Kho Yao

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."

-Andre Gide

Zack taps me on the shoulder and nods his head towards an eagle hovering over the cliff to our left. The bird is futilely flapping his wings, unable to fly against the raging wind. Zack and his friend continue to carry the loaded kayak towards the pounding surf while I pause and consider postponing my launch until tomorrow. I push the doubt from my mind and follow the boys with my kayak but when I catch up Zack says, "You know, you can wait until tomorrow."

When I shrug, he nods and says in his sweet melancholy way, "Yeah, your right, it just makes it more of an adventure."

A few hours earlier, Zack greeted me with the slow, penetrating, sadness I associate with the tortured souls of romance poets, maligned musicians and alienated writers.  His, I soon realized, was a much worse affliction because his was a dispossessed soul with nothing to pour all that pain and angst into but a kayak shack.

Much to the amusement of his two friends seated on the log benches, I rose to the challenge, trying to cajole him into better spirits throughout our transaction but failing to elicit even a fleeting, faded smile.

"Do you have someplace I can keep my bag?" I asked before heading to the nearest village to buy food and water.

He let out a pained sigh so heavy with disdain I thought the sheer apathetic force of it might topple his tiny, sinewy frame. "Of course."

Laughing, I picked up my bag, passed it to him and turned to go.

"Good gawd, is there someone living in here?" I stopped to watch him carry my bag away, feeling quite satisfied with myself. I had cracked him. He made a joke.

"Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, yes there is," I replied before setting off, down the gravel road.

When I returned an hour later with 6 bottles of water, bananas, two bags of peanuts and a container with my leftover dinner of chicken and rice, he had all the camping gear laid out on the beach and paperwork ready to sign. His voice still plodding with the heaviness of depression, he handed me 'the big knife' and he deadpanned, "you will need that in the middle of the night when you find you're not really alone."

"Gee, thanks Zack," I replied with mock earnestness, "between you and the guy in Phuket going on about the sharks I'm feeling reassured about my life choices." This time he even cracked a smile.

"Now," he continued, "I just need you to sign this form saying it's not our fault when you die and an emergency contact number or email I can use when you don't make it back. A friend, a relative, ... boyfriend?"

When I smiled but didn't answer his question he retreated and instead tried to reassure me, "I'm kidding you know, about the not coming back. No one's ever not come back."

Once the paperwork was in order he pulled out a map to point out favourite sights and places to avoid. "But, you should go here," he concluded drawing a circle with his finger around some dots to the north of the island. "I love it there. Nobody goes there. It's beautiful and quiet and you don't have to deal with other people at all. Perfect for people like us. Go there." For a minute, I was taken aback: how did he know that I am 'people like us'? But of course I am a woman setting out to sea, alone, in a kayak. Who else could I be?

As he helped me pack my gear he showed me where a rat, trapped in the storage hold, had damaged the kayak trying to escape. "Don't," he admonished morosely, "leave the cover off for even a minute or they'll get in and ruin everything." So much for thinking I was leaving rats behind in the city.

Occasionally he'd look up from the folding, and stuffing and jamming of packing to say "Canada, hey?" Then, shaking his head in a bewilderment tinged with the blues, he'd add, "Canadian girls are awesome."

Now he sits on the bow, holding the kayak steady for me as I climb in. Once I've pulled the skirt tight around me he hands me the paddle. He removes his camouflage cotton baseball cap revealing a mass of long black loose curls, unusual for this part of the world and which the wind tussles wildly, revealing a two inch wide strip shaved on the left side where six, thick wire stitches have been threaded into his skull.

"You're going to have a great time, Canadian girl," he says. Then, placing his hat on my head, "You're going to need this."

But once he's hopped off the kayak and pushed me out to sea, the doubts begin to clang above the roar of the sea. I dig into the water with my strongest strokes but barely move against the aggressive wind and waves. I am as helpless and static as the madly flapping, motionless eagle. The wind knocks Zack's hat off my head and a wave swallows it whole. I sit for a moment, watching, waiting for it to resurface but it never does.

Doubter's Companion

"When we deliberately leave the safety of the shore of our lives we surrender to a mystery beyond our intent."

-Anne Linea, "Deep Water Passage"

On the crossing back to Phuket, I study the waves intently. By this time tomorrow I will be on them and, feeling their impact on this large vessel, I am beginning to feel more than a little trepidation. I've never paddled a sea kayak before and I've never seen waves quite like these. They're not necessarily high but they seem crowded and hurried, their white caps breaking one on top of the other. I'm starting to think I may be getting in over my head.

