum limit of 3 nights per place, but I managed to pull myself together and get moving again, by getting on the boat to Ko Phi Phi. But not before I tried out the breakfast buffet at Kata Barbeque, a place run by a German. 70 baht for infinite amounts of a variety of juices, pastry, bacon, sausages and eggs. Recommended by me.

And Ko Phi Phi really was a paradise, it really looks like this, it was really perfect, apart from the fact that it was full. Even though there are literally hundreds of rooms and bungalows for rent here, absolutely none of them were in the range of my budget. As I was preparing for rolling out my sleeping bag on the beach, some good and bad news appeared. The bad news was that I came to spend the nights on Ko Phi Phi in a room costing 650 baht, many times more than other places I had stayed. The good news was that a German flight attendant, Silke, was willing to share it with me. She had run away from the rest of her crew, as she was waiting to return to Europe with the same people that she had fed with drinks on their way to Phuket. Apparently a major part of the people visiting Phi Phi are flight personnel who don't like the airline hotel in Phuket too much. Sadly, this means that a lot of the accommodation on the island is of a high standard, and so are the prices. Anyway, I got a room with a real toilet and a shower that worked very well.

I celebrated having found a good room and a new friend with having a salad with at least three things I never figured out what was in it. I had acquired snorkelling equipment on Kata Beach, and Ko Phi Phi, one of the best places to go snorkelling in the world, became the scene for my maiden snorkelling voyage. It was breathtaking. Simply stunning. Just a few meters from the beach the water seemed like just ordinary, clear water from above the surface, but under it... Thousands of fish in many sizes and even more colours. I spent three hours without noticing how the time went by in my first visit to the corals. I also learnt that when you go snorkelling somewhere where the snorkelling is really good, be sure to wear a t-shirt, for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, it'll keep you from getting a sunburn on your back. Even though there's water on your back, the sunrays will still hit you. Second, if the water is shallow you'll get a lot of small cuts on your chest if you come too close to the corals.

When it became too dark for snorkelling I took a shower in our expensive shower, and then had dinner with Silke. We sat at a restaurant with close to no other people in it, so I was a bit suspicious about the quality of the food. Normally the quality is proportional to the number of people eating at a restaurant. Anyway, the food was very good, and finally I got honest answers to all my until-then unanswered questions about the lives and doings of flight attendants. A most interesting evening indeed. After dinner we went back to the bungalow, accidentally breaking a window and a chair, making sure we got some value for our money. We lived in the absolute outskirt of the bungalow outskirts, so sitting on the porch with the lights turned off was quite exciting, as small snakes hissed in the grass while giant (and I mean GIANT) bats flew by. At first I thought they were albatrosses, or at the very least some large seagulls. The Phi Phi bats are huge.

The next day was spent on Hat Yao, "Paradise/Long Beach", an hour's walk to the south. Here there can be found cheaper places to stay, but that discovery came too late for me. I snorkelled and snorkelled, still totally enchanted by the underwater world. Back "home" we were suddenly discovere by the rest of Silke's flight crew. They really must have missed her. Anyway, I got the chance to practice my German, and it was actually a nice evening once again, although by now I knew all the secrets about the life in the air.

My last action on Phi Phi was to climb up to the Viewpoint on the east side. It is very beautiful in the morning, although the strange woman selling Coca Cola up there kinda ruins it a bit. If you can ignore that, or if you really think always adds that special little something to those special moments, you'll like it here. I said goodbye to Silke and left on Paradise Express to Krabi. The name is more suitable when travelling TO the island than when travelling from it.

I made it to Krabi, which seemed nice enough, but I had other plans. The bus station was four kilometers outside of Krabi, so I had to share a taxi with four thai women and three colour TV's, at the cost of 10 baht. At the bus station I caught a 44 baht air-conditioned bus to Phang-Nga. I was now definitely outside of the major tourist tracks. I could tell from the fact that everything closed at sunset, and the two places I could rent a room were really, really low class. I got a room at Thawisuk, which was small and dirty, but perfect for me. The only really bad thing about it was the dripping taps. I spent an hour doing research on tap noise reduction. Here are the results:

1. If you can not stop the dripping by closing the sink tap completely, open the tap so that you get a steady flow of water that makes as little noise as possible.
2. Because of the flow of water, there will be a gurgling noise from the plug-hole. Dampen this by covering it with the device for manually flushing the hole-in-the-ground toilet.
3. The drain noise can be further dampened by filling the water bucket with ... *drumroll* ... water, and setting it on the before-mentioned flushing device.
4. If the flow of water is too large, the plug-hole will not take care of the water, and the water will drip from the sink to the floor. To reduce the dripping noise, tear up a plastic bag and let it hang from the sink to the ground in such a way that the water will follow the plastic instead of dripping directly onto the floor.
5. If water is dripping from the shower head as well, turn/move it so that the water goes into the sink.
6. Put the door mat under the sink to dampen the dripping noise from the water that doesn't follow the plastic streams.
7. As an alternative or addition to all of the above; Wear ear-plugs.

Having silenced the water, I went to bed early and slept like a baby, as the next day I was going on a "cruise" with Sayan, starting 7:30am.

Sayan was warmly recommended by the Lonely Planet guide, and he might very well have been the number one choice for tours in the Phang-Nga bay a number of years ago. Since then it seemed as if he had specialized in forgetting all his English apart from "Sit still, my back hurts!". It didn't matter much, as the view was so amazing that I didn't really listen to what he had to say. Funny-looking towers of stone coming up of the water everywhere, thick mangrove forests, caverns and Ko Panyi, a floating village in the middle of the bay. It has even got a mosque, a school and a small soccer field. I suppose you can get used to the ground moving up and down below you all the time. I'm just guessing here, but I think fishing is their main occupation.

The main event of this trip is supposed to be Koh Ping Gun, "The James Bond Island", which was extensively used in the James Bond movie "The Man With the Golden Gun". It isn't that great by itself, and the women selling whatever there are really insistent, but walk around on the island a bit, it offers great views to all sides. These surroundings can only be seen here and in northern Vietnam/southern China, so it's a good thing to include on your travel plan for the area.

My time in Thailand was soon up, so I hurried over to the east coast to spend my last days. The bus from Phang-Nga to Surat Thani cost 100 baht, and the ferry out to Ko Samui was another 70 baht. I don't really want to tell very much about my visit to Ko Samui, it's just another island with beaches, huge clubs like Santa Fe and Reggae Bar and an incredible number of westerners. There are full moon parties, dark moon parties, half moon parties and all kinds of excuses are generally used to have parties.

I learned to really appreciate the invention of plastics on Ko Samui. It is in deed a wonderful material. For example, if there is a large table fan on your bedstand, and you move it around a bit to adjust the fan to a suitable angle, and you are a bit nonchalent about it... Well, it is difficult to tell what may happen if the fan has metal blades, but if it just has plastic blades, you'll probably have at least two options for what hand to use when you wipe yourself in the future, although your right hand may be a bit bloody. Amazing thing, plastics.

Having learned, I left for Hat Yai, where I would use my last Thai baht and get on to Malaysia.