Australia Day is one of the hardest holidays to be away from home for us, we are used to not seeing family and friends around Christmas and New Year but Australia Day has always been one of the big ones in our social calendar. The same group of friends get together every year to compete for the coveted Captain Australia trophy, there are Australian flags as far as the eye can see, there is much eating of lamingtons and iced vovo's, the obligatory barbie, much drinking and the subsequent and various forms of nudity that go with it!! Well, we've seen the facebook photos and we are proud to say that our friends have kept with tradition, all of the above was covered and the winner of Captain Australia this year was Aaron Rodd, complete with mullet, nudity, Australia flag as a cape and the Union Jack over his rude bits!! Congratulations Aaron!
As for us, last year we put the word out to the boats in the anchorage and only 2 turned up, this year we put the word out and 13 came over! With nearly 30 people on board the Makani Kai was a little down in the stern as we tried to escape the fierceness of the sun, luckily there was a fair bit of breeze to keep us cool. The barbie got a work out as everyone threw their prawns on and I must say, the yachties know how to cater a party, the table on the Makani Kai was overflowing with all forms of salads, vegemite concoctions and desserts including meringue with passionfruit and cream (thank you Glynis and Grant!) As for Captain Australia, this wasn't exactly the type of crowd to nude up and go for it so we had an 'Australian of the Day' Quiz, the crew from 'Two Up' walked away with the champagne and the title. This was followed by Bruce from 'Envy' reciting 'Clancy of the Overflow', rousing renditions of 'Skippy' and 'Home Amongst the Gum Trees' from all the yachties, battle of the jokes between the Kiwi's and the Aussies before 'Land Downunder' drowned them all out and we got back to the drinking!!
As the party was ending and Aurelia and Soul were about to leave we let a lantern off the boat, our wishes for this Australia Day floated off into the air and out to sea.
We would like to thank the following yachts for joining us and making this Australia Day less lonely, 'Raku', 'Truest Passion', 'Muscat', 'Envy', 'Bach & Byte', 'Two Up', 'Braveheart', 'El Misti', Investigator II', 'Nowadays', 'Soul', 'Aurelia' and 'Lazy Bones' (the token Americans who downloaded pages of Australian slang and tried valiantly to use them on the day!)
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Here we are anchored at Nai Harn again! It's one of our favourite anchorages in Thailand, we love the people and the area but boy, was it a shock to come around that corner and all of a sudden see so many boats after over a week of being on our own. We thought that the crowds might have thinned out a bit as everyone sailed off through the Red Sea or off to explore the Similans and the Surins but it seems that people are still turning up. We had planned on stopping at Bang Tao on the way South as we had heard that they bring the elephants down to the shoreline in the afternoon and you can play around with them, take photos and sometimes even get a kiss from one! But the Makani Kai had other ideas, the autopilot decided to start playing up. With our departure date for the journey home creeping ever closer we decided that it was more important to get the autopilot fixed as soon as possible and so, continued on to Nai Harn where we organised a motorbike to go and drop it off to be fixed the next day.
I wasn't too disappointed, I love Nai Harn and there were plenty of things that we can do here. When we arrived we were a bit tired from having to hand steer for 6 hours and although we could hear something going on onshore we had a quiet night on the boat. The next day we took off to boat lagoon, we dropped a gas bottle off to be filled on the way and I can say that I am starting to feel like a local on the back of the motorbike. There we were, Jay riding and me on the back cradling the gas bottle on my lap, something that no doubt in Australia would be completely illegal and that there is no way I would do but here it just seems natural. Nearing boat lagoon we had our first near miss on the motorbike, a local guy zoomed past us with a Thai girl on the back of his bike, he had a truck to his right and ahead of him was another Thai guy on a motorbike who seemed to be in some sort of a daze, he was weaving lazily in the lane and seemed to be off with the fairies. As he went to pass the weaving guy he clipped him, knocking his bike out from under him. To his credit the guy off with fairies came to pretty quickly and landed on his feet, not worrying about his bike which was sliding across 3 lanes of traffic. Luckily Jay had seen what was about to happen and managed to swerve around the bike and the guy as he ran up the road chasing after the bike that had clipped him while yelling out to us to stop him. That would have been a heated conversation!
