Koh PhaNgan to Georgetown
April 19th 1995
I left the Sanctuary by boat the morning after all the drama, as i didn't feel comfortable staying there any longer. I spent the day just hanging around in Haad Rin waiting for the night boat to Surat Thani. That didn't leave till about ten in the evening, from Thongsala - the other main town on the island.
The ride in the taxi (or bemo) from Haad Rin was hell. It was a really rough dirt road with steep hills and we nearly slid out of the back on some of them. But fortunately it wasn't very far.
The night boat was good. It was a timber, asian-style boat, maybe eighty foot long, with two internal decks. the top deck had rows of double mattresses, pushed right up against each other, making long multiple beds on each side, with a few raised single beds in the middle, with room under them for luggage. The bottom deck, which was cheaper, had sleeping mats instead of mattresses. I got a space in the top deck, which was a pleasant and comfortable place to spend an all-night jorney. Unfortunately, though, it was only a six hour trip, but i got a decent night's sleep anyway.
We arrived at Surat Thani at four in the morning, at the same jetty where i'd spent the night a week or two before. I went and sat outside the same bus office, which was where i had to catch the bus back to Malaysia from. I only had an hour or so to wait.
It was a fairly boring trip in a minibus. And the driver was completely psycho, as all bus drivers seem to be. This bus took me to Hat Yai, which is a big town not far from the border. There i had to hang around for an our or so before getting on the minibus that would go the rest of the way.
Not long after leaving Hat Yai, the driver stopped at a shop and came out with two largish packages wrapped in brown paper and clear pastic, which looked like they weighed about ten kilos each. He stuck these in the back section of the bus, with the luggage.
Not very much later, we came to the border. After the bus had gone through the thai border control, and while the driver was waiting for us to come back from getting our passports checked, he moved one of the brown packages from the back into the inside of the bus, under one of he seats.
At the malaysian border, we had to get out and carry our bags through with us while the bus drove through the border control. The bus was checked fairly half-heartedly by two customs officers. One of them looked inside the brown package in the back, but ignored the one inside. Then we all got back in and the driver walked off to one side with the customs men. I was watching, fascinated. I knew there was something dodgy going on. I saw the driver give one of the customs officers some money and then he walked back to the bus and off we went. I wished i knew what was inside that package!
We arrived in Penang at about six in the evening malayasian time, which was five, thai time and I went back to the D'Budget hostel.
Fortunately the election was over. It had taken place while i was in Thailand and, surprise, surprise, the "recalcitrant" Datu Seri Dokter Mahathir bin Mohammed and his Barisan Nasional party had won it again! Unfortunately all the shitty little plastic flags and all the stickers and posters were still up and there was no sign that anyone was likely to remove them before they fell down of their own accord.
- - -
The next day, i met up with Nicki in Gelugor, where she'd been working the day before in the Penang Organic Farms office there. Gelugor's really an outer suburb of Georgetown. She hadn't been having an exactly wonderful time with Ong, but she was thinking about staying on in Malaysia for a while though, although it would mean she'd have to stay at the farm and put up with his nonsense. Anyway, she had to go back up there that afternoon as there was a group of eighty visitors coming over the weekend! I wasn't interested, although i had been planning to go back to the farm. Eighty people didn't sound like much fun to me and anyway, the stuff she'd told me about Ong, which i didn't doubt for a second, because i trusted her judgement in those things, had put me off going back there at all really. In a way i hadn't really felt like it beforehand. I already felt a bit uncomfortable about the place.
I went back to Georgetown, changed some money and got myself waitlisted for the flight to Mexico on the the thirtieth which, surprisingly, was the new moon! The next day the booking was confirmed and i got my ticket. I was leaving in a week.
That evening, i phoned Ray, in London, to find out the whereabouts of my friend Paula, who was in Mexico at that time as far as i knew. He told me she was in a place called Zipolite and gave me directions to where she was staying.
While i was staying at the D'Budget, i met a woman from Brisbane who was staying there too. She'd been living in Thailand for a couple of years, on Koh Pha Ngan. It was her who told me the story about how the beach where the Sanctuary was had been given to those people by some monks.
She also told me a story about how a friend of hers in Queensland had grown a big marijuana crop one year and had gone to check on it one day, only to find it had gone. All there was was a note pinned onto a tree saying something like "Call Detective Sergeant So-and-so, Roma Street police station".
She went with her friend to a call box when he called the number on the note and the cop said "I just wanted to congratulate you on your crop. It's some of the best plants i've ever seen! Just out of interest, how much were you going to get for it?"
Her friend replied replied something like "Twenty thousand dollars" and the cop said "I'm going to get thirty!"
On Monday, Nicki came down from Sungei Pinang and checked into the D'Budget. She had all her stuff with her and had decided she wasn't going to go back. We spent the rest of the week together in Georgetown, which wasn't very exciting, but we had a good time.
At half past four on Saturday morning, Nicki caught a bus to Thailand. She just had enough money to spend a week there before flying back to Darwin from Penang. She was headed for Koh Pha Ngan. It was all happening really fast now, somehow. This was the end of nearly four months of travelling together. It was really strange and i began to feel a kind of hollow loneliness and apprehension as i looked forward to my own departure from this continent the following day.