Marine Preservatives
What your hearing, says John
is the sound of petrol exploding.
The long tracks in the sand
look like belly prints of refugee snakes
What refugees? Find some wet sand.
A dog is eating a diaper on the beach.
The jellyfish are taking over the ocean;
Someone said they love climate change.
They don’t catch much fishing that way.
Moonlight in an old water bottle, want it?
Its not as valuable as turtle bone earrings,
but its worth more than a can of jellyfish.
Jellies have no hearts and no blood, he said.
The first time I got bent
I couldn’t walk anymore.
But I was one of the best
at placing the dynamite,
so they let me keep my job.
Everyday my friends
carried me out to the boat.
The fish and blood in the water from the dynamite
attracted sharks. Want shark fins? Buy a can of explosives.
A dolphin head is drying on the roof. This rain will be good
for the papaya trees. Who flooded the hospital garden?
The patients aren’t wearing any shoes. They are dancing
on the mosquito larvae. The monk said they’re inbred
and that’s why they are stupid. What if they just like to dance?
What would you like to drink?
Do you have pineapple juice?
We have it in a can.
Yes, but do you have it in a can screaming?
Do you have it in a can screaming and with blood? Do you have
three more generations? what about in a jar? What about Hopefish? Can you find me a steak of Hopefish with trumpet flower and onion? Do you have that?
with a glass bottle of jellyfish moonshine?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
He Inflated his Overalls like the Michelin Man and ZIP
30
My run this morning was beautiful. It started raining (I really only have the heart to run when its raining) and the clouds were just a little sunrise and a little storm, out over the bay. I ran up and down the beach twice, (4 kilometers) and the sand was packed and then pockmarcked by the rain, and the guy at the gate to the military base at one end waved at me, and while I was running I could feel the rain on my arms… The tide was really really far out, and the bits of broken coral and everything was basking, exposed, on the edge of the beach. I passed the Monks (two of the four) who were going down the beach collecting merit and food in the morning. I thought about smiling at the one who I talked to the otherday, but I wasn’t sure if I shouldn’t make engagement with him since it was only in a tank top and shorts, but I kinda smiled on the way back and he looked right passed me, so hummm.
After showering, and laundry, I went and tried to make a cup of coffee to have on the beach. I managed to light the stove on my own (Dehwehwim and Solep were nowhere to be seen), and I put water on, and then I realized I couldn’t find the coffee. I looked everywhere, because I found it yesterday; I opened the bag! there were 30 packs – and I knew there was no way Dehwehwim and Solep had managed to drink 29 cups of coffee in one day. It started to make me a little bonkers, not even that I am that insane for coffee but that I knew it was somewhere obvious and I couldn’t find it. Had they begrudged me taking some yesterday and hid it?! I looked in all the counters, in the pots, behind the house, in the cubbord, on the porch. I found cleaning products, and oil packets, and a container of lolly pops, and the empty package from the 30 coffee pack and then I gave up and got a bag of tea and opened it, got the hot water, and saw the lolly pops again… Who… I thought… keeps about three food items in the house, with one of them being a giant container of lolly pops and I opened it up and there was the coffee!!!
I sat on the beach with my coffee and thought about how thankful I am for how much Dale and Cindy have supported me (both in a hands-off I trust you, and in a being able to count on you for getting me whatever I need way).
I skyped with Tor and we dreamed about opening an ecotourism resort one day. I called mom and colin who are doing great up in Maine with the relatives. I did some transcriptions and translations (haha. Biology). After two of them I was ready to go crazy. It was pouring today. Really pouring and that delighted me, because another dive master stopped by Pooh’s Bar today and said while talking with Neal (Pooh’s Dive Instructer) “the coral will come back.” And I said ‘how do you know?” and he said “I mean, no body knows, but with this rain that’s good to cool the water down. And its happened [bleaching] before and it came back. And not all of its bleached, some of its still O.K so that will help the bleached coral reestablish.” I looked out at the rain, pouring off the metal roof onto the patio and felt really good (I’ve been enjoying the cool down too!).
I had lunch with John, and Lee Pae Backery (the one just on walking street with a little view of the sea at the end of the street. Its so well kept and a nice atmosphere with little black and white table cloths, and its very very clean. No T.V. playing or anything, too. John and I joked about how terrible most Thai dictionaries are. I said yeah I bought one once, for tourists, it had the word for “poached eggs! And not the word for rice. I’m not even kidding, in the food section there was poached eggs (I’m not sure I know what poached eggs are in english!) and not rice. In THAILAND.”
After lunch I went back to interview Neal if he had time. Amanda, his girlfriend and another employee at Poohs place has come down with Dengue fever (mom don’t tell grandma). Actually, something with a Thai name that’s worse then Dengue fever. It’s from mosquitoes they think. One other person got it last year, and no one else since then, but it’s really aweful. She had a 39.5 fever last night. The islands clinic nurse is on standby to come give her an injection to cool her body down if she needs it, and they’ve given her drugs to control it and so shes doing better. I guess, mom, dad, you have a right to know and try to convience me to come home, but I’m wearing two kinds of bug spray, and sleeping in a mosquito net. Tomorrow I’m wearing long pants and brining long sleaves too. They fogged Pooh’s place this afternoon. A guy went around with a backpack like a jet pack full of white foamy chemical death and blasted everything in sight. Pooh passed out little.. those nurses mouth cover things. I decided id be a good idea to take off for a bit (while my computer downloaded a new antivirus) and when I got back it was coated in little brown droplets!!!! Eeepsss!!!
I also interviewed a guy who lived on a sailboat off the atlantic coast for a year, and he said when he was around Kayaking the other day he saw what he said was “a lot of trash in the water” unlike what he had seen around many many other seas.
(the following quotes aren’t actually real quotes, their just from my memory. I’ll do the transcription sometime and put up the real ones)
I interviewed Neal. He was particularly articulate, knowledgeable, and interesting. He told the story (he written it actually, and is looking to get it published) about going down diving with the locals when they were setting their fish traps. It’s horribly dangerous! It’s called “hooka diving” and they just hook a really long tube up to a aircompressor. (and a jankkety old one that’s prone to spew unclean air, or give out at any second). And then then dive down to (when he went) 28 meters deep!!! and then they ran around on the bottom, setting up the trap, and dancing over a lion fish (extremely poisonous), and when they were done, they just pulled out the tubes for air from their homemade masks. One guy filled a bucket with air. The other guy was wearing overalls and he “filled them up with air like the Michelin man” and ZIP right up to the top. If you don’t know to blow out the entire time, your lungs can explode. To go up safely and allow enough time for the Nitrogen bubbles to come back out of your muscles and blood you should take a minute and a half to go up, with a three minute safety stop part way. “how long did they take to get up?” I asked. And Neal said “about three seconds.” By the time he got up to the top, they were getting ready to go back down again, over and over. When you go down diving that deep, your under about 4 times as much pressure, so air gets denser, and when you breath in one “lungful” of air your really getting 4 times as much oxygen and Nitrogen as normal. The oxygen is O.K but the nitrogen gets absorbed into your body tissues. When you come up again, its like opening a coke bottle, all the bubbles suddenly don’t have that pressure keeping them in and they all fizz up. Its called getting Bent. He says “that’s why so many of them are bent. If you come up so quickly, the Nitorgen can’t get out of your lungs so if forms bubbles inside you. It can kill you, and if it doesn’t kill, it’s extremely painful to get bubbles in your joins, a few hours later your just be bent over in pain (that’s whey they call it bent). It can be debilitating/handicapping. That’s why you see so many people in the village slouched with limps and on crutches, they’ve been bent and got bubbles in their joints.”
It’s a fantastic interview. I’ll pull a bunch of quotes from it if I have energy tonight. He also linked it to overfishing/the coral reef decline. “If the area is getting low of fish it means they might be down there longer, or going out more often, or setting more traps, to make income for their families, which is just increasing the danger.”
While hiding from the mosquito mister, I discovered a new favorite kind of Rotee (fried dough pancake) today which is egg and milk with sugar!! I asked Pi Awm, who makes them, what her favorite was and she said egg and tuna.
I had dinner with Pi Mut again today. The best Tom Yum soup I’ve had other than my Mae’s in Chaing Mai. The perfect priao sour and pet hot with bright green chfir lime leaves, and colorful chilis, and thin slices of chicken, garlic, cilantro, and lemongrass. He said “you want to play four?” and I was like “what?” and he pointed and I said “what?” and he brought over a connect four game! We played, the lights from the bar making the pieces glow a little (they reminded me of disco lights) as the sun set and night fell. The local mainland fishermen were putting out nets at the low tide, so maybe by next low tide fish will have swum in and got trapped. Fitting to the name “time to chill bar” the music was calm and beautiful, and I had this wonderful moment of almost … surprise or puzzlement for how fortunate I have been in my life. Some things we control, some things are chance, and somehow we end up where we are.
My run this morning was beautiful. It started raining (I really only have the heart to run when its raining) and the clouds were just a little sunrise and a little storm, out over the bay. I ran up and down the beach twice, (4 kilometers) and the sand was packed and then pockmarcked by the rain, and the guy at the gate to the military base at one end waved at me, and while I was running I could feel the rain on my arms… The tide was really really far out, and the bits of broken coral and everything was basking, exposed, on the edge of the beach. I passed the Monks (two of the four) who were going down the beach collecting merit and food in the morning. I thought about smiling at the one who I talked to the otherday, but I wasn’t sure if I shouldn’t make engagement with him since it was only in a tank top and shorts, but I kinda smiled on the way back and he looked right passed me, so hummm.
After showering, and laundry, I went and tried to make a cup of coffee to have on the beach. I managed to light the stove on my own (Dehwehwim and Solep were nowhere to be seen), and I put water on, and then I realized I couldn’t find the coffee. I looked everywhere, because I found it yesterday; I opened the bag! there were 30 packs – and I knew there was no way Dehwehwim and Solep had managed to drink 29 cups of coffee in one day. It started to make me a little bonkers, not even that I am that insane for coffee but that I knew it was somewhere obvious and I couldn’t find it. Had they begrudged me taking some yesterday and hid it?! I looked in all the counters, in the pots, behind the house, in the cubbord, on the porch. I found cleaning products, and oil packets, and a container of lolly pops, and the empty package from the 30 coffee pack and then I gave up and got a bag of tea and opened it, got the hot water, and saw the lolly pops again… Who… I thought… keeps about three food items in the house, with one of them being a giant container of lolly pops and I opened it up and there was the coffee!!!
I sat on the beach with my coffee and thought about how thankful I am for how much Dale and Cindy have supported me (both in a hands-off I trust you, and in a being able to count on you for getting me whatever I need way).
I skyped with Tor and we dreamed about opening an ecotourism resort one day. I called mom and colin who are doing great up in Maine with the relatives. I did some transcriptions and translations (haha. Biology). After two of them I was ready to go crazy. It was pouring today. Really pouring and that delighted me, because another dive master stopped by Pooh’s Bar today and said while talking with Neal (Pooh’s Dive Instructer) “the coral will come back.” And I said ‘how do you know?” and he said “I mean, no body knows, but with this rain that’s good to cool the water down. And its happened [bleaching] before and it came back. And not all of its bleached, some of its still O.K so that will help the bleached coral reestablish.” I looked out at the rain, pouring off the metal roof onto the patio and felt really good (I’ve been enjoying the cool down too!).
I had lunch with John, and Lee Pae Backery (the one just on walking street with a little view of the sea at the end of the street. Its so well kept and a nice atmosphere with little black and white table cloths, and its very very clean. No T.V. playing or anything, too. John and I joked about how terrible most Thai dictionaries are. I said yeah I bought one once, for tourists, it had the word for “poached eggs! And not the word for rice. I’m not even kidding, in the food section there was poached eggs (I’m not sure I know what poached eggs are in english!) and not rice. In THAILAND.”
After lunch I went back to interview Neal if he had time. Amanda, his girlfriend and another employee at Poohs place has come down with Dengue fever (mom don’t tell grandma). Actually, something with a Thai name that’s worse then Dengue fever. It’s from mosquitoes they think. One other person got it last year, and no one else since then, but it’s really aweful. She had a 39.5 fever last night. The islands clinic nurse is on standby to come give her an injection to cool her body down if she needs it, and they’ve given her drugs to control it and so shes doing better. I guess, mom, dad, you have a right to know and try to convience me to come home, but I’m wearing two kinds of bug spray, and sleeping in a mosquito net. Tomorrow I’m wearing long pants and brining long sleaves too. They fogged Pooh’s place this afternoon. A guy went around with a backpack like a jet pack full of white foamy chemical death and blasted everything in sight. Pooh passed out little.. those nurses mouth cover things. I decided id be a good idea to take off for a bit (while my computer downloaded a new antivirus) and when I got back it was coated in little brown droplets!!!! Eeepsss!!!
I also interviewed a guy who lived on a sailboat off the atlantic coast for a year, and he said when he was around Kayaking the other day he saw what he said was “a lot of trash in the water” unlike what he had seen around many many other seas.
(the following quotes aren’t actually real quotes, their just from my memory. I’ll do the transcription sometime and put up the real ones)
I interviewed Neal. He was particularly articulate, knowledgeable, and interesting. He told the story (he written it actually, and is looking to get it published) about going down diving with the locals when they were setting their fish traps. It’s horribly dangerous! It’s called “hooka diving” and they just hook a really long tube up to a aircompressor. (and a jankkety old one that’s prone to spew unclean air, or give out at any second). And then then dive down to (when he went) 28 meters deep!!! and then they ran around on the bottom, setting up the trap, and dancing over a lion fish (extremely poisonous), and when they were done, they just pulled out the tubes for air from their homemade masks. One guy filled a bucket with air. The other guy was wearing overalls and he “filled them up with air like the Michelin man” and ZIP right up to the top. If you don’t know to blow out the entire time, your lungs can explode. To go up safely and allow enough time for the Nitrogen bubbles to come back out of your muscles and blood you should take a minute and a half to go up, with a three minute safety stop part way. “how long did they take to get up?” I asked. And Neal said “about three seconds.” By the time he got up to the top, they were getting ready to go back down again, over and over. When you go down diving that deep, your under about 4 times as much pressure, so air gets denser, and when you breath in one “lungful” of air your really getting 4 times as much oxygen and Nitrogen as normal. The oxygen is O.K but the nitrogen gets absorbed into your body tissues. When you come up again, its like opening a coke bottle, all the bubbles suddenly don’t have that pressure keeping them in and they all fizz up. Its called getting Bent. He says “that’s why so many of them are bent. If you come up so quickly, the Nitorgen can’t get out of your lungs so if forms bubbles inside you. It can kill you, and if it doesn’t kill, it’s extremely painful to get bubbles in your joins, a few hours later your just be bent over in pain (that’s whey they call it bent). It can be debilitating/handicapping. That’s why you see so many people in the village slouched with limps and on crutches, they’ve been bent and got bubbles in their joints.”
It’s a fantastic interview. I’ll pull a bunch of quotes from it if I have energy tonight. He also linked it to overfishing/the coral reef decline. “If the area is getting low of fish it means they might be down there longer, or going out more often, or setting more traps, to make income for their families, which is just increasing the danger.”
While hiding from the mosquito mister, I discovered a new favorite kind of Rotee (fried dough pancake) today which is egg and milk with sugar!! I asked Pi Awm, who makes them, what her favorite was and she said egg and tuna.
