Notes From A Secluded Beach: Day 5
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Notes From A Secluded Beach: Day 5
The last day on Krabi, nobody wanted to leave. Even for me, the victim of a night-long battle with the stinging pain in my back after the sunbathing session at the beach the day before. I was still very fond of Krabi despite everything, still enjoying the diversity the place had to offer. On the last day, we booked a boat to tour around the vicinity of the bay after negotiating with Ya, the owner of the Banyan Tree. Like I mentioned before, I did not sleep for the most part of the night due to the excruciating pain in my back and shoulders. Every position begged to be changed because it just felt like a dozen needles burying themselves into my flesh. Joel was sound asleep by the time it was four in the morning, but I was still tumbling around in bed, trying to find a position which my back would just stop hurting for five minutes. But those five minutes never came, and I was left in pain until the morning came and Kevin came bursting through the door all over again.
The last day on Krabi, nobody wanted to leave. Even for me, the victim of a night-long battle with the stinging pain in my back after the sunbathing session at the beach the day before. I was still very fond of Krabi despite everything, still enjoying the diversity the place had to offer. On the last day, we booked a boat to tour around the vicinity of the bay after negotiating with Ya, the owner of the Banyan Tree. Like I mentioned before, I did not sleep for the most part of the night due to the excruciating pain in my back and shoulders. Every position begged to be changed because it just felt like a dozen needles burying themselves into my flesh. Joel was sound asleep by the time it was four in the morning, but I was still tumbling around in bed, trying to find a position which my back would just stop hurting for five minutes. But those five minutes never came, and I was left in pain until the morning came and Kevin came bursting through the door all over again.
To be honest, I was a little reluctant to go for the round-the-bay trip that morning because of my exhaustion, but I didn't want to be the wet blanket either. Besides, it was the last day, and I wanted it to end off with a bang somehow. So after breakfast - which I ate little to none - we met the boatman at the front of the resort and made our way down to the beach. It was our first time traveling to an island from Krabi, and the journey out into the open waters took quite some time. I almost fell asleep on the boat, my head banged against the metal railings at the side a dozen times over. I didn't even notice that we were already at the beach half an hour later until Azhar woke me up, and it was probably the most beautiful beach we've been to, simply because it was not crowded like the rest when we got there. It felt as if we had the whole beach to ourselves, and the waters were so clear that there could have been a giant tap somewhere pouring out drinkable water. We dived into the water and swam alongside fishes and threw a rugby ball around at the same time. It was a beautiful place, though the tsunami warning sign was a little distracting.
It was also at this time when our Captain Sunburn, or Kevin, got into a little accident. Somebody, from somewhere, threw a rugby ball in his direction and he chased after it without looking at where he was going. So just as he was about to catch the ball, he tripped over an anchor in the sand and fell forwards into the ground. There was a nasty cut on his foot, and that wasn't the only injury we suffered other than our sunburns. As mentioned, Azhar had that twisted left foot and that rope burn on his right arm, while I got this nasty cut on my left ankle somehow, and blood just didn't stop flowing for awhile. We had the wound washed and dressed, and then it was back to throwing ourselves into the waters all over again until the hour was up, and it was time to go.
On our way to the next beach, Kevin decided that it'd be cool to challenge Mother Nature to a fight. So he yelled into the heavens with the words "Burn me, bitch!", in an attempt to finally turn purple on the very last day. The sun must have heard his plea, and the next beach was as good as a raging Hell for the lot of us. Even the waters by the shores were hot, and all we wanted to do was to find some kind of shade before everybody sublimed and disappeared. I already bowed out of sunbathing long ago, and Jonno joined me on the mat in the shade because he was already red all over the place. The Spartan, or Azhar, held on for a little while more and couldn't take it any longer, while Kevin was still running about in the sands like a lunatic, thinking that the sun wasn't hot enough. His temperature sensing abilities were cooked, and he couldn't tell hot from cold any longer. He was making sand angels in the shallow waters while we all just pretended not to know him at all. The last day was probably the day Kevin officially became Captain Sunburn. He didn't actually turn purple by the end of the trip, but at least he managed a shade of orange. You wouldn't have told the rugby ball and Kevin apart for sure.
