1 month away = 1st blue day.

No walk today, as I have developed a large blister on each of the balls of my feet. It was pretty painful at the end of the walk yesterday, so I will give them a rest to allow them to be in good shape for a hectic 2 days in Ranong. I spent the morning doing a batch of laundry, making up fruit salad to use up the fruit, and giving the house a general tiding, so that no critters get into anything while I have gone. I must say, I’ve done a pretty good job at not letting anything go to waste. I have only tossed out a few oranges that were past their prime, and I will end up throwing some beans in the composter before I go tomorrow. Other than that, the shopping/eating schedule has gone really well. There have been issues with the ice, but that’s to be expected in a place like this. I really can’t imagine how difficult it must be for Chiyoko and Chris to maintain such a big place like theirs, year round. This evening, I will pack a bag of clothes, and make sure I have everything on a list, so that I am prepared to make the most of my limited time in Ranong. I had a spell of the blues earlier today. Not sure why, but I had been thinking about Enzo, my family, friends, my Dad, and Moyra. Maybe it is the fact that I have almost reached a month away, and that I have basically been in self imposed exile for 3 weeks of it. I think I will have to make an effort to get out and socialize more once I get back on the 9th. After 2 more weeks here, I know I will be ready to move on and see some friends in other places, but there have sure been some amazing moments here in the quiet. I am having crazy, vivid dreams several times a night. Some good ones, and some nightmares. I used to wonder if I was someone who just didn’t dream much, or just not remember them. It must be due to the lack of over stimulation from TV, work, and being in the city, that they have come back so strongly. There have been some real wild ones! One thing that I am finding, is that writing most of this down has been very therapeutic. There are days in a row, that I really don’t talk to anyone. This has been kind of a surrogate for that. It may read as factual and dry, but that’s the way it goes I guess. Tonight will be an early one, because 48hrs of hustle is about to begin.

Bananas can make a wonderful token of friendship.

I think it was due to yesterdays storm, but the dawn sky today was quite something. I took some pics at around 6:30am, while I was drinking my coffee. The big clouds, the pink skies and the light coming over the mountains really create some amazing imagery. On my walk along the beach today, I had decided to head up to a small market that is half way up the beach and up another road like mine that cuts across the island and towards the village. It is the main road which most of the people staying in the resorts use. Along the way, I came across a Thai guy who’s motorbike had crapped out. He was trying to push start it, so I gave him a hand by pushing while he tried to jump it into gear. We tried several times, but to know avail. He thanked me and then told me it was ok, and I continued up the road. I got “Koy’s Shop”, which was a beautiful little shop run by an Englishman and his wife(Koy, I guess). It had everything you could need for a little bit more than the market, but in a convenient location if you didn’t want to walk all the way in village. I needed a few items to get me through the 2 days until I hit the mainland, so I bought a few instant coffees, 3 postcards, 2 envelopes, and some cigarettes. I chatted with the guy for a bit, and then headed back home. Got back around 9am, and just as I was about to take the turn, Tee-ha’s auntie(who he has lived with since the age of 1, and calls Mom), calls out, and grabs a bag from her porch. I come into her yard and she hands me a bag of fresh bananas. I don’t know it they are Burmese bananas, but they look slightly different than the ones I here in the yard. They are thicker and stubbier than the ones growing around me. What a nice gesture! I thank her for the gift, and head to the house. Due to the rain yesterday and the 1.5 hr walk, I am drenched! Once home, I hang up all of my clothes and try to dry off. There is a family of Tokei’s living in my house, and I have tried to take a photo of them all together for quite sometime. I haven’t been successful until today. When I went up to hang up my shirt, there they were, all three relaxing. I ran down and grabbed my camera and took a photo. For the longest time, I thought I was losing my mind thinking there was a family. Last night, I saw the baby in the kitchen and took a photo, but I had never seen the parents together at the same time, and often convinced myself that I was seeing the same one, even though they look slightly different. Well, now as you can see, there they all are!. I think the white things are hatched eggs, as the female is always laying beside them, and 2 more that are still waiting to hatch. Maybe they are timed so that as soon as one is ready to leave home, the next hatches… more investigation is required! The rest of the afternoon was spent compiling a shopping list for the trip to Ranong, the market, and Tesco/Lotus. I also wrote a postcard to my niece Taylor(a weekly event, as she likes the pictures of strange places and people I think). I took a trip down to the beach at 2:30pm, for a beer run. I am trying to let my supplies get low before Ranong, and the shopping, so I bought a 6 pack of cold beer from one of the bars. Somewhat pricey, but convenient! Ate one of Auntie’s bananas as a snack, and it was great. Sweeter and firmer that the usual banana I have had, and had seeds like a Vietnamese banana. I will have to ask of its origins tomorrow. I decided to take a wee nap around 4:30pm, and ended up waking at 9:30pm. I had thought of taking a wander, but at this hour, there was little point. I headed back to bed. All was fine and dandy until 2am, when someone in the Thai family that lives about 300m from here, decided to watch some TV. Now, what’s the problem with this you ask? Well usually nothing, but when you have to start a generator to watch TV, there’s the rub. It’s like camping on a really quiet lake here. Any sounds from the people camping on the other side, carry right over to you… same applies here. So after an hour of watching one of the numerous karaoke music video shows, the TV went off and the generator stopped. Back to the sounds of nature and another few hours of sleep.

