The cast of characters

The Austrians

I took up with a crew of Austrians for a while, a posse of over 10 guys who drink hard and climb harder. Listening to them carry on in their accented German night after night and participating only in a few side conversations in English was an enjoyable way to pass time in company without having to fret too much about carrying on with small talk. But by the end of the week, bits of their sentences were starting to translate in my brain, if only in imaginary ways. I understood meaning, if not syntax, and would sometimes respond in English to a question asked in German. The myth of magically-acquired language.


They were noisy, and laughed hard and loudly, and laughing always translates. It’s not hard to be infected by it, even if you missed the joke.

When they left, it felt as if the Freedom Bar and the beach were empty.


The Germans

I was trolling for partners a Pyramid Bar over a late breakfast when Felicks and Marlene came in, having their own late breakfast before heading out for an afternoon climbing. They started asking questions, “Are you traveling alone?” “Is that hard?” “Is it hard to find partners?”


“Somedays, yes, it’s hard to find partners,” I admitted. “Like today…” I easily secured an invite to join them climbing.

The Austrians climb stuff I can only imagine someday completing, but Felicks and Marlene climb right at my level. I paired up with them, we added Angelo (Italian), Eddie (American), and Natalie (Canadian) and had a full posse on the rocks for a few days. Felicks wanted a long, full day, so we headed to Fire Wall in the morning, for full sun, full heat, full humidity. We’d run out, climb and belay, and then come back and hover in the shade, gulping water and talking about how boring it would be to wait for shade to climb. By afternoon, the sun moved behind the cliffs and the climbs were in the shade, we were so sweat-soaked and tired we headed for barbequed chicken and Chang beer.

When I said I was taking off, Felicks replied, “But you’ll be breaking up our little… What do you call a group of cows?”

“A herd?” I said.

“Yes, you’ll break up our herd,” he said.


The perpetual ex-patriot

I thought I was a wandering soul, until I met Camila. She left her home in Brazil at 17, to live on different continents, learning other languages and chasing dreams and all those other things women chase across countries. It was her guidance that took me away from Ton Sai for a few days, into the unknown, and her enticement, “You want to share my motorbike?” that got me out of bed and all the way down to the ice cream shop when I was sick with a cold and unwilling to stray far from my bungalow. She’s so well-known on that little island that she can’t walk down the street without getting sucked into a conversation, and at that shop the woman working the counter knew how long it had been since she’d last stopped in for a fix of pistachio ice cream.

In Italy, Germany, Brazil, or California, I’d want her to be my tour guide.


The Italians

Everything Angelo says sounds vaguely romantic.

“I would bring everything for you,” he said when I scrambled back up to the base of a route to retrieve my shoes and water bottle.

“I will do this for you,” he said when he wasn’t sure I was going to finish a climb.

The simplest of phrases, in translation, border on accidental seduction.

He runs on his own schedule, and though he’s recently relocated to Ton Sai, still occasionally takes nights back in Ao Nang, where he was staying to participate in a bit of the night life. A Thai disco? I never. Angelo always. He often shows up to climb sometime in early afternoon, grumbling of little sleep.

With Leonardo, the language is a different matter altogether and so is the schedule. Joe (a Swedish climbing partner Leo met in Laos and bumped into again in Ton Sai) had stopped to talk to some friends while we were on the way to meet Angelo, and Leo was urging us onward.

“Just wait a minute,” Joe said.

“I’ll wait a minute when I have a minute to wait,” Leo said, and took off.

I had been climbing with them for a few days, and will admit I’d noticed Leo’s propensity for cutting corners and bending rules when it comes to climbing safety, before I heard a story from another climber who had been near Leo and Joe when they first arrived. They were hauling their rope in a jacket (not a bag, not coiled, just stacked and bundled around in jacket) and a group of four of them was climbing with one pair of climbing shoes. Leo had four quickdraws with him, and so would climb high enough to clip those four quickdraws into four bolts, and then lower back down and clean the bottom three to climb on with them. The responses I get from other climbers when I retell this story vary from “Great idea in an area where the bolts are suspect.” to “Well, that’s dedication.”

They belay me with a Grigri, an automatically locking belay device, which eases a few of my worries but also leaves me wondering just how little attention they’re paying when they take phone calls while someone is climbing.


The Americans

When I left Ton Sai, part of going where I was headed was to meet up with Josh. We’d shared bloody marys and lunch in Boulder and talked about his work and his experiences climbing in Ton Sai over the last 10 years. He’d given me the loosest directions on how to get in touch with him in Thailand, which ended in “There’s a party for Tom’s birthday and a showing of my film on Saturday night. You should be there, if you can get there.” No address. No phone number. No time. But, I showed up on the island, and immediately heard rumors of a party, and traced it to the bar next to my bungalow. So, I went.

Josh was deep in conversation, so I stood back a bit, waiting, until his gaze flickered over me, he paused, turned back and, grinning, hugged me.

“It’s like, I just say, yeah, OK, I’ll be on the other side of the planet, too, and here you are,” he said.

The next morning, I found myself in a boat headed out to the cliffs that was full of people who know people I know. >Enter, the Americans. They have become my companions of late, when I’m not preoccupied with the Italians.

Jace, eight days younger than me and, like me, a walking mess of contradictions, has become my roommate. We do, in fact, stay up late giggling, doing one another’s hair and discussing our crushes back home. And on a good night, the books we’ve read, the places we’re going, and life, the nature of the universe and everything else. Matty and Brendan are the latest members in Tom Cecil’s orchestra (in the guide book by Sam Lightner, Jr., many of the routes with Tom Cecil’s name include references to “his orchestra,” his crew of guides who work summers with him at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia and come to Thailand for part of the winter off-season). Clint and Apple are in the crowd too, but I’ll leave off scrutiny of them for later.

We slide tables together at the restaurant count how many beers into the night we are, discuss dinner, discuss climbing, discuss how many bhat we’ve spent and how many we have left to go. It’s an ideal ring of climbing bums and honestly, I feel privileged to have been adopted.