Island Paradise

[Above photo: A seemingly endless deserted beach on the Andaman Sea, Ko Phra Thong, Thailand ]

9 May 2021                                                                  2 May

“Do you want to use the ladder?”, Theresa asked. “No, it’s OK.”, I replied, jumping down 8 feet to damp-packed sand, having heedlessly forgotten about my 30+ pound backpack. Soon I was on my back as a wave of warm Andaman Sea washed over me. I was fine, if damp and a little crestfallen. “And now for my next trick!”

I rode my Honda Click from Anurak Lodge 20km to the western entrance of Khao Sok National Park, returning the scooter and catching a taxi ride with an enterprising and very engaging cousin of the scooter rental guy. With three years of a 5 year architecture degree completed at university, he saw a poor job market and switched to tour guide school. Now he owns acres of coffee trees and a tree-top hotel outside the park. As well as a new Toyota van to transport tourists from the Surat Thani Airport to his hotel. Covid has killed tourism, as I find everywhere here, and he is holding his breath until the virus subsides. He drove me 1 ½ hours to Kuraburi Pier on the Andaman coast where I awaited a boat ride to my next destination.

Baba Eco Lodge is a collection of small, elegant stilt houses on an island with a 12 km stretch of pristine beach facing the Andaman Sea. The longtail boat left the pier and weaved through a myriad of small mangrove islets, emerging into the open sea between two large islands. As the driver continued heading west, I wondered, “India?” “Sri Lanka?” He was merely moving beyond the breakers before turning south to parallel the shoreline. An hour after we departed he beached us behind a rocky promontory that forms the only protected cove on the outside of Ko Phra Thong.

That’s when I made my dramatic entrance. I do seem to be crashing more these days. While I’m happy to have strong bones, I need to be a little more circumspect. Even though I fool people into guessing I’m 60, I am 3 ½ months short of 81; I must remind myself to act it, even if I don’t always feel it.

Once again, I am the only traveler here. Theresa, the manager, is Austrian and very solicitous; I suspect she is used to hosting demanding, well-off Europeans. She has 4 beautiful cats, one of which gave her a live flying lizard as a present while I was registering. She saved it; in thanks, the lizard bit her.

I am in a well-designed one room (bedroom) bungalow on stilts with an outdoor toilet and shower and a covered deck twice the size of the interior. It faces the sea, but is nestled among trees for shade. A light breeze caresses my rinsed and drying clothes and backpack. Two large orange bath towels are origamied into perfect swans on my bed. I deconstruct only one for my shower, preserving the other as a kind of pet.

I can hike on nature trails into the interior of the island; there is great birdlife, I am told. I can kayak in the ocean or some km up a channel in a mangrove swamp. I can walk the endless sand. I can sit and write. I can simply be, taking an occasional swim, smelling the smells, listening to the cicadas and birdsong. Last night, with all doors and windows open, the surf crashed and long-tailed macaques howled as I sank, deeply, into the arms of Morpheus. Happily, the internet is only available in the dining hall and reception area so I won’t waste my time on news.

It seems a perfect place to enjoy nature and avoid covid until I return to Bangkok in a week. I won’t be able to snorkel at the Surin Islands (the Similans are closed because of covid); even though they are open for daytrips, no one will run them for a single traveler. And even though I’d like to visit Ranong, the northernmost town on the Thai Andaman coast and the departure point for scuba liveaboards to the Meik Archipelago off of Myanmar, I suspect none of those boats are travelling either. Theresa’s boyfriend, who recently visited her, was quarantined for 14 days upon returning to his home in Ranong. Interprovincial travel here is increasingly difficult.

I’m not suffering.

4 May

The low salt-palms reached across the narrowing estuary, fronds overlapping. Mangrove roots continued to narrow the channel. I had visions of snakes and huge salt water crocodiles, as are found in Indonesia and northern Australia. I also thought of Humphrey and Katherine, pushing “the old girl” down to the lake where she would seriously interfere with Germany’s African dominance exemplified by a gunboat.

