Turtle Island

"ANNIE!!!  I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!!!" said a message from Kim on Facebook when I got home from Thailand a couple of Sundays ago.

Oops.  I had forgotten to tell anyone but my mother where I was going.  I had been so busy and so tired the week before my Spring vacation, I hadn't even been on Facebook for a week before I left.  Then when Friday rolled around, I was like, "Peace--I'm out," and left straight from work to the airport with Amy and Gene.

We headed to Ko Tao, or "Turtle Island," Thailand, where Gene used to live for a while as a trapeze artist and underwater scuba diving photographer, I think.  I was looking forward to doing nothing.  Nothing.  I knew I didn't have to plan anything...that was the best part of the whole thing.  I didn't want anything to do with a travel guide.  I didn't want an itinerary.  I didn't care what amazing things the island had to offer, and I don't care if that sounds blasphemous.  I just wanted to chill.

The week before we left, I realized that it has somehow become so totally and completely normal to just jet off to a place like tropical Thailand for a week and it's like, no big deal.  It was in this mindset that I didn't tell my friends I was leaving the country.  It was also because things were seemingly hectic at work that week and I didn't even have the energy to get online or think about anyone noticing that I was away.  I mean...who has never wished that they could just vanish for a week and not be missed?

I was really diligent in Thailand about recording everything that happened.  I typed it out nightly in my iPod's notebook.  Then the other day, when I was finally ready to write something, I opened it up, and the notes were gone.  All of them.  Vanished.

I considered this for a moment before anything besides shock came up.  It occurred to me that it was probably meant to be, anyways.  Daily recaps can be quite boring.  Even though being on Thailand was like watching a new series of Real Housewives.  Gene has some superbly colorful and entertaining friends...some of whom work in bars, and others in dive shops...and they all seem to party on a practically nightly basis.  It seemed almost unfathomable...how do they do it?  One friend is a gay man who owns a restaurant, and had a fabulously heated discussion on his cell phone one day out by our pool, with a friend/business partner who he felt was doing him dirty.  That same man also dates one of the ladyboys, whose cabaret show is just a couple of doors down from his restaurant...but when I asked why she was his "boy"friend if ladyboys are "she's," I found out that he's not a ladyboy after all, but just a regular boy who works there and does hilarious Tina Turner impressions.  I wouldn't have asked him, but I got confused when we were watching the show and he pointed at one of the girls and said, "That's my boyfriend!" and then later, from that cue, when I referred to one of the other ladyboys as a "he," he corrected me and told me that no, ladyboys are she's.

"But you just told me one of them was your boyfriend," I thought to myself.  So, I had to ask.

Maybe I shouldn't have asked him several days later in front of his mother, who had just flown in from England.  But it seemed like a good idea at the time.  I never admitted to be anything other than slightly crazy and mostly oblivious to various social cues and implications.  In other words, I just don't know any better.  I'm a little kid.  She seemed cool though.

Tina Turner

Beautiful ladyboy

After the show :)

Another one of Gene's friends, Ayesha, co-owns a dive shop with her partner Wilco and reminded me of a more plastic-bag-hating, scuba-diving version of Baby Spice.  She was super cute.  Took us out snorkeling one day, too.  Everyone on the island is British, by the way.  As a lover of different accents, this turn-out was quite pleasing to me.  Because...they refer to people's one-night-stands as "shagpieces," and laugh when I say things like, "That lizard's gonna get them skeeters!"


That night was interesting.  We went to Ayesha and Wilco's house.  They live in the middle of what seems like this insane jungle, next to the Burmese, who live in grass-roofed huts and have escaped from their own country to come to Thailand to work dirty jobs and be treated like dirt by them.

Imagine what they must have escaped from!

The tops of the Burmese houses

As we sat on the back porch that evening, we discussed the little geckos, which were on the ceiling, and the huge geckos, one of which was hanging out on the wall of the house next door.  We also kept a watchful eye on a spider, who was not quite the size of a tarantula, but damn close.  I might have said something about missing lightning bugs and cicadas back home.  Either way, the discussion turned to a bug Ayesha calls "wing droppers," who show up about once a year in large swarms, invade the house in a sudden infestation, then drop their wings all over the floor and die, leaving a mess to clean up for days afterwards.

The minute...no...the second she got finished telling us about these strange creatures, they swarmed in.  Right then.  It was like a flock of tiny birds, desperately trying to commit suicide by burning themselves on the little flames inside the porch lightbulbs, a task which seemed impossible, since all lightbulbs are covered in glass...Wilco and Ayesha turned the lights out, and Amy, who wasn't too fond of even the lizards, who were keeping a safe distance and catching all them skeeters, covered herself with her scarf like a blanket, for armor.  The wing droppers left as soon as it was pitch black, but soon Ayesha had to go into the kitchen to check on some food she was cooking.  The lights in the kitchen were on for a good 45 seconds before a swarm, straight out of the cartoons, of tiny, dragon-fly-ish-looking tan winged creatures came flocking through the door by the bajillions, causing my jaw to absolutely drop to the floor.

Ayesha came out shouting some hilariously British-sounding curse words and cut the light off once more.  Wilco lit small candles on the porch table, where we were sitting, so we could at least see each others' faces.  Amy huddled under the scarf, and we watched with amazement as the little fairy bugs swarmed the lamps, desperate to burn their bodies with the flames...and some were successful.

