Our Honeymoon

The almost final stop of our trip was to Koh Pra Thong (which means "Island of the Golden Buddha") to work on a turtle conservation project. And what a week it was!! First, we arrived by boat (well, a lawnmower engine powering a canoe) from the mainland onto the island.

We arrived on what seemed to be a deserted island! Clean beach, and nothing but palm trees as far as the eye could see, dotted with coconuts. Not even a sign of one person around.

When the boat arrived, the tide was too low to make it the pier. So we pulled what I call "a mermaid" to get onto land. This is my glamorous name for walking to land through knee deep water! Yes, with all of our luggage. Little did we know we'd be pulling mermaids a bit more than we would have liked this week.

The island of Pra Thong only has three villages with stretches of beaches around the coast and a dry savannah in the center. Pak Chok village is the one where our project, Naucrates, has been headquartered. See the pic below of our group at the HQ spot. Also pictured there is our trusty ride visible that gets us around between beaches, ports, and villages: our motorcycle! (Well, it's more like a lawnmower-powered scooter with a shopping cart attached that seats four comfortably.)

The story of Pak Chok was very overwhelming for us. Before 2004, it was a lively, modest-sized Thai fisherman's village. After the fateful tsunami of 2004, it was different. Three pulses of tens of meter-sized waves hit on a quiet Sunday morning that year, and this village was devastated.

Hundreds of villagers died, and the rest relocated for fear of another disaster, spirits and ghosts that might haunt them (part of their Buddhist beliefs), or lack of work. Today, the village population is 40. Yes, only 40 people total. (The other two villages were not hit half as hard and did not loose many people. Today, the emergency system is much better and the village was relocated back to prevent damage if another one hits.)

The Swiss embassy and other rescue groups rushed in to provide aid and rebuild. But the rows of European style square houses neatly aligned down the street that they built just didn't get filled up. The street (and there is only one main street in the village) is now full of deserted houses and empty land that serves as a constant reminder of the event. And we had to stay there two days with the constant reminder of this ghost town.

Our group spent two nights in Pak Chok village. Volunteers were hosted in the very basic white houses. Ours was the best, though. PaNee, our host, is the village restaurant owner. (Her place seats only eight! She keeps the place going all by herself at age 72!) She heard two of the volunteers were on a honeymoon. So we got a honeymoon suite! That means a tiny room with nothing but a mattress inside and a bathtoom downstairs (past the frogs and beetles) with nothing but a ceramic hole in the ground for a toilet (an Asian toilet), a shower head that doubles as a sink, and a bucket for flushing... but hey, at least it was decorated with pink lace and flowers! She even made me a bridal bouquet!!

The founder of our turtle project, Monica, was on the island that Sunday of the tsunami. She and many locals saw the wave come. They all ran up "Hornbill Hill", fighting the steep, slippery slopes and sharp branches, and pulling on ropes in some spots, and were saved from the waves crashing at their ankles. Most survived because they reached tall hills quickly enough.

It turns out that Hornbill Hill is tall enough to also see far out on the right beach where turtles feed. What was the haven for survivors is now a haven of hope for turtles. When we see turtles feeding in the rocks in the water, that lets us know they successfully found their way back to the place they were born (female turtles always return to their own nesting spot to lay eggs) to restart the cycle and lay their own eggs. We took turns observing for turtles in the water as one of our main daily volunteer activities and noted the conditions in which we saw them. This is part of a long term survey for the project where we monitor their behaviors. We only saw one green little head pop up once during our whole week. See the pic below of us observing there (that was almost our whole group pictured). The angel statue in the pic is a memorial to a baby who was taken by the tsunami.

Another activity we did daily was monitor the beaches every morning (3 hour walks before breakfast!) for any egg nests laid the night before. These need to be monitored and protected by volunteers so that when they hatch (about two months later) they can get as many babies to the water as possible. And so they don't get eaten by locals. We had many disappointing mornings during our week. It's not as easy as it sounds to walk on super soft sand in the sun all morning. Especially not when we had to pull many mermaids to cross from one part of the beach to the next, sometimes in waist deep water! See the picture of me and John, one of the team leaders, swimming to our end point! (Lots of major world news were happening the week we were in Koh Pra Thong, but for us, high tide times were the main dinner table discussion with the group!) :)

Our last day of the project, we reached the end of our beach and I said, it's hopeless, no one has seen a nest all season. Let's go back early! I'm tired!
And sure enough, a local man (who surveys another section of the beach daily for a Thai turtle rehab center in partnership with our group) waited for us in his tractor with good news. When he saw me and Marc, he yelled "Turtle! Turtle!" ( That's the only word he spoke in English.) He insisted that we get into the back of his tractor (on a wooden board that sat the two of us somehow!) to see the nest. Or at least that's what we thought.

He actually took us to his village, Thung Dap, to feed us breakfast first (rice and shrimp soup) and pick up the village boys who wanted to come along. We took an epic ride to the nest with practically the whole village coming along in a wagon pulled by the tractor! We even got to see their favorite pastime in action: card games with serious money at stake! Most of them spoke no English but we really appreciated their hospitality and seeing their simple way of life.

We reached the nest, and the villagers and even two French resort tourists joined us in excitement. Our group took measurements and made notes to add to the long term database on turtle activity. See pic below of villagers, kids, two tourists, and our volunteer group all huddled around a turtle nest taking pics and measurements.

We also contributed to the turtle museum. Unfortunately, after the tsunami and instability of the project that followed it, the museum is not in good shape. This, plus flooding every rainy season causes the need for lots of paint and maintenance. So we got to use our creativity!! We painted sea creatures on the walls and Marc added a huge bright "museum" sign (in English and Thai!) to make it more inviting and attractive to visitors. See my little lantern fish on the walls in the picture.

In the end, we still got to have a fun time. Between the beach walks and long observation sessions, we passed a few resorts on the way. One even had a "massage center" (an outdoor bungalow right on the beach by the hammocks)! See pic below. Also, we took one day off of turtle duty and took a boat ride to the Surin Islands to go snorkeling. We have never seen so many corals as we did in those waters!

We also had a chance to take a cooking class at another lodge where we were housed, Nok's place in the savannah by the beach. Play Nok's favorite song to get a feel for the kind of guy he is (a Thai hippie who loves reggae, which he played at dinner every night: https://youtu.be/BVzwoqde15g. This is now our theme song of the week. Doo doo doo doo da dum...!). Nok built a restaurant and some bungalows (all mostly by himself). Our project partners with him. He lodges and feeds the turtle volunteers. Lucky for us because everyone considers his wife Lamion the best cook on the island! Nok and Lamion showed us how to make authentic Thai fish cakes with cucumber salad, tempura fried mushrooms, and Massaman curry! This was our third cooking class on our trip and we still managed to learn lots of new recipes.

At the end of the week, we managed to rescue one turtle safely back into the water!! Well, a land turtle stranded in the savannah behind Nok's place...not exactly what we imagined! It got lost and suffered a dog bite. Nok delivered him back to his pond. Hey, at least we can safely say we did what we came to do: rescue turtles!

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