A Lesson In Rubber!

Thursday 19 October

When we woke this morning there were only a few monkeys in the trees on the opposite side of the river, and they were not nearly so active as the troupe we saw yesterday. We had breakfast on the verandah overlooking the monkey ‘play area’, but sadly they didn’t arrive today. We did see a couple – mother and baby - on our side of the river leaping from branch to branch in the trees, but that was all. How lucky we were to witness the monkeys in their natural habitat yesterday. I also went to see if the spider was outside the hole we visited last night. He too was feeling shy, with only two feet protruding from the entrance – perhaps he sleeps with his feet out of bed too!

We left “Art’s Riverview Lodges” (as I found out these lodges were called) around 09.00 for a two hour drive to Krabi (pronounced ‘Crabby’ not ‘Crab I’ as I have been saying) – in another comfortable minibus – all eight sets of luggage just about go in the rear of the vehicle when the back row of seats are dropped forward. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as we accelerated along the main road, firstly back towards Surat Thani and then turning south to Krabi, the tall limestone peaks of the ‘karst’ scenery, covered in a dark green coat of vegetation, were like mammoth stalagtites rising towards the sky in all directions. It was all very dramatic. Closer to the road were large stands of rubber plantations separated by banana trees and coconut palms, all three staple trees of this area.

About an hour into our journey, the driver pulled off the road into a yard, surrounded by a couple of open-sided sheds, with a small house at the front. A man and a woman were in one of the sheds, pushing and pulling white sheets – about two feet by three feet – through an old fashioned mangle like my Nan used about fifty years ago. When most of the water had been extracted from the ‘sheet’, now about half an inch thick, it was placed on top of a pile of other ‘sheets’. We were visiting a rubber plantation and the white substance was pure latex. It felt like mozzarella cheese just out of the watery packet – soft, spongy, stretchy and damp. These sheets (looking a bit like white back-door mats) would then be hung over a line to dry, when they would change colour to a pale golden tan. When dried the ‘sheets’ were flexible, floppy rectangles, feeling more like a soft eraser, and would then be stacked up and sold to the local rubber company at 60 bahts per kilo.

We were then taken out into the field to see the trees. The farmer made a long sloping slit about a third of the way round the trunk, at the base of a scar where previous cuts had been made. The cut immediately bled a white milky substance and flowed into a small piece of coconut bark acting as funnel and dripped into coconut shell ‘cups’, tied round the trunk of the tree slightly under the funnel. Within three hours, the latex must be mixed with a chemical and water, which thickens the liquid into the soft spongy material we had seen. Usually the farmer and his ‘mate’ start cutting the trees around midnight. They had about a thousand trees in their stand and these would be cut for three nights in a row, then a night off, before beginning the cycle again. When the cut section stretches down to about two feet above the ground, the farmer would begin to cut through the bark on the opposite side of the tree, and work his way downwards, while the scarred bark would recover over the next few weeks. Ten trees would yield about one kilo of latex in each cycle, although the trees will be seven years old before good latex is released. The trees continue producing for a further 35 years, before replanting is needed – we hoped they practiced crop rotation, as cutting down all your trees in one go and waiting a further seven years before you saw any production, would not result in happy finances. It is a seven day a week job, but the man and woman continually smiled at us and seemed very happy with their lot,

We then carried on with the journey, having a short toilet break at a “motorway services” area – it seemed similar to Toddington or Newport Pagnell, substituting Maccy D’s and KFC for a local café, with petrol pumps and toilets – just not nearly so busy. The road near Krabi was being widened to become a dual carriageway, but in typical Thai style, they do not cone off the part of the road being worked on – over five miles - but just dig up the carriageway you are speeding along, so that you have to suddenly (there are no warning signs) swerve into the oncoming traffic, or around the diggers and steamrollers putting down a new surface, or even drive around men trying to construct the central barriers. It was all a bit hairy, but what we have come to expect, as ‘Health and Safety’ has never been heard of in these parts.

We ignored a sign to Krabi and took a right turn which ended at a long, semi-circular beach, with lots of long boats moored about a hundred yards out in the sea, as the tide was out! One of these was supposed to take us to our hotel at Rai Ley Beach, a distant resort of Krabi – we have come to expect isolated hotels from Kumuka. Having disembarked from the minibus, we all had to clamber back to our seats, and trundled off to a spot further down the beach where a ‘pier’ had been built out into the sea. The luggage was loaded into a two seater tut-tut, which wobbled its way along the concrete jetty, to where other long boats were tied up at the bottom of some steps. We all scrambled aboard one of these boats and sat two by two across the width (it was exactly the same as the boat we had used for fishing in Koh Samui). We wobbled from side to side as the boat sank lower into the water under the weight of the luggage as it was all loaded into the front section of the boat, about four cases high. It was a tricky manoevre to reverse the loaded boat from between two others, but eventually we were skimming over the waves to a beach a few coves up the coast.

