The coconut files
I mentioned heading out of Bangkok by bus the first sighting of a coconut tree as a symbol of knowing I had finally arrived in a tropical country as no visit to the tropics would be complete without coconut trees. Similarly my blog entries on Thailand should have some antidotes involving coconuts right?
Coconut trees are everywhere along the coast and on the islands of Thailand and grow like weeds just about anywhere that the coconut fruit can sit long enough to sprout and send down roots. Drinking the juice of a coconut fruit is not one of those exotic must do pleasures that tourist pursue although plenty are sold to tourists with the top neatly cut with a straw. Do tourist drink more than one coconut during there holidays? Not often. It is the curiosity and the exotic image that has a tourist pay around 10 baht at the market for this experience but the juice itself doesn’t generally excite many. I’m sure the humble coconut had a significant place in Thai history but the locals like the westerners select their drinks branded and cold from the fridge at the local shop rather than from what falls from trees in abundance. The coconut tree itself provides a lot of reasonable quality timbre for building and is seen as a resource yet the nut itself is seen more as a nuisance than anything else. Many of the bungalows have patched roofs where coconuts fall and smash through leaving an expensive repair. They fall whenever and wherever which brings me to my first coconut encounter.
Brett and I had been doing a bushwalk from Haad Rin to one of the beaches on the east coast which is only accessible by boat or foot. We’d decided to try and follow the hopelessly detailed map in our guide book and have a bit of a look around on an eastern beach. Bushwalking is certainly not a developed activity in Thailand. In the west over the last few decades there has been a huge growth in appreciation in the wonder and spectacle of the natural environment and a consequent growth in environmentalism and environmental activism. In Thailand and most of the third world wilderness is simply seen as wasteland by most to be exploited wherever possible. So, the concept of walking through wilderness as an enjoyable activity is something most locals just can’t get there head around. Why would you spend three hours walking over a steep mountain soaked in sweat and fighting mosquitoes and other bugs when you can catch a boat there in twenty minutes is their way of thinking. Consequently the trails are rudimentary to say the least. Nevertheless after finding the unsignposted start of the trail which simply leads through a cluster of houses we found our way to the trail and headed to Haad Tein. Well there is not a lot you can write about bushwalking really other than it is an activity that requires putting one foot after the next and proceeding and that when you start ascending a step climb in blistering sun that you wonder if there is a little wisdom in an easy boat option. Well there isn’t too much else to this story other than at some point we lost the trail. The one we were on seemed to stop and despite spending around an hour trying different areas trying to pick it up we had to decide to keep trying or head back. Brett was still keen to keep looking for the illusive path but as we only had a couple of hours of daylight left I was able to spook him enough with the prospect of spending the night in the forest that we soon started to head back in defeat. This brings me to the coconut element in this story. At some point on the way back we had stopped for some reason and where standing talking. I was looking up a dry creek bank then suddenly Brett yells, ‘Shawn move!!’ I’d been in Thailand long enough to realise in a split second that that probably meant falling coconut and the last thing I wanted to do was look up and kiss a falling coconut yet at the same time realised that which ever way I moved I might just step into the falling coconuts downward path so I leap to one side and hoped for the best. Bang! The coconut hit the ground a metre or so away. I looked at Brett and started laughing, ‘you stupid bastard, why didn’t you tell me to move left or right, I could have stepped right into it’s path!’ A coconut might be a humble and disregarded fruit but an encounter with one on the head is certainly a terminal experience. We both couldn’t stop laughing and it is funny how near death experiences can have such an element of humour to it.
