ferry fun

As the porthole exploded inward and I was drenched with a couple gallons of sea water, shipwreck movies were running through my head. When the ocean starts to crack the windows and flood the ship, it's time for the characters to panic. A few of my fellow passengers were eager enough to pick up the cue.
About all I could do was sit there, muscles tensed, clutching the armrests of my seat and watching as a skinny Thai crew member was nearly bucked off the bow of the ship as he lashed a sheet of metal over the hole where a window used to be.
On our way in to Koh Pha-Ngan the ferry ride was no sweat; it was a relief after an overnight bus ride from Bangkok. After a couple of nights partying and days doing exactly nothing on the island, it was time to head back to Bangkok and finish our time in Southeast Asia.
The morning weather on the island was fine. I didn't notice the rough seas until we got on the boat - a modern catamaran accommodating more than a hundred people. The route was in two hour-long steps: Koh Pha-Ngan to Koh Tao, another island off the Southeastern Thailand coast, then on to the mainland.
As soon as we left Koh Pha-Ngan, the boat was rocking in five-to-10-foot swells. Just big enough to throw me into my first bout with seasickness. I managed to avoid any personal food expulsion, but when we pulled into Koh Tao I was fighting nausea. During a layover on Koh Tao I popped a seasickness pill (a great decision) and my stomach decided it didn't need to scream at me anymore and settled into a sulking grumble.
By this time the sky had turned gray and a few short downpours had all the passengers huddled with their luggage in the snack bar or under the waiting area's roof. The scheduled layover dragged on, and word spread the boat from the mainland - which would take us to shore - was running late.

Eventually we loaded up. The rain forced the crew to move all luggage inside the passenger compartment, rather than the normal practice of piling it on the front deck. As the ferry pulled away from the dock, it became apparent the wait had only intensified the waves. The swells now were 10-15 feet, and every time the boat rose up on a wave, it violently slammed down into the water on the other side. It felt like we were constantly being picked up and dropped a few feet onto a parking lot. The boat shuddered on every landing, then made another rapid ascent up the next wave. In the brief instant of weightlessness at each peak, my stomach kept going up even as the rest of my body started to drop with the boat. Each parabola of rise and fall also propelled me up off my seat, and then back down, unless I physically held myself tight to the chair.
Eventually, the impacts took their toll - the plastic casing around some florescent lights at the front of the cabin came loose, crashing into a group of already-nervous passengers. One girl in particular ended up with more of her blood outside her leg than she would have preferred. Just as the crew had gotten her panic attack under control and moved her to the rear rows of the cabin, a far more alarming wave hit.
Instead of hitting this wave head-on, the boat was at a bit of an angle. The front right corner led as the boat tilted down into a trough, and the boat was stilled dipped when the wave crashed over the corner of the deck and up into the front of the boat with enough force to blow out a window. That's when I became soaked with saltwater and starting thinking about shipwreck movies, as well as the two-paragraph stories on ferry sinkings in developing countries; the deaths always well outnumber the survivors, by about 100 to 1.
The people across the aisle from me had pieces of glass coating them, along with sea water. Those passengers who weren't simply stunned by the event voiced some concern.

"We're going to die!"
Comforting to all, of course.
"We must go back!"
This one gained some traction among the group; we were only about 15 minutes into the trip and could still see the dock behind us. The Thai crew did their best to talk everyone down, although most people shouting were more interesting in voicing their opinion than listening to anyone else. A few individuals defused the crowd by pointing out the captain was likely better qualified than the screaming passengers to make such a decision. The captain, above in his cabin and unseen by the passengers, did make one concession to the situation by slowing down considerably. With a bit less momentum, the boat avoided any more waves breaking into the boat. The crew passed out doses of menthol oil which served two purposes: for one, it was calming and seemed to combat both seasickness and the low-level anxiousness which the roiling sea induced.
It also masked the scent of the passengers whose seasickness got the better of them; once one or two passengers' stomachs sent their contents outward, the urge was contagious. It also wasn't helped by the seasickness bags the crew passed out, which happened to be clear plastic.
The hour-long trip instead took more like two and a half. The surreal sense of the whole trip was only heightened by the TV monitors playing "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" in the corners of the cabin. Although I suppose it was better than "Titanic," or "Poseidon."




There is a postscript to this story. Our journey from the islands to Bangkok was supposed to take about 12 hours, putting us in Bangkok around 11 p.m. that night. Instead, the tropical depression off the coast delayed and slowed our ferry, which meant we missed our bus connection. We ended up arriving in Bangkok at about 4 a.m. We had no room reservation (a concept that doesn't exist in Asian backpacker budget accommodation). We walked along the backpacker area and found a room available for about 800 baht, or $20. Instead of taking it, we searched for another 45 minutes until we found a room for about 500 baht, or $12.50. A month in SE Asia will seriously screw with your cost-comparison calculations. We seriously felt the first room was simply too expensive to even consider, even though we were exhausted and it was 4 in the morning. Instead, we sacrificed an hour of sleep - when we knew we'd have to check out of either place in the morning - to save about eight bucks.
It didn't even strike us as unusual at the time. In a month traveling around Thailand, Laos and Cambodia we probably paid an average of $7-8 a night for accommodation, and that's double beds and private rooms, not the dorm beds we paid $20/night each in Australia. In SE Asia, most restaurants posted their menu (in English) outside. After a week or so, we'd look at the menus, and if any one item cost more than the equivalent of $2.50 or so, the place was too expensive and we'd find somewhere else.
Then, in Iceland, we stayed at the Salvation Army, in dorm beds, in separate rooms, and paid the equivalent of about $40/night each for the privilege. If we wanted blankets, it was an extra $7/night.