Writing Ourselves Into Stories

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The first accommodation we found after deboarding the minibus in Phuket town was a decent deal; Downtown Hotel. Alan caught up on much needed sleep in the afternoon, and I wandered like a forlorn vagrant down streets in the dirty business district, passing by stores in vain transit; my attempt to be active instead of inactive; I called it "exercising willpower" in the face of my own fatigue. I stopped in at an Internet cafe for a few hours and came back to Alan tacking the last of his wet hotel room laundry onto my once-20 meter orange construction rope, which I have become inseparable with for it's innumerable uses. In the evening, we meandered through city central in search of another Internet cafe that could burn DVDs, which we found after about an hour and 4 complete strangers. After we did our business, I went to go eat pad Thai at the night market, while Al caved in for some good ol' grease-spattered McDonalds. I joined him later in his conversation with a wiry Australian dive master named David, one of the more pleasant Aussies I have met. Immediately upon our arrival at the hotel, we noticed a girl oddly dressed for the adjacent "Downtown Coffee Shop" emerge from washrooms, and a mystery we had to investigate was born. We agreed to hang out at the coffee shop for a while, and quickly came to realize it was not what one could expect. Nobody was drinking coffee; beer, wine, water, anything but coffee. And while quasi-classy men sat chattering in the dim light with their strangely under-and-overdressed females, the stage bore Thai girls, singly effortlessly and boorishly the child-like glee of Asian pop, as if it wasn't their job. And perhaps it wasn't, because they seemed dressed for something more. It was both the most surreal and typical sight, despite an attempt at being "a hoot", so we finished our drinks and left the seedy den of who-knows-what. I don't think we'll ever find the solution to the mysteries that place evoked, and a mind can only wander so far until it realized it may be entirely wrong. We resorted to sleep with the dull-thud of a party gently radiating through our walls until 2AM.

The next day, we caught a double-matinée. In early afternoon, we visited a Indian temple, where we were amicably entertained by Alvinder, the Sikh "cyberpriest"; he called himself this because he confessed to having a laptop, camera, email, and everything else one in this day and age could want. We sat and talked upstairs for a while, about Cashmere, knowledge and belief, and other buddy-buddy talk. It wasn't a problem for us to accept our differences at all. We went downstairs, where his companion made and boiled our mouths with some great mint tea, and demonstrated the complexities of a Banghra beat on his two hand drums; he was good; he said each drum can make 8 sounds, and I had all the reason to believe he acquired them right there. Of course, I was all ears in this fantastic moment. Alvinder was teaching two little Indian girls how to read and write Punjabi, but the excitement of our presence interrupted him several times. He unofficially aborted his class to show us pictures of his hometown of Cashmere and his wedding. He made it clear to us that if we ever go to Cashmere, and he is at home, he will accommodate us with joy; an email address to backed it up. We've learned before that monks and priests are not as solemn as you read or watch them to be, yet this experience proved still surprising.

We walked back to our street in the daily afternoon drizzle, and picked up a minibus towards the snake farm. What ensued our price for admission, was more than a slow tour of caged in snakes. While we were able to see about 15 snakes of about 10 variety in such confinement, our motive was "the show." For a solid 20 minutes, a young homely dressed and well-fed Thai man provoked to great extent the likes of nonvenomous and venomous snakes alike, saving -- as any good showman -- the best for last. The little snakes were quick, but proved boring for him. The jumping snakes were feisty little lashers, but offered little more danger than a bite, which he dodged lazily. The python's grip was strong, but it proved slow and lazy. I let it wrap 3/4 around my neck. The snake-man upped the ante halfway through by pulling not just one cobra out of it's crude wooden crate, but 3 sharp-toothed serpents, and proceeded to play the part of The Crocodile Hunter with his hands; he even apologized by picking them and kissing them directly on the mouth. This process was repeated with the absolutely terrifying king cobra, which can stand up to a meter tall in malicious anticipation of your first -- and probably vain -- move. Of all snakes you would not want to meet while taking a leisurely stroll through the thickets, this one is at the top of your list. It is longer, faster and more deadly than a naked human could ever be. This is probably what form Satan took in the garden of Eden; a shiny-scaled mass of length and anticipation and seedy intent that is on all accounts a good idea to avoid. I had many questions for the endangered man, which the English-speaking ticket lady was able to answer most of by herself: he had been bitten by cobras before; they did not have anti-venoms on hand; the hospital had them; getting bitten meant rushing to the hospital at blurring speeds on the back of a motorbike; he had learned about snakes for 10 years before attaining such a job; he started catching snakes as a kid; a king cobra would definitely chase you if you ran; king cobras give you a mere 15 minutes to say your prayers; on and on...