The second coconut story involves a coconut tree. I’d decided to head over to the eastern side of the island (by boat) and spent a week there at Haad Tein which is better know to many for the Sanctuary Resort, a place where many go for yoga, meditation, and various cleansing diets. The fact that the place is full of people taking drugs, magic mushrooms, chemicals and all night parties seems to run counter to the image but I am sure there must have been some there for the legitimate reason. I wasn’t staying in the resort but in a place called World Heritage Resort which is a grand title but that is about where it ends. It was cheap and I generally go by the backpacker creed, ‘pay less go further’ although for some ‘pay less drink more’ if more accurate. Anyway, Haad Tein is the kind of place people sit around and say how they are in ‘paradise’. After about a week I’d decided there was such a thing as too much paradise and time to head back to the real world on the other side of the island as I was exhausted. I got to the beach early and sat hostage with a group of others for around two and a half hours waiting for Eddie the local longtail skipper to decide it was worth the trip over to Haad Rin. It’s not a long trip around to Haad Rin. The only variable is the ocean. The western side of the island is rather protected waters as it is only 30 odd kilometres from the mainland but on the other side its just the beach facing the Pacific Ocean and when there is a bit of a swell you know about it as the swell comes up to the edge of the boat. Anyway it was a fairly nail biting ride with Eddie at the rear moving the boat this way and that battling with the ocean as we rounded the head this morning and I was certainly glad to get off. My one ambition was to get back to Haad Chao Pao take a shower and sleep off paradise. I got the taxi, a pick up/ute with seats in the rear, and made my way to Thong Sala where I hired a motorbike for the last part of the trip home. About three quarters of the way home there was a sign placed right in the middle of the road written in Thai which made no sense to me at all and as I was only thinking of getting to sleep I looked at the sign and decided when in doubt ignore it. I rode about five minutes up the road, came around a corner and saw what looked like something you’d see from news footage out of Iraq. There were power poles down, the side of a building smashed, a car crashed under another power pole, electrical cables laying everywhere on the road and people everywhere standing by. Hell, what’s happened here I thought, a bomb, an out of control truck taking cars and everything else with it? I got off the bike and walked closer cautious of the fact there were high voltage cables everywhere. I was looking for clues as to what had happen but I could only see the damage, not the cause. I realised the sign I had passed was a road closed sign and rather than be another spectator I should have got back on the bike and headed back but human curiosity dictated that I needed to know what had happened. I found a young guy who spoke enough English and found it wasn’t a bomb, major accident or anything as dramatic but the simple falling of a coconut tree on power lines that had pulled a number of inadequately stabilised power poles down and creating the chain of events before me. I was already low on fuel and praying to get home on what I had, exhausted and realised the detour home was at least another half and hour and could only think, ‘bloody coconut trees!’.
Finally, I have saved the best coconut story till last. This is another falling coconut story like the first but far more interesting. Coconuts fall regularly from trees here but they rarely create a chain of events like this which involves abduction of over forty people, thief, stowaways, a highway police chase, guns and arrest. The story comes courtesy of an Australian, Dean who recounted a story of losing his knife from his backpack on the bus from Bangkok to Koh Phangan. Most of the long distance buses here are the double deck variety with top floor seating and half the bottom floor given to seating and the other rear section given to luggage. Apparently there are numerous cases where one or more people hide in the luggage compartment and during the twelve odd hours it takes to drive to the jetty where you catch the boat they go through passenger bags and take various valuables. According to Dean they are careful to repack the bags so that when the baggage is unloaded at the other end passengers are unaware that possessions have been taken out in a wholesale fashion and would group together and bring in the authorities. Passengers like Dean don’t realise anything is gone until they reach the island and unpack and by that time your co passengers are who knows where and it would be difficult to pin it on the bus operator at that point anyway. He then recounted the following story to me
Apparently one of these double deck buses was heading down the highway when suddenly, bang, a coconut hit the glass windscreen on the upper deck and fractured all the glass without shattering it. A couple of passengers went down to the driver and explained the situation and after he stopped the bus and inspected it continued to keep driving. Not long after the passengers at the front of the bus felt small splinters of glass coming from the windscreen and again went to see the driver who after placing a few strips of duct tape on the cracks began down the highway again. This however didn’t solve the problem and whinging demanding people we westerners are there was soon a bit of a revolt with people storming downstairs demanding he stop the bus and get a replacement. The driver reluctantly stopped telling everyone to stay on the bus and tried to wave down passing busses with spare seats but unbeknown to him one of the passengers had gone to the luggage compartment to get something out of his bag and realised things where missing, told his friend who came down and realised things where missing from his bag as well and before too long the word got around that someone had been in their bags. The driver came back to the other side of the bus and was confronted by these two guys about the missing luggage and where man handled back onto the bus before the driver jumped back into the driver seat and headed off. The buses here have a door between the driver and the rear of the coach and despite people banging on the door and demanding he stop he just kept on driving. By this time there was a certain degree of panic and concern on the bus by passengers who where now basically being held captive. There was discussion as to what the hell to do and the only thing they could think of was anyone with a torch/flashlight to try and attract the attention of traffic passing in the other direction but flashing torches at them. Finally and luckily for the passengers they attracted the attention of a police car who did a quick U turn and came up alongside the bus and from the gestures they were making must have realised something was not right. The police drove far enough ahead to pull over and draw pistols and directed the bus to pull over. The passengers explained the missing items from their bags and after a search of the luggage compartment found two young Thai boys hiding, obviously working in conjunction with the driver. The police organised another bus and the driver and his accomplices where arrested handcuffed and taken away.
The image of the tropics is coconut trees and sandy beaches and people from the west flock here to these postcard locations. I laugh sometimes when I think what the locals must think of this all as they observe us westerners drinking fresh fruit shakes, walking on the beach, sleeping in hammocks and doing nothing and continually praising the peace and tranquillity of the island. But we come here to escape then go home. If you were born on the island you might just have a different view of it all and wish you were anywhere else and as for coconut trees I’m sure there are some locals who would be happy if they never saw another coconut tree in their life.