I had dinner with Pi Mut again today. The best Tom Yum soup I’ve had other than my Mae’s in Chaing Mai. The perfect priao sour and pet hot with bright green chfir lime leaves, and colorful chilis, and thin slices of chicken, garlic, cilantro, and lemongrass. He said “you want to play four?” and I was like “what?” and he pointed and I said “what?” and he brought over a connect four game! We played, the lights from the bar making the pieces glow a little (they reminded me of disco lights) as the sun set and night fell. The local mainland fishermen were putting out nets at the low tide, so maybe by next low tide fish will have swum in and got trapped. Fitting to the name “time to chill bar” the music was calm and beautiful, and I had this wonderful moment of almost … surprise or puzzlement for how fortunate I have been in my life. Some things we control, some things are chance, and somehow we end up where we are.
Put More Jungle in the Jungle
29 th
Today I had breakfast and coffee wit Solep and Dehwehwim, the Burmese workers who are also living at Sanom Beach. It was really nice, and delicious. The sauce was tomato, onion, oil… over rice. Then there were these big hunks of beef (think beef jerky) that were soaked in oil and spices to sort of rehydrate, and you pulled strips of the meat off the block with your teeth. I taught Solep some phrases in English. I spontaneously wrote a good poem. In town, I wrote some stuff for Udall, worked more on poems and went around with photos for a while. I met up with John and talked over lunch about what it is like to retire in Thailand. I snorkled off Sanom beach again (hoping to see the small shark) but it was very murky conditions because of the quite drastic tides from the nearly full moon so I didn’t see much of anything. I lay down on the beach to write, my first intentional exposure to the sun on the trip and suddenly I feel rain falling on me. I look up and there are no rain clouds, just whispy white smudges, but it keeps raining. Fine! I shout to the sky. I see, no sunbathing! And just then I look out at the water and a strange fruit is floating towards me in the surf. It’s a kind of lumpy rainbow pineapple. When I pick it up it looks very much like a pineapple, with brown wilting leaves at the top, but big fat sections that stick out like molars. The ends of the sections are yellow with brown dots, the middle parts are green and inside the crevices is bright red. The meat, where the skin was torn seemed papery and white like a… honey comb or sugar cane. The elements apparently say no sunbathing, but pineapple is O.K.
I went out for dinner and found a new place that is quite lovely. It just re-opened a few days ago. It is a bar/restaurant on the beach, made and decorated with driftwood and other beach found items. There are Pringal cans with lights in them along the celing, tree roots made to lanterns, walls made of glass bottles and cement (the nozzles sticking out). Everything it seems is made out of stumps, or drift wood, decoared, and covered with pillows. There are bottle caps mosaics on the pillars. The food is really really delicious (the best I’ve had on lipe) and cheap (before I got a discount), the guys who work there are friendly and kind. I interviewed one with long decorated dreadlocks, named Mut (moot), about the bar. It was a nice interview because it was (a. in english) and b. I got a few different answers that normal. For instance, he said
“I think that if everyone took… if you have your home and you take care in front your home, beside your home, that is enough. If you are thinking you want to help everything in the island, too much, because you cannot do by yourself alone. But if you have one home, your home, make nicer, make something clean, make a small tree, coconut tree, or something, you can do… I have some land too in the jungle and it grow up everytime when I go to the jungle. I put more tree like the lemon, the coconut, I grow chilis, pumpkin…put more jungle in the jungle…if everybody do, Lipe will be beautiful.”
Today I had breakfast and coffee wit Solep and Dehwehwim, the Burmese workers who are also living at Sanom Beach. It was really nice, and delicious. The sauce was tomato, onion, oil… over rice. Then there were these big hunks of beef (think beef jerky) that were soaked in oil and spices to sort of rehydrate, and you pulled strips of the meat off the block with your teeth. I taught Solep some phrases in English. I spontaneously wrote a good poem. In town, I wrote some stuff for Udall, worked more on poems and went around with photos for a while. I met up with John and talked over lunch about what it is like to retire in Thailand. I snorkled off Sanom beach again (hoping to see the small shark) but it was very murky conditions because of the quite drastic tides from the nearly full moon so I didn’t see much of anything. I lay down on the beach to write, my first intentional exposure to the sun on the trip and suddenly I feel rain falling on me. I look up and there are no rain clouds, just whispy white smudges, but it keeps raining. Fine! I shout to the sky. I see, no sunbathing! And just then I look out at the water and a strange fruit is floating towards me in the surf. It’s a kind of lumpy rainbow pineapple. When I pick it up it looks very much like a pineapple, with brown wilting leaves at the top, but big fat sections that stick out like molars. The ends of the sections are yellow with brown dots, the middle parts are green and inside the crevices is bright red. The meat, where the skin was torn seemed papery and white like a… honey comb or sugar cane. The elements apparently say no sunbathing, but pineapple is O.K.
I went out for dinner and found a new place that is quite lovely. It just re-opened a few days ago. It is a bar/restaurant on the beach, made and decorated with driftwood and other beach found items. There are Pringal cans with lights in them along the celing, tree roots made to lanterns, walls made of glass bottles and cement (the nozzles sticking out). Everything it seems is made out of stumps, or drift wood, decoared, and covered with pillows. There are bottle caps mosaics on the pillars. The food is really really delicious (the best I’ve had on lipe) and cheap (before I got a discount), the guys who work there are friendly and kind. I interviewed one with long decorated dreadlocks, named Mut (moot), about the bar. It was a nice interview because it was (a. in english) and b. I got a few different answers that normal. For instance, he said
“I think that if everyone took… if you have your home and you take care in front your home, beside your home, that is enough. If you are thinking you want to help everything in the island, too much, because you cannot do by yourself alone. But if you have one home, your home, make nicer, make something clean, make a small tree, coconut tree, or something, you can do… I have some land too in the jungle and it grow up everytime when I go to the jungle. I put more tree like the lemon, the coconut, I grow chilis, pumpkin…put more jungle in the jungle…if everybody do, Lipe will be beautiful.”
Monday, June 28, 2010
"don't worry about the future"
28
Long day lots of rain. Took Photos. Met a Monk who was really keen on converting me which wasn’t so useful to my project, but he also had a really fitting sign hanging on the way to them temple that said “don’t worry about the future”. Spent half a day writing two awful poems before I could get out a good one. Read up on the history of the Urak Lawoi. Chatted with Pi Jaeng, who smiles so convincingly in his eyes and so often I can’t help but to really enjoy his company. Met some more tourists, a Russian and American couple (Marcus and Marsha), who may be snorkeling/diving companions in the future. Heard, from a Thai woman named Soy, about her trip to Belgium and culture shock that hilariously resonated (sometimes as opposites) to my experiences. “I couldn’t figure out how to get off the plane. its your first time flying and everything is so different, and scary. I looked out the window once we landed and it was very tall to go down. There were so many different ways to go, for bag, for pet, for getting plants, the airport was huge. I saw someone else with black hair (an asian person) and followed them… and in Belgium I couldn’t sleep it was very cold! I wore double everything, double pants, double socks”. I feel some of the novelty shock is giving way to let in a little more of the lonely, but I’m still doing really well overall.
Long day lots of rain. Took Photos. Met a Monk who was really keen on converting me which wasn’t so useful to my project, but he also had a really fitting sign hanging on the way to them temple that said “don’t worry about the future”. Spent half a day writing two awful poems before I could get out a good one. Read up on the history of the Urak Lawoi. Chatted with Pi Jaeng, who smiles so convincingly in his eyes and so often I can’t help but to really enjoy his company. Met some more tourists, a Russian and American couple (Marcus and Marsha), who may be snorkeling/diving companions in the future. Heard, from a Thai woman named Soy, about her trip to Belgium and culture shock that hilariously resonated (sometimes as opposites) to my experiences. “I couldn’t figure out how to get off the plane. its your first time flying and everything is so different, and scary. I looked out the window once we landed and it was very tall to go down. There were so many different ways to go, for bag, for pet, for getting plants, the airport was huge. I saw someone else with black hair (an asian person) and followed them… and in Belgium I couldn’t sleep it was very cold! I wore double everything, double pants, double socks”. I feel some of the novelty shock is giving way to let in a little more of the lonely, but I’m still doing really well overall.
schools of thumbnail sized yellow fish
27th
Today I did two more snorkeling trips. First was out at the other point of the big bay that my beach is right next to. I was surprised, there was actually a lot of good coral there. There were big rocks cascading down into the water too, which I always enjoy. I saw the biggest fish so far – I’m guessing about a meter long! (maybe three quarters) and it looked like a puffer fish! (I’d love to see him expand). I don’t know if it was actually a box fish (same body shape). It was spotted kind of like a green leopard. I took a picture with my underwater camera. I kept getting “sea turtled” on the dive, aka, startling myself my mistaking floating pastic wrappers for jelly fish. This was probably made worse by the fact that the water was littered like a mine field with tiny invisible shreds of dead jellyfish. When you swam into one, ZAP! If it got you on the ankle, or ear, or lip, it hurt! (but only for a minute or so). The other really note worthy thing, was I saw an Urak Lawoi fishing trap. It was about the size of… a bathtub? It was like a cylinder with one flat side: the arches made of bent “rattan” vine and with rope netting. It was quite far down, just off a point of rocks, sitting on a sandy patch on the bottom amid boulders and coral heads. Inside were half a dozen large brown and white reef fish, and one giant black parrot fish. They turned this way and that, nudging at the netting. I remembered my professor for ISDSI when I came here last time said the biggest fish are the best breeders, so the most important for the population so it’s hard on the ecology because we tend to go for the biggest. On the other hand, it was really cool to see this traditional form of fishing and trap (hand made) from mostly local materials. I dived down several times, until my ears wouldn’t clear properly anymore. I found I get about a dozen or so free dives per snorkeling event before my right ear starts hurting and refusing to clear. I liked the idea of showing this integration of the reef, the fishing pressure, the local culture, and tried to take some photos (no clue if any will turn out). Then I realized the camera I was using had taken in a little salt water, maybe it wasn’t built to work at depth….
I took a nap in a hammock, in the shade, on the beach. I ate two of the best mangos of my life. I felt a little lonely. I went snorkeling on the other side of the island in the afternoon. Apparently, the Urak Lawoi little kids just had an english lesson because on my way to the reef I passed a bunch -- waving from a beached boat, and the boughs of a fallen tree-- they shouted, giggling, “hello, goodbye, hello hello, hello goodbye, goodbye, hello”.
I decide to check out shark rock. There was some staghorn coral that wasn’t bleached there, which was nice to see. It was windy, so the current was pretty fast, and the water pretty shallow, so I didn’t go around shark rock (but soon!). I floated through clouds of fingernail sized yellow fish (Sergeant angels). I watched crabs scuttle over barnacles on above water in the rocky coves of a small island, while sea cucumbers munched on the sand below. On the way back I chased a massive herd of grey parrot fish, devouring the coral with their chom chom chom / Squeek Squekk like ice snapping, or puppies in tennis shoes on a gym floor.
Today I did two more snorkeling trips. First was out at the other point of the big bay that my beach is right next to. I was surprised, there was actually a lot of good coral there. There were big rocks cascading down into the water too, which I always enjoy. I saw the biggest fish so far – I’m guessing about a meter long! (maybe three quarters) and it looked like a puffer fish! (I’d love to see him expand). I don’t know if it was actually a box fish (same body shape). It was spotted kind of like a green leopard. I took a picture with my underwater camera. I kept getting “sea turtled” on the dive, aka, startling myself my mistaking floating pastic wrappers for jelly fish. This was probably made worse by the fact that the water was littered like a mine field with tiny invisible shreds of dead jellyfish. When you swam into one, ZAP! If it got you on the ankle, or ear, or lip, it hurt! (but only for a minute or so). The other really note worthy thing, was I saw an Urak Lawoi fishing trap. It was about the size of… a bathtub? It was like a cylinder with one flat side: the arches made of bent “rattan” vine and with rope netting. It was quite far down, just off a point of rocks, sitting on a sandy patch on the bottom amid boulders and coral heads. Inside were half a dozen large brown and white reef fish, and one giant black parrot fish. They turned this way and that, nudging at the netting. I remembered my professor for ISDSI when I came here last time said the biggest fish are the best breeders, so the most important for the population so it’s hard on the ecology because we tend to go for the biggest. On the other hand, it was really cool to see this traditional form of fishing and trap (hand made) from mostly local materials. I dived down several times, until my ears wouldn’t clear properly anymore. I found I get about a dozen or so free dives per snorkeling event before my right ear starts hurting and refusing to clear. I liked the idea of showing this integration of the reef, the fishing pressure, the local culture, and tried to take some photos (no clue if any will turn out). Then I realized the camera I was using had taken in a little salt water, maybe it wasn’t built to work at depth….
I took a nap in a hammock, in the shade, on the beach. I ate two of the best mangos of my life. I felt a little lonely. I went snorkeling on the other side of the island in the afternoon. Apparently, the Urak Lawoi little kids just had an english lesson because on my way to the reef I passed a bunch -- waving from a beached boat, and the boughs of a fallen tree-- they shouted, giggling, “hello, goodbye, hello hello, hello goodbye, goodbye, hello”.
I decide to check out shark rock. There was some staghorn coral that wasn’t bleached there, which was nice to see. It was windy, so the current was pretty fast, and the water pretty shallow, so I didn’t go around shark rock (but soon!). I floated through clouds of fingernail sized yellow fish (Sergeant angels). I watched crabs scuttle over barnacles on above water in the rocky coves of a small island, while sea cucumbers munched on the sand below. On the way back I chased a massive herd of grey parrot fish, devouring the coral with their chom chom chom / Squeek Squekk like ice snapping, or puppies in tennis shoes on a gym floor.
Moonlight Marching
26
Man so exhausted. So I did more interviews today. Met and talked with Bee and Darius some more, (they gave me some good leads about who to go for interviewing / friending in the Urak Lawoi village). Then I went into town with the intention of interviewing the smoothie couple and Pi Pooh, but met this woman named Pi Tasha. We made friends and started talking about ways to improve the island, and the issues I’m studying, and ended up planning a volunteer day to lead by example of –doing something- about the env. on the island and not just talking and talking about it, which she says is all that ever happens. Then she invited me to make dinner with her and made Farang food (which apparently other Thai’s don’t appreciate) absolutely phenomenal salad, chicken and pesto olive pasta. We spoke pretty late into the evening. Then a line of soldiers. Yup soldiers. Walked by (one corner of Lipe is a military base) and they were all wearing leather boots, camo, carrying big guns, and had the most ridiculous hard hats covered with plastic branches and leaves like crazy bobbing green feathers. They were friendly enough from a march and smiled and waved a little when we waved. And Pi Tasha pushed me out into the line so they would walk me part of the way home, so I walked along with them, people saluting and laughing from the side of the road. They walked out of Walking Street and onto the beach in a line and the tide was way out so the beach was wide, and it was a full moon, and the resorts lights were dancing in a haze far away, and it was quite a sight – the soldiers (with guns and cammo and their hats) marching along onto the beach and into the moonlight.
Good quote from the day: the reef is everything for this island. People just coming for the beach? No. there are many many beaches in Thailand and we are pretty remote to come just for the beach…. And if the reefs die, the kind of people will change. The kind who come for the nature and the reef, they are more polite, more respectful, they will care about protecting Lipe’s nature. They aren’t the kind who get drunk in the street. If the people change, Lipe will be more dangerous, especially at night, like Phi Phi or Phuket.
