Pulo Bardia
I closed my eyes and breathed deep, filling my lungs with the salty ocean breeze one last time. As I opened them again I saw the island I had come to know so well fade into the horizon and out of my life.
Speeding toward it 11 months earlier I speculated as to how it was formed. Sailing around it, it would seem as if a pile of giant granite boulders were thrust up from the ocean floor and vegetation began to grow on them. The earliest account of human habitation that I can find is in 1852, though the inhabitants had obviously been there for some time as they had farms with cows and chickens, crops etc. In 1933 it began to be used as a political prison, all inhabitants of which were pardoned in 1947. Western backpackers discovered it in the 80s and its opportunities for diving would only become known in the 90s. Early European cartographers knew this island as Pulo Bardia, Siam. I would come to know it as Ko Tao, Thailand.
On November 24th 2007, I arrived on the aforementioned island expecting to stay for a week to do my Open Water Diving certification. Eleven months later I left as an Assistant Instructor with over 500 dives and a mind stuffed full of new experiences and ideas. The fascinating part, I find, is not how long I ended up staying or how many dives I amassed, but that my situation was so strikingly common for this place. In all of my time on the island I met not one single person who lived there that came with the intention of staying. The stories (including mine) were always the same: People go to this island with the anticipation of staying a mere week or less. They dive, explore and sample island’s simple ways of life, savoring it before realizing something inevitable: They are in love. Whether it be with the diving, the lifestyle, the people or the island itself matters not. The attraction is simply too much to resist and they stay. A month passes and they tell themselves “Just one more month”, but on it goes. For some it may only last a few months and others never leave until that one fateful day, either through shear will power or circumstances beyond their control, they are pried from the island’s unrelenting grip.
But that is what makes this particular island so very special. It is populated, for the most part, by people not too unlike myself; travelers with no particular reason to return from whence they came–all united by a common love of the ocean and the lives that they have found. It is unique in the truest sense of the word; one of those few rare places left on this earth that can be labeled so. But alas, there is no such thing as paradise.
As with any place the good is tempered by the unpleasant. After living there long enough you eventually slip behind the well-kept curtain of tourism that hangs before most passers-through and you witness the stained, rusty machinery that makes the island chug forward. Knowing these truths can range anywhere from delightful to scary. From the handful of mafia-like Thai families that ultimately own and control everything on the island to the farms where trained monkeys scurry up palm trees and harvest coconut crops, the island is saturated with the texture and grit of life. Crime in general is extremely rare, but the environmental problems make up for it. Development is rampant and relatively unhindered. As more trees are removed more rain reaches the soil and washes it into the sea, killing coral reefs. In attempts to maximize their profit, fisherman drag their nets as close as they can to the underwater pinnacles where fish take refuge. The nets are too often caught, torn from the boat and blanketed across the habitat. I personally have had to help cut these nets away on more than one occasion. The island’s tone is shifting, albeit slowly, as resorts are building larger, ever more elaborate complexes that cater to a much wealthier demographic than the backpackers that have been it’s base for so long.
There is hope, though, not only in that a large group of people are actively doing battle with these problems, but also in an elusive feeling that the “soul” of the island will never truly change. For a place is not only what you see. A place is people, smells, sounds, the whole gamut of experience and every place to me has its own distinct feel; that intangible quality you get from this experience. And there is something truly special that emerges when the right environment is populated with the right people at the right time. Ko Tao is one such place. Whether it will remain so or for how long, only time can say.
I am removed from the island now, but every night I am painfully reminded that the island is not removed from me. Every night for a month, in fact, I have been plagued by the first recurring dream I have ever had where I return to “Pulo Bardia.”
-Tyler
“I was a quick wet boy
diving too deep for coins
…now I’m a fat house cat
cursing my sore blunt tongue”
-Samuel Beam (Iron & Wine)
Statesward Bound
So my laptop was a lost cause and I returned to the island empty handed. My luck has failed to improve since… so much for karma. I’m presently trying to claim the computer and camera on my travel insurance, but I place about as much faith in insurers as I do pixie dust and unicorns. The downside of not having a computer is pretty much everything. My t-shirt designs and writing are on hold, I can’t sort through any pictures I’ll take in the meantime and it was the only form of entertainment at my house. I have no TV nor dvd player, no stereo, nada. The upside to all this, which is always good to look for, is that I’ve started reading more. A lot more. I’ve downed 4 books in 10 days because when I’m not diving I hardly have anything else to do.
First I read Into Thin Air for no particular reason. It is the firsthand account by Jon Krakauer of the disaster that unfolded around him on Mt. Everest in 1996. Quite incredible. Then I read a stinker called Last Light, some thriller about a hired mercenary in Panama. To make up for I then read the very tiring Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. Actually I’m still reading it in the background of all the others because its taking me so long. So far he has some incredible things to say on many subjects, but curiously a few points of striking ignorance as well. “I have lived some 30 years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of value or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing and probably cannot tell me anything”, he says. Bullshit says I. The verdict is still out on Walden, what I have read is much more good than bad, but I can understand where Bill Bryson is coming from when he calls Thoreau “inestimably priggish and tiresome” in the next book I picked up: A Walk in the Woods. This is Bryson’s comical and throughly entertaining account of his attempt to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Its also peppered with lots of trail history, botany and the life; not really my bag, but the rest is grand and I would recommend it. Thus concludes this episode of the Tyler Capps book club.
Another up/downside of my smashed laptop is that I have to actually “write.” You know, with a pencil and this old stuff people are calling “paper.” I bought myself a little notepad to write my entries (or whatever you want to call them) and record thoughts and things that pop up whenever and that’s nice. I can foresee it becoming just as indispensable as my camera, but the problem is this: My typing is nearly fast enough to keep pace with my thinking, but my handwriting is utterly hopeless. My hand has to scribble as fast as it possibly can to keep up with my head and I still have to stop and let it catch up. This leads to my speedy scribbles being hard for even myself to transcribe unless what I have just written is still fresh in my mind. God forbid anyone else ever has to try to read this notebook.
With the loss of my computer and my ever-dwindling money supply the time has come for me to return to the States, if only for a while. With the slow season on the island approaching many people are leaving and I could probably walk into a job pretty much anywhere, but it is so slow that I wouldn’t be able to sustain myself regardless. With the riots in Bangkok making international headlines people, sheepish as they are, are canceling their trips to Thailand. 90%, in fact, of the people traveling to Thailand have canceled and this is going to amplify the quietness here until things fall eerily silent on the island. The sad part is that Bangkok is completely traversable with hardly any other areas of the country being affected. Why must people in the modern world let the media hold such sway over their fears?
I have to say, though, I’m rather looking forward to going back at this point. I miss my family, I miss cold weather and mountains and snow. I’d like to stay over the winter and save as much money as I can, do some hiking and skiing with my brother and perhaps make a trip out West for some real skiing before I depart on my next adventure. What that adventure will be, I’m not too sure yet. Right now my thinking points me towards South America. All of it.
-Tyler
Karma Police
I am about as far from superstitious as one can be. I believe in science, sound theories and provable facts. Sometimes, though, things happen that beg me to reconsider my stance on things like karma.
About a week ago now I was driving back to my bungalow around 9:30pm. There is a particularly steep hill just before my house and I was driving up fairly slowly in first gear just as I normally do. About half way up on the steepest section the bike popped out of gear into neutral and I began to roll backwards. The speed gained up as I tried in vain to shift back into first and gained more before I was able to apply the brakes. I was going too fast and swung sideways flipping the bike. After I was thrown from the scooter there was a split second as I flew through the air that I knew things were coming to an end. I hit the pavement on my right side and the bag containing my laptop landed with a mortifying crunch next to me. The momentum forced me to roll over it once, crushing the screen and my small Olympus camera along with it.
