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September 19, 2002

survivor?

survivor?

I’ve never watched a full season of Survivor. And while I've never been eager in the past for the start of a new season, I’ll be watching Survivor Thailand simply for the scenery that I so miss.

A little over a year ago I too spent some time on a remote island in south Thailand. Ko Phra Thong (pronounced: Ko Pra Tong).

To get to Ko Phra Thong you have to take a short flight to Phuket or Ranong. Lucifer B. Elzeebub and I took a flight to Ranong. There a driver picked us up and drove us two hours to a little fishing village called Kura Buri. The "little fishing village" consisted of two rusty aluminum buildings and a store where almost any beverage you could buy had an expiration date pre-dating my high school graduation. I didn't care. It was hot and humid. I forked over a dozen baht for a huge bottle of expired water.

It was monsoon season and we had been traveling for the better part of the day without rain praising our own "good travel karma." They lifted our bags into the long tail boat and proceeded to asphyxiate the two farang for the next hour, two hours...oh hell who knows. Eventually it started to piss down rain. I shielded my camera with my life and the tiny boat bobbed up and down in the water. The two nice Thai guys who were driving the diesel fueled beast tried to steer, pull a plastic cover over us and hold our bags in the boat at the same time.

The nice woman at Railey Beach who set us up with this journey told us -- after the long boat ride -- it's all over. They'll pick you up at the lagoon in the jeep and drive you 45 minutes to the beach. Great.

So after a stomach churning boat ride we arrive and they drop us off in the jungle. There's no jeep waiting. Across the muddy lagoon we see another fishing village (pictured here). And we wait. And wait, and wait. The bottle of water I had on the boat ride with us was long gone and I was getting a crippling dehydration headache. There were coconuts all over the place. Lucifer and I tried to get them open but it's harder than it looks on Giligan's Island.

Finally after an hour and a half of waiting he leaves me in the middle of nowhere and follows the muddy tire trails into the jungle. I continue to try and open a coconut to soothe my mind bending headache while monkeys chuckle at me knowingly and try to open our bags. They have more success than I do. About a half hour later I hear off in the distance, "Moxie? Baby?"

So what does that mean? Am I supposed to leave my bags and follow the voice of Lucifer?

Of course I do.

Maybe he found some drinking water. If you've never been to Thailand during the winter just walk into a sauna. Then imagine it's about 90 degrees hotter and 100% more humid. I walk to find Lucifer with some guy who has a tractor (there are only about 15 people on the huge island) His name is Porn. Porn tells us before departing that the jeep went "boom!" and that's as much as I expect we'll ever know.

We sit in the back of a wet muddy and slippery handmade wooden trailer on trash bags. Our luggage was left with the monkeys who seemed to like my Exuviance skin care products. Porn says he will take us to the beach in the antiquated tractor. That didn't make me feel any safer. It wasn't the tractor, it was that his name was Porn.

We couldn't sit without bruising our coxic bone, couldn't stand without falling and shattering our coxic bone. It started to pour again as the Thai farmer pointed out the broken down jeep a few miles away from our drop off point.

"Boom!" he explained once again. We covered our heads with a left over garbage bag.

I wanted to cry but all I could do is laugh and hug my man.

Lucifer had his hand under my ass, presumably so I didn't shatter my coxic bone.

Yeah.

He kissed me and told me he loved that I was such a good sport about all this. Soon we passed out of the jungle and into true savannah. We saw bobcats and other things we didn't know even existed in Thailand.

And after almost 2 hours the rainy tractor ride was over. It was all worth it once we got to Golden Buddha Beach.

Of course, once I got back to Los Angeles Lucifer voted me off the island. For a dish water blonde. But that's a story for another time.

Posted by Moxie at September 19, 2002 9:43 PM |Stumble It! | | del.icio.us