Five Months on The Rock

By Beth Green

After 12 hours of travel, we sat on yet another bus, watching through the dirty windows as Bangkok traffic chittered and lurched in the golden afternoon sunlight.

We’d been on this public bus for 45 minutes. We were nowhere in the city we could pinpoint on a map and didn’t really know if this bus would take us somewhere we wanted to go, anyhow.

The bus was old, but going strong. It stopped every few feet, and another crowd of school kids, or office workers, or ladies coming home from the vegetable market would get on and squeeze past my sweaty legs and big backpack, politely smiling and looking away as I apologized for being in the way.

The bus stopped at yet another intersection clogged with taxis, three-wheeled trucks, and motorbikes. I watched the shadows outside lengthen. I felt bone tired, but also, suddenly inspired.

“Let’s keep going,” I said to Dan.

He craned his neck to see over the top of the backpack he was cradling on his bent knees, crammed in the plastic seat across the aisle from me.

“Where?” he asked.

“Let’s find an island,” I said.

And so, we went to Koh Tao.

As sometimes happens when you make a spur-of-the moment choice to abandon a plan, we found that road blocks were lifted, obstacles decimated, red carpets rolled out.

We’d been sweating on the bus for close to an hour, stuck in traffic as gnarled as the noodles in a plate of pad Thai. But as soon as we decided to take Bangkok off our itinerary, it all came right. We alerted the conductor, shouldered the bags, leapt off the bus, hailed a taxi, shot through the streets, snapped up a ticket and were sitting on the night train to Chumphorn in quick succession.  At Chumphorn we transferred to a bus, which took us to the ferry. By morning, we were whizzing across the Gulf of Thailand on a high-speed catamaran watching British honeymooners drink beer for breakfast and subsequently puke it up.

We did our dive training at Master Divers, in Mae Haad.

Koh Tao is a tiny speck in the blue ocean, at eight square miles a fraction the size of its famous neighbors, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. It has three villages, a surprising number of hide-away resorts, and the largest concentration of dive shops I’ve ever seen.

I was there for the diving, and Dan, an indifferent swimmer at this point, was there for cheap beer. Or so we thought.

The three days we’d initially decided to stay on Koh Tao stretched to seven once my divemaster convinced Dan to sign on for a scuba course. We spent the mornings underwater, checking out clownfish and coral and avoiding the island’s strangely aggressive triggerfish. Afternoons we read or walked the sandy lanes that counted as “roads.” Evenings, we met new friends and, yes, drank cheap beer.

By the end of six days, the seed of a radical idea was blossoming. We left, but Koh Tao stayed with us: Palm trees. Tropical reefs. Friendly people. We continued on our Southeast Asia backpacker’s circuit. Cambodia. Malaysia. Australia for the holidays. India. Vietnam. Months passed, and we saw amazing, incredible, life-changing things. And we still kept talking about how we could get back to tiny Koh Tao.

So we did.

We signed up for divemaster courses, found a bungalow with a pet monkey living in a tree outside, and spent five months admiring the way the water shone in Thai sunlight—both above and below the surface.

Image courtesy pelkaphoto

The diving industry on Koh Tao sprang up in the 1990s. Before then, it was mostly uninhabited, with just a few houses where fishermen would overnight. In that relatively short amount of time since then, it’s grown and developed and yet still retained that “deserted island” feel. The inhabitants of the island are castaways themselves. Foreign dive professionals from a hundred countries staff the technical side of the resorts and dive shops while Burmese and Nepalese migrants mind the shops and cook and clean in the restaurants and hotels. Tourists arrive from everywhere. Even the Thai population is adrift here—it’s no-one’s home, and because of that it’s as free and easy a place to be as I have ever been.

Living on a small island is not for everyone, however. Water shortages, power outages. Cash shortages if weather keeps the ferry from running and the banks from bringing more change. Jokes about “island time” are not really jokes, just a reflection of how perceptions of urgency are diluted by the sea that surrounds us.  Bad weather is the bogeyman.  If the ferry isn’t running, you might not make your flight in Bangkok next week. Emergencies are dealt with as swiftly as possible—but may require help from another island, or the mainland, an hour or more away.

And, like in many enclaves of expatriates and long-term travelers, there are some who come and never leave—but say they’d like to. Anyone who’s spent some time on “The Rock”—as Koh Tao is affectionately called—can name-drop two, three or a dozen people who have stayed over the time they should have. People who sit in perfect paradise and only notice the mosquitoes. Some of these became inspiration for characters I’d write into a mystery novel manuscript some months later.

Scuba self-portrait.
Water gets in my mask when I laugh.

Dan and I discussed staying on Koh Tao through the low season and on into the new year. We could have dipped farther into savings—travel budget gone now—and pulled out enough to pay the tuition for dive instructor courses. We’d need updated equipment. A higher rate of insurance. Maybe a larger apartment—a one room bungalow is fine for a few months, but indefinitely?  Outside practicalities had invaded our island life.

So we left. And chased money. And closeted up our dive gear.

But every so often, at an airport, we say, “Hey, let’s keep going. Let’s go back to Koh Tao.”