All was quiet. The wind was knocked from me and I sat bleeding in the road for a moment getting my bearings. I looked up the road at my overturned bike lit only by rays of moonlight leaking through the palm trees and I was alone. There was no one there to help me, no one to talk to for comfort. Just me, my pain and two newly christened paperweights. I picked myself up, hauled my bike back onto its tires and roll-started it down the hill. Once the engine was running I turned it around and went back up the hill to my house. Given the accident my injuries were minor. Just a sore neck, a few bruises, cuts and scrapes that I was able to clean and patch myself with first aid supplies from my pack. After tending to myself I reviewed the damage to my electronics. Given the durable nature of the olympus camera I expected it to survive, but the LCD display was crushed. The laptop’s screen was shattered and it wasn’t powering on. Thoughts of all the information that I may have lost rushed through my head in a panic. I sat down for a moment, but I couldn’t stay still. I knew there was nothing I could do that night, but I had to move. I drove back down to the beach and tried to call a couple of people, but no one was answering. I sat down in front of a dive shop alone trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Money was already tight and I needed the laptop if I was going to film anymore. I spent the next day running down answers. I extracted the hard drive and opened the computer up to see the internal damage. Everything looked surprisingly intact. I took it to one of the computer guys on the island, but the only thing he could do was suggest I take it to Pantip Plaza in Bangkok to see if it could be salvaged. Which is what I did. I left the next day taking a ferry to the mainland and an overnight bus into Bangkok. I arrived sleepless around 4:30am and caught a cab to my guest house. My room wasn’t available until 1pm and there wasn’t any place for me to sleep so I killed a couple of hours on the internet and wandered the streets until Pantip plaza opened at 10am. I scoured the massive electronics complex for the right shop to take my computer to and eventually settled on one. The man gave it a once over and said a screen replacement may be all it needed. I watched him as he installed a new screen for 8500baht and shockingly the machine powered on and seemed to be working. Exhausted, but relieved I made the long walk back to my guest house, stopping for lunch along the way. It seemed my streak of bad luck had finally been curbed. As I sat eating, a young Thai woman sat down in front of me and silently slid me a card. It was asking for a donation to the Deaf, Blind and Mute by buying a small handycraft for 60 baht. Wary of Bangkok scams, I politely declined and she left. Immediately afterward I felt very cold hearted and regretted the decision. I did my best to put it out of my mind and continued back to the guest house to get my room. It was 1:30pm, 31 hours without sleep. I sat down on the bed and thought about taking a nap, but before I let myself crash I booted up my laptop to make sure everything was still working. As I was checking through everything with pleasing results I heard a faint “pop” and the machine flicked off. It wouldn’t turn back on.
I rushed it back to the shop in the plaza where the man told me the motherboard had shorted and would need to be replaced. It was at this point, combined with the cost of the screen, that repairing the machine became more expensive than buying a new one. Except I couldn’t really afford one. After wandering around trying again to figure out what to do I asked the man if I could give the screen back and at least save that money. He would only give me 6000baht for it. I tried to get more at other shops, but no one was buying. At this point it had been 37 hours since I had slept and my attempts to bargain and haggle with the man in my state were pitiful at best. I ended up taking the 6000 and as I staggered out of the plaza utterly defeated at 8pm it began to pour rain. In my haste I had forgotten my rain jacket. I couldn’t seem to get a cab to stop and had to settle with a tuk tuk to get back to my room. Needless to say I was drenched by the time I arrived. I finally slept.
I got up the next morning and spent all day searching for a laptop that met my needs and I could afford, but after looking at my bank account and weighing prices I decided that I couldn’t really even afford a cheaper one. That afternoon I booked my ticket back to the island and went back the guest house to relax. I watched TV for an hour or two and left at 7pm to get dinner in a different part of the city. As I sat slowly picking away at my dinner I thought back to the girl who asked for a donation the day before and everything that had happened since. Then the very same girl sat down in front of me and with a look that would suggest she knew more than she possibly could, slid me the card again. This time it said 100baht. I paid her, she thanked me in sign language and disappeared into the crowd outside.
I am about as far from superstitious as one can be. I believe in science, sound theories and provable facts. Sometimes, though, things happen that beg me to reconsider my stance on things like karma.
-Tyler
Touching the Flame
There is a very distinct sound produced when wind meets flame and for a few moments it is all that you hear. The crowd fades, the ocean quiets and all that you see is fire. All that you hear is the roar as it passes around you.
Its called Fire Poi. Two chains (one for each hand) with a weighted end wrapped in kevlar or cotton, soaked in fuel, set on fire and spun around in weaves and patterns. It is an art form that started sans-fire with the Maori people of New Zealand and has since spread to every corner of the world. From the rainy streets of Ireland, to the beaches of Vietnam you will find it. Here on the island many of the local Thais practice it on the beach outside of restaurants or bars to attract patrons. For them it is all about flash; they spin as hard and as fast as they can and since this more commercial version was the form I was most familiar with it never really had any draw for me.
About a month ago one of the Thai diving instructors that I work with here named Off was having his birthday party on the beach outside the dive shop. Eventually he started playing with the fire chains and absolutely blew me away. It was slower and rhythmic with an extreme technical difficulty. The way he moved the fire around him was nothing short of artwork. His girlfriend Sussi went after him and was just as impressive. It was so hypnotically beautiful that it gave me a new respect for the practice and inspired me to try it. I bought a very cheap pair of chains to practice with and on and off over the course of a few weeks I worked through the most basic maneuvers on my own. Eventually, after enough smacks taken to anywhere the chains would reach, my left hand begrudgingly excepted it’s new more complicated tasks. Last night on the beach in front of a crowd with Off and Sussi I lit them up for the first time.
There is a very distinct sound produced when wind meets flame and for a few moments it is all that you hear. The crowd fades, the ocean quiets and all that you see is fire. All that you hear is the roar as it passes around you. And in this moment I learned that there is a very real calm to be found in so much controlled pandemonium. The flames focus your attention so singularly on the motions that there is nothing else. The rest of your mind is allowed to breath and you can forget everything, living only in the moment.
There were a few inevitable mistakes that broke things up and when my fire was almost done I spun them out. There were a few black residue marks on my arms from the hits and my pants smelled of fuel, but I was unscathed.
So I did it again.
-Tyler
Options, Lack Of
It has happened. The inevitable is upon me and it has come a bit sooner than I expected. This island has a very tangible pull to it and one of the things that makes it so unique is that you will not find one foreigner living here, literally not a single one, that came to this place with the intention of staying. The lifestyle is simply too attractive for some people to pass up, myself included. I hunkered down, got a little too comfortable and stopped watching my account balance as closely as I usually do. I had an imaginary “caution-line” drawn that once my funds dipped below I was to start making contingency plans should I not be able to continue my traveling. They have dipped. My situation is far from dire; I still have enough money to get me through the next couple of months, finish my dive master certification and then some, but unless I find actual “gainful” employment soon after that is finished then I’m afraid I’ll have to make a difficult choice. There are two options that I can see:
A: After two months time I press on with my travels and bank on finding solid work in Oz or NZ. This one is particularly risky because my funds will already be tight and if that work never comes about or isn’t enough to let me save money I could end up in a bad situation that lands me back in the states without much left. Although, if the work does pan out that means I could continue on with this wonderful little world wandering thing I’ve got going.
