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Published: February 6th 2008
Sawatdee, everyone! Sawatdee means hello, not some Thai vulgarity, I promise - or do I… We are at present BACK in Bangkok @ Lily’s house. We arrived yesterday afternoon after some brutally long travel, but I’ll get to that later. Since the last blog I posted, we have since disappeared to one of Thailand’s National Marine Parks located west of the Thai-Malaysia border, Tarutao National Marine Park, for about a week and a half (10 days or so). I’m pumped on coffee, loads of green curry, and have a gang of time on my hands (we have two more days here till we fly to Italy). SO…we all know what that entails: a ludicrously extensive blog and a horde of pictures.
Boo-yah.
Adventures in Hat Yai
---After posting a blog @ an internet café, I returned to our hotel to find Dan and Paul waiting for me patiently, as they should have been. Heel, boy. Now roll over.
---Grabbed some quick lunch, which was a scoop of some room temperature stir-fried chicken mixed with Thai chilies from a tray on a scoop of hot rice (which is how a lot of food is here, not heated or kept hot,
just warmed or made earlier on in the day and left to sit for the rest) that was about empty. This is, as I’ve autonomously theorized without evidence, not a good idea b/c the batch could potentially be days old with only 2 reheats. Anybody who knows about safety-sanitation in a kitchen is aware that: my food spent a lot of time in the dreaded DANGER ZONE, where bacteria grows exponentially every hour and could potentially spell the literal deconstruction of your very innards (and all your toilet paper) if consumed. I ate it anyway and was in good health. Moving on…
---Practiced a little Thai with a woman who spoke English and was able to impress her! I now know in Thai: I/we want, please, thank you (very much), excuse me, sorry, I/you/we have, my name is, without MSG, fried, rice, noodle, now, and chicken. Virtually fluent if you ask me, I could pass as the King himself if need be.
---
Phase 1: Since Katie stole our Lonely Planet (which I am personally glad to be rid of b/c it means you have to journey more independently and take more risks), we will be looking for her
firstborn or thumbs as repayment. I learned online from Wiki-Travel that we could catch a minibus from across the Hat-Yai Post Office to Pak Bara Pier (the pier where we would later take a boat to Ko Tarutao) for about 150 baht. This would end up being one of those risks I mentioned formerly. We took a tuk-tuk to the post office (20 baht). Wrong post office. An employee inside helped us flag down another tuk-tuk (20 baht) and gave the driver directions on where to take us. Got there, and it was the correct post office. Catch: the drivers across the street wanted a 1000 baht to take us to the pier. We went in to the post office and asked how much it should be. Everyone looked at us like, “We just do mail, dumbass.” Again, an employee went out to tell the drivers that a 1000 baht was too much, and he walked ahead of us across the street with confidence. Unfortunately, this was merely a façade of confidence, and he sheepishly returned to us to tell us it was…a 1000 baht!
---
Phase 2: SO, we left to go to the bus station (20 baht). We got
there. Wrong bus station. Haggled with some fellow (cheers, chap!) to take us to the true bus station (40 baht), and were off. The “right” bus station turned out to be…a tour company - yay! They offered us a fine deal however, and we booked a taxi to the right bus station, a ticket for a “minibus” (a 1985 Toyota van amid 14 other people), and the ferry ticket (500 baht). The woman at the tour company wanted us to forgo the minibus to Pak Bara and take one of her taxis directly to the pier for an extra 300 baht per person and told us that we would not make it to the ferry on time if we did otherwise. We told her we’d stay in Pak Bara for 200 baht
less than that per person @ a guesthouse, if that was the case, and that her idea didn’t make any sense. Check and mate. Face (inside joke - ignore).
---
Phase 3: Finally got to the bus station and saw a man whom we had ridden with on one of the tuk-tuks, we didn’t know precisely why he had made it directly there prior to when we did,
but we attributed it to something along the lines of (a) him being gifted to speak Thai, or, (b) him not being a dull tourist. All of the above? We then departed in our 1985 jack-in-the-box-from-hell and were shoved to the rear along with heaps of luggage. For the next 2.5 hours we were trapped in unearthly yoga poses, straining to reach the faint, straggling breezes of AC.
