Travellog: Thailand: Bangkok and Koh Samed

Wednesday, July 23 2003

I whacked the alarm clock silent, and looked at Kat. This time she had heard my clock.

"Maybe we can have just five more minutes..."

We ended up sleeping a whole extra half an hour, until my uncle banged on the door and yelled. That evil bed! It was so comfortable!

We didn't do much on Wednesday; it was mostly pure relaxation. It was raining when we got up. My first thought on seeing the downpour in the shower: "Bloody hell! How are we going to take a bath?!" I couldn't help imagining myself standing out there in the storm, wearing nothing but my flip-flops, getting pelted by rain and falling leaves. It wasn't a nice thought.

Fortunately, by the time we'd finished breakfast, the rains had stopped. In the morning walked along the beach and picked up shells. The sea had washed up thousands of shells in the night. Some people had gone barefoot that morning, but I was glad I had my flip-flops because the shells were sharp! Kat picked up several shells; I collected a shell and a couple of cuttlebones. We also saw a tiny little crab (we yelled 'Craaaaaab!!' and my uncle came running at once!) When we reached the end of the beach we decided to climb the rocks there. The waves were incredible up there and we found another, bigger crab. Later inspection showed it to be dead - but we did finally catch a crab I guess! Kat found a dead starfish on the way back, too. There seemed to be an awful lot of casualties.

Later that morning we ventured out to Samed Village again. The track in the daytime is much easier to walk on...and most of the dogs had disappeared, thank goodness. The track itself isn't much more than a cement path in the midst of wilderness with huts, resorts and guesthouses peppered along the way, so I soon wished I'd worn something more comfortable to walk in than flip-flops. We saw more chickens - here's a hen and her chicks - as well as sunflowers, ducks, and something we called 'The Chickenpox Plant'. I particularly liked these little birds (here's a close up). They run around on the ground unless something scares them into flying. I think they are cute! We passed many houses with chickens in their yards, ducks in the grass, and dogs sleeping on the front porch. Time just seems to stop on Koh Samed. It was such a primitive-looking place, but comfortably so. A dog ran along beside us as we were walking. At first we thought he was out to get us for intruding, but he just trotted along with us for a good half-hour and never bothered anyone.

Finally we reached a small minibus (minitruck, really. The 'taxis' of Koh Samed are open-back trucks with two rows of seats along the sides. You pay the driver and off you go with as many as 9 fellow passengers, and may God help you if it rains.) station. We sat down, and had a drink (I think the Thai coke can is cool!) We had a view of another, smaller beach too. We just rested for a while. It was never really hot on Koh Samed, only pleasantly warm with the occasional breeze. In the end we took a minibus home. There was a bit of a problem when the minibus driver tried to enter a national park (200 Baht per adult!!) but it was solved when the park officers realized she'd misunderstood where we wanted to go, even though we'd shown her the resort name in Thai. Turns out that the resort is pretty low-key with the locals.

Halfway back, my phone rang (dad had given me his cell phone with roaming).

"Hello?" (I was really tempted to say 'Sawadee ka' instead.)

"(Mumble....static....mumble)...Agnes?"

"What??"

"(more agitated mumbling) Agnes!"

"Wrong number!"

It struck me as highly ridiculous. Here I was, bumping along in the back of a truck, somewhere in the Thai wilderness, and this person calls and asks for Agnes. Whoever she was. I cancelled the next call - no point wasting money talking about nonexistent Agnesses.

We spent the rest of the day doing nothing in particular. Kat fished olives out of the pool (the odd one is a coconut); we bummed around on the beach. We saw two very cute lizards and a rather large millipede. Another group of Hong Kong tourists arrived that day, though they were mostly young and there was quite a few of them. While we were eating dinner one of them came around and peered at our table to see what we were eating and then ordered the same thing. What odd behaviour. I wonder if they had trouble speaking English...

That night we went back to our bungalows pretty early. At about ten we noticed the couple in the opposite bungalow going out in their swimsuits, so Kat mentioned that they might be going skinny-dipping when she went to collect her clothes. Her parents were so funny! They left the passports with us, then snuck off to see. Turned out that they were in the swimming pool. By the time they came back to collect the passports, Kat and I had all but split our sides laughing!

We had no postcards to write that night, so we tried to copy the yoga positions on the T-shirt I'd worn that day on the bed. It was so funny. Kat was much better of course, being a ballet dancer.

"Hmmm...I can do this..." (stands straight with one leg in her hand)

"Nah...maybe not this...lemme try..."

"Hey, this is EASY!" (said after I had, from a lying position, lifted my feet up over my head so they touched the bed and my butt was now on top of my face)

Such were our pointless diversions when deprived of television, telephone and computer.

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