A scene from the best of dreams.

We got into Suratthani at 6am realizing we hadn't heard from any of our prospective southern Thailand farms in about two weeks. This is how the whole trip will likely go, I think. We went to a cyber cafe to look up the phone numbers of three farms. Somehow we successfully contacted all three prospects, but of course, all three were busy until 3-4 days from then. To some this would be disappointing, but I saw it as an opportunity. We got out our travel books and checked out cool things in the area. Thanks to the student travel book Michelle got me, I discovered that you could camp within the nearby Mu Ko Angthong Marine National park. We immediately hopped on a bus, then a ferry, and ported at Ko Samui; a perfect example of an island paradise destroyed by the pressure of tourism. There was a bar and resort on almost every beach front lot available. This was our necessary route to the marine park.

As expected, the first downside to the marine park was that it was only accessible via one of several tour companies. We had to arrange a somewhat expensive day trip with a company to serve as our transportation to and from. Early the next day we took the morning tour company's ferry to Angthong. The approach to the park is breathtaking. After twenty minutes or so, the outline of islands begin to show through the thin shroud of mist. It takes a full hour to fully reach the first tour stop, and for the last half hour of the trip you are surrounded by towering limestone rock formations that were forced upward as the continents shifted, and then surrounded by water at the end of the last ice age. Green vegetation grew out of every impossible nook, seeming to continue the vista of the green ocean.


Our first stop was Talay Nai, or Green Lagoon. The name was a good one. Limestone bluffs surrounded emerald water. An underground tunnel brought salt water in from the ocean which was then made greener by the eroding limestone. Just another one of Thailand's gems.

After the lagoon, we stopped at the main island, Wua-Talap. Here you could snorkel and do a series of hikes. There was a park office with a fully equipped staff and grassy lawn for camping where we spent the night. There was also wildlife. We saw Common mynas and Dusky langurs. Common mynas are common throughout Thailand but no less magnificent for their abundance. As I sat with coffee one sat watching me. I heard at least eight unique sounds; trills, chirps, honks, cackles, rattles. As he vocalized his feathers puffed out, looking as if demanding my sugar packet. The snorkling wasn't ideal. There was also no coral reef and visibility was low due to the mineralization. Add in the heavy traffic of tourists each day and you get a habitat not fit for high volumes of beautiful sea life. The hikes were the best part. There were only two. One took you to a huge cave with dangling stalactites that you could walk through, more like climb through. The trails there were not trails in the normal sense of the word. There were no switchbacks or smooth dirt paths. Trails went straight up the mountain and asked you to trek over angular limestone boulders and tree roots coming from every angle. There were thick ropes attached to trees along the entire trail to help, especially on the way down. You couldn't walk up this trail. You had to pause and plan each step; a slow, rhythmic climb and metaphor for the islands themselves. Small, purple violets grew from the tiniest pores in the rocks. How many things had to go right for that seed to germinate? The same thing will never happen twice. But if it happens a third time expect it to happen again.

The second trail was also a grueling upward clime. It reached a 500m high viewpoint where you could see the whole network of islands. Since we were camping we hiked this trail after all of the other tourists left. We sat peacefully and watched the sun set into too many clouds. The islands, painted a delicate pink, became a scene from the best of dreams.

Stranded with Puppies on Koh Mak

As previously mentioned, the first WWOOF host we planned to stay with fell through, and so our plan was to try and replace him with Ann. Ann was reported by the WWOOF website to have a coconut and rubber tree on Koh Mak, an island in the SE region (not on the strip part of the country but more near the Cambodian border.) All attempts to contact her the week before leaving failed, and so the search for the elusive Ann began. We took a bus from Bangkok to a pier on the coast, and then a speedboat ferry to Koh Mak. By then it was late so we stayed at a backpacker resort on the opposite side of the island. The next day the search commenced. Koh Mak is a small island so we figured someone would point us in the right direction if we asked the right questions. A half hour walk got us back to the main drag of the island and within 20 minutes a woman told us, "Oh, Ann! She lives in that big house just down the beach." We found her. As it turned out, though, it was Ann's dad's farm and house and he had just turned violently ill. All the usual work we could of done just a week ago was out of the question, since Ann had spent the previous 7 years living in Nova Scotia and Montreal and was seemingly out of touch with the work. She did, however, say that we could stay on a different portion of land; land that was heretofore untamed, wild jungle. We could camp on the beach and help her clear the land if we wanted. I asked myself, isn't this wrong according to all of my learned conservation principles...clearing land to use for more agriculture? After contemplation and explanation from Ann, her vision was to save the land from the increasingly popular resort destiny on the island, and convert the land to a farm of coconuts, edible vegetables, and medicinal plants that could all be used by the local people and resorts. She said all of the food on the isalnd is imported from the mainland and therefore expensive at the resorts and for the locals. Her vision would both make living on the island more affordable and help save water. Resorts use a ton of water since tourists want toilets and showers. What also helped my mind was that most of what we would be clearing were invasive vines anyways.

