เกาะลันตา, Koh Lanta

Am I using my website as a sort of intellectual Instagram? A friend wrote and told me this was what I seemed to be doing. He added that he disliked social media and would not be looking at what I posted in future. I regret the latter, not the former, but my aspirations are literary rather than intellectual, although you might like to look elsewhere than these journals to discover them.

I am assembling the journals of our recent travels at home. Over a month has passed since our return. Why?

Another friend suggested that you reach a point, travelling, at which you can only absorb. You are focused on absorbing and not on informing yourself about where you are, what you are doing and what you are seeing, and not on reflecting on your experience. You cannot package up what you experience with what you think about it any longer. In a way, it is a release. As I wrote here, you are open to what comes; but there is something else: I suppose I did not consider in relating some of where we went, with photos and short sometimes cryptic comments, which really are supposed to be suggestive rather than cryptic (there are longer sections of writing too, as now, which are reflective, something I am saying reaching that point of absorption it is hard to do)—I did not suspect myself of egoism.

I did not consider the extent to which I was projecting onto the images and texts I am gathering into a sort of travelogue affections, associations and connections which are personal, to me, or could be seen to be. They might be really boring to others, this I had considered, in which case, change channel. Look here, or here. Or search for your favourite topic using the ⌕ (search function). For example, we all love a crisis.

I should then reflect on my intention, simply a travelogue? I had in fact reached the absorption phase (and note that it is not self-absorption: in a way it is kenosis, or maybe less self-emptying than dehiscence (the word is suggested by the crisis link), the links dissolving as they are suffused, psychic defenses down, by new images and experiences. Whether psychic defenses are ever down is another question; but this feeling, of floating on the real, of being absorbed into the outside, is one of the things I most enjoy about travelling. Immanence: there psychic defenses amount to trying to hold onto habits which relate to action rather than thought, like morning coffee or evening drinks.) as far back as Chania. By the time we reached Koh Lanta, an island in the Andaman Sea, chosen for being less touristy and so less set up for industrial-scale tourism, less expectant of the hordes with their hungry greedy phone-cameras, and, in Thailand, their appetite for cannabis, which was no less represented in Koh Lanta by the multiple stores selling it, just that fewer restaurants had to have signs asking patrons not to smoke it, I was taking fewer photos. OK, still a lot, only because I found so much so remarkable. I have wanted to share what I saw. And, going over these old news now, I am looking for a message, which is in the image itself.

We were forced to slow down in Koh Lanta, a physical necessity brought about by the heat, by having no air-conditioning, sleeping with a fan, noticing our bodies adjusting and the time it took for them to adjust. That was remarkable, a body is a remarkable thing. This sensory experience is altogether missing from the images that follow. Of course, even if some of them are shot with a nice little camera using a prime lens, they are holiday snaps. So where is the intellectual component? Where the literary? (In this article which I started in Koh Lanta, and in the drafts for it) outside, as these are when they are any good anyway.

Here's where we came to:

and how we got there, by minibus, from Krabi,

and the austerity of our accommodation at Baan Suan Farmstay:

The shower base was round pebbles on a dirt base and, as with the basin and kitchen sink, water heated by a caliphont (electric, the power going out several times, affecting the excellent, in general all over Thailand, highspeed wifi in every palm and bamboo hut), flowed directly out onto the ground outside.

That first day we walked to the shops for essentials for the night. Seeing

made us realise what we must do.

We both took lessons and debated, one scoo? or two? settling on the above arrangement, captured on camera only when I was confident enough to ease my grip on the bar behind the seat.

Petrol outside every store more-or-less, sometimes with a sign warning that it is not for drinking (see Dr. Toon below):

The neighbours

and in the neighbourhood, a mosque. We heard the muezzin still. The style had become

improvisatory. And the timing was unpredictable. ... We learned the islands are mainly Muslim, and women with headscarfs billowing scooting at high speed, no helmets, often accompanied by cargoes of children and unreasonably large boxes, were always on the go. The Brahman field

Butter entry beach was where we met a family of monkeys

the mother behind me tried to attract my attention by throwing seedpods at my back. I thought she had crept up behind me, and ran.

The mugs are from Chiang Mai, coffee courtesy Andy Sidewalk Berlin, apparatus from 7 Eleven. I had a stash of filters from Al Riyadh, had left the Japanese travelling holder in Berlin, which (see habits above), of ingenious design, wire and collapsible, I was attached to (and replaced from JapanMart in NZ as soon as I could), so improvised (like the muezzin), a disposable bowl with a hole cut into its bottom. The apparatus lasted our entire time in Thailand.

