A Day in Narnia, a Night in Phang Nga continue… September 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Bangkok, Germany, Hotels, Tour , trackbackNext morning in the market, shopping for a picnic, our struggles with the phrasebook brought an English-speaking Thai to our rescue, explaining that the quail eggs we had bought were raw, but could be cooked for us in the soup cauldron wherever we took breakfast. And the performance with the nails and the knives? A thanksgiving. All those who went through the ordeal had at some time survived an accident or illness when their lives had been despaired of. In gratitude they undertook to walk the nails and climb the knives every year until they died. They spent the day chanting and dancing, and when they came to walk and climb they could be heard speaking Chinese, a language none of them could speak during the rest of the year.
Sapan, the boatman, had found two other tourists to share the fishtail boat and the cost. Peter was from Germany, and Helga was from California: they were solo travellers looking for entertainment, travelling together for her convenience. Sapan had brought along a couple of passengers too. Mike was from Phang Nga town, back from studying economics in Bangkok; Strawberry was from Panyi Island, like Sapan himself. We had a momentary chill when they climbed aboard . . . piracy? Would we ever be seen again? But when Strawberry reached under the seat and produced the first bottle of an apparently endless supply of Star Tiger rice spirit we realised it was not going to be that kind of adventure.
The islands rose sheer out of a millpond sea, pillars of white limestone with ochre splotches capped in crinkly green. Rank on rank they stretched to the horizon, their reflections shimmering towards us on a blue mirror. The coast dropped away into mist and we nosed into a world of fantasy. It bore no resemblance to our map.
Getting closer we saw that the islands rose more than sheer, their bases eaten away by the sea. Sapan sailed in beneath the overhang of limestone. He leapt up on to the ledge of rock which ran around the whole island under the overhang like some inside-out cloister, and tied us up. From the cool of this cloister the island-dotted sea shimmered in the sunlight. We found our torches and entered the caves beneath the island.
Later we drifted and found: a beach, 20ft of yellow shingle under a dozen palm trees; a grotto more lurid than Lourdes, every glittering bowl crying out for a plaster Madonna; a lagoon in an island’s heart reached through a rock tunnel. In a gallery of stalactites, baobab roots seeking water winding down from the roof, we asked Sapan what the island was called.
`It has no name,’ Sapan said, ‘but when I told some other people I brought here that it had no name, they said to me that it was called Narnia.’ He looked puzzled.
We ate quails’ eggs, drank Star Tiger, swam in the warm sea floating from sun into shade and back again under trailing vines. The sun tumbled the islands’ shadows on the sea.
Panyi island, where Sapan and Strawberry lived, had only enough room on it for the mosque. The rest of the village was on stilts, a Southend pier of teak, and we stopped there for petrol and beer. Oily water glittered through gaps in the teak boards as we climbed the gangplank. A plump old man sitting in a wooden scaffold on a marine building site sawed the top off an immense teak column to make it flush with the decking. The village was expanding. Seen through the lacy walls of the village pool hall the polystyrene floats of the fish farm bobbed busily.
While Sapan found the petrol we strolled the boardwalk where ladies sold shells and coral jewellery. One in jeans and blouse laid a hand on Ann’s arm. Despite the nail varnish, it was a man’s hand.
`What’s your name?’ He-She asked huskily.
`Ann. What’s yours?’
He-She simpered prettily. ‘My name is Linda.’
Sitting in a bus next morning, eating pineapple and waiting for the driver, we heard that the survivors were going to walk on fiery coals that night down on the fairground. But we were bound for Tekua Pa, and rumours in our guidebook of an ancient city.
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