---
Finally reached Pak Bara Pier, and unfolded ourselves like rusty lawn chairs. Ate lunch (30 baht) and I bought a hammock (a fancypants tie-dyed lime green one to be exact, 240 baht). And off we went on our ferry, which just so happened to not be when the woman @ the tour company said it would be leaving.
Enter Ko Tarutao
---We rode the slow ferry for about an hour and a half southwest. Paul made nice with a Thai woman, and Dan and I were blown away by the sun shooting through the gray clouds everywhere. It literally looked like an aura above the ocean; what I would call the natural energy of the world unblemished @ its finest, another would call the work of God. Dan and I
spent some time talking about tattoos (yes, we are rebellious) and the juvenile/adult penile system (which made us disgruntled with society…
watch out, you don’t want disgruntled people with tattoos on your hands).
---A modest lesson on Tarutao National Marine Park:
*It was established, essentially because it was in the middle of nowhere
*Ko Tarutao is an actual island within the 51 island park named Tarutao National Marine Park.
*Ko Tarutao is the base of Park operations (which are partial at best) because it is by far the largest island in the park (and thus, the park was named after it - surprise surprise).
*Other well acknowledged islands in the park are: Ko Adang (1.5 hours from Ko Tarutao), Ko Rawi (across from Ko Adang) and Ko Chabang (20 minutes from Ko Adang).
*Ko Lipe is a highly touristy island right across from Ko Adang, but is external to the park’s jurisdiction (is that the right word? Are we in court?), and thus, has been overrun with hotels, and other things that I have little taste for. It is, however, the most well identified island in the area, and in fact resides within a few kilometers to Malaysia’s sea border
with Thailand.
Yes, I just made that up (the distance), regardless - it is exceptionally close. *You are technically only permitted to camp on Ko Tarutao, Adang, Rawi, and Lipe, but that is essentially the only place where they have park rangers, and no one would ever distinguish if you stayed somewhere more remote. Each of these islands have bungalows, campsites, and restaurants.
*
Let’s be frank, of the 51 islands some of them are really just bulky rocks in the water - the Thais have small standards.
*In the wet season (around June-November) the entire park closes. Just like that. Inconceivable, I know.
*
Survivor: Thailand was shot on Ko Tarutao. Yeah, we’re famous.
---Arrived outside Ko Tarutao and had to take a longtail boat (basically a makeshift, lengthy wooden boat with a long, removable motor propeller in the back that a driver holds and guides in the water) b/c the tide was out and the ferry would get jammed on the rocks going into the small dock they have (50 baht). @ the conclusion of the day I spent about 920 baht (about 28$ US) - a massive amount in Thailand for a single day.
---Dan and
Paul were to divide a rented tent (275 baht a night) and I was going to keep my stuff in it and
sleep in my hammock outside for a measly 50 baht a night, however, after discovering some masses of some variety of wriggling larvae in the tree branches above my hammock, I bunked in the tent for the 1st night. Not a very first-rate night of sleep, I was told I elbowed Dan and Paul in my sleep several times (I’m Chuck Norris-vigilant even in a subconscious state of being)
---We were situated on Ao Pante Malaka, the chief beach of Ko Tarutao, about 100 feet from the water. @ any given time, there would maybe be 3 or 4 other people walking around on the beach for as long as the eye could stretch. The sand was white and fine, and it made squeaking noises everywhere we went as the granules rubbed against each other. We got away from the rest of the campers about 100 meters from the main campsites. The water was a pleasant jade blue, and the weather was about 90-95 degrees during the day and around 85 degrees at night. To eat we
would just walk 5 minutes to the park restaurant and order. It’s about the remotest place I’ve ever been:
absolutely awe-inspiring and humbling.
