Tarutao, Pt 2

I thought I'd start off with a little of what I've been reading. A few days ago I read an excellent book called Weed Man about a guy called Jimmy Divine. He was perhaps the largest smuggler of cannabis in Caribbean history. Eventually he was responsible for shipping large cargo ships full of cannabis from Columbia to the United Sates. It's a terrific read – reminiscent of Howard Marks' Mr Nice, for those who know that. Jimmy's a very good story teller and the book is full of amusing anecdotes. I'll include a couple.

" 'This one Friday, I was flipping burgers,' Jimmy recalls, 'and everybody's just sitting round as usual, shooting the bull. When out of the corner of my eye, I see my brother Godfrey take out a packet of cigarettes and flip one up into his mouth. I remember saying to myself, 'This boy has gone and lost his mind.' I don't know what he was on, but sure enough, Olive suddenly filled the entire doorway – this gigantic woman, right? And she just stood there for a moment, as if she was taking it all in. It took her thirty seconds or more to realize what her son was doing, because she didn't think anybody possessed that much stupidity to smoke a cigarette on her property. And as I stood there and watched, she calmly walked over to the side of Godfrey, drew back her hand, and slapped that boy hard – and when I say hard, she slapped him silly. His cigarette went one way and his face went the other. And I never ever saw Bobo – I called him Bobo affectionately, and he called me Pumpkin – smoke anything again. He told me later that every time he saw a pack of cigarettes, his head ached. No sir, you did not mess with Olive, no matter who you were.' "

At another point, Jimmy's talking about his step-mum's preferred method of discipline.

" 'Olive read somewhere in the Bible that if you spare the rod you spoil the child. I think that's the only Scripture she ever memorized in her life, Jimmy points out. 'She used to beat me once a week for the things I did that she didn't know about. The tamarind tree was the switch of choice, because it's really, really thin – and it stings. And the sad part about it is she used to send me to fetch the switch. You can't pick a thin switch, either, because if it breaks while she's beating you, then you're in a world of trouble. Then she has to go to the tree to get what you didn't get in the first place. Just think of the mental anguish you go through when you have to choose the right switch. First you have to find the right one. Then you have to strip the leaves off. And as you're coming back to the house, you're swinging it like she's going to swing it. And it's making this sound – ssswishhh-ssswishhh-ssswishhh – and you realise that every one of those swishes is going to be headed in your direction, and they're going to be painful. It was a tough walk to take.' "

One time Jimmy goes to see the film Hercules Unchained at the local theatre. He's inspired by Hercules' super-human strength. He rushes home and wraps his arms round the trunk of a tree in the back yard. Olive yells out, "Boy, what are you doing?"
"I'm pulling this tree out of the yard."
"What tree?"
"This tamarind tree."
"Why?"
"I saw Hercules doing it in the movie just a little while ago."
"Boy, come this way. But first break off a switch and bring it with you for being stupid."

Anyway, it's an enjoyable read. If anybody wants to borrow any of the books or articles I mention, let me know.

A couple of days after I arrived, a French couple – Matthieu and Muriel – moved in to the bungalow next door. They were on a year-long trip around the world. Apparently in France there's a thing called a sabbatical whereby if you've worked for six years at a job, you can take a year's unpaid leave and your work has to hold your job for you. More evidence that the French lead a better life than the rest of us. And Matthieu and Muriel – who worked at the same company – got nine and a half weeks annual leave a year anyway!

They were good company. Muriel was passionate, pretty, and intellectual – pretty much how one expects French women to be. Matthieu reminded me a little of Lucky Luke – the thin frame, the hair, and the aloof coolness. Needles to say, he smoked. They were stimulating conversationalists and had travelled to some interesting places in the last eight months. Ironically, they'd just come from Penang and before that Kuching, two places I'm heading to shortly. Good to know I'm headed where intrepid travellers go.

On the 24th, we all shared a longtail to the beach where Survivor Thailand was filmed. It was supposed to be a good area for snorkelling, and it was a pretty boat ride.

Unfortunately the water had almost no visibility – that plus the fact whatever coral we could see was clearly dead. The Survivor beach itself wasn't especially impressive – Ao Molae, where I'd been the day before, was far more beautiful. This beach was now obviously a staging post for fishermen. Behind it, in shallow caves was a camp where the fisherman stay overnight.

As it's a marine National Park, I couldn't quite work out why there was about a half mile of fishing gear just behind the beach.

We had lunch on the beach and some nice swims, and then we headed back. I think I spent the late afternoon reading. At some point I felt like something healthy, so I had an avocado I'd brought with me. It was the first really fresh food I'd had in days. I'll definitely be taking more fresh fruit to islands in the future.

That night I ushered in Christmas with Muriel and Matthieu – the French celebrate it on Christmas Eve. Among other things we had a whole fried fish, which was quite yummy.

I have to say, the quality of the food on Tarutao varies considerably. Half the meals I've had have been pretty bad and half quite good. With some trepidation I ordered some "French Fried"(French fries) at one point. They were excellent. But then a yellow soup with fish most certainly wasn't. The pad Thai was nice enough, but the fried vegetables were pretty grim (two types of cabbage and not much else, and pretty bland at that). And so on. Actually, the pad Thai has the usual condiments: fish sauce, chilli flakes, and sugar. When I went to spoon a little sugar on, I noticed it seemed to be moving. There were thousands of tiny ants in the sugar bowl.

