Got back from Oceans way too long ago to warrant an extremely detailed post. Sorry. It was fun, if extraordinarily rainy/windy/frightening - but that only when we were out camping or kayaking, of course.
So our first week we stayed in the village of Hat Chao Mai, in a Muslim fishing village. I stayed with a woman I nicknamed Ma Kiwi (her real name is Ma Lam Duan, which is not all that hard to remember but nicknames are seriously much more fun). Spent most of this week (and most of this expedition, in fact) feeling profoundly unhealthy, namely because of the food we were eating. Example: Ma Kiwi not only subscribed to the classic Thai parent MUST FEED THIS CHILD UNTIL SHE EXPLODES methodology, but was also the town deep-frier; so every morning I went out the front door to find her sitting in front of a vat of bubbling oil, frying up donuts for my breakfast. I sat with her every morning, trying to wake up, helping her turn the dough over in the oil (which i'm not very good at but that's probably a good thing) and drinking NesCafe, heavy on the sugar.
We also visited a few Mangrove forests, which were pretty spectacular, surveyed some sea grass, and swam with dolphins? Or at least swam very close to dolphins. They weren't trying as hard as we were to get close to them. The long boats that these families use are gorgeous and old and seem more like a crazy ancient duck buzzing around on the water than boats; the men tie colored cloths to the mastheads and stroll around like tightrope walkers on the edges while the boats are rocking and rolling in the waves.
We then went to the profoundly touristy island of Koh Lipe for our midcourse seminar, where we were given the task of taking some observations of what the tourist economy has done to the island in general. In iwalking around, we talked to a group of women in tihe village and then walked with a Russian author and a Thai woman to a house called the art Garden, where an artist named Tee holds batihk (wax and paint art) classes, sells his art, and has wine and jazz parties. We hung around and talked to Luis, his Spanish protege, and then convinced them to give us a discount on some art, since there were five of us. But we all felt a little guilty about it later.
The second bit of expedition consisted of us kayaking between three islands (Lipe, Adang, and Rawi) and camping and snorkeling and bonding. The last part was exceptionally important, since from the first night we camped, a torrential downpour was never far away. We were stranded on Adang for an extra night, and only got about half the dives in that we wanted. But we never backed down! Our last paddle was done in a sort of fevered, desperate state, since we needed to get to Rawi so badly -- we pushed off into what amounted to be more or less a monsoon, with the rain masking the island we were paddling towards. Also, a few people got Staph infection. But we ended on a great note, and non-fried food has never tasted so good.