Coconut trees are everywhere along the coast and on the islands of Thailand and grow like weeds just about anywhere that the coconut fruit can sit long enough to sprout and send down roots. Drinking the juice of a coconut fruit is not one of those exotic must do pleasures that tourist pursue although plenty are sold to tourists with the top neatly cut with a straw. Do tourist drink more than one coconut during there holidays? Not often. It is the curiosity and the exotic image that has a tourist pay around 10 baht at the market for this experience but the juice itself doesn’t generally excite many. I’m sure the humble coconut had a significant place in Thai history but the locals like the westerners select their drinks branded and cold from the fridge at the local shop rather than from what falls from trees in abundance. The coconut tree itself provides a lot of reasonable quality timbre for building and is seen as a resource yet the nut itself is seen more as a nuisance than anything else. Many of the bungalows have patched roofs where coconuts fall and smash through leaving an expensive repair. They fall whenever and wherever which brings me to my first coconut encounter.
Brett and I had been doing a bushwalk from Haad Rin to one of the beaches on the east coast which is only accessible by boat or foot. We’d decided to try and follow the hopelessly detailed map in our guide book and have a bit of a look around on an eastern beach. Bushwalking is certainly not a developed activity in Thailand. In the west over the last few decades there has been a huge growth in appreciation in the wonder and spectacle of the natural environment and a consequent growth in environmentalism and environmental activism. In Thailand and most of the third world wilderness is simply seen as wasteland by most to be exploited wherever possible. So, the concept of walking through wilderness as an enjoyable activity is something most locals just can’t get there head around. Why would you spend three hours walking over a steep mountain soaked in sweat and fighting mosquitoes and other bugs when you can catch a boat there in twenty minutes is their way of thinking. Consequently the trails are rudimentary to say the least. Nevertheless after finding the unsignposted start of the trail which simply leads through a cluster of houses we found our way to the trail and headed to Haad Tein. Well there is not a lot you can write about bushwalking really other than it is an activity that requires putting one foot after the next and proceeding and that when you start ascending a step climb in blistering sun that you wonder if there is a little wisdom in an easy boat option. Well there isn’t too much else to this story other than at some point we lost the trail. The one we were on seemed to stop and despite spending around an hour trying different areas trying to pick it up we had to decide to keep trying or head back. Brett was still keen to keep looking for the illusive path but as we only had a couple of hours of daylight left I was able to spook him enough with the prospect of spending the night in the forest that we soon started to head back in defeat. This brings me to the coconut element in this story. At some point on the way back we had stopped for some reason and where standing talking. I was looking up a dry creek bank then suddenly Brett yells, ‘Shawn move!!’ I’d been in Thailand long enough to realise in a split second that that probably meant falling coconut and the last thing I wanted to do was look up and kiss a falling coconut yet at the same time realised that which ever way I moved I might just step into the falling coconuts downward path so I leap to one side and hoped for the best. Bang! The coconut hit the ground a metre or so away. I looked at Brett and started laughing, ‘you stupid bastard, why didn’t you tell me to move left or right, I could have stepped right into it’s path!’ A coconut might be a humble and disregarded fruit but an encounter with one on the head is certainly a terminal experience. We both couldn’t stop laughing and it is funny how near death experiences can have such an element of humour to it.
The second coconut story involves a coconut tree. I’d decided to head over to the eastern side of the island (by boat) and spent a week there at Haad Tein which is better know to many for the Sanctuary Resort, a place where many go for yoga, meditation, and various cleansing diets. The fact that the place is full of people taking drugs, magic mushrooms, chemicals and all night parties seems to run counter to the image but I am sure there must have been some there for the legitimate reason. I wasn’t staying in the resort but in a place called World Heritage Resort which is a grand title but that is about where it ends. It was cheap and I generally go by the backpacker creed, ‘pay less go further’ although for some ‘pay less drink more’ if more accurate. Anyway, Haad Tein is the kind of place people sit around and say how they are in ‘paradise’. After about a week I’d decided there was such a thing as too much paradise and time to head back to the real world on the other side of the island as I was exhausted. I got to the beach early and sat hostage with a group of others for around two and a half hours waiting for Eddie the local longtail skipper to decide it was worth the trip over to Haad Rin. It’s not a long trip around to Haad Rin. The only variable is the ocean. The western side of the island is rather protected waters as it is only 30 odd kilometres from the mainland but on the other side its just the beach facing the Pacific Ocean and when there is a bit of a swell you know about it as the swell comes up to the edge of the boat. Anyway it was a fairly nail biting ride with Eddie at the rear moving the boat this way and that battling with the ocean as we rounded the head this morning and I was certainly glad to get off. My one ambition was to get back to Haad Chao Pao take a shower and sleep off paradise. I got the taxi, a pick up/ute with seats in the rear, and made my way to Thong Sala where I hired a motorbike for the last part of the trip home. About three quarters of the way home there was a sign placed right in the middle of the road written in Thai which made no sense to me at all and as I was only thinking of getting to sleep I looked at the sign and decided when in doubt ignore it. I rode about five minutes up the road, came around a corner and saw what looked like something you’d see from news footage out of Iraq. There were power poles down, the side of a building smashed, a car crashed under another power pole, electrical cables laying everywhere on the road and people everywhere standing by. Hell, what’s happened here I thought, a bomb, an out of control truck taking cars and everything else with it? I got off the bike and walked closer cautious of the fact there were high voltage cables everywhere. I was looking for clues as to what had happen but I could only see the damage, not the cause. I realised the sign I had passed was a road closed sign and rather than be another spectator I should have got back on the bike and headed back but human curiosity dictated that I needed to know what had happened. I found a young guy who spoke enough English and found it wasn’t a bomb, major accident or anything as dramatic but the simple falling of a coconut tree on power lines that had pulled a number of inadequately stabilised power poles down and creating the chain of events before me. I was already low on fuel and praying to get home on what I had, exhausted and realised the detour home was at least another half and hour and could only think, ‘bloody coconut trees!’.