Man so exhausted. So I did more interviews today. Met and talked with Bee and Darius some more, (they gave me some good leads about who to go for interviewing / friending in the Urak Lawoi village). Then I went into town with the intention of interviewing the smoothie couple and Pi Pooh, but met this woman named Pi Tasha. We made friends and started talking about ways to improve the island, and the issues I’m studying, and ended up planning a volunteer day to lead by example of –doing something- about the env. on the island and not just talking and talking about it, which she says is all that ever happens. Then she invited me to make dinner with her and made Farang food (which apparently other Thai’s don’t appreciate) absolutely phenomenal salad, chicken and pesto olive pasta. We spoke pretty late into the evening. Then a line of soldiers. Yup soldiers. Walked by (one corner of Lipe is a military base) and they were all wearing leather boots, camo, carrying big guns, and had the most ridiculous hard hats covered with plastic branches and leaves like crazy bobbing green feathers. They were friendly enough from a march and smiled and waved a little when we waved. And Pi Tasha pushed me out into the line so they would walk me part of the way home, so I walked along with them, people saluting and laughing from the side of the road. They walked out of Walking Street and onto the beach in a line and the tide was way out so the beach was wide, and it was a full moon, and the resorts lights were dancing in a haze far away, and it was quite a sight – the soldiers (with guns and cammo and their hats) marching along onto the beach and into the moonlight.
Good quote from the day: the reef is everything for this island. People just coming for the beach? No. there are many many beaches in Thailand and we are pretty remote to come just for the beach…. And if the reefs die, the kind of people will change. The kind who come for the nature and the reef, they are more polite, more respectful, they will care about protecting Lipe’s nature. They aren’t the kind who get drunk in the street. If the people change, Lipe will be more dangerous, especially at night, like Phi Phi or Phuket.
Rough Day
June 24 (day of darisu and bee dinner, forgot to copy)
During the day I did more interviews of shop owners along Lipe’s walking street. I attempted my first interviews int eh Urak Lawoi village, but unlike the shop owners who seemed fascinated and eager to be interviewed, the four villagers I asked declined or drifted shyly away. The forth, was unemployed and in quite a rough time and talked to me for a while. It turns out she wasn’t originally Chow Lay and came from Phuket some years ago. Although I’m not sure I caught everything she was saying, it was a very interesting (and different) interview from so far. I read up on coral bleaching, as well.
June 25th
Uhhh. I just saw some men talking on the porch or Sanom café and I thought Pi Jaeng might be there so I wandered down, but it was Solep, Ewwehwim, and a bunch of their (I’m assuming) Burmese worker friends. I chatted for a second, but I wasn’t up to getting started at more today, and I went back to collapse in my Bungalow.
Today has been rough. The electic cut out last night, so I couldn’t finish my Participant Observation/recording/journaling for the night, and when I checked the time it was almost one anyway. When my alarm work me at 5:30 for my run, it was pouring. I slept till 8. I ran at 8:30-9. It was really difficult because of the heat, (even though it was still raining) and I felt I couldn’t get enough air. I went to town and had, a remarkably great breakfast of Tom Kra Kai. But as I was waiting for breakfast to arrive, I realized my stomach didn’t feel so great. Once I finished breakfast and journaling and uploading it was already 11:00. I went out to take photos – something I havn’t done much so far so I decided to take time for it. I encountered the lovely “smoothie shop couple” who we interviewed last year and who were excited to be interviewed this evening. Pi Pooh agreed to be interviewed in the afternoon. The people with the store with fruits and veg by the Urak Lawoi village were also welcoming and happy to be photographed. They also came to the island about a year ago. I ventured into the Urak lawoi village.
A bunch of women and girls were gathered around the first house. They were seated on a big wooden porch/area. The were pouring and packing fish sauce, “orange water”, red pepper, and sugar, (the toppings for noodles here) into little plastic bags, cutting soaked chicken feet with a meat cleaver, and boiling broth and water. I introduced myself. Only a few would look my way. No one acknowledged me, exactly. I explained, in two sentences, my research. I asked if I could take pictures of them making the soup. One woman said “yes”. I asked the girl nearest me, if I could take her picture and the woman who said yes said “ty lurry!” which means like …” Go ahead and take them!” maybe with the subscript (don’t keep asking us!). I took a bunch of pictures. A bunch of men were sitting playing cards and drinking whisky across the street. One man with half a bottle of Red Label came over and started talking to me. He was slurring; he wanted me to take his picture with one of the girls in the picture, too. She was clearly not amused and would get up and move away. He’d follow, sloshing behind her. I tired to engage the women and ignore the drunk man. They asked if I wanted a bowl of the soup. I didn’t really, but I said yes. It was noodle with “chicken insides”. Normally, I’ll all for food adventures and i've eaten intestines before, but the intestines looked like (please excused the description) fatty wrinkled butt holes. I ate the pieces of liver. The broth was really good. The man said, “if you don’t eat everything its not delicious.” I looked at the soup. I thought if I ate the butt holes I might hurl onto the woman next to me, and I decided that would be markedly more insulting that not finishing.
Yesterday, I tried the tactic of walking up and asking to interview right away/looking for somebody who wanted to be interviewed. That didn’t work so well. Today I tried the tactic to hang out with a group for a long time, chat, try to integrate, try to give a causual context, wait for an opportunity for someone to open up a little, or an opportunity to talk to someone. Giving it only one afternoon, this didn’t work either. (I heard that the researcher who originally came here (6 years ago?) stood around in the village not being accepted for like, a year, (maybe half?) before people started talking to her. Ahhhhhhh! After my expeience of today, I am…. In awe… I felt quite awkward. I’d ask the women questions every so often. If the questions were simple, once in a while they would answer. Slowly as the women finished whatever they were doing, then left.
Eventually, it was just me and the main noodle soup maker. She was chopping pieces of chicken into smaller pieces. When I write “pieces of chicken” I think of the sytrofoam platters of breasts they have in Meijer. This chicken came in a big yellow bowl, rimmed in flies. It was still covered in the pimply skin. It had little toe nail claws. This didn’t surprise me in anyway, but it struck me vividly. The man came back over. At two plus hours in, I was eager for anyone to talk to me. He flipped through my notebook, trying to read where I had words written in Thai to aid my correct pronunciation of the vowels. I started talking to him. (He seemed much more coherent now). He began giving the same set of answers I have been getting from each shop owner. It turns out he is also not Chow Lay. He arrived three months ago. He is working on the trash problem, from what I could gather as the collector and the person who sells the trash – so he’s the one who has taken over the position Pi Pooh used to have?
== long tangent about waste management, only read if you’re interested ===
Background: Pi Pooh got together a group of buiseness owners and created this system of dealing with the waste where every business pays in based on their size. Then the trash is collected, sorted, and boats come to carry it off the island. There were lots of cool side projects like ducks to eat the food waste (although most of them died, choked on little pieces of plastic), and the recycling would be sold as a bonus for the sorters who had to pick through it all, or used to offset the costs of hiring boats to take the trash away. It was called Rahk Lipe. Which was cleaver because it Rahk can be read as both “love” and “protect”. It had some harships, like many resorts were not paying their dues, but it was also working pretty dang well (especially compared to burying the trash!). As every person I’ve interviewed, then and now, has listed trash as the number one envionrmental problem on the island, there was clearly a public motion to support it. ‘Some people thought I was making a lot of money with the program,’ Pooh said, ‘but I was loosing money.’ It was also a stressful job, because people were always complaining, about dues, or rubbish.
When I arrived with ISDSI last year, my sub-group studied waste management on the island. As I seem to have a knack for doing, we arrived at a pivotal point for that issue too. While we were there, Pi Pooh was handing the whole operation over the district government. I believe I thought this was a success. I might have written something in my final paper like “this shows how and bottom up approach to solving environment problems, and bringing people together around a common cause, can be institutionalized into an established system”. I can’t remember, or it was unclear why, but the program was sort of shrinking in size the week we arrived. Where there had been about 15 employees, then there was 11. Today, (as far as I could understand) Mah Goh, the man I interviewed said he worked alone, and then said there were 3 others who helped separate the garbage. I haven’t seen the name Rahk Lipe, anywhere. Maybe because it is low season, and people aren’t bothering to clean, but the island is much much dirtier. Trash is all along the street and the beach. Why would the government say it wanted to take over the operation, and then drop it?
(I’ve since been told, this never happened, rahk lipe is still going, still doing the trash collection, and just ran out of money during the low season when everybody left / pi pooh resigned from being the person who goes around getting yelled at and trying to collect money so he could focus on his own business. And by a different source, a different story. (what I keep thinking should be a simple matter is turning out quite controversial… government, money, garbage, drama!)
== tangent ends==
When I thought i might pass out from the exhaustion of being ignored, I thanked Mah Goh, for his interview and left. I bought a smoothie and tired to recuperate. That’s when I realized my stomach had really gone sour. It felt like someone was twisting around in there with a stick. I thought of the twenty minute walk home and was … overwhelmed. I had an interview in a few hours, here. I walked home. I lay down on the beach in the shade. I went to my bungalow and slept through both the interviews I was suppose to have, and to 7, when I had said I’d meet John and the girls to watch soccer. I got up and ate a granola bar for dinner. When I went to go talk to Solep and his friends all stared at me, I decided that was enough of that and called it a night.
P.S. The sea is beautiful. I’m really glad I’m staying here a little more than a month. It might take a while to get interviews in the village!
During the day I did more interviews of shop owners along Lipe’s walking street. I attempted my first interviews int eh Urak Lawoi village, but unlike the shop owners who seemed fascinated and eager to be interviewed, the four villagers I asked declined or drifted shyly away. The forth, was unemployed and in quite a rough time and talked to me for a while. It turns out she wasn’t originally Chow Lay and came from Phuket some years ago. Although I’m not sure I caught everything she was saying, it was a very interesting (and different) interview from so far. I read up on coral bleaching, as well.
June 25th
Uhhh. I just saw some men talking on the porch or Sanom café and I thought Pi Jaeng might be there so I wandered down, but it was Solep, Ewwehwim, and a bunch of their (I’m assuming) Burmese worker friends. I chatted for a second, but I wasn’t up to getting started at more today, and I went back to collapse in my Bungalow.
Today has been rough. The electic cut out last night, so I couldn’t finish my Participant Observation/recording/journaling for the night, and when I checked the time it was almost one anyway. When my alarm work me at 5:30 for my run, it was pouring. I slept till 8. I ran at 8:30-9. It was really difficult because of the heat, (even though it was still raining) and I felt I couldn’t get enough air. I went to town and had, a remarkably great breakfast of Tom Kra Kai. But as I was waiting for breakfast to arrive, I realized my stomach didn’t feel so great. Once I finished breakfast and journaling and uploading it was already 11:00. I went out to take photos – something I havn’t done much so far so I decided to take time for it. I encountered the lovely “smoothie shop couple” who we interviewed last year and who were excited to be interviewed this evening. Pi Pooh agreed to be interviewed in the afternoon. The people with the store with fruits and veg by the Urak Lawoi village were also welcoming and happy to be photographed. They also came to the island about a year ago. I ventured into the Urak lawoi village.
A bunch of women and girls were gathered around the first house. They were seated on a big wooden porch/area. The were pouring and packing fish sauce, “orange water”, red pepper, and sugar, (the toppings for noodles here) into little plastic bags, cutting soaked chicken feet with a meat cleaver, and boiling broth and water. I introduced myself. Only a few would look my way. No one acknowledged me, exactly. I explained, in two sentences, my research. I asked if I could take pictures of them making the soup. One woman said “yes”. I asked the girl nearest me, if I could take her picture and the woman who said yes said “ty lurry!” which means like …” Go ahead and take them!” maybe with the subscript (don’t keep asking us!). I took a bunch of pictures. A bunch of men were sitting playing cards and drinking whisky across the street. One man with half a bottle of Red Label came over and started talking to me. He was slurring; he wanted me to take his picture with one of the girls in the picture, too. She was clearly not amused and would get up and move away. He’d follow, sloshing behind her. I tired to engage the women and ignore the drunk man. They asked if I wanted a bowl of the soup. I didn’t really, but I said yes. It was noodle with “chicken insides”. Normally, I’ll all for food adventures and i've eaten intestines before, but the intestines looked like (please excused the description) fatty wrinkled butt holes. I ate the pieces of liver. The broth was really good. The man said, “if you don’t eat everything its not delicious.” I looked at the soup. I thought if I ate the butt holes I might hurl onto the woman next to me, and I decided that would be markedly more insulting that not finishing.
Yesterday, I tried the tactic of walking up and asking to interview right away/looking for somebody who wanted to be interviewed. That didn’t work so well. Today I tried the tactic to hang out with a group for a long time, chat, try to integrate, try to give a causual context, wait for an opportunity for someone to open up a little, or an opportunity to talk to someone. Giving it only one afternoon, this didn’t work either. (I heard that the researcher who originally came here (6 years ago?) stood around in the village not being accepted for like, a year, (maybe half?) before people started talking to her. Ahhhhhhh! After my expeience of today, I am…. In awe… I felt quite awkward. I’d ask the women questions every so often. If the questions were simple, once in a while they would answer. Slowly as the women finished whatever they were doing, then left.
Eventually, it was just me and the main noodle soup maker. She was chopping pieces of chicken into smaller pieces. When I write “pieces of chicken” I think of the sytrofoam platters of breasts they have in Meijer. This chicken came in a big yellow bowl, rimmed in flies. It was still covered in the pimply skin. It had little toe nail claws. This didn’t surprise me in anyway, but it struck me vividly. The man came back over. At two plus hours in, I was eager for anyone to talk to me. He flipped through my notebook, trying to read where I had words written in Thai to aid my correct pronunciation of the vowels. I started talking to him. (He seemed much more coherent now). He began giving the same set of answers I have been getting from each shop owner. It turns out he is also not Chow Lay. He arrived three months ago. He is working on the trash problem, from what I could gather as the collector and the person who sells the trash – so he’s the one who has taken over the position Pi Pooh used to have?
== long tangent about waste management, only read if you’re interested ===
Background: Pi Pooh got together a group of buiseness owners and created this system of dealing with the waste where every business pays in based on their size. Then the trash is collected, sorted, and boats come to carry it off the island. There were lots of cool side projects like ducks to eat the food waste (although most of them died, choked on little pieces of plastic), and the recycling would be sold as a bonus for the sorters who had to pick through it all, or used to offset the costs of hiring boats to take the trash away. It was called Rahk Lipe. Which was cleaver because it Rahk can be read as both “love” and “protect”. It had some harships, like many resorts were not paying their dues, but it was also working pretty dang well (especially compared to burying the trash!). As every person I’ve interviewed, then and now, has listed trash as the number one envionrmental problem on the island, there was clearly a public motion to support it. ‘Some people thought I was making a lot of money with the program,’ Pooh said, ‘but I was loosing money.’ It was also a stressful job, because people were always complaining, about dues, or rubbish.
When I arrived with ISDSI last year, my sub-group studied waste management on the island. As I seem to have a knack for doing, we arrived at a pivotal point for that issue too. While we were there, Pi Pooh was handing the whole operation over the district government. I believe I thought this was a success. I might have written something in my final paper like “this shows how and bottom up approach to solving environment problems, and bringing people together around a common cause, can be institutionalized into an established system”. I can’t remember, or it was unclear why, but the program was sort of shrinking in size the week we arrived. Where there had been about 15 employees, then there was 11. Today, (as far as I could understand) Mah Goh, the man I interviewed said he worked alone, and then said there were 3 others who helped separate the garbage. I haven’t seen the name Rahk Lipe, anywhere. Maybe because it is low season, and people aren’t bothering to clean, but the island is much much dirtier. Trash is all along the street and the beach. Why would the government say it wanted to take over the operation, and then drop it?
