On the 6th of April 2005, cousins Jamie Mackenzie and Ben Wylson set off on their bikes on a journey which will take them to over 50 countries and to every one of the worlds great continents, all without the use of an aeroplane.
Thursday, December 29, 2005: News flash: Christmas accident report
Ben was lying in the ditch of a steep slope leading down from the top of the mountain. He had his head towards the foot of the hill, partly submerged in a stream. The situation appeared grave, very grave. "Ben, Wake up!!!!" Jamie screamed frantically; Ben did not move. There was blood everywhere, seemingly coming from Ben's head. Ben stirred. "What happened?" he groaned. "You've taken a fall," replied Jamie. "I thought you were dead!" he continued with a sob. "Let's get you out of here - are you O.K to move?" "I think so.."
The accident occurred whilst Ben attempted to find his motorbike keys. It turned out they'd fallen out of his pocket at the top of the mountain. It was twilight and getting difficult to see. As he searched for the keys he lost his footing, tripped and fell, knocking himself out. This is speculation, of course; Ben can remember none of it. The pair had been up to the top of Sairee mountain to take in the spectacular views and Ben decided to go home early. The last thing he remembers is looking for his motorbike keys. This is Ben's account of events after he regained consciousness:
"The stream was trickling over my face. I remember wondering how on earth I got there. I did not realise I was bleeding; the only thing I knew at the time was that Jamie was almost out of control, yelling so loud and with so much emotion that he scared me. This gave me my first indication that something was not right. Jamie put me on the back of his bike to take me to hospital. I felt groggy and sort of passed out again with my head on his shoulders. At the hospital two nurses came to my aid. Stitches were administered to a deep gash on my temple after they cut back my hair. Another cut above my eye, bleeding a lot, required no stitches; however, it was badly swollen. Along with minor cuts and scrapes all over I had a swollen left foot, the inside of my cheek is ripped making my jaw ache and chewing difficult, and I also have the ugliest black eye I've ever seen; it's the colour of blackberry juice and so swollen that my eye does not open without effort. I was most shocked to see that I had lost the white of the eye; it has been replaced with red, the result of badly burst blood vessels. Thankfully my sight is still twenty-twenty. My whole body aches. Nobody on the island can quite believe it's me under all the bruises. Right now I feel lucky, lucky that Jamie found me when he did, that I have not got brain damage and that I did not lose my eye. I am thankful that I am still alive!"
Ben is so well bandaged up that he looks just like Wells' Invisible Man! The accident has given both Jamie and Ben a profound appreciation of the tango we dance with death, fate and luck each day. You may be struck down at your strongest or saved at your weakest. You may take every precaution but nothing will alter the hand you are dealt.
The accident was a sorry end to what has been a wonderful Christmas here on Koh Tao. Thank you everyone for your good wishes and gifts at this festive time. On Christmas morning conversations were made home. Jamie called his parents, Ben called his for the first time since leaving Beijing about 6 months ago. It was happy, emotional, so much better than that impersonal mode of communication that is email.
We missed the British Christmas traditions and the togetherness of Christmas, we missed the food too!! Now the duo have one more celebration, one for their departure from Turtle Island, a last goodbye, one of new beginnings, one of the new year, one of cycling onward, toward Singapore's sky-scrapers.
Friday, December 23, 2005: Lava lamps can be ugly
Only two days to go until Christmas and the team find themselves worryingly run a-ground at Chumphon.
Having left the inspiring and beautiful Koh Phi Phi behind them off the West coast in the Andaman Sea, the cyclists travelled north to Patong in the Phuket province; a place that would appear to sum up all that can be so wrong about this part of SE Asia. Grizzled old men parade the beach in nothing more than day-glow-coloured 'ball-crushers' with slogans such as 'cockpit' emblazoned on them. Hair leaps and bounds from their expanded frames, flesh flowing, dripping and bulging bulbously about them like a lava lamp. Orange-tinted women with shrivelled, puckered faces and leathered skin lie sprawled on sun beds doing their best to frighten away the sun...and indeed, anyone with eyes. The sand long ago gave up the battle for possession of the beach, finally relenting to the constant onslaught from the blue and white 'loungers' and parasols.
FWE did not linger for long and were on a bus in moments, again heading north to Ranong. It was time for another Visa run.
