It’s time to leave Kalim Bay and travel south to Nai Harn Beach where I will stay for almost 3 weeks.
The new credit card has arrived from Australia and I finally have some cash again. I have a local taxi driver Adisak, nickname “E”, collect me and off we go in his souped-up, lowered, re-engineered Honda for the 40 minute journey. E dresses fashionably, has the sharp-angled hairstyle over one eye that is common with the Justin Beiber generation. His car doors have been modified so that they lift vertically and bizarrely above the car roof, not out and away from the car as is standard. It reminds me of the ill-fated Kerkorian car of the 80’s. You have to squeeze through the small gap when the doors are lifted, careful not to scratch the duco. The roads have seen better days in many cases and E navigates his machine through short-cuts and long-cuts in order that there is no bottoming out, or fender or tyre damage. He is 26 years old, his father bought the car so that he would have a job, and he puts all of his earnings into this re-invention. He’s quiet, well-mannered and has the passive nature of most Thai males. I want to practice my Thai, he wants to practice his English, so the conversation goes back and forth between two very poor proponents of each.
We travel the winding coast road. Past Karon Beach, then Kata Noi, then over the jungled hills, past the elephant camp, then we leave the main road and come into Nai Harn. I had found a place here, a reasonable sized apartment with views to the green mountains of the west. It is about 1mile from the beach; a walk around a lake which is the local running track and down to the stunning white sand.
My new home is in fact quite new. Tiled floors, aircon, kitchen, king-size bed and large ensuite; it is perfect. Cleaned daily, new linen and towels, bottled water and tea/coffee supplied. It has a small kitchen with a sink, microwave and large fridge. There is a sitting room with chairs and cable tv and wi-fi internet. The cost? 800 baht per day, or roughly $25...everything included.
And guess what?
Today the airline found my lost luggage! The day they had to write it off and pay compensation, they found it. I had to do a 2 hr round trip to Phuket Airport to pick it up at a cost of $60 taxi fare though.
Thanks Qantas/Jetstar.
So, I begin my life here.
I slip into a routine of rising around 9am, checking emails, composing letters and talking to family and friends in different time zones. I then look at the financial markets and do some day trading and try to make some money. I may wander down to the beach at 12 and buy some fresh fruit; mango, pineapple, banana, watermelon and other exotic fruit cousins. Around 5pm the sun is disappearing over the hills and the temperature is dropping a little. Most days it is 30-35, dropping to 25 at night.
I change into my running shorts and shoes and jog down to the lake where I join others in the endless pursuit of physical perfection through exercise. It’s too hot to wear a shirt, but at least the sun is gone, so sunburn is not a problem. The lake circuit is about 2.2km and is a footpath that runs next to the road which is also used by some people training on road bikes. Traffic is light and the mainly Thai locals with the occasional farang (European) smile and nod when you pass them. The heat and humidity are stifling and, even though I’ve acclimatised through a week’s running on the beach from Kalim Bay, it’s very difficult to do much more than 20 minutes so close to the equator. My body overheats, and unable to cool down I head to the beach, throw my shoes on the sand, and plunge into the lukewarm surf. I then do some swimming up and down the beach and gradually cool down.
Head-high sets of waves hit the outside sandbars and I revel in a bodysurfing session....ah, this is living! I really feel alive here.
Nai Harn is a little gem. The Buddhist monastery owns the beach, so apart from a small development on the headland nothing else can be built here. Europeans mainly holiday here in family groups and spend their days soaking up the tropical sun. Every day I see someone badly burnt, but no one seems to mind, such is the craving those from northern climes have for solar rays. There are a few open air restaurants under the she-oaks on the flat above the beach, there are lifeguards here, and regular drownings; such is strength of the rips that can run up and down this beach. Surfers inhabit the break at the south where the river mouth seems to hold the waves up a little longer so that they can barrel briefly and completely cover a rider who has sought that inner sanctuary. There are some bamboo frames which hold some thatch and shade a couple of platforms open to air and the sea and everyone on the beach. There you can have a matronly Thai lady pull apart your joints and pound your muscles till you reach that state of nirvana-like relaxation that only a good masseur can bring you to. And for 400 baht ($12) you can afford this regularly.
A big set lines up on the horizon. I dolphin dive through the first wave and come up to see the next setting up perfectly. I turn and kick and pull myself into it and feel that amazing sensation of freefalling down the face of the wave and then feeling it pick me up at the hips and hurtle me towards the beach with just my head out of and ahead of it and the beach rushing towards me like I’m on a London train and then I’m under and it’s passing over me and I can feel the sand again beneath my feet. My face breaks the surface and I must be grinning like a Cheshire cat because I see a girl, a woman, watching me from in the water with a kind of quizzical amused look.
Unusual, because she’s Thai. Thai’s generally can’t or don’t swim, there are no learn-to-swim schools here like I had as a kid. Whilst this isn’t the wildest beach by any means, there are still regular drownings here. And many of the Europeans that come here are alien to the power of the sea.
I smile and give the universal greeting “sawadee krap”. She returns a “sawdee kha”. Krap is masculine, kha is feminine and it relates to the speaker, not the subject.
“I see you come from water, you.....” and she imitates what my face must have looked like with a big cheesy grin.
Her name is Tim in the anglicised nickname way of Thai women. Men don’t seem to do it to the same extent, and women will often take a celestial nom-de-plume like moon or earth, or a fruit like som (orange) or sometimes just Nancy! But Tim in the world’s number 1 country for transgender surgery is, well, interesting?
It turns out she has left her 2 sons with her parents and has come to Phuket to take over her sister’s massage platform on the beach, “good munnee, munnee mak mak can send to Mama take care famillee”. This is a familiar story in a country where there are no child alimony laws; couples separate and the women are left to bring up the children any way they can.
She is from the country north of Bangkok, but does not want it to be Isaan, the poor north-east, for the stigma attached to that place would reflect on her badly.
I offer to teach her to swim but she declines with a shake of her wet hair and, with a wave, walks from the shallow surf and up the beach to her work.
The waning sun is pressing gold and crimson against the horizon, the beach is darkening. I stroke out to where it is deep and tread water and see the scores of camera flashes breaking up the thickening darkness to capture the spectacular sunset from the top of Promthep Cape. The lifeguards are whistling for everyone to leave the water before it is truly dark, so one last wave and I collect my runners and begin the walk back.
The candles are being lit and put out on the tables beneath the she-oaks, the lights glittering in the breeze. The smells of Thai spices cooking add to the ambience of this place and I begin to think of dinner. The fruit lady has packed up and gone and so have the motorbike taxis. A man sets up a stall with a large flat steel plate that he will turn out crepes from filled with banana and mango and chocolate. I reach the lake, and the island with the small bridge is lit too and seems like a fairyland with the orange oriental roofs of the few buildings there. A motorbike goes past in the dark and stops up ahead. A woman’s face turns, “where you go”? It is Tim.
“You have motorbike? Why you walking walking”?
It seems strange I don’t have a bike. Most farangs hire one as soon as they get here and 1 in 3 end up in hospital or worse. Driving in Thailand is not the same as home.
I hop on the back behind her and we go past the Rasta Bar that is having a black moon party next weekend and she stops.
“kawp koon krap”
“kha”
She rides off into the night with her black hair caught up in the breeze. I head for a shower and then across the road to the restaurant of the seven sisters and eat Tom Yum soup and Gaeng Pah with rice, sweating with the heat of the night and the heat of the chillies and gingers and lemongrass and drink cold Singha beer and play dominos with the young sisters till midnight when I head back to my room to sleep.
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