Ko Phi Phi, and the beat goes on

---

Sasha

So I lost my flip flops last night. Okay, I'll start from the beginning. Krabi, a concrete beach town, turned out to be pretty crappy. So, after snorkling on a few surrounding Islands (including the island where the movie "The Beach" was filmed) two people from our group, Mike and Phoebe, decided to stay on Phi Phi island with us for the night instead.

We went to dinner at this hole in the wall, mom and pop place and had really good pad Thai there, accompanied by a large Chang beer. Then we went to the beach and watched a fire show at this place called Monken. It was on a roped off area and not as romantic-seeming as when I saw it at Khoa Samed last time. There the guys were tattoo artists by day and were just doing it for fun, not hired by an australian ex-pat. But it was a fun way to start off the night. Mike and Phoebe and I shared two buckets - Thai whisky, red bull and coke.

After we finished the buckets, conveniently enough, the Aussi ex-pat MC announced "the balloon game!" Not knowing what it was Mike and I volunteered. There were about 10 guys and 2 Thai girls and me. We each had the balloon attached to a rubber band around our ankle and had to go around and stomp on everyone else's balloons without getting ours stomped on. It was girls vs girls and no surprise, despite the Thai girls squealing at the excitement, I managed to pop their balloons. Then it was the 5 remaining guys and me and we all had to hold hands as well. They were all pretty rowdy...as drunk guys get, so my strategy was just to stick my leg back and not get caught. Which worked pretty well because Mike and I won - a free large beer! Then we played "the chair game." When the MC guy announced something we had to get it. The first one was cigarettes, another was a ten baht coin which this random guy gave me. Then women's underwear, Phoebe gave me hers. At the end it was me against another girl but I couldn't get guys underwear, (she got her boyfriends) but I won a free drink for second place!

Then we went to another bar on the beach and sat in the sand at this wood treelike tables. The rest of the night is a blur of techno music on beach dance floors. I remember walking back to the hostel by myself and just when I realized that I actually had no idea how to get back (earlier my mom and I had gotten lost 4 times!) I turned the corner and out of the darkness Mike appears and it turns out I was right there!
Good Karma.

This morning I felt great though. Tired, but not hungover. I even had 50 baht left! When we were checking out though I realized that I couldnt find my flip flops...I had come home barefoot. This was a great opportunity to experience walking around barefoot I decided. My mom on the other hand was convinced that because she loved me she had to buy me a pair. In the end I choose a pair for a couple bucks that are made for men, a few sizes too big and super comfy cause there's lots of foam. I feel really funny (in a good way) walking around in them.

We had brunch on the beach and then lounged around on the beach for the rest of the day. The water was really shallow so you could walk out as far as you wanted which was really cool.

Pennelope
Buckets of red bull, Thai whisky and coke replace handbags and beach bags as the hoards cruise from one fire dance disco party to another. It is a wonderful spectacle of unjaded gyrations. Believing the moment is now, and now lasts forever. I feel strangely at ease in my invisibility cloak. As I keep to the
shadows I feel okay. I have done this scene. I have not missed out. I have had the good life, I can move on. It is only when I leave the darkness that I become intensely aware of my middle aged mass and cringe with every passing gaze. And the unspoken question "hey lady, what are you doing here?" like the one who has stayed too late at the party.

In the morning, in the quiet empty streets, all is okay again. The bikini clad revelers are at this time between sheets in oblivion. I am semi shocked to see school children on the street, uniformed, riding bicycles with pink barbie backpacks. I can't help but wonder at how they perceive their quiet island after the night's debauchery and which rises every morning miraculously cleaned and restored like Brigadoon.

What?! Nothing happened here. Tattoo parlors, massage parlors, markets, beach, boats, and bars, it's all here next to the spirit houses, beribboned trees, they pause in their step as they pass with bowed heads and a "wai," hands clasped in blessing asking forgiveness and giving thanks. I see a tee shirt on a Japanese tourist "enchanted fantasy" and it is so.

Last night while we were writing we heard the distant call to prayer, soothing, and so at odds with the techno revels soon to come. There's beauty in the space where there is a place for all. Money makes it work. Or is it something else...? The expansiveness of the human spirit?

