Tourist Season Terminated with Extreme Prejudice

The overnight bus from Bangkok arrived in Ranong without a hitch and when we checked our luggage is had not been tampered with, not that we had really expected a problem on a bus where almost everyone was Thai. Our plan was to find our way into town for breakfast before heading to the ferry port, where we hoped to find out the times of the ferries. We expected to be able to get Songthaews into town from the main road but they either didn't understand what we were saying or else they were all going somewhere else. Eventually, out of desperation, we tried the name of the ferry port. Yes, that's where this one was going, so we decided to forget about town, after all surely there would be food at the port. The port wasn't up to much and there were no shops of cafes nearby, so I had to walk all the way back to the main road to buy some food from a street vendor. The channel leading into the port was disgusting: rubbish drifted up against the mangroves and the water was black with diesel and probably other chemicals. It seemed to be more of an industrial port than a passenger one. Considering how little there was to do at the ferry port we wished we had persisted with the town songthaews and when the ferry arrived leaving for the other more developed sister island, Ko Phayam, we were a little put out to realise our fare was the same 150 Baht even though Ko Chang was only about one half of the distance. We had expected the fare to be 80 Baht. On the journey lots of rubbish floated past and it seemed that the stuff I'd seen piled up in the channel was actually coming from open sea, not the port itself. Burma was only a few miles away and I supposed that their environmental record is probably about as good as any military dictatorship's, so the rubbish probably came from there. Then I noticed that the majority of the rubbish is tree material followed by flipflops. Could this still be debris left over from the tsunami? It was a few years ago now, but I'm no expert on ocean currents. At Ko Chang we were the only ones to get off the boat, the other 20 or so people carrying on the Phayam. There were a couple of mopeds to meet us at the pier. “Where you want go?” they asked. When we told them the name of our chosen resort, they replied “closed”. A bit suspicious, we tried the next one on our list: “closed”. The woman then suggested we go to her resort instead so we were now certain this was more Thai trickery and asked if they would just take us to the beach on which these resorts were located. 100 Baht each we were told and we complained that we had just paid slightly more than that (which we thought was a rip-off) for a 90 minute ferry journey, so we weren't going to pay it again for a three kilometre bike ride, expecting this to begin negotiations. “OK, good luck!” she said and they disappeared on the bikes.

So that's away from the water then? Oh, really?

Our lonely little bungalow

We had wanted to see Ko Chang because we thought it would make a nice change from the noise and the busyness of Bangkok, and I also fancied doing something a bit off the main tourist trail again, as I felt we had just started to sleepwalk around the tourist traps again. This place was certainly a change from Bangkok. After walking about ten minutes with our big bags, we had seen nobody, seen no shops where we might buy a map or ask about a cheaper moped taxi. The island was certainly quite pretty with coconut palms and rubber trees everywhere, but the heavy dark and pendulous clouds heading our direction detracted somewhat from the beauty. Of course it started to rain heavily and we kept walking.

A beach all to ourselves

After about half an hour, we came to a small village with some houses and even a school. There was also a map showing tsunami evacuation routes, and a sign advising that this was a tsunami shelter area. We were at a crossroads in the middle of the island and were it not for the map we would have continued straight on instead of turning right, where we found a shop and restaurant and chose to sit down and shelter. At the restaurant was strange character who, the more we spoke to him, reminded me more of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now; Patrick is a 50 year-old French guy who had been living on this tiny island for two years. He had very little good to say about the locals, whom he clearly looked down on, and said that they were the most unfriendly people he had ever met.

Horrible dog following us

I was surprised, as this had not been our experience of Thai people at all, although it was true that the people who met us at the pier were probably the grumpiest people we'd met on our trip. I wondered why he was living in a place where he thought so little of the people, but he told us he was living in the forest away from the resorts and the people, and he was also very bitter about France, about women, and about his former life in general it seemed. He liked the forest and the nature on the island. He claimed to be an anarchist although, unusually for a Frenchman, he was very pro-USA. He absolutely refused to have his photo taken because he doesn't "want the CIA or something finding out where" he is.

Rubbish on the beach

He told me he spent his time on the island reading maths books and chess books, and his one friend on the island was a one-legged German called Uli, who was another long-term resident but, unfortunately for Patrick, did not play chess. Patrick confirmed that we were actually told the truth at the pier: almost everything on the island was shut. The guidebooks said that places started to shut down about June, so we were not expecting this at all. Patrick said “they don't care about June here: they see when the rain comes and the tourist stop coming, then they shut”. Finally I had found a place where they admitted the monsoon had come two months early! We had wanted quiet but this was more than we had expected. Maybe we would leave and go to Ko Phayam.

