To: Family and Friends

29 April, 2005

Check in from Ko Phi Phi...

I’m on the move. I was volunteering in Khao Lak and decided to change gears and shifted my home base to the Phi Phi Islands... (for any of those of you who saw the Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio a few years ago...Ko Phi Phi Lei is where the movie was filmed)

I left Khao Lak the day before yesterday on a Thai local bus. That was a bit of culture shift/shock. Let’s just say that in the United States the bus would have been considered a traffic violation, but it was really cool to go the way the locals travel. Not the air conditioned Greyhound-like buses you assume traveling on in the States, but instead an old school-bus-like vehicle that had torn seats, broken windows and local farmers transporting their bags of mushrooms and eggplants to the market in the town.

I got to Phuket and took a taxi to the pier where I got a ticket for the ferryboat over to Phi Phi Islands--again opting for the boat of the locals instead of the usual tourist transport. It had shattered windows down in the level where you sit with the dirty seats that have never been re-padded and life jackets on each seat that looked like leftovers from World War II. The view from up top on-deck was great as we got closer to the island. Towering limestone cliffs that are renown for rock climbers around the world and where swifts make their nests...those birds whose nests in some parts of Asia fetch a hefty price for their espoused attributes.

I got here and checked in and met a couple of people. Laura was one of those people. A bubbly, young woman from Austin, Texas who was to start teaching English as a foreign language in Phuket in a few weeks. However, she recently changed her plans and intends to head to South America later this year to live and teach English there-- after traveling in Asia through July. I attended the two separate volunteer meetings that first night and got a sense of what was going on. However, my intention was to spend the next day getting settled onto the island and figuring out the local scene.

The next morning I was walking down to the daily tour scheduled to start at 9:30. A couple of the locals take you walking around the island to see the degree of devastation. I stopped at one of the local vendors to check e-mail and as I was ready to head on down the street a man asked me if I knew anything about computers. His name was Gary and he was trying to send some images as attachments, but was unable to do so at the internet shop. I went with him to his terminal and gave him a lesson in how to attach files to e-mails. Serendipitously, as I was sitting there with him Laura walked by and saw me. She called into the shop to say that she and a couple of friends were on their way to a volunteer beach clean-up project. She knew from our conversation the day before I was on Ko Phi Phi to volunteer, so she wanted to know if I was interested in joining them...in fifteen minutes. I pondered for a second and said that sounded like the perfect thing to do. I figured the tour I could do at any point while I’m on Phi Phi.

I finished up with Gary and then went to meet Laura, Colleen, Candace and Jens. We chartered a long-tail boat, the Carpe Diem, to get over to the beach. As we headed out we realized we needed a few more tools so we turned around and landed on the shore to take a quick trip to the volunteer tool shed. We grabbed more gloves and a couple more rakes. So we launched a second time into the bay. On the way to Loh Moo Dee Beach, where we were to work that day, the boatman yelled something in Thai. He’d spotted a dolphin surfacing—a rare occurrence and a good omen around the islands. The school of twenty or so was off the left side of the boat and about 300 feet away.

It marked what continued to be a wonderful day unfolding...

We got to the beach and met Papa Moo Dee (called Papa by the locals and the beach was Moo Dee Beach). Papa Moo Dee, a Czech man who lives on Phi Phi each year from November through May, then goes back to the Czech Republic. He has been a mainstay of Moo Dee beach for years. The other local to the beach was Mr. Hut who ran the little café/bar area. Very basic, but in its prime assuredly a great place. However, neither the bar nor the beach was in its prime. For a mental image of Mr. Hut think of a tiny Thai man with a mane of Rastafarian dreds…and that’s him.

We disrupted Papa Moo Dee’s morning swim...he was swimming nude in the lagoon as we pulled into shore. He popped his head up out of the water and slapped the water surface, then yelled out something in Thai to the boatman. After we loaded off of the boat and made our way on shore the boatman went to the beach and picked up Papa’s swimsuit and carried it out to him. Let’s just say that Papa’s lifestyle was basically that of Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway.  