Then they all dropped their wings and died.  All over the floor.  It was the damnedest thing.  We kept our bare feet perched up on the wooden beams of the table for the rest of the night so as not to disturb their restful peace on the tiles.

Amy, as the bugs are swarming

Dead bugs on the table

HUGE spider

Wings covering the floor, at the end of the ordeal

I got 3 massages while we were there on Ko Tao.  It was in this way that Amy and I discovered the amazingness of coconut oil for your hair and skin.  My massages were with pure coconut oil.  After the first one, I noticed the next morning that the skin on my arm felt just like one of my kindergartner's arms...it was so soft, it felt like a child's skin.  I immediately purchased a bottle of the stuff at a local convenience store.  When I suggested to Amy that she use it on her I.C.U. burn-victim-esc sunburn, she noticed that it said on the bottle you could use it in your hair and decided to try it.  Both of us were obsessed after that.  Now I have soft skin, and she has soft hair.  I freakin' love that stuff.

Getting to Ko Tao was no easy task, I'd like to point out.  First, a 6 hour flight overnight to Bangkok, straight from work.  Then 6 hours waiting (in my case, sleeping on a hard bench) in the airport, before venturing out in the wee hours of the morning into the streets of Bangkok to the bus station, where, as we sat waiting, we watched the late-night drunken stragglers puking and passing out all over the dirty sidewalks.  Then, we took a 6-hour bus ride, with no stops, to the bottom of Thailand, where we caught a large boat (where everyone gets seasick, apparently) to the island.  It was quite a journey.  So, on the way back, we decided to take a tiny airplane to Bangkok instead of the bus, since it was only like $100 anyways, I think.  It cost less than my rainbow turtle tattoo I got, which was pretty cheap, considering its size and the fact it was not done with a traditional tattoo gun, but rather meticulously with a stick of bamboo.

I've since read that getting bamboo tattoos hurts way less than with the gun.  I've also heard that it hurts way more.  In my opinion, it was neither more nor less.  It was just...different.  And perhaps a bit more gruesome, at least in the beginning.  See, I'm usually pretty good at taking the pain of a tattoo.  It's really not that bad.  But when he started on my turtle, I could feel the little needles slicing into my skin, poking individually, almost like a little blade, like a knife, cutting me like an incision.

I felt sick.

Amy was still there...she had gotten hers first, which was a much smaller one on her shoulder blade.  She had decided to stay with me for a few minutes while he got started (I was to be there for two whole hours).  She watched my face turn stark white, including my lips, despite my sunburn.

"I think I'm gonna throw up," I told her.

"Do you need anything?" she asked, with a furrowed brow.

"A bucket," I said, letting my head flop down onto the table.

She got me a mango smoothie instead, from a street side vendor.  After a few sips of that, I was fine.  It was a magic smoothie!

An hour and a half later I showed back up at our bungalow feeling quite tough.  This is good.  I need to feel tough.  It's important these days, believe me.  "Yeah--I made it!" I exclaimed, flexing my almost non-existent bicep.  I was quite proud of myself.  Plus, I now have the turtle tattoo I've always wanted, and it looks like candy.  Perfect.


What better place to get it than on Turtle Island?  But it was so funny...you should have seen me trying to get these islander tattoo artists to make me a land turtle design, as opposed to a sea turtle one.  These guys only know sea turtles.

"I want one of these Thai designs," I explained, "but I want it to have legs instead of flippers."

Then he'd redraw it with flippers with claws on it.

"No...legs..." I'd say...I mean...I couldn't just let him tattoo me with something I didn't like.  "I have no emotional attachment to a sea turtle...look up Eastern Box Turtle on Google...that's what I used to catch when I was little..."

I finally had to draw it myself.  Rather crudely, since I can't really draw...but it worked to get them to understand what I wanted.  Then they drew it perfectly.

I actually chose the rainbow turtle to be the symbol of my wise, adult self (I, like everyone else, have several parts to myself) during my hypnosis sessions...which while they were happening, didn't seem like anything to write home about (it was basically like, just lie down on this couch, close your eyes, relax, and just talk, freely, about the specific topic), but then immediately after the first one, when I got home, I noticed I could suddenly hear and feel my stomach again while I was eating dinner...and after the second, just this morning at the bus stop, I noticed a different smelling men's cologne.  Mens' colognes have all smelled exactly the same to me for at least a year or two, maybe longer.  I know this is all a bit vague, but, I think there's something to this.  It's just not for this blog.  It's more for the small compilation of short stories I've been writing.  Maybe one day I'll try to get them published.

I'll have to think of a good pen name, first, though.

This is in the beginning.  It hurts so bad I'm biting my thumb off.

One leg outline is done!  

Ooo!  I like how this is looking.

Poking me with a bamboo stick

Finished!!!  It looks like candy.  Perfect.  Not to mention, I am tough now.

Gene's panda pillow got chopped by the maid...precious

Watching a fire show on the beach one night

Gene, Amy, and me

The pool we laid by every day

An example of what my friends ate on Ko Tao (this is to make some of you jealous)

An example of what I ate (this is to make the rest of you jealous)

Oh yeah! We went on this treacherous journey to get to the snorkeling spot!

How are these guys gonna make it?  This hill is SO steep and rocky.

We were in a Ko Tao taxi...which means, riding in the back of a pickup truck on benches

There's the ocean!

And we ate at a restaurant with a sand floor when we got there

Awesome lizard at the restaurant

The snorkeling spot

The tiny plane we took back to Bangkok

And all that's left on my mind are coconuts

...and rainbows!