When we arrived back in Nai Harn after our day of running around we noticed that a heap of street stalls had been set up as well as a big stage for a band. We spent some time wandering around having a look at what was on offer, after speaking with one of the stall holders we found out that it was a festival to celebrate the completion of a new building within the temple there. At Nai Harn rather than masses of tourist accommodation everywhere a lot of the land is owned by the monks which is why it hasn't been built out. The temple at the back of the restaurants that line the beach is quite a large one and they had been constructing the celebrated building the last time we were here. The festival had been going on for a week and this was the last night. We bought a couple of things, Jay a couple of $3 t-shirts and me, some hand-made delicate looking wooden flowers, we watched them making them using paper thin pieces of wood. Returning to the boat we decided to relax for an hour or so and journey back in to experience the last night of the festival. When we got back in there were people everywhere! We ran into a couple of yachties we knew but the majority of the crowd was Thai. Lights hung from trees everywhere and the smells from the Thai version of a snack stall wafted through the air. We decided to try some of the delicacies for dinner avoiding the Thai favourites of deep fried cockroaches, grasshoppers and big fat grubs we settled instead for spring rolls, baby octopus on skewers straight off the barbeque and Thai fish cakes each accompanied by a spicy sauce. Jay topped off his meal by having a coconut ice cream where the Thai man cut a coconut in half, scooped the flesh from the sides and filled it with tiny scoops of ice cream.
The area in front of the stage was crowded, bands played popular music in Thai and comedians did their best to warm up the crowd, while monks off to the side in part of the temple blessed and spoke with people! At the front of the new building a thin rope was pulled up and down by volunteers from the temple laden with bank notes as people donated money. We wandered off through sideshow alley where you could throw darts at balloons to win prizes and off to another stall we had visited during the day, we picked up some mango wood vases that the lady running the stall discounted so that she wouldn't have to carry them back to Chiang Mai. We decided to leave the Thai's to their party and headed back to the boat, the celebrations continued on into the night complete with fireworks. The Thai's certainly know how to party.
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Since our last entry we spent a few days at Nai Yang Beach taking in the relaxed atmosphere, the little strip of restaurants and shops along the waterfront cater to the tourists from the neighbouring resorts. There were no jet ski's there and the only annoying touristy thing was a speed boat that took people out waterskiing, at the rear of where all the yachts were anchored was a vast expanse of calm unobstructed water but they still persisted in attempting to weave in out of the anchored yachts. I had envisioned helpless tourists smacking into the side of yachts as they were whipped around corners by the speed boat drivers but I guess I underestimated their skills and there were no accidents to speak of.
We hung around at Nai Yang waiting for a swell that was expected to arrive, Jay had heard that there was a surf break at Nai Yang that could be quite good on the right swell and was keen to take advantage of it. The waves were small, but Jay indulged in a desperation paddle on several occasions taking out my mini mal. At one stage there were 3 other surfers out with 1 stand up paddle boarder, a crowded day at Nai Yang!
Not ones to sit around doing nothing, it wasn't long before we'd had our fill of relaxing and decided to hire a motorbike and get out and see some of the countryside. We had ridden a motorbike up to this area a week or so before we arrived in the boat and had enjoyed cruising around the rubber tree plantations that were hidden out the back of all the resorts. We found Yacht Haven Marina and had a quick look around before heading North off the island of Phuket altogether. Unfortunately there wasn't a lot to see, a lot of the coastline past Phuket is barren, dry looking and has not recovered from the Tsunami. Prior to the Tsunami a lot of the areas we visited were up and coming tourist destinations but unfortunately they weren't established enough to pick up again quickly after the fact. We stopped for a drink at a local place and had a quick swim before deciding to turn around and head back. That was when we noticed the dark clouds forming, a storm was on the way! Great! We had ridden a long way from where we were anchored and although we stayed ahead of the storm for a little way there was no doubt that it was going to catch us. Thai roads are scary enough let alone wet Thai roads, the bad weather doesn't slow anyone down and the way I clutched at Jay every time we went around a corner must have left marks! As we neared the turnoff to where we were anchored we saw the aftermath of a really bad car accident, we had just stopped for fuel and had we not I'm sure we would have witnessed it. One car only completely ripped in half, I don't think anyone was walking away from it. A crowd of people had formed and 3 ambulances passed us as we continued on our way. Later Jay was talking to a South African guy in the surf and he mentioned that you only ever see one car involved in an accident, it's because the Thai drivers get so comfortable in their seats that they fall asleep at the wheel. He had no doubt that the accident wasn't related to the bad weather. This struck a chord with us as we remembered Paul and Gemma Truman coming to stay with us in Thailand last February and their story about the driver who picked them up from the airport and kept falling asleep at the wheel as he drove them to their resort!!
We dropped the bike off early deciding not to go biking for a while, the weather stayed rainy and we ended up at a local bar drinking cocktails and watching all the young Brit's on holidays, they were very funny! Our break at Nai Yang had been fun but it was time to move on to our next destination, Ban Thap Lamu.
