Traipsing Around: Travel and Psychogeography: May 2015

Koh Samui is a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, East of the long, thin stretch of mainland that leads down to Malaysia. I found the journey from Bangkok to the island to be really hard going, involving a domestic flight from Bangkok to Surat Thani, then a very slow and baking hot bus ride of about 2 hours from there to Donsak Pier, a refreshing ferry to Lipa Noi Pier on the island itself and then a taxi ride to Chaweng. It wasn’t that the journey itself was too bad (the bus ride through vibrant green forest and across many, small, pea green rivers would normally have been very interesting), but for the first time on my journey I was really struggling to keep my innards inwards. Crossing from the mainland was spectacular, however, looking out over blue, azure and turquoise waters at the forested mainland and tall, razor sharp islands arranged like strings of shark’s teeth, covered invibrant avocado and olive green vegetation and then looking across to Koh Samui, with white, sandy beaches, fringed with palm trees. It was difficult to believe I was actually here, now, seeing it. It really is a tropical paradise.

Not all of it, though. I thought Chaweng centre a disappointment. It is a very busy small town, with one main road which is crammed with bars, restaurants, Thai massage parlours and travel agents offering jungle safaris, boat trips and money exchange shops. It is an international tourist destination and it’s the first time I have been to a fully-fledged resort like this since leaving the UK. I don’t mind the noisy bars (although the newly built, posh hostel I’m in is in a quiet part of town) or the bands that provide live music. (In fact they are really funny. I had to suppress my laughter at some of the lyrics, which have obviously been learnt from listening to the songs, rather than reading the words, or perhaps it's due to the fact that the Thai struggle to pronounce some words. The chorus of the Status Quo song ‘Whatever you Want’ became something like ‘Whenever ya Wan’, with a Thai accent, which combined with the disjointed and just plain bad guitar playing was sheer comedy genius! I hadn’t realised that Pink Floyd sang about the dank side of the moon! Still, they are giving it a go and the audience seemed to like it, so Hey Ho!). What I don’t really like is the arrogance of some of the holiday makers. I somehow feel like apologising to the lovely Thai people on their behalf and I feel slightly embarrassed to be associated with them. Also, as people are generally on holiday as couples or groups, it is almost impossible to connect with people in conversation and I’m viewed with some suspicion, I think, if I engage with them. For the first time, I’m conscious of being on my own. I’m trying a bit though and the bar owner in the almost empty bar next to the hostel is kindly teaching me a few Thai words and phrases each evening in exchange for buying a couple of beers, before thrashing me at pool. At least it (my Thai) brings more smiles to people’s faces when I use them. On another positive side, the beach is fantastic – about 2 miles of white, soft sand and warm water, and given the number of people in such a small area, surprisingly quiet.

It was a good idea to hire a motorbike and escape.

The snorkelling is just fantastic! Each day I wake up early, around 6am and I travel on the bike about 2 miles south, to Coral Beach. It is a small bay, about 200m wide, flanked on each side by rocks; large cracked blocks which tumble into the sea and frame a sandy beach, edged with palm trees, lime green butterflies and the sound of cicadas. I must look funny washing my shirt in the sea each morning, but the salt water and sun have finally got rid of the sand from Jaiselmeer! There is a beach side bar where, between swims, I get a breakfast of watermelon, papaya and bananas or lunch of fried rice, mixed seafood and Singha beer. The warm water is layered in different colour blues extending out to the horizon: close in, smooth and still, it is more transparent, then slivers of varying shades of dark blue, then graduated hues of lighter blue and then, on the very edge of the horizon, a thin, startling line of turquoise. I’m in the sea each morning by about 7.15am and I usually have the beach to myself or with one or two others. The water is cooler and refreshing in the early morning and the sand is not yet too hot to walk on slowly. The coral starts only 3 feet from the shore and when I stand in the water to put on my mask and snorkel, I can already see fish darting between the rocky clumps. The variety of coral is amazing. Close to shore it is like hovering over a well-kept, gaudy garden, brimming with flowers and vegetables, full of life and colour. A little further out, growing from the seabed and from the sides of the large boulders that extend out from the headland of the bay are huge platelets of what looks like the fungus that grows from the side of felled trees and tree trunks, but 20 times wider, growing in multi-layered abundance, stretching out to catch the sun’s rays. I have the urge to touch everything and I am expecting them to be soft and fleshy, as they look so vegetable like, but they are as hard as rock, with sharp edges which easily cut if caught inadvertently by careless ankles and toes. There are green intestinal like structures that snake across rocks, forming a network of concealed tunnels, round white configurations of coral that are patterned like brains and large brown conical structures, with pineapple like patterns. There are clusters of purple polyps and sea anemones and open clams, gently wafting delicate fern like fans in the breeze. Further out still, in the deeper and cooler water, are brown circular tubes, at least a foot wide and about 3 or 4 feet deep, with sealed ends and which look like the surface has been eaten by worms into complex channels. I don’t think they have been, but the channels themselves are an astonishing purple colour. Their surface has a vaguely bristly texture and when squeezed hard, my hands are left with a greasy, slippery residue, like the clear, slimy juice that runs from seaweed. It is not a good idea to touch everything. After an about an hour my fingers are stinging like mad and the following morning the tips of my fingers are swollen and shiny and blistered. When I emerge from the water on the first day, my toes are bleeding after catching them on the sharp edges of the rocks and coral. I don’t know how long I swim for, I have no idea of time, but when I do leave the water, my fingers and palms look like the face of an octogenarian smoker.