---The next day we walked to Lu Du Waterfall knowing full well it would be an all day event. It was about
24 kilometers out and back. Along the way we saw a cluster of 6 or 7 crab eating Macaques (monkeys in essence, people) in the road, but they hastily made way and yelled @ us from within the sanctity of the jungle. Apparently they didn’t feel like playing nice. Then we stopped @ Ao Molae beach and caught a quick look of 2 more macaques that were braver than the ones we saw before and allowed us to get about 20 feet to them. Along the way we also saw very hefty monitor lizards lying in the road that would scurry away as quickly as they felt our vibrations getting nearer. We arrived @ Ao Son beach, Ko Tarutao’s final beach with a restaurant @ it, but to much chagrin, found it closed.
Oh the horror. It was now about 1 in the afternoon and Dan and Paul get
exceptionally savage without food (
like gorillas in mating season).
---We started on Lu Du Waterfall’s trail and walked back about 1 kilometer in the humid jungle. And it was
The Jungle, there were points where we were not sure where to go, and the path was not glowing in apparent clarity (
we’re in a tight spot, boys - inside joke - ignore). Eventually, it turned into a rock climbing and hopping debacle. It was an exceedingly arduous progression, but I got in the zone and buckled through. I was nearly losing hope that we would reach the real waterfall (
yes, the mother of all waterfalls) before my 40th birthday, but we did, and it was well worth it. The flow of water was not remarkable, but the visibility of the 10 foot pool beneath it was, and we all jumped into the cool water as rapidly as we could.
SO soon in fact, that I didn’t take my iPod out of my pocket.
Nice work, Bill Nye The Science Guy, aren’t these shorts waterproof? We spent some time there, and got above the waterfall by mountaineering over some rocks (Paul even jumped in from the top -
hardcore) then headed back.
---On our
way back we had a
really cool encounter with some feral pigs. Like ordinary pigs, not savage tusked ones. We were headed around a bend in the road and I thought I heard monkeys, so I told Dan and Paul to be silent and we all stood still waiting for the noise to come out of the trees. Eventually, it did: an immense, chubby squealer, and about 3 or 4 other ones with it. We were pretty tickled by it b/c they didn’t see us even though we were in plain site, had they just turned around. THEN, a petite baby popped out of the woods too, it was pretty cute, but we thought they would be aggressive if they did notice us.
In fact, it was the complete opposite. They were all standing in a cluster in the middle of the road when finally one of the older ones saw me. It looked at me for about 2 seconds and then let out a massive shriek. This is where it got engaging. Instead of shielding the small one, they all just jumped and scattered in a gigantic flurry of squeals and awkward motion. It was like a Farmer John’s
Pork Explosion. The little one was left to fend for itself and ran away on its own route. The scene literally looked like someone had bounced 4 large pigs off a big trampoline in diverse directions.
---I set up my hammock in a different area than Paul and Dan and slept like a baby - no spiders or mosquitoes or anything for that matter. It was rather lovely;
almost splendid if you will.
---Woke up the next day and watched in awe as a man did Tai Chi on the beach. I get goose bumps whenever I see someone accomplish it well.
Hi-five, to that guy. I also wrote in my journal for some time before breakfast, as I am trying to record more of my dreams so I can remember more of them eventually. I won’t tell you what they were about, but they were especially PG-13 (which may well mean anything these days).
---Met a Californian named Mike at breakfast and he agreed to acquire another guy and head to an aged prison site on the island with us to aid the cost of the truck ride there. So we did just that -
bam.
The other man he got was a rather kind Italian man who I don’t remember the name of, but who merely understood formal English (
he failed to comprehend the further implications of “taking a leak” ). The prison site was quite dilapidated but informative nonetheless. Here’s the lowdown:
*We drove roughly all the way to the southern tip of the island in the back of a stake bed truck with a bench screwed into the center of it. Classic.