Got rain? Got bugs!

As I am heading down my path, Tee-ha rides up on his bike to make sure the ice came. I guess he didn’t hear the girl come the night before. I tell him all is well, and I continue on. At the end of my trek down the beach I stopped by to get my clean linens. I used the washroom first, and when I came out to wash my hands, I noticed a rather large spider on my breast pocket. I casually brushed it off, but not before the manager lady that I normally deal with, saw it, and basically ran off! Good to know that creepy crawlies bother the locals too! I hear her talking to the staff in the kitchen, and I can only imagine she was saying how big it was, how I was so casual about it, and that I must be really brave and strong! Anyway, I paid for my stuff, and headed home. Had a couple of bananas for breakfast, and leftovers for lunch, before heading to the main house to use the computer. I uploaded a few more entries to the blog, and wrote Steve Kain about his travel plans to Thailand in April. After I was done, I paid Chiyoko for another 2 wks, and asked to borrow a few items to help with the lack of power outlets. Unfortunately, she didn’t have what I needed, so I will either have to make do, or buy my own in Ranong in 3 days. I spent the afternoon, organizing some more photos for uploading at a later date, and around 3pm, we had a major rain storm roll through. It lasted about an hour, and I took some video for you all. Right after the rain let up, a HUGE termite hatch happened. You could seem them all in the grass, and trying to gain altitude in the last of the rain. Normally, after one of these, the night sky is just filled with them, and if you have any lights on, they swarm to them. Filling the house with 100's of them, until they lose their wing and walk away. This leaves a big clean up the next morning! Wings everywhere! And forget about cooking… the last time this happened I had just started to cook some food with 2 fried eggs. Thankfully, I only had one that landed in the meal, and I was able to spot it before I consumed it. It reminds me about home when we would have a lot of Leatherjackets, or Daddy Longlegs in the summer… whatever happened to those anyway?! I guess it is a bad sign when you remember certain species as a kid, and you don’t see them anymore 30yrs later. I decided that there would be too many of these things flying about tonight, so I would treat myself for my first dinner out in almost a month. After a shower, I went down to Silver Sands, where I do my laundry, at about 6pm. I saw my manager lady(Thais seem to work 24/7) and asked if I could eat and she said yes, I grabbed a seat in there nice covered outdoor eating area and ordered a beer to start. There was an awesome sunset, but I forgot to bring my camera yet again. Once the first beer was done, I ordered another and also my fave Kapow Moo. She asked if I wanted it “spicy”, and I said “Phet Khap”(spicy, yes!), to which she was shocked!. She also asked if I wanted a fried egg, which is usually served with the dish, to which I also said yes. The second beer came, shortly followed by the meal, which was delicious! She cooked it a little differently than in town. Rather than ground or minced pork, this was sliced, but equally as good. Once done, I had one more beer before I called it a night. It was now dark, and I had a 20min walk ahead of me. I paid her, told her cooking was delicious, and let her a nice tip. The walk home in the dark was uneventful. I have 2 lcd lights, and the moon was out and high, so I could really see well. Got home just before 8pm, had a few beers, turned on both Pink Mountaintops albums and drifted off before 9pm, yet again!

