Cat's Malaysian misadventures - well I'm in S Thailand, so I'm almost in Malaysia...

9/8/2006 continued

I arrived at the full moon party in Hat Rin with Kate, Ruth, Jamie, Caragh, Dean, Jenny, Cathy and Joanne (my crowd of friends from bottle beach - a mixture of English and Irish people, mostly teachers and university students on their summer holidays). Once we'd got past the police checkpoints and I'd finally managed to e-mail my parents to reassure them that I was still alive and well, the first thing I saw was a long line of stalls selling sandcastle buckets containing a 350ml bottle of a spirit of some sort, and a can of coke, or a carton of orange juice for about three quid. Suspected that this evening would not end well for the 5000 or so people crammed onto one long beach in various states of inebriation. Spread along the beach were several different sound systems, playing trance, techno, house, reggae, breakbeats and pretty much anything else you can dance to. In one spot there was a roped off area where people were performing with fire poi and staffs (I decided that I was probably too far gone to have a go and stuck to pois that can't burn you alive). People were dancing, sitting, chatting, drinking from buckets and generally partying as far as the eye could see. Dotted around in the sea, people (mostly men) who couldn't be bothered to walk a hundred metres behind the beach to the toilets were standing knee deep in a mixture of sea water, and piss (their own and other people's). People were daubing each other in luminous paints, with flowers and patterns (like me), or with comedy slogans on their backs and tummies ("If found, please return to Belfast", "I don't like paint", "If lost, please fuck me up the arse" etc). One guy was manically running around, trying to paint numbers on everyone, God only knows why, but it seemed to be important to him at the time. He was worried that he wouldn't make it to 100, so we offered our arms and I became number 79. He jumped around in an excited manner, then ran off to eagerly number more people.

Unfortunately, Kate hit the buckets too hard and too fast, so we all spent a bit of time looking after her as she had no idea of what was going on anymore. One of the Thai guys that works on Bottle beach was an absolute star, looked after her and cheered her up. His name's Joc, and he's this hilarious, jolly, huge guy with tattoos on his arms that owns two of the boats that run from bottle beach. I ran into Craig and his girlfriend (whose name I've completely forgotten now) - two bottle beachers that left for Koh Samui a few days before. After squealing and lots of hugging, we danced a bit and then they went off to find special milkshakes. Later on we ran into Jeff and Ben, and the whole Bottle beach crowd was together again. We then picked up a random by the name of Michael, an American guy who was being molested by a ladyboy in front of us. He tried to get me to come over and help, but I just thought that he was trying to get me to join in, to which I gave my best not-my-sort-of-thing-but-thanks-for-asking shrug. When he finally managed to disentangle himself he came over and berated us for not helping him out. He had beautiful cheekbones which, in my then-current state, I found hypnotic. He stayed with us for the rest of the evening, and we flirted while I gawped at his cheekbones. I don't think I dribbled.

My pois were in almost constant use - when I wasn't dancing with them, or teaching someone else, they went from person to person, but always somehow, miraculously came back to me.

When the sun came up at about 6am, turning the piss-filled-sea into a beautiful (but also worrying) yellow tinted mirror, I realised that it was about 11pm at home, and had this sudden, powerful urge to call Mum and Dad from the beach. I don't know quite what they made of that phone call, or the level of background noise, but it was good to (just about) hear their voices. Afterwards I did my bit and grabbed a plastic bag and filled it to bursting point with other people's rubbish (obviously I'd been cleaning up after myself as I went along) as the beach was covered with straws and empty bottles. There was nothing I could, or was willing to do, about the sea (except advise everyone I know never to swim in the sea at Hat Rin - really don't), so we rounded up the Bottle beach stragglers and headed back to the vans. The journey home was bone-jarringly bumpy and interminably long (miraculously the only person who was sick was the driver of one of the other vans), but when we got back to bottle beach, with it's clean, non-piss filled water, we went for a lovely swim, and then had the best breakfast EVER (french toast with normal, run of the mill, in no way magic, or even slightly tricky, mushrooms). Got my belongings back from the safe. I went to bed at about 9am and slept like a baby.

10/8/2006

Slept. Slept some more. Ate food. Contemplated booking myself in for a massage as my back was peeling quite severely, but didn't get round to it as it was too much effort. Went in the sea and made some feeble attempt to wave my arms and legs around in a way that was more a nod in the direction of swimming that actual swimming. Slept some more. At about 8pm I double checked the bag of stuff that I'd left in the safe and discovered that some bastard had taken the big notes (US$160) out of my money belt, and left the small notes with my huge wodge of travellers cheques, so that I didn't notice the missing dollars at first. I hadn't counted the money for a couple of days, but since the money had been either locked in my bungalow or in the care of the staff at Bottle beach, I assumed that the money had been taken from behind the counter before it went into the safe. I went to speak to the owner about it and she became very defensive, assuming that I was accusing her or her staff. I tried to explain that it could just as easily have been another traveller who saw my bag behind the counter before it was taken to the safe (as the desk had been unmanned at times in the confusion of organising transport to the other side of the island), but she wasn't really listening (she's not a very nice person - she's the kind of woman who hates all women, she's nice as pie as long as there's a man within earshot, but is a cow if there's not).