I open the book I've brought with me and been power reading through. At times the author spirals into territory far too intimate for me but I find the story of her, often solo, paddle around the notoriously vicious Lake Superior, riveting, informative and reassuring.

I am a self taught paddler. It was my Aunt who suggested it. I had been lamenting the loss of the great love of my life saying, "I'll get over him, eventually (I was young and foolish and still believed that then) but I miss having a paddling partner. I'm not skilled enough to canoe by myself."

Aunt Jude stared at me like I'd obviously lost my senses. "Why don't you kayak?"

Now it was my turn to stare at her dumbfounded. "Well," I said slowly, "I've never tried it, it hadn't occurred to me."

"You've never kayaked? Oh, well, you absolutely must. There's something about it, being that close to the water, it's hard to explain." She paused for a moment, searching for the right words. "There's something sacred about it," she finally continued, "like baking bread. It's an ordinary action that's somehow extraordinary; it connects you, grounds you, reminds you that you are a part of something so much bigger than you."

Many members of my family have shared many amazing gifts with me, but this revelation was one that changed my life. I understood exactly what she meant about the process of baking bread. It's something that's been happening for thousands of years, a process that's been handed down and perfected for hundreds of generations. Every time I work a bowl of dough, combining water, eggs, yeast and flour -such a simple recipe really-it feels like I'm subverting a system that wants me to forget not only the simple pleasures in life, like the yeasty smell of bread rising in warm kitchen on a sunny winter's day, but my connection to the past and the future. Her description resonated with me profoundly and, if a kayak could bring me a similar experience, I was certainly not going to pass up the opportunity.

So, a few weeks later, on a September long weekend, I rented a kayak from the general store and set out on the water of Rushing River. It was everything my Aunt had advertised and more. At first I was terrified, convinced I would over stroke and capsize into the autumnally frigid water. It is, after all, the slyness of a kayak, that it rocks, and sways and generally does not inspire confidence; it deceives you into thinking that by all rights, it should not be water worthy. But, after the first ten minutes, you start to believe it just might let you sit that close to the water without falling in. After twenty you start to relax into it. After thirty you’ve forgotten that, much like humans should not, in theory, be able to fly, it is equally unnatural to be so close to the water and not be wet. You fall into a rhythm, the paddles and water and you become one, and you lose yourself in the fiery colours of fall reflected on the river’s surface from the rocky shore.

But paddling a river is one thing, a lake is another and a feisty, incessant sea is something else altogether. Lake Superior can be described as an inland sea, a lake so vast the waters behave like those of unbounded seas, water who's nature and temperament I know very little about. Fortunately the author, in recounting her journey around the lake, details strategies to overcome unpredictable waves, read the water, and count waves to make a safe landing and launch. I read these passages like a how-to manual, as if cramming before a final exam, knowing full well that, in the end, all I’ll really be able to do is trust my instincts. It’s a fortunate book to have found when I most needed some expert instruction but more than that it transports me back home.

There are moments I think I might drown in waves of homesickness; descriptions of “Old Woman’s Bay”, only a short drive from where I spent my last glorious summer, and the familiar shorelines along the Canadian Shield make me long for the scent of pine trees and cool summer nights spent under the stars. Still, there’s a comfort in remembering home and knowing, through these pages, there’s someone else in the world as enamoured with my homeland as me. I haven’t met anyone here who can relate to or even begin to imagine the majesty of a place with space enough to go for an entire day without seeing another human being; a place where people, accustomed to the treacheries of an often unpredictable climate and untamed landscape, are, on the whole, friendly, trusting and trustworthy. They will, as the American author discovers and marvels, be happy to help if you need. Yeah, I think proudly, reading about the friendly, generous Canadians she meets along the way, those are my people; that’s where I come from.

 

Most comforting of all is the knowledge that there’s at least one other woman in the world who has ventured out into a foreign wilderness alone and survived. Every time I look out at the sea, and the shark stories and nervous doubts start to creep in, the book serves to remind me: If she can do it, I can do it.

Phi Phi Island

"The only downer is, everyone's got the same idea. We all travel thousands of miles just to watch TV and check in to somewhere with all the comforts of home, and you gotta ask yourself, what is the point of that?"

- The Beach

I arrive at the Old Town Hostel shortly before eight o' clock as instructed but the tour operated who's to drive me to the ferry is late. The receptionist serves me the complimentary breakfast -tea, toast and a banana- even though I haven't yet spent the night. I sit with another lone woman, from South Africa, who tells me Thailand is just an appendage to her dream trip to India. We have, needless to say, much to talk about but we're soon joined by the Chinese Canadian guest from Vancouver.

