The last few days

I’ve been back in the US for a little over a week now, but I felt the need to write a final entry about the islands field course and my last few days in Thailand (and my mother is forcing me to write this).
The islands course was incredible. By that point in time though, I was pretty ready to come home. We went to the Adang Archipelago in the Andaman Sea. As I said before, we chartered a bus and rode for about 24 hours down to Pakbara where we met Pi Aaron who helped us load all our stuff and ourselves onto a ferry which took us to Koh Lipe. Once we got there, half of us stayed there and the other half kept going to Koh Rawi. While on this course, we got from place to place either by kayak or by longtail boat. We hired about 4 different Urak Lawoi men to help us get to each site and also to tell us about what was going on in the area. My group went to Koh Lipe first.
Koh Lipe is one of the smaller islands in the archipelago but in recent years has been incredibly developed because of the demand for tourism in the area. There’s an interesting dynamic on the island (and in the entire archipelago) because there’s a group of native people that live there as well called the Urak Lawoi or chaoleh (island people). During our time there, we stayed at a resort and spent most of our time doing research for an assignment called the Stakeholder Analysis Survey. For this assignment, we split into groups and each conducted research and observations in different areas with the common goal of understanding the logistics of the island. My group focused on the restaurants on the island so we went around and asked different restaurant employees/owners where they got their food, how often they ordered it, if they serve mostly tourists or locals, etc. We were curious about these topics because other than fish from both the reef and further out in the sea, Koh Lipe has very few natural resources and there’s little to no farming or even kitchen gardens on the island. Another group focused on interviewing the Urak Lawoi fishermen. They asked them questions mostly about reef health and current fish populations in comparison to populations in the past. This was interesting and important for our survey because the coral reefs in the archipelago have suffered serious damage in the past few decades and there’s kind of a he-said-she-said going on because no one will take the blame for the poor health of the reef. Many of the Urak Lawoi fishermen blame either the large scale fishing boats that come through and catch everything they can or natural disasters namely the 2004 tsunami. Another group studied language on the island which was interesting because the Urak Lawoi have their own language but it is only spoken and never written down so some feel that there’s a risk that the language will eventually die out especially because of the intense development of the island. Many of the Urak Lawoi now speak both their native language and Thai and many of them also learn English because there are so many tourists on the island. One group studied religion on the island which didn’t relate directly to the assignment I suppose, but it was interesting to hear about their results because the Urak Lawoi are traditionally an animist people but there are also ties with Islam because the island is only about 17 km from Malaysia which is a predominantly Muslim nation as well Buddhism because Thailand is a Buddhist nation. Another group walked around the entire island and counted how many resorts, restaurants, dive shops, tourist shops, massage shops, and bars there are on the island. This seems tedious, but it was important information for the assignment because the same information has been gathered in past years so we were able to gauge just how quickly the island has developed. About 10 years ago there were only 7 restaurants for example and now there are 54.
In order to tie all of this research together, we were told to write an essay explaining the different stakeholders on Koh Lipe. I wrote mine about the Urak Lawoi, restaurants, tourists/the tourism industry, and the taukay. A taukay is a kind of middle man between the fishermen and restaurant owners and buyers on the mainland. They buy fish from the Urak Lawoi then sell them elsewhere for a higher price. Although this seems unfair and kind of pointless, there’s kind of a give and take because the taukay in turn will help out the fishermen that are loyal to them. If someone has trouble with their boat or if their child needs to go the hospital on the mainland, the taukay will take care of them. We had the opportunity to have structured discussions/question and answer sessions with a Canadian dive shop owner, a couple Urak Lawoi men that are involved with resorts, a taukay that happened to be the owner of the resort we were staying at, and a national park official while staying on Koh Lipe. When we weren’t working on the project, we also had the chance to go on a few snorkeling day trips as well as just hang out on the beach during free time.