We visited Ban Thap Lamu last year although it was a fleeting visit as we were racing to catch up with our friends on Raku for Christmas. The anchorage itself is in the entrance to a river, there is a Navy base there and it is also the base for local Dive boat operations going to the Similans and the Surins and the local fishing industry. You could almost set your watch by the Dive boats leaving while the fishing boats return in the morning and vice versa in the afternoons. The fishermen are all really friendly shouting and waving to get your attention as they pass by your boat, always keen to have their photographs taken or to be a bit cheeky. It was a great place to stop to do the work on the Makani Kai as the anchorage is flat and there are not too many distractions. The Navy Wives run a restaurant there which is nice and cheap but the food this time was a little bit disappointing from what I remembered last time. Luckily there is a really good fruit and vegie lady nearby and due to the Thai Cookery class Jay and I did in Chiang Mai it was a chance to try out our skills. The vegie lady also made her own curry pastes fresh which were laid out in stainless steel bowls every day. Spooning the required amount into a plastic bag it cost no more than $1 and although we had learnt how to make it ourselves, it was backbreaking work by hand (a food processor would do a much better job). The hard part about Ban Thap Lamu is that no one speaks English beyond a couple of words and trying to communicate is a frustrating series of hand gestures along with pointing at words in dictionary's. By smelling the paste we could work out which was the hot one and we decided to try some of that one, I made a vegetable Tom Yum Soup for dinner and it was beautiful. Just the right amount of heat without being over the top, we got two meals out of my little bag of paste. Unfortunately I made the mistake of assuming that there would be some kind of consistency to the level of heat in the pastes and when we went back to her shop I walked confidently to the same bowl and scooped my paste into its little baggie. I tasted the soup as I cooked it and although there seemed to be a little bit more heat to it, it seemed bearable, I added a little more coconut milk to dilute it just in case. As time went on Jay and I looked forward to our yummy dinner, I served up and we sat down to eat, I tasted it first and although there was a little bite when the aftertaste hit it burnt like hell. I managed to choke out to Jay that it seemed a little hotter than last time. He tasted it and valiantly tried to continue to eat, we added even more coconut milk trying to douse some of the heat but nothing worked. In the end the whole pot of soup went over the side of the boat when we finally admitted defeat and settled for toasted sandwiches instead. Note to self, do not assume consistency in this part of the world, what is perfect one day will be completely different the next!
With the work on the boat finally finished we decided to spend the day exploring the village of Thap Lamu and the surrounding areas. We took off in the inflatable to explore the river system which reminded us of home, brown water, flat surrounds and mangroves. It all started to look the same after a while and we turned around and headed for the village. Heading to the Navy Wives for a quick bite of lunch we ran into some yachtie's who came into the anchorage on dusk the day before, yachtie's seem to have a sixth sense for one another and as soon as we entered the restaurant they knew we were off another boat and invited us to join them. I had met the crew of one boat, some Alaskan's, at Rebak during one of my trips to the vegie truck for supplies, the others had come through on the Sail Indonesia Rally in 2008 with us but this was the first time we had met, they were from Freemantle and are sailing on a yacht called Viajero. After having just each other for company for the last week or so it was nice to catch up with some fellow sailors.
After lunch we had the daunting task of trying to find some fuel, we've become very good at charades though and managed to get our message across. One of the men indicated to a motorbike with a side car like contraption attached to the side with a bench seat inside it. We thought he was saying he would take Jay to get the fuel but he was indicating that we should take his bike. With a little trepidation we took the bike and set off in the direction he pointed us, it was a little hairy, I was in the side cart and it felt like it was floating over the road, I worried about falling out or through the floor which was a series of mismatched planks of wood but we made it to the service station safe and without incident. Well, that was a new experience we could tick off our list! We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the village, meeting cheeky fishermen and taking it all in. A house was being built in one of the streets that at first glance we thought was going to be a temple. It was unlike any of the surrounding houses, all wood, a lot of teak and looked like the Thai architecture of old, the lanna style I think they call it. The roof was pointed and carved detail decorated it. The builder saw us looking and came over to introduce himself, his name was Suang and he was 54. He ran off into a tiny tin shed, that acted as both his workshop and his bedroom, and brought back a picture of what he was building and photos of some of his previous work. He was the first person we had met that had relatively good English and when he couldn't remember the word for something he would draw it in the dirt or write it in a neat cursive script. He was from Northern Bangkok and had been contracted to build this house, he was a lovely man and thrilled that we liked what he was building.
We headed back to the Makani Kai, we leave Ban Thap Lamu tomorrow and start to head back South to Phuket.
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