Finally, I have saved the best coconut story till last. This is another falling coconut story like the first but far more interesting. Coconuts fall regularly from trees here but they rarely create a chain of events like this which involves abduction of over forty people, thief, stowaways, a highway police chase, guns and arrest. The story comes courtesy of an Australian, Dean who recounted a story of losing his knife from his backpack on the bus from Bangkok to Koh Phangan. Most of the long distance buses here are the double deck variety with top floor seating and half the bottom floor given to seating and the other rear section given to luggage. Apparently there are numerous cases where one or more people hide in the luggage compartment and during the twelve odd hours it takes to drive to the jetty where you catch the boat they go through passenger bags and take various valuables. According to Dean they are careful to repack the bags so that when the baggage is unloaded at the other end passengers are unaware that possessions have been taken out in a wholesale fashion and would group together and bring in the authorities. Passengers like Dean don’t realise anything is gone until they reach the island and unpack and by that time your co passengers are who knows where and it would be difficult to pin it on the bus operator at that point anyway. He then recounted the following story to me
Apparently one of these double deck buses was heading down the highway when suddenly, bang, a coconut hit the glass windscreen on the upper deck and fractured all the glass without shattering it. A couple of passengers went down to the driver and explained the situation and after he stopped the bus and inspected it continued to keep driving. Not long after the passengers at the front of the bus felt small splinters of glass coming from the windscreen and again went to see the driver who after placing a few strips of duct tape on the cracks began down the highway again. This however didn’t solve the problem and whinging demanding people we westerners are there was soon a bit of a revolt with people storming downstairs demanding he stop the bus and get a replacement. The driver reluctantly stopped telling everyone to stay on the bus and tried to wave down passing busses with spare seats but unbeknown to him one of the passengers had gone to the luggage compartment to get something out of his bag and realised things where missing, told his friend who came down and realised things where missing from his bag as well and before too long the word got around that someone had been in their bags. The driver came back to the other side of the bus and was confronted by these two guys about the missing luggage and where man handled back onto the bus before the driver jumped back into the driver seat and headed off. The buses here have a door between the driver and the rear of the coach and despite people banging on the door and demanding he stop he just kept on driving. By this time there was a certain degree of panic and concern on the bus by passengers who where now basically being held captive. There was discussion as to what the hell to do and the only thing they could think of was anyone with a torch/flashlight to try and attract the attention of traffic passing in the other direction but flashing torches at them. Finally and luckily for the passengers they attracted the attention of a police car who did a quick U turn and came up alongside the bus and from the gestures they were making must have realised something was not right. The police drove far enough ahead to pull over and draw pistols and directed the bus to pull over. The passengers explained the missing items from their bags and after a search of the luggage compartment found two young Thai boys hiding, obviously working in conjunction with the driver. The police organised another bus and the driver and his accomplices where arrested handcuffed and taken away.
The image of the tropics is coconut trees and sandy beaches and people from the west flock here to these postcard locations. I laugh sometimes when I think what the locals must think of this all as they observe us westerners drinking fresh fruit shakes, walking on the beach, sleeping in hammocks and doing nothing and continually praising the peace and tranquillity of the island. But we come here to escape then go home. If you were born on the island you might just have a different view of it all and wish you were anywhere else and as for coconut trees I’m sure there are some locals who would be happy if they never saw another coconut tree in their life.
posted by transavante | 1:45 a.m.
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