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Published: February 18th 2017
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The glossy brochure for paradise probably resembles Railay. Stranded on the nub of a peninsula and cut off by impenetrable mountainous jungle, no roads lead in or out. Wooden long-tail boats ferry visitors along the Andaman coast, around the towering limestone headlands, and into the placid bay where the cobalt waters lap gently at the postcard crescent of powdered sugar sand. Black-faced spectacled langur and thieving macaque monkeys forage in the small strip of trees between the beach and the sheer cliffs towering over the beach. Seeping minerals have streaked the white cliffs red and black, forming stalagmites, like the wax drippings from a candle in a wine bottle, at the cliffs’ base. Wind, water, and time have rounded the tree-topped crags at the edge of the sea into knobs and towers, reminiscent of Chinese scrolls once seen and half remembered. In the drowsy timelessness of sea, sun and sand, words, or at least my grasp of them, are inadequate to the task of paradise.
I board the plane with only a vague grasp of where it is headed. Distracted and drained by the leech of employment, I have participated in no trip thinking and less planning. I know we
are going south toward beaches, so the suitcase is filled with socks I won’t need, a puzzle we won’t do, a book I won’t read, an array of electronics that shouldn’t be near water or sand, a swimsuit, and lots of crap for the baby. I discover after arriving that in addition to no expectations, I also have no sunglasses and no sunscreen. While the sunglasses and sunscreen are undoubtedly useful, expectations are better forgotten when the baby is involved.
The beach is quintessential baby simple: drink coffee, breakfast the baby, watch monkeys, apply sunscreen, walk to the beach, sit in the sand, dig in the sand, splash in the water, apply more sunscreen, drink coconut water, nap the baby, lunch the baby, return to the beach, apply more sunscreen, repeat beach activities, watch the sun set, drink gin and tonics, feed, bathe, book, and bed the baby, drink stronger gin and tonics more enthusiastically, kill mosquitoes, play dominoes, sleep, wake, and repeat. As long as the coffee, the nap, and the gin and tonics are not forgotten, there is happiness.
Escaping the rigors of the beach one afternoon, I follow the power lines into the jungle. It
is damp and smells alive. Monkeys crash in the treetops. In webs spun across the trail, golden orb weaver spiders as big as my hand feast on the clouds of mosquitoes. The trail climbs then descends into the climber-backpacker haunt on the edge of the next beach north, Tonsai. The thatch roof hovels are largely deserted at midday except for a few pockets of deep shadow in a ramshackle bar where someone idly strums a guitar and voices murmur languidly. Predictably, faded Marley and Che posters hang on the walls and the graffiti, scrawled un-ironically in English, tiredly demands the end of capitalism. Walking down to the beach, the tide is out, so I walk around the headlands to Railay. On the beach, the waves lap. The sun shines. The breeze blows. The baby digs in the sand with her grandmother. There are coconuts. Paradise goes about its day entirely unconcerned with social and economic systems.
And that is where the story should end, except you have to leave paradise and return to the Trumpocalypse dystopia. A more immediate problem, however, is that there is no pier. The long-tail boats anchor in the bay, but importantly, the tides dictate
how close or how far out they are. Arriving on a high tide, we splashed ten-feet onto the sun-drenched beach. Leaving on a low tide, the boats are 150 feet from the beach, and it has started raining. Wading through knee-high surf and climbing a rickety ladder onto a wooden boat tossing in the waves is not usually high-drama, but the story changes if you have a 20-month-old baby on your hip, a 78-year-old grandma in tow, more bags than hands, a mama with a bad back, an oversized-overweight suitcase, and a mass of overanxious tourists under the impression that like the Titanic, there are more passengers than places in the boats. The rain incites unwarranted widespread panic, and the tourist throng surges into the bay toward the waiting longboats. The drivers gun their engines, frantically waving their hands and yelling incomprehensibly at the tourists heaving themselves and their luggage over the gunwales, threatening to swamp the boats. We, of course, move slower. Grandma, baby, and I reach a too full boat and are turned away. Rather than waiting for the next boat, grandma inexplicably retreats to the beach, leaving me with the baby and no grandma to hand the
baby to. Mama, meanwhile, is yelling at the not-helping ferry representative and grandma, but her words are swallowed by the roaring long-tail motors, the wind, the surf, and the now pouring down rain.
Things are quickly ratcheting up to the level of the absurd when mama finally drives grandma and the ferry rep, who is now an unwilling porter, into the sea. A startled young Spanish couple winds up with the baby, and grandma and mama arrive, flopping themselves unceremoniously into the boat. There is a lot of staring. Everyone is very obviously wondering who should report the gratuitous endangerment of an infant and a senior. The baby and grandma, however, seem totally unfazed. Both, in fact, are smiling a lot. Though wetter than expected, everyone and everything gets on board, and the long-tail roars off to meet the Phuket ferry. Invariably, life offers moments of paradise as well as opportunities for questionable decisions. For better or worse, living overseas seems to open the door for suspect decisions just a little wider. Perhaps age and a child should mean walking through this door less often, but it’s the stupid things you do that often make life more memorable.
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Nico
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ThaiWand
I remember this place with much nostalgia, the tide allowing the crossing between Railey and Tonsai, the breakfasts on the beach, the evening massage in the hands of Apple, as she was called... and the climbing: You shouldve dug your fingers into the lovely limestone!