The beach suffered a lot of damage in the tsunami. It has been over four months and only two Canadians for a week of volunteering have been on the beach to help Papa Moo Dee and Mr. Hut clear the beachfront of glass. There has been a great deal of devastation that has not been touched on Phi Phi. We probably have a week’s work for five or six people just to get this few hundred feet of beach cleaned up. Next Thursday we plan to have a party to help bring business back to Mr. Hut’s shack. So we’ve got our work cut out for us...piling up wooden debris to burn, picking up glass and metal and plastic debris that was washed onto the back side of the beach by the tsunami and planning a party. Papa told us how on the day of the tsunami there were only two helicopters doing medical lifts and the helicopters could only hold four people each lift to Krabi (the closest mainland hospital as the medical facility on Phi Phi was destroyed in the tsunami). It took over eleven hours before he could be lifted to Krabi with the injuries he suffered.

For our lunchtime siesta we went snorkeling in the lagoon and then resumed working for a few more hours. We headed back to the main stretch of beach by our long-tail boat taxi. We got there and Laura and I headed to Lookout Point. It was her last day on Phi Phi and she wanted to see sunset from this area on the island where you can see -- from several hundred feet up in elevation -- both lagoons. Everyone in the boat, who had been up to Lookout Point, said that the view was well worth the torturous hike up several hundred concrete stairs. I kept asking myself if I really thought it would be worth it every five minutes of the forty-minute hike. After a day of manual labor a strenuous hike (and I do hike in the Appalachian Mountains so I know strenuous and this was quite strenuous) proves rough on the body. A majestic viewpoint of white sand beaches, towering cliffs and tropical vegetation made a perfect vantage for sunset. The hard work to get there was well worth the tropical vista.

We headed back down the mountain, parted ways for overdue showers and then met up with the other folks on the work crew for dinner at 8pm. We were at the Hippie Bar/Restaurant and while we ate there was karaoke by some of the local volunteers. All of them were excellent singers. Then after dinner we went over to the next door bar where there was a fire show. Imagine those performers who twirl the batons in the Olympics with the trailing streamers...and imagine them aflame. Or those performers who swing balls on the end of a rope around in rhythmic patterns around their heads, but with the balls afire, instead of just balls twirling...and as a backdrop behind the fire show performers, waves crashing into the shore fifteen feet behind a stage built of sand and plywood on the beachfront. The driving music and the hyped up energy of the five fire twirlers in the show was mesmerizing and electrifying.

Then it was time to call in a night around midnight. Today was the official day off for volunteers, but we all wanted to help out Papa and Mr. Hut as much as possible. We chartered the Carpe Diem again and to everyone’s delight on the ride over saw the school of dolphins again and this time they were thirty feet from the side of the boat. The encounter was magical. Everyone wanted to jump in and swim with the dolphins, but our boatman said the current was too strong where we were. We journeyed on to spend the first half of the day on Moo Dee beach again. Around 12:30 a Brazilian named Enrique showed up. He walked there from the other side of the island as he considered Moo Dee his favorite beach of those he had explored on Phi Phi. He has traveled for a year and has six more months before he plans to return home to Brazil. Today was his last day on Phi Phi. When we found out he’d never been to Maya Bay we invited him to come along---Maya Bay was part of our afternoon plan when we finished with some of the clean up work.

Then around 1pm we headed over to Ko Phi Phi Lei---the island where much of the filming was done for “The Beach”. We spent the afternoon snorkeling, hanging out on a secluded beach for an hour, and then being shuttled over to Maya Bay – truly a paradise. There we walked around on the island’s trails and made our way to the entrance used to get onto the island when the sea prevents long tails coming ashore. Jim, our long tail boat driver of the Carpe Diem brought us back to Ko Phi Phi Don (the main island) and dropped us off.

I ate dinner with Enrique and Colleen. We then went to the volunteer meeting and the street festival to support the local shop owners. The storeowners were very excited to see that there were people spending money for the goods and services they were there to provide.

I’m taking a break from the festival to write this e-mail, but am heading back as there is another fire show and the grand re-opening of one of the local hang outs tonight.           

Tomorrow we head back to Moo Dee Beach and to continue the clean up work…and the island adventures.

love, jace