*Walked about 10 minutes from where the truck dropped us off (next to an enormous limestone rock in the water -
I’m talking huge, peeps - which used to signify that boats were approaching the prison).
*The prison was set up in a circuit and we walked along a path around it. There were signs that contained information on them about the different structures and going-ons of the facility.
*The prison, @ one point,
held some 3000 inmates who were general offenders. Tarutao was chosen to host the prison in 1937 because, at the time, it was
home to dreadfully deep waters off shore and an assortment of less-than civil sharks, both of which are less true now. The prison houses
held, at capacity, 120 people in one room, which we visited and saw a grotesque spider in it - yeck. The well behaved prisoners were permitted to erect their own huts close to their work areas. The prison had a rehabilitation program intended to offer skills (woodworking, welding, construction, etc.) to the inmates for when they returned to society. They ate rather well, a typical meal consisted of rice, potato curry, salted fish, and, for a short period before it was discontinued, dessert.
It sounded superior to what we ate. After WWII, it was tough to get supplies to the prison, and many of the guards and prisoners fell ill with malnutrition and Malaria, and died. Eventually the remaining inmates and guards banded together to become…
swashbuckling PIRATES in 1946! They attacked ships and terrorized the sea till 1947, when a British fleet of 300 soldiers came and subdued them. The end.
---I came back to my hammock to find a woman in it. I told her she could stay in it but she decided to leave anyway. I must be
very menacing.
---We climbed Toe Boo Cliffs later that day, which is a short 20 minute hike up
over some rocks and switchbacks that eventually come to a clearing on top of the mountain that overlooks the entirety of Ao Pante Malaka. We caught sunset and then made our way back. Along the way I stopped to eavesdrop on the langurs (
of the monkey family, they look like a cross between a large Ewok from Star Wars b/c they have a black circular faces, and a Navy Seal with night vision b/c their eyes are entirely black). We eventually saw some, and they freaked us out because we could only see the glare of their eyes in the fading light and a shadow of a face to go with it. Afterwards, Dan and I were followed by 2 rabid looking dogs who attempted to outflank us till we reached the water of the beach. Nice doggy.
---That night we were determined to build a fire despite the instructions to not do so by the restaurant employees (we are such rebels). So we built a small fire and wondered in its incredibleness. We got freaked out b/c there was a solitary person with a headlamp some distance away from us making their way towards us, but periodically stepping
off the beach to wander through the trees only to reappear back on the beach but closer. We were pretty convinced it was either a
park ranger or some sort of
Predator. Seeing as how we didn’t have nearly the artillery that Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the movie, we put the fire out quickly and did away with the evidence, just to be safe.
Ko Adang
---The next day we headed for Ko Adang, which is the 2nd biggest island in the park. We first had to catch a ferry to Ko Lipe, which was everything I thought it would be: a nice beach with gas and oil in the water, complete with 95%!n(MISSING)aked, elderly Europeans. I’ve decided to boycott Lipe entirely b/c the tourism has completely changed the way the indigenous people live there life.
Fight the power. Afterwards, we took a longtail to Ko Adang. The differences were striking; Adang was ultimately empty except for a ranger headquarters, restaurant, bungalows, and some construction.
---A man annoyed me when we were at the restaurant eating. He asked the girl at the counter a lot of questions that he could have figured out on his own had
he simply looked at some signs, and she didn’t speak a heap of English. Then he asked her for safe drinking water so he didn’t have to buy bottled water. THEN he asked her to hold his beer (which he had just ordered) while he went to the bathroom so it would be “refrigerated” when he came back. I thought to myself: this is
just a job to her, not Buddha’s self-appointed purpose in life;
she doesn’t strive to serve others, nor should she have to. Kam angry! Grrr.
---I walked on the miniature beach near the campgrounds and walked past an indigenous village, of the Chao Lay to be precise, and they seemed like some rather content people. They used to live predominately on Ko Adang, but have since moved generally to Lipe.