As Metallica once said, Ride the Lightning

So once again, ice is an issue. I seemed to have received a little more chicken than I had asked for the other day. I’ve got the last of the ice surrounded by my last two chicken breasts… from probably the biggest chickens in all of Thailand. They are MASSIVE! Like Jurassic Park chickens big! But then again, a lot of things here are like they are from Jurassic Park. Bubble bees the size if hummingbirds, mosquitoes you can hear from across the room etc. I headed out for my walk and ran into “Tee-ha”, the young Burmese guy I have been lovingly referring to as, “the young Burmese guy”. I told him that I could really use some ice ordered, and that this batch had only lasted for 3 days rather than 4, due to my shopping trip and an ice chest of room temperature groceries dumped on my last ice. He says he’ll pass the message on to Chiyoko, and I head out from my morning stroll. I took a few shots with my camera this morning. One interesting set of shot was a hermit crab dead on the road. It had either made its way a little far inland and had been run ove by a motorbike or two, or had been the meal of the otter that lives in the river a few meters ahead. This otter scared the shit out of me the other day. There is a small concrete bridge over this “river”, which only has water when it rains, and that is where the otter lives. I hadn’t seen it over the first 3 weeks, but one day when I was all calm, and peacefully taking in the scenery, I crossed the bridge and heard this huge commotion and saw this “thing” scamper off into the saw grass. Being completely startled, it took me a few seconds to process as to what it was., but after dome time and about 10m of walking, I realized what it was. Anyway, being that the Hermit crab was so close to the Otter house, I think that it must have made its way up the river in high tide, and met his match in the Otter. There was lots of him left, so I guess Otters must be picky eaters and only eat the tastiest parts, leaving the rest to the ants, flies, and other bottom rung feeders that make the most of a free meal. Got home from the walk about 9:30am, and blogged for awhile while listening to music. At lunch, I decided to cook my chicken to be safe, saving one of the breasts for tomorrow. Tee-ha stopped by a little later and said they would bring me the ice when they went into the village to pick up a generator they had sent to Ranong to be repaired. This should be around 5pm, after the ferry arrives from the mainland. After a lazy day, I used the one cooked chicken breast in yet another batch of yellow curry, and just as I was wrapping up, my grocery taxi gal pulls up with some ice at around 6pm. We both had a good chuckle that she was the one who ended up getting the job, she unloads the block, and I put it into the cooler. We say good-bye and she drives off, just as a lightning storm begins. It lasts for the bulk of the night, so I eat, shower and watch the last of it listening to Radiohead’s OK computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac. It all fit quite well!

Making plans for Visas and Lao New Year!

This morning I took a walk down to the end of the beach I hadn’t explored yet. There only seems to be one or two resorts and a few private type house/bungalows. I believe that this is where the Dutch fellow, from a few nights back, lives. The tides was really out at 8am, so the rocks were really exposed, and there were a lot of small shells in the sand. I walked a little less than usual so that I could drop off my bed linens at the laundry. After the power was on, I headed to the main house to use the internet. I emailed a few of you, and made a few more posts to the blog. I got an email from my Lao friend Jukky. I think I have decide to try and be in Laos by the time my Thai Visa expires on March 23rd. This could change of course, but I plan to be there for Lao New Year, which is on April 13th, but may start cranking up by the 11th. Thailand also celebrates Songkran about this time, and it can be virtually impossible to go anywhere as everyone is going back to the home cities/villages to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. I found this out last year when I stayed in Ranong a little to long before trying to make my way to Laos. I hired a minibus to drive me to Chumpon, where I had planned to take the train to BKK. When I got there, I found the train had sold out, and the buses pre-booked. My visa was about to expire in 2 days, so I had to double back to Ranong in order to see immigration and do a Visa run to Burma. Of course this made Lek, the woman I had be seeing, very happy and she always assumed that I couldn’t bring myself to leave her quite yet. Haha… oh well. Anyway, so I missed getting to Laos for New Years, and don’t plan to have that happen again. I will give myself plenty of time to get there, and possibly a visit with Steve Kain, who will be in Sukhothai, or Ayuthaya around that time. There’s a group of people I used to work with, coming to BKK for a big HIV/AIDS conference, so I am hoping that I can connect with at least a few of them while they are in Thailand and Vietnam. I confirmed to Jukky, that I would be with them for the holiday, but wasn’t certain of the exact date. I will keep her posted. After updating everyone, I headed back to the house and bumped into Chris on the road. He gave me a brief lesson in the flora and fauna of the property, lots of interesting stuff I can now put names to after examining it all for 3 wks now. Made a stir fry for lunch and dinner, listened to some music and basically had a really mellow time at my little edge of the jungle for the rest of my day/night.

Goodbye Paul...