On Christmas Day, I woke up early to the usual sound of monkeys trying to open rubbish bins. They tip them over and seem to be pretty good at prying their way in.

I got up and opened the present my mum had given me: The Food Snob's Dictionary. It both lampoons food snobs while simultaneously telling them what they need to know. Whilst many people think I'm a food snob, I'm not really a traditional one. I hate pretension more than almost anything on Earth. I care most about the quality of ingredients, not – as food snobs do – what those ingredients are. The book is slight but amusing. And I think it's got a good take on things. It points out that panko breadcrumbs have become quite modish among food snobs, but that many of them fail to realise that the "non-sogging qualities come from the trans-fat-laden partially hydrogenated oils usually used in making the crumbs." I wouldn't touch panko crumbs with a barge pole; they're in the Foods from Hell pantheon along with margarine.

I thought of my friend Cushla, back in New Zealand, opening the present I'd left for her. We give each other a gimmick present each year. It has to be silly and useless. I'd given her a poster of the Hoff.

For breakfast I had some food I took with me: some oatmeal biscuits (from Fresha in New Plymouth, they were excellent) and some Italian mandarin jam. It was nice to start the day with something sweet.

I thought I had better do some washing. I was down to one t-shirt left: my Subversive Copy Editor one, a reward for being a frequent poster on the Chicago Manual of Style forum. We all have our specialties – mine is punctuation, in particular the parenthetical en dash (for those who know her, I think this love for the dash began with the great American film critic Pauline Kael). I love how a dash (en or em for that matter – I probably prefer the em, but I'm stuck in New Zealand) can help approximate the way we think.

At any rate, laundry cost 10 baht a piece (about forty-four New Zealand cents, I think), so I took a pile to the National Park office. Then I went to hire a bicycle for the day (this was 200 baht, or NZ$8.80). Unfortunately the only vaguely ridable one left was a woman's one with a low seat and barely any breaks at all (the front one worked about forty per cent and the back one about ten per cent). I packed up all my stuff, including some lunch and headed off the Ao Molae round the coast. That mother of a hill was a challenge on the bike; I had the breaks on full for most of the way down and still didn't come to a stop. Ao Molae looked even more beautiful than the other day. It was a great place to spend a relaxing Christmas.

The water was particularly nice. Despite what Viv thinks, I didn't come to Thailand for the ladyboys. I came for water like this ...

I managed to get the hammock up much faster this time. And it's just so comfortable. It's probably the best thing I've brought with me (although DermAid for itchy bites would run a close second). I spent the day swimming in the lagoon or reading and resting in the hammock. By now I was reading a book called 102 Minutes about the fall of the Twin Towers. It might not seem cheery reading, but it's an utterly compelling book. It's based on a whole host of sources – from phone transcripts to interviews. As the book says, "Their words inevitably trace a narrative of excruciating loss; they also describe how the simplest gestures and tools were put to transcendent use ..."And while the book is heartbreaking, it's also utterly transcendent. Reading what people thought about and did in their final moments gives one pause. What would you do if you knew death was suddenly close and inevitable? What regrets would push their way into your mind? What would you be proud of? And the moments of tenderness in the book are extraordinary. Moments of crisis show you we perhaps have more of the gentle Bonobo in us than the aggressive chimp. A book like that is like the most gripping movie, and it was a great way to spend a few hours.

Oh, I forgot about lunch. I'd taken with me a tin of stuffed vine leaves, some walnuts, some olives, some crackers and a tin of duck rillettes. YUM – duck! Or nom nom as someone I know likes to say. It was certainly a Christmas treat, though next time I think I'll find a fridge to throw it in. I think the fat needs to be just a little more congealed.

I think I'd stay at Ao Molae next time. It's not open now because there is no generator. One thing I noticed was that there were nice thick mattresses in the bungalows. The ones at Ao Malaka were ridiculously (I almost used All Caps then) hard. You simply cannot imagine a harder bed. Muriel, Matthieu and I said they might as well just have used wooden tables. When I peeked in the windows of the Ao Molae bungalows and saw those soft beds, I looked on with a mixture of frustration and longing.

Here's a picture of a bungalow at Molae.

There's a row of nice trees between the bungalows and the beach, including a number of coconut palms.

This next section should be titled "Toilet Mishaps". Yes, I've had a few. I think the second day the toilet got blocked. Applying some Kiwi ingenuity, I emptied the rubbish bin and filled it with water, then emptied that in one go into the toilet. That took care of that problem. But it's really something that can bring a holiday down, a blocked toilet. And it's not the kind of place they're going to call a plumber, you know? The next day, my body shampoo slipped out of my hands and landed in the toilet. Ew, yuck, yes I know. Look, this is a warts-and-all blog. The toilet was very clean, I have to say, and I had it under running water within about a second. The next day I saw two giant ants sitting in the toilet bowl looking up at me. These ants were big – there seemed to be several sections to their bodies, like they were created by someone from a special effects workshop. I now have to wonder what today's toilet adventure will be.

Well that's all for now. Time for lunch – I had a nice breakfast, so lunch will probably be pretty disappointing. Later I'm thinking of hiring a kayak and exploring the mangroves. Tomorrow I'm off to Koh Lipe to meet up with Pat and Mat (and yay, hopefully a better bed).