2/15/2006 - Kid and the Squid

Another beautiful day in Thailand.  The sun was shining out of the clear blue sky as we rounded the point of Koh Wao. The green crowned tops of the black cliffs of this island in the Angthong National Marine Park  towered over us and completely dominated three sides of the large bay while the open side was rimmed with dozens of brightly painted wooden boats tied side by side in long rows.  The bay seemed to be a perfectly framed oval mirror through which we cut a frothy swathe as we dropped anchor.

 What a perfect day for diving .  Gazing straight down into the water below the boat I could see the sandy bottom at 15 metres and knew that the visibility was going to be good .   We planned to do two dives today and had been told by another dive shop that had dived here the day before that they had seen millions of squid laying their eggs and we were hoping to get to see this spectacle too. 

Kid , a Thai member of our staff, was sitting up on the bow of the boat organising his fishing equipment.  He also was excited by the squid but for a different reason than I and the rest of the divers.  He had also heard stories from the boat that had come the day before but the stories he heard were from the non-diving Thai staff on the boat who had managed to catch 20 or 30 kilos of squid using only handlines.  Kid couldn't think of anything better than to return triumphantly to family and friends in Koh Samui with a huge catch of squid.   The squid were reputed to be uncommonly large and he could just imagine the face he would gain if he was successful. His equipment consisted of three or four metres of fishing line with one end attatched to an empty 1-litre plastic water bottle.  The other end of the line was attatched to a lure for squid shaped like a shrimp.  he carefully wound the line around the water bottle, set it aside and pulled-on his skinsuit.  As soon as he had done his duty of assisting the divers into the water, he would be ready to fish. 

We readied our equipment, entered the water, descended and began to swim towards the reef fringing the cliffs.  We encountered squid almost immediately.  I have never seen so many squid together before and could see that my group of  divers were also impressed, though some people seemed a bit nervous being surrounded by so many of these alien-looking creatures.  Colors rippled across their bodies bringing to mind that car that is totally covered with thousands of light bulbs and can turn them on and off to create moving patterns of light and dark.

As soon as we disappeared from view, Kid donned his mask, snorkel and fins, rushed into the water and swam towards the base of the cliffs.  When he was surrounded by squid he rolled down the shrimp lure and attempted to dangle it temptingly in front of a squid.  As the water was seething and roiling with squid and was very possibly more squid than water this was not difficult.  He immediately caught one tremendous squid, about the same size as his forearm.  He detatched it from the lure and then realized that he had forgotten to bring a bag to collect the squid he caught.  By this time he was quite a ways away from the boat so he decided to just hold the squid in his hand and continue fishing.  No sooner had he begun to lower the lure did he catch another large squid.

Kid was having the time of his life, he was the master squid fisherman of southern Thailand.  Nothing could make him give up even a moment of this wonderful opportunity.  He did have one problem, however, with a large squid in each hand it would be impossible to catch any more.  He floated and took stock of his situation and realised that he was wearing the solution, namely his skinsuit.  It had nice tight ankes and wrists so no squid could escape and a handy front zip.  He zipped the squid securely into his skinsuit and continued fishing. 

It wasn't until he was zipping the sixth or seventh squid into his skinsuit that they all suddenly started to bite him.  By this  time they had floated around a bit inside the suit , one was down one leg, several were around his waist a few were still up near his chest and  one on his inner thigh alarmingly close to parts he didn't want to have bitten.

The bites were shokingly painful and any attempt he made to pull them off was rewarded by even more vicious bites.  Squid have beaks very similar in shape and strength to the beaks of parrots and these bites were truly excruciating.  To make things worse, they were also sucking tightly onto his skin with the hundreds of tiny suckers lining their tentacles.  Kid tried to hold very still in the water in the hope that they would lose interest and let him go.  There was no question of Kid removing his skinsuit and letting the squid go.  Fighting panic, Kid determinedly swam back to the boat which was by now at least 100 metres away.

As we ascended beside the boat after our dive we could  see Kid, covered in black squid ink, frantically ripping off his skinsuit and pulling off firmly attatched, irate squid.