Bollocks.

11/8/2006

I organised my PADI course for the next 4 days with a very highly recommended and professional outfit on Bottle beach. I've been desperate to learn to scuba dive for years, and Thailand is supposed to be one of the best places to dive, and the cheapest places to learn in the world. I went to Thong Sala for the day to sort out boring , practical stuff. I asked for a sawngthaew (pick-up, taxi thing) to the police station (it was 2 miles away and raining), but they wouldn't budge from 400b (about 6 quid), so I started walking. I asked for directions in a massage parlour, and this really sweet masseuse took pity on me and offered to give me a lift on her motorbike. When we got there, she asked me how long I'd be and offered to wait. I told her not to bother as I could have been hours for all I knew, but thanked her profusely. I filled in the report at the station pretty quickly and was given a copy of the translated version that the policeman had written in Thai, but not a copy of what I'd written (apparently this was not possible). I was then expected to give him a bribe of about 2 pounds (I felt like I'd been robbed twice). I came out of the station and the sweetheart with the motorbike had waited for me anyway. She gave me a lift back - I really must go to her for a massage before I leave. I did a quick bit of e-mailing, got some money out of the bank and then made it back to the sawngthaew stop at 4pm. I waited for other people until 4:20 (I was starting to get worried as the last boat was at 5pm), and then we agreed on 100b each for the journey for myself and 3 others (including two very lively, chatty girls from Manchester). After a very entertaining journey, we got out at Chaloklam, and the sawngthaew woman insisted on 150 baht each and kept shouting at us that we'd agreed on 150 baht. All four of us were certain that we'd agreed on 100 baht each, and that this silly cow was trying to rip us off. It really wasn't the money - if she'd said 150 b to start off with, we'd have paid it, it's the underhand way that she tried to get it off us, and the fact that she was being very rude. She then started threatening that she'd stop any of us from getting a taxi boat back to Bottle beach if we didn't pay. I had a brainwave, and said "You do that" and dragged the others away. I phoned up Joc (the lovely, big cuddly bear of a Thai guy from the full moon party - the one with the boats) and got him to pick us up instead. Bless his barefooted-complete-lack-of-socks-cotton-or-otherwise.

At dinner I met two fabulous women (whose names, once again, elude me), one of whom was a maths teacher. As there were no men nearby, the owner practically threw menus at us and stomped off, then came back and snatched them off us 5 minutes later without taking our orders. Silly tart. We managed to find a waiter who was more than happy to take our order, then spent a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours enthusing about different places that we'd been to, and recommending places to stay, and places to avoid. I left the maths teacher with a rather infuriating problem (for the mathmos amongst you - find a number that is followed by 100 consecutive non-primes, and if you can do that, find the smallest such number), and my e-mail address in case she got stuck (as they were both leaving the following day).

12/8/2006

Got up at some ungodly hour of the morning to catch the first boat to go to the other end of the island for my basic scuba training, and then spent a (frankly boring) day watching videos about volume, pressure, scuba equipment and safety stuff. Important, but dull. We were even given homework. The highlight of the day was the place that we had lunch. Not only did I run into the girls from last night, on their way to the ferry off the island, but the toilet in the cafe was just beautiful - the first sit down toilet (or throne) I'd been on in a week, an immaculately tiled floor, a huge mirror and liquid soap. Ahhhh, bliss.


13/8/2006

Got up at some ungodly hour of the morning again and counted my money (this has become part of my morning ritual since my money was nicked) and discovered that I was now missing the remaining dollars and 8000 baht that I'd got out of the atm in Thong Sala. Realised that the only place that that money had been for the last 24 hours, since I had last checked it, was my locked beach hut. Someone must have picked the lock and then relocked it, so that I didn't notice (which would explain why my lock had suddenly bacome more tricky to lock recently), and that was probably what happened to my money last time, I just hadn't noticed it until after the full moon party.

I left for my day of scuba training in a nice safe swimming pool, and dropping by at the police station on the way to say hi, to fill out another report, and to pay another bribe. Marvellous.

The day in the swimming pool was a huge imrovement on the previous day, but learning all of the skills and safety precautions was tricky in such a confined space. There were 5 of us on the course, with two instructors to look after us (part of the reason that I picked this company is that they have a very high ratio of instructors to students, but charge a bit more for it). Really looking forward to seeing corals for the first time tomorrow. Really not liking the fact that we have homework again though.

