Wednesday, June 10, 2009

On the Road Again

I'm leaving Koh Tao in a few hours for a 24-hour journey to Malaysia.  3-hour boat, followed by 5-hour "layover" at the train station, followed by 15-16 hour night train ride.  Also the trains typically run hours late, so the trip will probably be longer...

Anyway, I realized that I've just passed the halfway point of my trip - entering the 5th week of my 10 week trip, and it has gone by fast!  Too fast, maybe.  I've actually spent more time here in Koh Tao than in any other single place so far on my trip so I'm itching to get back on the road again.

Koh Tao has been great - I've really enjoyed scuba diving and just relaxing on the island but there is something a little bizarre to me about the place.  Up until about 10 or 15 years ago, this island was little more than a remote fishing outpost.  Then as word got out about the amazing coral just off the coast and the island's natural beauty, the place exploded on to the scene and is today the largest center of diving instruction in Southeast Asia and a firm fixture on the backpacker trail.  It remains the quietest of the three famous Gulf of Thailand islands (Koh Samui is the most commercialized, with hotels and 5-star resorts, Koh Phan Ngan is something of a backpacker party paradise, while Koh Tao remains relatively laid-back, with most people here to dive and chill out).  Yet it is still a place that to my eye is overrun by visitors.  There are certainly more foreigners than there are Thais here and this kind of experience (vacation vs. travel) begins to feel a little tiring after a while.  The foreigners I've encountered in Koh Tao, unlike in Vietnam and Cambodia, seem to be more interested in partying and more abusive of the locals (I feel terrible for the poor clerks at 7-11 who deal with drunken English partyers all night) and less polite, engaging, and interested (or interesting for that matter) than the foreigners I encountered before.  So I'm definitely eager to get back to real traveling off the backpacker trail a little bit, exploring new places, mingling with locals, and navigating my way around.  

A note on the English language - It is ubiquitous, maybe too much so.  As an English speaker I've never had any real trouble communicating so far on the trip, and it will be even easier as I move on to Malaysia and Singapore where English is an official language and universally spoken.  It's actually been a little too easy, for my taste, and I feel like I've learned nothing of the local languages because I haven't needed to.  English is also how you communicate with other travelers, be they Swiss, Spanish, French, or Japanese.  I feel a little guilty about that - they defer to the rest of us by speaking English while I know little of their languages - but when I have shared this concern with them they brush it aside, noting that when they come to travel they end up speaking English the whole way to communicate anyway so for them they are already used to it.  

Ok off to travel for a long while now.  Will be reading, listening to my iPod, staring out the window, and sleeping a lot.  24 hours of travel.  fun.  


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