homestay at Naga Island - part three

Thus I walked on the shoreline, over craggly landscapes and mudflats and occasionally sand. Eventually I did encounter people, from a distance anyway. Dark phantoms near the water's edge would slowly shuffle around, picking objects off the beach. I was skirting the jungle to my right, a comfortable distance from the phantom people. The circumfrence of the the island seemed to never end. More than once I seriously considered delving into the jungle interior, in the hope of stumbling upon a more rational path or trail. But the snakes that I imagined (I am told that they can be as long as eight or twelve feet on the island: pythons?) deterred me from blazing a trail through the twilight forest. Supposedly there are monkeys on the island, but I hadn't seen any all day. That concerned me. This was just the kind of place where you would picture Michael Chrichton's "Congo".

"The damned monkeys were throwing berries. He bent over to pick it up. And then he realized that it was not a piece of fruit at all. It was a human eyeball..."

And then! A loud rustling from the bushes startled me. In fascination and dread I stared into the dark shadowy foliage, at the bush with its drastically moving branches. Something large was in there. It could only be a dinosaur. And when is it ever a vegetarian that is lurking by you. I hurried away.

I went around another bend of the shore and could see much further down the island. Finally I saw lights in the distance. It looked like a row of lamps extending out into the water - the concrete pier lit up at night. But it was miles away! The others would be really worried about me. It was nearly 7:00, when I said I would be back. There was another bay to round, and then a peninsula, blocking yet even more unknown swaths of sand. It would take hours. What else was I to do? I kept going.

The beach of this bay was thankfully sandy. It extended far away from the forest, out to the water. Just ahead of me was a blinking light eminating from a beached speed boat. I could see dark figures entering and leaving the cabin. As I approached, I found human footprints again - my fellow students. I traced their path as I went along the beach. I passed by the boat only to discover that the tracks led inside it. They were children's footprints. I had been wondering why some were so small... Misinterpretting the footprints only added to my sense of lost. I ducked under an abandoned concrete pier. Further on the beach, I could see the footprints double back, some towards the boat. Some towards the forest. I kept walking. As I neared the other end of the bay, I realized that the peninsula was actually a rocky cliff jutting out of the jungle, into the sea. There was no way that I could scale those rocks. The only way to get across it would be to go into the woods or swim. I was thoroughly upset and confused. How did my companions get back? I walked from the shore to the forest to catch any stay footprints that I may have missed. Where did they go? Did a boat pick them up halfway back? All around me on the shore were these ghostly longtail fishing boats strung out in the sand, tied to ropes leading back to the forest.

The forest. I looked a little more closely and realized I was already there. And it was just about time for dinner. It turns out those lights were an illusion. And the bay looked totally different because it was now low tide. When I was here earlier, the water was all the way at the foot of the pier, not at all like the expansive sand and mudflats that I saw now.

I walked up to the village house like a wild man out of the wilds. "sa wa dee kap" - hello, I said. They didn't seem too concerned. Wilson recommended I wash up before it got too late. A new adventure in Thailand. Showering. Rural island village style.

I took my clothes, soap and dish, and I walked down a little path a little ways into the woods where the well was. It's an open stone well, with a rope on a pulley, leading down to a plastic bucket in the water. "It's dark out. You can wear darkness. It'll be fine" were Wilson's words for me. So I wore darkness. I pulled the bucket of water up, and poured it over myself. I had to do this several times because the bucket had holes in it. After lathering and rinsing off - quite an interesting process in the dark, with a broken bucket, I put on my clothes and went back to the covered deck. I didn't have a towel, nor did I need one. It was so warm out, even at night, that I dried out very quickly just standing around.

Dinner was served. We again had rice and vegetable soup and fried egg. It was delicious. Few meals are so fulfilling.

I knew the family was Muslim, so I asked if I could read from their Quran. Mr. Deen had to talk to the matriarch, after which he told me that his sister was borrowing it. I was a little disappointed and a little surprised. You would think that they would be sure to have one in the house. (Later, I found out that it was probably just a polite way of them not letting me see their Quran. It's possible that it's because I'm not part of their family. It's also possible that it has to do with a purification ritual that I obviously had not performed. Or mayhaps they objected to me, a non-muslim, handling their holy text. I won't ever know.)

After dinner, we went out to end of the pier. I lied down on a bench and looked at the sky while I ate almonds and dried pineapple. We called the girls on their designated seminar cell phones, but aparently they were already asleep. The ocean wind was a pleasant sensation as I listened to the waves and thought about starlight. I was thinking of sleeping on the pier since it was so warm out, and you don't have to worry about mosquitos so far away from the forest and with so much wind about. As I was lying there, darkness obscured the already darkened sky. I felt a few moist drops on my face, so I decided to leave. Indeed, by the time I got back to the house, it was pouring down raining.

The boys were to sleep on the deck. We set up our blue mosquito nets, and spread out the mats and blankets provided by the host family. I read from my book. We went to sleep.

Aparently I snore. But I already knew that.

In the morning, we went to the shore, where we were taken aboard longtail fishing boats. They took us out to the open water, where little bouy things made of styrofoam were floating, marking where crab nets/traps were. We floated around for a while, observing the fishermen who were already at the scene, hauling in their nets. Then we went back to headquarters for breakfast.

We had coffee and strange gooey deserts. After that, we sat on a covered platform by the shore, where we had more traditional village food for breakfast. Then we were wisked away via fishing boat, back to mainland Phuket. We were all thoroughly worn out.