Matt Hobbs

A new kind of hero

Down on Ko Lanta at the moment enjoying relatively quiet gorgeous white beaches, blue seas and sky. The sea is being ridiculously flat at the moment which is lovely for swimming up and down when I’m not lazing around in my hammock. It’s a hard life in paradise, init.

It’s not all fun though, oh no. Yesterday I completed my Rescue Diver qualification, the last PADI qualification before you can start the Professional ones. Apart from a few days in a classroom this also involved a day out on the reef doing fake emergencies… Now, on a normal visit to the reef I generally come across ooh, about zero emergencies a day – perhaps one a week of diving! So to have to run about and ‘save’ six people in an afternoon is completely exhausting. By the end of it I was ready to push them under and say ‘don’t dive any more’! Good fun though and very exciting giving people rescue breaths as you drag them along the water while everyone stares at you like you’re mad.

Oh, and eventually we got to go on a fun dive out at Ko Ha, which was really stunning. Lots of bizarre little fish like harlequin shrimps – about 1 cm long and living on an anemone. Not quite as big as the leopard shark we saw the other day at Ko Daeng. Still hoping to see some whale sharks and manta rays… fingers crossed (no luck yet Vera!).

Angela’s ashes – frank mccourt. Great story of life growing up in New York and then Limerick. Not as accomplished as Joyce’s Dubliners classic stories but a great read nonetheless. Made me feel very selfish when compared to all the generosity in the poor classes.

Going Phi Phi Again

Now down on Ko Lanta, southernmost of the touristy islands on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Here because everyone said it was the nicest, most chilled out island they’d been to on their travels and much better than the highly package touristy Ko Phi Phi… Not 100% convinced of that at the moment as it seems pretty darn package touristy here as well, although without the (often fun) drunken antics of Phi Phi town and the infamouse Tiger bar.

Staying on Long Beach, a different one to Ko Phi Phi but with similar gorgeous sand and wonderful swimming. The whole beach is chocca with guest houses ranging from upmarket bungalows to badly built bambo huts (which is where I’ve been staying). There are benefits to ill fitting bambo mesh though, the light streams through at dawn in a most beautiful manner to wake you up and it normally lets the poisonous centipedes crawl straight back out again after they crawl in… well, most of the time. Same can’t be said for the evil little red ants although only myself to blame for dropping some nut crunch on the floor there.

Also finding the people on Ko Lanta a lot more pushy than elsewhere. Everyone really tries to sell you on their service with barely a pause for breath (all the bar owners ask ‘where are you staying’ as the second question after ‘what do you want to drink’, rapidly followed by a recommendation for their guest house). This is true of the farangs as well as the locals, and can be quite off-putting. Shame in such an island paradise and apparently ’twas not the case only a year ago when half the guest houses hadn’t been built. Progress…

Had a great dive today though off Ko Bida – saw an awesome leopard shark amongst other things and, more importantly, my ears didn’t fritz out on me – so more diving ahead. Huzah!

Hint of the day: When booking your ‘ferry ticket from Krabi to Ko Lanta’ make sure you’re booking the relaxing two hour, all sea based ferry ride as opposed to the two hour cramped minibus journey broken up with two 3 minute ferry crossings.. Not quite as enjoyable.

Keep on trekkin’

A week on and I’ve been to two more countries already… busy week. Not such a big deal as it was just a trip to the infamous ‘golden triangle’ in the north of Thailand where it joins both Burma and Laos. So an extremely quick, bouncey and fun boat ride across the Mekhong river put us on a small island that is official in Laos but you don’t stamp your passport. Then a bit later a quick walk across a bridge and 250 baht for a day pass gave me a Burmese stamp and another 30 days in Thailand to enjoy. Mae Sai, the border town, was very calm compared to Poi Pet with prices in the market that made Bangkok seem ridiculously overpriced due to cheap Chinese imports.

Most of this week was spent in Chiang Mai, home of more temples than you can point a stick at, all of which are still active and stunningly beautiful. Chiang Mai is also well known as the place where lots of old, fat white men go to ‘find’ young Thai wives which made for some interesting people watching. Didn’t spend too much time on that myself, instead opting for a three day hike up north of Pai.

This hike was important on my travels as I’ve been carrying round my waterproof and hiking boots for a month now and had never used them. I can now leave them in storage feeling like I wasn’t completely stupid to have bought them in the first place – huzah! The boots certainly made the hiking a lot easier, some folk were trying it in flip flops… hmm. The Thai countryside is stunning and reminded me a lot of photos of China I’d seen. We stayed in bambo huts with floors that I constantly felt I’d fall through but never did (unlike when I got on the bambo raft). Also got to ride an elephant and pole bambo rafts down a river with some mini-rapids which was great fun and gave me flashbacks to PGL.

