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.
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