As we reached a bay with a few buildings visible from out to sea, we turned towards land, until about twenty yards from the shoreline, when we suddenly stopped. Surely we weren’t going to have to carry our cases through the sea to reach dry land and our hotel!!! A dark grey jeep drove over the beach and into the water to ‘rescue’ us. First the cases were all man-handled into the back of the jeep and then we were helped aboard the vehicle. Once everyone and everything had been off-loaded from the long boat, the jeep made its way through the waves towards the beach – we felt many people sitting on the beach were watching us, but we later found out this happens a lot at low tide. The truck took us to the safety of a concrete lane, between a couple of restaurants/bars and all the passengers climbed off, before it sped away carrying all our cases! Help! would we have any clothes in this out of the way place? We were led uphill to a fairly new reception building, with apartments attached. Keys were handed to each couple and we were led even further up the hill towards a group of chalets. Ours, number 102, was at the end of the alleyway between the two rows of chalets and boasted a double bed in a standard sized hotel room, with a bathroom equipped with an electric shower (hot water ahhhh), that unfortunately spews out all over the floor and European loo again!!! I am sure we will be happy here for the next three days.

Having satisfied ourselves with a tuna sarnie and coconut shakes, we sorted our laundry and found our way to a basement ‘garage’ where a lady was busy hanging out washing on lines across the ‘room’. An ironing board was visible in an upstairs area. She weighed our bag – it would cost a mere 120 bahts for the three kilos , who had promisedto take us on a tour of the resort. As we all met by the swimming pool – a teardrop shape that apparently contains heavily chlorinated water – we could see some dark clouds closing in towards us. Nok told us about an offer from the boatman who had brought us here, to take at least five of us round the four islands we could see lying distantly off-shore, with an opportunity to snorkel and swim. He would also cook us some simple fare such as fried rice for lunch. All for 400 bahts each – less than 6 GBP. This seemed like a good opportunity to see some of the local sights, at a greatly reduced price from those offered in the travel shops nearby, so we decided to go.

As we left the hotel area, a clap of thunder could be heard in the distance, but still Nok urged us on. We walked along the stony beach past many bars, cafes and restaurants mingled with souvenirs, clothing and grocery shacks. There are areas of mangrove on the beach, but these petered out at the far end of the cove, and the beach became more sandy. We veered off up a lane between a row of newly built shops, towards a building site where a new large holiday complex is under construction. Walking around the perimeter and down past another clutch of chalets, we reached another beach on the opposite side of the rocky promontory, all sand, where apparently it is safe to swim. By this time the thunder was getting louder and the sky darker as clouds rolled in from across the Andaman Sea. We were just starting our return journey when the first few droplets fell, and within seconds they had become a heavy shower. We sheltered under the awning of a shop for a few minutes, until we decided it was better to make our way back to the hotel. We had only gone about 100 yards when the thunder clapped again, not far away now, and we took shelter under an old spreading tree at the back of our beach – but still several hundred yards away from ‘home’. We stood there for a while, joined by Warren, Linda and Jill, but as the rain was driven in horizontally from the sea, by ever strengthening gusting winds, we were getting soaked and decided to make for the dry safety of our room. By the time we got there, we were dripping – reminiscences of an evening in Chaweng came to mind. But it gave us a good excuse to try out the hot shower and relax with a “Chang” beer or two, while the rain continued to torrent from the sky, flooding all the paths around our chalet. Later when the rain eased, the staff at the hotel were out with brooms sweeping away the flood water – shame it started to rain again soon after.

We watched television for a couple of hours – Kurt Russell and Steven Segall film, and really relaxed for the first time for ages. It was then time for dinner. My sandals were still soaked, water dripping from the toes, but I didn’t want to wear heels and aggravate my ‘poorly’ toes - they are now healing well, I am pleased to say, and look almost normal today. (Arms are getting better too.)

We went to the hotel restaurant where we ate lunch, as we didn’t want to go too far as there was still some spectacular lightning out across the bay. Colin chose sweet and sour chicken and shrimp rice, while I reverted to Koh Samui days, and ordered barbequed squid, jacket potato and a large corn on the cob (I have been having withdrawal symptoms for a jacket potato since Koh Samui. They also had a large cocktail menu which I just had to sample, and the Blue Hawaiis were quite strong and a greeny colour (?), but still tasted good. It was then time to return to the room, and while Colin watched some footy, I caught up on the blog.

We assume that this area was severely damaged in the Tsunami, almost two years ago, as nearly all the buildings are new or under construction. Many of the shops, cafes and bars are still in corrugated iron shacks along the back of the beach, but many new ones are being built, together with hotel accommodation, in an effort to return the area to the tourist attraction it once was.