2008: Speed Boat To Kho Phayam (Thailand)

The overhead fan stopped sometime after midnight, but three open windows - screenless, curtainless - pull cool morning air into my bungalow to waft an almost imperceptible breeze over my body. Humidity is thickly woven into the air... the only blanket I need.

I become aware of perfect silence. My eyes crack open. Wisps of pre-dawn light filter through the loosely woven bamboo walls, forming dotted patterns on the mosquito netting that tents my big bed. Through the open window, pink sky and coconut palms. Still here. Not a breath inside the hut but my own. Outside, even the sea has hesitated, holding its breath for a brief moment as it lifts itself toward the long, curving shoreline in unison. One long wave, building quietly as it sucks the receding water outward. It begins to crest, hovers for one more instant, then comes crashing down all at once, breaking the silence with a stereophonic roar that makes it sound much bigger than it actually is.

As if on cue, the jungle all around me revs up into a buzzing chorus. The cicadas have woken up. They start up each morning just before sunrise and again just after sunset. Just one is all it takes... he gets his neighbors going and they get their neighbors going and pretty soon the entire jungle is alive with their electric hum. So loud you can't hear the ocean anymore. Sometimes you can't even hear what the person right next to you is saying.

Moments later, the cicadas in full swing usher in the first direct rays of today's sun. The sky turns from pink to purple to blue and the cicadas go back to sleep until the next alarm is sounded. I roll myself out of bed to welcome the new day with a dip in a warm, salty tub.

The days don't get much more eventful than that here, which suits me just fine. As you can tell, we loved Kho Phayam island. But it didn't start out that way. Our journey to get here involved a night in Ranong, a dingy seaside town along the border with Burma (Myanmar). Ironically, the main tourist attraction there are the hot springs... it's like a Thai Calistoga. So in spite of being in a dingy and fading border town, we ended up in a luxury spa hotel.

Our morning there began with the delivery of a pile of laundry we'd sent in the night before. The bill was for just around $27... for a single load of laundry! Everywhere else we'd been paying 50 or 60 baht a kilo, about $4 for a good sized pile. But here at the Royal Princess Spa they charge by the item. They fluff. They fold. They iron, even the underwear. Then they mount each item individually on a piece of cardboard that would never fit in your backpack and wrap it in cellophane. For that, apparently, one pays a premium. It was our own fault... we'd both looked at the cover sheet as we built our small pile... 3 pairs of shorts, 2 short sleeved shirts, on and on. Serves us right for not paying attention to the next column... the one that gave the prices.

No matter, though... lessons learned.

Once we got downstairs to the lobby, cardboard removed and all ready to go, we found out that we'd missed our boat. Turns out the lady at the reception desk had recited the ferry schedule for the wrong boat. Wrong island. Our boat to Kho Phayam was already pulling away from the pier. We would have to wait until the afternoon.

"Is there anything to do at the pier?" we ask.

"No, nothing there," the woman working the morning shift says. "Better you wait here."

"Well, maybe it's nothing to them but we might find it interesting," we say to each other optimistically. We order a taxi to pick us up more than an hour before the boat leaves, then haul our stuff back up to the room.

We don't know anything about Kho Phayam first hand, but we suspect it's not the kind of place that's littered with ATMs waiting to put cash into the hands of spendy tourists. We ask the receptionist at the hotel in Ranong if she knows of an ATM we can use before we leave.

"Oh," she thinks a minute. "Yes, at the market."

"Thanks, over that way?" we ask, pointing in the direction she's pointing. "Can we walk?"

"Yes, but... he drive you." She motions to the hotel's minivan driver. "He take you now."

We're happy with that. The temperature has already climbed into the 80s at least and anyway, we're not sure where this market is. We get into the back of the minivan and turn on the aircon. The driver turns some corners, goes down a grey and depressing main drag that looks more like a ghost town than a thriving sea port, until we spot a faded ATM sign near a mini market. "Oh," he says, sounding disappointed. We slow down but don't quite stop as we pass through the parking lot. "Yesterday, right here." He motions with his head to the spot on the sidewalk where an ATM booth apparently used to be. "Today, not here."

It is somewhat disconcerting to be in a place where an eight foot tall box of metal full of cash can just disappear from one day to the next.

"Oh," we reply from the back seat. "Hmm."

The driver goes back the way he came, passes the hotel. He slows down alongside a guy on a motorbike and they have a short conversation... mostly hand and head signals, but we hear the word "ATM" bandied about so we are hopeful.

We stop in an alleyway a few blocks from the hotel. The bank is located along a deserted thoroughfare that has clearly seen more bustling days. The town of Ranong, in general, seems to have once been thriving and now, not. Logan is hoping to change some dollars instead of getting more cash from the machine so he walks up the stairs to the front door. Locked. Closed. Oh.

