First week in Thailand, it’s raining in heaven.

11 September 2012

Sept 03rd- 09th.

There are over seven points to cross the border, but we chose the smallest village, and the closest to Kota Barhu, let’s be honest. The barge took us across the river to the tiny town of Tak Bai to get our immigration and custom paperwork done, and we were finally in Thailand. Our first encounter with Thailand proved to be right: this is going to be a challenge.

Remember Thailand uses a different alphabet, more like symbols than letters, representing diphthongs in a very artistic way. This turns the most educated Westerner into an illiterate child when it comes to reading.

Fortunately though, most road signs and important information is also written in English. But not always though, as we were soon to discover.
Thailand is also an hour behind, so while we turned our watches one hour back, we realised we were very hungry and tired, so we decided to camp on the first beach we could find. Just 30km from the border.

The road North the next day was punctuated by military checkpoints. It seems the south of the country is fighting for more, or total, independence from the kingdom, and the tension is palpable. The soldiers at each checkpoint, though very friendly and smiling each time they see Tanami, our teddy bear, are all armed to the teeth with heavy machineguns, semi-automatic pistols, bulletproof vests and Kevlar protector gear. Well we went through every time so they’re obviously not targeting foreigners.

It’s a lovely drive to our next destination, on the West coast. No palm trees, great sceneries, nice road, and funny road signs we have no clue how to read. Thank god for GPS (and the navigational skills of my co-pilot, I must admit she’s pretty good at this stuff).
We stopped at the supermarket on the way, and laughed non stop while shopping since we could not understand either the ingredients or even the products. Everything is very different, like the butcher alley selling pig ears or intestines. Still, we filled the trolley with just 50dollars, pretty good deal.

We were looking for a beach actually, but we only found mangrove. So we settled for an average spot, then a guy armed with a small rifle came by, smiled and offered us in very good English to follow him to the jetty, where we could spend the night, all dry and protected. And protected we were. Adi spent the whole night by the fire, with his rifle on his laps, while we slept soundly in our tent, away from the buzzin mosquitoes. He was so concerned for us he really did not sleep. I don’t know what exactly he was afraid of, but we woke up very much alive. He turned down our offer for a coffee, and went to bed. We never saw him again.

North of the mangrove, the famous island of Ko Lanta was waiting for us. Now, for my non-French speaking readers, Ko Lanta is famous in Belgium and France as it was the set for the equivalent of the TV show “survivor” a few years ago. It is also famous as the small island next to it was where the movie “The Beach” was shot. Mr Di Caprio now owns a rather large villa on the top of Ko Lanta.

You need to take two ferries to get to the island, then drive a bit down the West coast to find the friendly Lek and his “Mixing Bar” which just opened. He’s a local, who’s been traveling quite some time in the UK and now lives with his French girlfriend in this little bit of paradise. His café is build with scraps of wood the sea sends him at every tide, and sells beers and cocktails on the beach.
Lek offered us to pitch our tent on his beach, so we kindly accepted his offer. This turned out to be a pretty lousy idea. The weather changed rapidly as soon as we lit the fire, and by 7PM, the storm was upon us. Heavy wind and torrential rain forced us to take the tent down as the fiberglass poles were menacing to break. We just had time to finish dinner, quickly roll the tent under the car, and the worst of the storm kicked in.

We spent the night in Lek’s house, woken up by mosquitoes and heavy rain on the corrugated iron roof, but at least we were dry.
We spent the next morning cleaning up the mess, sand was everywhere in the tent, in the car, in our clothes. And we all know how much Claire hates sand, but in the end, everything was clean, packed, dry, nothing was broken during the storm and we were ready to go.

On the other side of the island, lies the “old town” with its traditional houses. A decade ago there was a gipsy floating village as well but it got destroyed by the 2004 tsunami.
Now they all live on land but the traditional houses have survived, and still give a very authentic feel to the town. We ate lunch in a very nice restaurant, the table at the end of the jetty, our feel dangling over the water. Mmmh, green curry. So yummy.
Rain was upon us again when we got to Phangnga. The town has apparently one of the best beach in the country, but we never saw it. It rained pretty much nonstop until the next day. Some of you might know the place though, as it’s where the villain in “The Man With A Golden Gun” had his hideout.

The owner of the guesthouse (a bit expensive but so so nice) was coincidently a 4×4 entousiast. So when Troopy did not start in the morning, he called a mate to come and repair the starter/dynamo which also was the reason why the battery was empty every morning. By lunchtime, Troopy was roaring and we got back on the road.

No rain that night, but a palm tree plantation for our campspot. Hopefully this plantation is a bit of an exception in the area, which produces rubber instead. Rubber comes from the latex that seeps from the hevea, the rubber tree. Rubber tree, or Hevea Brasiliensis, has a far less environmental impact than palm oil or coffee. And it does not disfigure the landscape.

Anyways, that’s for another pep talk, no rain, and a much needed good night as the next day we drove for 560km North. Our destination was the Khao Sok National Park, home to wild elephants. We got there by 6PM, and were told most of the campsites were closed due to rain season. We had to chose between the one next to the entrance, with hundreds of students, or one 80km south, very small and very remote. Guess what we chose…

One thing we now know is it’s hard to find a good map. Not just here in Thailand but just about anywhere, even in Australia. Maps displayed at the entrance of the parks are very rarely to scale, very rarely point with the North up, or show any real bit of information. So, the 80km that looked like a nice drive deep inside the park, turned out to be 250km going in circle. You have to remember the roadsigns are not in English, and they actually are roadsigns on the first junction but nothing after. So at 9PM finally, we found the right road, and drove the last few kilometres to the campsite.

As a joke, Claire said “imagine if a wild elephant was to cross the road” and whoopsy, look who’s crossing the road nonchalantly, mummy elephant and her baby. Slam on the brakes, just enough time to steal a few photos and off they went. A bit further, another one, an old bull this time, with a funny birthmark on his face, blocked the road. WOW that’s totally worth driving 2 hours in circle.

After a quick dip in the waterfalls the next morning, we headed for Bangkok, tomorrow, Julie, my sister, is joining me for three months! YAY!.

Distance to-day: 1759km, total: 33356km.