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Published: December 31st 2008
Fire Show
Long Beach, Koh LantaThe human body is a shamefully fragile vessel. Considering the mind it protects, one that outperforms all others on this planet ten-fold, its shocking how weak our bodies are. We're confined to the tiny cage that our world becomes when one has such a small survival window. Our pathetic flesh leaves us exempt from the spoils of extreme temperature, we lack the ability to explore the sky, our addictions to air, food and water leave us shaming ourselves with want after merely few hours. The planet suddenly becomes very small when you consider the places we dare not tread. The Earth mocks us with restrictions while we scramble to sustain life on the tiny plot of land we've been given. It's only through the power of our minds that we've grown to overcome our physical limitations and defy the boundaries our bodies create. We've learned to fly, stomped on both poles and most importantly (considering that 70% of the planet is covered with water) breached the seas. There's a odd sense of power that comes the first time one cracks the shell that we normally inhabit. It's a surreal combination of awe with your surroundings and awe at oneself to penetrate
Our second night's sunset
Koh Lanta. That's Koh Phi Phi in the background the ocean's surface and gaze, for the first time, upwards at the surface. Suddenly you're privy to a new dimension of space. Up is, for the first time, a concern. Once you get past the mind-blowing weirdness of staring fish straight in the eye, you can take a step back to really take stock of your circumstances. You say to yourself, "Look at me God. I am man. I defy. I tred on the moon. I split the atom. I broke the sound barrier. I BREATH UNDERWATER."
That may seem like a gross over dramatization of a relatively simple act. Of course it is. I'm trying to entertain here. How would you feel if i just said "I put air in a metal tube and saw some fishies" No. If Fox News has taught me anything, it's drama trumps content. Just scream the most sensational thing you can muster as loud as you can and people will pay attention. (Pause just a moment to consider the irony of the notion that someone learned something from Fox News).
There was a long road that led to Jenny and I's grudge match with Posieden. If you remember the end of
the last blog (don't worry, I had to check back too) it closed with a deep longing for sunshine and cultural indifference. We certainly delivered on that, but first we needed a rendezvous with a good friend. We hopped a cheap flight from Chang Mai to Kuala Lumpur on the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula to meet up with our travel buddy Ali (astute followers will remember Ali from our epic adventures in Rio. He was present on what Jenny and I both agree was the best night of our lives: Copacobana Beach New Years. Really if it wasn't for him, none of this would be possible. The blog that is. He's the admin of the website.) Ali was kind enough to pull himself away from his every day life of taking over the internet to give us a city tour of KL. (It's always called KL. I don't think half the people in KL know what KL stands for). KL is a cool city. It's an ultra modern, western influenced, hectic city that bombards with the wattage of both its technology and people. The lights shine just a little bit dimmer than those in Tokyo or Hong Kong,
but for a small town kid who sometimes finds Santa Barbara overwhelming it remains a spectacle to behold. To its credit, while most big cities blabber on about the greatness of their multiculturalism (mhhmm London), KL delivers to a level that I've never seen before. On one city block, you'll pass Asians, Europeans, Africans, Arabs and Aussies. KL is the single most diverse city I've ever seen. New KL tourism slogan: Kuala Lumpur The World's Stopover.
Being that we'd checked off yet another box on our lifetime insanely huge and hectic Asian metropolis checklist, we decided that we had absorbed too much culture for one trip. Our enlightenment level was growing dangerously close to capacity. One more native village or jungle-enveloped temple could push us over the edge into nirvana. While that does sound nice, nothingness can be really boring and it's hard to blog whilst transcending Earth's material plane. We desperately needed some good-old-fashioned American selfishness. A healthy dose of indulgence on some of the world's best beaches should knock us down a peg or two on the ethereal scoreboard. First stop was Pulau Lankawi, off the northeast coast of Malaysia. It's an island that lacks the notoriety
Mike learned to spit fire
All you need is a mouthful of gasoline for fuel and a belly full of beer for courage of many of its Thai neighbors and for good reason. While its beaches and party scene may be a step behind Thailand's Andaman Coast, Lankawi offers a clash of cultures that I've yet to see anywhere else. This manifests itself in the many beach-side bars that serve bottles of beer costing nearly as much as your nights accommodation. In a Muslim country, alcohol is a tool for visitors and therefore very expensive. The most shocking cultural collision to be seen is on the beach, where you'll find European tourists- wearing bikinis that make you wonder if the French language even has a word for modesty- lying in the sand within a few meters of a local woman completely shrouded in a burka. The activities they participate in are much the same: swimming, jet-skiing, paragliding, but only one of them has to worry about reverse sunglass tan. It's not my intent to make any judgments one way or the other, but one can't help but feel like the world is an incredibly bizarre place when witnessing such a wide discrepancy in people's lives.
