Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it. - Richard, The Beach.
Forrest and I met in our first AS German class with Herr Mountford in Sixth Form when we were sixteen. The first thing we bonded over was Dominic O’Connor, when I found out he had gone to QEGS and was mates with him. I didn’t hesitate in telling him that Dom was one of my best friends and that we planned to travel the world together. It wasn’t long until we discovered another shared interest – a love of Alex Garland’s The Beach and Danny Boyle’s movie adaptation of the book, and that this would help to cement our friendship and eventually draw us together through our shared wanderlust (definitely not a word taught by Mounty, but definitely daydreamed of during the lessons). Who would have guessed that eight years later we would be on our way to Koh Phi Phi, following the footsteps of Richard in search of paradise?
Following in the footsteps of Richard, and it seems the rest of the bloody world. Although Alex Garland’s inspiration for the book was actually taken from Angthong National Marine Park on the other side of Thailand, Danny Boyle filmed the beach scenes on Koh Phi Phi Lei, on Maya Bay, which has since become a Mecca for Gap Yah’ers. The boat from Phuket to Phi Phi kindly slowed down as it passed Maya Bay, and Forrest and I braved the gale-force winds and sleeting rain for our first tantalising glimpse of our paradise. But, as Richard says in the book: “the only downer is, everyone’s got the same idea”. The bay was obscured completely by longtails, speedboats, catamarans and sailing boats which had all transported in bazillions of day-trippers all as keen as Forrest and I to experience paradise. The sand was undetectable beneath the hordes of tourists and the turquoise water was hidden by all the boats bobbing about in the waves. The blowing monsoon didn’t really help to create the perfect atmosphere either, and dejected we returned to the comfort of the boat to watch Mr Bean.
Arriving at the port on Koh Phi Phi Don, we were bombarded with the usual harassment that is the curse of the tired and disoriented Gap Yah’er, but we quickly escaped on a longtail to Long Beach, accompanied by Kiwi Bede. We wasted no time in checking in to a cheap bungalow set back from the beach, and once we had sorted ourselves out and had some lunch the sun was shining and we hit the beach. Unlike the jam-packed Maya Bay, Long Beach was practically deserted and we basked both in the glorious sunshine and in the knowledge that we had found our own paradise away from day-tripping Japanese (“konnichiwa!”) and school-bus loads of eighteen-year-old British Gap Yah’ers. Unable to do nothing for more than a minute, Forrest bought himself a snorkel and went off in search of reef sharks, while I relaxed, read, listened to music and slept – it’s a tough life! After an exhausting day of doing nothing, we got ready for the night and went to the small cocktail bar down the beach from our hostel. After a couple of delicious Pina Coladas, we were joined by Bede, who was having a holiday in Thailand from his Gap Yah in India where he was learning to play the Sitar. We mused over the difficulties of the Gap Yah life (“Sometimes it’s hard to decide between a Mojito and a Caiprihina – is the mint really necessary?”!) whilst we had an outstanding Thai meal and then returned to the bar for lots more drinks and hanging out with local Thai guys as they put on a fire show for us on the beach. I took a moment in between cocktails to reflect, and realised that this was exactly as my sixteen-year-old self back in Herr Mountford’s class had imagined my Gap Yah to be, and one look at Forrest’s ridiculously happy grinning face told me that he felt exactly the same.