Never mind. There's a machine on the street level and I'm already there punching in my password. "Invalid amount," the screen flashes back at me. What? I try again. It won't give me 5000 baht (about $160) so I try for 4000. Then 3000. Finally just 1000... at least enough to buy a boat ticket to the island. But no... 1000 baht is an invalid amount, too.

Logan sees the disappointment on my face as he walks up. "What's wrong?"

"It doesn't like my card," I say. "You give it a try."

He does, and gets the same reply. Ranong's starting to feel like even more of a ghost town that we'd thought.

We walk back to the minivan and shake our heads at the driver. "Not working?" he asks. "OK."

"The things we take for granted," Logan says as we get back in. We're a bit discouraged, but we get the distinct feeling that this guy will not give up... he may never have used an ATM himself in his life, but he knows what they look like and his attitude tells us that he will drive us to every cash machine in Ranong until we find one that works for us. We must give him a nice tip when we're done... I'm sure we're both thinking it.

This time he pulls up right onto the sidewalk and gets out with us. He seems to be standing guard for us as we give this next machine a try, but maybe he is just stretching his legs. Still, the street is pretty deserted. I punch my numbers in quickly. I ask the machine, plead with it, to please, if it's not too much trouble, give me 5000 baht so that I can get out of this town and go to Kho Phayam island. It thinks for a moment and then... whoosh! Out flutter five crisp 1000 baht notes. Success!

The machine likes Logan's card, too, and minutes later we're on our way back to the hotel for one last swim in the hot springs before heading over to the pier.

Ah, yes... the pier. We pull out just after 1:30 into a dirt road lined with run down shanties and chicken cages. We are dropped off in front of a tiny dock area about 20x20 foot square. "Pier." The driver points to it. "Restaurant." He points to a small set of tables covered by an awning. Nobody is eating there. Nobody is even sitting there. Some locals hang out around the small, shaded ticket area, but that's it. It takes two minutes for us to buy our tickets, and then we sit down for the one-hour wait. "They were right about there being nothing to do here," Logan says.

"They sure were," I agree. But after a few minutes I get restless and decide to explore the driveway area, where a couple of vendors have set up food and trinket stands. The last one has something grilling on an open charcoal fire, which actually looks quite appealing from a distance. I try not to look like I'm checking out the goods - just going for a stroll, really - as I walk over by it... chiken, apparently. Hmm, heads, feet and all, glazed over with a reddish sauce of some kind. They smell good, but I can't quite get past the heads poked through the top of the skewers, necks swiveled gracefully around to save room on the stick. I stop for a mango instead and sit back down in the ticket area.

"Anything there?" Logan asks.

"There are some skewers... chicken, I think."

He gets up to do some exploring of his own while I take my turn watching our stuff. He must be really hungry because he seems to be stopping at the last stand and ordering one. I see him munching on a stick as he walks slowly back, but he throws it away out of sight before sitting down again. "Was it good?" I ask

"A bit dicey." He pauses. "They had feet."

"You ate one, though."

"Yeah?" He seems unsure about it. "Yeah." I can see he's wondering how this might affect his boat ride.

At half past two, suffering no ill effects from our snacks, we get on the speed boat to Kho Phayam. Since it was now afternoon, we'd opted against the slow boat, which takes 2-3 hours. We imagined ourselves renting a motorbike when we got to the island, riding around a bit to check the place out, then going to the bungalow we'd reserved. We know that the road to get there is only semi-paved at best, and probably not lit at night, so we don't want to be wandering around looking for it after dark.

The speed boat revs its twin engines into high gear as we pull out of the Ranong delta. All seems fine and then clunk! a loud cracking sound, a slight jolt of the boat, and the captain is winding down the engines. Crew scoot around to the back of the boat, talking in hurried Thai, looking alternately concerned and amused. A alarm buzzer of some kind is going off. The crew says something to the captain... click, click, click goes the right engine. They tilt it upward, then back down into the water. Fiddle with the lines going in and out of it. Shout at the captain again, and vroom! We're off... no problem. All is back to normal.

An Australian lady with big eyes looks at me with a worried smile.

Sounds OK, I shrug.

She shrugs back and off we go, racing out of the harbor past the slow boats, the water becoming clearer and clearer as we gain distance from the murky delta area.Then clank, sputter, sputter, cough, and the captain winds down the engines again. Shit! The crew pokes at the right engine again, feeling its temperature, moving it back and forth. They shout for the captain to try various rpms and watch as it vibrates more or less subtly. A slow boat passes off our right.

"I think he hit the bottom back there," Logan says.

We bob around for a little while. Another boat passes us. Then, as if nothing had happened, the captain starts the engines again and we're off. A dedicated crewman leans over the back of the boat holding onto what looks like an oil line for the rest of the way, patting the engine once in a while and shaking his head.


This process is repeated once more, but we do eventually make it to Kho Phayam island. We even make it ahead of the slow boat in the end. The one I thought for a while might have to rescue us. We leave the speed boat coughing and sputtering behind us.