Private Picturesque Papaya Paradise

In just a few hours we catch the night train back to Bangkok, 3rd class hard seats of course, but with that comes wide open windows, and local food vendors making their way up and down the train with unrecognizable edibles for sale! Then it's one night in Bangkok before hitting the airport Monday morning and flying home (defined at the moment as someplace we can understand everything that is spoken and the road signs don't look like a preschooler's scribbling pad) - and after about 24 hours of flying and layovers, we arrive in the states that same afternoon! Cool, huh?

We just spent the last 10 days of our 5 months of wandering, on an island in southern Thailand. Hot. Heat. Muggy. Sweaty. Hot. Humid. Sticky. Sweaty. Hot. Um, yeah, it was a spectacular tropical non-touristy quiet island, but wow, hot, humid, and so forth. You get the idea. Even the ocean is 85 degrees! Whew - swim too hard and you get HOT! Okay, it was pretty darned incredible - despite no breeze and 95 degrees with 99% humidity - maybe I'm exaggerating (but I don't think so) - I didn't have a thermometer - but we read the ocean temperature in our guidebook, so you know that MUST be true (all hail Lonely Planet!)...

So, I'm not exactly a hot/humid type person - you Mid-Westerners wouldn't bat an eye (I mean break a sweat), but me - I melt and get slightly cranky until I can cool down to a humane temperature (you can ask my family about the slightly cranky part).

Again, we seemed to step back in time - this time maybe 100 years (well, maybe less since they did have a few modern conveniences) - an island not yet hit by the glut of tourism - intermittent electricity, no roads, just paths winding through coconut groves, rubber plantations, cashew trees, brushy jungle. Tiny "bungalows" on a huge white sand beach, with NO umbrellas, NO lounge chairs lined up three deep, NO high rise hotels, NO people (okay, a couple of people, a few friendly, pudgy old dogs, and lots of tiny beige crabs that look more like plant fluff skidding across the sand than side-stepping invertebrates).

More details:

Bioluminescence - This was the big excitement - really, truly, it is so incredibly cool! The water is filled with it, tiny one-celled (multi-celled?) organisms that light up when agitated (movement-wise, not emotionally!).

So we wade along the shore at night, creating sparkling, glittering showers of diamonds, twinkling constellations, underwater fireworks displays. Even when we stand still, the in and out surges of the tide make a galaxy of stars and nebulas stream past our legs. We splash and swirl the water - all is dark except for the brilliance of the water-lights - even the breaking waves sparkle. Walking along, Raina exclaims, "It's like trailing your own little personal Milky Way!"

It's fairy - faerie - we enter a sparkling realm - we create the lights, we follow the lights, and unlike the lights of Gollum's warning in the marshes of Middle Earth ("Don't follow the lights!") these lights lead us into beauty and imagination and a mystical realm - like Gandalf's curtain of silver glass - an entryway into another world. Fairy? Elven? Who knows? But always: goodness.

Oh yeah, I forgot shimmering - really, how many adjectives like sparkling, glittering, shimmering can I use? Really (again really) there are not enough in the English language. So I'll use them all. But it doesn't come close to what I'm seeing, feeling.

Some of you know how much I like sparkles, and sparkling and glittering. So what is it? It's this. Or part of it is this. Here, there is a silence, filled only with crickets, and gentle waves breaking, rolling back down the clean sand, warm wind rustling the palm leaves. And these lights. There are these lights. It's the beauty of a black universe full of stars. It's the touch of eternity.

So this glitter thing - anyone with any new "glittering" words or thoughts, let me know! I could get a lot more abstract about it all, but really, it's just something that's deep down and just so beautiful I can't describe it.

Swimming: Let's see, when you go swimming you get stung by a bunch of invisible creatures! It's really not much of a sting (a little like lemon juice in a cut) but a bit annoying, and you don't want to just lounge in the water. We went swimming everyday. Finally, someone told us it was sea lice. Whatever that is. We'll have to look it up when we get home.

Animals: So we've got the bugs from Land of the Giants - one is a black fuzzy thing the size of a hummingbird, but much louder. Then there's the geckos - the small one's are cute and live on your ceiling and chirp - the big ones look like dragons and make this spectacularly loud rubber ducky noise. Of course there are crickets galore (both normal size and giant size - for you coffee drinkers that would be tall and vente). And the chainsaw bugs are here too (the cicadas we heard in Cambodia). We also saw a number of birds - hornbills (look just like the toucans on the cereal box), sea eagles, kites. There's also some really cool jungle noises (no clue as to what it is, but sounds just like the movies).

What we did: Swim (and get stung), hike and explore the island, walk the beach, wilt under the sun, watch the sunsets, kayak (really fun in big waves and wind), note location of tsunami evacuation zones, eat green coconut curry, swim some more, hang out on the porch of our little beachfront bungalow, and that's just day one!

Boat to island: So did you see the movie Nim's Island? The part where Jodie Foster gets dropped off and has to swim to the beach? Well, we didn't have to swim, but we did get our feet wet! The boats are called "longtail" boats - they are wooden, long, and have a motor with the propellar on the end of a 10 foot or so long shaft sticking out behind (hence the name longtail).

Coconuts - here we could find our own - they are all over the ground on the island (and you have to watch your head since they periodically and spontaneously fall). But how to open without the useful and ubiquitous machete? Send Marc for the biggest rock he can lift - you lose the water, but the coconut is so delicious!

Well, we've got to head over to the train station. Don't want to miss our ride!

I'll update next week with pictures! Thanks again for reading!