Current Status:
Last two dives this morning. Saw a turtle! The girl working the camera got a great shot of it (Finding Nemo totally nailed the stoner turtle look).
Did the tourist thing and bought the video so I can cherish the experience forever. I was worried if I didn’t buy it I wouldn’t be able to properly cherish it.
Felt exhausted, so I crashed early. Everyone else did drunken acro yoga on the beach. Not a bad day.
commentor: Cindy date: 2015-02-04 05:40:37
If you don’t have the video, the experience didn’t happen. Don’t you know that? Glad you learned it before your life never happened. BTW, what is drunken acro yoga and was my daughter a party to what sounds like debauchery?
Class in the morning, where we learned again, that you’re supposed to breathe underwater. Then we did our first two dives. So cool!
The girls did two of their fun dives the morning, then once we were all back we grabbed dinner and called it a night. We all have to be up early tomorrow morning for our next two dives.
Spent the morning in the classroom. Learned that when scuba diving, you’re supposed to breathe underwater. Who knew?
Actually going under water for the first time was a bit weird, but after the first couple breaths it started making sense.
Met up with the last two of our group!
Hiked around the island, then started diving school. Just class work.
Lazy morning, followed by lots of entertaining, low key travel, capped off with a night ferry.
This, more than anything else, was the reason I came to Thailand. Forty feet up, no gear, beautiful views, and nothing but air and water below.
On-sighted my first lead. It was a juggy 5.8, but I’ll take it.
When we first arrived on the beach at Tonsai, we were unsure of what to make of it, but we damn near crawled back in the long tail. Tonsai is beautiful: humbling cliffs, seemingly impossible rock formations, crystal water, and gorgeous views. And all of it completely covered in trash.
We were speechless.
We had begun to grow used to the wear on the environment. Every excursion we’ve come back with our pockets filled with rappers. We’d even grown accustom to our guides in Khao Sok cutting down bamboo along the trail to make whistles, coffee pots, or even just because. But this was something different. Beer bottles, plastic bags, tires, and the smell of burning plastic permeate everything. It’s disgusting. Even along the beach with the on-shore wind, where it’s not sandy, it’s dead coral.
From what we’ve pieced together, no one lived in Tonsai before climbers came. Not like it was undiscovered, just that there was no reason to come out this way. But with the climbers came money, and with that the services it pays for: restaurants, bars, reliable internet. Very little infrastructure; trash still gets burned. The tourists ignore it or see it as a local problem (who wants to spend their vacation picking up trash?), and I’m sure locals have diverse perspectives on it.
Complicating all of this, they’ve just broke ground on a new resort, starting with a huge concrete wall wrapping around the perimeter. So the story goes, over the last few months banks have been repossessing all of the beach front property in Tonsai. Now it’s all in the hands of the Starwood Alliance (full disclosure, I’m proud to have several family members that are Sheraton employees). The climbers hate it (civilizations filling in all the cracks, man), while the locals seem ambivalent (and who can blame them for wanting higher cash flow?).
Ironically (if predictably), a major resort could be the best solution to the problem we climbers created. We’re the ones leaving Chang tallboys all over the jungle, while a resort can’t afford to let trash turn away customers. We’ll move on, push out further and develop new routes, hunting for that place where we can really experience nature, so long as it’s got wifi and beer.
Maybe I’ll come back in a few years, see how the resort has changed things. The rock sure isn’t going anywhere. But if I’m being honest, and as shocking as it is on arrival, writing this is probably the most I’m going to do about it. You can get used to overlooking the trash and holding your breath walking through the smoke. And the rock really is incredible.