Migrant Monkeys go Bohemian

Empty promises abut the photos, folks. There appears to be some breakdown in my technological skills. I'll keep trying, though... I am nothing if I am not persistent.

This latest installment finds us in Ko Phangan, a little island off the east coast of Southern
Thailand. We slowly worked our way up from Malaysia, through a handful of po-dunk towns where nothing remarkable occurred.

Yesterday we took a bus and a ferry to the island with the intention of spending a week or two at a secluded beach resort called the Sanctuary. We had to take a long tail boat from Hat Rin (the infamous full moon party beach) to Hat Tien. There are no roads into Hat Tien. You either hike 8 kilometers through the jungle or pay $3.50 per person to cruise the sea in a long tail. When we arrived at The Sanctuary we were dismayed to learn that the bungalows were booked up. A few houses were available. Rather than schlep back to Hat Rin we splurged on a $45 jungle house.

Our accommodation was nestled at the top of a windy path, built right into the rocks. We had a kitchen, with a gas cook top, some Nescafe packs and tea bags - but no implements for boiling water. We also had a hammock and a pampason chair that a family of spiders decided to nest in. The house did not have walls but looked right out into the jungle. Fortunately the Sanctuary did provide a mosquito net. (This area is not malarial but dengue fever is a risk.)

At least one migrant monkey could not handle going bohemian and did not dig on sharing space with critters. Various exotic bugs strolled our floor, we had to watch out for scorpions and centipedes (they bite), and the mosquitoes loved the bathroom facilities (complete with squat toilet). Guess which migrant monkey didn't get a wink of sleep for fretting about the critters? You may be surprised... (He would claim it was just a general insomnia.)

The other monkey was kept awake well into the night from the boom boom thud of the dance party on the beach. The music filled the valley and was swept up into our jungle paradise. Silly us to assume the jungle would provide a quiet respite. I took solace in an 11 AM check out time and planned on sleeping in. However, I learned that it's impossible to sleep in when you're in the jungle and the sun streams into your hut through the non-wall at 6 AM.

I tried to warn Francis that the Sanctuary was a little granola - a skosh hippie-dippy. I'm not sure what he envisioned from my cautions, but he was not prepared to stay in a place that offers classes on crystal healings. (The yoga and meditation courses were a stretch.) "What sort of wounds are these freaks nursing that they need so much healing?" We're back in Had Rin, scurrying about to find a quiet resting place as our hard-partying days have been over for at least a decade now. I suppose the lesson we have learned is that we like the beach life in theory. In reality the sun and sand and boom boom thud is not quite our thing. We're going to give it a go and see if Phangan has anything to offer a couple of 30-somethings who hail from the land of coffee and rain.