Mike goes to the beach

Today was my first day out of the city Surat Thani. I left a city which has been growing on me by the day to go to my first Thai beach. Wow. About 45 minutes or so outside of Surat is a beach town called Khanom, which we will get to, but first the ride there its self is worth addressing. In addition to the tropical flora, which still blows my mind because I have only lived here a week, the landscape itself is stunning. Driving along the land appears to be reasonably flat, no big hills, no mountains in the distance, when almost without warning there is a hill that bursts out of the flat lands. A hill may not sound particularly impressive, but this is a hill which you would need rock climbing gear to ascend. Its more reminiscent of the lonely mountain than blueberry hill. I spent a good deal of the day trying to guess at what could cause such a geographical oddity, and still am not particularly close to an answer I am comfortable with. I assumed that something this strange must be a rare thing, and I was very wrong. Nor was the first one anywhere near the most impressive, as you get closer to the coast it seems like the landscape is dominated by them, some much taller and still skinnier, some much like a regular hill, but rather than ending a gentle slope it looks as though a massive ninja cruised through chopping down the hills that looked at him the wrong way. Oh, and they are all covered in Jungle. Ridiculous.

Speaking as a boy born and bred in Maine, my experience with beaches typically include a lot of rocks, freezing water, sea weed, and a lot of character building. This Thai beach resembled this in… well really no way at all. We pulled up to a sprawling fine, white sand beach which was flanked by massive hills (one had a small island off its tip, as someone looked at it and decided it wasn’t quite perfect enough, and added the island), and after about 200 feet of sand met a beautiful mixture of blues and greens rolling up to shore. Palm trees marked the separation between the resort area (filled with pleasant looking bungalos) and the beach, and this is where we set up camp for the day, under a wooden umbrella with comfortable beach chairs. Soon someone came out to take orders for food and drink, I had a clear curry with fish (this was the first dish to officially kick my ass with spiciness in Thailand), and a quick dip was had while the food was made. The water was pleasant, warm enough that you could spend hours swimming with out getting chilly and cool enough to make it worth it. The rest of the time at the beach was spent between reading, napping, and occasional dips, really a blissful way to spend a day in what amounted to a tropical paradise. In most situations this would have been the full day, we would have caught a bus back to Surat, probably sooner than we had to because we didn’t want to miss the last one, and it would have still been a wonderful day. But this was not most situations. We had been brought to this beach by Wen, a Thai Co-workers and friend from Super English. While my roommates and I had been swimming, she had been conversing with a parent, who suggested two stops for us, the Fish Spa, and a temple. I was torn, not knowing what a Fish Spa was, I wanted to stay on the beach and take a walk up the shore to a more ritzy resort and check out there setup, but luckily, one of my roommates was enthusiastic about the idea of a fish spa.

My vision of where we were headed included a sterile room, a bucket of water, and fish biting my feet. Wowee zowee was I far off. After yet another beautiful drive through the ninja chopped hills we arrived in a forested area and paid 100 baht for a Fish pedicure. We were led down a path, into some trees until we came in view of a pool where people were relaxing under a shady canopy with there feet in the water. Clearly not what I had been expecting, I began to get excited, something which was compounded when an employee of the spa came up and offered us small glasses of a deep blue liquid whose taste I can best describe as a sweet, cold, liquid, corn on the cob. We found a spot to our liking, a bridge across a pond or a stream, I wasn’t sure which, and dangled our feet into the water. After a few minutes with only seeing fish I began to assume that it was more of a place to sit and relax than anything to do with actual fish, but I was once again very wrong. Before too long a fish tentatively approached my feet, hovering a few inches away for a moment than rushing at the sole of my foot. Surprised, I let out a half laugh, half shriek and jerked my foot out of the water into the air. I got bold quickly and put both feet back in, and tried to contain myself. Soon, no fewer than 20 fish were nibbling and cleansing every part of my feet, from the heel to in between the toes. After a few minutes of this I managed to contain my exclamations of surprise and restrain the natural impulses of laughter and foot jerking and lay back to look up at the sun streaking through the leaves, allowing a small army of fish to remove all the dead skin from my feet, a unique experience if ever there was one.

Surely this would have been enough for one day, but no, we still had one more stop on our docket, the temple. Three years ago I traveled to Turkey, and was stunned by the beauty of the mosques there, and while time may have robbed some of the grandeur from my memories of them, this temple was among the most beautiful religious structures I have ever seen. Driving up a giant tower is erupting from the landscape, but before you can actually reach the base of the tower there are stairs. But before you get to the stairs there is a stunning, smaller temple whose gables are made of vibrant and shiny blues, reds and greens. The structure pediment contained a Buddha placidly sitting surrounded by a ruby red mirror, swirls of intricate gold, and an outline of curling sapphire blue coils. The base of the stairs had an ornate gate, and the railing were the long bodies of dragons whose heads were ordained with similar colors as the Buddha. Once you arrive at the top of the steps you come into full view of the tower you saw from the road below, and at its base is a temple similar to the one below, but all of the shiny bits are benefiting from the direct rays of a late afternoon sun. This sun, by the way, is descending towards the ocean, and shore line, which you have a stunningly clear view of. Everywhere are images of the Buddha surrounded by stunning color and wealth, bells line the outer walls of the courtyard and are rung by patrons of the temple as they walk the wall.

By the time we have soaked all this in, and headed back down the stairs hunger has gripped us enough that we stop in the town’s market before leaving. This, like every market I have seen so far is a hot mess of smells, sights and sounds. One booth, serving what appears to be a dark fruit jam is mobbed by bees. Another is selling whole fish on a stick, another flowers, another curry, another fruit, another shoes and watches, and many more. This is a small market, but like its bigger counterparts, it is almost overwhelming trying to choose food among the over stimulation. In the end I go with a tried and true rule, when in doubt, chances are that what ever the fat guy is making is probably really good. And it was.