Long Beach

Popeye, 1980, Harry Nilsson's score:

Dinner:

home

nights, there was this

bat mobile:

Lightning storms were frequent in the hills behind us. Weather, the physical environment; thrashing winds blowing up suddenly and unexpectedly: ought we to have expected them? And at what ferocity? Thunderstorms. Cloud formations

portending what? Along with the animals and their signs, whereas the humans claim habitually so large a chunk of our attention. Put in mind of the earthquakes and typhoons we experienced in Japan, locals smiling, surprised at our concern. Earthquake? Yes! It is usual. Waves expected to the second floor where our room was on the Seto Sea? Yes. Natural. The nature of a place and its nature, knowing what is characteristic and what out of character takes time. In Kantiang we could see the rainclouds rolling in from the hills. We did not want to get caught scooting in a deluge and did not,

our neighbour did, the German girl, who had swapped accommodation with her friend, his for hers, because he could not bear to be without air-conditioning. And the comings and goings on the raised boardwalk outside our hut

There were many who did not last more than one night. A couple from India requested more than the wall-mounted fan in the hut. Fans were brought, still not enough. They retreated one evening, the crazy off balance scooter-sidetray combo driven by the husband of our hostess, back down the long drive to the main road.

Of course the plants had voices too. The huts were serviced on alternate days. The lady cleaning next door. She had spied something. She stepped down off the neighbour's deck. I got up from where I was writing to see where she was going. Down by the raised piles of our hut, at the base of some young palms growing there, a giant phallic mushroom, like a cèpe. She held it up for me to see. Good? Very good. Butter, in a pan. She had been waiting for it. Four days after the rain. Every day after that I went and looked, no luck, until our last night in Bangkok, these were on the menu. Very good.

Kantiang Bay

was a little further afield. Our favourite.

friends

toad

Dinner:

samesame:

now with added food & beer:

memo: the natty MD with crossbody, small mo, sly smile like he knows more than he will let on, who, after our first visit came to recognise us, still did not let on

budget memo: blew our budget bigtime at this venue, ordering cocktails, inspired by Chiang Mai's excellently mint-muddled Mojitos (well, they were that first time), a first course and a main, with Singha, two large, and were charged close to NZD20

budget memo #2: Thailand is the only place ever I have been I could afford

Hermit Crab Hotel

Lanta Old Town

on the other coast of Koh Lanta, where the Sea Gypsies were

Dr. Toon

We were rewarded by the gratifyingly insistent possibility of medical assistance on two occasions, once in Chiang Mai, and now here, ear. I could not hear. Nights we would watch Lupin. My Netflix sub from Saudi had followed us and since the wifi was generally so good and generously provided we would, but now I could not hear it. My head felt like it was encased in concrete, as if I would be dropped in the canal head-down. Scooting back over the hills from Old Town we stopped in at the medical clinic, who referred us to a distant clinic, but we had passed a closer on Long Beach so hazarded that and, gratifyingly it was open. You see, no health and safety, visitors with grazes, from scooting off their scooters, some with monkey bites, were common. Well, if you are going to be silly enough to ... (Health and safety is part of the regulatory regime in NZ: returning you see how it might have destroyed an entire culture. After infantilising them it has become a tyranny.) ... And so to Dr. Toon! Delightful diminutive assistance from the nurses, Doc himself out of clinic, playing golf? something like that. On leave. I had to consult with him by phone. He advised clean ears. The process was long and pursued without stinting, no shortcuts, no rinse and drain. Little spoonfuls at a time, with perseverance, after the Moby Dick in ear. The reward immeasurable, but the result measured! a trophy! held up for the oohs and ahhs of the clinical assistants. My drums sparkled. The final gift, advice not to put one's head under. We were in the Tropics. Had come from the Desert to the Tropics. The sea itself a soup, warm and seething with amoebous life.

Dinner (the dividing line from the above a necessity):

modular capsules on the way to Kantiang Bay:

rain

lunch in Lanta Old Town

Soft-shell crabs:

It was a mad-dog-Englishman afternoon, we were in Old Town looking at the shops.

Sensible people were having a siesta. Entering a clothing store, on the floor below the racks lay a person. Her skin was oddly pale, white-stocking-coloured and with a fabric-like texture, like you would stuff stockings to make limbs. I had seen someone before, asleep, whom I had mistaken for a life-size stocking-person, in Chiang Mai, had had to stop myself from nudging it with my toe. We paused, looking down. Her arms were at crooked angles, not covering her face, not supporting her head. Dead? We backed out quickly but kept an eye on the frontage and finally did see a younger woman, perhaps her daughter, go into the shop, find the body, not scream.

Dinner:

Koh Lanta Community Museum

Sea Gypsies are represented in the Community Museum, along with Muslims and other Thai, which records also the rebuilding after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Dinner:

Koh Por

is just off the coast, accessible by longtail ferry from Lanta Old Town

We followed someone who seemed to know where she was going, to the bar, but the bar was closed

lunch:

Lunch might be had, the muezzin might sing, still, there is the universal pacifier:

load-bearing on planks and poles not specified, the sea beneath, as the beach was said to be beneath the street, in an unsafe and possibly unhealthy way:

some details of the scene and behind the scene:

return:

dinner in:

Sea Gypsies village

dinner:

last details of Lanta Home, night and day

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