Low Tide, Some Bad Luck, and More Visitors

When Jeff's parents left us, we didn't have much of a plan for what came next for us, so we left the island of Koh Lanta and followed them as far as the mainland city of Krabi. We settled in there for a few days to come up with a travel plan, while also enjoying the unexpected charm of the town (a great night market with cheap seafood, a couple of restaurants serving good coffee, cheap rooms, nice people). Our 30-day Thai visa was close to running out, but we decided that Jeff should take a SCUBA diving class before we made a border run for a new visa. So, we spent a few days walking around the Krabi area checking out the local diving options and spent some quality time on the internet looking into what dive shops were offering further away. We eventually realized that we should have just stayed on Koh Lanta all along - turns out it was the best combination of price and current diving conditions, so soon enough we were back on a stuffy mini-bus bound for Koh Lanta.

01 - Playing Frisbee on Koh Phayam

Our time in Koh Lanta was good and bad. The good was the diving - Jeff had a great time doing his course while Allison (already certified) went out separately to get in a few dives. We didn't see anything "big" (no sharks or sting rays or anything), but it was still pretty nice, and we saw good stuff like pufferfish, lion fish and scorpion fish. The bad part of Koh Lanta was that our bungalow was broken into the night we arrived (probably while we were at dinner) and all of the money intended to pay for our diving was stolen. Yeah. To make it worse, the bungalow management became hostile to us, accusing us of making the whole thing up. Maybe it was just that they didn't like that we got the police involved. But they also may have been uneasy because there was good evidence that the break-in was an inside job. The afternoon we arrived we had been picked up from the dive shop by one of the bungalow's drivers. He arrived early and saw us go to an ATM while he was waiting. That person could have easily found out which bungalow we were in, and it seemed the person who took the money likely had a key. We hadn't put all of this together when we talked to the police (other than the part about needing a key to get in), so we didn't make any outright accusations, but we think the bungalow management either suspected the same or actually knew what was going on. Whatever the case, when Jeff approached the owner the night before we left to comment on the general lack of security in the area we were staying, the owner erupted into a very un-Thai fit of shouting.

02 - Sunset Volleyball on Koh Phayam

But anyway... We finished our diving and left the island on a Thursday. We needed to get to a border by sometime Friday so that we could exit the country and then come back with a new visa. We returned to the city of Krabi, and, because we had found the Thai public transit system to be pretty reliable, we decided to wait until the next morning to take a bus up to a sort of obscure river border with Myanmar/Burma. But our bad luck continued. First, we almost missed the bus because we had trouble finding a taxi to the bus station and then the taxi took about twice as long as expected to get to the bus. Then, the bus ride took two hours longer than we were told, largely due to several inexplicable stops, one of which seemed for the sole purpose of fixing the bus radio. We rolled into the Thai border town around 5pm, hoping there was still a chance we could do our visa run before the border closed at 6pm, at which time our visa would expire. But, when we suggested the idea to the shared taxi drivers waiting at the bus stop, they laughed at us - no way were we going to get that accomplished in an hour, they told us. The next morning we found out why. First, we had to take a shared taxi to the immigration office on the Thai side. Only the office isn't really at the border and our driver misunderstood where we wanted to go. We overshot immigration and had to walk a mile back the way we came so we could get stamped out. Then, despite our hopes that the immigration officials might overlook our short visa overstay, the officials made us go out and make photocopies of our passports and then pay a $5 fine each (all noted in our passport with an extra stamp documenting the extent of our overstay and the payment of the fine). We then walked back to the border area, which is actually a harbor, and had to find the boats to Myanmar, which wasn't at all clear. After about a half hour of walking around we found the boats (or rather, one of the boat hustlers found us). So, we loaded on the boat with a bunch of other passengers, mainly Thai or Burmese, and started the comical trip down the river to Myanmar. Our first stop was at another Thai border post, the function of which we didn't really understand (other than that they had to stamp a piece of paper clipped to our passports to show we'd been there). Second stop was several minutes later at Myanmar immigration, where we had to pay $5 each to enter the country. The hang-up was that the officials accepted only pristine US dollars (apparently, Myanmar's banks won't accept anything less than perfect bills). We had about $100 US cash at the time and they rejected every single one of our bills for either having been folded or having a slight mark on it. Well, we did have four $1 bills that they found acceptable, but because we didn't have a fifth dollar bill that they would accept, the first four didn't do us any good. The alternative was to pay in Thai Baht, but, of course, that increased the price - they wanted the equivalent of more like $8. Oh well - it was kind of our fault anyway... We had been warned that they were picky but thought our bills would be good enough. So, we paid the Baht and continued up the river to the Myanmar border town. Again, we visited another inexplicable border post where our passports received additional stamps. That done, we made the reverse trip back to Thailand passing through all the same river border posts and then walking back to Thai immigration on the mainland for our new visa. Altogether it took three or four hours. Probably good that we didn't attempt it late the previous afternoon. But it left us wondering why Thailand doesn't just let tourists like us pay THEM $5 each for a new visa rather than make us go through the trouble to put it into the hands of a military dictatorship that is the embarassment of the region...