The next way, we caught a minibus to the edge of the city and then a truck to the border, where the police tried to set us up with a bus, while I came to the stark conclusion that I had left my eyeglasses on the previous ride, which was now long gone. I just disposed of garbage in my shoulder bag, and we walked down the highway anyway, to their complete confusion. We soon got another ride to a a place just across the bridge to Phuket island. We stopped for a break. We spent pennies on some Pepsis and a blissful pineapple which we cut up using my pocket knife and devoured on the side of the highway, squatting like scavenging wolves over the juicy messy, tearing pieces off with our merciless teeth. This was one of the most unforgettable scenarios, and reminded me of Tim Horton's donuts, for one reason or another. We continued on to the edge of that town until a Vin Diesel-esque foreigner scooped us up in his rented el camino in transit to Krabi. To divulge a bit, I want to say that traveling, especially hitching, brings a striking realization to mind; that every single person who ever lived, is living a fully-detailed story, be it boring or interesting, of 3 or 76 years; it happens without inaccuracy. And further, you become a part of the story of every single person you have and ever will meet. And on this occasion, we found ourselves in the story of the national Italian kayak team's physiotherapist, me riding shotgun in the only car the rental company owned, and Alan offering him directions from the tight space of the backseat, where our map of Thailand sprawled panoramically in front of him. The Italian talked and talked, and interrupted himself to comment on the beautiful scenery, and then continued. The ride may have been mere minutes, but it felt like hours; I was spent from a short night and the hot sun, and was going into energy debt, courteously fulfilling the hitchhiker's duty of keeping the driver company; I commented whenever he paused to think about something. Meanwhile, as we started to notice directional signs to Krabi, we began to do what we later realized was get completely lost. We took a turn which purportedly lead to a beach; which beach, the Italian had no concern for. We toured unknown villages and single-lane roads through the trees for what felt like hours, until we came to a bay. To be fair -- and truthful -- the view at the bay was amazing; limestone islands rose out of the dead-still waters and silhouetted against the ecstatic flare of sundown colors which in turn ricocheted repeatedly off the water's surface. It was an eclipse of time and location that made every feeling of doubt, sadness, and pain pause momentarily in the wake of nature's beauty. Were were lost, and we knew it, but we had forgotten it. We were hungry, but it didn't matter. We remembered our cameras and made good use of them for 20 minutes. We got back into the car and drove around in the unlit gravel roads, stopped in at a small neighborhood store for the most unearthly snacks tasted and water, and drove on. We reached a quaint little resort, and reading the sign's desperate 'food / water / bungalow,' we decided to at least stop in for a much needed supper. While waiting for our food, Vin Diesel pored over the lodge's map of Krabi area, and Alan and I tried not to chuckle over our waiter/ess; he wore a dress and flip-flops, his hair long and carefully styled, and a thick line of lipstick had been liberally applied -- his throat was scratchy, as close to the Godfather's as I've ever heard, only higher and not at all authoritative. We finished our excellent pad Thai and and chocolate-banana roti, a classic fried pastry-like dessert of the Thai. The Italian wheeled out in the el Camino in search of a better place to stay for the night; he claimed the 400 baht rooms here were expensive, as opposed to the 1200 baht A/C rooms he was used to. We kindly asked permission to camp out on the yard with the promise of buying breakfast in the morning, and the owner agreed without fuss. We slept safely in the middle of Somewhere, short meters away from the crashing beach, which lay between us and the fishing boats that raked the waters for food in the starless night.

I first woke up to a juvenile's 5AM prayers blaring from the village mosque. It only lasted for about 5 minutes, but after that it was the birds and the locusts and the other creatures that wake up on the chipper side of life that kept me awake and out of the blissful sleep I had fell from. I spent numerable minutes trying to sink back into my dreams, failing all the while. I got up in annoyance, put on some clothing, and threw everything else outside the tent; except Alan, which lay soundly asleep like an exhausted child. I readied myself to leave the resort completely, and walked to the restaurant. I asked in hidden desperation, for my stomach had already started to shout at me, "Is it too early to order breakfast?" The yet-groggy home-dwellers said that 6:30AM was in fact too early to order breakfast. I would have to wait til 8. And I did. I found a cute little bamboo platform with a small table which the Thai people like to eat on, rearranging it to my own taste, and passed out for 1 1/2 hours, waking up only momentarily while the raspy Thai interjections of the ladyboy peaked in his conversation; I understood nothing but sensed his urgency. When at last I felt the courage to face the day, I made haste to order chicken friend rice. Of all the chicken fried rice I have had in Thailand, from street stalls to Phuket restaurants, this was the most stunning of all; the flavour was of heaven, the size was of kings, and the price was just plain normal. When Alan woke up and packed his bags, he took my advice on breakfast, while I packed the tent. He slammed back his food and we walked together down the sun-blasted road in search of a ride back to Krabi town.

We may have spent 15 minutes or so walking by quaint little country houses, analyzing small village life here; Alan was busy wondering out loud if we'd ever get a ride here, and I reassured him these places are good. We caught a pick-up going 3/4 of the distance, bringing us to many unrecognizable turns that simply required trust on our part of the driver; they typically understand the name of the place you go, and none of your other words; when they nod their head, you only hope they understand. Where we got dropped off, we caught a cheap minibus into the heart of Krabi, which proved to be a pretty uneventful place. We stopped in at Green Tea guesthouse to pick up a free map. I suggested to Alan that we spend a night at Crystal Lagoon and Hotspring Waterfalls, both purportedly pieces of "unseen Thailand," which sounded in stark contrast to the naive beaches of Phuket. In late afternoon, we caught a right to Khlong Thom via a series of farmer pick-ups, where we forked off towards the national parks in search of nature and solitude, in any dose available; a much needed resort from resorts.

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