The Islands: III

We're getting old.

Our night with April and Tyler ended wonderfully. We left our spot on the beach (after two more buckets) and went to one of the "point and grill" restaurants we had ambled past several times over the couple of days spent on Phi Phi. You walk up to the restaurant and are met with the sight of a 20 foot long open bin of ice with seafood of every variety laid on top, hours from the water, and some still alive. When your turn comes, you point to your dinner.

"I want that fish, those prawns, and that crab. And that lobster. No, not that one, the one beside...yeah, that''s the one. And go ahead and add one more of those prawns. Please."

It's pretty awesome. Then you go find a table, get some bread and salad and beer, and wait for the pounds of fresh seafood you just ordered to make its way to your table. I wish I had a picture of the spread the four of us had on that table. 2 lobsters, 4 crabs, 6 or 7 prawns, a whole fish (of some kind) and more. It looked gluttonous, overly indulgent and fantastic. I wondered if we had been on the boat with one of those crabs earlier in the day. The waiter brought us bowls of garlic butter, and the four of us would happily grab a crustacean and begin picking it apart with our fingers, slathering every morsel with delicious garlic butter, and washing it all down with cold Singha. It was divine.

At this point in the night, it was getting on 10:00, which was probably later than we had stayed up on the trip thus far, except the first few days adjusting to the time change. On those days, I could have woken my Dad up. 4:30 or so I was up, and astonishingly enough Rebecca would follow shortly after. We would read, go about our day, and nap from late afternoon until we got up for a late dinner. Once we adjusted, however, our bedtimes came early. Really early.

We're getting old.

Thanks to April and Tyler, however, we finally made it past 10:00 and to one of the famous Phi Phi fireshows. These nightly performances send sparks airborne from every resort and encircle the island in a hazy, smoky ring of spinning, twirling fire. We saw our show at the "Hippie Bar." It reminded me of the not so glorious past, when I had long hair, clothing that looked like a tattered quilt, and thought bathing was for yuppies. Nostalgic, yes, but I do enjoy my shower, clean clothing, and private bathrooms now. It's why Lillie can do Thailand for $25 a day and we need at least twice that.

We're close to old.

The fireshow was great, even though my request to the DJ for some hip hop was greeted with Adele. Alas, I will make it my duty to bring real hip hop to the islands. The performers were a rotating cast of locals, some pretty skilled at twirling the burning spheres. The best of them could not have been older than 12, and he would catch the instruments no matter what, unlike some of his older, more sensible colleagues, content to let the fire hit the floor and go out rather than chance suffering burns. Needless to say, after another bucket at the Hippie Bar, I was convinced that I could sling fire with the best of them, and probably would have given it a shot had my wife not intervened. Damn it's good to be married. After a few more minutes, and after probably my 12th time saying that it was past my bedtime, we had a very heartfelt goodbye with April and Tyler, who had to leave on the early boat. Then, mercifully, we strolled back to our little bungalow and turned in. At about 11:30.

We are old.

So I have a confession to make. On day 3 in Ko Phi Phi, we sat by the pool. We were sad April and Tyler were gone (which we verified by going by their room after breakfast). We read magazines (sadly, not an US Weekly to be found, which reminds me: that is definitely my favorite of the "magazines Rebecca reads occasionally that I look down my nose at but secretly enjoy" variety. Tell me you can't get 15 minutes of enjoyment out of US Weekly. Tell me you can't! Other magazines that I will deny flipping through but enjoy from time to time: People (although just admit what you are People, you are a tabloid that runs one article and tries to call itself a magazine), Cosmo (to find out about women) Better Homes and Gardens (don't ask) and any food related magazine (for obvious reasons)). And yes, I just employed the rare double parentheses 4 times in one aside. All of those upper level English classes paying off. So we sat by the pool, we read, we drank beer, we dozed off a little bit, and, just so we wouldn't feel totally useless, we befriended a Canadian family and talked about some of the hiking they had done. We got sweaty and tired just thinking about it.

"Another Singha, please sir!"

The pool was wonderful: three sections, a swim up bar, all tucked away in in the jungle on a hillside overlooking the bay. My only complaint was the mystery chemical the pool was saturated with, presumably because of the swim up bar. I'm a big fan of seeing what's in front of me when swimming in a pool. And I would prefer some vision without the humiliation of wearing goggles. Not only do I feel ridiculous wearing goggles, but I'm always afraid someone will challenge me to race. Which I will most assuredly lose. I assume somewhere in my room at home there is still a box full of yellow ribbons.

"Third place," you say, "hey, not bad."