03 - On The Ferry to Koh Mak

Now that we had enough visa power to get us through the rest of our stay in Thailand, we were able to move on to the nearby island of Koh Phayam, which we'd been hearing lots of good things about, especially from traveler types who are good at getting off the beaten path (we don't claim to have earned that distinction yet). It was a great four or five days. The island doesn't have any roads, just a cement path down the center of the island that is used by motorbikes to transport people back and forth. There isn't any electricity except for that provided by generators, usually only from 6pm to 10pm. So, it is really quiet. We stayed at a great place called Hornbill Huts run by a really friendly Thai couple with lots of good ideas - a huge book library, hammocks in the shade, free use of snorkel gear, nightly sunset beach volleyball games and a great restaurant. It was the kind of place where staying for only a couple of nights makes you feel out of place (example: we met a German guy there who parks at Hornbill Huts about 8 months a year). Why not, though? The island is incredibly laidback, receives far fewer visitors than the more well-known Thai islands, and the beaches are beautiful, though in a really unique way. The island doesn't have fluffy white sand, but the sea bottom is so close to flat that it allows the tide to go out incredibly far each day. So we had a huge expanse of drying sea bottom where we'd run around and play frisbee when the sun wasn't too hot (and it was HOT). And hardly anybody was on the beach anyway, since it attracts types that spend so much time there that they'd rather have a spot in the shade than the sun. So, other than sitting around and reading, the occasional toss of the frisbee and participation in late afternoon volleyball games, we didn't do much, but that's about what Koh Phayam is meant for.

04 - Front of the Ferry to Koh Mak

As much as we loved Koh Phayam, soon enough we had to leave. But for good reason - Jeff's sister Jill and brother-in-law John had decided to join us for our last week in Thailand. So, we took an overnight bus back up to Bangkok (always a good way to wreck the following day) and got a few things organized before they arrived. Jill and John touched down a few days later on a late night flight, but we all rallied early the next morning so that we could hop on a bus and bring the poor Midwesterners to a beach as soon as possible. We had decided to head back towards the island of Koh Chang, which we had visited before going to Cambodia. We hadn't particularly liked Koh Chang, but had heard good things about a nearby island called Koh Mak. Since it was relatively close to Bangkok, we decided to check it out. But first we had to get there. Our run with bad luck continued, and we ended up picking a taxi driver who took the longest, slowest route imaginable to the bus station (and we knew something was up, because we had done the same ride before in about half the time). It is possible that he wanted us to miss our bus so that he personally could bring us to the beach, at a rate of about five times what the bus would charge. And we did miss the bus we wanted, actually watching it pull out of the station as we were approaching. But we knew there was another one leaving about 45 minutes later, so we sent the taxi driver on his merry way without us. The ride was uneventful, but somehow we managed to get behind schedule, narrowing an already small window for error to get us to the ferry to Koh Mak on time. However, things were looking up, and we arrived at the ferry office just in time for the woman at the desk to call the ferry to ask it to wait for us. We rushed down to the dock and hopped on more or less as the crew was pulling up the ferry's anchor.

