Love/Addiction

If I haven’t mentioned it before, the Thai education system frequently leaves me scratching my head.  Oh I have mentioned it?  Two dozen times you say?  Okay well then suck it up and listen again!

You can see why we were itching to get here.

Last Friday yet another teacher was transferring schools (all this transferring mid-year is really counterproductive) so “maybe” we wouldn’t have school on Friday.  We already didn’t have school on Monday because it was “Teacher’s Day,” aka another excuse to avoid learning, so Carlyn and I made plans to spend the long weekend on Koh Jum.  Unfortunately, our plans, like most plans here, didn’t work quite as expected.  First, as it turns out, we did actually have school on Friday.  That teacher leaving only had a small contingent of teachers going with her so the rest of us had to teach.  Our coordinator told us we had to come on Friday because otherwise it would mess up our salary – which I’m sure is a lie because half the teachers here don’t show up for one thing or another.  So we went back to our travel agent, Ray-nu, to ask for a postponement on the ferry and a refund for Friday night.

I should mention that Friday was a completely pointless day to even be at school because due to a randomly scheduled soccer tournament and the fact that half the teachers were missing, most of the students chose not to show up for class.

Transport to the island

Finally, Saturday morning we took off for Koh Jum.  It is one of the most remote places I have ever been to which was completely awesome.  The only piers on the island either are not convenient for the resort traffic or else they’re only for bringing in food and supplies because the way we got to the resort was crazy cool.  A short ferry ride brought us about a half mile out from land.  The ferry slowed down and six longtail boats zoomed to meet up with it.  They tethered themselves together and to the ferry, three on each side, and began shouting out the names of the various resorts they represented.  We found the longtail boat for our resort, Sunsmile, and indicated as much to one of the workers who tossed our backpacks to the boat.  Then we hopped our way across three boats until we reached the one that would take us to Sunsmile.  It was so strange, but so cool!  And so Thai.

Our beautiful, if a bit rocky, deserted beach

We reached the resort at about 2pm and decided to walk to see if we could find a 7-Eleven (remember, they’re everywhere in Thailand).  I had forgotten a toothbrush and Carlyn needed to top up her phone.  We trekked uphill through the jungle behind our bungalows as choruses of what had to have been liver-sized bugs chirruped and wheezed and, honestly, freaked us out a little.  The cacophony was so intense that we had to raise our voices to a yell in order to carry on a conversation!  We finally made it to the “main” road only to realize we truly were in the middle of nowhere.  There was not a 7-Eleven to be found.  The occasional cluttered convenience store dotted the road, spaced unevenly between rickety homes and monkey families.  Every few minutes a seven-year-old zoomed past us on a motorbike. 

#106
Our lovely little bungalow :)

After walking for a bit (I did find a toothbrush…and ice cream), we realized that there was nothing in front of us but more of the same, so we turned around to head back to Sunsmile.  And we were met with a downpour.  Neither of us had thought to tote a rain jacket or umbrella along with us, so we got completely drenched in warm, jungle-rain as we slid downhill through the orange mud back to our bungalows.  The downpour lasted the remainder of the afternoon and into the early evening, so we didn’t get to beach it up at all on Saturday, but we did chill out on the porch of our bungalow devouring our books....Sidenote:  If you haven't read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, DO IT.  I was mesmerized. 

Don't know exactly what kind of flower these
were but they were gorgeous!

The bungalows were set up a hill just yards from the ocean in the middle of a sea-side jungle full of squatty palms and towering coconut trees.  Bird of Paradise–looking flowers in vibrant crimsons and marigolds hugged our porch, their giant green leaves poking through the wooden railing.  We hung our wet clothes to dry on the clothesline strung across the porch, but with the humid rain blowing in, they never actually dried.  As we read, we were serenaded by steady sheets of rain on the roof that drowned out the crashing of the waves.  Eventually the torrents of rain became a steady patter on the canopy of leaves before ceasing all together, surrendering sound effect duty to the tiny waves breaking onto the beach and the occasional putter of a longtail boat. 

Carlyn and I slept in workout clothes, figuring that was the only way we wouldn’t chicken out and actually go run on the beach in the morning.  We left around 7:30 and completed an utterly unidentifiable distance of beach alternately running and walking since we’re both so pathetically out of shape.  It was more than we had been doing though, so we considered it a win.  On our way back to Sunsmile, we explored some other resorts we thought our parents might like, picking up brochures and flawless shells in equal number.  When we got back to Sunsmile, we headed off in the opposite direction to find a resort I had seen online.  The map at Sunsmile showed that it was less than half the distance we had gone in the other direction, so we figured it would take us no time to get there.  Man, were we wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

View of the water from our porch

We had to navigate through so much slippy, barnacle-covered rock that it took us probably an hour to traverse what should have taken fifteen minutes.  We finally got to the resort in question with no shortage of bloody fingers and bruised shins, picked up a brochure, and decided that taking the road back would be a better option than what we had just done.  Again – wrong.  The woman at the resort told us to hike up the stairs and go right and then left to find the road (or something).  We hiked up the stairs and went left and then right.  We hiked up and up and up and up until I started to worry we would get altitude sickness.  Every time we stopped to consider what the heck we were doing, we decided to go “just a little bit more” because the road “has to be right there!”  It was not.  Instead, after hiking for about an hour in the wrong direction, we came very near the top of the mountain at the hut of two crazy men who spoke no English and thought “Where is the road?” meant “Can I steal your motorbike?”  It was like walking into a horror movie.  If I’d been in the theater watching this saga unfold, I would have been yelling at the screen, “Stop walking!  They’ll skin you alive and take your earrings!”  Luckily, no such thing happened, but it was the impetus we needed to finally turn the heck around.  It took us an eighth of the time to make our way back to the resort where we had neglected to follow the correct directions and then continued in the opposite way of where we went originally.  We never did make it to the main road (there is only one road on that island, so where it was compared to where we were was anyone’s guess), but we did make it back to Sunsmile, exhausted, sweaty, starving, and slightly sunburnt.

Salas near the beach for when shade became imperative

We had been gone for five hours.  And lost for probably three and a half.

After scarfing down our brunch, we spent the rest of the beautiful day blissfully baking away on the beach.  The sun was blistering hot and we had to jump in the ocean quite frequently as it felt like we were literally inside a kiln.  When it got too hot to bear and we could feel our hearts beating in our heads, we retired to the shaded bamboo salas where we read until sunset.  Koh Jum was a paradise I could have easily spent a month enjoying in all its remote, do-nothing glory.  Is there such a thing as “too much beach?”  Can a person ever get tired of the sand between their toes and the sound of the surf?  I’m sure if it’s possible, such a concept will always remain foreign to me because the beach is the best escape from the frustrations of teaching little Thai miscreants than I can think of.  It’s the place I go in my head when I have the murderous urge to bitch-slap someone with a machete.  If only our time there could have lasted longer! 

Looking left from our bungalow

From our porch

#106....second from the left :)

Sunset over the Andaman Sea

Getting some shade in the sala

Flat Garrett on yet another tropical Thai island...the kid gets
around!!  (Although he's starting to look a little worse for the wear.)

Our early morning jog path

Our blanket was actually a GIANT towel!

Yes, please :)