the ferry arrived before sunset and i thought this would leave me enough time to search for a nice beach with a nice bungalow. i forgot about the somewhat different laws of island roads. whereas most roads make you sweat when you climb a hill, these roads feel more like climbing a ladder and you worry about rolling back down now and then. there are a lot of germans in thailand and so i was sweating up the hill while people on their scooter pitied me: “mit dem fahrrad… ach du scheisse!” (with the bicycle… oh my fucking god) or tried to be encouraging: “hau rein!” [how rhine]. when i finally arrived at ‘thong nai pan yai’ beach, it was already dark.
i got myself a bungalow with a hammock and a nice green garden in front.
after some days chilling at the beach, playing guitar and a lot of reading, i got word from caro from another beach on the island. instead of going back all the way on that damned road, i took a slightly easier route to bottle beach…
from where a water taxi is going to chaloklum bay. from there it is only a ten minute ride to haad khom.
how do you greet someone whom you haven’t seen for a year or two. well, probably not different to someone who was away for only a couple of weeks. it was wonderful to skip the ‘usual’ questions and getting to know each other, talk in german again and one could feel a bit of home brought this far by those two.
caro at her most cherished beach activity on the big swing.
my favourite was the volleyball “net”.
though we managed only once to get some players together with rather mixed capabilities it was fun. besides the three of us, two kids and two fisher-/boat taxi men and a dog joined the game. as the dog couldn’t decide on which team he was on and after having to fight him off all the time, the father of one of the kids did what nobody else dared to do, or just didn’t think of. red card, on the leash!
after enjoying the thai curry for a last time, we wanted to leave the next day on the same ferry. but as there were no more tickets for bus or train to bangkok, we ended up staying an extra day. a day well spent… and another curry, please!