“You Liii’ it Thai Schpishy?”

The beaches couldn’t come soon enough!  After spending two days sweating, complaining about sweating,  picking out our newly-required tank tops (‘grillin’ shirts’ for those of you familiar my summer cooking attire), stuffing myself with any and all foods that were grilled on the sidewalk and served on a stick, and peppering our conversations with “That smells like Bangkok!”, we boarded an overnight bus to the sleepy, fishy port city of Ranong.  From there we planned to ferry our way to Koh Phayam in the Andaman Sea. Ranong smelled like Bangkok. We arrived at the ferry dock during low tide, and the smell of uncovered delta mud and old fish reminded me of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Turns out, parts of Alabama smell like Bangkok. Koh Phayam, situated two hours off  the West coast of Thailand and directly South of Myanmar, promised to be an island oasis boasting few inhabitants and fewer tourists, a lack of cars or real roads, limited electricity, questionable water sources, mile-long beaches, snakes, monkeys, hornbills, and teal water.      

Koh Phayam rocked our world!   After six weeks of Nepal: Kathmandu-craziness, my bushy ginger-beard,  my 10-day shower strike (Hillary paid up to $5 to shower off with a warmish bucket-full of water in the mountain villages along our treks), boring food,  it felt otherworldly to be clean, clean-shaven, and relaxing in a beach-front hammock while sipping Chang beer and wearing my purple Khao San Road-purchased board shorts. Let me break down our days to you:   wake up all tangled in mosquito netting (realize I am not actually being mauled by some wild animal), walk up the path from our beach-front bungalow to the bamboo building that served as family home/massage parlor/coffee shop (get coffee, no massage), walk back down to beach and read (I tore through some Hemingway- the only man who can make Paris seem as if it exudes testosterone), enjoy all day happy hours from the gal who slung cocktails our way, swim in crazy clear water all afternoon, and then hit up possibly the best food spot we found in all of Thailand. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Mr. Ziggy Stardust, aka: Thai Spicy Lisp Guy.   What we found around the bend from our bungalow was the most affable, pudgy, smiling, stray/feral-puppy feeding, lispy, tasty-food-making local on the island.  As a whitey in Thailand, you have a hard time convincing folks to actually put some real kick into your meals. They will ask you “You want ‘pharang’ spicy or thai spicy?”- at which we reply “Thai spicy’’ (pharang=whitey).  Hey that’s racist!!  But, sadly, you hardly get a meal that makes you suffer. Ziggy asked on our first encounter, “You wan’ it Thai scphishy”?  “Yes! Thai Spicy! Kap kun krap” I told him. He tried to warn me that he would throw a “fishfull” of peppers into the soup I ordered.  But I told him to do his worst, treat me like a local. Having peppers in a stir fry or dry curry is one thing, but having 30 Thai chilies in your soup is like making a lava tea.   The first few spoonfuls weren’t so bad.. But the peppers started to brew as Ziggy wandered by to check on me every few minutes and walk away with a lispy giggle.  At the halfway point of my bowl, I had to abort the mission and pick out all the remaining peppers from the broth.. Much to Ziggy’s amusement. The stupid pharang had tapped out, beer was no good, time for ice cream.  Hillary had pointed out an upscale bungalow cluster almost a mile north of our patch earlier in the day that she insisted had a secret ice cream stash, and I shot the prospect down (citing the lack of reliable electricity on the island as a deal-killer for frozen treats). But now that my face was melting, we went running towards the healing powers of possible ice cream.    Alas, the home of the $200/nt bungalow (ours was $9) also had a deep freeze powered by solar.  Never have I been so happy to overpay for dessert.

