Koh Chang, Last of the Undeveloped Paradises

Three weeks away from emails and cell phones!  Who could ask for anything more?  Not many English speaking travelers and only mosquitoes to contend with at the happy hour.  Yes, around 5 PM they would arrive to chew on me on parts of my body that I couldn't reach to scratch.

This is probably the last blog entry from Thailand for this trip.  I have some photos of the wonderful Thai markets to post but I don't know if I will make that happen.  I am heading home as I write and edit these photos of Koh Chang.  The island is a wonderful way to end a five month stay in Thailand.  There is almost nothing to do.  So for those travelers that need a lot of activities to make their vacation a success this is not the place to venture to on holiday.  I read for hours in my hammock and never got bored.

This picture tells just about all.  Probably extremely egotistical to start a blog with a self portrait,  but it is really how I spent my time. In a hammock that I bought in Ranong knowing full well, ahead of time, of the comfort I was anticipating.

The island is a small island located in the Andaman Sea, very close to Burma off shore from the town/city of Ranong, Thailand.  It is not the larger Koh Chang that is over off the east coast and heavily  populated with tourists.  That is the destination that travel agents and tour books will direct you to when you ask or go to look up travel information.

 My bungalow was the closest one to the ocean, about 21 feet from the sand and depending on the tide how far I had to go to get wet.  The water was always warm, much warmer that I am used to at home in my pool.  A small room with a private bath with a cold shower, no screens, a mosquito net to sleep under and a small porch to spend my leisurely day practicing being a beach bum. 

The island is very much a jungle of various tropical plants.  Growing in the wild all of the bread fruits plus the cashew nut that the resort that I stayed in is named after.  Cashew Resort is the largest of the 15+ resorts  on the island with 45 bungalows all spread out from each other.

I was lucky to have a bungalow pet, roommate or guest.  Either way you choose to look at this gecko he/she served a great purpose of aggressively eating all the unwanted visitors that visited my territory.  Usually leaving behind at 10 AM every morning the evidence of his previous night's meal.  The gecko was about a foot long and moved sporadically but with speed across the rafters and tiles.  Amazingly it managed to intensify the color of the spotted pattern depending on how close I came to it.

This is the bungalow of the resort's one year-round resident.  It fulfills my image of a beach bum's sprawling life style.  The season for the island runs from late November until mid April when most of the resorts close up and stop taking guests.  I understand a few will extend their operation but most pack up and head back to the mainland.

 

 

The long tail boats are the only way to reach the island from Ranong.  As you can see the boats pull up to the beach and passengers use an awkward ladder to get aboard after wading through the surf.  There are about 3 departures and arrivals during the day through the high season.  It takes approximately  one and a half hours to make the trip.

 Besides the visitors to the island every thing that is used by the resorts -- food, ice, gas, fuel, furniture and all the various building supplies are transported to the specific resort that has placed an order.  In this photo besides the passengers that have been off loaded the food stuffs and shelving that are on the beach have just been unloaded from the boat, yes,  through the water.

 

The rubber tree plantation that is in the center of the island.  I have never seen this kind of operation and figure that it must be very labor intensive.  They use a half of a coconut shell to collect the white sap that runs off a diagonal cut in the bark of the tree, as seen in the picture below.

The great surprise and added bonus in coming to the island this year was being able to continue practicing yoga every morning at Om Tao yoga center just 5 minutes from my bungalow.  What a gift to be taking yoga in the natural setting of the jungle with all the sounds of the wild life and the breaking of the waves out on the beach, and the attacks of mosquitoes!!!

And then there was meeting the yoga instructor.  What would you expect if you were in my shoes, on an island, in a jungle setting and having no expectations?  Would you expect to find Andrea? What a wonderful person to meet on a remote island.  Most of you know that I have been doing yoga for quite a while and when I am up in Chiang Mai I take 2 classes a day with Remco.  He has really kept this old body functioning and I have the utmost love and respect for him.  He just isn't the tall beautiful woman that Andrea is and I hope this doesn't offend him.  Andrea got me to look at my old excuses/stories and go beyond the yoga practice that I had in the past.  I can now do things I was planning to do in my next life.  Thanks to this persistent, encouraging teacher.

 

Although Koh Chang was not hit directly by the Tsunami of 2004 as was the rest of southern Thailand, some of the best signs to be found on the island are the warning signs directing people to the high ground.  The island has mountains and rolling hills, so it is possible to get away from the approaching water and to safety.