Leaving Koh Phi Phi was tough. After the initial shock had been overcome, after the surface appearance had been scratched, we discovered a fantastic, often breath-taking island still to survive. The beauty remains but in a less obvious way; the people are humble, modest and kind, a testimony to the strength of our potential nature and surely deserve so much more help than they are receiving. It is, though, worrying to see the levels of aid that have sifted through to the lower levels, to the meeker businesses, the fishermen and small shop owners. While initial efforts were effective many of the people now feel abandoned and forgotten and for a place such as Phi Phi, that provides so many of us with so much entertainment, it's a shame and an embarrassment to witness.
With our fondly assembled multi-national crew that included an Italian, a Chilean, a Welshman, an Australian, two Netherlanders and of course us two Swedes (it's a common mistake but we forgive people), we explored the smaller corners of Phi Phi and lived out a most memorable eight days.
We arrived under a cloud but left in the sunshine. All but for a few days we were blessed with scorching rays of golden shine that caressed our faded tans and charged the batteries back to near capacity. Still, when you are trading locations for somewhere like Koh Tao, there can really be very little to complain about and so it was that on Thursday morning we hopped aboard the 10am boat bound for Phuket Town, some two hours further north.
After being spat off the bus from Patong in a streetlight-lit Ranong, we checked into the Paradise Hotel for a couple of hours' rest before the run to Burma. The room provided complementary cockroaches, gheckos, spiders and bed bugs and achieved the rare status of being a 'rip-off' at the paltry sum of 50 baht each.
So once again we are in Chumphon, once again waiting for a boat, once again heading for Tao. If the boats don't start running again soon then it could be a lonely Christmas, folks; a Christmas KFC is looking like a distinct possibility. We are told daily that the monsoon is over, but we are beginning to have our doubts.
Will the winds and waves abate? Will the duo reach Tao? Will they be forced to eat battered reconstituted chicken heads? We live and wait in desperate but happy hope...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005: First hand Tsunami
On Boxing day 2005 at about 10:00 in the morning the Tsunami everyone remembers only too well hit Koh Phi Phi. It wiped off the face of the earth most of the buildings, people and trees inhabiting its most densely populated central bar of sand which joins the uninhabited higher ground to the east and west of the island together. More than 1500 people died here alone. This tiny island formed just a small part of a vast break-water made up of at least one coast of every country on the Indian Ocean.
We spent a day walking through an area that looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb. We shuddered to think of what it must've been like just under one year ago. The people here willingly give their eye-witness accounts of the moment the wave hit. One girl who could not swim was asleep when her room began to fill with water. Her boyfriend pulled her by the hair to safety just as "I was waiting for death" she said. Standing under a lone palm tree in a place that used to be covered with them, we asked her how much the government gave her in compensation for the loss of everything she had other than the boyfriend who saved her life. All together she received 2000 baht. That's less than 30 pounds.
Practical Action -the charity we hope to raise money for- (please see the tab 'Charity' in order to donate) has helped get communities in Sri Lanka also affected by the Tsunami back on their feet. It is important that we help these amazingly resilient people to live their devastatingly disrupted lives in as normal a way as it is humanly possible.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005: Negotiating the High Seas
The day was beautiful, a light breeze played with the palm trees, holiday makers cooked gently in the sun, some looked a bit over-done, ready for turning.
"I have an idea.." said Ben; "let's kayak over to Nang Yuang island!" Jamie looked over to the deceptively close island with images of the postcards we have seen floating between his ears; three lumps of rock protruding from the sea, joined with a bar of white sand, Thailand's answer to the Whitsundays. The thought of it was as tempting to the hot and bothered Jamie as a rump steak is to a feral hound. "Let's do it!" yelped Jamie, foaming at the mouth. A few minutes later and we were paddling hard out to sea on the 'pacific cruiser', a blue, stable-looking craft.
It took some time to get out into the open water. Blisters began to form on our palms. "We forgot to bring any water!" Ben yelled aft, his voice drowned by the sound of the waves. Waves! This was an unexpected bonus. The Kayak was being tossed around like a cork. "Don't let this thing turn broadside, or we're going in!" called Jamie forward. The breeze of before had become a squall, we were half way to Nang Yuang. "Do we turn back or push on?" "I say we go for it!" The thirst was worsening, the blisters were raw, the knees ached, the spray soaked our eyes with every wave, it was becoming difficult to see anything, the waves got bigger and bigger...
