Fish in Water

  Koh Tao, Thailand
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Singha on the balcony, Kanchanaburi

You may be surprised to find yourself reading a blog entry free of typos (I hope!), given that the return of the company laptop had condemned me to the torment of the dysfunctional keyboards of Asian internet cafes. But I am, in fact, typing on my very own keyboard, belonging to what could be the smallest laptop in existence, snapped up for a snip at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok (thanks Dave and Martin for your pre-shopping input!) It's slightly bigger than a copybook and powered by a spindly cable so the overall weight is... well, not very much. Fits easily into my pack, doesn't weigh me down and allows me to type in bed again rather than under the fluorescent glare of cafe lights. My only problem is that the camera software I have been using, providing the only picture-reduction method I understand, is no longer with me, so there may be a dearth of photos for a while till I get my head around a new system...

beach on koh tao

My stay in Bangkok got extended too long, between doctors and dentists and all so it was a relief to hit the beach here on Koh Tao, where I've been doing a lot of nothing except lying around reading and dozing and floating in the warm sea... back in my element as a fish in water. Bit disappointed with the island really, as I had been told it was one of the quiet ones... I guess it's all relative, though, and in Thai beach terms, doof doof music till 1 am is bliss compared to doof doof till 6 am. I'm just baffled that people don't want to sit and listen to the waves rolling in and to lie and watch the stars at night. But my definition of chilling out is quite different to the norm, it seems! There are lots of large groups of British boys staggering around at 4 am yelling football chants or threatening to kill each other as they fight, too, which does little for the peaceful atmosphere. Anyway, the upside is that they are all sleeping it off the next day so the beach is not too busy.

The toyboy has been doing a lot of diving but I have a sore throat and rotten sinuses to I can't join in. It wasn't a Susan and Richard scenario when he showed up, thank God, but as soon as he started exhibiting signs of 'me, me, me - male syndrome' I left him to his own devices for a couple of days and headed off to 'the other side' (of the island) for some peace! I discovered a tiny bay well beyond the clutches of the backpackers and thus blissfully devoid of shite music. It worked wonders: my ears had a holiday and on my return, after a spell without company, the toyboy is behaving admirably!

I spent yesterday afternoon snorkelling on 'the other side'

sunrise from my terrace on 'the other side'

and was jolted back 17 years to the time I did my dive training in the Philipinnes, by seeing so much similar marine life. It's a long time since I experienced the sheer joy of floating in warm water, sun sparkling on the surface and casting long rays down over the coral and the abundant life feeding around it. It was magical: shoals of tiny shimmering silver dainties flashing past, changing direction in unision, like synchronised swimmers; dazzling rainbow fish in their wake; a huge group of mellow yellows in the underwater equivalent of a leisurely amble; lots of darting mint humbugs; and a few Saturday night tarts, wide-eyed in red mascara. When I learned to dive, I realised that it was far more fun to create suitably descriptive names for the creatures I encountered, instead of using accurate terminology, and new to Lisa's Fishy List this time are the long, thin, black, slightly sinister Snape-fish (if you don't read Harry Potter, that will go over your head) and the ideally proportioned Guinness fish with just enough of a creamy head on its black body to conjure in my mind the image of a perfect pint sitting on the bar in O' Donnell's.

But the beach stint is over and tomorrow we will spend the day on a boat bound for Surat Thani to catch the overnight sleeper train across the Malaysian border to Butterworth for the ferry to Penang.