I had taken a paddleboard, standing up, outside the break, entering a channel into the mangrove interior of the island. It was strange and yet uneventful, except for surprising a troop of macaques frolicking in the water. They scampered for the forest as I paddled on but when I returned they were less frightened and simply moved to a little more distant shore.  The dominant male brought up the rear, walking disdainfully slowly. I saw a few birds, surprised a large frog, and watched a strange, small box-shaped fish, black with white markings, dawdle across a shoal.

I could enter a few kilometers up the briny, twisty channel. Eventually it became too narrow and overgrown for an easy passage. I had neither Kate, a lake, nor the “Louisa” to inspire more vigorous propulsion so I spun and paddled back.

Today I took the board again and accessed one of two small islands in the bay. Finding a beach, I ditched it, donned fins, a mask, and snorkel and worked my way around half of the island. There were several types of hard coral, looking healthy to my eye, and a great variety of small, brightly patterned fish. The visibility was poor but it still was fun, always being surprised by yet another brilliant display.

As I returned to the beach after perhaps 1 ½ hours, the sun was high and patches of surface water felt unpleasantly hot. I’ve not encountered that swimming in the tropics. I don’t know if it is new or just common to here but it certainly didn’t feel healthy for living creatures.

8 May

I have never marked time as I have here. “You cannot kill time without injuring Eternity.” I want to be in Maine. Paradise, solo, has gotten boring. It is very remote and beautiful. I don’t feel much like writing. I swim in the lovely warm ocean 100 feet from my cottage. I walk back and forth to meals. I read. It’s too easy. It would be excellent for romance—or for evenings with friends. A wonderful place for evening poker.

I enjoy watching a splendid hornbill swoop back and forth in front of the dining area. The sunsets are colorful but since they are just over water, I don’t find them as special as those viewed on Beach Island, on the coast of Mozambique, or, even, on the shores of Lake Malawi. Boy, am I spoiled!

There was a costume ball last night as I returned to my place in the dark after supper. I noticed a 3-4’ long slender cone-shaped shell under my first stair tread. I’d seen 3 similar there the night before and determined that they were inhabited by hermit crabs. Then I looked around with my flashlight and the ground was alive! All manner of different shells were moving about, their tenants feeding and sight-seeing. Perhaps dancing. I’d wondered what creatures lived in all the holes in the sand, for this island is all sand. Now I know. Night-feeding hermit crabs inhabit every shape, size, and color of abandoned shell they find on the beach. It is perhaps not strange that I have only seen tiny shells, and bivalves at that, on my beach walks. The larger ones are all inhabited.

I struggle to imagine what I’ll do next year. I don’t think just “living” will suit me. I don’t really want to return to the Bay Area, although that’s where many of my old friends, and my roots, are, if I have such. It is too crowded and expensive. I worry I’d be impatient with the concerns of many, given what I’ve seen in the past 4 years. Rural Maine, near Brooklin where my daughter lives, is appealing but seems very isolated in winter. Perhaps I’d enjoy it: writing, building a small boat, reading, observing such wildlife as there is. I could perhaps teach a semester course in Global Mental Health at a local college, if I can find a local college. E.B.White loved living there, but he was enspoused.

Winters can be hard in Maine. It is cold and icy and could be solitary. It can be beautiful, as well. I’ve always liked snow, watching it and playing/exercising in it. I also could look for something in the tropics, but then I’d be out of reach of most family and friends.

Renting a place in Portland when I leave the Island seems like a better fit for me. There are colleges, child psychiatry colleagues, live music, and a variety of organizations with which I could connect. It seems to me to be late in my life to do this; it also just seems strange after so many years imbedded in my nuclear family.

It feels like a challenge for me, one I’ve avoided addressing directly since my divorce, I realize. I didn’t feel it in either Malawi or Myanmar. In the former I had a partner and a defined role; in the latter, a larger, less-defined role and no partner.