(I’ve since been told, this never happened, rahk lipe is still going, still doing the trash collection, and just ran out of money during the low season when everybody left / pi pooh resigned from being the person who goes around getting yelled at and trying to collect money so he could focus on his own business. And by a different source, a different story. (what I keep thinking should be a simple matter is turning out quite controversial… government, money, garbage, drama!)
== tangent ends==
When I thought i might pass out from the exhaustion of being ignored, I thanked Mah Goh, for his interview and left. I bought a smoothie and tired to recuperate. That’s when I realized my stomach had really gone sour. It felt like someone was twisting around in there with a stick. I thought of the twenty minute walk home and was … overwhelmed. I had an interview in a few hours, here. I walked home. I lay down on the beach in the shade. I went to my bungalow and slept through both the interviews I was suppose to have, and to 7, when I had said I’d meet John and the girls to watch soccer. I got up and ate a granola bar for dinner. When I went to go talk to Solep and his friends all stared at me, I decided that was enough of that and called it a night.
P.S. The sea is beautiful. I’m really glad I’m staying here a little more than a month. It might take a while to get interviews in the village!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
You could swim to it
I just got back from a long dinner with new friends: John the recently retired engineer from Australia, who has been living on Lipe for the last four months. Two charming sweedish sisters (names coming when I remember them) one 29 a nurse, one 17. And Darius a European Farang married to Bee, and mainlander from near Lipe. Darius and Bee own a beech side coffee shop/bungalow/restaurant place where we all just met to have pizza and salad dinner. It was a phenomenal evening. Darius and Bee are –full- of stoires of Lipe over the last seven years.
One story was about when the Tsunami came in 2004. Lipe (named after the local word Nipe, which means flat) is an extremely flat island, especially when compared to its neighbors Adang and Rawi. Luckily, the Tsunami didn’t hit hard here. Darius and Bee’s neighbors saw it happen. They ocean, the neighbors said, came in and out, in and out, very very fast. They were (smoking hooka) watching the Farang one second swimming in the bay, the next second flopping on the sand. The fish too, and all the coral were exposed, and the fish, suddenly out of water were flopping and flopping, dancing and dancing, until the water came back in. On the other side of the island, both from Adang and from Lipe, they watched the water pull out from the channel between the islands, and all the fish were flopping and shimmering, and the coral heads revealed, and then the wave passed between the islands and from the perspective of each shore, the people on Adang thought ‘lipe must be gone” and the people on lipe thought “adang is gone higher than the coconut trees on the shore” and the wave just went straight through and both sides were just fine. On one island, not far from here, some fishermen and an old man were on the beach. The old man saw that suddenly the longtail boat was sitting on the sand, and he knew the tide does not go out in five minutes (he didn’t know anything about Tsunamis, but knew something was wrong) and he told the otherman, and they went the only way they could, which was up the mountain side. Then the wave came and carried the longtail boat all the way into the forest and left it there, where it still is today. You can go an see it resting in the jungle.
A sadder topic was the history of the Chow Lay ocean people on the island (the Urak Lawoi). How they used to own the land, and could make a fortune off of it, but they sold and sold it, and now their own village is sitting on rented land. Darius and Bee talked about how they used to rent their land from a Chow Lay. It was a great deal for him, every year they paid rent and when the contract expired he would get everything, all the infrastructure, the customers, the business. For seven years they explained this to him, and did this contract, but then at the beginning of this season he decided he wanted to sell. He wanted to buy a motorcycle. They said they tried to convince him that this was not a good idea, but that he only wanted to sell. It’s like many of the chow lay have never learned to think in the long term, they cannot see the consequences of their actions over time. It complicated by the fact that the land (once owned by grandparents) now has ownership split between many grandchildren, so if more than half want to sell, it usually gets sold even if a few have tired to build something or go somewhere with the land. John talked about seeing on the island, tin roofed wobbly shacks -- with amazing sound systems in them. The music coming out of the little hut would be fabulous, and he could see the colorful lights flashing between the cracks in the walls. Darius talked about how seven years ago “the chow lay village used to be well kept, clean, and beautiful, when it was their own land. But now they just throw things on the ground, since it is not their land,” he said, “what do they care.’ I asked if the new influx of packaged goods was part of it too. “yeah,’ he said “for sure”. He said, “they know their done for, they just drink themselves away from it all. They’ve got no land. Their running out of the money they made from selling the land. The water is running out of fish. A man, 23 years old, died last year on the walking street road. He drank himself to death on white whiskey (whiskey cheaper than beer).” I mentioned how we heard last time I was here that some chow lay, having sold their land on Lipe, want more land and bigger villages inside the national park. The national park doesn’t want to give it. The chow lay have no where to go. Many are just squatting on the land they already sold, until the developers move in and want to build another bungalow there.
We talked about what people want, and what they think they want, and how everyone has a right to choose. I said how some of my experiences in Thailand make me question if people (the world over) actually know what will make them happy. “When it comes down to it, though. We choose what we want. If these people want a motorcycle, if that is what is important to them, they have the right to that” said Darius. To me it looked like the Urak Lawoi, coming from a life style of being able to take what ever they needed from the sea whenever they needed it, hadn’t learned long term judgment.(I think Jaeng might have said something like this 6 months ago). I kept thinking of kids, getting a huge sum of inheritance and not knowing what to buy with it. This isn’t to say every Urak Lawoi person sold their land for a motorcycle – several have made successful business, or rent their land. “Pi Jaeng,” (who owns the bungalows I’m staying at) I said, “seems to be doing really well with his land. He is always working on the bungalows when I’m around. He seems to have a lot of perspective on the situation of the Urak Lawoi on the island.”
“Yes” agreed Darius. “He is a smart, a hard worker, and doing well. But he was very lucky. Everything he built he could build because the money to start was a gift.”
“Really?” I say.
“Have you seen the big house on the hill behind the resort?” asked Bee. “That guy gave Coon Jaeng the money to build what he built. Well, it was a trade more than a gift. Jaeng gave him the land to build his house on. The “contract” was done in this house. Since Darius could speak Swedish with the house builder, and Thai with Jaeng.” Darius added, “Once he got the money, Jaeng had to work hard too. He only had money, but no one to help him put in the nails.”
Yet another facet of the issue is the availability of extremely cheep Burmese labor. “there are a thousand Burmese on the island right now’ said Bee. ‘That’s an exaggeration. But they are easily the biggest group here. They have no papers, no passport. They work for nothing, 200 Bhat, 300 Bhat a day. They eat one meal and work all day. They’re good workers, and they’re strong too. They don’t get drunk at work.” She listed basically every big resort on the island, “They all have many Burmese workers.”
We talked about the trawlers, the lines of bright lights on the horizon. They shine extremely bright floodlights into the sea to attract the schools of fish. When they see on the radar there are enough fish (say 10,000 kilo) a huge fishing boat comes in and puts a net around them all and takes them all away. Tah Lay Mohd. (the sea is empty). The national park says nothing. “they have money in their mouths. They require a 200 Bhat fee for the national park, but they don’t do their job. The money just goes into their pockets. They don’t get paid very much, and if its not enough to feed your family what are you going to do?” (Who wants to be posted way out here in the middle of nowhere?) The rule is not fishing within 10 kilomoters of the park. When we interviewed them last season, the park claimed the enforced the law and that it was 3 kilometers away. I say, I once saw floating lights set up for this kind of fishing in the narrow channel between Ko Lipe and Adang. “oh!” says Daruis “That’s nothing. They were off that point right there two nights ago. Right off your Sanom bungalows (the bungalows I’m staying at). The huge fishing boat came right in to the point. You could have swum to it.”
Besides the trawlers, I was very happy to hear what Darius said about sea life. “There’s all kinds of sea life here. Black tip sharks, nurse sharks, manta rays, eagle rays, rock fish, (and many more I can remember). There is less now, but you can still find them.” He told us where we could find sharks off Lipe, behind a certain rock, if you came at it from behind in a certain way (so as not to scare them off). They are about 10 kilos, he measured about a meter with his hands. Black tips. They’re not dangerous. They just swim away. Once a man said he had them swim two times around him, then they swam off.” Apparently my face was revealing my excitement. John laughed and noted I was “itching to go”. He said he’d go with me to see them sometime, he knew the place Darious was talking about. I can’t wait!
My friends walked me home along the beach, since it was late. They laughed as I showed them the way to Sanom beach – you get to the end of Pattaya beach and then clamber onto these big rocks. You can’t see the path at first, it just looks like climbing onto rocks. Then there is a walkway made of bamboo poles nailed together that leads over the rocks and around the corner to Sanom Resorts, with it’s small private beach. Since it’s high tide with a full moon, the waves sometimes come sloshing right over the rocks and under the path. It seemed completely normal to me, until I saw how surprised everyone way. Wow, they said, this is really adventurous! I guess it does feel a little like being a lost boy, coming home to my treefort-bungalow every night.
One story was about when the Tsunami came in 2004. Lipe (named after the local word Nipe, which means flat) is an extremely flat island, especially when compared to its neighbors Adang and Rawi. Luckily, the Tsunami didn’t hit hard here. Darius and Bee’s neighbors saw it happen. They ocean, the neighbors said, came in and out, in and out, very very fast. They were (smoking hooka) watching the Farang one second swimming in the bay, the next second flopping on the sand. The fish too, and all the coral were exposed, and the fish, suddenly out of water were flopping and flopping, dancing and dancing, until the water came back in. On the other side of the island, both from Adang and from Lipe, they watched the water pull out from the channel between the islands, and all the fish were flopping and shimmering, and the coral heads revealed, and then the wave passed between the islands and from the perspective of each shore, the people on Adang thought ‘lipe must be gone” and the people on lipe thought “adang is gone higher than the coconut trees on the shore” and the wave just went straight through and both sides were just fine. On one island, not far from here, some fishermen and an old man were on the beach. The old man saw that suddenly the longtail boat was sitting on the sand, and he knew the tide does not go out in five minutes (he didn’t know anything about Tsunamis, but knew something was wrong) and he told the otherman, and they went the only way they could, which was up the mountain side. Then the wave came and carried the longtail boat all the way into the forest and left it there, where it still is today. You can go an see it resting in the jungle.
A sadder topic was the history of the Chow Lay ocean people on the island (the Urak Lawoi). How they used to own the land, and could make a fortune off of it, but they sold and sold it, and now their own village is sitting on rented land. Darius and Bee talked about how they used to rent their land from a Chow Lay. It was a great deal for him, every year they paid rent and when the contract expired he would get everything, all the infrastructure, the customers, the business. For seven years they explained this to him, and did this contract, but then at the beginning of this season he decided he wanted to sell. He wanted to buy a motorcycle. They said they tried to convince him that this was not a good idea, but that he only wanted to sell. It’s like many of the chow lay have never learned to think in the long term, they cannot see the consequences of their actions over time. It complicated by the fact that the land (once owned by grandparents) now has ownership split between many grandchildren, so if more than half want to sell, it usually gets sold even if a few have tired to build something or go somewhere with the land. John talked about seeing on the island, tin roofed wobbly shacks -- with amazing sound systems in them. The music coming out of the little hut would be fabulous, and he could see the colorful lights flashing between the cracks in the walls. Darius talked about how seven years ago “the chow lay village used to be well kept, clean, and beautiful, when it was their own land. But now they just throw things on the ground, since it is not their land,” he said, “what do they care.’ I asked if the new influx of packaged goods was part of it too. “yeah,’ he said “for sure”. He said, “they know their done for, they just drink themselves away from it all. They’ve got no land. Their running out of the money they made from selling the land. The water is running out of fish. A man, 23 years old, died last year on the walking street road. He drank himself to death on white whiskey (whiskey cheaper than beer).” I mentioned how we heard last time I was here that some chow lay, having sold their land on Lipe, want more land and bigger villages inside the national park. The national park doesn’t want to give it. The chow lay have no where to go. Many are just squatting on the land they already sold, until the developers move in and want to build another bungalow there.
We talked about what people want, and what they think they want, and how everyone has a right to choose. I said how some of my experiences in Thailand make me question if people (the world over) actually know what will make them happy. “When it comes down to it, though. We choose what we want. If these people want a motorcycle, if that is what is important to them, they have the right to that” said Darius. To me it looked like the Urak Lawoi, coming from a life style of being able to take what ever they needed from the sea whenever they needed it, hadn’t learned long term judgment.(I think Jaeng might have said something like this 6 months ago). I kept thinking of kids, getting a huge sum of inheritance and not knowing what to buy with it. This isn’t to say every Urak Lawoi person sold their land for a motorcycle – several have made successful business, or rent their land. “Pi Jaeng,” (who owns the bungalows I’m staying at) I said, “seems to be doing really well with his land. He is always working on the bungalows when I’m around. He seems to have a lot of perspective on the situation of the Urak Lawoi on the island.”
“Yes” agreed Darius. “He is a smart, a hard worker, and doing well. But he was very lucky. Everything he built he could build because the money to start was a gift.”
“Really?” I say.
“Have you seen the big house on the hill behind the resort?” asked Bee. “That guy gave Coon Jaeng the money to build what he built. Well, it was a trade more than a gift. Jaeng gave him the land to build his house on. The “contract” was done in this house. Since Darius could speak Swedish with the house builder, and Thai with Jaeng.” Darius added, “Once he got the money, Jaeng had to work hard too. He only had money, but no one to help him put in the nails.”
Yet another facet of the issue is the availability of extremely cheep Burmese labor. “there are a thousand Burmese on the island right now’ said Bee. ‘That’s an exaggeration. But they are easily the biggest group here. They have no papers, no passport. They work for nothing, 200 Bhat, 300 Bhat a day. They eat one meal and work all day. They’re good workers, and they’re strong too. They don’t get drunk at work.” She listed basically every big resort on the island, “They all have many Burmese workers.”
We talked about the trawlers, the lines of bright lights on the horizon. They shine extremely bright floodlights into the sea to attract the schools of fish. When they see on the radar there are enough fish (say 10,000 kilo) a huge fishing boat comes in and puts a net around them all and takes them all away. Tah Lay Mohd. (the sea is empty). The national park says nothing. “they have money in their mouths. They require a 200 Bhat fee for the national park, but they don’t do their job. The money just goes into their pockets. They don’t get paid very much, and if its not enough to feed your family what are you going to do?” (Who wants to be posted way out here in the middle of nowhere?) The rule is not fishing within 10 kilomoters of the park. When we interviewed them last season, the park claimed the enforced the law and that it was 3 kilometers away. I say, I once saw floating lights set up for this kind of fishing in the narrow channel between Ko Lipe and Adang. “oh!” says Daruis “That’s nothing. They were off that point right there two nights ago. Right off your Sanom bungalows (the bungalows I’m staying at). The huge fishing boat came right in to the point. You could have swum to it.”
Besides the trawlers, I was very happy to hear what Darius said about sea life. “There’s all kinds of sea life here. Black tip sharks, nurse sharks, manta rays, eagle rays, rock fish, (and many more I can remember). There is less now, but you can still find them.” He told us where we could find sharks off Lipe, behind a certain rock, if you came at it from behind in a certain way (so as not to scare them off). They are about 10 kilos, he measured about a meter with his hands. Black tips. They’re not dangerous. They just swim away. Once a man said he had them swim two times around him, then they swam off.” Apparently my face was revealing my excitement. John laughed and noted I was “itching to go”. He said he’d go with me to see them sometime, he knew the place Darious was talking about. I can’t wait!