We bailed off Phayam for the mainland once more, traveled for 14hrs via moped taxi (I promise you there is nothing weirder than riding down a bumpy dirt track trying not to press your thighs to the elderly Thai gentlemen who is whisking you across an island on a rickety moped), wooden boat, hitch hike truck, bus, van, and truck tuk to the beach town of Krabi to meet up with some of our trekking buddies from Nepal. The Brits, Mike and Allison, had lined us up a $7 room, two beers, and a pizza.. A bueno reunion!  Next stop: the island of Koh Lanta. Our first day on Lanta was Thanksgiving, and we spent our time explaining the holiday to the Muslim women who ran the BBQ at the spot we picked for our presumed feast.. After assuring me that she knew not of an edible bird larger than a chicken, one of the gals scootered off to the market to buy a chicken for us. We threw in some shrimp, too!  Reminded me of Thanksgiving back on the Gulf Coast: Dad would fry a turkey, but the real feast was in the shrimp, oysters, and crab bisque that became a staple of our family’s holiday shindigs.  Now if I only had some of my cousin Tracy’s cheese straws.. Thanksgiving would be complete.

I have a confession:    I enjoy riding scooters, mopeds, whatever you wanna call em.  I mean I REALLY love the feeling of zooming around beach roads and jungle corners at a top speed of 40km/hr while wearing a flimsy plastic helmet that only protects my noggin’ from sunburn (maybe) and listening to Hillary scream at me to not hit the chickens, pigs, puppies in the roadway.   We spent our time on Lanta “beach crawling”, as Mike coined it.  Wake up, pancake, moped, stop at beach numero uno, play in sand and water, moped, find beach numero dos, repeat playtime, moped, lunch, try and teach the girls how to moped, realize mopeds are too masculine for girls, beach numero tres, 7-11 for cheap whiskey and cola, moped, beach numero quatro, sunset and cocktails…   better than pub crawling.

A few days later, we ferried over to pretty little Ko Phi Phi.  Phi Phi is a bit of paradox  if you ask me. Smack dab in the middle of the archipelago where “The Beach” was filmed, it is a limestone juggernaut of beauty that embodies all things amazing and evil about island tourism. While I relished the opportunity to privately snorkel in spotlessly-clear bays underneath soaring limestone karsts, I sadly watched hoards of tourists aboard overloaded party boats throw cigarette butts, beer bottles, plastic bags, and food wrappers overboard surrounding the more touristy islands. Luckily, we had chartered a small long tail boat with the Brits, so we could kinda tell our driver where we wanted to spend our time. We cruised into a skinny, shallow bay that proved to be the highlight of our Phi Phi trip.   Sure, other boats came and went, but we spent the rest of the afternoon jumping from the bow, swinging of ropeswings, and getting pummeled by tiny fish that protected their nesting areas kamikaze-style by ramming into my ribs so hard that it left tiny bruises. I mean, these fish were finger sized..

Next up, the Railay-Tonsai-Pra Nang beach area.  Technically back on the mainland, but logisitically an island, this peninsular paradise boasted beaches routinely mentioned amongst the most dramatic in the whoooole World.    Previous statement: True. Gigantic pillars of limestone plunging into the sea.. Blue green water.. White beaches… obese eastern Europeans in banana hammocks.. Shockingly beautiful sights.   Also, one of the most fun places..   My favorite night in the area was spent in Tonsai beach: douchey-fratboy-esque buckets of local whiskey and/or rum, fire breathers/dancers, ROPESWINGS (I love ropeswing.. “Brick, do you really love ropeswing?”), and laughing my ass off with Allison as Hill and Mike did some funky hip-rolling-floppy-arm dancing to the local reggae band that refused to do a cover of Lady Gaga for Hillary.. Surprise, surprise.  Staying in the jungly ‘headlands’ area, we managed to avoid the vast majority of other westerners, but the skeeters found us for sure.   Thank God for OFF!  Confession #2:   I decided not to take anti-malarial pills.. Not really a problem in this area, but still.. I had doubted the reliability of OFF, but did not want to use cancer-causing, plastic melting DEET-laden products.. So I decided to use it in the non-malarial areas so we could see if it was trustworthy for the areas further north in Thailand and jungly Laos and Cambodia.   No symptoms yet, but I think I could take a round or two of Malaria and keep kicking. It would be a good souvenir!