Remnants of Ton Sai

Living with Chai, Nee (his sister) and Mook (his nephew), I really gained an appreciation for their lifestyle. Talk about living in paradise! The food was amazing; I don’t know how I ever even thought Thai food was good at restaurants that simply cater to the ‘farang’ (foreigner) tastes. The food in restaurants is garbage compared to Nee’s cooking, she’s just so phenomenal!!!! I wish I had time before leaving to learn all her kitchen secrets…oh man, what a treasure trove that would be.

This is a photo from an afternoon market in Krabi town where Chai and I went to buy produce, and where I was finally able to buy strawberries! For some insane reason, strawberries in southern Thailand are very expensive, and hard to come by, in the north its rather easy. But I was living in the south, so my strawberry cravings continued. Chai thought it was so funny that I wanted them so bad that he bought me 4 packages one time as a surprise so I could have them in the morning with my granola, fruit, and yogurt. So sweet!

Chai and I were already good friends before I moved in with them, but being there, we became even better friends. During the days the three of them would get up super early-we’re talking like 4:30am (!!!), and I would sleep in until about 8am, at that time I would get up and get ready to climb. While waiting to meet up with friends to climb with, I would help out at the café because that is their busy time. Then usually around 9 or 10am I would leave to go climbing, and return after dark. Upon returning Chai, Nee, Mook and I would eat the dinner which Nee and Mook made, and sometimes other Thai’s would come for dinner too-an old man, or an 8 year old boy who lived down the path (he loved to sneak my cookies when I wasn’t looking). I learned that Ton Sai is more than a place for travelers to come where the climbing is unbelievable, but it is a community that exists among the locals even when there are no tourists-sometimes we forget that part, and it’s nice to be reminded.

I would accompany Chai to Krabi town for supplies, and sometimes just for us to get away. He enjoyed the company when I came along while he ran errands, and I enjoyed getting away and driving around the countryside, and we always had a blast. This photo is of the Ao Nang International Off Road 2009 event. Pretty entertaining.

This photo is of Chai walking along a pier in the small fishing village.

Chai’s brother and wife live on an island and run a bar there, they ordered some shirts to be made with their logo, and so one day while Chai and I were in town getting supplies for Pyramid, we picked up the shirts for him.

We drove out to a small fishing village and paid a boatman that was going to the island to deliver the shirts to the bar.

The pier is not very far from the island and yet there are no westerners or tourists. The boat area/beaches for tourism is quite a ways away around the cove, and so this pier we used was unspoiled. It’s a small community is built among mangroves, at the end of a long and winding, poorly maintained dirt road in the middle of no-where.

It was breathtaking.

The following are some random photos of critters I have encountered in Ton Sai.

This is the Black Giant Squirrel!!! It is one of the largest squirrels in the world, and I was so SO excited to see it in the wild. Most people go 'birding' aka bird watching to try to 'tick' birds off their list from around the world. Well...I go 'squirrel-ing'. This was one I have always wanted to see.

On a funny side note, while being here in Ton Sai with so many climbers from all over the world, I have learned how to say 'squirrel' in 15 languages now!!!!

This is a non-venomous tree snake that happened to end up on the beach one afternoon while I was climbing. On-lookers gathered around and watched it uncertain of what kind of snake it was and curious if it was poisonous or not. The dog even was barking at it and a little hesitant to go near it. There are quite a few other snakes that look very VERY similar to this tree snake, and with out being experienced in your snakes-it would be easy to mistake venomous ones for this one. The snake that most resembles this one is a Pit Viper, same coloration and from a few feet away looks almost exactly the same. A bit from a Pit Viper can quickly lead to death, so most people wouldn’t risk getting close enough to a snake to determine which one it is. Both this tree snake and the Pit Viper live in this area, and both like similar habitats. Since this snake was on the beach, everyone was not sure which snake species it was…perhaps its not the tree snake? It is best to air on the side of caution and just considers all snakes in Thailand to be deadly, so as not to get in a bad situation.
This snake however, I was certain was not a Pit Viper, I knew it was a tree snake because while my ribs were healing, I spent a lot of time at Pyramid reading up on books about animals and reptiles of Thailand. Granted-I WAS mostly interested in the squirrel section of the book, but none the less, I learned my snakes as well.
So I waked up to it, picked it up and carried it to a tree along the cliffs edge where I let it go. Word traveled fast around Ton Sai and for the next few days I was told I was nuts, but I tried to explain that I know my snakes, and people still couldn’t believe it. The thing about this tree snake is, although not venomous, they still have teeth in the back of their jaw, and when bitten the wound can become infected rather quickly from the exposure to an array of bacteria from the snakes mouth-it does eat a lot of things I wouldn’t normally rub into open wounds you know. So you can imagine why people think its best to treat all snakes as harmful-because they are.

A butterfly (or moth?) on a tree near Pyramid Bar.

Jellyfish washed up on shore on Railay beach.

A beautiful yet very strange insect that was on a friends dinner plate one evening. We didn't know what it was and we weren't sure if it had wings, but we took photos because it was so pretty.

It was about the size of an ant, and very delicate looking. It looked like it had a snow flake attached to its butt. The way it moved around was a dance like prance, and very slowly. Stunning really.

My tummy since being sick a few weeks back had slowly started to hurt again. I think while sick and vomiting so much before, I must have gotten rid of a lot of the bad bacteria that was the issue, and with time it slowly came back. I knew of some Thai antibiotics you can buy at the store that work magic according to other climbers, but they were out in Ton Sai. So I took some antibiotics from the doctor but it didn’t seem to help much. I really needed the Thai ones because I knew they were a broad spectrum antibiotic, and they would fix this. I was planning on leaving Ton Sai and heading to Bangkok around the 12th anyway, and I wasn’t feeling so well I didn’t even want to climb because I was tired all the time, and my tummy hurt when wearing my harness. While most people would cruze though as many climbs as they had time for when nearing the end of a climbing area, I barely climbed…I think I did 8 pitches in 4 days. Woo. Not good…and my stomach wasn’t getting better with time, so I decided it was best to just move and I booked my flight to Bangkok for the 12th of Feb, and enjoyed my the last of my time in Ton Sai with the friends I had made. I was hard to leave, but it was time.

Thus I continue on my joureny through SE Asia.