Groovin…On a Sunday Afternoon

Growing up with a silver spoon meant my family spent a lot of time in the Caribbean when I was a kid.  This was the era of Tom Cruise in Cocktail, so I was surrounded by older dudes in Hawaiian shirts with overly tanned wives drinking colourful concoctions that always had a mini umbrella out the top.  One of many things I fondly remember about those vacations was the soundtrack of the beach; songs like Groovin (the Young Rascals), Red Red Wine (UB40), and Baby I Love Your Way (Peter Frampton) were constantly playing.  When I got older and started heading to the beaches of California a new soundtrack started to form, one that I thought was infinitely cooler since I, as a teenager, was infinitely cooler (or so I thought) than overweight drunk lawyers in the Cayman Islands.  Songs by the Dove Shock, Warren G and Sublime were always in my Sony Discman (with 9 second ESP I might add, pretty awesome).  The reason I bring up this music is because I’m currently looking out at the turquoise waters of the Andaman sea on Klong Dao beach, a beautiful stretch of sand on the Thai Island of Koh Lanta.  Here, the music of Jack Johnson has taken over.  I have nothing against Jack Johnson, I used to like him a lot (I still do but less than before, overexposure tends to do that to an artist) but I do find it a little unfortunate that the islands and beaches of SE Asia, which I like more than those of the Caribbean, don’t have their own home-grown sound that matches the vibe of the ocean.  I will make the statement that when it comes to music on the beaches all over the world though, there is still one king to rule them all, one king to find them, one king to bring them all and in the music bind them.  That king, deservedly, is Bob Marley.  He’s still the one voice common to every beach we’ve ever been to.  I’m hoping you can tell by my reference to the Lord of the Rings that I no longer think I’m infinitely cooler than anyone else, including overweight drunk lawyers having fun, dancing and singing to Kokomo in the Caymans.  However, I do hope that one day I won’t be that drunk, overweight dentist trying to get people to do the Macarena with me.  Fingers crossed.

After Myanmar we returned to Bangkok for a night so that we could have my stitches finally removed.  Once that was done we headed to Phuket for a night before taking a ferry to the island of Koh Lanta, briefly stopping at Koh Phi Phi.  Phuket is kind of the resort hub of the area, with all the big hotel brand names setting up shop.  Further south are the islands of Koh Phi Phi, made famous by dreamy Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie The Beach.  Phi Phi, like many other Thai Islands, used to be a backpackers haven, but the place has completely changed with overdevelopment and speedboat day trippers from Phuket.  Some still think it’s paradise while others, especially those who knew what it once was, are on the verge of tears when they see what has happened.  The Thai government had a chance, under horrific circumstances, to redevelop Phi Phi sustainably (supposedly it’s currently an environmental disaster waiting to happen due to its fragile ecosystem) when it was basically wiped out by the tsunami in 2004.  However things now, unfortunately, look just like they did immediately pre-tsunami.  Di and I decided to head further south to the larger and less-famous Island of Koh Lanta, which has a more groovin (I’m bringing that word back for this post) vibe and extremely long stretches of beach along its coastline.  Since we had been moving around a lot, we also decided to spend 5 full nights here without checking out the rest of Krabi province even though it’s considered Thailand’s most beautiful.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived was that most everyone had really blonde hair and blue eyes.  Further questioning provided some answers; most of the tourists were from Sweden, with the rest being largely from other Scandinavian countries.  We had barely met any Scandinavians over the past 10 months, and now we were surrounded by them.  Most of them were families on their Christmas vacation.  Supposedly once the infrastructure was set up and direct flights opened up from Stockholm word of mouth got back to Sweden and they all started to come to Koh Lanta.  The Swedes, however, don’t sound like the dude in the funny IKEA commercials back home, their English is far better.  That was a shame really for me, as I’m a fan of hilarious accents.

Anyways, we went scuba diving with a recommended Swedish company, and the service was amazing compared to our other dive trips so far.  We basically didn’t have to do anything but put on our mask, BCD and fins and jump in the water; everything else was done for us.  We went diving around the islands of Koh Ha Yai.  When we told our German divemaster that our last dives were in Palau, he conceded that here the diving was catered to families who rarely dived anywhere else.  He thought we should try diving around Thailand on a liveaboard, which is a boat you live aboard (hence the name) and where all you do is scuba dive, sleep and eat for as many days as you want.  He, and other hardcore divers, was of the opinion that the underwater experience would be unparalleled.  He was basically implying that though the tourists on the boat would find the diving awesome at Koh Ha Yai, we might not.  He was right.  The diving was still good and enjoyable though so no complaints.  We also did have fun hanging out with a Swedish couple on the boat and we met up with them later on the island for food and drinks.  The rest of our days were just basically spent groovin; we scootered around the island checking out other beaches, paddle surfed, got Thai massages, and ate delicious Thai food.  Life was good, and we could definitely see ourselves retiring somewhere in the south of Thailand in the future.  Being surrounded by Swedes but not knowing their writers, I also decided to read the Stieg Larsson Millenium trilogy which Di recommended and which turned out to be pretty entertaining.  I’ve mostly been reading non-fiction on this trip so Swedish mystery novels were a nice change. 

We spent Christmas day here yesterday, my first without my large extended family around in a long time.  I did miss them a lot but we skyped them to send our xmas greetings.  Our xmas dinner was pad thai and curry, nothing like my aunt and uncles’ turkey and stuffing but Di and I were still happy to spend it together and thankful for our amazing year so far.  We also decided that though we’ve enjoyed travelling mostly in the developing world, we’re ready to slow things down as our trip is coming to an end and we are starting to get tired of harder travel.  So, from here on out, life will be on easy street; no more “tough” countries.  We’re going to head to Kuala Lumpur after this just for a couple of days before flying to Taipei for New years with our friends.  After that, if all goes well, we’ll finish things off in Australia, HK and Japan where we also have friends.  Groovin! (I don’t think that word works here but I’m using it anyway)

So in the immortal words of Trooper (in the lyrics of a song that happily reminds me both of Caribbean beaches and my days at UBC where it was a sort of theme song for the sunny days in our residence house) I’d like to finish off by saying:

We’re here for a good time, not a long time, so have a good time, the sun can’t shine every day.

Merry Xmas everyone