B: After two months time I cut my losses and return to the states with enough cash to keep me floating until I find a job and start saving for the next trip. I have to admit that a part of me sees going back to the states as a sort of failure. I was hoping I could keep extending this trip for some time and if I had been a little wiser with my money it certainly could’ve been a bit longer, but a full year isn’t bad. I do really miss my family and friends and I wouldn’t mind doing the “normal” thing for a little while as long as I can find a job that isn’t too awful.
So far option B has the edge, but obviously nothing is set in stone at this point. I still have a couple of months to feel out where things are heading. But, for the first time in a long time I can actually see an end to this trip on the horizon and my mind seems to be having trouble accepting that. I think my new goal is to find a way to perpetuate these travels long enough to stop calling them “trips” and start calling them “life” because this is most certainly a large part of who I am now. Also on a slightly related note, I believe I have found the official title of my dream job (something I never really bothered to pin down until recently): Professional Travel Photographer. So obvious it hurts. While its nice to actually have the name of what I aspire to, its somewhat depressing for reasons I will discuss in the next post.
For now, what can I do other than keep moving forward. While there is some uncertainty in my path I take comfort in knowing that I’ll make the best of whatever happens and no matter what that is I won’t be off the road for long.
-Tyler
The Clock’s Move Freely
Let it first be said that I like this island. I like it a lot. I like my job, I like the people I work for/with and I certainly like the lifestyle. That should be fairly obvious given that I was meant to be here one week and the six month marker is now speeding toward me. Relentlessly. For some time now I’ve been grappling with whether or not I should stay longer or get back to traveling. At present the people I work for have offered to train me up as a dive master as well as put me through the extensive underwater photography course we’re launching—each of which usually cost about $900—for free and there are a number of potentially very very good things on the horizon for the company. There are articles on us and what my boss is doing coming out in a handful of diving magazines, one of which (Fathom) he shot the cover photo for. My boss has also been invited to Hawaii to help film a 3D IMAX film about the islands and there are whispers of a new contact in Zimbabwe who could help us sort out filming on the African Savannah. There are documentaries and television pilots scheduled to be shot in the coming months. Indeed it seems I may have stumbled into something pretty great, but if all this sounds a little too good to be true… that’s because it probably is.
The key word in that last paragraph was “potentially.” There are more “if”s, “but”s, “when”s and “maybe”s going on behind those descriptions to keep me from holding out any real hope of it actually going down, much less my being involved in it. I don’t think my luck stretches quite that far. Regardless I think I’d like to stick around a bit longer to see where things go. For the moment my job still consists of plugging away at our daily video work, but even that is not so simple. I work on commission here, meaning I get paid depending on how many dvds of my filming that I sell. I was out of the water for about a week with a cold that made diving impossible (equalization issues) and today on my first day back I nearly broke my foot on the side of a boat knocking me out of the water for yet another few days.
When I check my account balance I don’t look at it in terms of what I can buy or even cash really. I look at it like a clock; a countdown to uncertainty slowly ticking away. Sometimes I have a good week and it stops ticking entirely… sometimes, as now, it ticks faster. So to help stave off this temporal leak I’ve been thinking of other things I could do on the island and indeed I think there is a market for my particular skill set in graphic design and illustration. Of course there is a hitch. My boss does a lot of graphic design work for a wide variety of shops and people on the island. Any of the graphic work that comes into the shop goes directly to him; its “his thing” as it were. And as long as he can handle the load I won’t get any work in that area from within the company even though—to be uncharacteristically bold—I’m better at it. Going into direct competition with the guy I work for and expecting to retain a job isn’t the silliest idea I’ve had (when I was 5 I tried turning a robe into an invisibility cloak by tying a D battery to the waist strap), but it’s close. My hands are tied. The clock’s move freely.
I haven’t been this torn in a long while and as time and money grow shorter I grow more anxious over my indecision. I feel like good things could happen for me here eventually, but how far away “eventually” is, I have no idea. I could travel on and come back later, but there is no guarantee that I will find more work in the interim to save up the money to do so as I would like. A tricky situation, this. Were it a movie I would be expecting a deus ex machina any minute.
If only.
-Tyler
“Confusion never stops closing walls and ticking clocks”The Unexpected
So I left the island of Koh Tao, Thailand for my usual day-and-a-half visa run into Burma and back. Four days later I’m sitting in a guest house in Penang, Malaysia making a mental note of how every article of clothing I’m wearing is from a different country. My glasses are from Thailand, my shoes were bought in the states, my socks in Athens, my pants are from Prague, my belt is Hungarian and I picked up this shirt at a mall here yesterday. But I digress…
I had been told that I could make three trips into Burma before having to worry about getting a proper visa. This run was meant to be my third, but in my most epically dumb oversight to date I didn’t consider something much more important. It was explained to me as I arrived at the Thai border and handed the agent my passport. She flipped through the pages and concernedly remarked: “I think you no go to Burma today.” To which I replied, “Umm… No, I’m pretty sure I need to.” She then pulled out a scratch sheet of paper and went thorugh all the dates on the Thai stamps in my passport and added up the number of days I had been there. You see, on a US passport one is allowed up to 90 days in Thailand without a visa and I was staring down in awe at a scribbled total of “88.” Even if I did cross into Burma and back I would still have to get myself to the nearest foreign major city of Penang, Malaysia within the next two days to apply for a visa. I phoned work: “Hey uh, Heather? Yeah, I’ve got some bad news.”
After I explained the situation she recommended a place to stay in Penang and I sat around waiting for the bus back to Chumporn where I would be able to catch the overnight train to the Malaysian border. Chief among my thoughts was the fact that I was now going to have to stretch a week’s worth of wear out of a day’s worth of clothes and how happy I was that I decided to bring my laptop with me this time. The bus took me back to Chumporn, but the overnight train was booked full… For the next two days. I decided to stay in Chumporn that night and worry about getting to the border in the morning. When I got up I walked down to the local does-everything-travel agent-resturant-bar-internet-guest house-shop thing where I was greeted by the kind of guys who hang out at foreigner bars at 10 in the morning. Luckily I know that these are also the kind of people with experience in getting in and out this country in a rush so I struck up a conversation. I had my travel plans worked out and was on a bus to Hat Yai within the hour. The bus took about 8 hours, pulling into the station around 7pm and I was instantly mobbed by the usual array of room renters, taxi drivers, minibus runners etc. There were no proper buses across to Malaysia so I eventually entered one of the many travel agents across from the station.
I was told that I could either take a taxi across at 4am or a minibus at 8:30am. The man had a thin mustache and a thick gold medallion necklace; a fast talker trying to push things on me, which I never enjoy, but know how to deal with. Eventually I settled on the minibus and he tried to get me to stay in one of the “cheap room” he had upstairs. As usual I said I would have to see the room before I agreed to anything and he had one of the ladies that worked for him lead me upstairs. Most situations like what follows are genuinely harmless—as this one probably was—but I think its very important to listen to that feeling in your gut when it says things aren’t right. As I followed her up the stairs it got darker and darker toward the third floor where the lights were off. The walls of the stairwell were cold unpainted concrete and it was unsettlingly obvious that I was the only one there. I was becoming more uncomfortable with every step and when the dim lights flickered on and I saw the hallway I made the decision to bail. The doors to the rooms were made of plywood with numbers haphazardly painted on them corresponding to the key in my hand, but I quickly noticed we were on the 4th floor and that my key was for the 3rd. I motioned that I had to go down a floor and left the lady as I descended. I skipped right past that 3rd floor and pulled out my cellphone before reaching the ground floor. As I shuffled quickly past the man handing him the key and saying that I would be back, I pretended to be on the phone so he couldn’t argue and made a quick, clean exit.
