5.26.12

Before moving to Thailand, I might have wanted to consider the fact that I get heat exhaustion so easily. It’s making it difficult to get on a normal sleep schedule. By 4pm, all I want is a cold shower and a nap. Tried to sleep as long as possible last night, but I woke up at 4am (seven hours of sleep, which is an hour more than I usually would get) and there was no going back to bed. Instead, I have been watching a lot of movies on my Nook and laptop and staring out the window until the shops open. Wish I had my camera out this morning when a truck dropped the monks off outside my hotel at 6am to start their day of begging for alms (which is what I assume the baskets were for, but I could be completely wrong). They walked right under my window, single-file. Would have been a great shot. Oh well, again, you can’t get a picture of everything.

Apparently, I only get internet in my room when the Coconut is open. And they don’t open until 10am. So, there was no surfing the web for the six hours in between. Great.

Skyped with my parents (no video) and then decided

I needed to actually DO something today. I had already wasted two days in Ban Phe with stupid jet lag. Put on a sundress and shorts and, yes, sunblock. You know I hate sunblock but I decided not to be stupid.

Had my bowl of fruit with yogurt and muesli (you really should try it with the bananas, watermelon and pineapple. Blows strawberries and blueberries out of the water). The daughter of one of the waitresses at the restaurant was there today. In a little red dress with white polka dots. She was adorable. Kept staring at me and smiling at me in between watching Cartoon Network. When I finished my food, I was just having a sit for a while and she came right up to my table and kept tip-toeing in order to look in my bowl.

Went to 7-11 and bought water, milk tea, wafer cookies and some Hello Panda cookies. Love those things. Also, called Bruce thinking he might be able to tell me how to hook up with the other teachers and perhaps make a day of it. He told me that two of them were staying in the hostel behind the 7-11. Great! I will just walk in and ask for Tom and Steve. However, there was more than one place behind 7-11 and I just didn’t have it in me to walk in to both places and try and find a Tom or a Steve, whom I had never met before and who were not expecting me. So, I headed back to the main road and walked towards Sribanphe Pier to pick up a boat to Koh Samet (which I keep wanting to pronounce “sam-ay” because I took French).

At first I thought the man at the desk said that a boat ticket was 1,200 baht, which I thought a bit steep, but I was willing to pay it. I went to an ATM because I didn’t have that on me. When I came back, he asked for 100 baht. 50 there and 50 back. Oh, even better. He told me that the boat leaves every hour. I asked when the next one was. He said 1pm. I asked what time it was now. He said 1pm. I really need to get a watch. After sitting for about half an hour, I realized that there must have been a miscommunication. Buses arrived bearing lots of Thai tourists, most of whom made their way immediately to the seafood restaurant farther down the pier. Some of them stayed and bought tickets for the boat which reassured me that I was in the right place. It must have been closer to noon when I got there because I sat, in the heat, for about an hour. It started to wear me down since all I had eaten was a bowl of fruit at 10:45am. I resisted eating my cookies because I was saving them for snacks in my room. Oh, my room…With air conditioning and cold water… No. I was going to Koh Samet and, by God, I was going to stick my feet in the ocean. The thought of getting on the boat and feeling the wind got me through. Finally, I got in the back of a truck that took me to the end of the pier, boarded a boat and we were off to Koh Samet.

Well, kind of.

At first I thought we had to go slow to get out of dock. Then I realized that we weren’t going to go any faster. Up, down, up, down… It wasn’t the motion of the boat that made me feel ill. It was the fact that I was starving and had heat exhaustion. I just wanted to get on the island and find noodles. And I did. 30 minutes later.

I walked south for a ways, found a restaurant and ordered Pad Tai and Thai milk tea. Finally! The tea I was looking for. The iced tea at the Coconut wasn’t Thai tea. It was just overly sweetened iced tea. THIS was Thai tea and better Pad Tai than I had at the Coconut. I paid my 85 baht and headed back out. I walked a little farther, but this direction was just taking me farther in to the island interior which was not where I wanted to go. There were lots of tattoo shops and vendors and cooking meat. It was hot and dirty and noisy. I headed back towards the pier and north along the same road. No shops. Not many scooters or taxis. Stayed along the coast. This was the way I was looking for. I passed “resorts” with little cottages for rent or that advertised hot water and wi-fi. Who comes here looking for hot water?! I must have walked for about 30 minutes without finding clear access to the beach, other than the private beaches off the resorts. I didn’t think they would let me just wander down to the water without being a paying customer of some sort. I had passed a couple of “overlooks” that I thought I might climb down. Only I can come to an island and not be able to find a beach… At long last I found a large rock that sloped down to the water. I scurried down this to the sand and then made my way to the pebble beach. The water was amazing. This is the first time in my life (that I know of) that I have been in a warm ocean. I wished I could have gone swimming, but I wasn’t wearing a suit and I wasn’t sure that I was even allowed to swim here. Now I could head back to the mainland and get to the cold sanctuary of my room.

Back at NaDan pier, I found that it was 3pm. Perfect timing. I asked for “Sribanphe?” and they pointed to a boat that was triple parked. One boat they backed out. Then they had me climb on to the next boat to cross over to the Sribanphe boat and then get on to a speed boat from there. I guess they are in more of a hurry to get people off the the island than on it.

There were a handful of Thais already on her and we all had a blast headed back to shore. I think the guy driving it was purposefully making it fun. He would bank and hit lots of “bumps” that would make everyone laugh. One woman had a baby and I kept expecting the little girl to get upset. She remained unphased one way or the other the entire trip. I told her mother when we docked that she did so well. All the Thais waited to take the truck off the pier but I just decided to walk it. As they passed me, the mom made her baby wave to me out the window of the truck.

Let me say that I get a lot of stares. I thought that there would be more farang around this area, but I have barely seen any. I think I have seen two women the entire time and the men that I do see are all at least 50 and always have a Thai wife or girlfriend at least 20 years their junior with them. I appear to be a rarity here. Maybe when I get to Hat Yai this won’t be the case.

I stopped at Tops Daily on my way back to the hotel and got a big bottle of water and a big bottle of orange Fanta. I needed the sugar and the hydration.

Got to my room (which I had forgotten to tell them NOT to clean) and the A/C wasn’t on and I couldn’t get it to turn on. I went back downstairs and it took a minute for me to get them to understand what the problem was. The girl who cleaned my room took me back upstairs and then showed me that I had to turn the power on behind the TV. Ah. Yes. Like England. Bloody British influence. She left and I immediately got in a cold shower, not even taking the time to brush the braids out of my hair. I didn’t care. I had looked in the mirror and had seen that my face was all shades of red and purple. I hoped I didn’t have a burn, but it didn’t feel like I did.

Feeling somewhat human again, I promptly laid down on the bed (at all of 4pm) with the TV on and very quickly fell asleep. I had had all intentions of taking a short nap and then going out for dinner. I woke at 7:45pm, checked my email, ate my wafer cookies, and went right back to sleep. I woke again at 2:30am to a strange sound like that of a crumpling plastic bag. It took me a second to realize what it was. The sound of rain against the window. I looked out to find that it was raining. Like, REALLY raining. Sheets and sheets of it. The first time since I had been in Thailand. I read for about an hour before making myself sleep again. At 5am, I allowed myself to be up for good. Ate my Hello Panda cookies, downloaded my photos from the previous day and prepared for the long trip to Hat Yai…