Just as we could take no more we heard the reassuring thud of bow on sand. We'd made it. The island was worth every paddle. We gorged on water and took on board plentiful supplies, we frolicked in the surf, relishing every second of our stay on Nang Yuang. In the back of our minds, though, there was an irrepressible sense of foreboding; we knew that shortly we would have to use every scrap of our severely depleted energy supply to get us back to Koh Tao. A black cloud hung over the sound of water. The waves looked more ferocious than ever. Foreboding became fear as we sat ourselves down in 'Pacific Cruiser' for the second time. Just as we were about to set off there was a sudden rush of people, running around and jumping into boats like madmen. They were yelling something in Thai and pointing out into the sound. "Look!!" shouted Jamie. There in the distance was a yellow sliver in the dark water, it was a canoe. There were three heads bobbing beside it in the water: the canoe had overturned.
Three Swedish guys had had the same gung-ho attitude as us. They had not been so lucky in one respect because they had capsised; on the other hand, you could say they were the luckiest men that day on the seven seas: they had been seen by the Nang Yuang coast guard, they had not been swept out into the gulf - they had survived.
We looked at each other with 'sensible' written in our eyes for once. We hailed a Long-tail, hoisted the 'Pacific Cruiser' on board and commissioned the friendly skipper to take us safely back to Koh Tao where we would begin planning our next fraught-with-danger Kayak adventure.
There was a party, although we are finding it difficult to remember the finer details. Ben D.J'd at the Dragon to a sizeable crowd in what was perhaps to be the final night of Skillywiggler; both he and Jamie were plied with complimentary drinks for their troubles. Afterwards, at the top of a hill lies Moonlight Bar which only opens monthly. We were greeted with the kind of neon paint that only shows up under ultraviolet light, and soon the paint was on us too, primeval patterns on the face, on the arms, chest and legs.
Tonight we put our lives in the hands of Neptune once again as we are on a short holiday. To escape the stresses of island life in the east of Thailand, we are journeying south and west to unwind on an island in the west called Koh Phi Phi. To be on the west coast, though, on Boxing Day would be a sombre occasion, so, to keep the mood light-hearted we're only staying for 10 days before we return to Koh Tao for Christmas and New Year. Then fans, it really is the end of our holidays. You will be pleased to hear that some day in early January Free Wheels East will take to the road for the last time to complete the last little bit of our second major cycle ride of the expedition so far; Beijing to Singapore. That just leaves designated routes three, four and five to go...
Wednesday, December 07, 2005: sad dog goodbye
The bay of Chalock seemed very quiet as the sun sank behind a ridge of the hills flanking the beach. Palm trees gently swished in a light breeze, a prickly halo before the molten red glow of the setting sun. A heron, silently, majestically flew past in the half light and a tethered long-tail bobbed on the water while we three spent our last few moments on our balcony together.
'Last call; everyone for the boat to Chumphon,' the squat man with a clip board tucked under his arm announced. 'That's me, boys,' Monty said as he laboured to shoulder his black Karrimor rucksac. Few words were said, handshakes and manly hugs, a slap on the back and that was that. Monty turned and lumbered up the jetty like a sad dog to the waiting white catamaran. He turned, raised a clenched fist and held it aloft. Head bowed, he walked up the gangway and disappeared from view. It was the end of the 'era of Monty'.
Time has marched on at a frenetic pace here on Koh Tao. Nearly seven weeks have passed since we first arrived on the night car ferry and we took up residence in our cherished Hut 27 at the JP resort. Our attention is shifting to FWE once more; slowly we're remembering who we are and why we are here. For the first time in many weeks we viewed the bikes this very afternoon. In their dank and dark place of storage they cut an ugly sight to behold: saddles black and covered in mould, tyres limp, chains stiff and tinted with rust; they looked sad and dejected, unwanted, lonely and out-of-place in this strange and alien land.
Anticipation slowly builds once more, the thought and comforting excitement of the un-known returning daily.
Saturday, December 03, 2005: Visa nightmare
Our sixty-day visas were about to expire; time to do a runner to Burma. While 'Monty The Pink' was left to bathe in the rain in the desperate attempt to achieve his longed-for 'healthy glow', Jamie and Ben took to the high seas once more.
A six hour boat ride, three hour bus journey, one hour wait in immigration, the discovery that we had overstayed our visa by a day, payment of a fine, severe reprimanding, thirty minute boat trip, arrival at Burma, quick coffee, boat ride, bus ride, KFC, boat ride, Koh Tao! A day of travel, discomfort and anguish but another thirty days have been granted and we are legal once more.
FWE feel desperately sorry for 'The Pink' as the rain has continued to run amok. 'The worst in forty years' the Bangkok Post read, 'It's all because of Monty' another one reported. The good news is that rumour says the inclement conditions are due to abate on the 6th December; the sad news for Monty is that this is the very day he is due to leave!
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