As I said, it was probably harmless—rooms like that aren’t uncommon around these parts. But bad vibes like that are, so when I get them I tend to take heed. I went back to the same place the next morning to catch that minibus and everything went smoothly. On the bus there were two older Thai men, an older American, a Dutch girl and 3 guys from Somalia, one of which we left at the Malaysian border because he couldn’t get through. Upon exiting Thailand the American man noticed my passport and asked where I was from. I told him NC and he explained how he lived in SC when he was young. Turns out he was only a couple of counties away from where I grew up. As the trip went on our conversation continued and it turned out we had a few more things in common. His name was Charlie and if I had to guess his age I’d say late 50s. I asked “so what do you do back in the states?” and he only answered “Get ready to go somewhere else.” Like myself he was also ex-navy stationed in Japan, but the generational gap became glaringly obvious when the conversation shifted to women in the military. He mentioned that there were no women on ships when he was in the service and I noted in a negative tone that they still weren’t allowed on submarines. He said “Good, they shouldn’t be allowed on any ships. They shouldn’t be on the police force either.” I gave him a deservingly awkward look and he said “Think about it, if someone breaks into your home which would you rather show up: A little lady or big guy named Bubba?” I answered, “First off, I don’t think you’ve met some of the women I have… Second: Either one’s going to have a gun ya know.” “Hell, I have a gun.” “Then what do you need Bubba for?” Realizing that the exchange would go nowhere he ended with “Well, we’re obviously from different generations, like I’m a republican and you’re probably a democrat…” We found common ground again when I explained that I would rather not be associated with either party at the moment given the state of things. It seems that out of all the other Americans I’ve met traveling, no matter how different we may be, we can all agree on one thing: Our current system and government are complete trash.
The car ferry pulled into port at Penang and we drove into town. The driver pulled over at the last stop and I got out, said goodbye to Charlie and walked over to the place that was recommended to me. I was told that they could also do all of the paperwork necessary for my Thai visa right from the guest house which was true… except I was about 30 minutes too late to get my stuff submitted before the immigration office closed for the weekend. I got settled into my room and took a walk to the local super-huge mall to pick up some socks, a couple of shirts and some various other bare essentials to hold me over on this little Malaysian misadventure.
People who know me know I’m not a braggart, but all in all I have to say I’m rather impressed with myself right now. A few days ago shit kind of hit the fan and much like a front row spectator at a Gallagher show, I had a garbage bag ready to pull over my head. I was ready and that makes me feel pretty good—like I passed some sort of test or something. Also there’s the fact that I’ve been away on this “trip” for over 6 full months now. Over 180 days I’ve crossed 17 countries by foot, scooters, buses, trains, cars, trucks and planes. I have taken well over 4000 photographs accompanied by nearly 40 pages of text. I’m accomplishing what I set out to do and I’ve found one of the things I think I was looking for:
A way of life. One that I’m good at
-Tyler
Into the Blue
I’m going to try something new. Now that I have settled into a place that I’ll be staying for a few months obviously my stories of traveling will slow a bit. I’ll still have things to recount (as you’ll read shortly) but there won’t be as much of it I don’t think. I’ve grown a bit used to writing quite a lot in these posts so I’d like to take that extra space to put down my thoughts and discuss certain subjects. Not necessarily this time, but in the future. So I guess whoever is reading these things stands to learn more about me. And don’t worry, I’ll still have pictures to post. In fact I have some right now, but I need to upload them. That being said I’ll go ahead and move on to the part where I tell you about my last couple of days here on the island.
There is a dive site off the mainland here called Chumpon Pinnacle and when the water is clear and conditions are right it is the best diving to be had around the island. It contains a staggering array of marine life from giant barracuda to bat fish to groupers. I dive here quite often as part of my job filming open water students on their last 2 dives qualifying them as open water divers. They stay around the 12-14 meter (40-45 feet) depth, but I always make my way to the bottom 30 meters (100 feet) down to film the grey reef sharks that inhabit the area. On this particular day I was separated from the group in a section of bad visibility while filming the sharks and was swept off of the main pinnacle by a current. With no reference point I soon found myself a bit turned around. This is nothing all too uncommon so I proceeded slowly to the surface continuing to film along the way. I was separated from the other divers in a section of water not normally visited by them and for a moment time seemed to slow. I found myself suspended motionless in a surreal blue void, no bottom in sight and only a glimmer of light from the surface far above. Soon I began to notice dark shapes moving around me in the blue haze.
The blurry shapes soon narrowed into unmistakable silouettes and it was in this moment that I realized just what it was about sharks that makes them so inherently frightening. To me, at least. Not so much their sharp teeth or reputation, but their perfection. Never in my life have I witnessed anything so perfectly adapted to its environment. I really don’t think that they could be better at what they do and given what it is they do, I find this is terrifying. As I looked down I saw one below me, then one to my right, one behind me, everywhere. They kept their distance, though, as I ascended and I took comfort in the knowledge that no one has ever suffered a shark attack in these particular waters. Just before I reached the surface I managed to catch an enormous blue marlin on film in the water as it swam in the distance. By this time I had drifted a good ways from the boat so I surfaced and swam back. This was the most incredible dive I had done so far and probably something that I will never forget, but it paled in comparison to the following day.
I went out to Chumpon again with a different shop this time but still filming students. This particular shop is quite small and their boat is tiny compared to some of the others around the island, but I actually prefer this. There were only about 11 people onboard and it was very relaxed, which is just what diving should be. As everyone was getting ready we spotted a giant jellyfish moving around the boat. I got all of the shots I needed and jumped in with the group. Just as we got to the buoy line to descend the instructor looked down into the water and called out two words that send tingles down the spine of any diver on this island: “Whale Shark.”
I put my mask into the water and saw the giant lumbering 10 meters below us and as quickly as my mouth was out of the water I blurted out “I’m going down.” I let the air out of my BCD and descended as quickly as I could to catch up with it, leaving the group behind for the worthy cause of getting the animal on film. For almost 10 minutes I swam along with it taking in its massive size (about 6 meters long if I had to guess) all alone. Again moving away from the dive site, again finding myself in that hazy blue void, but this time with something entirely different. How do I describe it? My lexicon goes only so far. I will say that it was one of the defining moments of the trip thus far. I reached a point where I didn’t feel comfortable swimming any farther from the boat so I stopped and watched the whale shark fade into the blue. At only 10 meters deep I decided to surface and get my bearings as to where the boat was. It was closer than I thought so I swam back to the bouy line and descended to the pinnacle for about 20 minutes. I never caught up to my group, but upon getting back to the boat they were waiting for me, all smiling wide and holding up the hand signal for “whale shark”. After it left me it turned back towards the dive site and everyone on the boat had the chance to swim with it. Once everyone was back onboard no one could stop smiling.
The only other boat at the dive site left and we had the whole place to ourselves for the next dive. While we were waiting we saw blue marlins leaping from the water and shark fins breaching the surface as they circled their prey. We all gathered in silence at the edge of the boat watching the sea deliver one amazing sight after another. “Its one of those days…” the instructor remarked with a smile.
