So island life can be intoxicating. The tide seems to wash time off your shoulders and sweep it out to sea, relieving you of a burden that you weren't even aware was there in the first place.
A typical day on Koh Chang could start with waking up alongside the sun as it shines through the cracks in your wall. You might slip back in to a peaceful slumber once your skin readjusts to the rhythm of sweat and relief that follows the undulations of the asthmatic wall fan. When the feeling strikes you, stroll down to the bar. The morning sea breeze invites you to relax. You come for the ambience, you stay for the banana pancakes.
Seriously, the banana pancakes. You only need one. The diameter of a cereal bowl, the thickness of a large matchbox, the consistency of a perfect hug from someone that knows how to hold you. Hot and fluffy, pockets of gooey melted banana and smothered with honey and chocolate sauce on top. You don't 'need' to have a shower after but no one would blame you if you did.
Its a good place to sit and think but eventually someone you know will come along and you can chat the day away. When the mood takes you can shell out a whole 100 baht (less than 1 pound) for your lunch, maybe some fried rice with pork or chicken? You can take intermittent dips in the pool as the midday sun cooks the world around you but eventually you are heading down to the beach.
Stroll along, keep an eye out for anyone you may have met the night before, if you do, stop and chat for a while. Find a spot, chill out and swim in the sea. At some point during this journey I will write a whole entry about why I love to swim in the sea. I always have done and it certainly doesn't need to be tropical although that does help. This is not that entry though. I don't think I can fully articulate it right now. I will think about it and get back to you.
You can opt as to whether you want to witness the days transition in to night on the beach or to sit by the bar and have a beer cool your body just as the ocean cools the sinking sun. Thats a wanky way or saying, start the night off as you mean to continue. You could always go for a massage first though. I had my first thai massage at a small place just down the road from the beach with some friends upon their recommendation and believe me, it will be the first of many!
Finally the night is set, you shower, refresh and head out for some barbecue. For roughly one pound fifty you can have your choice of barbecued meats or seafood along with salad, baked potato, corn and garlic bread. You wash it down and you go out. There are plenty of beach bars starting the evening with established chart hits and transitioning in to electronic music as the night progresses and these places are always a reliable location to dance your cares away with a bucket in hand. There was one spot that held a special place in my heart though.
Stone Free is a bar and guesthouse in the Lonely Beach area of Koh Chang. It is run by a group of old Thai hippies with long grey hair and grey beards. They greet you every night with a dopey enthusiasm which is at once entertaining and comforting. You can get food and drink out the front but the back is where you want to be. Amongst tables, chairs, mats and hammocks you will find The Sticky Rice Blues. The band plays every night and have done for longer than any of them can likely remember. They are all Thai and it seems the nominal english they speak is learnt mostly from their endless catalogue of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Beatles and other old blues and rock standards. This is not kareoke though. They just refer to it as jamming but they play at the tempo and cadence that best suits their mood, never pandering to accent. You can make out half of what is being sung and follow even less of how it is being played. It is glorious, trust me on that.
Don't be fooled for a moment though. This is not reality. It can so easily seem like it, but it is not. It can be a great trip, a sweet breezy respite as you run along the rollercoaster tracks, sandwiched between the urban loops and dips that stand either side. It can also suck you in.
You see it everywhere, young people who arrive on the island and decice to stay. Their blonde and brunette dreadlocks serving as a self styled division from the culture they left behind, forgetting that a seperation from one does not automatically equal an invitation to another. The girls who stroll along the beach during the day with the local firedancers, handing out fliers for the bars they now work at in a 'promotional capacity'. They know they are a long way from Norway, they just don't realise quite how far.
It is a nice life out here but you have to move on. Following my last night I would remove myself from this experience in pretty much every conceivable way, not because I wanted to leave it behind but because it is what the next stage of my journey called for. I can never see myself getting hooked on sunset in the way that many of the islands collection of gathered souls have done but being there, you can hardly blame them for it. The problem is they seem to think they are home, but from where I sat, it looked like they had never been more lost in their lives.
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