A rest is as good as a change

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Our levels of inactivity have reached epic proportions. I no longer think it is right to describe what we’re doing as ‘traveling’. I think ‘sitting’ is probably more appropriate, or per-haps lounging or mostly sleeping.
I’m starting to think there’s a good chance we may not leave here before we have to get the plane to Auckland for Christmas. That said - we may not be able to leave, a quick cur-sory look at the BBC website yesterday informed me that anti government protesters had succeeded in shutting down a number of airports and crippled much of the rail network over the last week. If they escalate their activity as promised then there probably wouldn’t be much point getting on the boat as there would be nowhere to go at the other end.

If I hadn’t been checking the BBC, which was mainly to see if any of the places next on our list had been flooded or fallen victim to a natural disaster, (and as India, Southern China and New Orleans are not on the list, at the moment it looks ok) we wouldn’t have known that protesters were trying to overthrow the Thai government. There are no notices in the travel agents hinting at travel disruption, no chatter amongst the travelers. It all feels a million miles away. And in a way I suppose it is. This island gets very little from the govern-ment as it is - even their water and electricity supplies are private.
In order to expand our shrinking but picturesque horizons we decided to take some time to investigate other parts of the island for prospective new accommodation. Our first port of call was Sairee Beach - one of the main towns, where most of the shops, bars, restaurants and dive resorts are. Nothing is too far away on this tiny Island, and rather than pay 200B (which is about what we spend on dinner) for a taxi, and by taxi, I mean a bench in the back of an open truck, we decided to walk the 5k. We put on proper shoes, loaded up on water and began the trek in the searing midday sun (as our sloth like existence had caused us to lie in - again.) There are only 4X4’s and motorbikes on Koh Tao as the roads are too steep for regular vehicles, so we gritted our teeth and climbed the hills, crossing the road to take advantage of any small patches of shade that may come our way.

We eventually make it, sweaty and weary, having not passed one other person walking along the way. It was a nice insight into the central parts of the island, to see how the lo-cals lived and a million miles away from the busy town that greeted us at Sairee Beach. Bearing in mind we have spent the last 5 days in a small bay with only a couple of resorts, restaurants and shops, the ‘city’ was a bit of a shock to the system. Our immediate neighbours at the moment are the inhabitants a few simple wooden bungalows like ours (half of which are empty), the fish and a few chickens. All the rooms and bungalows we looked at in Sairee Beach that were within our budget, didn’t offer the privacy, the views or the quality of accommodation we have here. The only thing that made me think it might be nice to live somewhere a little less remote was the free wifi on offer in a couple of cafes. But that really isn’t a good enough reason to leave where we are.
In about a week we will decamp to the Sairee Beach in order to start a dive course at one of the big resorts - as they are offering free aircon rooms (oh the luxury) during the course. When you’ve been trying to sleep with in the heat with just a fan blowing apologetic wafts of coolish air over you through the night, the lure of air con is too much to resist. In the meantime we have everything we need here - cheap restaurant that serves good food, a nice beach front bar if we fancy (and have budgeted for) the odd drink, and a spacious porch with a hammock where we can continue our epic scrabble tournament. Oh how the young people must laugh at the old crones who leave the bar after one drink to huddle over their scrabble board searching for match winning triple word scores as they get wasted on buckets of cocktails across the bay.

In an effort to elicit some sort of change we did have a look at bungalows around the other side of our bay (which we reached via a series of very hilly inland roads, only to discover that the water was shallow enough to walk around the rocks - which we did on the way back and it was a lot less arduous) but again found nothing with the views and privacy we had for the money we were paying. So having satisfied ourselves that we were onto a good thing here - having got a good deal (and a free taxi) thanks to a rep off the boat when we arrived, we are paying 100BHT a night less than our neighbours - we reasoned that it would be foolish to move just for the sake of it, and proceeded to book three more nights.

The plan at the moment is to head to Sairee Beach and find a room a few days before we want to begin diving and then stay there until our diving course is complete. At that point, which is still looking like being at least 10 days away, we’ll have to start thinking above leaving our new island home.

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