-Tyler
One of those days we all live for.Shark Diving on Christmas Eve
It is now safe to say that I will soon have a job here on the island of Koh Tao where I have been for about a month now. I’m now staying in a simple fan-cooled room in a quiet spot away from the beach. Its spacious with a big double bed, hot water, a fridge and a TV. I swim in the ocean everyday and watch the sunset on the beach every night. Life is good.
On the last two dives of my open water course we were accompanied by a videographer who filmed us as we finished our course. As I watched her work, I thought to myself: “that seems like it would be a cool job…” and I made a note to ask her how she got into it. Later that day we gathered at Big Blue’s bar to watch our video and after it was over I talked to her a bit and found out that she had gone through a course with Ace Marine Images on the island and then stayed to do an internship with them and ending up working for them full time. I read up on the course and it sounded quite good. I stayed on at Big Blue to do my advanced certification and as I did that I went in and talked to the people at Ace about doing the video course. It was on the expensive side, but I had a good feeling and splurged on it. It consisted of an on land photography course and 8 dives with a camera and housing. As this went on I moved from Big Blue to the place I am now and spent time hanging out with the German friends I made from my open water named Chris and Tina. We rented scooters and accidentally took the back way to one of the other beaches. The dirt roads where in terrible shape and it was my first time riding a scooter, but we pressed on anyway. That was one way to learn I guess. The scooters were returned miraculously unscathed after our off-road adventures. Having learned our lesson, the next time we decided to go across the mountainous interior of the island we rented ATVs, which I have a bit more experience with. We hit almost every beach on the opposite, much less developed, side of the island via these primitive dirt roads. We even had to turn around once when we found a section so steep and sandy that I could tell our 4-wheelers wouldn’t be able to bring us back up if we went down. We also found an incredible view looking out across the island on top of a rock accessed by a makeshift bamboo ladder. After a few days hanging out with them and others we met, they left for Bangkok on their way back to Germany.
Shooting video underwater was admittedly harder than I expected, but over the dives I got better at it and when I finished they invited me to stay on for the internship. After much thought I decided that I would like to stick around for a while and give it a shot, so I did. The past week or so I have been out diving with the other videographers at different dive shops to get a feel for the job, what to shoot, when to shoot, when to get set up etc. The guys at Ace were really great and lent me dive gear when I needed it. Eventually I got my own setup for relatively cheap.
Around lunch time on the 19th I looked at the stamp in my passport and realized I was supposed to be out of the country that very day. Most every foreigner in Thailand has to do “Visa Runs” which means leaving the country and coming back in to get a new stamp and hence, more time. I frantically called Heather from Ace wondering how I was going to make it off the island that day, much less out of the country. She directed me to a travel office where I sorted out one of these visa runs. I wasn’t going to make it out that day, but my boat to the mainland left at 10am the next morning and I was on it. Fun fact: This was also the first day I had worn socks in about two weeks. It was a nice, fast, air conditioned boat and I arrived in Chumpon around 12:30pm. The boat pulled in slowly passing lines of fishing boats and ports on either side along the way. Once I left the boat I was greeted by the bus driver holding a sign that said “visa run.” Myself and 6 others who were doing the same thing, piled into the van and started on our way to Burma. We dropped everyone off at the Thai port for a place called the “Andaman Club” across the way in Myanmar, but because I had overstayed by one day I had to pay a fine in a different place across town. The van took me to the right place and they made copies of my passport while I filled out a police report about overstaying and payed my 500Baht fine. Lesson learned. I got back to the port just after 4pm and the bus back to Chumpon was leaving at 5pm. I had less than an our to get my paperwork through, get across the bay, get stamped and get back in time. I was in Burma, literally, for 5 minutes and I made it back right on time. The bus dropped me and the other 2 who where taking the night boat back to Koh Tao off at a cafe while we waited for a taxi (pick up truck) to the boat a few hours later. I had dinner and used the internet to kill the time. I had heard stories of how uncomfortable this particular night ferry was and I have no trouble admitting that I downed a few beers to help soften the blow and get some sleep. And it turned out to be the best decision I made all week. Once the pick up arrived me and the two British girls hopped in the back a got to chatting. The truck stopped and picked up two South Africans and we met two Australians when we arrived at the port. We all gathered around and cracked jokes about the boat we were about to get on. The 7 of us were the only foreigners on this boat and when we boarded we found out why. It was easily the oldest vessel I’ve been on and our place to sleep consisted of thin mattresses laid out on the floor and the shelf just above it, like two huge uninterrupted bunkbeds with a good number of locals already sleeping. I snatched an open place on the floor along with the two Brits. Maybe it was my sense of adventure or maybe it was just the alcohol, but I was actually pretty comfortable with the situation. The boat was loud, but the seas were calm and I slept surprisingly well throughout the night after watching us sail away under a full moon. The boat pulled in around 5:30 in the AM and I bid the others goodbye as I hopped on my scooter and zipped back to my room to catch a few more hours of sleep.
I ended up feeling good enough to dive that afternoon, so I went out and did more following. We went to a site I hadn’t been to yet that had caves you could swim through which was quite an awesome experience, made even more interesting by my fogging mask which I had to keep clearing in the cramped space. Yesterday morning I woke up early and went out to a beach called Shark Bay do some snorkeling.
Today is Christmas Eve and I got up around 5:30am to follow Heather out on a couple of dives, but this time with a camera back in my hands. The first site was a place called Chumphon Pinnacle which I have dived many times before, but the conditions there were the best I’ve seen yet. 30 meters down you could still see light at the surface. Also 30 meters down is where the sharks tend to be. Nothing wakes you up in the morning quite like turning around and find yourself face to face with a Reef Shark not much smaller than yourself. Not to mention the Great Barracuda that also patrol the area. It was an incredible dive and I got some good footage. The next dive was also quite good, but less eventful. Did I mention everyone was diving in Santa Hats?
Its hard to believe Christmas has already come so quickly and being in a country that doesn’t ‘officially’ celebrate it is interesting… and refreshing. There are no lines backed out of superstores, no extra traffic, no holiday hordes wrapped up in the consuming frenzy that Christmas has become. There is only celebration. My Christmas day will consist of a BBQ on the beach, swimming and laying in the sun. It should be an interesting change from the cold I’m used to. More later
-Tyler
Of Travelers and Tourists
I feel I should take a moment to elaborate on my definitions of “tourists” and “travelers.” To me a “tourist” is someone who buys a package vacation or tour and rides around on a tour bus seeing the same major sites that everyone else sees and skipping everything in between. You see them everywhere around the main attractions of any city being lead around like sheep by a guide with a raised umbrella or stick etc. Travelers on the other hand are more independent and tend to spend more time digging into the local culture rather than only visiting the touristy spots. In other words, tourists are in a speedboat skimming across the surface while travelers are going for a swim. And in places like Turkey that can make all the difference in the world…
Istanbul is an incredible place and I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. Walking around the city is quite different to most places I am used to. Shop and restaurant owners constantly beckon tourists into their various establishments by asking where they are from and making small talk, many times claiming they are very special because they are the first customer of the day, when in reality the only thing special about them is that they are about to be taken for a ride. Such shops are often ludicrously overpriced and they get away with it because of uninformed visitors who just don’t know any better. For instance some people… we’ll call them “salesmen” may approach you with watches to sell and they will ask 300 Lira for them. Some people may just pay that thinking it is the price, when in reality they could be talked down to about 5 Lira. It is my experience that once these shop owners and hawkers realize that you know what you’re doing and that you’re not “just another tourist” they generally leave you alone and actually show you a bit more respect. I spent a few days wandering the city, seeing the sights, getting lost in the bazaars, eating the local kebabs and woken up by the call to prayer thundering over loudspeakers throughout the city.