"Augh," she says when I tell her I'm also Canadian and specify Winnipeg, "the mosquitoes so biiiig. Like birds, and so many too," she tells my South African friend who looks at me with round, questioning eyes.

"Well, small birds," I shrug.

"You must be here to be away from winter," the animated Chinese lady continues.

"Actually," I confess, "I kind of miss the winter." I feel foolish admitting this. Escaping winter was, after all, part of what made this plan seem so brilliant to me in the first place.

"Augh," she says again wrinkling her nose, "so cold in Winterpeg. So much snow. Not for me."

Then my ride arrives and I dash out the door calling safe travels back to my breakfast companions.

By the time I get on the ferry all the seats on deck are taken and, not wanting to sit inside, I push my way to the front of the boat, find a small space amidst the other lounging tourists, lean my back against the cabin and sit directly on deck. I eavesdrop on snippets of German and French conversations about scuba diving and Bangkok, until the engines clank and clatter then roar too life.

As the boat pulls away from the pier a voice comes over the tinny loudspeaker warning those of us sitting on or near the prow to move or we will be sprayed. A few people make their way towards the back but most us are willing to get a little wet. After all, we're all on our way to either dive or beach.

The first wave to come over sends most of the crowd running. I smile but I'm sitting far enough to the side of the boat I was only mildly sprayed so I remain, smugly, in my place. A minute later another wave breaks over the prow and this time I am thoroughly soaked. I leap to my feet, grab my bag and head towards the doors but the deck is now slippery and I nearly topple over the rail when my bare feet lose traction at the same moment a wave rocks the boat.

The air conditioning inside is uncomfortably cold, especially now that I'm wet, but there's nowhere else to sit so I dry off as best I can and use my towel as a shawl. I pull a book from my bag but I'm only a few sentences in when the toddler in front of me starts playing peek-a-boo. Unable to resist the distraction we spend most of the hour long trip amusing each other with our funniest faces and disappearing tricks. His French Canadian father is almost as amused with me as his son is.

"'e is not alwayz so friendly to strangurez," he says.

"Well, I'm not always this strange," I shrug, bringing my thumb to my nose, wiggling my fingers and sticking out my tongue, causing them both to laugh.

The ferry makes three stops and they disembark at the first. When my new friend realizes I'm not going with them he begins to cry. I give him a small heart shaped key chain and he waves sadly at me from over his father's shoulder as he's carried away.

The ferry slows to point out islands where various movies have been filmed, including The Beach, and we all gather on deck with cameras in hand to snap pictures of the giant, lush green rock towers rising out of the ocean, looming like large sentinels over the clear teal water.

By the time the ferry has transferred the hundred or so scuba divers to smaller boats and drops the twenty of us who remain on Phi Phi Island it's well past noon. After paying the entry fee, as if entering an amusement park, I wander down the water front in search of food and there is no shortage.

Phi Phi is a massive tourist trap of Australian bars, European restaurants, and French cafes amidst the usual infinity of souvenir shops selling t-shirts, sarongs and flip flops that populate all resort towns. Every shop is filled to the rafters with exactly the same merchandise as the one next to it, as if in defiant challenge of the Western economic theory of supply and demand.

I find a vendor selling "Thai" pancakes. They look like crepes, which I've made very successfully with rice flour, so I ask what they're made from.

"Milk," is the startling answer.

"Uh-huh," I say, suspecting a miscommunication. "But what kind of flour?" I ask again.

"Flour? No flour," comes the confused and befuddled answer. "Milk!"

My desire wins out over my reason and sanity and I order one, deciding I should be able to taste the wheat flour if there is any. While I wait for my order though, I am suddenly seized with the fear that the vendor thought I saying "flower" which would account for the astonished reaction to the question.

When it's served, it arrives on a banana leaf plate with blueberry sauce. I hesitate for a moment before taking a bite, sweating more from fear than the heat but, if there's wheat flour, I can't tell. I decide to enjoy it; it's too late to prevent getting sick now.

After lunch I set off to find the beach, but when I do the tide is out and there's nothing but pink and white tourists beached along the mud flats of the exposed ocean floor. I take a walk around the island but it's so overrun with drunk and high tourists, I can't find anything to like. Even the "Tsunami Village" eludes me. I can see remnants of the disaster everywhere, but even following the signs I can't seem to find this "point of interest".

