I Am Kayak, Hear Me Roar

And what does this picture have to do with the post, you may ask? Well, nothing. I just saw this little statue of Ganesha over a fountain and had to stop and take a picture. On with the real post . . .

After getting a van from Trang to Surat Thani, I got the night ferry to Koh Tao. The guide book warned it was more of a cargo ship than an actual ferry, and so not to expect comfort, but I figured I'd be fine and didn't want to find a hotel room to wait for the next ferry. Riding the night ferry was . . . well, an adventure, if you get to sleep during an adventure. True to the guidebook, the bottom deck was full of cargo, like crates of water and alcoholic beverages. A few motorcycles made it on board. The top two decks were full of very thin, narrow mattresses. And when I say deck--well, perhaps they were hoping to be decks when they grow up a little, because they were only about four feet high. I found my assigned mattress without too much trouble, as it was on an end (lucky), but had to double over to get to it. When I first saw the beds, my first thoughts were: 1) Yay, I get to lay down instead of sitting up all night like on a bus, and 2) You know, the proportions here are a little reminiscent of berths described on slave ships from that movie "Amazing Grace" . . . (great movie, btw. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now.) The girls who crawled in after me and settled on the mattresses next to mine had a more positive view: "it's like an enforced sleep-over!" I did get to sleep, and yeah, it wasn't too bad.

The boat pulled into Koh Tao in the gray, rainy morning. Which meant the island didn't give the best first impression. When the rain stopped, I decided to just walk around for a bit and ask at a few places before I settled on a place to stay. I had lunch, read the first quarter or so of Brahm Stoker's Dracula, took a nap, and walked on the beach. Not a great beach, as beaches go. Not one of those that calls to the world, "come lie on my sands and swim in my water." It was sort of mucky. I did have some very good pizza for dinner, though, and ended my day on an "oh, well" sort of note.

This is the morning that greeted me yesterday:

It's amazing the difference a little bit of sun makes. The beach still qualified as kind of mucky, however, no matter what you might think of the picture. So after a leisurely late breakfast and some more reading, I rented a kayak for half a day:

. . . and spent about four hours paddling around and humming pirate songs to myself (as per the Slater sibling kayaking tradition beginning circa August 2003). The kayak, unlike the ones I've experienced in Seattle, was more a sort of aero-dynamic plastic raft with a paddle than anything else (the ones in the Seattle area almost always have rudders), with strategically placed drainage holes that guaranteed a saturated bum. But at 200 baht per half-day, I wasn't going to complain. I started out from about midway down Sairee Beach and made it all the way around the nearby island Nangyuan--which, given that my upper body strength is, well, negligible, felt like quite the accomplishment.

I finally understand the phrase "turquoise waters"--I don't think I'd ever seen a body of water that didn't look more sea green (or murky green) than turquoise, but once I got away from the shore, there was no other word for the color. The guy who carried the kayak down to the beach for me warned that the coral was quite shallow close to the shore, so I'd have to be careful not to scrape the bottom of the kayak and sort of zigzag out into deeper water. I wasn't quite prepared for just how shallow it was--less than two feet down, I got to see tiny fish darting to safety as I passed. You can sort of see it here:

When I got into deeper water, I caught glimpses of schools of fish around the island, some with bright yellow tails, some tiny and silvery, and some with stripes similar to the tiger barbs I kept in an aquarium when I was little. Unlike kayaking in Seattle, there were no seal heads that popped up, and there were more butterflies than sea birds passing overhead. And I got to see things like this:

and this:

Which don't look as huge and impressive in photographs as they did in real life.

You've probably lost all curiosity by now, but the title of my post comes from an episode of Gilmore Girls, in which one of the characters compares herself and her husband to two people paddling a canoe, which will go in circles if one person stops paddling; and then she compares her daughter to one person paddling a kayak, with power to steer herself because she can paddle on both sides instead of just one. Sometimes it's daunting to be traveling alone, and sometimes it's just plain lonely. When I first got to Koh Tao and sat at the dock waiting for the rain to stop, I watched several couples and other tourist groups help each other unpack rain gear. And there have been several moments when I've had the thought, "I'm the only one seeing this" and I haven't had anybody at hand to whom to point out some curiosity or wonder. While there are always new friends to be made, it's mostly brief acquaintances. Not that traveling on my own hasn't been a good experience, overall--I get to choose what to see, travel according to my own preferences and in my own time. But for the past few days I was feeling the lonelier side of the experience. Kayaking helped with that a bit, I think--it's an empowering feeling to go somewhere and see amazing things under your own steam. I don't need to wait for somebody else to do something amazing. I am a kayak, not a canoe.

I'll admit, though, that my arms and shoulders are very sore this morning.

Koh Mook and Trang

As you might be able to tell from the less than friendly sky in the picture above, Thailand is done with its dry season this year. Songkran, the Thai new year, marked the transition into the rainy season, which means there's a good chance of a rain-shower every day, even if only for a half hour or so.