Later, I made the leap and purchased what was my second one-way plane ticket of this trip: from Istanbul, Turkey to Bangkok, Thailand with a quick layover in Bahrain. I gave myself the better part of the week to see more of Turkey and I used that to bus it out to the very center of the country to an area known as Cappadocia (Kappadokya). I left on an overnight bus with two New Zealanders from my hostel room in Istanbul. Every time I take an overnight bus or flight, I seem to forget just how terrible they can be. I can never sleep sitting up and with an aisle seat there is no place to lean so it always ends up being a restless drawn out night that leaves me exhausted the next day. Nonetheless after a long night of riding the sun rose to reveal a desert-like landscape that soon gave way to the strangest area I have ever found myself in. Again, my vocabulary and descriptive skills fail me when thinking of how to explain a place like this, save to say it looks like another planet. The people that lived here long ago carved their homes and churches directly out of the mountainside’s soft rock and a good number of them are still in use by local residents and renters who used them to accommodate travellers. We stayed in the town of Goreme, which is overlooked on most sides by such mountains and indeed we stayed in cave rooms carved directly out of the rock for our time there. Granted they were modernized with bathrooms, heat and electricity.
The day we arrived it was rather cold and the weather was not cooperating so I took a nap for a couple of hours while the rain cleared before heading out to the open-air museum east of town. The open-air museum in Goreme is another UNESCO site and it features an array of small churches carved out of the rocks. The entrances to the churches are quite modest, but once inside you realize that the carved pillars, arches, domes and vaulted ceilings directly from the rock and covered them with frescoes. Though small, the craftsmanship is more than impressive. However extraordinary the museum was, it paled in comparison to the following day. I woke up around 9:30am and had breakfast before picking up some water and stocking up on a few apples at the local fruit market for my walk. I set out back towards the museum, but took a trail leading away from the road and up a hill toward the edge of a valley.
I passed a stray dog along the way and once I neared the top of the hill I looked back and found that it was following me. I don’t know why… I didn’t feed it, or pet it or call it… she just decided to tag along. I would stop to take photos and she would lay down just behind me and once I started moving on she would trail along. Eventually she caught up and laid down at my feet so, I pet her a bit while I rested. This small female german shepard ended up walking along with me for the entire 6 hours I was out hiking. I tried to give her some of my water and attempted to share one of my apples, but she would have none of it. I started off on the trail, but strayed off of it into the countryside as I worked my way around valleys and across fields before finding a marked trail that lead down into a small canyon and eventually to one of the places I was looking for called Rose Valley. Its name comes from the pink color of the rocks that line the gorge. Every time I would pass other people, the dog would stick right by my side. Sometimes she would track ahead on the trail and disappear around a corner and I would round it to find her waiting on me to catch up, but nearing the end of my walk on the way back towards the town I came to a crossroads. I needed to go left, but the dog apparently was headed right. We walked in our opposite directions and I never saw her again. It was the strangest thing.
The next day I went on a walk with the two Kiwis around a separate equally interesting section of the area and we got back a bit after lunch. We hung around the town and got our things packed for the overnight bus back to Istanbul before having dinner. The bus was about usual except this one had satellite TV on board and there was a soccer game on. Turkey was playing Norway in a qualifying match for next year’s european playoffs and the whole bus was really getting into it. Clapping a cheers would erupt after a goal and gasps for near misses. Turkey won the match 2-1. The rest of the bus ride was per usual and we checked back into the same hostel we left from around 8am and I took a nap. I spent the rest of that day organizing some last minute details for my trip to Thailand and went to be early. I was set to catch the 7:20am shuttle to the airport the next morning… I was awoken at 7:30 by the bus driver who had others on the bus waiting for me and I snapped into scramble mode and was out of bed and in the bus by 7:40. I got to the airport with ample time which was good since there were 2 security checkpoints (one right as you enter the airport and another at your gate) to go through, plus passport control. And the security checks are picky, you have to remove your belt, shoes, etc. They even scanned my watch. Are terrorists really that inventive these days? I mean, these airports seem to think you can fashion a bomb out of shampoo and a tray table…
After my layover in Bahrain I landed safely in Bangkok. I knew I would be heading back through the city later anyway and I decided that I wanted to head straight for the southern islands, so I went through immigration and found a really cheap flight to Surat Thani, the port where you can catch ferries to Ko Samui, Pha Ngang, and Tau. I landed and hopped a bus to the port. The balmy heat hits first as you exit the plane. Looking out the bus window the landscape reminded me, oddly, of Vietnam. But only in the sense that, if you watched a film about the war it would be set in this type of environment. Forests of palm trees, flooded low grasslands, makeshift towns on the banks of muddy rivers and cows wandering across the street as they please… As I got closer and closer to the pier I couldn’t help but realize: This is a whole new ballgame.
At the pier I found a Thai woman offering beach hut accommodation on the island of Ko Pha Ngang. The price was reasonable and I was exhausted and I didn’t want to haggle when I got to the islands so I took her up on it and caught the ferry out. It was dark when we arrived and the owner of the huts was there to meet me and a few others at the port. I jumped into the “free taxi” which was the back of his truck and he drove us off the main roads and through what I would almost call a jungle on one of the roughest dirt roads I’ve ever seen. Soon enough, though we arrived at the little complex which included a resturant and a few huts right near the beach. They lead me to mine and put my things down. It was exactly what I expected and what I was looking for. A little fan-cooled hut on a secluded beach… but it wasn’t $8. It was $9.50. High season, you see.
The hut was about as basic as it could get. Just one big double bed, a fan, a bathroom with a cold shower and a toilet with a flusher that consisted of a bucket of water and a sprayer. It was basically a shed… but a shed, quite literally in paradise. I have to imagine that when most people picture paradise in their heads it doesn’t look too much different than this island. After I got settled in, I went up to the open-air restaurant and ordered some food, which I found to be quite good. I turned in early and slept until about noon the next day, catching up on my sleep and nursing my jet lag. After a few days there the weather wasn’t holding up so I decided to move on to Ko Tau and find a place to do my scuba certification as planned.
The day I checked out of the hut I hopped into the back of the owner’s truck once again as he drove me back to the port where I caught the ferry to Ko Tau in a nick of time. It was an express ferry which cut through the waves like a dull hatchet would a tree and the engine quit twice, but it got me there in good time nonetheless. Once arriving at the port there were a multitude of dive companies waiting to greet us with their information paphlets and what not, but I chose to skip by them so I could check out a few different places on my own and see the place first hand before I made a decision. I caught yet another back-of-the-truck taxi to the far end of the main beach and began walking down, passing all of the dive resorts along the way. In the end I settled with Big Blue Diving. The course was cheaper than I thought, plus after some negotiations I scored a free room and PADI book along with it. Not to mention that their operation seemed solid… which I turned out to be right about. So over the past few days I’ve been doing the course and its bringing back a lot of memories just as I suspected it would, since my parents used to own a dive shop when I was a kid. With the smell of wetsuits, the taste of regulators and the sound air tanks clanging together come fond recollections of a time that I’ve always been partial to. It reminds me of home…
Its 11pm and I have to be up by 6:30 for the last dive of the course so I suppose I should wrap here. I’m not sure how long I will be on Ko Tau as I’m seriously considering staying to do my advanced certification after this and then there are many places around the island that offer special courses in underwater photography… which seems up my alley. I’m sure its a bit pricey though, so we’ll see.