On the trip to the next and the last beach, Kevin was already moaning softly to himself. "You got me good!" he said, and that was the price he had to pay to mess around with Mother Nature. Anyway, so the next beach was too crowded for my liking. More Caucasians were around, and they crowded the beach so tightly that there was hardly enough space for sand at all. There was a random goose or something in the middle of the beach, probably a pet by the canteen owners on the island. Nonetheless, I bought myself a bottle of water and fell asleep under a tree because I was just too tired from the sleepless night. By then, nobody wanted to take any chances in the sun anymore, which was why they had their lunch in the shade while I fell asleep and dreamed of going back home and sleeping in my air-conditioned room. I needed a bath, a good cold bath, and that was when Jonno woke me up and asked if I'd like to go back. They were all wanting to go back because the sun was evil, and we couldn't take it any longer. So we took the long ride back again, and The Beach - once again - became a warming sight.
But of course, the story didn't get better from there. On the road back to the resort, I had the mentality of doing the 24 kilometer route march, telling myself that the end is near, that we've already made it this far. I knew that we were going to shower by the time we reach our little huts, and I was desperate to cool myself down under the running water. That dream of mine was utterly shattered when somebody got into the room and turned on the tap, only to find no water flowing out of it at all. In fact, that seemed to be the case throughout the whole resort, which also meant that we wouldn't be showering for a very long time - indefinitely. I was devastated and collapsed onto the bed, whispered something under my breath and fell asleep soon after. I remember Joel singing A Rush of Blood to the Head at the doorway, Azhar and Kevin were asleep on the mat outside half naked. Jonno was elsewhere, somewhere, and Kevin hallucinated about burning up and started putting powder all over himself. It was a long afternoon, and my head spun faster and faster as my fever started to take shape.
When the water finally came, it came out in gushes of disgusting brown liquid. Flushing the toilet wouldn't have helped, because it only served to make the water dirtier, which was a nasty sight. But it came to a point whereby we didn't mind bathing in dirty water anymore, so that was exactly what we did before we packed to go home. The bath was my rejuvenation, and I came back to life almost immediately afterwards. We made our way to dinner after that, had to rush a little to make our way to the airport. In the mean time, we squeezed ourselves onto the three-wheeled motorbike - the kind with a carriage by the side - with all our bags and managed to survive the bumpy roads and the portholes in the ground. Then it was the boat trip away from the beach, around the giant boulder that we first saw when we came around the corner from the town, then it was Krabi town where it all started. A van was waiting for us by the side of the road at that time, and Jonno said that that was our ride to the airport.
Apparently, the lady owner of Banyan Tree does it for him every time he visits, a VIP treatment all the way from the huts to the airport. The guy with the van was Ya's husband, whose name I didn't catch. we threw our bags into the back of the van, and the three of them jumped into the front while Kevin and I sat at the back with Ya and her sister. While on the trip to the airport, we talked about Banyan Tree, Krabi in general, the on and off seasons, Thai politics, oil prices, the cats and rats in Banyan Tree, sunbathing, "Yellow Hair", opening a restaurant in Singapore, Chai the long chin guy and so many other things. Despite the wind blowing in all our faces, we still managed to hold a conversation. I was blown blind and silly by the time we reached the airport, but it was still a great thing to interact with the locals, something which I hoped to do throughout the trip but never actually had the chance to. I guess, the thing I love more than the food was the Thai people - they are really tremendous people, people that I cannot say enough good things about. They are just happy, and their happiness are really genuine and unpretentious - most of all, infectious.
We shook hands at the airport, thanked them for their hospitality. It was a great time staying with them at the resort, although it was a short one. Still, the trip to Krabi has been a fruitful one in terms of the sights and the experiences. It was probably the diversity of culture that attracted me the most, and not to mention the good food, the nice people, and the nudists. Anyway, I'm not sure about going back to Krabi anytime soon, but going back there is definitely something I am going to do again. After all, for a paradise that close to where I am, why waste the chance to revisit it once more?
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on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 5:39 PM.
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