And one day, we might.

The First Big Trip

Jeanine Ertl is a rural, mini-homesteading mother to three young children on the Lost Coast of California. She blogs at RosieDreams. She loves writing, gardening, travel and following her ever-changing passion for learning-something-new-until-thoroughly-sidetracked.

I’m gonna backpack through Europe this summer, I told my boyfriend that day as I watered my mom’s sun parched lawn.

We were twenty years young, in college, living at our parents’, and in love.

I wanted to see with my own eyes one of the many famous landmarks imprinted from years of text books and television. I wanted to venture away from home on something bigger than a road trip.

But on that balmy San Diego evening I was met by a dreadful silence. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might not be interested. When I’d heard about “backpacking through Europe” my mind had connected with it immediately.

But now my heart raced, my thoughts canvassing the little I knew about actual “backpacking.” I had many questions, and now, the thought of a solo adventure left me a little worried.

So I re-stated my plans, preparing my thoughts better this time. Don’t you wanna see the Eiffel Tower for yourself? Visit the Louvre? Ride trains around the countryside and feel like you know what lies beyond the USA?

I was holding my breath now. Hoping with all my might that he’d be interested.

Now’s the time. We’ve got nothing holding us back!

The idea hung in the world of anticipated dreams for a few days longer. I thought about it obsessively while batting it down into my subconscious. Midterms were at hand.

A few days later, when it was obvious that I wasn’t changing my course, my boyfriend changed his. And it was with a deep sigh of relief that I set off in research- planning-mode for our first overseas adventure. Backpacking Europe.

I like to hear about people’s first travels. The journeys that pushed them beyond. To soak up more than they’d expected. To go a bit further. To step out of a comfort zone they didn’t know existed.

And Europe was ours. It was our big First Trip. My boyfriend and I had road tripped already a handful of times, borrowing a car and heading off for a few days to check out the coast, mountains, desert.

But Europe taught us to travel.

It was the trip that taught us to breathe in life.

To stop and taste the gelato, on a curb, in the heat of the Italian afternoon.

To sleep with our heads twisted up, one eye open as the train swayed through the night.

To put up with a fresh or stale baguette--morning, noon and night.

And most importantly, Europe taught us to revel in the art of serendipity, both in everyday life and especially in travel. Because truly there is an art to beginning one’s day with an open heart and a willing mind.

Europe started like this for us…

Bag won’t zip shut. Analyze contents again in search of unnecessary items.

Drive to airport late and realize Eurorail Pass tickets are in photocopy machine at local drug store.

Fly across the US and Atlantic, curious how life will shape up for the next six weeks.

Find ourselves safely delivered to England’s doorstep. Heathrow International.

Fifteen years ago that summer, my now-husband and I stood looking at each other, said backpacks claimed from baggage and now teetering on our backs. We stood quietly for a few minutes, watching as families and passengers confidently strode by in a current of togetherness. Our backpacks loaded and our travel know-how at point zero, we were felled by the very first move.

Umm, how do we get to London? we contemplated, not knowing precisely where we were.

Hmmm. Do we want to take a taxi? I don’t think there’s a train station at this airport. I suppose we should exit that way and look for a bus?

Yeah, that would be the cheapest. Definitely a bus.

So off we went, integrating into the lifeblood of flowing busy moving people exiting airports at all hours, our feet moving at last.

And that’s the way it all continued rolling those first few days. After waking at noon to the darkness of velvet wallpaper and tiny beds, crackers neatly waiting at the door, we’d ask each other “What should we do? Bus? Tube? Walk? Where to?”

We were new travelers in every way, in awe of the simple existence of this foreign-to-us-reality--double decker buses, red telephone boxes, the Queen’s guard in all their seriousness.

We rose late, which we learned was our typical style and not actually jet lag. And we walked until way past dark each day. Flipping through our guide books at times and wandering at others, the magic of the day tumbled out at its own pace.

And our trip continued on for six more incredible weeks. Including of course, new friends along the way and missed trains, late night drinks under lit verandas and plenty of stomach ailments, crazy dormitory hostels and tiny, stuccoed apartments, non-admittance to countries we had no visa for (bad planning on my part) and sleeping in train stations and on sidewalks when those closed. And the insanity of finding peace in simply not knowing; a first for me at the time, but a lesson I’ve continued to learn over and over since.

We fell in love with the whole process of traveling. The not knowing where we’d stay that night. What we might see the next day. Who we might meet. What deliciousness, or not (let’s be honest), would fill our bellies when our feet finally stopped walking.

After traveling Europe that summer we were hooked. We felt ready to take on any of the continents. Eager actually. And to this day, though we’re much more homebound with three little children under the age of six, we love the thrill of driving into the night, pulling over to a hotel that fits the moment’s need rather than having a stringently organized itinerary. For as much as I love making an itinerary, they leave our trips feeling too much like a “to do” list and less like an adventure.

So, if you’ll humor me now. Comment with your First Travel? The trip that hooked you? And if you’re so inclined, what moment stole you away to being forever torn between home and craving the next journey?