No. Not third place. That would be more of a gold color. That would mean I finished swimming at a time relatively close to those of the other swimmers. Oh, no. These pale yellow ribbons bear the swimmer's scarlet letter: "exhibition." Meaning, numbers did not go high enough in the late 1980s to account for the place I came in. Meaning, I did not actually count in any scoring, but they let me swim anyway. Meaning, a lifeguard was keeping an extra eye on me just in case. Just think of me as the slightly handicapped Sherwood Shark. I was always put in the far lane, and I'm fairly certain that several heats would be run while I completed my "exhibition race." It was so humiliating. Listening to the other parents dutifully clap for you:

"Oh look, there's the little Elliot boy. Oh goody, he finished this time! So sad, he hasn't figured out how to use his legs to swim yet. Yay Michael!"

I can still feel my father's shame. The same shame he felt when my soccer team mercifully played the last game of a winless season. I think we were 0 and 18 that year. And I came home with a trophy. Dad could barely stifle his laughter:

"They gave you a trophy? For that? Well, you were a model of consistency. Maybe Coach thought you needed your spirits lifted after getting shut out the entire second half of the season."

On a bright note, I'm pretty sure I led the Winston Salem Optimist Soccer Club in red cards that season.

So the swim-up bar. Such an odd concept, with such an obvious flaw. You know, the flaw with the large gut and the straw hat who puts in four hour shifts at the bar, knocking back beers like its his job. The guy that, strangely enough, never needs to leave the bar for anything, despite the liters of beer he is inhaling. Maybe we should be thankful for the extra chemical in the pool, even though I felt as if I'd been pepper sprayed if I dared open my eyes. We had a good day, though, a honeymoon day. We read, we drank beer, Rebecca cried A LOT while finishing The Help (thanks Mary), I listened to sports talk and got very excited about the upcoming NFL season, even though I will miss most of it. And we sat at the swim up bar, right beside "the flaw." And you know I made a point to comment to Rebecca when I was getting out to go use the toilet- its right over there. It was great.

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I know it sounds crazy to get Mexican food in Thailand, but we are certainly not accustomed to going weeks (or even days) without it. Even stranger, we struck up a conversation with the Swedish bartender while murdering a plate of nachos. We knew we would leave the following day, we just hadn't decided what island to do next (rough life, I know; these are the decisions that keep us awake at night). We asked him about our options (Ko Lanta, Railay Beach, or shooting across to the islands off of the east coast). He told us he had just been to Ko Lanta, that it was relaxing and had nice beaches, but got real quiet after about 11:00. It sounded perfect. We wanted quiet after 11:00 anyway because, well, you know. After listening to him bash Swedes for another half hour, we went to meet our Canadian friends at the Monkey Bar to go kayaking.

Jules, Janna, Regan, and Meghan are from Ontario, and we had seen them at the pool and about town. We got along very well, and were excited to do some more kayaking. Regan is Jules and Janna's daughter, and Meghan is Regan's childhood friend. After meeting them (and securing a handful of beers), Regan impressed us all when she got us a great deal on the kayaks and snorkel gear (much better than I had done the day before). While procuring the gear, the Thai man had told us the mask and snorkels would be 50 baht apiece. They needed 4 (I had negotiated mine the day before). After careful consideration, Janna quickly declared that they would, under no circumstances, pay more than 200 baht. Not surprisingly, the Thai man quickly agreed. Regan (majoring in math at the university, and apparently minoring in business as well), quickly interjected that 150 baht seemed like a reasonable amount, and if he didn't like that, we would simply head down the beach and get our gear elsewhere. He agreed.

Looking thoroughly defeated, the man brought out the kayaks and gear and we were off. I believe Regan could have talked that man out of his shirt had she set her mind to it.

I could make that trip everyday, the slow route around the corner, sliding into the water and swimming around. When the mask and snorkel come on, you really do feel like you are in a different world. Even if the many scuba divers around the island most certainly laugh derisively at the "snorkelers." We spent a few minutes watching other kayakers beach their boats on the beach at Monkey Bay. We hadn't seem them the day before, but monkeys were all over the beach. Several kayakers yelled and carried sticks, waving them in the monkeys' direction. Two kayakers rowed by us, shaking their heads. "Watch out for the monkeys, they are mean as hell."

"Yeah, we know." I said. Regan and Rebecca assured me that beaching the boat while we were snorkeling would be a bad idea, as the monkeys would take our stuff and run off with it.

"I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm...skeptical." I said. I was wrong, again, but that's another story for another day.

We tied our kayaks to a buoy, safely out of reach of any thieving primates.

Being a bit too early for the sunset, after our kayaks were returned we all went by a western-style bar and had a bite to eat. They had Guiness on tap, and I thoroughly enjoyed my first non-yellow beer of the trip. It was fantastic. We had a great time with our Canadian friends, and though we certainly enjoyed Regan and Meghan, we spent the majority of time talking with Jules and Janna, the parents. Who were closer to our age than the kids. Which made us feel very...mature.

We're getting old and we love it (most of the time).

After a brief stop to play with kittens on the way home, we retired by our bedtime, determined to catch the boat for Ko Lanta the next day, excited about the next leg of our journey. We said good night to Ko Phi Phi for the last time, blown away by the beauty of the place.





But it was time to move on...