That evening Kid cooked and determinedly ate every last squid.   He is still an avid fisherman but he has to this day never put another live squid into his skinsuit, at least not when he was wearing it.

2/15/2006 - Rats, Bats & Bugs!

        I Jerked awake, my heart pounding as a piercing scream shattered the night.  I sat up on the thin sleeping mat I had spread on the cement front step of the dive shop.  Inside the shop fourteen divers were sleeping in bunk beds in tiny rooms.  The light from the hundreds of squid fishing boats on the horizon leaked weakly over the town’s pier, between the rough wood houses and over the dirt road onto the step but did not penetrate the inky interior of the dive shop.  Another scream followed by thumping and banging and cursing sent me onto my feet and into the gloom.

        “Hello, are you OK?” I called.

       “THERE’S A FUCKING RAT IN MY BED!”  Came the frantic reply.  I groped for a dive light and aimed it at the second door on the right as it was yanked open and a disheveled woman ran out.

        “Is it still there?”  I asked hoping I could go back to bed, only to be discouraged as the woman’s terror turned to fury and she demanded that the offending rat and its entire family and friends be eliminated.  Having a rat in your bed was apparently a universal fear and soon all the customers were milling about in the dusty street demanding that the building was made rat-free. 

        While I stayed with the customers and tried to calm them the Thai staff went through all the rooms, beating beds and walls with the sticks.  They then went out into the bushes at the back of the building and after a short time there was noisy rustling and smashing. Finally they came back, suitably breathless from their exertions, and reported that the rat was dead.  I have to admit I was a bit suspicious of their success but I was pleased to be able to go back to sleep.  The next day I cornered one of the staff and asked him if he had really caught the offending rat. 

        “Yes, of course.” He said as he shook his head, his eyes sliding off to one side and a little smile on his lips.

        “ So you could show it to me?” I suggested.

        “ I think this place has many rats.” He paused, “Very easy for rats to come in.” He pointed at the building and shrugged. “If we can’t kill that rat we can’t sleep.”  I could see his point.

        Mae Hat Town on Koh Tao in 1989 consisted of ten or fifteen houses lining a road running parallel to the beach. The dive shop was the last structure on the landward side of the road, opposite the pier and the market.  A generator located twenty yards up the hill in the jungle of coconut palm, cashew and mango trees behind the building was coaxed to noisy life each evening to supply several hours of electricity.  The building was originally one big room which had been partitioned by sheets of plywood into a front dining area with sleeping rooms around the sides and back in a horseshoe shape.  The plywood walls ended well clear of the exposed thatch roof providing perfect pathways for a single rat to run.  When two rats travelling in opposite directions met a scuffle would take place and often a rat would be pushed off the wall.  If this occurred directly over a bunk bed then a rat could fall into the bed causing great distress to both rat and human.  It wasn’t as though there was an extraordinary number of rats just, well, we were located in prime rat-running territory positioned between the market and the wild.  You’d have to expect a certain amount of interface between human and wildlife.  If you want to go diving on an undeveloped island in the tropics part of the adventure is this possible interaction with the local wildlife.  Unfortunately you can’t always expect your people to act rationally at 3am.   Living on Koh Tao had some drawbacks: It was very tiny and the few restaurants and shops had very little on offer.

        Rats weren’t the only wildlife we experienced out on Koh Tao that first year.  My very least favorite, the foot-long dark brown centipedes occasionally found their way into a BCD or a bootie.  One day an instructor walked around for twenty minutes with a centipede snugly curled beside his foot inside his bootie.  It only bit him when he stepped into the water with his class.  I had one very close call when demonstrating oral BCD inflation to students.  I blew into the inflator mouthpiece and as I removed it from my mouth a huge centipede crawled out.  Talk about totally grossed out!   It really puts the rule about always blowing into your regulator before inhaling in a clear perspective!  The other bad thing about centipedes besides their many-legged terrifying buggyness and poison is that they are quite hard to kill.  Smashing them with a rubber flip-flop has little to no effect on these fast-moving, armored insects.  Stepping on them while wearing a flip-flop is a scary option because of the fear that they might touch/bite your foot.  Plus, a simple stomp is often ineffective and a twisting motion is required for any real damage to be done. 

