About ten of us, all English teachers left behind the snow in Japan to search for our South East Asian Paradise. First stop was the island of Phuket in Malaysia, unfortunately not the best place for diving so that had to be put on hold for a week. Instead there was the beach to enjoy, an island to explore and the city of Georgetown to visit.
The contrast from Japan was sharp, in particular; the prices; being able to freely talk in English, eat spicy Indian food and drink Guinness; the laid back atmosphere and; the temperature. Every night we would eat huge feasts of Indian and Chinese food, visit the bars and sit round bonfires on the beach.
We all stayed at a couple of beach front guest houses, one of which had its own bar and terrace where we were most of the evenings before going out to eat. It was only a place to shower and leave our stuff since we spent most nights out on the beach around bonfires. On Christmas Eve we had a barbeque by the beach and stayed there at the party till after midnight. Being my last night in Malaysia I headed off to my now favourite street side curry and nan vendor before going down to the beach. On the beach we joined a whole series of bonfires surrounded by travellers from all corners of the world bringing in Christmas Day talking, singing and drinking.
I was rudely awaken on Christmas morning with about twenty minutes to get packed, showered and head off to the airport to catch the flight north to Phuket in Thailand. We were still in high spirits and continued our Christmas celebrations in the airport and on the plane.
My first experience of Thailand was to be the toilet, a place I was to become very familiar with for the next three days. Despite only drinking bottled water I must have eaten something well dodgy and my interstines became the host venue for the 1996 gastric bacteria conference. Things were not bad enough for me to miss Christmas dinner and provided I had my trusty bog roll to hand and knew the location of the nearest toilet, I was happy. For Christmas dinner we ate such a feast of Thai food ordering so many different dishes that by the end we had to give them away to others in the restaurant. For one of the best meals I've ever eaten, the bill came to about five quid, including the beers.
Having fed the bacteria for one last time and felt the pain of the spices on the way out the next morning I started my diet of pepto-bismal, water, bananas, gatorade and plain boiled rice. Nothing was going to stop me diving, having been out of the water for about six months. Christmas is a very busy time in Thailand so I was unable to get on a live aboard dive trip to the Similean islands, but was more than happy to take a series of day trips from Phuket and take my Advanced Open Water Course.
Each day we took boat trips to dive sites up to three hours from Phuket and did a couple of dives. To be free to get in the water wearing only a shorty and hardly any weight and to be warm and free without gloves or a hood was just such a thrill in itself. Not only was I free in the water but the visibility was great and I could see far off along the coral my line of site interupted only by the huge number of fish.
The variety of fish, coral and colours were awesome, the small fish just as fascinating and the leopard sharks, barracuda and sting ray that we saw. Dropping down and between walls of coral checking out the moray eels and swimming through shoals of colour which moved together as one, raised my excitement for each day and a different dive site. I also did a shallow night dive with an instructor along a reef and saw a whole new range of mysterious fish who's eyes shone from the coral when lit by my torch. At one point we switched off our torches and swam by the light of the phosphoresence which glowed bright green wherever we moved.
After taking some good medicine my stomach returned to normal and I made it out on the town on my last night in Phuket. I realised that all I'd been missing was a seedy night life of gogo bars and prostitutes hanging off the arms or on the motorbikes of middle aged fat Euopeans. The non-divers in the group had been quick to realise this and had since left for Ko Samui, an island off the the east coast of Thailand. On Hogemany, that was to be my next stop, meeting up with everyone again.
In Ko Samui, there was a much younger crowd, more good clubs, quieter and cleaner beachers, friendlier locals and cheaper beach huts. The diving on the east was not so good so lot of time was spent on the beach and out all night at the clubs. At last, some decent tunes for the first time since leaving Scotland in July and good open air clubs free to all. Hogemany was like most of the other nights except there were more people out, everyone stayed out longer, drunk more and got very excited around midnight. We recovered on the beach during the day swimming, playing volleyball or out on the water in kayaks. Once again the food was great and eating became the primary focus of my day.
Travel plans for the next stage of the trip took some arranging because all flights from Ko Samui were booked for the first week of 1997. Only three of us wanted to go up north to Chang Mai to go trekking in the mountains so we left everyone else to their last week of late nights and baking on the beach. We took a boat to the mainland, stayed a night in Surat Thani and flew up to Chang Mai the next day.
Chang Mai in the north was so different from the islands in the south with a lot more history and the atmosphere of a city who's prime function was not catering for tourists. Chang Mai is also the main centre for organising trekking in the region and soon on arrival we arranged a trek for the next three days.
Not knowing what to expect from the trek I was apprehensive about visiting the remote villiage hill tribes for fear that the villiagers had transformed their lives and villiages into a kind of theme park to serve the interests of the tourists. Our guides for the trek came from the two of the three villiages that we visited, all of which were very different.
In our group were three Italian friends, the two Americans I was with, and a Korean father with his son, niece and nephew. The first day we went in the back of a pick-up to a local market and then onto the first villiage from which we continued on foot. The first villiage was empty except for the very old and very young, everyone else either out hunting or farming. They see a couple groups of tourists every week but were still excited when we arrived, if only so they could try to sell us their friendship braclets. The villiage was on the side of a mountain and looked over a beautiful valley. There were about 20 bamboo huts along one road and a lot of dogs, pigs and chicken roaming free.
In the afternoon we hiked across a few valleys to reach the villiage where we would spend the night. When we got there we just played with the children who hung onto us wanting to be spun round, turned upside down or lifted up high into the air. We then sang a few songs together like "Old Macdonald", "If you are Happy" and "Head, shoulders, knees and toes." It was not that much different from visiting an elementary school in Japan except that we were in the middle of nowhere round a fire in a bamboo hut. The food the villiagers ate was considered too spicy and unsafe for us to eat, but the guides cooked us an amazing feed. At night with no electricity we sat round the fire, sang more songs, got the villiage chief doing a wee dance and watched the Korean children play fight with the local children. The only modern item I saw in the villiage was a bright green bic lighter which a 3-4 year old boy, quite proud of himself, was running about using to set light to the small fires he'd built.
On the second day we continued through the jungle, got washed under a waterfall and took an elephant ride down the valley to the next villiage - a very slow and uncomfortable way to travel. This villiage where we spend the second night was on a road and was comparatively well advanced. Here they were in reach of the markets and they grew crops - mostly garlic and onions and I'm sure hidden away were the opium and marijuana crops. There was electricity in one hut and some huts were built with timber and concrete foundations. The villiagers also had a motorbike, a shower and a truck, and we saw a few children coming back from the school 2 hours walk down the road - not all the families could afford education. They were also a bit more on the ball when it came to getting cash from tourists and even had a sort of shop (a hut with a door and padlock) to sell us beer. Here life was not so basic but it was still very cold at night in the hut and impossible to sleep past four in the morning when the cockerels decided to wake up.
The final day, we hiked in the morning, now out of the mountains and along the side of a river. In the afternoon we reached a point in the river where the group took three bamboo rafts down river and back to civilisation. The last night in Chang Mai was spent shopping and eating more curry and nan bread. The remainder of the trip was spend in airports or airplanes as we flew back via Bankok and Kuala Lumpar to Osaka and straight back to school.
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