14/8/2006

Got up at the crack of dawn once again (I swore that I wasn't going to do that for a year), took the boat to Chaloklam and got on the diving boat. Sadly the five of us and the instructors were joined by a tour group of snorkellers. Sea sickness tablets were given out, then Marioline (a Dutch girl from the course) realised that she was only supposed to take one, not two, and started to feel, and act, wasted. She went to lie down below deck and the rest of us just tried to remember which way was up, as the sea tossed the boat around like a plastic bag in a gale (although don't worry Mum, the boat was much more structurally sound than a plastic bag). After 2 hours on what felt like a rollercoaster, we arrived at the dive site just off the coast of Koh Tao, got kitted up, went through last minute safety checks, got in the water, found the rope, did more safety checks, then descended into another world. There were huge, brightly coloured fish everywhere, swimming over freakishly shaped corals and around us. Staying at the same depth, sticking with your buddy, following Gianpaolo (the main instructor), and not bumping into each other and knocking each others' regulators out proved incredibly tricky as we flailed all over the place and forgot half of the things that we'd learned in our excitement. After 45 minutes in the water, our air supplies were running low, so we surfaced, went back to the boat, and ate like pigs until it was time to get kitted up again for our second dive.

We went out onto the water again, as before, and descended with our buddies. John and I were so busy checking that the other one was ok (John had had problems equalising on the way down the first time) and equalising, that I didn't notice the sea bed appearing, as if out of nowhere. I looked down in time to realise that my arse was about to land on a coral reef, started waving my flippers to manoever myself out of the way, and covered my arse with my hands to protect it, and got coral cuts all over my ring and little finger on my right hand. The upper layers of skin were pretty badly shredded, and stung like buggery in the salt water. I thought about asking if I could go back up, but decided not to since I'd been looking forward to this for so long. When everyone had descended to 17 metres, we practised the emergency skills that we'd done yesterday in the swimming pool. It's funny how when you don't have the option of just standing up and surfacing like we did in the pool, you just get on with it. We were all desperate to see more coral, so we went through our mask defogging/regulator recovery type exercises at lightning speed, then Gianpaolo led us off. The ocean floor of the second dive site was covered with big boulders, and the boulders were covered with coral, anenomes (sp?) and other bizarre creatures like sea cucumbers (they look like caterpillars, with the movements of slugs, but about two feet long). We saw trigger fish, angel fish, hexagonal groupers and even a baracouda, and they're just the ones that I can remember the names of! At one point we swam through a canyon in the rocks, and it honestly felt like we were flying through an alien world with freakish creatures. Loved it, loved it, loved it, despite my hand being covered in coral cuts (they're kind of like hundreds of paper cuts, only deeper). Sadly all things that go down must come up again (insert rude joke here), so we ascended and got back onto the boat.

After oohing and aahing over the amazing things we had seen, we set off for Koh Pha Ngan again. There weren't enough sea sickness pills to go round, so I passed on them, thinking that other people probably needed them more (judging by the number of people who were sick on the way over), and that I'd been getting to and from bottle beach on a small longtail boat for a week now, so was used to it. After about half an hour, when I'd dried off a bit, but when the sea was getting really rough, I went to the deck to get Emily (one of the instructors) to sort out my hand. She poured hydrogen peroxide over my hand, swearing to me that it wouldn't hurt (the callous, lying bitch!) and bandaged it. Just as I was walking back to my seat we hit a huge wave, the boat rocked, and I kicked a step in the middle of the boat hard and fell on top of some poor sod who was trying to recover from a bout of seasickness. I knew immediately that I'd fractured my little toe (having done it twice before - why is it always my little toes?), hobbled over to my seat and put my foot up for the rest of the journey. It would almost have been funny if it hadn't been so painful - it was a right old Nordberg moment (O.J.Simpson's character in the Naked Gun). The toe in question is now all bruised with purplish lines down the side, is bandaged up to the next two toes with a makeshift splint made from fairly rigid cardboard (the best that we could do), and walking is slow and painful.

Sadly this means that I can't finish my PADI with the rest of my group (they'll be done by now:-(), that I can't really move far from Bottle beach (certainly not with my luggage), and that there'll be no more climbing to the big rock, volleyball, or even poiing (because of my hand) for at least a few days. I suspect I'm going to get very bored, very quickly. Thank christ the restaurants on bottle beach serve alcohol!

Today (15/8/2006), I've mainly moaned to people about my debilitating toe, limped up and down bottle beach trying to find someone to give me a massage, and when it became clear that none of the masseuses were around today, I hopped (literally) onto a boat to Chaloklam, had a blissful massage that made me feel much more at peace with the world, and came to update my blog.

As I said, I'm likely to get very bored in the next few days, please, please, please e-mail me with all your news from back home.

Lots of love to all.