The pervasive aftereffects of a night well spent meant that the following day was spent feeling slightly worse for wear, however there are worse places to nurse a hangover than on a stunning beach, utilising the refreshingly beautiful water as an alternative to nurofen and the Hollyoaks omnibus! Once our hangovers had been fully vanquished, we headed over to Hat Yao, the main stretch of beach on Phi Phi, for a reccy of Long Beach’s competition. After a slightly gruelling thirty minute clamber across tree roots and through questionable local “villages” in the stifling dying heat of the day, we finally arrived in Hat Yao, extremely sticky and ready for liquid refreshment. As you know Forrest and I are pretty sociable creatures (well, Forrest more than me!) and although we have met some amazing people and friends throughout our Gap Yah (not to mention the ones who didn’t quite cut the mustard but nonetheless are an integral part of our experience) there are times when it is nice to stray from the crowds and just be on our own. However, despite the fact that we had had a wonderful night the previous night, when we arrived in Hat Yao we debated our decision to stray from the main stretch of beach, as it often means that it’s harder to meet people. As you can imagine, this can sometimes be a cause of contention between the two of us as I am often more keen than Forrest to move away from the crowds of Gap Yah’ers. I do understand his hesitance to do this, and obviously a balance must be found (which I believe we have done pretty successfully thus far) but as we weaved our way through what could have been Clitheroe on A Level results night, albeit on a stunning beach with an incredible sunset, I think we both realised that staying away this time had been a wise decision. But you know how much I love a night on the tiles painting Clitheroe red, so it was hardly a chore to plonk down in one of the beach bars with a cocktail watching the world go by, but it was nice to know that we had a little slice of quiet paradise, away from the Singha vest top-wearing Rahs, to return to afterwards. Over pizza we spent some time evaluating visiting Maya Bay, weighing up the pros (it seemed ridiculous to come to Phi Phi and not go – after all we had been planning this pretty much since we were sixteen) with the cons (basically everything I have said above, coupled with the fact that I hate most people, especially when they’re in crowds, and our Maya Bay day-trip might be in danger of ending as successfully as The Beach). Our decision was made for us though when we saw a sign advertising an overnight camping trip on Maya Bay, arriving once the crowds have left and leaving the next morning before they arrive – what could be more ideal! We booked the trip with renewed enthusiasm, and prayed to God that everything would be perfect.
We woke to rain. And when I say rain, I mean wet rain. The black skied, inescapable, torrential, tropical, terrible downpour of the southwest monoon. Needless to say our mood as we nervously waited for the skies to clear and the sun to come out was as black as the sky itself. Not even the four-week old kittens padding around could alleviate Forrest’s thunderous mood. As we weren’t able to postpone the trip because we had to head back to horrible Phuket to sort out our visas, we made the decision that if the weather didn’t clear up then we would have to go and get our money back and get the afternoon ferry. After all there was no point of a paradisiac camping trip on a remote beach if we had to huddle under a palm tree to uselessly avoid the rain – and let’s not forget the scene in The Beach where it is raining and even beautiful Leo looks grumpy. And then he gets attacked by a shark, so forgive me for not wanting to relive that particular scene! We waited, and waited, but the rains showed no sign of abating and we resigned ourselves to the fact that instead of camping on Maya Bay we were probably going to be spending the night hot and grumpy in the tourist hellhole of Phuket. BUT… by the time we had trailed miserably over to get our refund the skies had cleared, the sun was shining and Forrest was smiling again! We celebrated by buying a couple of bottles of rum to take camping with us, after all the weather had proved to be unreliable and if we were going to get caught in the rain then it was probably best that we were drunk.
We met up with the rest of the group and headed over to the boat, and luckily we seemed to have a nice mix of people, not just the gaggle of Gap Yah’ers that we had feared. Our guides seemed awesome, if a little Thai-crazy, and we set off towards the National Park and Maya Bay in a slightly easier manner than Richard, Francoise and Etienne. While we waited for the day-trippers to disappear we stopped off in a stunning little inlet for snorkelling, where we saw clownfish, pufferfish and touched a sea cucumber, while guys on the boat threw bits of bread at us which sent hordes of tiny tiger fish to swirl around us, going crazy for the carbs. As we were getting back on to the boat, another boat turned up and asked poor Forrest to tie him up to a rope anchor – no easy feat with a snorkel in one hand, a boat in the other and treading water. Forrest says that the big rock covered in sea urchins came out of nowhere, and was unavoidable, but I have a feeling that he will remember to be a little more careful in future when putting his feet down after one of the guides had to wee on him to dissolve the poisonous sea urchin spikes embedded in his foot.
