Donal Mountain

For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to go to Thailand.

A year ago I decided to go to Thailand for a few weeks, but I didn’t
get to for some stupid reasons. But I was determined to go this year,
so here I am! It’s been too long since I last traveled solo and I’d
almost forgotten how much of an adventure that can be.

There’s a word for what I’m doing: flashpacking. It’s backpacking for
people who only have a few weeks to travel, and who don’t have to
stretch their money so far. It’s backpacking for yuppies, I suppose.

• Photos on Flickr

I’ll try adding some stories here as I go:

December 20, 2008 (Seattle): I wasn’t expecting the journey
from San Francisco to Thailand to be such an adventure. I was supposed
to be stopping off in Seattle for a couple of hours, and then Seoul,
Korea overnight. Pretty much none of that went to plan. I got stuck in
Seattle for 48 hours because of snow and saw Tokyo instead of Seoul,
but only for a couple of hours. It’s too bad I didn’t get to see Seoul,
or Aaron CP, who I’d hoped to spend my first day with in Bangkok before
he left to New York for the holidays.

I had a positive overall impression of Korea and Koreans until I
started trying to have an intelligent conversation Asiana Air, who I’d
bought my ticket from. Therey were suggesting that I stay in Seattle
for seven days until their next available flight out. They’re a bunch
of jokers, and I ended up flying with United instead. My return journey
will be with Asiana and I can tell it’s going to be an adventure.
They’re pure ametuer. I’m actually nervous to get on one of their
planes.

December 22 (Bangkok): Bangkok
is big, hot, sticky, smelly and noisy. I planned on staying for a
couple of nights but one was enough and I got a seat on the night train
South to Chumphon, jumping off point for the island of Ko Tao. I’ll
spend more time in Bangkok on my way back out of the country.

December 23 (Ko Tao): I
sat beside a monk on the night train south. I thought this was pretty
neat until his cellphone kept going off. He had one of those ringtones
that sounds like a dance party. And he kept farting the whole night
long.

The train was late getting in to Chumphon, so it was a tight
connection (read: scary bus ride) to the coast to catch the ferry to Ko
Tao.

We
got on board the ferry just as the sun was rising. I settled down for
some sleep on the 3 hour crossing, but they were showing a pirated DVD
of “The Mummy”. The sound was turned down, but I could tell it was a
story of non-stop close encounters with death, which all the main
characters somehow managed to survive, even as almost every last one of
the supporting characters was dealt a gruesome death blow.

Eventually Ko Tao appeared on the horizon, and by the time I
disembarked I’d signed myself up for a Scuba Open Water PADI course.

December 25 (Ko Tao):
I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I got up at dawn to walk the beach,
and some Aussies and a South African called me over for a Christmas
morning drink. They told me they’d been up all night, which made me
feel bad because I realized that I’d been getting to bed early every
night. Maybe once my scuba course is over in a couple of days I’ll be
less of a wuss.

December 26 (Ko Tao): The first scuba dive was brilliant. The
water was warm enough that I almost forgot about it. Floating there,
neutrally buoyant, it felt like weightlessness with no up and down.

Visibility wasn’t great, because the sun isn’t out. Things just
disappeared into the blue-green distance. My favourite is looking right
up, towards the surface and the light; the waves look familiar from
their undersides, but different, and with fish silhouetted against them.

I have two more dives today. This evening I will decide whether to
hang around on Ko Tao and hope the weather gets better, or just make a
break for the Andaman Sea on Thailand’s other coast, where the weather
is more assuredly tropical.

December 27 (Ko Tao): There was torrential rain for around an
hour this morning. It’s stopped now, and I’ve rented a quad-bike to go
exploring the island for the rest of the day. Lonely Planet, who
describe Ko Tao’s roads as ‘appalling’ obviously didn’t have the
insight to rent a quad bike.  I’m hoping to get on the night ferry to
Surat Thani tonight and then get a bus overland to Krabi and then
another ferry to Ko Lanta. But the forecast is for rain there also!

December 30 (Ko Lipe):
Two days ago I was on my way from Ko Tao to Ko Lanta when I met someone
who told me Ko Lanta was pretty busy and touristy, and that if I really
wanted to get away from it all, I should head South — almost to the
border with Malaysia — to Ko Lipe, a small island in the middle of
Tarutao National Park.

Getting here was quite an adventure. I took at 4.5 hour bus journey
south to the inland town of Hat Yai, a busy place with rats on the
street and cockroaches in the hotel. After a fairly sleepless night I
got on another bus west to the coast and then got a speedboat to Ko
Lipe. The speedboat was fast once it got going but it took forever to
load everyone on. I passed the time talking to two women from Quebec,
one of whom was pregnant. Eventually we all boarded and zipped over to
Ko Lipe. There’s no harbor on Ko Lipe so the speedboat let us off on a
pontoon and I got on a water taxi to the coast.