With only an hour left until the ferry heads back I resign myself to partaking in what the island seems to have to offer: shopping. I buy two scarves, realizing I have nothing to cover my head on my kayak trip, and a much needed pair of pants before heading back to the ferry in hopes of being early enough to find a seat on deck.

Thai Pancakes
  
2 1/2 cp or 20fl oz coconut milk

2/4 cp (3.4 oz) rice flour
3 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cp (4 oz) sugar

1/2 cup shredded coconut
pinch salt
vegetable oil

Pour the coconut milk into a mixing bowl. Add rice flour and
well-beaten eggs and blend well, then add the sugar and beat until it
dissolves. Fold in the shredded coconut.

Rub an omlet pan with a paper towel and heat to moderate.

Pour a large spoonful of the batter into the pan and cook until flecks
of brown appear underneath. Turn and lightly cook the other side. Cook
the remainder of the batter in the same way, keeping pancakes warm.

Roll each pancake up into a tight cylinder. Scatter with the remaining
coconut. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Wat a Wonderful World

 "...Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'..."

-The World is A  Beautiful Place, Lawrence Fahrlengetti

 Wat Chalong is the largest temple complex in Phuket, though any aspect of the sacred is utterly overwhelmed by the carnival that's grown around it like weeds choking an untended garden. Walking through the gate I feel more like I'm entering the fairgrounds of the annual Red River Ex than a place of meditative worship.

I push through the crowds, past the hawkers and their stalls filled with every conceivable consumer good from beach balls and sandals to kitchen pots and pirated DVD's. The late afternoon heat steams up from the asphalt and molders amidst the sticky human throng but if I keep my face turned towards the peacock blue sky there is a great red and gold spire pointing towards the heavens.

When I finally reach it the gates are closed, only monks are allowed to enter, and I find I suddenly have a lot of space around me as I'm the only person interested in the temple or the neglected lotus pond beside it.

I play with my camera until the smells from the food stalls and the setting sun remind me of dinner. I wander around the perimeter, past the massage and karaoke stalls, past the carousel and mechanical swings, to the food alleys where practically every creature that can be dregged up from the ocean is being roasted on a stick and offered up on a plate with an infinite selection of accompanying sauces.  There are earthly critters too, pan fried beetles and catepillars alongside frog kebobs and mysterious meat stews. I settle for chicken sate, fresh squeezed mango juice and a bag of popcorn to enjoy with a movie when I get back to the hostel.

Neon lights are flickering on, the electricity that moves through the frayed wires filling the air with a cicada like thrum as I wander back to the gate. I approach a mini bike driver standing awkwardly by the road and point to the giant buddha sitting atop a distant ridge silhouetted by the greying dusk sky.

"How much?" I ask.

"400," he says, hopping from one foot to the other, adding, "long way, very long way."

"Okay," I say. "Let's go."

It's a two minute drive down the highway before he turns off onto a gravel road that passes through a small town where he stops for gas. He hops with a nervous energy even as he uncaps the water bottle full of fuel and dumps it into the tank. The owner of the convenience store, round and serene as Buddha himself, says to me, "You go Buddha?"

I nod and he nods quietly back. My driver says something in rapid Thai, slaps his thigh, then hops back on the bike. Even though he chatters for most of the drive, I like him. He doesn't make me wear a helmet and he speaks mostly in noises, trying to convey to me that the road is very dangerous and we may, at any moment go flying through the air. I suspect that the odds of this occurring are becoming exponentially greater every time his hands leave the handlebars to make the universal gesture of being airborne and crashing but it makes me laugh all the same and my laughter seems only to encourage him.

The road twists up the side of the hills and the air cools quickly as we climb past cafes, restaurants and viewpoint bars. We round a bend to find elephants grazing and a sign offering rides for only 1500 baht. I've never seen an elephant in nature and have always thought of them as slow, melancholy creatures but here they swing their trunks in a seemingly playful wave, they grin mischievously and I half expect them to wink as we pass.

By the time we reach the top, the sun has almost disappeared. Still, standing at the foot of this mass of stone carved in the image of the most benevolent being I am awed. I walk up the steps, wander around the monument, still under construction, and watch the last rays of dusk disseminate over the city below.

I consider how utterly fortunate I am to not have missed this moment. It's corny to the point of treacle, but whenever I am struck by moments like these- left breathless from the blows of amazement at my life since crawling from the valley of shadows-I recall the people I've met and their stories, the people who still love me in spite of me, the places and creatures I've seen, and I can't help but concur with the sentiments of a certain jazz singer, the world really is pretty freaking wonderful.

