The Beach and Halloween.....Thai Style

Close to our home in Surat Thani is the small port town of Khanom. It looks like every other Thai small town, with a market and a 7-11. It has a small harbor filled with fishing boats, the foul smells of fermenting fish sauce, and the “fresh” catch decomposing at various stages emitting scaly, slimy smells as you cruise by on your motorbike.
Not much to write home about until you jet out about ten miles from town to the coast. Now, we have seen our share of beaches here in Thailand. They are stunning. The sun melts into them or rises up from them streaking the sky with colors you believe only exist in cheesy pastel hotel art you would find at a Super 8 Motel. The sand is mostly powdery and the water is perfect. Bathtub warm.
But, these beaches are on the tourist circuit. That can’t be kept a secret. So they have the usual debris and parasites that come with any tourist beach town. Garbage washing up on shore (plastic bags and juice boxes reflecting that “perfect” sunset even more), backpackers posing on their blankets, and at night the inevitable thump, thump, thump of bass that will be sure to keep you “taking sexy back” in your sleep.

This is where the beaches of Khanom break trail. They are clean, quiet, beautiful and usually empty save for a few Thai tourists who avoid the shore for most of the day and seem to come more alive at night when Karaoke and Thai whiskey are flowing. This is where we spent our final days before teaching a week ago, watching water overtake the sand and scanning the horizon for pink dolphins, and this is where we spent the last weekend meeting our fellow farang English teachers at the annual Halloween party at the “One More Beer” Restaurant. The restaurant was the chosen location for the British, Irish, Australian, Canadian, US, and Chinese teachers to descend and celebrate a holiday that has not yet caught on in Thailand. I was a cat (shocker) and Codie was a scarecrow using the straw from the broom from our house. The party freaked out the Thai neighbors and locals who were already bewildered by the farang (foreign) teachers much less farang teachers dressed up as Batgirl, Thai school children, ghosts, and cats.
It was the perfect setting to meet the other teachers in our town but was also the perfect place to relax on a sandy beach and swim at night. The water at this time of the year is filled with phosphorescent plankton that glow when you disturb them, making each stroke when you’re swimming feel like you are the Sorcerer’s Apprentice spraying stardust and sparkle across the water in front of you. I have a feeling we will become well known in Khanom by the end of the year if our cat and scarecrow impressions have not already cemented us in the minds of the locals.