I had a good map and started walking towards the place I heard was
nicest on the island (called ‘Porn’, funnily enough). On the way I met
the two Quebec women again. They said Porn was full, so we started
walking along the trail together, looking for other places to stay. It
felt like the nativity story: a pregnant woman lumbering along a rocky
trail, all the inns full. Just no little donkey.

Somewhere along the way I must have missed a turn and pretty soon we
were entirely lost. We found the coast but we weren’t sure what side of
the island we were on. The girls decided to go back along the trail,
but I decided to forge on along the coast, jumping from rock to rock,
my backpack getting heavier and heavier. About a mile along I saw some
Spaniards coming from the coast in the opposite direction and they said
there were cliffs and whatnot all along the coast that way. So I cut
inland to bypass the cliffs. Scrambling through the jungle I was very
happy the Quebec girls had not followed me, especially the pregnant
one! Then I found the coast again, and continued along it until I found
civilization again.

Eventually I found a beach hut to stay in for the night, and heard
from one of the other inns that the Quebec-ers were also safe and
sound. So then I got to relax and look up and see how beautiful this
island is. The sand is like talcum powder. The sun is out, but there
are clouds which take the edge off it. The water is warm and when I
swam out and looked under the surface with my goggles it was like an
aquarium. All sorts of little fish and anemones and urchins and whatnot.

It’s a small island, so when I bumped into the Qubec-ers again I
apologized for sending them on the wrong trail, and I think they
forgave me: we and two of their friends are going to rent a boat
tomorrow and go out snorkeling off the coast.

I think I’m going to stay here until it’s time to go back up to
Bangkok and fly out. It’s really idyllic here! Tomorrow night I move
from the South coast to the North coast, where it’s extremely quiet and
has a castaway feel to it.

January 3, 2009 (Ko Lipe).
Well, I’ve been on this island for five days now, and the pace is
great. It’s a small island so you can walk everywhere and you end up
recognising the same people you’ve seen elsewhere. The weather isn’t
great so I’ve spent a lot of time under cover, getting to read and
write and generally lounge about.

I got a Thai massage the other day. This is the traditional Thai
massage, not the “oil massage”, which is the one with the funny
business. Thai massage involves being sat on, stretched and bent. It
wasn’t so relaxing at the time, but afterward I could feel that it had
done me the world of good.

I saw that one of the stores had paper lanterns for sale. You light
the fuel on the bottom of them and they fill with hot air and rise into
the night sky. At dusk on New Years eve I lit on on the beach and
watched it float away. On it, I’d written messages from 2008 and the
past — things that I didn’t want to take into 2009. It was fun
watching them float away into the sky! And then at dawn I released
another lantern, with all my hopes and resolutions for 2009 and the
future.

Tomorrow I leave this island and go to Ko Tarutao National Park
island. Then on Monday I get the ferry back to the mainland, and an
overnight bus to Bangkok, arriving Tuesday morning. I’ll have Tuesday
and Wednesday to explore the city and then early on Thursday morning I
fly out, stopping off in Seoul, Korea for a few hours. Thanks to the
International Date Line I’ll be back in San Francisco by 10am the very
same Thursday. I think it will be the longest day of my life.

January 6 (Bangkok): At this stage I’m kinda done with
traveling and ready to start heading home. Ko Tarutao was beautiful and
empty, but the sky was still gray and the air muggy. I climbed to the
top of Toe-Book cliff for a view across the Adang Sea. It was only a
short hike, but after it I called it a day.

Then Yesterday (was it yesterday?) I started traveling back to
Bangkok in earnest: a 12-hour bus ride the length of the country,
through the night. The seats weren’t designed for tall Europeans and I
think I slept for around 45 minutes in 5 minute stints.

I arrived in Bangkok bus station at 3am, got to a hotel, had a
shower and then realized sunrise was only an hour or so away, so I
headed out to the bridge and watched the sun appear behind the
skyscrapers. It was a special time of the day to be out and about. I
wouldn’t say it was quiet — I don’t think Bangkok is ever quiet — but
was a little more serene than I knew it would be in four hours once all
the rest of the tourists arrived. Then I went over to The Grand Palace
and Wat Phra Kaeo before eventually heading back to my hotel room and
crashing. In the afternoon I went back out wandering, finding Wat Pho and it’s massive reclining Buddha, as well as many fun street scenes, which I’ll have to write about later as now I’m ready to sleep again.

Tomorrow I’ll do some shopping before heading to the Airport for a late night flight to Seoul, Korea.