Koh Jum

We have just returned to Prachuap after spending 3 nights at Koh Jum, an island in the Andaman Sea. The first night we stayed at the far end of the island and there were no motorcycles to rent. We were stuck and the accomodations were less than perfect. So we called a rival bungalow operation and they came and got us in their longtail boat. Too bad it was so isolated.

I read an email from the class the other day and I wrote back, but for some reason there was a computer error, so I don't know if you got any of my information about Koh Jum.

Koh Jum is a small island (only two small villages and upwards of 15 bungalow operations for tourists). The tourists are from Europe and the U.S. and Canada, although we were the only U.S. family in the guest register for a long time. We met people from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada.

The island is covered with rubber trees. A woman from Holland who lives there for half the year told us that the people have cut down all of the native plants in the jungle to grow rubber trees. There are no more mangoes, no more bananas, etc. This is the really sad part: monkeys used to be really hard to see. They were afraid of people. Now, the people are the only way they can find food so they come to where the people are to beg for food.

We had a major travel day yesterday. We hike 20 minutes through a rubber tree plantation to get to a 7:30 ferry to a small village on the mainland. We rode in a songthaew (a truck with a canopy and two benches running down the sides) for a 1/2 hour, immediately caught a bus for 1 1/2 hours to a large town called Trang. There we did some food shopping for a 10 hour train ride to Prachuap (where our friends live). The train was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo uncomfortable. Hot, cramped, and my rear hurt from sitting for so long. We got here in Prachuap at 11:45 pm and our friends picked us up and took us to our hotel. Then, when most of us would crawl into bed, we were invited to our friend's parents where they fed us, and then they took us to the noodle shop with all of their friends for MORE food. Amazing. I tell you, it's like permanent summer here.

We leave tonight on the night train (we have beds this time) for Bangkok. We arrive at 4:45 in the morning. We'll check our bags at the train station and goof around in Bangkok until night, when we'll catch another night train to the east of Thailand. There we'll catch a bus to Laos in the morning. Then we are going to chill out. Our biggest plan is to take a coffee plantation tour. It ends with some coffee drinking.

One more thing about last night: there was no power in our train car so there were no lights, and when the sun went down we saw thousands of fireflies. The are so cool. They are like small white neon lights.