Koh Mook (also spelled Koh Muk) is one of the Trang Islands. Which I find a bit of a misnomer, because Trang Town is actually about an hour from the coast. But if you're going by province name instead of city name, I guess it works. I stayed in Koh Mook for a week, mostly to avoid the Songkran furor--which might seem silly, since it's a big festival and I don't foresee being in Thailand to experience it a second time, but I just wasn't in the mood for crowds. It was nice to have a week in which to swim, read, and chill out on the beach. It wasn't quite as nice as the place Rachael and I stayed on Koh Chang, but I suppose part of traveling is the risk that each new place won't always top the last. But it was a nice beach to swim at--which doesn't always happen--and it was as far from crowded as I could imagine a tourist destination to be. The worst bit was probably the mosquitos that hurried to greet me at the door of my bungalow. I did get to have the experience of sleeping under a mosquito net, however--which was quite fun, actually--and I can at least say that I didn't get a single mosquito bite while I slept. On the downside, the running water in the bungalow bathroom smelled strongly of rust and didn't look the clearest when you got a sink full of it. Sometimes I find it so strange that I used to be able to drink water from the tap in America.

Trang town was more a transition than anything else--a place to regroup and decide where to go next. I stayed at a nice little hotel and thoroughly enjoyed the flushing toilet, air conditioning, lack of mosquitos, and available wifi in the room. Other than that, my two nights there were unremarkable. I did go to a street market while there, which had amazing food (one booth sold fresh-tasting chocolate chip cookies, which was a real nostalgia punch) and really excellent orange slushie-type drinks made from fresh-squeezed orange juice (or possibly tangerine?). The town itself was fairly standard, as Thai towns go, not much remarkable except a main street that boasted a center divid with Christmas lights (I suppose I should just call them twinkle lights since they're not associated with Christmas here?), and decorative street lights:

Chiang Mai

Ok, I've been remiss in posting. I went to Chiang Mai for five days after Phimai, and I haven't been quite sure exactly what to write about it. For a start, though, the picture above is the view from my window at the guest house.

So, what to say about Chiang Mai . . . I think I could quite easily live there. It's beautiful, and it's a big city without the feel of Bangkok's unmanageable traffic. I arrived ridiculously early in the morning from having taken the night bus, and spent a good half hour just wandering around the Old City, which is full of temples and guesthouses and various attractions. All the larger buildings are outside the Old City, which still has the remnants of the old city wall and gates into it.

My favorite part was probably the Sunday walking street market, which is easier to walk around than the weekend market in Bangkok. For the week I was there, one of the main roads in the Old City was being torn up and repaved, which basically meant that part of the walking street market took place on a dirt road. It made for a very strange atmosphere. But it was fun to wander around and see everything that was being sold, taste various things, and listen to music from street performers. (I also went to the Saturday walking street market the day before, which was outside the Old City and very similar, but on a smaller scale--the Sunday one was better.)

I was very lazy about my time in Chiang Mai--partially because I had the beginnings of a sore throat. So I didn't do as much sight-seeing as I might have otherwise, but I had a very enjoyable week of sleeping in, wandering around, drinking fruit smoothies, and writing. I did go to Chiang Mai's art and culture museum (which turned out to be more culture, less art, but was still ok), and to Chiang Mai's zoo and aquarium. The zoo was a bit of a strange experience--far from the norm in American zoos where there are signs against feeding any of the animals, most of the non-carnivore animals had a stand near their enclosures, with baskets of food you could give to them for 20 baht. I'm not in the habit of essentially feeding money to animals, but it did make for some interesting differences in the behavior of the animals--for one thing, it meant all the animals were a lot closer than in American zoos. For another, it meant animals like ostriches and giraffes would follow you along the fences of their enclosures with an expectant look that borders on creepy. One of the funnier things I saw during the entire trip was a hippo surprising a tourist by bursting out of the water right in front of her, mouth open.

The aquarium was, alas, a little disappointing. The Chiang Mai aquarium's claim to fame is having the longest underwater viewing tunnel. It was ok, but what they don't tell you is that it's longest because it zig-zags, not because it goes through a particularly long or large tank. The bigger disappointment was that I'm pretty sure all the coral in the saltwater portion was fake.

A few other random pictures from the zoo, to show you just how close some of the animals were:

And of course, I couldn't visit Chiang Mai without going to see some of the temples. The temple seen from my room at the guest house in the top picture, by the way, is just a small, random temple, not one of the larger or more famous ones. I went to see Wat Chedi Luang around six in the evening, which meant it was almost empty, although I could tell from various signs it's one of the temples that gets a lot of traffic during the day. There was a newer, fairly standard temple in front:

And an older, preserved temple in back:

And some rather beautiful smaller shrines around the edges of the grounds:

My favorite discovery from the visit was actually a sign asking people to remove their shoes, if only because of what was directly above the sign, almost looking as if it would hunt down the people who didn't obey the sign:

I'd love to go back to Chiang Mai sometime. There's too much I didn't see, and it's too beautiful a city to only see once.