Traipsing Around: Travel and Psychogeography: Crazy Thai Boat Ride

After a 16 hour flight and a 9 hour stopover in Bangkok, I arrive at Koh Samui airport. Well, airport is a bit grand, really. Several thatched buildings loosely connected by small walkways and a baggage reclaim area where I get to pick my wet rucksack from the trailer that has taken it directly from the small plane. It is raining. When I was young, my Father would occasionally take me to work on a Saturday morning. He worked for Fyffes and everything, the offices, the paper, the furniture, would smell of warm bananas. The highlight was when I could enter the vast, warm, dark rooms where the bananas were kept to ripen. I used to relish the tropical fragrance and my imagination would wander to the exotic lands in which they had grown and the snakes and spiders still lingering in the upturned, hard, green bunches of fruit (and sometimes there really would be various animals inside those protective hands). It smells just like that. It is muggy. The air is heavy with humidity and the dense smell of foliage. Fantastic! I get a minibus into Chaweng and check into my guest house. The rain is heavier now. Hard, tropical rain that beats a rhythm on the tin shed outside my room. Heavy tropical rain with large, insistent drops that form an impromptu river in the street, frothy with bubbles, and which leaves you soaked through to the skin in an instant.

Over the next couple of days (after losing my camera and having my credit card suspended, longish story), I try and get a boat to Angthong. Angthong is a Thai National Marine Reserve, an archipelago of around 45 islands, about 1.5 hours by ferry north west of Koh Samui. A few tour operators tell me there is no boat, only day trips, but that can’t be right, as there is a campsite on one of the Islands, Koh Wau Ta Lap. Slightly laterally, I ask if I can go on a day trip and be dropped off and collected on a different day. Yes! Sorted. I think, sort of!

The first part of the day trip is a bit touristy but good. Snorkelling (although the weather has calmed down a bit and it is intermittently sunny, the terrible recent weather means visibility is very poor) and kayaking. The day progresses and progresses and progresses. No sign of a drop off yet. We get to what must be the last island visit of the day. I remind one of the crew again that I’m being dropped off. Ahh, Ok. The weather was too bad, so they have missed the island with camping and visited a different one instead. Hmmm. Not to worry. Long boat. Errrr…Great!

I leave the last island with the now friendly group of tourists (including a couple from Yorkshire, who are both bizarrely wearing the blue suede shoes they got married in (I did ask, they said don’t ask) and who won their holiday by entering a competition on a packet of Walkers Crisps). I get back to the boat and am told to quickly pick up my stuff. I grab my rucksack (forgetting my walking shoes, very big mistake) and return to the long boat. There is just me and the boatman. What follows is one of the craziest boat journeys of my life! The long boat is about 70 feet long, about 6 feet long at its widest and made of long planks of teak. I sit at the front, with my rucksack on the flat prow area. I look behind. The boatman grins. Once we have cleared the larger vessel, we set off into open sea, a group of islands in the distance. The waves get bigger and bigger and the boat is pitching and rolling violently. The prow is at one time high above the waves and then crashing down, with the flat of the boat generating a hard, booming noise as it dives through the air between waves to slam hard on the water below. Then the prow is below the next wave, which is sliced in two as the boat rises, with a rush of water hitting me full in the face. At the same time the boat is rolling from side to side, at some points water rushing into the boat on each side, but mostly just washing the edges. I think I would probably be better off at the back of the boat, but it would be a sign of cowardice to change position now, even if I could! I grab my rucksack to prevent it slipping off the boat, considering if there is anything in it worth saving. Probably not. I wonder why we are going so fast and I turn around. The boatman is grinning from ear to ear. He gives me a thumbs up and gestures to another empty long boat alongside and just behind and shouts to the other boatman. Banter is banter in any language. They are having a race! All the time the boat is pitching and rolling, slapping the water hard as we power through the waves, the broken waves crashing into me intermittently as I hold on tight, wedging my feet beneath the wooden beams at the bottom of the boat (and, I later realise, removing some skin across the tops of my toes).

Eventually the water grows calmer and we draw close to a small beach, travelling parallel to the shore before turning right to head directly for it. The boatman cuts the engines and drops a small anchor. We are fairly close. ‘Come, Come’ he shouts and points to the side. I grab my rucksack, put it on the side of the boat and jump over, chest deep in water, turning around to retrieve the rucksack and lifting it above my head. At the same time an incoming wave pushes against my back and I‘m in danger of falling over, my toes desperately trying to gain some purchase in the shingle. With a mighty effort, I maintain my balance and see an opportunity between waves to head quickly for the sandy shore. Made it! I shout ‘Koppen Kup’ (thanks) to the boatman, who gives me another thumbs up, starts the engine and heads back out to sea. What a fantastic experience; exilerating and brilliant!