I am running out of time, so I'll speed this up. The beach camping was pretty crazy, secluded to say the least. Two coves edged our section of the beach, providing visual barriers to everything else in the world but the island speckled horizon. Our task lay in the other direction, though. As the beach ended, vegetation began. Coconut trees too tall to climb dotted the jungle and flowering shrubs grew in between. Connected it all was a dense network of green vines with recurved thorns. We cleared a huge chunk of land, creating space for a campsite and paving the way for other WWOOFERs or people to stay while they help clear. Ann brought us food every other day and stopped in occasionally to check in, bring water, and talk about her life and vision. We kept a fire going at all times to keep away the mosquitoes. We boiled rice in a big pot and fried veggies in a wok on a gas stove. The ocean was our shower. Perhaps the most interesting thing, but initially the most frustrating, was when Ann brought 10 four month old puppies (from seperate litters, same father different mothers) to stay with us. Apparently the mothers were over-aggressively weening the puppies and had already killed one. Ann wanted a place for them to stay to hopefully separate them from their mothers' teats. It would also be a good learning experience since Thai dogs are responsible for finding most of their own food. I was mad at first. Ann told us they all had fleas. It was already a hard enough challenge to live literally on the edge of the ocean, bordering a thorny jungle. I was soon won over, I mean, they were puppies. It only took a day of them struggling to climb on top of fallen coconut trees, sleeping curled up together under shady plants, and their skeptical inspection of crabs which always ended with a yelp. It also helped when Ann brought a flea prophylaxis the next day, which I administered (shout out to WRC). The fleas disappeared, if they were even there, and then the puppies really grew on us all. We each had a favorite and names for all of them.

Ultimately, our adventure ended with the coming of the tide. Each successive night, as it neared the full moon, the tide came up higher and higher on the beach; about 3 feet closer each night. The last two nights we had to move our tents higher up the beach, until finally we realized we had run out of beach to move up. If we stayed another night, we would have been flooded. But it was an unbelievable experience of waking up with the ocean as a neighbor. The image of this leg of the trip is two-fold. Facing one direction, imagine the horizon as the neck of a woman with sunset skin, wearing islands strung like jade on a multi-layered necklace. Looking toward the shore, imagine me sitting in the sand, back against a coconut tree, with clumps of mottled puppies lying around me. I have to catch a 10 hr night train to Suratthani now. Enjoy ythe snow.

Is this a sunrise or sunset?

I have to put out a disclaimer: there will be tense issues. I don't feel like being consistent, nor do I have time to edit. Sorry to those of you out there (dad) whom this will bother. This will also likely be my longest post since I have some time to kill at the guest house while waiting for a ride. There is also tremendous internet connection at the guest house so when in Rome.

The man next to me has almost completed his second Wednesday NYT crossword when I finish my first easy sudoku. I suspect his frustration that he hasn't beat me to the finish line. I realize now that it was a competition, but even if I knew this I don't think I could have gone much faster and I am secretly self-conscious of my inferior mental abilities next to this crossword cyborg. He is a floor talker, the kind of man who averts his eyes to the ground as you try to make small talk. His ability to quickly recall useless information to scribble letters into black outlined boxes becomes apparent. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He checks the answers to his second puzzle, and crosses out a few letters. Hah! I am smarter after all. I never check my answers, and therefore, am always right.

Enter Nana. This is not here real name, but her given name since we couldn't understand any of her Lao. We gathered from her hand motions that she is pushing 80. She wears a black dress pants, a zebra striped top, and pearls, none of which match her halfway toothless grin. We suspect someone dressed her. She is the kind of old woman whose family is on the plane, but intentionally many rows away. Wouldn't you know it, she was the third in our seating arrangement, the aisle seat, our Porthos. She hated everything, from how her back hurt from the seat, the acidic orange juice, or hardly any of the food. She always seemed to find some food on my plate that she did like however. She refused the food that the flight attendants offered, but then always wanted some after seeing me pull back the foil lid from the rice container. She summoned the flight attendants by tapping them on the butt and asked for her own meal. Upon receiving it,though, she ate none of it.  I don't think she understood how to open any of it. Those airplane meals can get pretty complicated after all, with all of those different containers. I made trades with her. I opened my shrimp soup and she immediately wanted it. I had no choice but to give it up. Next I opened the box of rice on my tray. She motioned for me to put rice in her soup, so I spooned rice into her soup. She became my adopted grandma that I took care of for all 12 hours of the flight. The best part were her faces. Every time she tried something that she didn't like, which was everything that she put in her mouth, she turned up her nose, squinted her eyes, and mouthed "blah." I began to anticipate her. The flight attendant came around with a drink tray every half hour and ever time Nana took orange juice, and every time made her now patented "blah" face. I always picked water from the tray, and then swapped for her orange juice. So...much...orange...juice.