Easy People

"You will love Asia," says the well kept, middle aged Chinese business man seated across from me. He owns the "Old Town Hostel", a renovated European colonial style building that is as neatly kept and comfortably pragmatic as its owner. The Greek pillars and whitewashed facade looked inviting from my patio seat so I crossed the street, after finishing my wine, to inquire about room rates and availability if I decide to take an extra day to visit Phi Phi Islands. "In Asia we are very easy and everything is simple, even traveling."

"Well, in Thailand maybe, that isn't exactly how I'd describe Indonesia," I say.

"Oh, you've been to Indonesia?"

After I explain that I'm teaching there, he says, "Well, I think this might be because they are Muslim. But still it wasn't always so. They used to be very easy going too. I think maybe the difficulty now is they are wealthier and send their children to study in the Middle East and when they come back they have certain ideas." I nod appreciatively though I don't recall crossing paths with anyone privileged enough to have had such an education.

"What do you teach?"

I tell him and then add, "But I'm hoping to teach in Thailand next year."

"Can you teach high school?" He asks.

"My experience has been with teaching adults ESL, children with learning difficulties and primary school, but I would love the opportunity to work with teens." It would, I think, round out my CV quite nicely.

"Well, I also own a school, a special school with an English program, here in Phuket. Maybe you can teach there. You would have maybe a week or two of classes to learn Thai culture and language, nothing difficult, before you teach."

I tell him that sounds really good.

"Send me your CV and we will see," he says handing me his business card before turning his attention to a Chinese Canadian from Vancouver who has brought him a bottle of whiskey for a New Year's present. I make arrangements with the girl at the front desk for a room and a ferry ticket for tomorrow before lugging my bag of books back to my hostel, then hiring a motorbike to take me to Wat Chalong.

The Imaginarium

" Medicine for the soul."  

~Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes

The curious thing about deprivation is you often don't realize you are until you no longer aren't. This was the case with me and books until my tuk tuk driver passed a giant bookstore on the way back to town. My heart did a somersaulting leap and landed so hard my stomach fluttered. My pulse quickened to a pace that threatened to cause me to faint.

Entering the store I am nearly knocked out again by the musk of pages too long unturned and, as I run my fingers along dusty spines that fill the shelves, I feel an old familiar thrill creep tenderly into my blood. Picking my way through and around cardboard boxes overflowing with books I wonder how I could have possibly forgotten the excitement of these amassed and collected words, compiled and composed of paper, glue and ink hunting for the one, or two, or five that might be arranged in unputtable-down order.

They are a coterie of friends I had yet to meet, just waiting to divulge the existence of someone they know that I really ought to meet, a place I simply must see before the tourists take over, a story so completely unhinged it can only be true even if it's not. I wile away most of the afternoon, spines snap crackle open and paper whispers beneath my fingers, at turns conspiratorial then seductive, words -beautiful familiar words in my own mother tongue- caressing so many too long untouched places in my soul, soothing my shriveling and parched spirit. Language that leaps, words that waft, sentences that scintillate and simmer; I am transfixed and utterly lost to the world.

By the time I finally tear myself away from the shelves I have amassed a bagful of books and an even deeper and more terrifying understanding of just how much of who I am is being denied by my current circumstances. I wander down the street, find a wine bar with a patio furnished with giant wicker chairs, order a glass of fantastically affordable wine and settle into the overstuffed cushions to read until the sun begins to wane.

Sea Gypsy Village

The Sea Gypsies are the oldest known inhabitants of Phuket Island and, for an extortionist rate, I hire a tuk tuk to visit the settlement at Silay Island.

Because the Sea Gypsies are, well, gypsies of the sea, their origins are still uncertain but it's largely held that they first arrived in Phuket from Malaysia as refugees from the Muslim invasion. Until recently they lived as nomads, moving from bay to bay when resources would run out. There are still nomadic sea gypsies in the more remote islands of northern Phuket but there are three permanent settlements along the coasts of the main Phuket Island.

The settlement at Silay is a tiny village with one main road and a few more houses off some alleys. On main street there's a medicine man laying hands on the porch of his hut, some teenagers strumming guitars with a reggae calypso feel while young kids play soccer in the local community club which is basically a cement pad under a concrete roof. People loll about, napping in whatever shade they can find and the women gather in groups, gossiping while they crack oyster and clam shells in search of pearls to make jewelery to sell to tourists.

The fishermen are already back for the day by the time I climb the hill at the end of the settlement where I sit, staring out at the wind blown sea, wondering if it's ever calm.