My friends walked me home along the beach, since it was late. They laughed as I showed them the way to Sanom beach – you get to the end of Pattaya beach and then clamber onto these big rocks. You can’t see the path at first, it just looks like climbing onto rocks. Then there is a walkway made of bamboo poles nailed together that leads over the rocks and around the corner to Sanom Resorts, with it’s small private beach. Since it’s high tide with a full moon, the waves sometimes come sloshing right over the rocks and under the path. It seemed completely normal to me, until I saw how surprised everyone way. Wow, they said, this is really adventurous! I guess it does feel a little like being a lost boy, coming home to my treefort-bungalow every night.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Writing Day
In the morning, is saw the travelers off. I skyped Tor, I heard about catching giant swamp spiders by wading through the muck and catching the frog-eating-arachnids with ziplock bags and gloves. I read up on coral bleaching in Thailand, rested, (it’s become extremely hot again), was assaulted by the black and white stripped dengue mosquitoes, cleaned up the beach in front of my bungalow, went into town for dinner, wrote, hydrated, watched a gecko catch a moth, journaled.
Environment Girl
Today I meet up with a few tourists I encountered in town yesterday and we all split the price of a long tail boat to go snorkeling for the day. It was a delightful group. First there were three Muslim Swedish girls traveling together, who were originally from Malasia. One, Pi Yang, spoke fluent Thai, one Amanai spoke fluent English, and one Amoneh, seemed pretty shy and didn’t speak much while I was there. They had made friends with two Thai guys who came in on the boat with them. Both of them were apparently named Bond. One Bond was from Bankok and spoke english well, and the other was a friend who Bankok bond met online as a travel buddy for sourthern Thailand. Overall, our gang was hilarious company since we were such a hog-pog of languages. Sometimes Bankok Bond would try to ask me something in english, but I woudn’t understand so he would tell Pi Yang in Thai and she would Tell Amanai in Sweedish and Amanai would tell me in english.
I bought some fried chicken and sticky rice on my walk to met them at their resort where they were having breakfast. I’m not sure whether Thai friend chicken is the best in the world, or if I just don’t eat fried chicken enough in the US, because it was great. At the resort, which was the same one my study abroad program stayed at six months ago, the wait staff recognized and remembered my name which was really touching! It was so fun to see them again!
Our boat driver was named Coon Lehk. He had smile lines on the corners of his eyes that looked like the v of a fish tail. He had rich tan skin, and short dark hair that was just starting to go grey on the tips. He wore a silver ring and bracelets, and a black and silver chain and shell necklace. His character might best be described by his wiry black gotee.
As we were leaving Lipe, a stormy rain shower came sweeping in between the two islands Ko lipe and Koa dang. Our boat motored off into the gale, which rapidly got more adventersome. The troughs of the waves rocked us, cold rain pelted into the wooden boat the islands almost disappeared into the clouds. We hung tight to our lifejackets, and I carefully watched Coon Lehk as he handled the boat. Long tails are steered with outboard motors, attached to a long handle and a pivot. Coon Lehk branced against the rain and the waves using all his strength to guide the boat in a zig zag across the channel. He looked like the was concentrating very hard, and I could see every muscle in his strong calves and arms as he steered the boat.
In maybe 15 minutes we reached the lee of Ko Adang. Here, it was just raining lightly, s the mountain blocked the cloud. We got out and took a peak around in the warm water, with a thin layer of cold where the rain had fallen on top. Almost immediately, I saw two long thin predatory fish gliding along the surface and then a beautiful blue and purple and black hexagonally patterned eel coiled under a coral. We snorkled three places alongside of the lee of Ko Adang. Each place was thick with coral heads, about a third of them bleached. There was still a lot of sea life around. Schools of parrot fish chewing on the coral. Large true clown fish (black and white not orange and white), and the normal colorful array of reef fish. It was clear that the staghorn coral and other thin branching kinds were hit hardest by the bleaching. They were like white chandeliers sitting on the reef. Some of the Massive coral boulders were bleached, others were still vivid green. Coon Lehk explained that the coral turns very bright blue just before it bleaches.. which may explain the “easter eggs” I saw off Mountain resort the other day… I’m not sure.
There is a smaller Urak Lawoi fishing village on the lee side of Adang, which we saw from the boat. The island is thick with jungle, and emergent trees, waterfalls. Two Urak Lawoi boys were playing of a moored row boat, they looked just like my friends playing on a raft at Friends Lake back home.
We ate lunch on a white beech, and waited for the water to calm down for a while. Bankok Bond made a woman out of sand, and named her Lisa. Coon Lenk talked to Sounthern Bond quite a lot about the coral, and Bond was full of questions. Some I understood, a lot about the currents ext. I couln’t. It turns out Coon Lehk is not a Urak Lawoi, he is from another part of Thailand, but he came to Lipe because he likes the fishing lifestyle. Although, as I understand it, only Urak Lawoi are supposed to be allowed to fish (as part of their traditional life style, early claims to the island resources), so it was interesting to see that Coon Lehk has been able to live as a fisherman on lipe as well. There are a lot of mackerel and barracuda, he said. He also explained climate change as the cause of the reef’s bleaching. So far, most of the people I’ve met have been aware of climate change’s role in the bleaching of the reef. Only one Farang, and one Thai person of maybe a dozen or two I’ve asked, couldn’t tell me when I asked why the reef was bleaching.
While we talked Pi Yang and Amanai were walking down the beach collecting shell and hermit crabs and putting them in plastic bags. They showed up and dumped their load onto the sand, and the treasure immediately began scuttling away full speed, so they were gathered back up and redeposited in the bags. Amanai showed me her bag, to which she had added seawater for them to live in. The crabs had abandoned their shells, and were clawing and wiggling wildly at the plastic. I suggested that maybe they were drowning as opposed to swimming. She seemed hesitant, but poured out the water. When we were getting ready to leave, they wanted to bring the shells and crabs with them, but I asked them not to. They agreed not to bring the crabs, but still wanted the empty shells. I explained, feeling cheesy, that the crabs needed bigger homes when they grew up and would need the other shells. They weren’t happy about it, but they left them behind and I felt better. This started my reputation as Nak Anorak or Environment Girl. This became the joke of the next twenty four hours.
We snorkled one last place by the Urak Lawoi village. Here I saw a crab sneak up a giant colorful ocean clam before it could snap shut. The crab grabbed the fleshy meat of the clam and then slowly pulled and yanked and tore the clam out of its shell. Meanwhile, the reef fish swarmed the pair, trying to steal the clam meat. The pink red crab moved like a slow and jerky puppet. His buggy white eyes with red dots for pupils twitching this way and that. He had just broken away with a long stretching piece of clam (it just kept coming out and out of the giant clam shell, which would twitch futilely now and again), and suddenly a huge green-brown moral eel lunges out of the coral and the crab retreats and the fish flee and the eel grabs a big chunk of clam and disappears again. It was classic “always a bigger fish”. It looked just like something you’d see on Discovery. The eel came back and snapped at the fish that were still trying to get pieces of the clam. I was only floating a few feet above all this and wondered if the eel electicuted a fish if I would feel it in the water.
The last place we snorkled, was just off the place where boats are moored on Lipe. While I saw swimming around the people on the boat caught a bunch of reef fish, (with a dumping food in the water and net I think) and were holding them in their hands. I swam up to the boat and they handed me one, which I didn’t know what it was until it was flopping in my palms. Surprised, I dropped it into the sea. It looked frazzled, but swam away. I followed it for a bit, interested to see if it recovered, which it seemed to. The bottom of the boat was swarmed with tons of fish (looking for more handouts?) it was very fun to swim though the cloud of them.
We ate together at a little restaurant next to the school. I was starving and it was delicious chicken soup with wide noodles. I can’t even explain how good it was. We told stories and tried to translate jokes through many langagues. I ordered a drink for a card table nearby, successfully without knowing what it was and as they man handed it over, I asked what it was called (looking for the word smoothie) and he said ‘cow-poat” which is “corn”. (it turned out to be a corn flavored smoothie. It was pretty good.)
I went home, showered, cleaned my gear, ext. and we were going to meet again for dinner, with Coon Lehk to grill fish and make som tom but I got there ten minutes late, and no one was there. I watched kids play soccer at the school for twenty minutes, it started to get dark. I feel sad, thinking of everyone bar-b-queing and having a great time without me. I decided to go see if I could find them, at the resort maybe, and walked along the beach to mountain resort. Three thai guys asked me where I was going, and then three dogs ran up and jumped on me, and I hit them on the nose with a waterbottle and shouted at them (the dogs), and felt harassed and awkward. When I arrived at the resort, my friends the employees in the restaurant showed me which bungalow my diving friends were in, and the girls where in there watching a movie. Apparently there were no fish to grill, so the night was cancelled. Bond and Bond came over and we watched the American movie and then I ahd a sleep over with the girls, since it was late and dark. It was fun to have AC and hot water for the night.
Oh yeah, and after the movie we all went on a spontaneous trip to visit Coon Lehk at his house. Bangkok bond’s idea. And he was eating dinner, so we went out to another restaurant and ate some more. I was so tierd I could barely think (it was like 11 – way past my island bed time ) but I intervewed Amanai a bit more.
On the walk to go to see Coon Lehk we ran into two people fishing in the dark on the beech. One was an Urak Lawoi man, and the other a Russian tourist. They had caught two reef fish and a small blue spotted ray. They had cut the stinging tail off the ray, but neither the ray nor the fish had died yet. They flopped half in a plastic bag, half in the sand. You could see the flat nub where they sliced off the ray’s tail. Its back was coated in sand. Its eyes flashed wildly about. The spots on its wings, which are normally glowingly bright blue in the water, were pale and drab in the moonlight. I had been hoping to see a ray, on the reef. I don’t know if the Russian man was paying the Urak Lawoi man to take him fishing, or if they were friends, or what. Bankok Bond teased me about being environment girl. He asked me if they ray was beautiful. “more beautiful in the water” I said. All the sadness I felt for Lipe and the reef, and this amazing natural place that is so rare and so special, suddenly welled up in me and I felt angry and hopeless. There is so much stacked against this place: climate change, tourist development, the trawling big fishers off shore, the corrupt national park, the local fishing people, tourists who take shells and put crabs in plastic bags because they don’t know better, this Russian man fishing in the dark. I wanted to pick the ray up and fling it back into the sea. Bankok bond asked me if I ate fish. “I eat fish” I said. And we walked on.
Earlier in the day, Bankok Bond, Southern Bond, and I had been walking along the beach. Southern Bond was taking picture of the ocean. Bankok bond said he had come to this part of Thailand because his mom had been all over southern Thailand years ago. She had talked about how beautiful it was, the perfect beaches. But so far, he said, the beaches, the islands, everywhere his mom had went has disappointed. There were many more bunglows, more people. The beach we were walking on, (the beach I walk everyday) is very heavily littered with debris, trash, glass, lighters, syrofoam, diapers, you name it, its probably somewhere on this beach. I explained how we had learned on my study abroad that “in the past” people just brought their trash down to the ocean at low tied and let high tied take it away. ((Yesterday, I saw someone carry a bag to the sea.)) “The island’s aren’t the same as when she came here” he said. “it makes me want to start a volunteer organization for opeople to come here and pick of the trash. I’ll take a picture of what they used to look like and tell my volunteers, O.K. make the beach like this.” I told him how Pi Pung has also had the idea to make a organization to take Thai kids camping here, and then show they how to protect the nature. The idea to teach kids to have a “consciences mind” was finally the word we came to, as the best English translation. “You know today, you talking about not taking the shells because they are the homes for the crabs.” He said. “I make joke you are Environment Girl, but that is a good thing. Maybe if enough people say like this it will change how everybody acts.”
The thing is, it will be so easy and quick to destroy places like Lipe, but to get them back? If we ever wanted to it would be so hard, expensive, and they wouldn’t be nearly as strong or as beautiful… I don’t know how much of the bleached coral is dead, and how much could still recover. (bleaching doesn’t necessarily kill it right away, it can come back sometimes.) But, if Lipe doesn’t get monsoon rains to cool down the waters soon, the coral will probably not recover.
I bought some fried chicken and sticky rice on my walk to met them at their resort where they were having breakfast. I’m not sure whether Thai friend chicken is the best in the world, or if I just don’t eat fried chicken enough in the US, because it was great. At the resort, which was the same one my study abroad program stayed at six months ago, the wait staff recognized and remembered my name which was really touching! It was so fun to see them again!
Our boat driver was named Coon Lehk. He had smile lines on the corners of his eyes that looked like the v of a fish tail. He had rich tan skin, and short dark hair that was just starting to go grey on the tips. He wore a silver ring and bracelets, and a black and silver chain and shell necklace. His character might best be described by his wiry black gotee.
As we were leaving Lipe, a stormy rain shower came sweeping in between the two islands Ko lipe and Koa dang. Our boat motored off into the gale, which rapidly got more adventersome. The troughs of the waves rocked us, cold rain pelted into the wooden boat the islands almost disappeared into the clouds. We hung tight to our lifejackets, and I carefully watched Coon Lehk as he handled the boat. Long tails are steered with outboard motors, attached to a long handle and a pivot. Coon Lehk branced against the rain and the waves using all his strength to guide the boat in a zig zag across the channel. He looked like the was concentrating very hard, and I could see every muscle in his strong calves and arms as he steered the boat.
In maybe 15 minutes we reached the lee of Ko Adang. Here, it was just raining lightly, s the mountain blocked the cloud. We got out and took a peak around in the warm water, with a thin layer of cold where the rain had fallen on top. Almost immediately, I saw two long thin predatory fish gliding along the surface and then a beautiful blue and purple and black hexagonally patterned eel coiled under a coral. We snorkled three places alongside of the lee of Ko Adang. Each place was thick with coral heads, about a third of them bleached. There was still a lot of sea life around. Schools of parrot fish chewing on the coral. Large true clown fish (black and white not orange and white), and the normal colorful array of reef fish. It was clear that the staghorn coral and other thin branching kinds were hit hardest by the bleaching. They were like white chandeliers sitting on the reef. Some of the Massive coral boulders were bleached, others were still vivid green. Coon Lehk explained that the coral turns very bright blue just before it bleaches.. which may explain the “easter eggs” I saw off Mountain resort the other day… I’m not sure.
There is a smaller Urak Lawoi fishing village on the lee side of Adang, which we saw from the boat. The island is thick with jungle, and emergent trees, waterfalls. Two Urak Lawoi boys were playing of a moored row boat, they looked just like my friends playing on a raft at Friends Lake back home.
We ate lunch on a white beech, and waited for the water to calm down for a while. Bankok Bond made a woman out of sand, and named her Lisa. Coon Lenk talked to Sounthern Bond quite a lot about the coral, and Bond was full of questions. Some I understood, a lot about the currents ext. I couln’t. It turns out Coon Lehk is not a Urak Lawoi, he is from another part of Thailand, but he came to Lipe because he likes the fishing lifestyle. Although, as I understand it, only Urak Lawoi are supposed to be allowed to fish (as part of their traditional life style, early claims to the island resources), so it was interesting to see that Coon Lehk has been able to live as a fisherman on lipe as well. There are a lot of mackerel and barracuda, he said. He also explained climate change as the cause of the reef’s bleaching. So far, most of the people I’ve met have been aware of climate change’s role in the bleaching of the reef. Only one Farang, and one Thai person of maybe a dozen or two I’ve asked, couldn’t tell me when I asked why the reef was bleaching.
