~no room left in paradise~

Wednesday, 7th February 2001

A long beach framed by boulders ~

That is where I am right now. Behind me, wooden huts, above me, the crowns of palm trees. There is someone playing guitar somewhere, in tune with the rhythm of the ocean. And I sit here, looking out to a distant horizon, and smile.

From all those things, it is my smile that takes me by surprise. For arriving here, on this island, I arrived right in the middle of my worst case scenario. There are no rooms left. None. Zero. It's all full. yet, instead of feeling awful, I muse in the shade and write down the story of the journey that brought me to this place.

It started yesterday morning, when I took the 7 o'clock bus in Songkhla, to arrive in Surat Thani in the late afternoon. Not that i was interested in Surat Thani. But i had to get there, as it is the ferry station to the islands in the Gulf. Knowing that I would only pass through the place, I took the next best room I came across, and started to organize the next part of the journey even before I moved the backpack into the room. "I want to get to Kho Phangan tomorrow," I told the man at the reception. He nodded, and handed me a slip of paper that listed the ferry times. "You can get tickets in the travel agency around the corner," he explained. Easy as that.

It was in said agency that I got the first hint that my trip to the island might not be all easy. "Do you also make guesthouse reservations?" I asked. The woman behind the counter nodded. "Yes we do, but for tomorrow the guesthouses we work with are booked already. It's full moon party on Friday"
"Aha," I said, not knowing how to handle this piece of information.
"But there should be accommodation on the other side of the island," she added.

Had it been the start of my journey, I probably would have reconsidered the whole island plan, and headed to an alternative place instead: Krabi or Ko Tao. The reason to go to KoPhaNgan, after all, wasn't minute planning. As so often, other travellers had brought the place up in conversations. "It is dream island," I had been told, several times. "You have to go there."

The first wave of doubts rose the next morning, when I saw the ferry arriving in the harbour. The number of people coming from the island, and the number of people going to the island - they were anything but equal. Still, as no one else showed any concern, I brushed the doubts away and joined the long queue of boarding passengers, and checked my ticket again, that for some unknown reason said: "You love Samui, Samui love you."

On board, I went to the front deck. I knew the cruise would take about two hours, offering time to enjoy the breeze and to check the guidebook for accommodation. On a whim, I asked the travellers who sat next to me for advice. "Hat Yao is the best beach," one of them said. I scribbled the two words on a piece of paper, and leaned back, to wait for the island to appear at the horizon.

It came to view like a picture out of scrap book: a long curved line, dotted by palm trees. Coming closer, the idyllic picture shifted and made space for more practical matters: a ferry town, scattered buildings, coloured roofs. And in front of it all: dozens of taxi jeeps waiting, to take the arriving passengers to the places they wanted to go. Almost there, I thought. After the bus ride from Songkhla, the overnight stay in Surat Thani and the ferry trip to the harbour of Ko Pha-Ngan, all that was left to do was to find the taxi to Hat Yao and climb inside.

And, of course, to find a place to stay there. Which usually is no problem at all, even though the island doesn't host a tourist office, and hasn't adopted the idea of vacancy signs either. But then, there always are free room somewhere. Except in the days before full moon. This is the rule I came to learn after most of the others in the taxi already had tried their luck and walked off, leaving only Anika and Sebastian, a couple from Denmark, and me as passengers. We were between a beach called Ao Si Thanu and Hat Yao, when the taxi suddenly came to stop, in the middle of the forest. The reason: another taxi, coming from the opposite direction. In its back, six travellers, their backpacks sitting between them. "You don't have to go any further," they told us. "There aren't any rooms nowhere. We been up until we reached the end of the road. It is all full."
With those words, they drove by.
"I just want a bed," Anika said. "We arrived in Bangkok yesterday evening, and spent the night in airport chairs, as our connecting flight was delayed. I haven' t seen a bed for two days. And now this. What do we do now?"
Our taxi driver placed the same question, just a moment later.
"Do you know of any rooms?" we asked in return.
He just shook his head. "I'm just the taxi driver," he explained.

Luck had it, that just at this moment a motorbike appeared. The driver: a friend or cousin of the driver. When he learned of the situation, he thought for a moment, and said: "Look, I don't have a guesthouse, but I run a restaurant near Hat Yao. If you want, you can stay there."
"Can we have a look?" Sebastian said, trying not to let our desperation show too evidently. To our surprise, the place to sleep we were offered was the sleeping room of the restaurant owner himself, upstairs, with a balcony and a view to the beach. "And where will you sleep?" I asked.
"Don't worry," he said.
And so I it was decided. Anika and Sebastian would take the double bed, and the restaurant owner would put up mattresses for me at the side of the room that opened to the balcony. Not exactly a honey moon suite, and surely not what either of us had hoped for when we arrived at the island, but a place to stay.

After a cup of tea with the others, I packed my daypack.
"I will walk down to the beach and take a swim," I told them, and waved goodbye for the day.
To get to the beach, I had to cross the road, and walk through a strip of palm trees. A walk from just a few minutes, but when I reached the sand, and saw the bungalows there, I realized how different it would be, to stay right at the waterfront: the bungalows were neat, built out of bamboo, and each and every one of them had a terrace in front, with a hammock hanging from the low roof, facing the water. A bigger bungalow served as restaurant, its sitting area framed by trees. It was paradise. And I had to stay at the doorstep of it, I thought, as I walked along the trail that lead to the beach.

And that is where I am now. In the shade of a palm tree, the sari being my home for the afternoon. After I had unfolded it, I went for a swim in the turquoise water. I drifted in the warm waves for a long time, drinking in the sight, the horizon, the beach framed by stone boulders, the little huts. And found to my surprise, that I am happy. Even though I don't have an own room, and not even a place to stay at the beach itself. Yet I am here, and it is beautiful. I think I will spent the whole afternoon at the beach, dozing, listening to the guitar playing, the waves turning, over and over again.

And I just had to write all this down. To give this unexpected feeling a lasting place. To remind me of it, in case I should forget about the beauty that can be found in the middle of a worst case scenario that decided to come true.

~~~~~~
Do

see the travel pictures: Samui
read the next diary entry: KoPhaNgan - solvitur ambulando

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