Lankawi served as a wonderful stepping stone on our descent into depravity. The rigid social structure made
it a watered-down, happy meal style dose of the craziness that is most islands on this side of the Indian Ocean. Next stop was Koh Lanta (actually the next stop was meant to be Koh Lipe, but as seems to always happen to us, the two hour boat ride from Lankawi to Lipe wasn't running that day because it was one of the 200 or so national holidays that every Asian country seems to have every year. We then missed the early boat back to the mainland, which made us too late for the last bus to Lipe, after changing plans to hit Lanta instead, we arrived in the port town just in time to miss the last ferry to the island. Long story short, because of a damn holiday a simple two hour trip ended up taking 36. The very 36 hours in which we got ourselves a new president who isn't on the spectrum, and we missed it all damnit. In a related note: This may be the longest parenthetical phrase of all time.) What seemed to be misfortune that put us on Koh Lanta, ended up being a blessing. Lanta is a for the most part a
View from Sanctuarys bar
not too shabby for $10 a night resort island. Its beaches rival those of any other island in Thailand but it's off the usual backpacker itinerary because the typical visitor spends more in a week than we will in 2 months. A combination of arriving at the very tail end of the wet season and the world's current lack of disposable income (thank you sub-prime mortgages) meant that the island was almost entirely secluded. We settled into the one budget place on the island, a magical little collection of bungalows aptly named Sanctuary complete with beach-side porches, stunning sunset views and Sam the world's most adorable stray dog. After about half a day of absorbing as much sun as possible, things started to get a little slow. Isolation is a blessing, but when the only person around is the same person you've been right next to for a year straight, new voices are at a premium. I've heard so much about TVHS, i feel like i deserve a diploma. In the interest of adventure, we decided to indulge something Jenny had been aching to do for a long time. Ever since i got certified to Scuba, i have been pounding it into Jenny's head that she should
to. (I need a dive buddy after all). She had been planning on getting certified by my brothers, who are this close to instructorship, but decided why not do it in one of the most spectacular dive venues in the world. Many people call this area of South East Asia the Amazon of the sea (though the mall eatery Kelp Forest Cafe is not quite as popular as its predecessor) So we cruised down the only road on the island and into the first of the many dive shops we found, Flip Flop Divers. In complete contrast to the duct-tape level infrastructure and wanton safety regulations in nearly every other venue in Thailand, Flip Flop is an ultra modern, extremely professional dive shop owned by a big lovable South African named Adrian and staffed by a pair of young guys from Denmark. We flew half way around the world just to get ourselves certified by another goofy Danish guy. Adrian had just purchased the shop and was so excited to have Jenny as his first certification that he offered us a stellar deal. He agreed to do Jenny's beginner training and thrown in an Advanced course for me for a
price that would save us each about $150. Throw on top of that the fact that we'd be able to dive together the whole time so we could share the experience and we were all in. After a couple training days in the pool and a surprising amount of reading (homework?! This is why i left home in the first place, but i sucked it up. It's difficult to explain being declared academically ineligible from scuba school) we finally hit the ocean. We dove off the same boat while Jenny did her boring beginner stuff like learning to breath, i was doing all the cool stuff like deep diving (a process in which you ingest so much pressurized nitrogen, you enter a blissfully stoned state of relaxation. Hilarious tales of being "narced" include settling in for a nap on the ocean floor and trying to fee the fish the bubbles from you regulator. My cool "narced" story involves my hilarious ability to bleed profusely from my nose for three hours). It's impossible to describe the intensity of the beauty of the waters in Thailand. The visibility and clarity are simple staggering. The water is a comfortable ninety degrees and the
KL's Petronas towers
unfortunately no Catherine Zeta Jones sightings wildlife is more diverse than a Jolie-Pitt family reunion. Diving in Thailand was categorically on of the coolest things I've ever done (that list is getting awful long). Sadly there was only so much time we could spend on Koh Lanta. We had made our one big splurge of the trip (as opposed to the 20 "one big splurges" we made last time). Waterlogged and salt ridden, we waved goodbye to Adrian, Per and Martin and hopped a boat to the legendary party island of Koh Phi Phi.
Koh Phi Phi represented to the peak our descent out of cultural intelligence and into the festering realm of pure indulgence. Sadly, this island was one of the most devastated by the Tsunami and it seems that the locals have compensated for all of the terrible times by cranking up fun to 11. There is nothing to learn about Thai culture on Phi Phi (a fact we learned when we saw the joke of what is a usually very moving traditional Thai candle lighting ceremony). You won't gain any knowledge of customs or history of this amazing culture. You won't even, as is the goal of all travel, learn anything about
yourself (outside of the always useful information of how many Jager-bombs it takes before you'll consent to unprotected sex.... with a coconut). If there's nothing to gain from the experience, why do people come here? It simple, it is one of the most stunning places on the planet with a beach that firmly places itself high on my list of most beautiful I've ever seen (yet another robust list). Sometimes it's fun to forget about expanding yourself and spend a little time narrowing yourself. Snorkeling, sun-bathing, sex on the beach (both noun and verb) and good old fashioned laziness are the name of the game here. In those respects, Phi Phi delivers like no other place I've ever been. Phi Phi represented our last stop our Asian oddessy. We were about to exit the world of short people, gibberish languages and incomprehensible chaos for a more familiar type of travel. Asia did exactly what i thought it would, it blew my freaking mind. On my first days on the continent, i withdrew from the inaccessibility of such a strange land. Now at home, I crave those moments of misunderstanding. I long to be bombarded by bizarre foods, cities and people.
For me, Asia redefined the word foreign.
Next stop, Australia. Where familiar will get its own new definition.
Disclaimer: While I would love to take credit for all the amazing underwater pictures, I did not take them all(a fact that you may have gathered by my presence in several of them). I sadly am still learning the technique of "not drowning" and photography is a little advanced for me. I am not fully felanderous though as the photos were taken by my instructor Per who was right next to me at the time. I included them to give a representation of what i saw down there. Those who choose to ignore this disclaimer and continue thinking that I am awesome will be greatly appreciated.
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Ash
non-member comment
still living vicariously!
Hope you guys are doing good! Miss you both! What do you think about a round 2 reunion in SB when you get back! Whats in store for the rest of your travels??? Are you going to go to the rest of the countries in the world before you call it a day? :) Hope you are both happy and healthy! xoxox Ash