Klong Plu Waterfall

“Koh Chang treasure map: all you need to know to enjoy your stay!” advertise tourist folders. And yes, as you view it from the ferry wheezing towards its landing at Dan Khao pier, Koh Chang looks like Treasure Island: a mountain rising steeply from the Gulf of Thailand, escorted by identical islets. It is a deep green mountain, entirely covered by a thick rain forest, an impenetrable jungle, except for the experienced trekkers.

In fact, there is only one paved road hugging the shore and not quite circling the island as it ends suddenly on its southern tip. Rough terrain lies in the way, unfit for cars and motorbikes. So, if you want to view the island in the comfort of an air-conditioned automobile, you must choose between the “West tour” and the “East tour”, but not both on the same day.

The “West tour” takes you from White Sands Beach, the busiest beach, in the North of the island, to Bang Bao, a fishing village built on a bay, in the South. The “East tour” takes you in the other direction, all the way to another fishing village on the South side, Salak Phet, with equally good seafood restaurants, boats to be chartered to the nearest islets for snorkelling and scuba diving around coral reefs. On both tours you can see temples, albeit of a modest size, waterfalls and elephants, plus a couple of mangrove forests on the East side.

A temple (pictured) on the northernmost point is Chinese, which makes it special, said my driver without explaining why. The waterfalls look like the one in the background of the closing scenes of Waterworld, when a group of survivors, led by Kevin Costner, find the last island on an ocean-flooded Earth. The elephants all look very patient. Everywhere, there are new hotels and bungalows being built. Will the island sustain that growth without damage to its environment?

There are indeed many more people on Koh Chang than the unavoidable but solitary Friday, although few seem to have been born on the island. Not the two grey-haired Austrian gentlemen sitting on bar stools next to me, at the hotel. They are from Innsbruck, they volunteer. One of them waves his hands in the shape of very high Alpine peaks. I know, I have been there many years ago; there was snow in the streets late in April, and more snow on the mountain ranges overlooking that town. I do not tell them that I have made no attempt to return since.

(Pic) Bungalows a la Robinson Crusoe

As the young barmaid hands me my change I pick up a ten baht coin. I want to tell her that in Europe these are passed on the unsuspecting as two euro coins: same size, same general appearance. She has no idea of what I am saying. She turns her attention back to the television screen above us. It is showing for the umpteenth time the women’s weightlifting event at the Beijing Olympics: Miss Prapawadee “Nong Kae” Jaroenrattanatarakoon, the 24-year-old Thai champion, winning the gold medal in the women’s 53 kg category, while setting an Olympic record for the clean and jerk, with a lift of 126 kg.

On my left, a tall middle-aged man, clean shaven and with an equally fresh haircut, bends forward and lifts his glasses up the bridge of his nose to look in earnest at my coins. He is himself paying for the cups of coffee he just had with his wife and teenaged daughters. I tell him about that two euro scheme.

“So, you get taken for one euro ninety five,” he says, getting his figures slightly mixed up. “Well, if you don’t get taken for any more than that in your life, you are lucky,” he intones.

He sounds as if he must have been taken for a lot more, recently. Perhaps the bursting of the sub prime bubble? Or the real estate market crash? Or one of the wild swings among commodities? Those erratic gold futures? His banker leaving town?

I do not ask. I just thank him for that euro ninety-five piece of wisdom.

“It was free,” he grunts.

Oh, the number of people we meet every day who want to have the last word! Today, I will.

- Pierre-Edmond Robert

Author’s Note: Pierre-Edmond Robert’s next volume of collected short stories, L’Autre Côté du monde, will be published in November by Bernard Pascuito Éditeur, in Paris. (www.bernardpascuito.com)