Path to Golden Bee

Forest full of smoke

Finally the rain let up somewhat and, following Patrick's directions, we found our way to Golden Bee. The beach front was lined with ghost-resorts; clearly nobody else was here. Apparently most of the owners move to Ranong during low season but a few, like Bee, only have property on the island, so stay open all year round. Bee was very friendly and showed us to quite a nice wooden bungalow for less than we had expected to pay. We were just settling in when a puppy hanging around vomited seafood on our veranda, then we noticed a huge wasp busying itself around a nest in the bathroom. Joanne sluiced off the veranda and Bee sent her son to dispose of the wasp and nest, but I was really starting to regret coming here.

Horrible puppies

Bee said she doesn't know where the dogs came from but since all the others left the island there have been stray dogs everywhere. Apparently they just leave their dogs when they go to Ranong and let them fend for themselves. We took a walk up the beach to see what we could find but all we found was rubbish all over the beach and dogs playing in it. We decided that we would leave for Phayam the next morning, unless the weather was much better; at least then we could sunbathe and swim. Bee cooked us up a nice dinner and we got an early night to recover from Bangkok and our long bus journey.

The lagoon had grown

Tsunami zone

Next morning we woke early so we'd have time to go for the ferry, but the weather was lovely and the island looked much prettier, so we decided to stay at least another day. We thought we'd walk across to the other side of the island to see the beaches there, but the route we had arrived by was now blocked by high tide filling a lagoon so much that the stairs up the bridge we came over were submerged. Retracing our steps, we saw a German with one leg and Uli told us the correct alternative way out. Thankfully we weren't stranded until low tide. On the path back to the centre of the island we were passed by two new farangs on the backs of mopeds. The middle of the island was the only place with a (poor) mobile phone signal, and Joanne was keep to keep in touch as her sister was expecting a baby. Patrick was there again, and Joanne found out that her new niece, Eve, had been born the previous evening.

Surely in poor taste?

Patrick congratulated Joanne and her sister in absentia, then told us that there were no beaches on that side of the island, only mangroves. The grumpy woman from the pier the previous day was there and told us that the Ko Phayam boat would not stop the next day, but the following day her husband was skipper, so she could ask him to stop specially. She also said there was no boat to the mainland tomorrow, so we were stuck on the island another day whether we liked it or not. We returned to our beach and chatted to the new arrivals at Golden Bee: Vicky from Leeds and Ben from Paris. They had only been charged 50 Baht each for the bike ride, but by different people.

Next day we slept in, but were woken by cockerels that had been much quieter the previous morning. Bee served us an excellent big breakfast of muesli, yogurt, and fresh fruit, which we ate with Ben. Ben told us of a little place called Little Italy down the beach, past the Lagoon, where the Italian owner served excellent coffee; something that was impossible to get elsewhere on the island. We wandered along to the place which was really lovely, as was the coffee, set back from the beach in the forest. After coffee, we made our daily pilgrimage to the island's centre so Joanne could get more details by SMS about Eve's weight, the birth, and so on. On our return, Joanne tanned in the continuing sun and I just chatted to Ben until it was time for dinner, which all four of us had together. We may have been stuck there, but at least there was company and plenty of nice nature to see.

Next morning we were up early again, this time to catch the boat, after another superb Bee breakfast, who was also nice enough to send her sons ahead with our big bags on their bikes, for free. Apart from the one woman we had not found the people on the island unfriendly and we wondered if Patrick was simply seeing his own antipathy reflected in those around him. After a wrong turning and a sweaty jog to catch the boat we arrived to find about twenty people already waiting. The truth was that boats in both directions serviced the island every day, only that woman's husband only skippered a boat every second day, so she had apparently lied to us to spite the competition. Back on the mainland we easily caught a songthaew to the bus station and opted to pay a little more to leave on the first class bus instead of waiting for the second class one which we were told “may be full”. Surely they could have phoned or something, but we didn't want to wait several hours anyway. The bus lunch stop was the usual cheap'n'tasty canteen food, but I opted to an unusual dish of very strong tasting salty fish which was actually disgusting. Oh well one out of so many isn't bad.

written by

The Happy Couple on April 28, 2009 from Ko Chang, Thailand

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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