---That night I taught Dan and Paul all my wisdom and then some of what I knew about Astrology,
which has not been proved as a hard science, but will someday climb the ranks of chemistry, physics, and mathematics as things high school kids never bother to learn.
---After my impromptu lesson on the magic of the universe, Dan and I were surprised
by a very unique session of…
BIO LUMINESCENCE. Yes, apparently these things look like minute shrimp, actually more like plankton that glow when stimulated or irritated (if plankton were capable of being irritated). They came in great quantity, being washed to shore and being torn apart on the sand. We only got a glimpse of 2 live, whole ones, the rest were fragments amid the sand. I know a lot of people have gone diving with these things in colossal clumps in the dark…blah, blah, blah -
this time was the most special for me, and it was a lot of fun just swiping the sand about at our feet, surveying the glow up in various places. I half expected some variety of a
hulkish, mutant glowing angler fish (the one with the glowing ball that floats in front of it’s face in the deep sea) to arrive on shore and consume us alive as we had foolishly fallen for its undersized minions as bait.
---
Some of the most amazing things I witnessed on Ko Adang were the sunsets, of which I caught many from the view of my hammock (which was even closer to the water than Tarutao), the
beach, and from a cliff on our last day. They were “magnificent” to say the least, and the sun was so close. I had, in fact, never caught a real sunrise prior to this, and as I completed
Walden by Thoreau, I was even further impressed with them and the minute details that every couple of minutes brought. OK, enough poetry about that…
---The next day we took a small tour, which was a great deal, b/c it was merely 150 baht for an all day boat ride to quite a few snorkel spots. We went to Ko Chabang, which had
startling coral covering giant rocks in the ocean. The visibility was great, and you could see well to the bottom. Afterwards, we went to Ko Hinngam and got to swim among
“brain” coral (b/c they resemble the cortex of a brain, but are much larger). Afterwards, we stopped on the actual island of Ko Hinngam and got to check out the
black stone beach, which it is famed for. It was stunning with smooth black stones about the bulk of oranges forming its beach. There were plenty of them piled in towers by visitors, and I finally
got to attempt my hand at creating one. I succeeded reasonably well, assembling on of the larger ones on the beach (supposedly, they instill you with good luck). The island also had a curse which was said to be administered by the ghost of an ancient king of the Chao Lay (the indigenous people of the islands who were true sea gypsies, stirring from island to island) that brought about a number of life-crippling effects if one should take any stones from the beach. Some of the other people in the tour made light of it, which
I found mildly offensive b/c I didn’t like how they could just make jokes about other people’s beliefs as we were treading on their rightful ground. Afterwards, we made our way to Ko Rawi and time soaking it up on the beach and got to take a rest from snorkeling. Then we went to the opposite side of Ko Adang, which is only accessible by boat and got to a somewhat less impressive snorkel sight, but got some good glimpses of
tube fish, schools of smaller fish, and some people even saw moray eels and sea snakes. Before getting back on the boat, Dan and Paul and I were swarmed by jellyfish, which was a bit panicking for me, but we managed to dive beneath them and get close to the boat. Then one of the members of the tour who spoke Thai soundly told us that the driver was willing to charter us to one last spot which was home to
giant sea fans before we headed back to our campsite. I went out with a miniature group of others to see them, and it was fairly impressive. I had never seen such large, feather-like, frills in my life, and it seemed almost surreal that they were just blowing around in the water attached to a giant rock. These things, I imagine, are quite susceptible to boat damage, and we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of some before they are harder to find than they are now. All in all it was an exhaustingly enriched day.
---One thing I should mention is that there was a steady presence in Tarutao from groups of Thai college university students on the islands, as many of them had taken their break before Chinese New Year to come to the islands on a
group trip (kind of like Spring Break for us). We were rather surprised to find out that
most Thais can’t swim. So we got to observe a chaotic scene of life preservers (which they wore at all times in the water, even the shallow coastal beaches), splashing, and a lot of screaming. Our boat drivers made fun of them quite a bit. I actually got to meet one, who took my picture and told me to remember her. After all her flailing and splashing, I probably won’t.