While we talked Pi Yang and Amanai were walking down the beach collecting shell and hermit crabs and putting them in plastic bags. They showed up and dumped their load onto the sand, and the treasure immediately began scuttling away full speed, so they were gathered back up and redeposited in the bags. Amanai showed me her bag, to which she had added seawater for them to live in. The crabs had abandoned their shells, and were clawing and wiggling wildly at the plastic. I suggested that maybe they were drowning as opposed to swimming. She seemed hesitant, but poured out the water. When we were getting ready to leave, they wanted to bring the shells and crabs with them, but I asked them not to. They agreed not to bring the crabs, but still wanted the empty shells. I explained, feeling cheesy, that the crabs needed bigger homes when they grew up and would need the other shells. They weren’t happy about it, but they left them behind and I felt better. This started my reputation as Nak Anorak or Environment Girl. This became the joke of the next twenty four hours.
We snorkled one last place by the Urak Lawoi village. Here I saw a crab sneak up a giant colorful ocean clam before it could snap shut. The crab grabbed the fleshy meat of the clam and then slowly pulled and yanked and tore the clam out of its shell. Meanwhile, the reef fish swarmed the pair, trying to steal the clam meat. The pink red crab moved like a slow and jerky puppet. His buggy white eyes with red dots for pupils twitching this way and that. He had just broken away with a long stretching piece of clam (it just kept coming out and out of the giant clam shell, which would twitch futilely now and again), and suddenly a huge green-brown moral eel lunges out of the coral and the crab retreats and the fish flee and the eel grabs a big chunk of clam and disappears again. It was classic “always a bigger fish”. It looked just like something you’d see on Discovery. The eel came back and snapped at the fish that were still trying to get pieces of the clam. I was only floating a few feet above all this and wondered if the eel electicuted a fish if I would feel it in the water.
The last place we snorkled, was just off the place where boats are moored on Lipe. While I saw swimming around the people on the boat caught a bunch of reef fish, (with a dumping food in the water and net I think) and were holding them in their hands. I swam up to the boat and they handed me one, which I didn’t know what it was until it was flopping in my palms. Surprised, I dropped it into the sea. It looked frazzled, but swam away. I followed it for a bit, interested to see if it recovered, which it seemed to. The bottom of the boat was swarmed with tons of fish (looking for more handouts?) it was very fun to swim though the cloud of them.
We ate together at a little restaurant next to the school. I was starving and it was delicious chicken soup with wide noodles. I can’t even explain how good it was. We told stories and tried to translate jokes through many langagues. I ordered a drink for a card table nearby, successfully without knowing what it was and as they man handed it over, I asked what it was called (looking for the word smoothie) and he said ‘cow-poat” which is “corn”. (it turned out to be a corn flavored smoothie. It was pretty good.)
I went home, showered, cleaned my gear, ext. and we were going to meet again for dinner, with Coon Lehk to grill fish and make som tom but I got there ten minutes late, and no one was there. I watched kids play soccer at the school for twenty minutes, it started to get dark. I feel sad, thinking of everyone bar-b-queing and having a great time without me. I decided to go see if I could find them, at the resort maybe, and walked along the beach to mountain resort. Three thai guys asked me where I was going, and then three dogs ran up and jumped on me, and I hit them on the nose with a waterbottle and shouted at them (the dogs), and felt harassed and awkward. When I arrived at the resort, my friends the employees in the restaurant showed me which bungalow my diving friends were in, and the girls where in there watching a movie. Apparently there were no fish to grill, so the night was cancelled. Bond and Bond came over and we watched the American movie and then I ahd a sleep over with the girls, since it was late and dark. It was fun to have AC and hot water for the night.
Oh yeah, and after the movie we all went on a spontaneous trip to visit Coon Lehk at his house. Bangkok bond’s idea. And he was eating dinner, so we went out to another restaurant and ate some more. I was so tierd I could barely think (it was like 11 – way past my island bed time ) but I intervewed Amanai a bit more.
On the walk to go to see Coon Lehk we ran into two people fishing in the dark on the beech. One was an Urak Lawoi man, and the other a Russian tourist. They had caught two reef fish and a small blue spotted ray. They had cut the stinging tail off the ray, but neither the ray nor the fish had died yet. They flopped half in a plastic bag, half in the sand. You could see the flat nub where they sliced off the ray’s tail. Its back was coated in sand. Its eyes flashed wildly about. The spots on its wings, which are normally glowingly bright blue in the water, were pale and drab in the moonlight. I had been hoping to see a ray, on the reef. I don’t know if the Russian man was paying the Urak Lawoi man to take him fishing, or if they were friends, or what. Bankok Bond teased me about being environment girl. He asked me if they ray was beautiful. “more beautiful in the water” I said. All the sadness I felt for Lipe and the reef, and this amazing natural place that is so rare and so special, suddenly welled up in me and I felt angry and hopeless. There is so much stacked against this place: climate change, tourist development, the trawling big fishers off shore, the corrupt national park, the local fishing people, tourists who take shells and put crabs in plastic bags because they don’t know better, this Russian man fishing in the dark. I wanted to pick the ray up and fling it back into the sea. Bankok bond asked me if I ate fish. “I eat fish” I said. And we walked on.
Earlier in the day, Bankok Bond, Southern Bond, and I had been walking along the beach. Southern Bond was taking picture of the ocean. Bankok bond said he had come to this part of Thailand because his mom had been all over southern Thailand years ago. She had talked about how beautiful it was, the perfect beaches. But so far, he said, the beaches, the islands, everywhere his mom had went has disappointed. There were many more bunglows, more people. The beach we were walking on, (the beach I walk everyday) is very heavily littered with debris, trash, glass, lighters, syrofoam, diapers, you name it, its probably somewhere on this beach. I explained how we had learned on my study abroad that “in the past” people just brought their trash down to the ocean at low tied and let high tied take it away. ((Yesterday, I saw someone carry a bag to the sea.)) “The island’s aren’t the same as when she came here” he said. “it makes me want to start a volunteer organization for opeople to come here and pick of the trash. I’ll take a picture of what they used to look like and tell my volunteers, O.K. make the beach like this.” I told him how Pi Pung has also had the idea to make a organization to take Thai kids camping here, and then show they how to protect the nature. The idea to teach kids to have a “consciences mind” was finally the word we came to, as the best English translation. “You know today, you talking about not taking the shells because they are the homes for the crabs.” He said. “I make joke you are Environment Girl, but that is a good thing. Maybe if enough people say like this it will change how everybody acts.”
The thing is, it will be so easy and quick to destroy places like Lipe, but to get them back? If we ever wanted to it would be so hard, expensive, and they wouldn’t be nearly as strong or as beautiful… I don’t know how much of the bleached coral is dead, and how much could still recover. (bleaching doesn’t necessarily kill it right away, it can come back sometimes.) But, if Lipe doesn’t get monsoon rains to cool down the waters soon, the coral will probably not recover.
Bathroom Friend
Today was absolutely perfect. Up to 20 minutes ago… when… I FOUND A GIGANTIC HAIRY BEADY EYED SPIDER IN MY BATHROOM! It was about the size of my hand. And right next to my mirror. We surprised eachother I tied the door shut and turned the light back off. After a lot of consideration I have come to the conclusion it was a tarantula. Grandma J, I brought along a tiny dream catcher you gave me once for a little bit of home and to keep my dreams good in this strange place (also I thought it might be a nice American gift for someone at the end of my trip). Its going to have to work pretty hard tonight!
Other than that today it rained!!! Hallelujah!!! Its so comfortable now!!! I got up at 5:30 and went for a morning run on the beach in the light rain. Next, I went home and clean up and got ready for the day, and then went out and tried to make a skype date with Tor. Unfortunatly, the internet place was not open and poking around in back I couldn’t find anyone to open it for me I had a Phad Thai breakfast at a little restaurant called Thai Pancake and chatted for a while with the people there, watched some Thai T.V. that I didn’t understand at all. I ended up getting some orange juice down the street and drafting a set of interview questions for the businesses I’m going to interview. While in the café, me and a wonderful Thai woman named Pung (which means bee) and two Farang who are volunteering here for another Farang friend who is building a resort, struck up a conversation and I did an informal / quite long and through and interesting interview for my project. It was outrageously rewarding, and my head was throbbing at the end because Pi Pung is a very good Thai teacher and was constantly helping me correct my sentences and teaching me new words. Then Pi Pung helped me interview the restaurant owner/worker SomSak and that was a really great interview too! (he spoke way too fast and emphatically and big-word-ie for me to understand on my own).
I was walking home in a moment of joy, and noticing the beautiful yellow flowers in the trees, and the teal water, and being proud of my SIP and speaking with such interesting people and all of a sudden this Thai word just pops into my head. I think “did I just learn this from Pi Pung? ( no… ). Is this a word I just heard and recognized, but didn’t know?” and I was still holding the dictionary from the interview so I looked it up and I found it. (which is really unusual because usually I remember/hear a consonant wrong or something and can’t find it) but I found it and guess what it was…. Experience (noun)! I even had the tones right! I had been thinking about what a great experience this was! Brains are such astonishing and complicated things. Somehow my brain found this word, that I didn’t know I even consciously knew, and drew it up when I hadn’t even come to the word in english yet! Wow!
I took a recovery break and looked up and wrote down correct tones and stuff for most of the words I’d just learned from Pi Pung. I read some of Di’s poetry, was enamored yet again, and ate some fruit on my porch. I sort of wanted to sleep, but was tired not sleepy, so I just relaxed for while and when I started to feel anxious about productivity again, I packed up and headed back into town. I did two more interviews in town (a very curious and kind shop owner) and a Urak Lawoi fisherman/restaurant/bungalow worker. The Urak Lawoi fisherman was around and was super easy to understand because he really dumbed down his langage for me, and motioned a lot, and made sure I followed - which was really nice. He gave me some interesting points of view, and insightful quotes like he “likes his restaurant jobs more than fishing by a lot because its not so much work” and “having tourists come allows the islanders to earn much more money to support a different way of life (they are able to buy things besides food, like electricity and tv ect)”, but they have to save money when it comes because the flow of tourists is unsteady and they may need to eat later. As the island becomes very developed the kind of people have changed from coral/diving loving, to just beach going people. He also talked about rotationally closing islands to allow the coral time to rest and recover from diving impacts.
After that it was starting to rain a bit so I started to go home, but felt the inkling for more adventure and came back into town, taking refuge under the awning of a shop. The people said “come inside and sit with us for a bit until the rain stops” and we sat together and chatted. (they ahd just got their dog fixed and the daughter drew on it with red marker to look like a tiger, and wrote on it). Then the daughter got two umbrellas and walked me to Pooh Bar (where I was going) so I wouldn’t get wet!
At Pooh Bar I met back up with Pi Pung and some of her friends to watch the soccer game. I ordered some delicious noodle soup with chicken meatballs. We hung out and her friends seem sooo nice. I walked home along the sea shore. And then I met the spider and my day took a rapid turn towards horrifying.
Other than that today it rained!!! Hallelujah!!! Its so comfortable now!!! I got up at 5:30 and went for a morning run on the beach in the light rain. Next, I went home and clean up and got ready for the day, and then went out and tried to make a skype date with Tor. Unfortunatly, the internet place was not open and poking around in back I couldn’t find anyone to open it for me I had a Phad Thai breakfast at a little restaurant called Thai Pancake and chatted for a while with the people there, watched some Thai T.V. that I didn’t understand at all. I ended up getting some orange juice down the street and drafting a set of interview questions for the businesses I’m going to interview. While in the café, me and a wonderful Thai woman named Pung (which means bee) and two Farang who are volunteering here for another Farang friend who is building a resort, struck up a conversation and I did an informal / quite long and through and interesting interview for my project. It was outrageously rewarding, and my head was throbbing at the end because Pi Pung is a very good Thai teacher and was constantly helping me correct my sentences and teaching me new words. Then Pi Pung helped me interview the restaurant owner/worker SomSak and that was a really great interview too! (he spoke way too fast and emphatically and big-word-ie for me to understand on my own).
I was walking home in a moment of joy, and noticing the beautiful yellow flowers in the trees, and the teal water, and being proud of my SIP and speaking with such interesting people and all of a sudden this Thai word just pops into my head. I think “did I just learn this from Pi Pung? ( no… ). Is this a word I just heard and recognized, but didn’t know?” and I was still holding the dictionary from the interview so I looked it up and I found it. (which is really unusual because usually I remember/hear a consonant wrong or something and can’t find it) but I found it and guess what it was…. Experience (noun)! I even had the tones right! I had been thinking about what a great experience this was! Brains are such astonishing and complicated things. Somehow my brain found this word, that I didn’t know I even consciously knew, and drew it up when I hadn’t even come to the word in english yet! Wow!
I took a recovery break and looked up and wrote down correct tones and stuff for most of the words I’d just learned from Pi Pung. I read some of Di’s poetry, was enamored yet again, and ate some fruit on my porch. I sort of wanted to sleep, but was tired not sleepy, so I just relaxed for while and when I started to feel anxious about productivity again, I packed up and headed back into town. I did two more interviews in town (a very curious and kind shop owner) and a Urak Lawoi fisherman/restaurant/bungalow worker. The Urak Lawoi fisherman was around and was super easy to understand because he really dumbed down his langage for me, and motioned a lot, and made sure I followed - which was really nice. He gave me some interesting points of view, and insightful quotes like he “likes his restaurant jobs more than fishing by a lot because its not so much work” and “having tourists come allows the islanders to earn much more money to support a different way of life (they are able to buy things besides food, like electricity and tv ect)”, but they have to save money when it comes because the flow of tourists is unsteady and they may need to eat later. As the island becomes very developed the kind of people have changed from coral/diving loving, to just beach going people. He also talked about rotationally closing islands to allow the coral time to rest and recover from diving impacts.
After that it was starting to rain a bit so I started to go home, but felt the inkling for more adventure and came back into town, taking refuge under the awning of a shop. The people said “come inside and sit with us for a bit until the rain stops” and we sat together and chatted. (they ahd just got their dog fixed and the daughter drew on it with red marker to look like a tiger, and wrote on it). Then the daughter got two umbrellas and walked me to Pooh Bar (where I was going) so I wouldn’t get wet!
At Pooh Bar I met back up with Pi Pung and some of her friends to watch the soccer game. I ordered some delicious noodle soup with chicken meatballs. We hung out and her friends seem sooo nice. I walked home along the sea shore. And then I met the spider and my day took a rapid turn towards horrifying.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Two liter sized Pufferfish (blah bakapow!)
June 20th
Each day of the two I’ve accomplished less than I expected, and ended the day exhausted. I guess I should expect it to be exhausting to spend the whole day speaking in a language you hardly know! The heat is something I’ll have to give my body time and lots of caring to adjust to, too. At noon I came home and lay in my hammock and felt sick for a while, before going back out. There is a growing line of empty water bottles on my front porch. I started to write about how often i put on sunscreen, when i realized, that was a pretty logistical thing to write about. I find myself wanting to write down the wierdest things. I think this is since there is no one around to just tell them to, like i normally would. Lets see, what did i do today... Maybe I should write about climbing along the rocky bolders of the shore. Scrambling over the surf kissed rocks in the sun, with the teal water rolling and tumbling out as far as the eye can see into the horizon. Maybe I should write about a puffer fish bigger than a two liter bottle huffing his spiny stomach at me as I floated over him. His black spots cruzing over the sandy bottom. Maybe I should write about kicking into the waves above the “coral reef” where 30 percent is dead and algae covered, 5 percent is sea anenomies, and 50 percent is bleached – par three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, it would have been easy to come to lipe and talk about the fishermen, the trawling boats off shore, the corrupt park office, the waste water problem and eutrafocation, to talk about the dangers to the reef. It would have been easy to write an essay on how irresponsible or uncaring, or optionless local management was putting in danger this paradise oyster, this ecological and beautiful treasure. Well, I see tying the global community to this issue won’t be hard now.
