Moving to Stay Still

Of all the aspects of travelling, I think that the actual travel is my least favourite. The process of physically relocating oneself and one's belongings, while exciting in the opportunities the new location holds in store, is fraught with difficulties of the kind I find tedious. This is because travel invariably involves people and processes over which I have little or no control and threaten to hamper a smooth transition to my destination.

I am not generally an anxious traveller. I don't concern myself overly with whether I will wake up in time to catch the flight, or whether I will leave my passport at home. If these things happen, I only have myself to blame. I don't even worry about accidents - plane disappearances, boat capsizes - as I recognise these for the freak occurrences that they are.

What frustrates me is relying on the perfect alignment of all the things that have to work in order to get me from A to B (where B is the destination of my choosing and not where the taxi driver happens to want to take me). I worry least about air travel, as this is well regulated and (as I have remarked before) standardised across countries. As we proceed down the tiers of transportation, the means of conveyance and its reliability become more and more suspect. Taxis (especially unregulated ones) probably rank at the bottom of this scale, and I find worrying about fares, routes, and the potential for kidnapping and theft, tiresome but unavoidable. Ironically I am happiest when under my own steam, either on foot or bicycle with little to go wrong (although simple mechanics are not infallible, as I will experience later).

I am striving to cultivate an attitude that isn't concerned about the specifics of how, when or where we travel, but which flows like a leaf on a river, going where life leads. In practice, I am naturally unconcerned if most things don't go 'to plan' but there are certain aspects of a journey to which I am (against my better judgement) attached, failure of which can profoundly affect my mood.

This morning was a good example of a journey that threatened not to go smoothly. We were scheduled to leave the island of Ko Lanta by ferry, travel along the Andaman coast of Thailand, stopping at a few islands on the way, and arrive at Langkawi, an island in Malaysian waters. The first leg of the journey was to get ourselves to the port of disembarkation, on the far side of the island.

The ferry company offered a pick-up service, which I had been trying to arrange. My emails had failed to elicit the requisite confirmation of the pick-up time, so I called on the phone. Having been directed from head office to the local number, I spoke to someone who gave me no assurance of having understood my request whatsoever. Given that our accommodation is not among the main resorts, we eventually settled on a common meeting point at which to present ourselves at 8AM. I had no confidence that anyone would show up and worried needlessly to that effect.

Eight o'clock came and went. At around 8:30 our host was heading in our direction and offered us a lift part of the way. Driving up the street, we noticed the pick-up truck and two guys parked at the wrong place. We gratefully got in and sped to the pier. My concerns had been partly justified.

At the pier, we were told that we would have to transfer to another pier, as there were a lot of passengers and as we were heading to the ultimate stop, we would save time if we were to go direct.

Travelling in (Thai) style

Transferring to a new pier meant travelling back to the mainland and taking a minivan for 6 hours to the closest point to Langkawi still in Thailand at Satun. From here it was a short hop across the water to the island. It wasn't quite what we had in mind when we had imagined island hopping our way south. With only a brief rest stop on the journey, we wolfed down the tofu laab and rice that we had packed for lunch at a service station.

Shifting our clocks by one hour over the border, we gratefully docked at Kuah port on the south coast of Langkawi. By this time it was turning dark, so we jumped in a taxi and drove across the island to our homestay.

The accommodation we had booked is a very small spa retreat in out-of-the-way Kuala Teriang, removed from the main beach (Pantai Cenang) and resorts. Its location, while close to the airport, is remote along small and steep roads into the jungle that covers much of the island. As such, only a few local taxi drivers know how to find it.

Our host agreed to meet us at the local Chinese school. More used to dropping people off at the Sheraton or Westin, the taxi driver was nervous of leaving us and our bags in such an unusual location. However, for the few minutes that we waited the school night watchman, who didn't speak a word of English, smilingly offered us both a chair to sit on. We sat listening to the amplified sermon being delivered at the local mosque to an all-male congregation. Presently, our host arrived and drove us the short but windy and unlit distance to the homestay.

There we met another couple, staying for only one night, and enjoyed a fresh coconut while chatting about our travel plans and experiences. Our host produced banana cake and coconut ice cream, which we greedily devoured.

Ensconced in our new home, I was happy and looked forward to the following days of discovering a new place and of becoming accustomed to the unfamiliar. I am still working on a 'que sera' attitude to travel. We will see how I fair on our ferry to Penang in a couple of weeks' time. For now I am happy being still for a while.