Week3 - Khao Lak

"At the time of the tsunami, Khao Lak was Thailand's fastest growing tourist destination. Khao Lak was one of the areas of Thailand hardest hit by the tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Many people died including many foreign tourists. The final death toll was over 4000, with local unofficial estimates topping 10,000 due to the lack of accurate censuses and the mere fact that the Burmese population was not recognized as residents. This confict between the official death toll and the actual loss of life will forever be debated.
Most of the coastal landscape i.e. beaches, resorts and vegetation was completely stripped back by the power of the tsunami. Some replanting programmes have been initiated and a great deal has been accomplished in the rejuvenation of surrounding foilage. Studies suggesting that coastal vegetation may have helped buffer the effects of the waves have ensured that replanting and maintenance of the coastal vegetation have become a priority in the reconstruction of the landscape.."

It was only a 2 hour ish bus journey from Phuket. Getting off at our stop was yet another guess work routine, but we managed. I think it would be easier if the conductor wasn't trying to help. He was signing for us to sit back down when we thought we should be getting up. We have now figured out that this actually means get up off your bums and get off the bus quick time... so after the musical chairs type game we played with the conductor, we had arrived in Khao Lak. We had passed the Tsunami center about 2Km back. Things were looking up for the search of a new project. I had a good feeling about Khao Lak. We sat for a few mintues to get our bearings... well Stephen got the bearings bit. I'm absolutely hopeless at that sort of thing, which I'm sure he wouldn't argue about. Anyway we started walking down the road we thought would take us to all the guest houses that were in Stephen's book. I still had high hopes. That was until we kept being turned away due to places being closed. It was a complete ghost town. And we discovered from finding a new map that Stephen's book possibly hadn't been updated since the tsunami, so it was likely that most of the places we were looking for no longer existed anyway. It was 5pm by now. The heat was immense and both of us were sweating buckets. Oh sorry. I was actually perspiring buckets, not sweating... Anyho, we went to check out the beach. It had a real cold feel to it. Like you knew something bad had happened there. Even 4 years on, there was still rubbish and all sorts all over the beach. We asked a random irish guy on a walk, who said it's all closed for the season, hence the ghost town. He said he had been before the Tsunami and spoke a bit about how lively it was etc. So it was a bit of a sad 15 mintues I think.

We decided to head back up the hill to the main road in hope of finding some sort of hostel for the night. We walked past a place that looked like you might expect to see Fred Flinstone running past your window every morning. I wanted to stay there. We enquired, and the room rate was fine, but the fan was tiiiiinnnnny, and nowhere near the bed. At this stage, we ha to be picky about this. I really felt like I was losing pounds from all the perspiring, and needed to cool down. We headed up the hill again, back to the main road and followed the first sign to 'vacant room'. It was cheaper, and had air con. Bliss. The only thing I was aware of was the HUGE 'WED' ANTS nesting outside our door. Massive things. We dumped our stuff, cooled down and headed out for some food.

I love this part of the story. We still laugh about it. The funniest lady boy I think I'll ever meet along my way. It won't be funny to anyone else I don't think. I'm not laughing at the image because that's his/her decision to be like that, although he/she did look incredibly weird. It was the lisp and the real hanging on the words that did it for me.

Here's a short Thai lesson:

Hello = Sawadeeka

Thank you = Kap-kun-ka

End of lesson

Weird Thai waiter: "Sawadeeeeekkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" with a huge funny smile.

We ordered our 7-ups and pad thai, and also some spring rolls. I'll never forget his/her reaction to the spring rolls. He/she squealed in almost horror, and then said something very lispy, producing some spit along the way and moving his/her hands around. We figured that they possibly didn't have any, and ordered something else.

Weird Thai waiter: "Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" (probably short for Kapkunka).

The food was amazing. Yes we were very hungry, but it tasted so good. The Pad Thai had something different about it that we couldn't put our finger on at the time. We made a joke that maybe they just had a kettle round the back and it was a thai pot noodle. Now it took us a while. Well a week. We were talking about it and both realised that different element was that of the sweat n' sour type flavouring you get in super noodles. Ha. We don't care. It was still a good Pad Thai, even if it was fake.

So we were a little disappointed at this point. Our search still wasn't as easy as we'd hoped for. I'd been trying to call the volunteer place but the number wasn't working. We walked around the supermarket that claimed to sell everything. Complete lie. And then we went on the internet for a bit that to research some places, and see if anything else was around in the area. We both agreed we didn't like the feel of the place much and wouldn't really like to spend the next 3 weeks there so looked in to leaving early the next day to head up north the Chiang Mai. We'd spoken to an orphanage there so knew we had something to aim for. I was still glad we had gone to Khao Lak though. You have to find these things out for yourself. We headed to the 7-11 for some bedtime water and milk and came outside to a bitch of a monsoon downfall. We stood in disbelief for a few minutes as there hadn't been any signs of rain before going inside. Our room was just 30 seconds away so we made a run for it. 30 seconds later and drenched like 2 people who had just run through a monsoon downpour for 30 seconds, we were home. Well it was home for the night anyway.

A good night's sleep saw us up early the next day. A guy who worked in an information place told us to get a taxi down the road to the bus station (again, using the word 'station' very lightly here) and we would be able to get a bus to bangkok. I think it was about 10am when we got there. The woman told us that the next bus was at 5pm. Great. We were pretty sure we'd seen other buses going places on the main road so we waited on the road to stop any bus that came alone. About 2 hours later, a failed attempt by myself to hitch a ride off a scotsman, and a nice conversation with a couple waiting to go the other way, we stop a bus going to Takua Pau. We didn't want to wait any more and Takua Pau is another bus station so thought there must be more buses going through that way. Here's sod's law for you. As we got on the bus, with our backpacks already packed up underneath, a bus to Bangkok overtook our one.

Doh.