The reef was depressing. Today I snorkled off mountain resort and it was even worse that my Sanom beach. I’d say 40 to 50 percent was bleached, in someplaces more. I remembered while I was out there, to mildly nauseating surprise that reefs are usually described as colorful. This reef was like going on an Easter egg hunt in a newspaper factory… that just got hit by a tornado. I’d see one head, bright blue or green and the little coral symbionts just blooming. It was almost erie actually the way they would just GLOW these bright colors. But from that coral all I would see was the rust red of the massive heads (their good color) burned with the white frostbite bleaching marks, and then stone colliflowers, and dusty sandy broken pieces on the bottom, and algae consuming the dead parts of the older corals. I saw the normal fish. Normal being about a dozen species, which I expect is not so many as I should be seeing. The most interesting ones were the big parrot fish, green and purple, with their little flocks of grey younger parrot fish. The sound of the parrot fish chewing on the corals is like ice cubes cracking in a glass on a hot day. Its one of the only sounds you can hear on the reef besides your own breath through the snorkel and the rush of waves lifting your body overhead. The other most interesting fish were “Nemo Fish” as my new friend Som calls them. They seem to be doing O.K. in their screaming lemon drop annenomies. The best thing about clown, (or false clown) fish is that when you swim up to them, they see their reflection in your mask and their very territorial so they charge your face, waving their little white fins ferociously. The saddest thing was swimming right up to the bleached corals and seeing the little coral filterfeeding flowers in every pore, but pale white. I’ll need to read up a bit more, but I’m pretty sure that’s the coral, but minus its colorful symbiotic bacteria: the partner it needs to feed.
After diving, I explored the adventurer more today. Scrambling, and climbing over the rocky pier at the end of sunrise beach, to castaway construction sight, and crashing through the woods up to the road, and seeing another symptom of Thai island death: a poster for a full moon party on this “hidden beach”. Walking back and tracking into grey sticky mud which coated my flip flops, and trying to hurry inconspicuously through town (to the nearest foot washing station) without any one noticing this crazy farang girl, sweaty, with crazyperson feet.
I stopped at a road side kanom (snack) stand for dinner and got to know the people working there better. I orderd two of everything. Two grilled hot dogs on a stick, two sets of three pork meat balls on a stick, and two big meaty mystery patties on a stick, and ate them with sweet and spicy sauce and loads of raw cabbage. It was so delicious. There is Som (which means orange) the woman who grills the meat, she is a great person to learn Thai from because she speaks slowly and clearly and repeats everything I say, only with correct grammer or pronunciation so I can see what I’m doing wrong. Then there is Jai (which means heart, mind or spirit) who is classic –very- friendly thai man, who pops in and out and sort of hangs out while the women run the stand. Then there is a older girl who knows a little english I think, because she proudly clears up my and som’s un-understandings will key english words. Her name is Phone (rain) and she is smack dab in the center between cute and beautiful, also quiet with a great smile. She sells drinks while Som sells the food. I checked: They live on the island year round, but are from the mainland. New friends?
Love, Gigi
Each day of the two I’ve accomplished less than I expected, and ended the day exhausted. I guess I should expect it to be exhausting to spend the whole day speaking in a language you hardly know! The heat is something I’ll have to give my body time and lots of caring to adjust to, too. At noon I came home and lay in my hammock and felt sick for a while, before going back out. There is a growing line of empty water bottles on my front porch. I started to write about how often i put on sunscreen, when i realized, that was a pretty logistical thing to write about. I find myself wanting to write down the wierdest things. I think this is since there is no one around to just tell them to, like i normally would. Lets see, what did i do today... Maybe I should write about climbing along the rocky bolders of the shore. Scrambling over the surf kissed rocks in the sun, with the teal water rolling and tumbling out as far as the eye can see into the horizon. Maybe I should write about a puffer fish bigger than a two liter bottle huffing his spiny stomach at me as I floated over him. His black spots cruzing over the sandy bottom. Maybe I should write about kicking into the waves above the “coral reef” where 30 percent is dead and algae covered, 5 percent is sea anenomies, and 50 percent is bleached – par three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, it would have been easy to come to lipe and talk about the fishermen, the trawling boats off shore, the corrupt park office, the waste water problem and eutrafocation, to talk about the dangers to the reef. It would have been easy to write an essay on how irresponsible or uncaring, or optionless local management was putting in danger this paradise oyster, this ecological and beautiful treasure. Well, I see tying the global community to this issue won’t be hard now.
The reef was depressing. Today I snorkled off mountain resort and it was even worse that my Sanom beach. I’d say 40 to 50 percent was bleached, in someplaces more. I remembered while I was out there, to mildly nauseating surprise that reefs are usually described as colorful. This reef was like going on an Easter egg hunt in a newspaper factory… that just got hit by a tornado. I’d see one head, bright blue or green and the little coral symbionts just blooming. It was almost erie actually the way they would just GLOW these bright colors. But from that coral all I would see was the rust red of the massive heads (their good color) burned with the white frostbite bleaching marks, and then stone colliflowers, and dusty sandy broken pieces on the bottom, and algae consuming the dead parts of the older corals. I saw the normal fish. Normal being about a dozen species, which I expect is not so many as I should be seeing. The most interesting ones were the big parrot fish, green and purple, with their little flocks of grey younger parrot fish. The sound of the parrot fish chewing on the corals is like ice cubes cracking in a glass on a hot day. Its one of the only sounds you can hear on the reef besides your own breath through the snorkel and the rush of waves lifting your body overhead. The other most interesting fish were “Nemo Fish” as my new friend Som calls them. They seem to be doing O.K. in their screaming lemon drop annenomies. The best thing about clown, (or false clown) fish is that when you swim up to them, they see their reflection in your mask and their very territorial so they charge your face, waving their little white fins ferociously. The saddest thing was swimming right up to the bleached corals and seeing the little coral filterfeeding flowers in every pore, but pale white. I’ll need to read up a bit more, but I’m pretty sure that’s the coral, but minus its colorful symbiotic bacteria: the partner it needs to feed.
After diving, I explored the adventurer more today. Scrambling, and climbing over the rocky pier at the end of sunrise beach, to castaway construction sight, and crashing through the woods up to the road, and seeing another symptom of Thai island death: a poster for a full moon party on this “hidden beach”. Walking back and tracking into grey sticky mud which coated my flip flops, and trying to hurry inconspicuously through town (to the nearest foot washing station) without any one noticing this crazy farang girl, sweaty, with crazyperson feet.
I stopped at a road side kanom (snack) stand for dinner and got to know the people working there better. I orderd two of everything. Two grilled hot dogs on a stick, two sets of three pork meat balls on a stick, and two big meaty mystery patties on a stick, and ate them with sweet and spicy sauce and loads of raw cabbage. It was so delicious. There is Som (which means orange) the woman who grills the meat, she is a great person to learn Thai from because she speaks slowly and clearly and repeats everything I say, only with correct grammer or pronunciation so I can see what I’m doing wrong. Then there is Jai (which means heart, mind or spirit) who is classic –very- friendly thai man, who pops in and out and sort of hangs out while the women run the stand. Then there is a older girl who knows a little english I think, because she proudly clears up my and som’s un-understandings will key english words. Her name is Phone (rain) and she is smack dab in the center between cute and beautiful, also quiet with a great smile. She sells drinks while Som sells the food. I checked: They live on the island year round, but are from the mainland. New friends?
Love, Gigi
Day 1: Dying Reef
Post # 1.
Journal excerpt:
I’m talking with Coon Jaeng and he says “are you going diving?”
“yeah” I answer.
“there is coral out there” he says, and gestures out from the beach. A few rocks peak above the sea, and dark blue blotches like camo-shapes are visible beneath the surface. “There is coral out there, but it’s dead.” He says. His voice, like the sea, is calm covering something much more complicated. I imagine I can hear sadness and picture other currents underneath. “Three weeks ago” he said “it was green and alive. Then it turned the color white, then it turned the color black and then it died. It happened all around…” he gestures as if circumnavigating Lipe island. “I went to look in my boat. It died on Ko Adang island and Ko Rawi island and Egg Rock too…. It’s the same as 12, 13 years ago, when Thailand had Elnindo.” ‘sorry, what?” I ask. We are speaking thai and I didn’t catch the last word. I leaned in closer “el nino” he says again, slower, and I understand that I do understand the Spanish word. “ka, ka, Cow Jai” I say ‘oh, yes, I understand.” From the veranda where we are sitting, Coon Jaeng squints out over the beach. “That year, the water was cold, and the coral died the same. This time it is not cold. It is very hot. It’s about temperature. Now, the water is hot. It’s too hot for the coral to live.” I look out over the bright water with pinched eyebrows and a falling heart. Today is my first day of the month I’ll spend on Lipe Island, a four hour boat ride off the southern tip of Thailand. I’ve come to study the coral reef and its relationship with the island’s inhabitants; what factors go into its degradation and what impacts the decline will have on tourist development and the local people. “I came to learn about the reef” I say. “and now its dead. It is hurting heart,” which is the Thai word for sad. “In the US the coral is in danger too, the oil in the sea comes out and comes out and we can’t stop it”. Coon Jaeng nods. We sit in silence for a while. The waves lap up on the paradise white sand beach. A black fishing bird is cawing form the tropical trees in front of Pi Jaengs bungalows. “Today, you dive out there” Pi Jaung says getting up “tomorrow I’ll take you out to Egg Island. Egg Island coral is more beautiful… but its dying too.”
Post # 2.
Hello!
I arrived safely this afternoon on Ko Lipe island. It is unbelievably beautiful. Very humid. And there are hardly any tourists here. The waters are a crisp light blue. The sands are warm and white. Most resorts and restaurants are closed. People (the whole journey long) have been kind and helpful. I’m looking forward to the rest of my stay here. Pi Jaeng, the owner of the bungalows I’m staying at is wonderful. My bungalow has a big hammock overlooking, past shading tropical trees, peaks of the open sea. After starting at 7:00 am W (on four hours sleep) and arriving her at 3 pm F (minus a 13? hour time difference) and sleeping only a bit on the plane I fell directly into bed until now (6:30 – nightfall) so I’ll go into town tomorrow morning to email this and check out the internet situation. At worst I know there is internet for 10 cents a minute (yikes) at one resort. I’m doing extremely well and having a very good time. I was able to get an extra supply of money out of the ATM in the pier town, so although there is no way to get money on the island, I should have enough for the trip with me (hidden around and mostly in my neck pouch for now).
One funny story so far is compared to the people who are just coming out for a few days, my 20.7 K bag and carry on and back pack were humungous!! The speed boat dropped us off on the opposite side of the island from my resort, and for a moment I contemplated carrying all my stuff (possible, but extremely hot and potentially embarrassing) all the way across the island (a 30 munite walk without bags). However, two really helpful employees of another resort gave me a ride in their motorcycle with side luggage car, (for like 3 dollars) and from their resort and I called up Khun Jaeng who cheerfully came to pick me and my stuff up from their resort (and we could meet in person for the first time). I liked him immediately.
Two stories of success were changing my money in BKK (31 B / dollar) not in New York (where the rate was 27 B / dollar) and saving a hundred dollars that way. Then I got to Hat Yai, took a group taxi into town $2 and got a ride from a wonderful woman, Anowan, the two hour van ride to Pak Bara (the pier where I’m going) for only $5. It was a private ac van with lovely company since she goes everyday as part of running her company in the low season, even if only one person like me comes. Although she runs at a loss for the day, she says over time it all works out. (she lives in Pak Bara so she was heading from her Hat Yai office home, a trip she makes each day). It turns out there isn’t a local bus that goes to Pak Bara this time of year, so it was doubly fortunate I could go with Anowan. Because to go by bus would have meant traveling three separate busses and def. missing the 11:30 ferry until the next day. On the ride we joked about how the 6 boats and many agencies running during high season all compete and “fight” to get customers, but in low season everybody works together and are friends because there are so few tourists that they can’t all operate. The same service from the airport would have cost $70 dollars or more. I made the ferry, and had a wonderful time cruising at a whopping, bouncing, flying, 90 kilometers and hour with a really fun family from south Africa out to the island.
To a slight prick in my stomach I realized the only thing I’ve eaten today is a airplane sandwich at 6:30 AM. Hehehe. Time to pull out some of the snacks, dad packed me for the plane, and while I barely touched since meals were served so often. I think I got (in this order) dinner, lunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner, lunch, no wonder my stomach is confused. This time, unlike in last September, we chased the sun around the globe so the whole trip was brightly lit. Mom, the water was a light blue, but mostly looking out the window was too bright to do. We flew over Alaska and n. Canada and could see the tiny nubs of melting glaciers up the big trenches where the used to lay nestled in the mountains.
If your interested google Ko lipe, and click ‘welcome to ko lipe” and check out the map. I’m staying at Sanom bungalos, which are on their own tiny private beach below the biggest “sunset beach”. The owner is the only indigenous islander to have a tourist resort. I’m pretty sure I’m the only guest around right now, but many local people were hanging out in and around the resort today when I came in. Khun Jaeng (the owner) says I’m welcome to use the resort kitchen to cook for myself, or I can get food from the restaurants in the other parts of the island. I have electricity from 6 pm to 1 am to charge things and write. My Thai is slow and I’ve forgotten some words, but it’s returning at a reassuring rate. The flights and connections were no problem at all. I’m almost done reading Blink which is fantastically interesting.
Hope this isn’t too much detail! I want everyone to know I’m safe and sound. I’ll email this tomorrow morning and possibly even skype if the much more affordable internet café is open this time of year. Forward freely.
Love,
Gigi
Post # 3
June 19th
Wow. Today was awesome and I am exhausted!!! The day started with me getting up at early morning, about six. I made my room riep roy, meaning tidied up, and put away the rest of my things, organized my backpack to be a day pack for each day. I was feeling a tiny bit apprehensive about going out to talk to people, but if I didn’t feel that would they really be worth talking to? What I mean is, I guess, the best things are always a bit scary and risky, but that’s where you have the most to gain.
I walked out my door to go into town and talk to someone/have some breakfast but before I even leave sanom bungalos I run into a couple of guy and one girl hanging out in the Sanom greeting/café area. I start talking to them a bit, and they invite me for coffee. Somehow, I understood them very well, especially one really friendly guy name Rit. They were impressed by my Thai and we got on really well. It was defiantly a confidence booster. It was so much fun talking to them! They invited me to eat breakfast with them. We walked out to the beach and over to the rocky point, where their lodge was perched above. Smoke was rising from a cooking fire nestled between three triangular rocks. We made breakfast on the beach! I learned everyone (all 8 peoples) names by writing them down and practicing, there was Rit, Ne-ew, Non, Oh-rah., Guang, Ek or “x”, Atit, and Ray. –interjection, omg, my eye lids are sunburned!!! – it was so perfectly amazing. We took photos and chatted and joked. They were all guys, a big extended family. I wondered at the time where all the girls were. The boys splashed, snorkeling, in the water. We ate together on the beach. It was… watery cooked cabbage with garlic and egg! With (tor you’ll love this) something called “salty fish”. Aka fish cooked, soaked, roasted, grilled, injected, made of, and sprinkled with salt. About one rice sized flake of fish is like… my max per bite. normally people just sort of squish a ball of rice on the fish and the juices that come out make the rice flavored salty. Classic real Thai food.
