Traipsing Around: Travel and Psychogeography: Crazy Tropical Forest Lady

I have spent the last week or so alternating between swimming and exploring the tropical island, depending on the weather. On one occasion I was caught in a fierce tropical storm and despite trying to shelter from the stinging rain, I decided to retreat. I was so wet, I could have emerged from the sea! I come across an old restaurant in the middle of the forest, which is essentially a large wooden platform, consisting of long planks of palm wood, on stilts of knotted tree trunks and an old corrugated iron roof. I stop and enter the space, glad to be out of the driving wind and rain, to be greeted by three smiling women, sat around a table, all smoking what looked like fat joints, but were in fact yellow roll-ups, made from dried and scrapped banana skin, which they had to pinch firmly at one end to ensure they stayed cylindrical. They bid me to sit down and offer me coffee and proceed to talk about me and laugh, gesturing, as I sit, dripping, on a wooden chair, water extending in a growing puddle at my feet. The banter, in a mixture of broken English and my broken Thai, is good natured and friendly, with what seems like a lot of innuendo. I politely decline the suggestion to strip off and wring my clothes dry!

After such hospitality, I get into the habit of stopping by and drinking coffee when I look for butterflies and the person who works there, called Toy, tells me about her family and her friends and all the people she knows who have died and her past boyfriends (in very graphic fashion) and shows me photographs (not graphic) and tells me about the time a python killed all her chickens. When I first tell her I like to go swimming, she immediately jokes about diving for pussy and now she laughs and shouts ‘Pussy’ at the top of her voice whenever I mention swimming! It’s a sort of standing joke! She is certainly a character! Due to the economic downturn, it is no longer a restaurant (restaurant is too posh a word really, although she makes chicken soup for her dogs), but she sells really bad, headache inducing strong coffee, water, whisky bottles full of petrol for any motorcyclists short on fuel and the occasional pineapple (chopped into slices and covered with salt, surprisingly nice) or bananas. She also sells coconuts and durian to a guy in a van who calls every couple of days. It is a subsistence living, really and she has enough money for 3 hours of electricity a day, which she uses to light the restaurant in the evening, leaving nothing for her small home at night, which exists, without windows, beneath the wooden floorboards. Toy is 57, small, thin and wiry and has been living there for 13 years. The owner of the restaurant lives close by, in a small chalet, but is often away, so Toy lives mostly in the forest alone. She has family, but they are living remotely, her daughters in Pattaya and Bangkok and a son in Austria.

When I arrive yesterday, she asks me to take her to Chaweng, as her Sister has sent her some money for a new SIM card. We travel on the bike a good few miles to 3 or 4 large supermarkets before she finds what she needs (although we subsequently find out she could have got the same at a 7/11 shop in Lamai, about 4 miles away). This is followed by a surreal tour of the bars, pool tables and massage parlours of Lamai where she used to work, greeting her old friends and colleagues, men, women and ladyboys alike, getting louder and more eccentric as she downs more and more Singha beer! I drop her back off at her jungle home at about 10pm and smile to myself as I ride through the warm, humid night air of the forest, back onto the main island road and then carefully to Chaweng. What a bizarre, interesting and funny day with a bizarre, interesting and funny lady!

The butterflies are just as varied and exotic as before and I find the best strategy is to find an area with flowers and to just wait and see what comes along. The mosquitos are fierce, particularly after rain and sometimes I can stand no more than 15 minutes in one place, until I am driven away by an angry buzzing cloud of voracious black and white zinging beasts, which follow me to the bike and I have to drive fast to get rid of them. Even the very strong, 100% Deet repellent that I have is not strong enough to put them off! They are just savage, insatiable bastards, no two ways about it!

In total I have spent 5 weeks on this wonderful island and I'm sure I will miss it: the fantastic wildlife, the sandy beaches and azure blue seas and the amazing, very friendly and beautiful people. However, I travel to Perth via Singapore on the 29th June, with a 2 day stay in Perth and then I pick up a campervan to drive across the continent from Perth to Brisbane. Taking the direct route, that's 2,700 miles, but I plan to travel via Kerang, where some of my ancestors emigrated to in 1814. I'm really looking forward to the next stage of this incredible journey! :-)