Monkeys
chitter under our mountaintop terrace, making it doubly difficult to concentrate
on writing because of the spectacular view of Kantiang Bay spread out below us.
We are staying at a resort owned by Ken and Metta, a Norwegian couple who have
lived here for around 10 years and who have forever escaped the snow and ice of
their homeland. Surely this is as bizarre as eskimos choosing to migrate to
Coober Pedy.
People
who are prepared to swap one extreme for another have interesting stories to
tell. We met in a beachside bar here on the Thai island of Koh Lanta.
Surprisingly they introduced themselves as “Ken and Barbie”. Metta is a platinum
blonde with big blue eyes and a stunning smile, and Ken’s not too bad either.
This year, ‘our year of the round-the-world-air- ticket’, we hesitated to add
Thailand to our itinerary. We had become disillusioned with the speed and
insensitivity that the ‘real’ Thailand was being lost. After several
disappointing visits to Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui, it seemed that the ‘old
Thailand’- at least the Thailand we fell in love with – had gone forever.
International brands, 5-star hotels and up-market stores had wiped it
out.
But the Thailand we remember so vividly is worth a
last exploratory effort, so we researched the hell out of it. We found the
island of Koh Lanta in the Andaman Sea of western Thailand, its development
retarded because access remains difficult. There are no bridges to make an easy
connection from Krabi and its (international) airport – you have to navigate a
three-hour drive on a beat-up track to a car ferry between the mainland and
Saladan, the northernmost town of Lanta. The ferry looks and acts like a
Victorian-era clockwork barge made from stamped tin (think of a large Noddy and
Bigears toy but very rusty). It slips and slides over the water like a cartoon
cat on ice. Each trip sees it packed tight with both vehicles and packs of
backpackers who, squeezed into the remaining spaces, teeter on the brink of
submersion for the entire trip.
Hordes of much tattooed and otherwise brain-addled
passengers are using the ferry the day of our crossing. Most are loaded into
vans and trucks cattle-style. They drink cheap Thai beer and laugh happily. They
smoke roll-your-owns with a familiar grassy perfume. They stand grinning in
front of our van and piss off the ramp into the water.
Lanta’s roadside villages are not exactly
primitive, and there are dozens of frayed and outdated resorts, but that suits
us. I’m hooked on tropical romanticism, so show me a palm tree, a thatch-roof
hut, a coconut and a chili and I’m yours.
The first place we stay is Relax Bay, where the
beach is nice but the service somnambulant. The further south we go, the more
basic Lanta becomes and the more excited we get. Internet research can only take
you so far. You still need your own questions to be answered. The more we could
say ‘yes’ to a few basic essentials the better it was. Is our accommodation on a
beach? Do we have aircon? Are there restaurants on the beach? Is an egg and
bacon breakfast part of our package? Is the beer teeth-achingly cold? Will the
local shop really negotiate on price?
For our two-week visit to Lanta we agreed to spend
three or four days in one place then move on incrementally to the southernmost
point of the island. We weren’t looking for 5-star treatment. If you are, Koh
Lanta isn’t for you. If you want quirky, smiling hospitality and genuine Thai
food, give it a try. We applied our simple ‘so much and no less’ standards of
comfort and that worked fine, except for the occasional mattress made of broken
glass or bricks, or not-cold-enough beer and poor cooking.
There’s always a
local market nearby where you can buy vegetables and fruit, especially the
superb Thai pineapples – not too sweet, not too sour. Tiny 7-11 stores are
ubiquitous and very, very welcome; they sell wine, beer, vodka, frozen chickens,
Muslim-approved bacon made from turkey, UHT milk, coffee and unidentifiable
Asian drugs and dangerous-looking Chinese hair products.
At Kantiang Bay in the southwest of the island we
stayed in a palm-surrounded bungalow at the Baan Laanta Resort and met Ken and
Mette. They showed us their resort development, high on the mountainside
overlooking the rubber plantation sloping down to the beach. Up there, whisps of
cloud drift by the terraces. Monkeys shuffle in the leaves and study us with sly
opportunistic eyes (don’t leave a window or door open or you’ll have unwanted
guests).Waves of orchid and Bougainvillea perfume wash over us. Hmmm. Maybe 5-star
accommodation isn’t so unsuitable after all…but on our budget, we’d soon be out
of Bhat and be begging Buddhist monks for a handout.
Baan Phu Lae is the southernmost resort on Koh
Lanta and was planned as our last stop. It hadn’t responded to our emails, so
Ken and Mette drove us there for lunch to check it out. Wonderful rocky headland
location, almost inaccessible, a small beach, crashing surf, privacy, thickets
of palms and rubber trees, uncrowded…but with unliveable conditions in the only
two bungalows. Damn.
Metta asks “perhaps will you stay at our place?”
We hesitate. If this means paying the entire annual budget of Costa Rica for
each night, then…. but Metta will have none if it and gives us a suite at cost.
We must have done something to please the Norse gods. We say ‘yes’, drive back
to Baan Kan Tiang See Villa Resort, open a bottle of Champagne and settle in as
if born to it.