Buy one, Get one free! The endless happy hour. As I left the party last night I passed an Internet cafe. A blonde dredlocked girl was skyping earnestly to mom and dad. Hours, miles, and a millennium away, the ties that bind. Worried wrinkles, caressed one face, the veiled wishfulness of diminished dreams. Parents thinking with only the tunnel vision of the future of who this youth of the night will become when she "grows up" - or not. They live in each others dreams, memories, and illusions but they are sharing, still connected through time, space, and ideals.

I looked at the map and like "Where's Waldo" or the game "Marco Polo" I noticed the marking "you are here" in four different places. A joke? Or a cosmic reference to our timelessness? The simplicity of the island is as deceptive as the complexity of it's social weave. Endless alleys, and spidery lanes, hotels and
rooms for rent and mini-stores and frying and grilling meats. Who comes to fill all these far away hideaways? Corrugated tin-sheeted roofs, woven mat bungalows, polished wood fabrications with intricate branch designs. Muay-Thai wrestling lessons daily, all are welcomed. At least all who seek and search hard enough to find it tucked away near the mountain top, clearly already only for the hardy of spirit. Crouched in the tropical jungle, abundance is everywhere, a metaphore worthy of more reflection. Cats, birds, monkeys spill and topple and trill. Flowers in assertive colors claim their glory and the houses seem to be painted to complement them. The original inhabitants of nature influencing the
new man made intrusions. Build it and they will come. It is said and I guess it is so. Everything seems to thrive, so much building, dreams are being made. New proprietors, men and women recieve workmens wages and unimagined visitors from far-off lands will come and be caught up in the spell. Face, arm, back, and foot, every appendage is lovingly the recipient of oil, aloe, milk, coconut, aromatic massage scrubs. The morning after, is, as if it never was.

In the stillness that seemed unimaginable last night, the bamboo chimes flutter, the boats are marooned as the tide disappears from the shore and the revelers are as invisible as their dance floors built on sand. A fisherman catches a bikini top in his net. We nod and envision it's route to this final destination. Small moments of shared smiles.

It is far away from fire island, "same same, but different." Phi Phi has captured my heart. I love the leisure of meandering, of pursuing every twisted path. I am remembering Sasha's words as we walked yesterday "anymore stuff to spew?" she invites. What does she get? What does it matter? Maybe now, maybe later...when she treads my steps in her 50s...or muses, over who she is and where "has it all gone?" it will reverberate and she will remember this!

I long for Shaun to be here too! Like the days of Guatemala and sunsets circuses on the beach and firecrackers and walking to the beat of the multiplication tables, and word games. He would "get this" same same, but different. We all take our space, but we three are family. I don't want to be a grandma in a carefully coifed living room behind a white picket fence.


About Shaun
Shaun is living with a family, two sons: 19 & 12. He seems to have bonded instantly playing basketball, tourista (a game like monopoly), helping mom in the kitchen (just like at home.) Clearly he knows how to walk the walk when he should just as he's always assured me. He said "mom" offered to give him cooking lessons and he promises to teach me too. That has been one of the themes of our year together: cooking! Shaun has become wonderfully independent in the kitchen. At least when he's inspired. His palate has expanded with his confidence. The "dad", is a vet with an impressive rifle collection...and also promised to initiate Shaun. Ahh the unexpected wonders of traveling! I really had no idea that he would be quite so independent "immersed" to say it simply in the family, the community and Spanish. He gives this as an excuse for not writing more. He is thinking in Spanish and then has to "translate." Already, after one week, we are impressed.

They also have a dog and to see Shaun out with the dad talking politics as it poops is another common occurrence. Shaun chose from a dozen fancy tours and trips but he deliberately choose this one. And happily all of his emails are filled with excitement and bubbling enthusiasm. The fact that he IS emailing, including us and sharing speaks volumes of how he is, who is he, and the bond we have forged this year. He has become a real "buddy." He also by the way, did great on his ACT test! Pretty impressive as he didn't actually seem to get around to studying much. I imagine he is celebrating - hopefully without another hangover.

---