The sea urchin debacle was forgotten pretty quickly as we swam over to the island, and with Moby’s Porcelain echoing around our heads, walked down to the beach. Completely emptied of boats, and deserted of tourists, our first sighting of Maya Bay was not too dissimilar to Richard’s in the film. We spent a good while in awe of the beauty, before taking the obligatory clichéd photographs and listening to the film soundtrack, which could have been playing from permanent speakers in the cliffs. I’m sure that that beach has had to listen to All Saints singing about searching for more, Sugar Ray spinning away and Moby musing on kaleidoscopic minds more times than it would like to, but for once I wasn’t bothered about being a clichéd Gap Yah’er – they formed the perfect soundtrack to the film and they formed the perfect soundtrack to our own little slice of paradise pie. As Forrest and the boys played a game of football (remember when I said after his football match in the Andes on the Inca Trail that he wouldn’t ever play in a more stunning surrounding again – well I was wrong) I chatted to the girls, and we all realised that this night was going to be pretty special.
After the sun set we all tucked in to a delicious spicy chicken curry and then it was really time for the fun to begin. Armed with buckets of vodka red bull we played our favourite game, which appears to transcend all nationalities, ages, backgrounds and cultures – KINGS! Our lead guide M did exactly as his job description implied and took charge of the drinking game, and everyone joined in and we had a riotously amazing time! Thoroughly tipsy by this stage, and having a ball, it was time for the next stereotypical feature of our Maya Bay adventure, swimming in the ocean in search of phosphorescent plankton. The film implies that simply disturbing the water causes the plankton to glow brighter than the northern lights, however nature is not that easy to activate and we spent an hour flapping around in the water like mad men occasionally glimpsing a flash of green near our fingertips out of the corner of our eyes. Nonetheless, despite the lack of bioluminescent plankton, our midnight swim was incredible and once out of the water we dried off around a camp fire as M and Dave played guitar and we had a good old-fashioned sing-a-long under the stars. After a mighnight feast of BBQ chicken courtesy of a crazy local with wide eyes, we settled in to our sleeping bags on the sand as we watched the guides put on our own personal fire poi show, before the excitement of the day overwhelmed us and we all quietly drifted off to sleep.
Although sleep had no trouble finding us, it was more difficult to hold on to it, as the black night sky was illuminated every few minutes with glaringly bright lightning flashes and warning rumbles of thunder in the distance. Around 5:30am we felt the first few drops of rain on our faces and everyone quickly rushed off the beach and under the shelter of the little camp for a couple more hours sleep. I managed to doze for possibly another hour, but the sounds of crabs crawling around in a bucket right next to my head became too difficult to ignore, and I eventually gave in and headed back down to the beach to watch the day break. The others weren’t far behind and we all went for a swim before breakfast, raving about how much fun we’d all had the night before. Of course, it had to come to an end as none of us were keen to stay and wait for the hordes to arrive and ruin our idyllic night and we made our way back to the boat. There was just enough time for another quick early morning snorkel before we docked back at Phi Phi Don, and a quick look at the monkeys on the aptly named Monkey Beach taking a stroll along their empty beach before they too were bombarded by tourists. Our Maya Bay camping experience was definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far, and had been everything we had hoped it would be and more. Yes it was a little clichéd, and yes it was a little corny, but sometimes these things just have to be done.