Swimming here is like flying across different landscapes and geographies, over shallow, verdant valleys where the rays of the sun are magnified by the ripples above, so that the sea bed is covered with moving lines of light, like strobe lighting and then there are unfathomable, sharp, v-shaped ravines, so that it is like slowly hang-gliding from a cliff face into a dark blue beyond. Or, in the very deep water, I am gliding across a vast desert, where there is no coral and nothing much can be seen, apart from a vague yellow impression from the bottom and the marks and scratches on the surface of my own eyes. At other times it is like pot-holing, trying to squeeze through very narrow gaps between huge blocks of stone that lie out in the deeper water, or to slide, as flat as possible over the sharp coral that almost seems to touch the surface, before it halts at a ledge, I cross the precipice and then fall away into deeper, more mysterious water.

There are hundreds of fish, of amazing varieties and colours: dark blue and light blue vertical stripes, black with a yellow tail, so you can only see it when it swims, away from you, like a rabbit, translucent silver bodies, with bright yellow rimmed eyes and luminous yellow fins, silver and green fins, silver and orange, deep iridescent sparkling blue, mottled green and brown, black and purple, silver and yellow fringed with orange. It is all simply stunning!

I don’t know the names of most of them, but some I do recognise. Large, thin butterfly fish, orange bodied, with black and white faces which, usually swimming in pairs, look like elegant courting couples. Others of the same species have bright orange bodies at the centre, blending to bright lime green at the edges, with a black triangle around the eyes. The copper band butterfly fish are the most beautiful of all, with bright orange vertical stripes on a bright silver background and a jet black spot at the top and towards the back on each side. There are small, black snappers, who are the aggressors of the sea here, protecting their piece of coral by chasing away fish more than 3 or 4 times their size. Then there are the shoals of Sergeant Majors, smaller, with black and white vertical stripes and a yellowish hue which extends from the centre of their body upwards. These are curious fish and sometimes I would stop dead in the water, spread-eagled, trying to maintain a single position and they would come to meet me, interested in what I am and what I’m up to With my white feet, darker legs and then bright pink knees, burnt from riding the bike with shorts on, I must look as exotic to them as they do to me. A couple of times they tried to nibble my toes, which is funny in hindsight, but really disconcerting at the time, as you are never sure what has just touched you. Instinctively I turn around quickly, only to see the scattered shoal swimming away from me.

The highlights have been seeing a small ray, its body perhaps about a foot in diameter and its tail perhaps 2 feet long. I noticed it by chance, resting on the sea bed, a flat plate of grey, with bright, almost luminous dots and as I looked more closely, I could see it had a long, bright blue tail, with a white tip at the end. It reacted to my presence almost as soon as I’d spotted it and it rose immediately, vertically from the sea bed in a cloud of sand, perhaps 4 or 5 feet away from me, so that I could see it completely end to end, swimming upwards and then it righted itself, swimming horizontally now, its wings rippling quickly. I tried to follow it, but even swimming as hard as I could, I could only watch the end of its tail disappear effortlessly but swiftly into the blue gloom. Then there is an amazingly coloured fish, about a foot long, which I have never seen the likes of before. I swam around a very large block of stone which runs from the seabed to break the waves just above me and it was there, right in front, about 3 feet away, just below me. It was so bright it couldn’t be missed: It has a bright green, mottled body at the back and a green and purple dorsal fin, then the most amazing mix of colours, mainly orange and blue, with an orange splash around its mouth and wings, rather than fins, of blue and yellow, which it flapped and then brought flush with its body. I followed it for about 15 minutes in a large circle, as it pecked at various bit of coral and plant life. It didn’t seem perturbed by my presence at all, until it suddenly got bored with me, flashed its tail once and was off like a shot. I’ve subsequently discovered that it’s a Parrot Fish. Just fantastic!