Everyone was just perched on these big bolders on the beach, joking and chatting, or shuffling about up and down the rocky sairs/latter to get up to the huge bungalow veranda above. Smoke rising from the fire and wafting over into the sunlight…
It felt great to make friends and hang out on the beach with them. They invited me to go snorkeling with them, but I decided I had a responsibility to email that I had arrived safe so I went on. At one point, Ray asked me what I thought of Thai people, and i said “They are very generous” and that is the truth. I think if I had to describe all of my experiences in Thailand with two words they would be adventure and generosity.
After that I went into town and used Pi Pooh’s internet and reconnected with him. He remembered my face which was fun. (we interview Pi Pooh in my project group studying waste management last time I was here. He basically single handedly started up a waste management system on the island.)
Next I came home chatting to people on the way. Lipe is composed of the biggest most developed “sunset beach” lined with bars, resorts, massage parlors, resturants, ect. Then a main foreigner drag/walking street, lined with the same plus stores, internet cafes, ext. Almost all of these are closed. The beach and the streets have accumulated debris, natural coconut shells, bits of dead coral, leaves, and driftwood, as well as construction debris and lots of trash. A few of the every kind of venue is open though, and almost everyone I’ve seen has been Thai, and a lot of them local or at least full time residents, which makes a whole different feel because the migrant seasonal workers are not as invested in the island, its social atmosphere, or it’s future, as those who call it home. When I spot them on the beach or in a shop, Farang (foreigners) are a unexpected and a sort of awkward sight.
The other half of lipe is remnants of forest and the Chow Lay (ocean people) villages. These are corrugate roved houses, bustling with playing kids, and working/socializing adults. The village is crowded with bedraggled chickens, and skinny dogs, and cats. I saw a chicken wire cage with doves, women washing clothes, carrying coconuts, making dinner, a guy and his toddler son burning an empty blue oil drum, a scrawny puppy yowling as it ferociously chased its tail, a man selling popcorn from a cart… Imagine trees enough for shade, dirt roads, houses haphazardly arranged over the packed ground, a spattering of brush and gardens, many neighbors hanging out together and working, lots of animals.
I’m trying to basically only speak Thai unless the other person speaks really good english (like pi pooh) and I’m really enjoying immersing myself in the language again.
After coming home, I went for a snorkel off Sanom beach. When I got out there I’d say about 30% of the coral was bone white. Some was dead, some was still alive. There were a decent amount of fish, some pretty big parrot fish, a few morish idols. It was a mix of a really euphoric to be there, but sad about what was happening dive. My new fins were heavenly and all my equipment, mask, snorkel worked flawlessly, which was awesome. I am fascinated by reefs. The second I get in, I just want to learn more about them. Get really close up and look at the little symbionts in the coral. Follow the schools of fish. Know what species I’m seeing. Know what species I’m not seeing, but should be. They are just so exciting and high energy, even when they are half dead.
After the swim I showered, the water very warm from the tubes in the sun all day, and washed my equipment. I decided to escape the heat of mid day and did a lot of organizing ideas on my porch. I brainstormed and wrote up schedules, safety protocols, decided on how I would record my experiences and did some journaling.
I took a two hour walk around the island. Bought some long kong, and knawhk fruits to share. Came back, showered again, and met with my new neighbor friends for dinner. This is when I found out they are just visiting and are leaving tomorrow! Oh no! all that time I spent memorizing names, socializing and networking is leaving tomorrow morning. Boo. It was really fun and rewarding and worth it, though it would have been superb if my friends were staying longer.
I am so exhausted I can hardly type. Good night!
ONG I almost forgot!! On my walk I saw a older fisherman carrying a GIGANTIC SWORD FISH over his shoulder into town. It was at least 7 feet long, without its giant sword nose. It was insane! He let me take a picture. Coming soon. I bumped into him a bit later, too. He sold it for 500 B -- about 16 dollars.
Journal excerpt:
I’m talking with Coon Jaeng and he says “are you going diving?”
“yeah” I answer.
“there is coral out there” he says, and gestures out from the beach. A few rocks peak above the sea, and dark blue blotches like camo-shapes are visible beneath the surface. “There is coral out there, but it’s dead.” He says. His voice, like the sea, is calm covering something much more complicated. I imagine I can hear sadness and picture other currents underneath. “Three weeks ago” he said “it was green and alive. Then it turned the color white, then it turned the color black and then it died. It happened all around…” he gestures as if circumnavigating Lipe island. “I went to look in my boat. It died on Ko Adang island and Ko Rawi island and Egg Rock too…. It’s the same as 12, 13 years ago, when Thailand had Elnindo.” ‘sorry, what?” I ask. We are speaking thai and I didn’t catch the last word. I leaned in closer “el nino” he says again, slower, and I understand that I do understand the Spanish word. “ka, ka, Cow Jai” I say ‘oh, yes, I understand.” From the veranda where we are sitting, Coon Jaeng squints out over the beach. “That year, the water was cold, and the coral died the same. This time it is not cold. It is very hot. It’s about temperature. Now, the water is hot. It’s too hot for the coral to live.” I look out over the bright water with pinched eyebrows and a falling heart. Today is my first day of the month I’ll spend on Lipe Island, a four hour boat ride off the southern tip of Thailand. I’ve come to study the coral reef and its relationship with the island’s inhabitants; what factors go into its degradation and what impacts the decline will have on tourist development and the local people. “I came to learn about the reef” I say. “and now its dead. It is hurting heart,” which is the Thai word for sad. “In the US the coral is in danger too, the oil in the sea comes out and comes out and we can’t stop it”. Coon Jaeng nods. We sit in silence for a while. The waves lap up on the paradise white sand beach. A black fishing bird is cawing form the tropical trees in front of Pi Jaengs bungalows. “Today, you dive out there” Pi Jaung says getting up “tomorrow I’ll take you out to Egg Island. Egg Island coral is more beautiful… but its dying too.”
Post # 2.
Hello!
I arrived safely this afternoon on Ko Lipe island. It is unbelievably beautiful. Very humid. And there are hardly any tourists here. The waters are a crisp light blue. The sands are warm and white. Most resorts and restaurants are closed. People (the whole journey long) have been kind and helpful. I’m looking forward to the rest of my stay here. Pi Jaeng, the owner of the bungalows I’m staying at is wonderful. My bungalow has a big hammock overlooking, past shading tropical trees, peaks of the open sea. After starting at 7:00 am W (on four hours sleep) and arriving her at 3 pm F (minus a 13? hour time difference) and sleeping only a bit on the plane I fell directly into bed until now (6:30 – nightfall) so I’ll go into town tomorrow morning to email this and check out the internet situation. At worst I know there is internet for 10 cents a minute (yikes) at one resort. I’m doing extremely well and having a very good time. I was able to get an extra supply of money out of the ATM in the pier town, so although there is no way to get money on the island, I should have enough for the trip with me (hidden around and mostly in my neck pouch for now).
One funny story so far is compared to the people who are just coming out for a few days, my 20.7 K bag and carry on and back pack were humungous!! The speed boat dropped us off on the opposite side of the island from my resort, and for a moment I contemplated carrying all my stuff (possible, but extremely hot and potentially embarrassing) all the way across the island (a 30 munite walk without bags). However, two really helpful employees of another resort gave me a ride in their motorcycle with side luggage car, (for like 3 dollars) and from their resort and I called up Khun Jaeng who cheerfully came to pick me and my stuff up from their resort (and we could meet in person for the first time). I liked him immediately.
Two stories of success were changing my money in BKK (31 B / dollar) not in New York (where the rate was 27 B / dollar) and saving a hundred dollars that way. Then I got to Hat Yai, took a group taxi into town $2 and got a ride from a wonderful woman, Anowan, the two hour van ride to Pak Bara (the pier where I’m going) for only $5. It was a private ac van with lovely company since she goes everyday as part of running her company in the low season, even if only one person like me comes. Although she runs at a loss for the day, she says over time it all works out. (she lives in Pak Bara so she was heading from her Hat Yai office home, a trip she makes each day). It turns out there isn’t a local bus that goes to Pak Bara this time of year, so it was doubly fortunate I could go with Anowan. Because to go by bus would have meant traveling three separate busses and def. missing the 11:30 ferry until the next day. On the ride we joked about how the 6 boats and many agencies running during high season all compete and “fight” to get customers, but in low season everybody works together and are friends because there are so few tourists that they can’t all operate. The same service from the airport would have cost $70 dollars or more. I made the ferry, and had a wonderful time cruising at a whopping, bouncing, flying, 90 kilometers and hour with a really fun family from south Africa out to the island.
To a slight prick in my stomach I realized the only thing I’ve eaten today is a airplane sandwich at 6:30 AM. Hehehe. Time to pull out some of the snacks, dad packed me for the plane, and while I barely touched since meals were served so often. I think I got (in this order) dinner, lunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner, lunch, no wonder my stomach is confused. This time, unlike in last September, we chased the sun around the globe so the whole trip was brightly lit. Mom, the water was a light blue, but mostly looking out the window was too bright to do. We flew over Alaska and n. Canada and could see the tiny nubs of melting glaciers up the big trenches where the used to lay nestled in the mountains.
If your interested google Ko lipe, and click ‘welcome to ko lipe” and check out the map. I’m staying at Sanom bungalos, which are on their own tiny private beach below the biggest “sunset beach”. The owner is the only indigenous islander to have a tourist resort. I’m pretty sure I’m the only guest around right now, but many local people were hanging out in and around the resort today when I came in. Khun Jaeng (the owner) says I’m welcome to use the resort kitchen to cook for myself, or I can get food from the restaurants in the other parts of the island. I have electricity from 6 pm to 1 am to charge things and write. My Thai is slow and I’ve forgotten some words, but it’s returning at a reassuring rate. The flights and connections were no problem at all. I’m almost done reading Blink which is fantastically interesting.
Hope this isn’t too much detail! I want everyone to know I’m safe and sound. I’ll email this tomorrow morning and possibly even skype if the much more affordable internet café is open this time of year. Forward freely.
Love,
Gigi
Post # 3
June 19th
Wow. Today was awesome and I am exhausted!!! The day started with me getting up at early morning, about six. I made my room riep roy, meaning tidied up, and put away the rest of my things, organized my backpack to be a day pack for each day. I was feeling a tiny bit apprehensive about going out to talk to people, but if I didn’t feel that would they really be worth talking to? What I mean is, I guess, the best things are always a bit scary and risky, but that’s where you have the most to gain.
I walked out my door to go into town and talk to someone/have some breakfast but before I even leave sanom bungalos I run into a couple of guy and one girl hanging out in the Sanom greeting/café area. I start talking to them a bit, and they invite me for coffee. Somehow, I understood them very well, especially one really friendly guy name Rit. They were impressed by my Thai and we got on really well. It was defiantly a confidence booster. It was so much fun talking to them! They invited me to eat breakfast with them. We walked out to the beach and over to the rocky point, where their lodge was perched above. Smoke was rising from a cooking fire nestled between three triangular rocks. We made breakfast on the beach! I learned everyone (all 8 peoples) names by writing them down and practicing, there was Rit, Ne-ew, Non, Oh-rah., Guang, Ek or “x”, Atit, and Ray. –interjection, omg, my eye lids are sunburned!!! – it was so perfectly amazing. We took photos and chatted and joked. They were all guys, a big extended family. I wondered at the time where all the girls were. The boys splashed, snorkeling, in the water. We ate together on the beach. It was… watery cooked cabbage with garlic and egg! With (tor you’ll love this) something called “salty fish”. Aka fish cooked, soaked, roasted, grilled, injected, made of, and sprinkled with salt. About one rice sized flake of fish is like… my max per bite. normally people just sort of squish a ball of rice on the fish and the juices that come out make the rice flavored salty. Classic real Thai food.
Everyone was just perched on these big bolders on the beach, joking and chatting, or shuffling about up and down the rocky sairs/latter to get up to the huge bungalow veranda above. Smoke rising from the fire and wafting over into the sunlight…
It felt great to make friends and hang out on the beach with them. They invited me to go snorkeling with them, but I decided I had a responsibility to email that I had arrived safe so I went on. At one point, Ray asked me what I thought of Thai people, and i said “They are very generous” and that is the truth. I think if I had to describe all of my experiences in Thailand with two words they would be adventure and generosity.
After that I went into town and used Pi Pooh’s internet and reconnected with him. He remembered my face which was fun. (we interview Pi Pooh in my project group studying waste management last time I was here. He basically single handedly started up a waste management system on the island.)
Next I came home chatting to people on the way. Lipe is composed of the biggest most developed “sunset beach” lined with bars, resorts, massage parlors, resturants, ect. Then a main foreigner drag/walking street, lined with the same plus stores, internet cafes, ext. Almost all of these are closed. The beach and the streets have accumulated debris, natural coconut shells, bits of dead coral, leaves, and driftwood, as well as construction debris and lots of trash. A few of the every kind of venue is open though, and almost everyone I’ve seen has been Thai, and a lot of them local or at least full time residents, which makes a whole different feel because the migrant seasonal workers are not as invested in the island, its social atmosphere, or it’s future, as those who call it home. When I spot them on the beach or in a shop, Farang (foreigners) are a unexpected and a sort of awkward sight.
The other half of lipe is remnants of forest and the Chow Lay (ocean people) villages. These are corrugate roved houses, bustling with playing kids, and working/socializing adults. The village is crowded with bedraggled chickens, and skinny dogs, and cats. I saw a chicken wire cage with doves, women washing clothes, carrying coconuts, making dinner, a guy and his toddler son burning an empty blue oil drum, a scrawny puppy yowling as it ferociously chased its tail, a man selling popcorn from a cart… Imagine trees enough for shade, dirt roads, houses haphazardly arranged over the packed ground, a spattering of brush and gardens, many neighbors hanging out together and working, lots of animals.
I’m trying to basically only speak Thai unless the other person speaks really good english (like pi pooh) and I’m really enjoying immersing myself in the language again.
After coming home, I went for a snorkel off Sanom beach. When I got out there I’d say about 30% of the coral was bone white. Some was dead, some was still alive. There were a decent amount of fish, some pretty big parrot fish, a few morish idols. It was a mix of a really euphoric to be there, but sad about what was happening dive. My new fins were heavenly and all my equipment, mask, snorkel worked flawlessly, which was awesome. I am fascinated by reefs. The second I get in, I just want to learn more about them. Get really close up and look at the little symbionts in the coral. Follow the schools of fish. Know what species I’m seeing. Know what species I’m not seeing, but should be. They are just so exciting and high energy, even when they are half dead.
After the swim I showered, the water very warm from the tubes in the sun all day, and washed my equipment. I decided to escape the heat of mid day and did a lot of organizing ideas on my porch. I brainstormed and wrote up schedules, safety protocols, decided on how I would record my experiences and did some journaling.
I took a two hour walk around the island. Bought some long kong, and knawhk fruits to share. Came back, showered again, and met with my new neighbor friends for dinner. This is when I found out they are just visiting and are leaving tomorrow! Oh no! all that time I spent memorizing names, socializing and networking is leaving tomorrow morning. Boo. It was really fun and rewarding and worth it, though it would have been superb if my friends were staying longer.
I am so exhausted I can hardly type. Good night!
ONG I almost forgot!! On my walk I saw a older fisherman carrying a GIGANTIC SWORD FISH over his shoulder into town. It was at least 7 feet long, without its giant sword nose. It was insane! He let me take a picture. Coming soon. I bumped into him a bit later, too. He sold it for 500 B -- about 16 dollars.
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