Unfortunately we then had to leave paradise and head back to Phuket to try to organise our visas, which turned out to be in vain anyway as we were advised that the best thing to do would be to go back to either Singapore or Malaysia to extend it at a Thai embassy there. Unwilling to retrace our steps we decided to head across the country to Koh Tao and then do a visa run from there across to Burma, which would buy us an extra fifteen days, which was all we really needed anyway. Having heard great things about Koh Tao from Gazz, we planned to spend a few days there and possibly, Gap Yah budget depending, do our Scuba Dive certifications there. You might remember that we had considered doing our PADI course in Taganga, Colombia, but had decided to do the Lost City trek instead. Obviously I wouldn’t change this decision, but I was still keen to do my Scuba cert – past dreams of being a marine biologist were never far from my mind! Excitingly, to get to Koh Tao we had to take a, wait for it, night…..BOAT! An exciting change from the exhausting night bus, we were given actual beds and managed to have a proper night’s sleep before arriving at the island at 6am. Gazz had recommended a hostel, which is such a nice change, rather than trawling around with heavy backpacks on trying to find somewhere to stay. We booked in to our little bungalow for one night, had a little rest (the night boat might have had beds but it hadn’t been the Hilton so we were still pretty tired) and then went off in search of a scuba school. Not a hard task as every other shop on Koh Tao is a scuba school, but we found the school attached to our accommodation to be exemplary, and the price of the course included accommodation so it was a double bonus. We changed rooms immediately, going up to our student digs, but reorganised for the room we had just paid for to be transferred to our final night in Koh Tao.
Our course began that same day, and we were ushered in to a tiny room to watch chapters 1-3 of the instruction DVD and told to read the relating chapters in our books by the following day. We must have been watching the DVD for less than a minute before Forrest started complaining that he was bored, falling asleep and needed a coffee. God knows how this boy managed to get through an economics degree and accounting and finance masters! The coffee helped slightly, but he still moaned, groaned and sighed his way through the two hours of instruction and information, and then pretty much flat out refused to read the book or complete the end of chapter knowledge reviews. I on the other hand, being the model student that I am, spend the rest of the evening reading through the book, underlining the answers to the ‘things to think about’, filling in the little quizzes on every page and completing the knowledge reviews, all the while being berated by Forrest for being a huge geek.
My thirst for knowledge and unquestionable desire to be at the top of my game at all times was to be to my advantage, for once on the boat the next morning heading out for our first underwater lesson I was able to answer all of Gina’s questions and successfully assemble my scuba gear while Forrest flailed around wishing he had read the book rather than roll around the bed complaining that he was bored as I became much more advanced at scuba than him before even getting in the water. With Gina and Annette as our instructors, and all our gear on, we jumped off the boat and slowly swam over to the beautiful Japanese Gardens for our confined water preview dive. We knelt on the sand bottom in shallow water while we practiced skills such as taking your mask off and putting it back on, removing your regulator and equalizing etc etc, whilst curious tropical fish swim around you wondering what on earth is making those noisy bubbles. We both quickly picked up how to do everything which meant that there was time to scuba back to the boat rather than swim back on the surface – a very good start to the day and course indeed! That night after a nice Thai meal we went back to our room for some more swotting (me) and much more complaining (Forrest), before I insisted that we get an early night so we were fully prepared for dives one and two the next day.
Feeling confident about repeating the skills we had learnt the previous day in deeper water, and excited to explore the coral some more, we were in high spirits as we boarded the boat which would take us out to the Twins dive site. As we attempted to set up our equipment, the boat lurched from side to side, causing our insides to curdle and turning our brains to mush. I was obviously proficient enough by this stage to still assemble to scuba gear no worries, but by the time the boat arrived at the dive site I was feeling ridiculously sick and was desperately trying not to chunder everywah. Forrest wasn’t looking too great either, as we squeezed into our wetsuits and lugged the heavy tanks on to our backs. Desperate to get off the boat and in to the water, I quickly followed Gina to the back of the boat where she jumped off with ease and instructed me to do the same. The boat was still lurching up and down uncontrollably and I had some difficulty controlling my shaky body as I attempted to simultaneously let go of the handrail to hold on to my mask and regulator with one hand, my weight belt with the other and my breakfast in my stomach in order to jump in. When I eventually managed it, my stomach heaved a sigh of relief and I did indeed vomcano which was entirely unpleasant but the fish seemed to enjoy my regurgitated breakfast. No further details needed. Once we were under the water, our seasickness evaporated and we were able to enjoy the dive. I delayed getting back on to the boat for as long as possible, but once the rest of the dive groups were back on I dragged myself back on and tried to ignore the returning rumblings of seasickness as we moved on to the next dive spot. Gina quickly went over the plan for the next dive, and mentioned that a turtle had been spotted there a couple of days before and showed us the hand signal for turtle incase we spotted one. We got back in to the water before I got the chance to feel too ill again, and made our way to a sandy bottom to go over some of the skills – no problems there which meant we got to spend the rest of the dive looking for the turtle. We’d only been swimming for five minutes or so when Gina starting gesturing wildly and wiggling her hands together to indicate turtle and sure enough there he was. We watched Crush aimlessly bob about, picking little morsels of food from the coral and swim effortlessly around despite a huge cumbersome shell on his back – pretty similar to our scuba tanks actually. It was an amazing moment and all seasickness was forgotten about, chundering everywah had definitely been worth it for that special turtle sighting. The boat trip back wasn’t too horrendous, and I even managed to use my still slightly queasy stomach as an excuse from revising and swotting that evening, and we just chilled in the hostel after another amazing cheap meal.