        Spiders are another insect which have the ability to make my skin crawl.  I don’t really mind the tiny furry jumping spiders but anything shiny or long legged makes my hair stand on end.  Whenever I woke up in the night to go to the bathroom I had an irrational fear that wherever I put my hand while reaching for my light that there would be a spider.  I never actually touched a spider in this way but you can see how it could happen.  I did, however have one in my wetsuit.  Balancing on the rocking boat on the way to a dive site I stepped into my wetsuit and as I began pulling it up my body an enormous spider ran up my chest, over my shoulder and back into the wetsuit.  I promptly removed the wetsuit. 

       Luckily not all the wildlife on Koh Tao was unpleasant.  Lung Kreung was one of the fishermen whose boat we often rented to ferry divers to dive sites.  He was a major character with a brushy silver moustache causing him to closely resemble a sea otter.   In the evenings he would saunter down the street in his polo shirt and fisherman’s trousers pausing along the way to gossip with locals and eventually end up seated on the cement step in front of the dive shop where we all hung out in the evenings.  He was rarely without some animal or another.  He would have a small python wrapped around his hand or a squirrel on his shoulder.  My favorite of his animals was a “chamote” which looks sort of like a fox crossed with a lemur crossed with a racoon.  It had bulgy nocturnal eyes and sharp carnivorous teeth and a lovely long black and white ringed tail.   Sometimes he’d let us stroke it and sometimes hold it.  Lung Kreung was always a big hit with the customers and staff.

       In the thatch roof of the dining room was a giant tokay gecko.  In the evenings when the generator was on he’d come out for everyone to see and eat the bugs attracted to the light over the dining table.  He was probably the most photographed gecko in all of Thailand.  I’m surprised his eyes weren’t damaged over the years by all the camera flashes directed at him.  The day after a big storm, a small bat came and roosted in the corner of the ceiling beside the gecko and stayed for several days.  It was torture for the gecko.  He’d creep over towards the bat, stalking it as though it was a huge bug and then as he came within striking distance he’d realize that the bat was just too big and he’d be frozen in place, transfixed by promise of a huge meal but unable to follow through.  I don’t think he ate for the whole time the bat was there, just stared at the bat while the bat studiously ignored him.

        I like most animals (OK, except for several types of poisonous insect) and I especially like bats.  There was a large tree just beyond the town in which flying foxes roosted.  These are the biggest bat species in the world and they eat fruit.  Each evening they would come noisily to life and I’d enjoy seeing them squabble and take flight, their frail wings orange from the setting sun.  Throughout the night while staff slept on the front step, tiny insectivorous bats would swoop over our bodies protecting us from mosquitoes.  I could feel the soft brush of air from their wings on my face as they darted over me and hear occasional high-pitched squeaking.  It was a very friendly feeling but I have to admit that I put up my arm first before I sat up during the night and moved very slowly to avoid collisions.  As things with wings go I definitely preferred the bats to the chickens.  For such a deserted place the evenings were incredibly noisy.  The generator was run from 7pm to 9pm at which point the racket from the air compressor’s engine and air venting would go on until 2 or 3am.  Finally the compressor would be shut off and as quiet settled over the town the roosters would begin crowing and wouldn’t stop until sunrise.  It was amazing that anyone in town ever got any sleep at all.

       Koh Tao is today much changed from the sleepy fishing base of thirteen years ago.  It is the major dive destination of the Gulf of Thailand and now has all the conveniences of a modern town.  Thirteen years ago it was impossible to imagine that the changes that have taken place on Koh Tao could have happened so quickly.  Perhaps the things that were difficult about Koh Tao were a major factor in its growth.   The satisfaction derived from surviving adversity can turn a trip into an adventure.  Adventure is what makes the trip so desirable and Koh Tao is quite a desirable place to visit.  I can no longer guarantee the same land-based adventures but underwater Koh Tao still has plenty of excitement to offer. 

        When I opened my own shop it was in Koh Samui, a quick boat ride to Koh Tao.  Koh Samui offers proximity to the Airport and plenty of comfortable hotels, great shopping and a busy nightlife.