Ken and I went fishing yesterday while Judi and
our friend Jo lay back and absorbed several vodkas. This was no puttering around
in a tinny, this is a full-throated assault on the senses aboard a Thai
long-tail fishing boat. ‘Long-tail’ is a descriptor. Picture an unprotected
propeller at the end of a long metal shaft with a 6-cylinder engine mounted on
the other end, all finely balanced on a single metal pin at the stern. The
engine doesn’t have a muffler and is louder than a jet taking off from an
aircraft carrier.
These traditional wooden boats are still built in their
hundreds in Thailand. High bows mean you can’t see where you’re going unless you
lean outward, and they’re heavy to steer. When moving from point A to B,
the helmsperson (this is gender correctness gone crazy; I’ve never seen a Thai
woman at the tiller) ties off the engine pole to the roof to ensure the boat
goes frontwards, then uses a steering wheel attached to a vertical steel rod
with rope wound around it and which is in turn attached though pulleys to a
wooden rudder. This is engineering technology for 12-year olds but it works
perfectly – and why not? Result: the boat wavers charmingly all over the joint.
A straight wake is a perfectionist’s dream.
The deckhand is a dark-skinned salt, a little
simple but hard-working and thoughtful. The skipper of the boat is a Thai friend
of Ken’s. When his motor was lost in a storm last year Ken helped pay for its
replacement; there was no way the skipper could raise the money. He was a
fisherman then, his family surviving on the thinnest of incomes, and in Thailand
the poverty line is always ready to trip you up. Now he takes tourists for
rides. Ken speaks pidgin Thai, the skipper pidgin English; nevertheless
communications are simple and clear.
It takes two-and-a-half hours to reach Koh Ha (Ha
Island). ‘Ha’ means five, and local Thais describe five stone fingers sticking
upward from the sea, impossibly thin gnarled things pointing at the heavens.
Thais had noticed how Europeans laugh - Ha Ha Ha! There was an idea: why
not rename it Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Island, or Happy Five-finger Island, for the
tourists. In fact Ha Ha Island has seven fingers. “Thais are not good with numbers,” Ken
says.
We sit happily with our bait on the seabottom, but
nothing happens for a long time. Doesn’t matter much to me, but the Skipper is
nervous. He badly wants Ken and me to catch some fish. I put this down to a
matter of ‘face’. During the lengthy no-fish period, Ken tells me of the marlin
which swim between the fingers of Ha Ha.
“I see them all the time,” he smiles cruelly. The
Skipper moves the boat to another spot. Clouds are gathering above the fingers.
Ken points them out to the Skipper.“Ha Ha Ha,” says the
Skipper.
A line is caught in the propeller. If anyone is to
be sacrificed it’s the deckhand. He jumps in unbidden, cuts it away and clambers
aboard with all his fingers, arms and legs intact. Ken makes a Norwegian joke in
English at my expense: “I see you are a…a-fish-on-ardo.”
“You Norwenglish is impeccable”, I tell him. He
looks puzzled. The boat moves and stops again, then fish begin hitting. They are
only bait fish, but I’m happy there’s action. They’re not big but they fight
hard. Ken is laughing. The Skipper relaxes; if Ken and I are happy, he is happy.
The Skipper hands the boat over to the deckhand, washes his face and hands from
a plastic water bottle, kneels on a scrap of carpet and prays. After a while he
climbs into the bow, curls up and goes to sleep.
The fish have decided to attack. They prefer lures
to bait. Ken reels in a silver torpedo.“A Monk fish,” he says, “the best eating
fish.” We pull in around ten of these and a few Mackerel.
It’s enough. The deckhand exchanges glances with the Skipper, the Skipper with
Ken. The stone fingers rise and fall in the growing swell, the air turns grey
and smells of electricity. Rain is coming and soon. The Skipper moves to the
wheel. Ken says “OK, we go home,” without being asked the
question.
The engine roars, the bow wave rises, Rain sheets
down on our boat in a long, trailing cloak connecting the clouds and the sea. We
are drenched by tropically-warm salty water from the bow and soft-tasting rain
from the sky. Lightning sews the clouds together, thunder shakes the world. For
some reason this is gloriously silly. We all laugh.
Back on Kantiang Bay beach, we give some fish to
the Skipper and the deckhand. On the way back to his resort, a drenched Ken
hands over the Monk Fish to a restaurant he knows, makes an order for later that
night. “They’ll deliver it cooked to our door,” he says. “How do you want it
done?’ He gives the remaining fish to the staff of his resort, who are genuinely
happy to receive it.
In the time it takes the cooked fish to arrive in
all its Thai magnificence, we all reunite over another bottle of Champagne. Our
Thailand is back. In fact, it never left.
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Surely not a Viking longboat ?
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( Followers of Burleigh's adventures in this blog will recall his epic , illustrated , Bulldust Diaries about his safari across North Australia in search of elusive barramundi and his expeditions along the French canals with Judi in the relentless search for the perfect croissant and something from another winery with which to wash it down .)