Be prepared for sunsets as you have never experienced before.  Nightly entertainment after being chewed on by the mosquitoes the quiet sunsets would develop for endless relaxing, no charge delight.

 

Island dogs become pets to families and visitors to the island.  I don't know if there is a specific name for the breed, other than Island Ridgeback.  They are all about the same size, black on top and tan on the underside, un-neutered, independent and free to roam the island.    I never could keep them straight unless they had a colored collar.   Breeding was a very popular activity or sport.  Once they identified you as a potential caretaker you had at least one body that would be sorry to see you leave the island.  And Lena Merna had two sad animals on her departure.

Afternoon hikers seem casual but most of the time there is a motive behind the direction that they are going.  Mother and daughter, Andrea and Lena are off to Crocodile Rock Resort for a great extended lunch that will include a swim at the rock itself.  For the life of me, I never could see the crocodile in the rock or swimming in the water looking for lunch.

Lek, the proprietor of the "Sunset Bungalows," with her fine menu and especially her homemade yogurt on top of a fruit bowl for breakfast made a very convincing argument to explore more of her resort.  The sizable bungalows are spread out in the jungle among the well maintained gardens and pathways leading down to the restaurant and the water.

 

In all likelihood, this is the last blog entry for this year's trip (2011-12) to Thailand.  It has been a wonderful trip as those of you who have been following my entries can see, and to say I am looking forward to returning home would not be telling the total truth.  To live in a relaxing, calm and gentle culture without the invasion of the media to disrupt my day and return to a culture that has given in to spending beyond its means is not where I am in my life.  High tech living is what is happening and I know I will have to live with it, but... I know a place where I can hang my hammock, turn off my cell phone and where wireless can't reach me and sunsets  are never the same.

A City on Stilts Inly Lake, Myanmar/Burma Part 2

 To refer to Inly Lake as a city is probably a misnomer.  It is more like a lake surrounded by numerous small villages or communities.  It is a destination on the map suggesting a city, and I only began to question the term after I got there.  It is definitely up on stilts and a marvel to mans ability to get away from water and yet use it in all possible ways.

Before I go any further with this blog, I want to give credit and thanks to my friend Darcy Richards in Frederick, Maryland.  She is the one who pushed, shoved and got me started on doing this work out.  With my limited skills on the computer, I couldn't have done this without her patience and encouragement.  Sounds like I just got an Oscar!  But I really mean it. Thank you Darcy.  Do not edit this out, please.

Back to the stilt city.  Of all the places we went, Mike, Annie and me,  we liked this place the best as it offered so many diverse explorations that the other cities on our trip didn't.  The major attraction was the water and the water travel.  We spent one whole day out on the lake going to the different villages to  see what craft they specialized in.  That's were all these pictures were taken except at the end. And those pictures are from the 2 day trek that I took with two strangers- Gero from Berlin, Germany and Richard from Scotland.  

We did not explore any of the "resorts"  that many tourists choose to stay at and I am happy with our choice as we took a hotel room in a large town,  Nyaung Shew.  From there we were free to walk all over the place and find different restaurants to try as well as go shopping without having to get on a boat to go somewhere.  Being at the mercy of a boatman we would likely end up going places where he would get a kick back from our shopping.  That was apparent from our day out of the lake.

 

This is a fine example of a typical stilt house.  Most of them are a variation of what you see here.  A dock right on the water where a man is bathing or washing out clothes.  Steps that lead up to a "front porch where two red water collecting drums sit.  We heard over and over that the only water the Burmese drink is water from a well.  They won't even drink rain water.  Later in our trip I saw some PVC piping that looked like it was carrying water to the houses.  None shown in this picture but there is an electrical line coming to the house. 

The following two pictures are the kinds of boats that are used for transporting everything imaginable around the lake.  This first pictures is the entangled boats loading and unloading passengers and gear, supplies and always rice.  No one seems to get upset with the boat that might be blocking them in or waiting for a boat to get unloaded.  It is just the way life goes in this culture.

We passed this house on the way to our first stop and if you can read the white sign it says "Nursery" and an explanation in Burmese that this is a children's day care center.   Who would of thought?

