ONE SMALL STEP FORWARD

A step across the border leading to adventure, kindness... and lots of food ;)

The old man was very kind. He took me to his home for lunch. There I met his lovely family. They didn’t have the biggest house in town, but they had very big hearts. I only hope I can be as kind as that person and his family. I realized that you didn’t have to know the language to communicate your feelings. A few gestures and a decent smile are enough to make people understand. I pasted a smile on my face because I knew that would take me farther than any number of words.

I reached the other checkpoint due to the kindness of some other people. After a small drama at the checkpoint, I received my visa and I stepped into Thailand. Thailand �" a land which has some of most exotic and erotic things in the world. At this point, let me remind that I was more interested in the “Exotic” part of Thailand. The first thing I learnt was all Thai people seemed to know four words in English. They were “I”, “No”, “Speak” and “English”. Everybody repeated these words in different combinations. So, I went back to my smile and body language.

I took a van to Hat jai. From there I called Ms.Yah, who was my contact. She asked me to take another bus to a village called Pak Bara. I had to wait two more hours for the bus and journey took another four hours. In the bus, I was the only tourist. People were finding it a bit difficult to place me. They were quite used to white-skinned western tourists. They could vouch that I was not a Malaysian or a Singaporean. When I told them I was from India, they looked at me as if I was from another planet. They were quite fascinated to meet a back-packer from India. There was one small boy with whom I tried to converse. He couldn’t understand what I said but he was grinning. So, I had to reciprocate. We both were grinning the whole trip, that my cheeks stated aching like hell. Anyway, it was a great experience travelling with the locals and seeing a bit of local culture.

I reached Pak Bara and called Ms.Yah again. She informed Mr.Lee would pick me up from the shipyard near Pak Bara. He came after an hour and told that he was taking me to Pak Nam resort. I had no idea that he was taking me there in a Long tail Boat �" A small boat that is fitted with a long pole. A motor is fixed at the end of pole. The motor is started and pole dipped into the water to propel the boat forward.

It was pitch dark and the setting was very mysterious. I got into the boat with no idea about where Mr.Lee was taking me. We drifted into the dark seas. The water was pitch dark and sky was absolutely beautiful. The sky looked like a curtain with a lot of holes through which the light was seeping in. We passed through some other islands on the way. I could see the forests on either side. He dropped me in the island and asked me to find my way inside the resort. I walked in and met two absolutely gorgeous women �" Ms.Yah and Samila.

On seeing Samila, I was quite stunned. I always thought Joan (Gab, please excuse me), Aishwarya Rai & Michelle Pfeiffer are the most beautiful women on this planet. But, Samila was almost as beautiful and even beats them because of the sheer innocence in her looks. Let me interrupt again… at this point of time, I was not interested in settling down with a girl in Thailand. I am just telling that I saw a gorgeous young girl in Thailand. She showed me the place where I was supposed to stay. It was a small but well-furnished chalet. I went to sleep straightaway.

Next morning, I came out of my chalet & saw the most unbelievable and spectacular sight. The hut was on a seashore, the sea was clear and beautiful, the sand white and soft, the sky slightly orange in color. I never realized the dimensions of colors until I saw these things. One thing seemed to be in complete contrast to the other. It was an absolutely magnificent and brilliant display of colors. This phenomena continued throughout the journey. The sunrise & sunset, the colorful corals, color of sea in different places, colorful fishes with fantastic designs. The realization was almost spiritual.

I found that there were very few people on the island. I had one whole day to spend on the island before I could board the boat to Ko-adang Island. I set about exploring the island. There were some caves, which were not visible when the tide was high. When the tide was low, I gathered enough courage to venture into one of the caves. The cave was very dark and the light from my torch seemed to create a creepy shapes inside the cave. The hanging stones and other natural structures looked like weird faces. It was quite scary too. As the cave got deeper, my courage started running low and I got out of the cave as fast as possible.

After this small adventurous caving experience, I felt very hungry and went looking for some food. Ms.Yah arranged for some food. The food was awesome but a bit bland. I complimented Yah that she looked very beautiful and the food was excellent although a bit bland. She thanked me for the compliments and winked at me. I didn’t realize I had committed the first mistake of the trip. I realized the mistake during my next meal. The food was so hot that I had to gulp 5 cans of coke to quench the heat. This continued for the next meal as well. Ms.Yah was so impressed by my compliments that she used up a week’s stock of Ginger and Chilies on my two meals. Anyway, she was so sweet that I didn’t want to complain.