The second half of the field course was completely different. It was a lot more biology intensive instead of focusing on the people. We did a few studies including a sea anemone study, a forest transect, and a mangrove “hike”. We started off by kayaking around Koh Lipe just to get a view of the whole island then across to the next closest island in the archipelago, Koh Adang. We camped at the national park area on this island for two nights. After that, we kayaked 17 km to Koh Rawi. We had the option of going a different rout that would have been 25 km but it was windy that day and we decided not to make it harder on ourselves. We stayed on Koh Rawi for the rest of the time. We set up our tents right on the beach in a bay which was cool because it was very secluded. This bay was interesting though because at low tide we would have to walk over 50 m. to get to ankle deep water. Then when the tide came back in, the water would be as warm as bath water which sounds nice but was kind of gross feeling, and in that hot weather we all really wanted some cold water. There was a mangrove in that bay that we spent a couple hours one day walking through which was really interesting and odd. I had heard of mangroves before but had never seen one let alone walked through one. The mangrove trees are all very strange because they’ve adapted to living in salt water. There are also other strange species like mud skipper fish and crab eating frogs that also have interesting adaptations caused by living in or near salt water. While staying on Koh Rawi, we did day trips almost everyday. Our main assignment on the island was called the marine pilot project. Laurie, Julie, and I worked together and gathered data in order to test whether there’s a correlation between the depth of a giant clam and it’s color. We were told that giant clams attract zooxanthellae (basically algae) and benefit from the energy they produce during photosynthesis. The different species of algae can give different the clams different colors. Our study was inconclusive, mostly because we didn’t have the ability to look at clams at great enough depths to reach any sort of conclusion and also because are methods weren’t incredibly scientific. We had to write another essay about our studies which was more of a lab report than an actual essay.
We had one more final essay to write which I finished on Koh Rawi because we had a “reading day” which basically means a free day. This essay was supposed to tie together both sections of the course. We were asked to suggest a management plan for the islands in the archipelago that would help to conserve the resources in the area. We had to go into detail about the logistics of how this plan would work on both national and local levels.
Our travels back to Chiang Mai went smoothly despite how complicated they were. My half of the group had to wake up at 4 am to pack up our tents and walk out to the edge of the bay to load everything onto the longtails since it was low tide and the longtails couldn’t pull up to the beach. This doesn’t sound that bad, but it was prettyyyy interesting because the bay doesn’t have a nice sandy bottom. It has this mucky muddy gunk and some strange crabs and other creatures that live in the ground. We had to walk out there with shoes on because there was a lot of broken coral that we could have cut our feet on, so we all were struggling because our shoes were sticking in the gunk. Once we loaded up the longtails though, we took a quick ride to the ferry boat that had been waiting for us. We took the ferry to Koh Lipe to pick up the other half of the group then kept going to the same port town that we left from, Pakbara. From there we took an hour long van ride to a small airport where we caught a plane to Bangkok. After a short layover, we flew from Bangkok back to Chiang Mai. The next day (Thursday) we had final seminar for the islands. It was kind of pointless because we were all finished with our essays and our other assignments, so everyone was kind of mentally checked out. Then on Friday, I had my final Thai interview which consists of speaking one-on-one with one of the Thai professors. Luckily I was assigned to one of the nicer ones that I had spoken with before so I wasn’t as nervous as I could have been. Although I said a lot of “mai kow jai” (I don’t understand) and “puud ee tee see ka” (say it again slower please), I think it went pretty well. After that, we had ate final lunch at ISDSI and watched a slideshow of pictures from the entire semester. Before we ate, Kyle aka grandma rapper, Caleb aka KLove and Cody/Leo performed their songs and/or raps that they had written about the Thailand/ISDSI experience. They each mentioned members of the ISDSI staff as well as awkward, funny, and memorable moments from the semester. It was a good way to end things.
The next day, my host family came to pick me up from the apartments and took me to the airport. We said our goodbyes, then I met up with Christie and Adam because we all had overnight layovers in Bangkok. We stayed the night in an incredibly beautiful and luxurious hotel room that Christie’s father got for her and she so generously offered that Adam and I could stay at also. Adam and I were on the same flight back home and we had to leave the hotel at 3 am to start our travels. After a couple long flights, we were back on US soil in Chicago. We said our goodbyes because Adam’s from there, and then I got on my last flight to Minneapolis. It felt so great to finally be home. I ate that chili and cornbread that I had been dreaming about, and just relaxed. Even though it’s been over a week, I’m still getting used to being home. I get overwhelmed very easily by crowds and other things, but I just have to laugh at myself until I get acclimated again.
Thanks for reading my tangled web of tales from Thailand. It’s been quite the ride, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to share some of it with you, whoever you may be. It’s been fun!