05 - At Sunset on Koh Mak

We opted to take the "slow boat" to Koh Mak, rather than a speed boat, and found it was a good choice. The ferry was more or less a tug boat. Cargo filled most of the lower level, but the covered upper level had rows of beach chairs for the passengers. Sure, it took three hours to get to the island rather than the speed boat's one hour, but there are worse ways to spend time than kicking back in a beach chair while watching a chain of tropical islands pass by. We arrived on Koh Mak close to sunset and managed to find ourselves a couple of bungalows on the quiet part of the island. We spent five days on Koh Mak, swimming in the bathtub warm water, sunning on the beach (at least, when the evil sand flies weren't biting too much), drinking Thai beer on Jill and John's porch and playing some frisbee. Jill and John kept the Thai massage ladies busy, and Allison and Jeff managed to get in a morning of diving. We also did a fair job of exploring the island and spent a few days hanging out on the grounds of one of its posher resorts, returning home in the evening to our more modest bungalows on the other side of the small island.

06 - Jill and John on Koh Mak

The days passed quickly and Jeff and Allison's departure date was looming. So, too soon, we found ourselves back on the tug boat to the mainland, and then on a bus bound for Bangkok. That night we did some exploring in the Khao San Road area, the nerve center of the budget travel scene in Thailand. Neon signs, racks of hippie clothes on the sidewalk, pirated CDs, fake designer sunglasses, vendors selling any sort of fake ID you might want (international student ID cards, PADI dive certification cards, media passes...) and, about every 20 feet, a vendor selling pad thai or banana pancakes. And a McDonald's and a Starbucks for good measure (complete with a Ronald McDonald statue in the posture of a polite Thai greeting, bowing with his hands pressed together). We navigated our way through the madness for awhile, stopped at a good Thai vegetarian restaurant off one of its back alleys and eventually wandered into a more authentic Thai night market for some traditional desserts (pumpkins stuffed with custard, gelatinous water chestnuts in coconut milk served over ice, mango with sticky rice...).

07 - Shopping on Khao San Road, Bangkok

The next day, Jeff and Allison's last in Thailand, we made a trip to Bangkok's gigantic weekend market. The two of us had gone there the previous weekend, before Jill and John had arrived. However, we decided a second trip was warranted, both because Jill and John would love it and because it was so huge we had barely scratched the surface in our first visit. Wow. First there is the section filled with nothing but dozens of booths of second-hand Levis. Nearby are more second-hand clothes, likely donated long ago by people like you back home to places like Goodwill. It seems like we saw something very Michigan in one of the booths, like a "Yes! There really is a Kalamazoo!" T-shirt (wish we could remember exactly what it was). Then there are just as many booths in other parts of the market selling everything from pets, to books, to Thai crafts, to expensive art, to boutiquey Thai designer clothes, to anything made in China... Lots of good food, bottles of water and coffee drinks are sold around every corner to keep the energy up. It seems impossible to go to the weekend market without spending an entire day, even though it is incredibly crowded, exhausting and HOT (it was around 100 degrees the day we were there). We were ready to drop by the time the market was about to close, but, in typical fashion, there were all sorts of things Jeff and Allison needed to do before leaving Thailand. Except for a break for a really good dinner, the group of us didn't really stop moving until late into the night. We were in an internet cafe around 1am burning photos to a CD and were eating banana pancakes and barbequed sweet corn on the side of the road around 3am. It was around then that we figured out that the two of us need not have bothered with keeping our hotel room that night, but since we had the room, we returned for a few hours of sleep before we had to get up and to the airport for our early flight to Hawaii. And that meant our international trip had come to an end. But there was still a bunch of US travel ahead, and we'll try to get some stories and photos about that posted soon.

08 - John and Mr. Thailand

09 - Weekend Market Madness

10 - Cooling Off at the Weekend Market