Ton Sai! Ton Sai!

After a week of the quiet of another town, the texture of Ton Sai is… well, we’ll call it an abrasive familiarity.

“It’s so easy to hate on Ton Sai,” Josh said. It’s true. I got out of town and started ragging on it immediately, even my beloved little bungalow. But I came back this weekend, and on the long tail from Ao Nang, as we rounded the Ao Nang Tower and the cliffs surrounding Ton Sai came into view, their reds and yellows in full glow of the afternoon sun, I was delighted at the sight of it.

Ton Sai functions like any small town, in some ways. As a small town, all I have to do is walk down the street to see someone I know.

That main street—the only street through town, is a horseshoe-shaped and begins and ends on the beach. The first leg of it is paved in cement, with deep gutters on either side. Then the pavement quits and rutted dirt begins. Walking through town after a hard and long rain is like walking over a skim of chocolate pudding. The road is only ever driven by a handful of vehicles, mostly motorbikes, some with sidecars like crates, and three trucks, a white Toyota, a black Mazda, and a thing more dune buggy than truck that looks like it came in a box labeled “some assembly required.” These vehicles haul jugs of water in—the bottled water for the tourists—and trash out to the boats. The trash that isn’t burned in the jungle at the center of the horseshoe, anyway. I’ve maintained just a dim hope that at some point they’ll pick up the heaps of plastic bottles scattered around town and that they’ll end up recycled, not at the source of the black smoke of the trash fire that burns several times a week. They do diligently retrieve bottles from the trash, so there’s that to consider.

The reception areas for the bungalows and the restaurants that accompany them line the street. The restaurants are all open air, bare boards or concrete and wood tables that collect the leaves when the breeze blows. The only places closed off by four walls and scrubbed thoroughly clean are the handful of convenience stores (where the travelers go to buy the water the trucks haul in). They occasionally stock some fresh fruit—bananas, oranges, mangoes, and the occasional apple—up front, but mostly, what they sell is wrapped tightly and sealed: crackers, cookies, and candy bars. Two stands make pancakes on the street, and they’re as good as IHOP at being open all night. The massage parlors advertise the same—“Open all the time” the one next to Mr. Pancake says on a sign below the services and rates offered (200 bhat or about $7 for a 60 minute Thai massage). Any worry that “all the time” is code for “whatever, whenever” is dispelled by the fact that, like the restaurants, the massage parlors are open air.


Down the road (if you view where the boats down on the horseshoe as up the road), is the food alley or the street kitchens. Chicken Mama’s Rendezvous competes with the other Chicken Lady to sell cheap fried noodles, fried rice, curry and, of course, barbequed chicken. Neither place is fast. Or likely to get your order exactly right 10 out of 10 times. A loaf of their banana bread makes an excellent midday climber’s snack. Bananas or mangoes or half a pineapple are also available for purchase. Bananas sell for 5 bhat, or about 18 cents.

Chicken Mama’s is staffed by the same people almost every day, including a teenage girl who is absolutely fearless at the grill (I saw her on the boat back, and she got on at an island that has a large muay thai [martial arts] training camp and I heard has produced the last two muay thai champions for Thailand). The Freedom Bar, the Sawasdee Bar, the Sunset Bar and the fish restaurant on the corner are also run by the same people every day. The Chicken Lady, Chicken Mama’s rival, didn’t show up to work one day and so her street kitchen stayed closed.

Having the same people in the same shops makes it easy to become a familiar face, particularly given the tendency here to pick favorites and frequent those places. I get friendly waves from the staff at Freedom, Sunset, and Sawasdee bars, and I’d hardly be said to drink my nights away.

The bar seating is platforms with low side tables and woven mats and pillows to sit on. I fidgeted all the first night figuring out how to make use of these accoutrements, including a triangular pillow designed, I suppose, for reclining and watching the climbers and, of course, the sunset, which is the real show in town. Twilight shakes climbers from the cliffs and they cluster at the bars along the beach for a Chang or Singha beer, or perhaps coconut water, served by shearing the sides and bottom of the coconut to create level surfaces and chopping open the top to make a lid, through which you place your straw and sip. The sun sets just beyond the Point, and as it is going down the water turns from teal to a silver lavender blue, more iridescent than clear.


Then, cold showers and a change of clothes and, eventually, dinner. A dinner order is a gamble. Service, even at the same place from one night to the next, is spotty and variable. It’s all part of the adventure.

The rain tonight brought out the frogs and toads. One dodged my footsteps as I walked toward my bungalow. They’re filling the night with their “come hither” croaks, which sound like cellos tuning a very low string and someone quickly beating a wooden block.

I’m back at the Andaman Nature Resort for my bungalow, but up a different path and, because all the cheap places are booked, with a roommate in a place with two twin beds. Two beds, one mosquito net. The bungalow is directly behind the restaurant, which basically means I’m hungry all the time. It’s also near the lodging for some of the people who work here, one of whom has a baby. The sounds of the restaurant and the baby crying provide an odd sort of comfort in background noise. It’s interesting to see my trip changing shape in these next weeks, my quiet, private life replaced by a roommate and a lot of residual noise and accompanying smells.

At the beach, the boatmen hover and advertise the places they'd like to take you. When I'm on Railey Beach for a climb on that side of the peninsula, my gear always gives me away. "Ton Sai! Ton Sai!" they call. I hike the trail back instead.