So far my impression of Thailand is one of the most positive I’ve had of a country so far. The people are incredibly friendly which I find to be such a refreshing change from eastern Europe and it is about as gorgeous as gorgeous gets here. I finally understand why there are so many expats in this country.
Pictures are coming…
-Tyler
On the Move
Getting out of Albania is not particularly easy. I walked out to the trashed stadium in Tirana where my bus left from and checked my backpack under the bus. Luckily it was a nice modern bus, but the seats were incredibly cramped. Once we got out of the city areas around Tirana the pavement disappeared and only reappeared in sparse rough patches dotted with potholes. After a long bumpy ride winding through the mountains we finally arrived at the Albanian border checkpoint. Everyone on the bus had to get off and line up at the counter to have their passport checked before the guards pulled every bag out from under the bus, matched them to their owners and looked through them. Once the bags were put back under the bus and everyone was in their seats the guards came through the bus and double checked the passports as well as the carry-on bags we had with us. Once we hit the Greek checkpoint, it was smooth sailing. A quick stamp on the passport and we were on our way back onto well-maintained roads. And by well-maintained, I mean they had pavement and lines painted on them.
We arrived in Athens around 10am after some arguments broke out between our driver and some passengers, about what I don’t know. After getting off the bus I caught the metro to the area around the Acropolis where my hostel was. After wandering around the confusing streets for the better part of an hour looking for it I finally got a bed for the night. I used that morning to catch up on all of my picture work, uploading and posting since the hostel had a wifi connection. I slept early and got up around 8:30am to head out to the Acropolis. I’d heard that it was overrun by tourists midday and to aim for either early morning or late afternoon. I got there about a half an hour after they opened and by the time I go to the top I had to push my way (literally) through tour groups to get a glimpse at the Parthenon etc. The site is spectacular and impressive in every way, but I found the experience to be incredibly dampened by the amount of tour groups clogging the area. There’s nothing like hearing old Americans complain about the Acropolis not having an elevator so they don’t have to climb what little stairs there are. Seriously, I heard that. And I know they were American because the lady had that oh-so-familiar southern drawl. I find myself growing more embarrassed by the day with where I come from.
I left the Acropolis site and made my way to the quiet hill across from it where I enjoyed the view a great deal more with some peace and quiet. But, I was also impressed with the shear amount of smog I saw hanging over the city. After a long walk around the area reading up on the history, I walked around to some of the other sites like the impressive Ancient Agora and Roman Agora and a few other sites that the 12 Euro ticket gives access to. By the time I got back to the hostel it was dark, so I took care of my ferry ticket to Crete and booked my hostel for the next day before turning in. I left Athens around noon the next day and made my way to the port of Piraeus. I had my ticket in-hand but I didn’t know where to find my boat in the massive harbor. I asked around at a few different places and eventually found that I could catch a bus to the opposite end of the port where my ferry, “Olympic Champion”, was waiting. Time was short though, so I hurried over to the bus stop to find the bus empty. A greek man standing next to a scooter shouted “Olympic Champion?!” I said yes and he informed me that the bus didn’t leave for another half hour… when my ferry would already be gone. The thought of running across the harbor with my full pack on was entering my mind when suddenly the man said “come, I take you!”, hopped onto his scooter and motioned for me to get on the back. I was hesitant and said “are you sure? How much?” to which he replied “I don’t know… 1 euro… you won’t make it, just get on!” I looked across the bay, looked back and jumped onto his scooter, pack and all. We raced across the port as he yelled back about having friends in New York and pulled up to the boat just in time for me to thank him and board the ferry. The ride was long and I arrived in Hania, Crete around 9:30 at night where I caught a bus to Rethymno. I had the name of my hostel and what street it was on, but no map. I asked the bus driver where the street was and he gave me some rough directions, so I threw my pack on and started walking. Of course I couldn’t find the street so I asked around to no avail for the better part of an hour. I finally came across some cab drivers, which by the way are always good to ask for directions if you’re in a pinch, and they pointed me to the right street. I checked into the hostel and hit the bed hard. The next morning I went about washing my clothes by hand and walking around the city. That night I was introduced to a few other people at the hostel as I helped a South African girl, Ingrid, book her flight on my laptop. Afterward about 10 of us went out for drinks at a local shisha bar before we split up and went to different places. Myself, Lambrose, Natalia and Ingrid headed out to the rocks on the ocean below the old town fortress for a couple more drinks while the others headed back to the hostel and on to other bars.
The next day we all woke up late and Natalia, Taryn and I took a day trip to Hania to explore its old town area. There wasn’t too much to see so we wandered and stopped for milkshakes while we waited for the next bus back to Rethymno. The next morning I was talking to Lambrose and found that 5 of the others were renting a car and going down to a beach town called Matala for the night so he suggested that he, I, Natalia, Taryn, and Lautaro all pitch in a rent one too to go with. Everyone was up for it so we hammered out the details and Rene (more on him in a bit) took me down to the rental place to get the car. After we picked it up we had to navigate around a parade to find a parking spot, but before we knew it I was driving us all down, following the other car through the mountainous passes. We stopped off at a small village along the way to visit some of Rene’s old friends and arrived at the beach early in the evening.
By Rene’s look some may pass him off as just an old hippie, but when you sit down and talk to him he was quite an amazing person to meet. He spoke 10 languages including Swahili, which sounds a bit far fetched, but I personally overheard him carrying on conversations in English, Dutch, Greek, German, Spanish and another that I couldn’t place. He worked for the UN as a peace keeper in Africa for 25 years the last of which was in Dar fur specializing in child soldiers. When you hear first hand accounts of having a machine gun pressed against your head unable to do anything while the militia takes the kids you were trying to help back to be brainwashed and made to fight you understand why he was in Crete on a leave of absence contemplating whether or not he could go back to this work…
The beach was quite a sight. On one side there was a massive cliff face dotted with caves. Apparently after being excavated the caves were deepened only in the sixties by hippies who decided to live in them. These caves are abandoned now and you can explore them, but judging by the smell they seem to serve as toilettes for visitors. As the sun went down we made a fire on the beach and gathered around it with a few bottles of wine after going for a swim along the cliff side. Good times were had and most of us ended up sleeping right on the beach. I woke up the next morning and stirred the fire to warm up a bit. As the sun came up a few of us decided to walk over to the local bakery and get some coffee. We were a bit early though so we sat around on the curb of this empty town waiting for them to open. Once they did we ordered some coffee and took a seat at a table outside. While we were sipping our coffee and eating pastries an old frenchmen which, I have to say looked strikingly like Willie Nelson, strolled by. Christian, who had been to the town before, recognized him and called him over for a drink. Come to find out, there are still hippies living in the caves on the other side of the ridge and he was one of them. We all made small talk and bid him farewell as we headed back to the beach.
As the sun came up and it got warm enough to swim again, Natalia, Lautaro and I swam out around the cliffs and found some smaller ones to jump off of. I had goggles on, but on one jump they came off and yet another contact was washed out of my eye while my spares were still in Rethymno. Taryn, Lambrose, Natalia and I headed out before the other car back to Rethymno to pick up my contacts and then the four of us drove out to Knossos, the ancient Minoan archaeological site. After we finished there we drove out further along the coast to find a beach, but we were all exhausted and when Natalia showed us the cut on her foot from the night before, we realized how bad it was and decided to head back to the hostel in Rethymno where Rene and I patched her up. The next morning I woke up and drove the car back to the rental place where I turned it in without any hitches.