Had a sweet 9 hour slept last night. Up fresh and ready for some coffee and the walk into the village. I was out the door around 7:15am and on the road. The walk was nice as always, and I crossed the usual assortment of Thais and Burmese on the way in. About ¾ of the way in, I was passed by Chris and the young Burmese worker, then shortly after by Chiyoko. Seems everyone is in need of supplies today! I got to my rest stop under the tree at the clinic and took a ½ breather to cool off. I noticed that more people than normal were heading by taxi and onwards to the ferry. Maybe it is because it is a Sunday, or the start of a new month. Regardless, once I had my battery recharged I walked the last bit into the market and made my purchases. In addition to the usual items, I need some mosquito spray, post cards, and muesli for my fruit salads in the morning. Once it was all bought and paid for, I flagged down my taxi gal, and off we went. Got home, unpacked and ate breakfast at around 9:30am. I organized some of the photos and videos I have taken, so that it will be a quick process to upload when I go back to Ranong for my Visa run to Burma on Mar 09. There should be some nice shots for people to see. I have tried to take my camera around with me, but it can be a pain in the butt if I am heading to the market. It is just one more things to weight me down. The were 2 batches of rain and wind today. It is nice and cool when it is going on, but about 30min later the humidity keeps up, and out come the mosquitoes. So, it was a good day to have picked up some more. I think I got 4 on my feet without even knowing it. In the village, I had seen Paul. He is off to Ranong tomorrow, and then to BKK three days later. He mentioned he’d be stopping by around lunch time to say a final good bye. I did some final calculations on my February expenses, and came to the conclusion that I saved myself about $250Can by doing things myself, as opposed to buying all food, drinks and smokes from bars and resorts. Not too bad, and things should get even better, by far, once in Laos. I am thinking somewhere in the $500Can/month range. If/when there is some income generated, it only gets cheaper! There has been some confusion over the “Leks” I am mentioning in this blog. The Lek from last trip is still not around, the Lek I have seen in Ranong this trip, is the sister of a friend, and strictly plutonic! No romance for this guy. Matters of the heart only complicate things. Paul came by around to for the final good-bye. I guess his ailment turned out to be salt depletion and some dehydration. He had stopped by a pharmacy store the day before, and the shop owner had told him that he needed a product like Gatorade to get his electrolytes up. Unfortunately, this guy was out. Paul then had to walk an hour back into village, where he eventually found some. I guess by this point he was basically like a zombie. He went back to his bungalow and mixed the powder into a bottle of water, and collapsed with his head on fire. At about 3am, he woke up and felt his condition rapidly improving, and by morning was a new man when I saw him in the village earlier this morning. When he showed up at the house, he was looking good, and was finishing off another litre of the magic elixir. We chatted for a couple of hours, exchanged emails, took a few photos, and he was back on the road to the village for his last night on then Island. Tomorrow he takes the speedboat, which is a new service last year, into Ranong for a few days in town, before flying to BKK for three more days and eventually home to Boston. It was a pleasure meeting you Paul. I hope to see you again next year, should you decide to return. Later on, I made another batch of chicken strip and sweet chili dipping sauce for dinner. I cooked the eggs I used for the chicken and flour, as scrambled eggs, and also eat some left over yellow curry rice. It was all very delicious and probably the biggest meal I have eaten in 3wks. Being quite full, it didn’t take long to feel pretty tired, so I got cleaned up, put on Talk Talk’s Colour of Spring and… zzzzzz…

Book keeping and number crunching.

Another day without a walk. Gotta nip this in the bud. Tomorrow I do the trek to the village, so that should get me back on point. Paul was checking out today and stopped by to let me know he’s giving me his 20litre jug… Thanks! He was feeling somewhat better today, so I offered him the last of my orange juice, which he devoured and asked if he wanted some fruit salad. He declined, but promised he would go eat something ASAP. Once again, I told him to go buy a hat when he goes to Ranong in a few days. We exchanged emails, and he said he would stop in tomorrow at around noon to say goodbye. At around noon, the young Burmese guy came by with my ice order and Paul’s water jug. Now I am all set to get the groceries tomorrow. I was really restless today. Probably from the lack of a walk, so I think I will try to take one tonight, just after sunset. I have yet to do this, so it should be a nice change of pace. I imagine a different set of faces at night, than first thing in the morning. The walk never transpired, but some beers and creating a spreadsheet for expenses did. Looks like I came in around $816 Can for February. Slightly higher than I wanted for only 19 days, but given that it is the “holiday” portion of the tour, I will let it slide. Had leftovers for dinner, showered up, and drifted off to the sounds of Elliot Smith.