Dives three and four were scheduled for the following afternoon, but first we had more of the fascinating DVD to watch, much to Forrest’s displeasure. Gina had said that we only had to watch one more chapter, as chapter five was just marketing garb, but Forrest was so anti-DVD watching that after an hour in to learning about how to plan and record your dives he began to feel unwell. At first I thought that he was just trying to skive his way out of the boring stuff, but when Gina said that if he wasn’t feeling well we should postpone the dives until he felt better, I realised that it wasn’t just laziness that he was afflicted with. We headed back to the room for Forrest to chill and get some sleep, but in the heat of the day and with no air-conditioning our room was unbelievably hot. We did have a ceiling fan but some absolute incompetent idiot had designed it to rotate around the room and there was no way to fix it on one spot, which meant that it came past the bed once every nine seconds for one second, therefore completely impossible to cool down at all. Forrest tossed about getting hotter and hotter by the second before declaring that if he didn’t cool down he was going to die, so we quickly packed our stuff up and moved to a room with air-con. Bliss. We spent the rest of the day chilling (in my case literally at this point – Forrest was still too hot even with air-con so we had it blasting at the lowest temperature which meant that consequently I was freezing) and hoping that he was feeling better by the next day so we could complete our course.
Luckily, after a proper night’s sleep in a cool room he was feeling his normal self again, and we went for breakfast before heading to the dive school. We were waiting for our order to arrive when I noticed a girl walk past the door of the café and make a very obvious double take before screaming “BEA!” I was delighted to see Rachael Jackson, a friend from Clitheroe, who was travelling with her boyfriend Tommy and a friend from university, Emily. I wanted to go for drinks right then and there with them and catch up on all the gossip from home, but of course there was a slight issue of scuba diving, exams and not to mention the small trip to Burma we had to make that evening, so we made plans to meet the following evening. We then bumped in to each other again when five minutes later Emily came crashing off her scooter outside the dive shop and had to be bandaged up by Gina, thus cementing my opinion that Forrest and I were not going to be getting scooters at any point! Dives three and four were amazing; we passed all of our skills with flying colours, went down to 18 metres and saw heaps of cool fish – including an eel, trigger fish and an enormous prawn! Confident that we were now scuba divers, we just had to pass our exam! My swotting, combined with Forrest’s help with the maths calculations meant that we were Gina’s highest-ever scoring students, with a grand total of 88/90! Hopefully we’ll get the opportunity to dive again soon, as we both absolutely loved it, and really want to experience a night dive as well.