My mind quickly lost track of what my eyes were telling it. I never thought about how strange it is to travel west. You don't get the full effect of it when going a short distance, such as to Chicago or the west coast, but we are a full 11 hours ahead here in Bangkok. It is Monday here, but Sunday in Cleveland. That also means that that I should be sleeping now, yet here I am typing. During the flights, though, I kept seeing the sun, but I never knew if it was a sunrise or a sunset. I hadn't adjusted my watch yet and with the time zones rapidly changing I had no idea what was going on. My body kept telling me to sleep, but was that because it was night time or because I hadn't slept in who knows how long? Korean Air is a tremendously accommodating airline, so much so that it is overbearing. I don't know how many cups of orange juice I received half asleep. Maybe 27? All I remember from the flight from Seoul to Bangkok is my eyes occasionally opening to a Korean woman with light blue ribbon tightly tying together a black bun, leaning over me with a tray of select juices. By this time of my journey it was close to 8am (a full 24 hours after boarding my first flight) Cleveland time so I was unaware of many things. But all ended fine on a nice firm mattress at a bed and breakfast in Bangkok. There was sweet tea and a gracious host awaiting us. A good sign of Thailand's smiling hospitality already.

And so it begins...almost.

Hey everyone! This post is coming a couple prior to departure. I figured I should give a short, tentative timeline of our plans. Lizzie (for those of you who don't know she is my girlfriend) and I are leaving for Thailand in two days. We will have two additional travel companions: Stefanie Couchman and Mason Stabler. Stefanie was Lizzie's best friend growing up and her and her boyfriend (Mason) both attended Kenyon College where they met. As Lizzie and I went to Denison, only a 35min drive away, we had the privilege of  hung out a few times. Our group of four has suddenly become less random.

The group. Lizzie, Dylan, Stefanie, Mason.

The day after our arrival we hope to travel to a farm on the island of Ko Mak. If we don't hear from her in the next few days we'll probably just show up and see what happens. The trip is all about rolling with the punches. Hopefully there won't be too many punches, maybe love taps instead. Ko Mak is part of a greater island archipelago on which we had already planned on doing some hiking and camping. So if the farm doesn't work out we will likely just start with the hiking and camping.

Ko Mak Island. This is smaller and part of a national marine reserve.

Ko Chang Island. This island is the largest of the archipelago and more developed.

After this adventure we head back to Bangkok to meet up with the train in order to head south. There is a shrimp and oyster farm that we will be working at for about 10 days on the island of Ko Phi Phi. There was going to be another farm in this region, but Tom sold his farm. It happens. After shrimping we will take the train down to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where Mason apparently has family. This will likely be the site of our great reef adventure, as the area is rumored to have some of the best snorkeling opportunities in the world.

Kuala Lumpur Skyline

These are all other peoples' pictures from Kuala Lumpur. Signs of things to come perhaps.

After visiting with Mason's family in Kuala Lumpur, we fly to Chiang Mai, Thailand. From a geographical standpoint, until this point we will have been predominantly coastal. The Chiang Mai Province, however, is more mountainous. It is also a center of cultural diversity with over 300 Buddhist temples as well as a few mosques, churches and temples (there is a Sikh and a Hindu temple.) There are two farms in Chiang Mai that we will go to. The Metta Experiment, as it is called, is a permaculture ecovillage has some organic farming responsibilities. It is a place where you can learn about Buddhist "middle path" philosophy. There are monks as well as professors from the nearby university who occasionally stop through and discuss Buddhism. Should be interesting. The other farm, called Rainbow Springs Farm, is more of a traditional farm with vegetables and fruit orchards and is situated at the foot of mountains. Both seem like nice meditative retreats. After The two farms Lizzie and I will have some free time. Who knows what we'll do?! Wish us luck.

Doi Inthanon - In Chiang Mai. Highest peak in Thailand

An elephant park in Chiang Mai. Maybe we'll go

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