Day 8.
Heaven is hard: hard to get to, hard to stay there and hard to leave.
It was certainly a long old way to the delightful archipelago within which Kho Lipe is situated. The speedboat that acts as a ferry got all of a mile out of port in the beautiful full southern Thai sunshine before it broke down. We would have enjoyed this delay had we not been prepared to sit for an hour in that merciless aforesaid sun. The repaired boat then bounced us across the 70 or so bone-shaking kilometres in a gruelling hour and a half. But at least we were in heaven.
We saw a fraction of the island. Of that which we saw it was your usual mixture of Thai sea gypsies and migrant workers, trouser-less babies playing in the soft beach sands and foundation-encrusted ladyboys, like the concert party in It Ain't 'Alf Hot Mum, "Boys to entertain yoooou!"
We were tempted to stay. A special moment was sitting down at the Castaway Resort for dinner and drinks and watching the sky darken over the lapping wavelets around the longtail boats whilst the resort's table-top flickering oil lamps were lit before us -all to tracks by The Orb. A home from home, or just heaven? One look at the bill, however, was convincing enough to realise it was hard to stay in this heaven for any length of time.
And so today we left by a smaller speedboat back to Satun. I can't recall that I've ever been through so much rain out in the water. It was tempting to demand to be taken back, particularly when the rain poured into the boat soaking everyone inside (except for us in our nerdy plastic ponchos). It was more pressing when the lighting began in earnest. Questions filled our minds; 'Should we have been in a speedboat in this heavy squall? Do the tanks of petrol-engined speedboats ignite on first impact? Do fibre glass and wooden boats act as conductors to earth the lightning or do we all fry? And then explode?' Perhaps staying in heaven wouldn't have been quite so expensive after all...
Of course, now we're here in Langkawi it all looks so very quant and fun-filled. But then, we've just taken the Langkawi ferry to this heavenly island and are staying in an empty but heavenly resort in a heavenly colonial house.