Our first stop of the day was Nan Pan market.  It is to be noted that the market moves everyday to a different part of the lake.  The shop owners set up early in the morning just as the sun is coming up and taken down just before it gets dark.  What you are seeing is another entanglement of boats of tourists and locals shopping for everything you could imaging.  For the locals it was food and clothing and household necessities.  Then for the tourists endless, just made "antiques!"   A few wood carvers and some people still selling gems that Burma is know for.  I was for the most part just interested in watching the interaction of all the different kinds of people.  Some shoppers comments that are memorable "as long as the fish is still alive, it is not rotting."  True.  "Albert, you don't need another elephant!"  Wife telling tourist husband to say 'NO," which he didn't pay attentions to and parted with the money.

Catch of the day from Inly Lake.  Notice no ice to keep the fish fresh.  No, I never ate any fish from the lake.

All the fish vendors line up along the bank hawking their catch.  I didn't compare the prices, just watched the haggling between the locals.

                                                                                 

Lots of produce stalls.  Cauliflower must have been in season as piles of the flowers still in the green leaves were everywhere and many dishes I ordered in the different restaurants had it on the plate.  Different stalls specialize in certain vegetables.  Some are nothing but 8 or 9 different kinds rice. Others have nothing but the different kinds of chillies, both dried and fresh.  Then an interesting one for me featured only greens.  Most greens sorta look like some at I see at home, but they are not.  Labels don't exist, and the language barrier prohibited my learning more of the relationship to our greens.

Here is another favorite photo of mine.  This lady sits in one spot all day selling oranges that are in season now.  It is probably hard to tell but there are at least 3 different sizes of oranges for her to sell.  Look close to see the old fashioned balance scale that she uses.  It looks like rusted plates in mid air.

The next village stop was, In Paw Khone,  at this house with the drying skeins of silk hanging out to dry in the sun.  The fine silk spun and woven by the Burmese is some of the finest silk that I have ever put my hands on.  The prices were higher than the typical Thai silk that I see here in Chiang Mai.  I am sure if I looked hard enough I could fine comparable quality material here at our markets.

 

After a wonderful lunch in a floating restaurant we stopped at this Wat at Inn Dein to see the interesting structure of the building as well as the 5 Gold Buddha images that reside there.

You will have to look closely to these two photos as the five gold shapes in the top photo will have little meaning for the viewer.  It took me some time to figure out was happening.  From the photo below you can see the shapes of the Buddhas on the left as they originally were many years ago, and in the right photo see how they have changes over time.  The reason behind this change can be seen in the upper photo as a Burmese man is in the process of applying a thin sheet of gold leaf to the bulbous shape.  Over the years the Buddhas have grown beyond recognition.

The Burmese as well as the Thai people have strong beliefs in building merit in this life.  And one way, of the many, is to buy the sheets of gold leaves and apply it to the Buddha statues in the different temples around the country.  I have watched as people put more emphasis on building merit in this life than taking care of themselves or their families with food or clothing.  A perfect example of my Western mind set compared to the Eastern mind set.  Who am I to judge?  I am only a visitor.

These next few pictures are of the boat people and how they move around the lake.  This man to the right has his right leg wrapped around his paddle and by using the leverage of his leg and his right shoulder he propels himself along.  It is hypnotic to watch as they maintain a graceful and smooth glide through the water.

This boatman is paddling in a traditional manner but it is the many bamboo poles behind him that I want you to call to your attention.   These define the floating gardens that are found all over the lake.  Honestly, I have no idea how the gardens are floating out there and couldn't get a clear explanation of how the operation works.  You can be sure that my gardening curiosity was getting the best of me.The following are the various forms of fishing that can be seen on the lake.  I never saw the large basket in the above picture working and it is a typical tourist painting that is being hawked in the shops.  It looks efficient  and I only wish I could have seen it in action.

The gracefulness of this man throwing his net is another favorite photo.  It wasn't an easy shot to get  because of the simplicity of my point and shoot camera.  He repeated the action over and over and I finally got this moment before the net got lost in the water.  I never saw him pull up a large catch.

The next photos are grouped together as intimate moments in the daily lives of the people of Inly Lake.  No matter where you look people are washing by hand, huge piles of clothes in what I think of as rather muddy water.  At all times of the day in broad daylight they are found bathing in the very same water, discreetly of course but they do give themselves a complete soaping over, washing there hair followed by a body rinse.  Young children can be found at the water edge doing the same ritual.  Best part, no water bill!