---And now to the highlight day of my trip! (Enter drums and red carpet). Everybody move to the front of their seats and look interested. I had spent most of the day trying to finish
Walden (which was brutally difficult task to accomplish), and was about to take a nap when Kimon, a Greek traveler we had met came over to us and asked if we wanted to go out and
see some sharks with him. I had planned on maybe making it out to see them,
but not before I spent a whole day meditating first (anybody who is familiar with all my phobias is aware that sharks are right up
there after spiders -
thank you, Spielberg). It had
not been a whole day of meditating, unless you count Thoreau’s pretentious ramblings of wisdom to be so. The day before, Kimon and a guy named Nick (Canadian, 26) had been out to see the sharks and saw at least 5 or 6, and
even a larger one that Nick guessed was a Bull shark (this did not bode well for me). I explained to Dan that since we were the smallest that we were going to be the 1st to go b/c we would be easiest to kill, which he had previously never thought about and was under the impression that they would go for bigger people b/c they had more meat (
someone never watched Bill Nye The Science Guy - FACE). This really opened his eyes to the wonders of the universe. I packed my guts, checked my body for open wounds, grabbed my snorkel gear, chain smoked 4 cigarettes in anticipation, and then headed out to sea. We stopped to get fins from the rangers on the way, and
he just laughed at me when we said we were going to go try to find the sharks -
I was chalked full of confidence after that. Paul, Dan, and I went out first in a group of 3 as not to scare the reef sharks away in a group of 5, who apparently came to the same place everyday at the same time to feed. Our directions were to swim towards a point in the cove beach area, but stop 20 meters out from the coast and back (towards where we had started). We swam out but couldn’t see so much, and visibility was getting bad (maybe 6-7 feet) and we were told that if we reached the point, or if the visibility did get that bad - we had gone too far.
Eventually, we got into an argument about who was correct about where to be in the water to see the sharks (which later, it was confirmed by Kimon and Nick, that we had gone too far and that going any further would have been in the complete wrong direction) . We basically split up, and Dan headed closer towards the coast, and Paul headed further out to sea. I swam back to coast, but in a different area than Dan. He was about 100 meters
in front of me and 20 meters off to the side.
I was rather scared to be by myself. To my surprise, after swimming for about 2 minutes after we had split up, I was thinking about what I wanted for dinner when a
Black-Tipped reef shark swam right past me, about 8 feet in front of me and about 5 feet beneath me. Despite it being only about a meter long and obviously not too interested in how tasty I was - it scared the shit out of me.
I surfaced and looked for someone to tell. Nobody - awesome I was going to die alone. I kept swimming stopping ever few seconds to do a 360 degree check around me. About less than a minute after I had seen the first one, a 2nd, slightly bigger one, came swimming parallel to me about 10 feet away from me. It curved in, as if going somewhere past me, then realized I was there, and made a slow curve out in the direction it came in. I probably got a glimpse of it for a good 6 or 7 seconds. This one was slightly bigger than the 1st and I
didn’t like that it had swam behind me without me knowing, so despite finding where the sharks were, I continued to shore without looking to find the rest. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and now all I have to do is wrestle a great white, and I’ll be rid of my fear. Simple.
---To complete the madness of the day, we were treated to a rolling thunder and sheet lightening storm above Ko Lipe that night. Sometimes, the sky was so illuminated that it lit up the entire beach and the Lipe at the same time. We tried our best to get pictures.
---Our last day there, Dan and Paul went to Ko Lipe (
Boo these men) and I stayed and meditated, finished
Walden, and snorkeled close to shore. I almost reached Nirvana, blew my mind with Thoreau-ness, and swam with Barracuda. It was a nice way to spend my last day on the island…almost. Later that night we were going to bed early b/c Dan and I were going to climb Chado Cliffs for sunrise, when it began to get curiously humid and the wind seemed to disappear out of the air.