My original plan was to go from Crete to Rhodes and then into Turkey from there, but because of the reduced winter ferry schedules I couldn’t make that happen. The easiest thing for me to do was go back to Athens via Santorini and then take trains into Turkey, so I did that. Natalia, Taryn and Lambrose were all headed for Santorini as well… on the same day. So we all went together. Our ferry pulled into Santorini and the girls had already made arrangements to stay at Perissa so they had transport waiting for them. Lambrose and I decided to stay in Fira, the main city and catch up with them later. The usual crowd of people looking to rent out their rooms greeted the ferry as well so Lambrose and I split up to see the lowest price we could get. After talking with a couple of people who insisted that I wouldn’t find a better deal than 30 euros a night, then 20, I bargained a man down to 15 euros a night for my own room. Not bad at all considering that a room like this would cost no less than 70 in summer high season. Lambrose caught up and we hopped in his van to go check out the rooms. They turned out to be better than we expected and we got our own separate rooms across the hall from each other. I took a walk around the town, but it was completely fogged in and spitting rain so I took the time to do my laundry and rented a couple of movies for that night. The movie place was pretty picked over, but I got Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland – two that I had been meaning to watch for a long time. Both are extremely good.
The next day the weather was only slightly better and I spent the day walking around the city checking prices to rent scooters and atvs, which proved to be too expensive. That night the weather was turning for the worse so we got dinner and went to bed early. The next day the weather was finally starting to turn in our favor so Lambrose and I decided to walk from Fira to Oia about 15km away. For most of the walk there was a path leading along the caldera with incredible views, but the last half is just along the roadside. Oia was a really cool town and much like Fira it was built along the cliff’s edge and has stunning scenery, but it was even quieter. The streets were empty and for a while it seemed we almost had the town to ourselves aside from the few locals strolling about. We spent a few hours checking out the city and caught a bus back to Fira which concluded a long day. I sent an email off to Taryn and Natalia who were still in Perissa saying that we may be headed that way the next day, but it was the wrong address and they never got it.
Nevertheless we caught a bus down to Perissa the next morning to see if we could find them and immediately after stepping off the bus we saw Natalia standing right there and Taryn was just around the corner. We all remarked about the odd coincidence and talked for a bit about what everyone was doing that day. The girls were set on walking from Perissa to Red Beach, almost as far as Lambrose and I had walked the day before, so he decided to split off and check out an archaeological site nearby and I went on the walk to Red Beach. It proved further than I thought. After the long walk we waited around and caught what we thought was a bus back to Perissa, but actually went straight to Fira so the girls got a taxi back to their place. Later that night me, Lambrose and Natalia met up for drinks at a local Irish bar in Fira that was throwing a 3-days-late Halloween party. Originally I was planning to catch the 7am ferry back to Athens the next morning, but the night ran long and I slept in. Lambrose was leaving around 2pm so we had lunch and talked Australian politics before parting ways. I ended up catching the overnight ferry from Santorini back to Athens the next day. As I was waiting for the bus to the port that night I met an old American couple that had just finished a folk dancing cruise-tour. We talked for a bit before getting on the bus and making our way onto the ferry. After that I wandered around the ship looking for a place to plug in my laptop so that I could work on some pictures. I found a place in a seating area, plugged in and sat down. As I was working someone who was laying down in the seats behind me woke up and started to stand to leave and we looked at eachother and jumped because it turned out to be Natalia. I knew they were on the ship, but I had no idea where and just happened to sit down right in front of her. We talked for a bit before trying (in vain for me) to get some sleep.
The ferry pulled into Athens and we all made our way to the train station and got tickets for our respective destinations. It came to my stop and we said goodbye for something like the 4th time as I left. Having been to Athens before I knew my way around, except this time it was 5am and the streets were completely empty. It was an odd experience walking around the Plaka (the central area around the Acropolis) with none of the shops open and only a few stray dogs as company. I got to the hostel I was staying at for the night, checked in and took a nap on the couch. I woke up around lunch time and got some food before heading back to my room. There I met John-Henry and Julia (a Kiwi and an Aussie respectively) who were traveling together with quite a story to tell… They had met only a week earlier on a train and apparently Julia had flown into Europe on a whim with only her purse and the clothes she was wearing at the time. Also in the room was Tulsey and nice Canadian girl. Julia went to bed early and John-Henry, Tulsey and I went about doing our laundry and having dinner. The laundromat turned out to be quite a happening place. As we waited for our clothes to dry more people from the hostel kept showing up to do their laundry and soon enough we had a sizeable little group hanging out.
The next morning I caught a train to Kalambaka, Greece around midday. I didn’t make it there until around 9pm because of some confusion about my transfer and a no-show train. Once there I caught a cab to Kastraki just a few kilometers away to find a room near Meteora. After asking a couple of people about rooms I found a place and settled in for the night. The next morning I woke up and pulled the curtains from my window revealing the towering rocky pinnacles of Meteora hanging over the small village. I was quite surprised since I had no idea this room had a view. I set out to explore the area, but the weather was overcast and threatened me with rain throughout the day. Despite this, Meteora proved to be one of the most spectacularly gorgeous and incredible areas I have ever seen. Wandering around I found myself second guessing the fact that I was actually awake because the scenery is so dreamlike. Its not something I would expect to find in reality. How these monasteries could be built atop peaks such as these in the 16th century can give the imagination quite a work out.
My room in the small village was a little expensive and I only expected to stay two nights, but I woke up the next morning and found crystal clear blue skies and couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. I set out through the area again and shot more photos with the much improved weather. I also found myself wandering for the better part of an hour along a random trail through the woods. I saw the entrance to this trail marked by a primitive cobble stone path leading through the forest so I followed it on a whim. It lead a good way into the forest and between two of the peaks, the cobble stones disappearing and reappearing the whole way. Eventually the odd little trail lead me to an iron gate with stone path beyond it. The gate was unlocked, so I opened it and continued on. It lead to the entrance of one of the monasteries perched on a cliff’s edge. It turned out to be one I had actually visited the day before, I had just found a back way in. I continued up the road back to one of the monasteries that was closed the day earlier and visited that one. Though the monasteries draw a good bit of tourism they are still in use and priests and nuns actually live in the ones that remain standing.
After I finished my second trek through Meteora I walked back to Kalambaka to check on train times for the next day. I turned in early and woke up around 6am to catch my train to Thessaloniki at 7:40. I arrived there around 10am and decided pretty randomly to go ahead and press on to Istanbul that night. I bought my ticket for the overnight train, locked up my bags and set out to explore the city all day. I caught the train and after a long night of off and on sleeping and standing in a police station at 4:30am to buy my Turkish visa, here I sit at my hostel in Istanbul, Turkey.
Having checked the visa requirements for Syria, which I would have to pass through if I were to head any further south to Jordan or Israel, I have decided to just fly out of Istanbul after exploring a bit more of Turkey. I still need to buy the ticket, but I find that making that leap is similar to that of buying my first ticket to get out here. It sets a deadline and guarantees my exit from Europe and on to a less known territory for me. I’ll buy it tomorrow, I think, since I’m anxious to have a beach to lay on for a couple weeks. I’m beginning to feel a bit burnt out from moving around so much and being on the road for so long, so when I get to Thailand I’m going to find a little bungalow on the beach (which you can rent out for about $8 a night) and just settle down and chill out for a week or two. Then I also plan on going to the island of Koh Tao to do my dive certification over the course of a week. Should be good.
-Tyler