The next group of photos are on the 2 day hike up into the mountains that are to the east of Inly Lake.  It wasn't in my original plan,  but when the offer came I thought for a bit and joined up with the two men that I have already mentioned.  We had a blast, considering that we didn't know anything about each other.  Our guide, was a Burmese man of about 24 and was a challenge for me to keep up with on the paths.  When I would ask "how much further it would be to our next rest stop," usually a temple, his reply was "5 more minutes."  Thus, his nick name was, yes, 5 more minutes, which he seemed to enjoy.

These first pictures were taken up on a high ridge with a Pagoda on the top that we are climbing on.  There was a small bridge going out to it and the remains of merit offerings so I felt it was acceptable to be there.  That is Inly Lake that you can see in the background

Needless to say, for those that know me, I was not as happy as I look, considering I don't like heights.

The lack of rain at this time of the year made the trail very dry and we had big need to carry drinking water which accounted for about 75% of the weight that we were carrying.  our guide carried all our food.

 Our first lunch stop that was in a monastery.  The food was mostly fruit and instant noodle soup.  Richard from Scotland is in the front and Gero from Germany is in the back.  As those of you know the Scots, they tell great stories.  Richard did an outstanding job at holding up their reputation.

A late night dinner in another monastery where we spent the night  It also housed 5 of the grumpiest Monks that I have ever encountered.  All we slept on was a woven bamboo mat a thick blanket and 4 blankets on top.  Because of the trekking, I slept.

The Buddha images above were found on an early morning hike to the top of the ridge and maybe a cave, which I don't remember our finding.  We came upon these images that appear to be freshly whitewashed as is the custom in many parts of the country.  

The picture below, inside the temple that we discovered at the top had 7 small alcoves around the back side of the big Buddha.  I include this one with the alarm clock that I have never seen placed as an offering of merit before in a spiritual spot.  My guess is it was left behind from the last persons meditation.

Don't I wish that this is the style of trekking that I could get away with on any given day.  This carrier was found on the side of the path and needed to be carrying me, but I had no cooperation.  5 more minutes didn't know at first I was kidding.

The pattern on this house that could be mistaken for brick is really woven bamboo.  It is found all over south east Asia in different forms.  In this area besides floor coverings, it is used for exterior walls of a house.  Here it has been woven into a pattern.  It is amazingly strong and resilient to the elements and nowhere near as expensive as brick.

A final trekking picture to prove that we made it.  It was a wonderful break from traveling with my to friends from the UK.  Richard and Gero were great sports to put up with an old man like me who was rarely up with the speed of the  pack.  I really appreciated Gero giving me a hand up steep slopes and Richards hilarious stories that took my mind off how tired or thirsty I was in any given moment.

One last market before we left Inly Lake on an afternoon flight back to Rangoon.  Can you find this infant in the above pile of cabbages.  Mother and child were happy as could be expected.  When I shot this picture babt was very busy playing with a piece of plastic.

Below is a picture  of cracked beetle nut that will be broken up into smaller pieces and then wrapped in a green leaf and chewed.  It is a custom that is found all over Burma, India and parts of Southern China and from my point of view rather disgusting.  The nuts themselves are quiet beautiful but what it does to peoples teeth is ugly.  If you have been around people chewing tobacco, then you have the idea.  Liquid drools down the chin leaving an orange-red stain.  The teeth are stained the same color and then seem to rot off at the base of people that chew it all their lives.  Yes, it is addictive and a carcinogen.

Ladies in the market in the process of wrapping the nut up in a special leaf along with different herbs and a white paste of some sort.  I tried to chew betel nut in India and once was enough for me.  My good friend Mac who was with me on the trip was very interested in finding out what it could do to him, so he went back for seconds.

 

A panoramic  view of the market where every thing that you could imagine or ever want to take home from Inly Lake could be found.  And yet, I could not find the antique brass chimes that I wanted.  It reminded me of a sign at home in the old flint Hill store, "If we don't have it you don't need it."

One last reflection off of Inly Lake.  This was obviously my favorite place that we visited on this trip.  Certainly the photographs attest to it.  I find when I travel I want to see diverse forms of cultural practices and this trip met those qualifications that I wasn't totally apart of my awareness.

I hope that as the viewer you didn't find this entry too long and uninteresting.  I find for me to cut out pictures to be a difficult task, particularly when I enjoyed the place.  I suppose that if you are not interested there is always the option to delete or not check in the next time.  As is said in Thailand all the time, "it is up ti you."  Thanks for having a look and if you care let me know what you think.