Was it just a nice night? NO!
It was in fact, the beginning of an hour long session of rain, thunder, and lightning.
This did not bode so well for my hammock. I stuck my backpack in the tent, which Paul was
very proud of b/c it didn’t get wet inside, (good thing, my camera is expensive). Then I went to the ranger station and waited for the rain to die down. I went back when it did, set the lake in my hammock free, rung it and my sleeping back out, and went to sleep. It was a really interesting sensation b/c the air was rather hot (probably 90 degrees) but the rain was pretty cool. So I stood at the ranger station without my shirt on and felt fine. Later that night, it did start to get cold, as the wind started to pick up (like it did every night on Adang), but I was able to sleep through it, and by the morning everything was dry again.
It felt nice getting to spend a night unadulterated in the smack of tropical nature. I could have gotten in the tent, but I would never have the experience again, and it felt Darwinian to brave the elements. The next morning Dan woke me up @ 5:50am and we made a fast trek (everything is fast @ 6:00am) to Chado Cliffs and caught the sunrise over Ko Lipe and Ko Adang. It was like we were looking over all our experiences on the island - fitting that we should do it on our last day.
---Leaving Adang was a day full of travel. We left two days ago from Adang to Pak Bara Pier by ferry, then a minibus to Hat Yai train station, then took an overnight train to Bangkok. Overall, we started @ about 9 m, on Adang and ended up in Bangkok @ about 11am the next day. This equaled up to
almost 22 hours of traveling in a 24 hour period - choke we with a stick.
Final notes on Tarutao
It was sad to leave Tarutao and all of the serene beaches and quiet solitude that came with it. Adang was noisier than Tarutao, but I also felt more at home. There was a strong sense of well-being that I found in myself; I found myself smiling while just watching the wind flow
through the trees, closing my eyes in my hammock, or seeing the waves soak into the sand on the beach. It is a blessing to be able to get to a refuge like this park once in a lifetime, let alone so early in my own.
There is something satisfying about taming the modern monotony of having nothing to do, being stripped of appliances and electronic stimulation, only to be left high and dry with the land and its intricate system of checks and balances. You have the whole world in front of you in these places, and
I would guess that a lot of people would be shocked to find that it seems like very little to behold compared to a movie, X-box, or fancy car, when in fact it holds a multitude more. In every way, the islands ask nothing of you, other than to leave them as you found them, and I strived to do just that, while remaining thankful that I was given an inlet to a world that moves slower than what I am used to. After being in such a natural place, I found myself asking why we have become so attached to unnatural
things, and whether that is truly beneficial to us in the end.
When I die, I will undoubtedly return to the earth, and there I hope it is not a foreign nation to me, and thus as the beginning and end, it is inevitably the most important - and the most overlooked. To what extent do I consider my participation in the material technological world to be balanced? Do I need to change this? One thing is certain: I left Tarutao w/ a hope to see the world in pieces of an interlocked puzzle, and as a more peaceful person.
I hope to look under the rocks of life, both physical and mental, and appreciate what is here w/o scientific explanation, logical procedure, or the Western notion of advancement. If man were not walking this planet - it would be just as intriguing, if not more amazing.
Considering that if you made it thus far in this epic entry, you are probably up there in the ranks of people like my mom and dad who care about it. I thank you kindly, and I hope you enjoyed what you could of it. Tonight we are going to Chinatown, here
in Bangkok (I wish I was in Beijing), to celebrate Chinese New Year. It should be fun, maybe I'll post something tomorrow. Cheers!
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katie
non-member comment
looking out from taratua
Reading your blog was really beautiful because it reminded me so much of how I'd felt. So empty of mind - no distractions or concerns- yet so full of amazement and wonder at the what i consider one of the most beautiful places in the world. Its a spiritual moment, well captured by your words and pictures. I'm so happy it was like that for you, i was worried it might have changed already....