As I have mentioned, that night we had a Gap Yah chore to do – hopping over to Burma/Myanmar to extend our visa by a further fifteen days. We organised this through one of the many operators offering the service, which meant that all we had to do was take the night boat back across to the main land where we got picked up and taken by minibus to the border. From there we got our exit stamps at the Thai immigration before jumping on a dodgy looking longtail across the river to Burma. A torrential downpour kindly started when we were in the longtail which meant that we were dripping wet as we waited at immigration in Burma to get our passports stamped, but that was over and done with in five minutes, and it was back on the longtail to Thailand where we got another fifteen days on arrival – sorted! Then the journey in reverse, with the bus and an express boat getting us back to Koh Tao just in time for happy hour! Possibly the easiest visa run ever! Forrest was particularly happy about the fast process as he was unwilling to spend longer in Burma than was required; as Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for a boycott on tourism in protest of the repressive dictatorship in power, and of course being politically and ethically concerned Gap Yah’ers we wanted to respect this.
That night we went out for an Indian meal with Al and Annette from the dive school, before meeting up with Rachael, Tommy and Emily for buckets and white Russians on the beach, catching up on all the Clitheroe gossip and generally having a jolly nice time as we watched the fire poi get dangerously close to singing our eyebrows. It was so nice to see a familiar face and made us even more incredibly excited for the next day… Koh Samui and the arrival of Mum, Dad and Louis!
Forrest’s Final Thought…
From an early age I always devoted much time to reading newspapers, be it in print or online; the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Huffington Post, BBC Sport or even occasionally the FT. However, whilst I enjoyed reading newspapers, reading novels or almost any book for that matter was certainly not my forte. Save a few Enid Blyton books whilst I was growing up, my book shelf always remained largely empty. Of the few, and I mean few, books that I did read during my teenage years, Alex Garland’s The Beach had quite a profound effect on me. Lured by tales of tropical islands, paradisiacal beaches, and the laid back liberal lifestyle of travellers, I can honestly say that this book was what inspired me to travel all those years ago.
In addition to giving me the inspiration to travel, the book gave me the inspiration to read more, something I’ve always regretted not doing. However, in in the end, amidst the partying days of Clitheroe Sixth Form, the inspiration was simply not enough, and stupidly I did not read again for quite some time. It wasn’t until I started going out with Bea “10 books a day” Cross that my book shelf started getting one or two additions. However, whilst I started to read a handful of books here and there, it was studying at university and copious amounts of academic reading, which eventually hampered my efforts. I never found it relaxing to sit down with a book after reading a journal on interest rates and bond yields!
And so to travelling and our Gap Yah adventure around the world; this was my chance. Eight and a half months of doing pretty much f**k all. If I couldn’t fit reading in around lying on beaches, drinking cocktails etc etc then books just weren’t for me.
I started with The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, whose title was the inspiration for the name of this blog! The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was a gift from my dear Watson, who had read this book whilst travelling himself, and could not recommend it highly enough. And he was not wrong. It was a truly awesome book from start to finish with a crazy plotline and one I’d recommend to anyone wanting something a little different. Suffice to say, the book aroused my desire to read again and I soon set about conquering Gregory David Robert’s Shantaram; a book that follows the true, albeit slightly fictionalised, story of Robert’s escape from an Australian jail and his subsequent fugitive life in Bombay. The life he leads whilst on the run is nothing short of astounding; setting up a health clinic in a Bombay slum, working for mafia and eventually going to war in Afghanistan to fight the Russians are just a few of things he gets caught up in in his amazing story. Bea, who has read about 1.7 billion books, says that this is one of greatest books she’s ever read and I couldn’t agree more.
Since devouring these two books at the start of our trip, I have read nearly every day. I have got through a whole assortment of books and genres from classics such as Tolstoy’s Resurrection, to crime fiction thrillers such as Stieg Larrson’s Millemium trilogy. I’m extremely happy that I’ve finally started to read books whilst at the same time slightly saddened by the fact that it’s taken me so long to do so. I can’t help but think I’ve got an awful lot of catching up to do! And for me travelling and reading have much in common, they both broaden your horizons and open you up to the world around you. And so to all those Gap Yah Chronicle followers who haven’t yet discovered the wonders of reading, I leave you with a quote…
“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” - Dr. Seuss – “I can’t read with my eyes shut!”