Now back in Bangkok again, on my way down south to Ko Lanta for some more diving and beach dwelling. Another overnight bus journey beckons which hopefully won’t be anywhere near as cramped and unnerving as the one that bought me here last night – every time we stopped the driver pulled out an arc welder and started to weld the gear shift rod back together…

Blast from the past – ben elton. Another quick and fairly satisfying read from Mr Elton. The main plot involves a beautiful, ex-hippy woman, her stalker and the only love of her life. Simple really, but with much more character development than is normal from the author, which makes it one of my favourite books of his. The one gripe is that sometimes it reads like the concept for a play rather than a book.

The discovery of slowness.

All greased up

Been a while since my last missive… spent all of that time on Ko Phangan. Decided to do a massage course which was great fun. Have to say that waking up early in Haddrin after a hard night out drinking on the beach is not a pleasent thing – but rubbing oil into cute Thai girls in the name of ‘learning’ definately makes it more palatable. It’s a hard life init.

The Full Moon Party was as crazy as you’d expect. Thousands of people crammed onto a (previously) pristine stretch of fine sand bouncing up and down to whatever music is pumping from the bar in front of them. Great fun – like Glastonbury but with better weather and a beach. Watching the sun come up over the sea was an awesome experience, with a soundtrack of thumping techno to boot. The sun obviously wasn’t in a techno mood, as it hid behind clouds for a good hour which kept things nice and cool – and then it rained! Such a glorious feeling having refreshing rain pouring down on you, until you remember your digital camera’s not in a waterproof bag of course.

The morning sun, as well as bringing rain, also brought the realisation of the damage that the party causes to both the beach and the people. Glass and plastic is strewn everywhere, with the encroaching tide sometimes taking part of it out to sea. Not a pleasent site. The bars here make no effort to tidy up the bottles during the night, and most people aren’t really in a state to think of taking them back to the bar themselves. In fact by the morning many people aren’t in a state for much, except lying on the beach comatose or dancing barefoot like wobbly spinning tops on tops of empty glass bottles. Nice. Rumours were also spreading of a body washed into shore the next day… a caucasian casualty with no name, but there was no official backing to that story.

To recover from the madness I changed rooms at the Sarikanita (formally Bumble Bee) guest house on Leela beach. Leela is a beautiful little beach situated over the hill from sunrise beach where the partying happens. This means it’s quiet, relaxed and only a 5 minute walk into town. The room I stayed in was beautiful, quiet and well designed – with an awesome, sun facing outside shower from which you can see the sea. Beautiful. Was very hard indeed to drag myself away from that comfortable spot and head back to Bangkok to try and see what I could do with my visa, or head north for a last bit of sight seeing in Chiang Mai…

Oh my Buddha!

Another day, another island.. This time it’s the home of the infamous Full Moon Party – Ko Phangan (or Ko Pha Ngan) in the Thai gulf. Another day spent travelling to get here – crossing the Thai southlands from Krabi to Surat Thani then a ferry – with the weathe getting greyer and windier as we went – oops. Currently staying in a small beachside guest house (Chokana) near Tong Sala and contemplating a move to Heddrin (or Hat Rin or however you want to spell it).

Nothing much else to say at the mo though… The local Chokana folk are very touchy feely and prone to saying ‘Oh my Buddha!’ at random, amusing moments. There’s a cool dog called Johnnie who likes to dig up sand crabs and then chase them down the beach – all of which passes for high entertainment value here. Getting mildly addicted to oil massage although the best one I had was still the first one on Ko Phi Phi – with a massage hut right on the beach listening to the waves break as a larger than average Thai woman pummelled the knots out of my back. Bliss. Last night’s massage left my smelling like a coconut which seemed to attract the amorous attentions of this cute black puppy that wouldn’t let go of my leg.. ah, bless.

Planning to move to Haddrin at some point to be more in the thick of it (ie, nearer regular massage facilities) and going to do some yoga and massage courses to keep me off the streets (and away from the cheap and evil local Thai whiskey). Also suspect that the every night beach party on Sunrise beach (Heddrin has two beaches, sunrise and sunset for obvious reasons) will keep me busy some nights with the choice of hip hop, house, chart, techno, trance and whatever else the DJ fancies combined with full on fire twirling shows – sometimes there are four going on at the same time, each with multiple people which is pretty intense.

Right… back off for some more sunning now having narrowly avoided a dialup crash at this cheapy cheap internet place (20 baht an hour).

Going Phi Phi

A slight change of scenery now as in the tropical island paradise of Ko Phi Phi, off the west coast of Thailand. Sun, sand and scuba diving are the order of the day – although not surfing as the sea is as flat as a pancake, great for snorkling off the beach. Have a little beach hut, near the beach with great views of the ocean from my hammock – sweet.

Getting to paradise was slightly less idyllic though. The sloooowest coach this side of coach town followed by a very cramped minibus drive for a few hours. Once we got on the ferry though everything was superb – just from the feeling of being near the sea again (aided by sleep depravation of course).

Republican party reptile – p.j. o’rourke. Collection of short writings sometimes political, sometimes just laddish but always funny and insightful.