Survivor Pull Tooth Mission Extreme II

"Our" Bay:

We met three awesome Icelandic guys in Ton Sai when we came back from Ko Phi phi and while having drinks at the Freedom bar down at the beach one night the idea for a survivor mission was born. (Peter, Balli and Totti are all icelanders travelling down Thailand on their way to Malaysia where they plan to do a 9 day jungle trek...).

From left to right: Totti, Mark, Peter and Balli:

The idea was to spend a few nights on one of the nearby islands with only essential items of survival in order to have a real adventure. As the night went on and the beers began to stack up the items list began to shrink until someone suggested all we would need would be 5 items. We figured in the end this would have been a bit ridiculous and we decided that some luxury items (Like the icelandic pillows - tourists) would be allowed. In the end we all bought along our backpacks simply because we didn't trust leaving them with anyone on the mainland.

After struggling to find a longboat to take us out there we finally managed to persuade someone after waiting a day and a half. So there we were, three icelandics and two kiwis, heading out to a secret bay on Ko Poda which we had been told about by a thai guy.

The island was a good three kms from Ton Sai where we had been staying and uninhabited except for the tourist boats which anchored on the white sandy beaches on the opposite side to where we were staying. Our little "secret" bay turned out to be a small strip of sand with chunks of coral and rock strewn among the beach and flanked by 100 meter rock walls on all sides. There was a welcome limestone cave at one end which was also home to a number of smelly bats and a small "jungle" at the other where we found sufficient firewood.

It wasn't exactly the robinson crusoe coconut palm beach we had all been dreaming about and the only fruit tree was papaya which we didn't reall recognise and so tasted onl scantly. We had brought with us only 5 kg of rice and 60 liters of fresh water for a planned 2 night stay, because in our minds we had planned on finding plentiful fruit to flavour our rice diet.

As we hopped off the longboat and passed our gear onto the beach we were all so excited that nobody bothered to check with our longboat driver to make sure he would come back for us in two days time. We all seemed confident our gesturng and simple thai dialogue back at Ton Sai had been sufficient to get the message through...

As we made ourselves at home on the beach, found a cooking area and set up a place to sleep at night under the roof of the cave it became apparent that we were going to be confined to our little beach for the whole time on the island. The only way we were going to get away was by the sea.

We found a small grove of bamboo trees and decided to build ourselves a shelter around the cooking area, this soon turned into a rain catcher as we found that the cave provided us with enough shelter from the monsoon rain which whipped through in the late afternoon.

For our time on the island the worst insult was to be called "a tourist" as this diminshed any image of surviving which one might have been able to accrue and we all succumbed to being called this at some stage.

Our first night was spent in ignorance of the time to come and we used the only seasoning for the rice (soy sauce) plentifully and tasted the bland flavour of unripe papaya which we decided we would mix with the rice in the morning in the hope of making our meals more exciting.

We spent the next day fixing the water catcher (we managed to fill a liter over the course of the day) and experimenting with our limited ingredients in the cooking area. The pot we had borrowed from a friendly thai restaurant had enough space for a snack meal of rice each and so it was inevitable that with five hungry guys to satisfy we were constantly cooking the next ration of rice.

Me and Toddy made spears with bamboo and tried our hands at spear fishing and Toddy also made his own snorkel frm rubbish - awesome. We were pro's (naturally) but our spears sucked arse and we caught nothing. Lots of fish to be seen though...

Everyone excluding Jo also had several ailments before coming to the island. I had "toad skin", "scabies" and heat rash and Peter had Wylie the Worm and mushrooms. Apart from that everyone had heaps of cuts which never seemd to heal. While my condition improved (probably due to the copious amounts of anti-histamines I had been prescribed) the icelander's seemed to love infecting themselves more by picking at their wounds.

Jo. the onl healthy one of us, eventually slipped down some rocks during a monsoon downpour and cheese-grated his arm so that now we all had something to complain about.

On the third morning we were all starting to get over the rice diet, the soy sauce had run out and we were now down to seasoning with salt. We kept ourselves entertained by dreaming about various dishes we were going to consume when back on the mainland and playing poker with emtpy snail shells as chips. The winner was awarded one meal when back at shore, paid for by the rest.

As the supposed last day wore on and our apprehension turned to frustration at not seeing our longboat arrive we entertained ourselves with playing hopscotch on the beach and creating our very own hacky sac mini golf. As the weather turned from bad to worse we realised we weren't going to get picked up that day and resigned ourselves to another night on our beach.

Next morning Jo awoke before the others and saw a calm ocean. Hopeful the longboat driver would come and collect his 750 baht and just as he was getting really excited at being able to see chicken island in the distance, the weather turned to custard again (why custard?).

A few minutes later when the rest of us woke up, two kayaks came shooting round the corner one struggling to stay on course, the other heading into our bay. As one landed the other was blown across our bay and out of sight.

A guy and a girl hopped out of the first kayak and we recognised one as Matt from Wales who we had met at Ton Sai a few days earlier. He sprinted back into the water and swam out of sight to rescue the other kayak. Once all four had landed on our beach we were happy to see they had brought food with them .

But we soon realised there weren't rescuers and we were now looking at another day with 9 stranded people. Thankfully two were chicks which lightens the atmosphere a bit.

So we chilled for like a couple of hours and then me and Matt decided to try and kayak to Ton Sai to get help or at least let people know we were safe. Or mainly the new people as no one really cared we were missing (o: And i didn't really decide, Matt just volunteered me for the kayak!

So when the weather was at it's worst (blame the welshman as i wanted to wait a bit. Yes, i know. "What a tourist".) and after we'd tried phone calls (who had a local number?), we set off in a kayak for Ton Sai.

I can't even emphasise the wrath of the sea that day and the whole way out of the bay i was just praying we wouldn't flip as the guys on the beach would worry. Jo already thought it was a dumb idea as did all of us except for Pete who was jealous he couldn't go bcause of his gimp foot.

But we managed to get around the corner in the roughest sea i have ever kayaked in and then we flipped (o: But the water was warm so all good. We paddled around to the other side of the island and by now my arms are tired (diet of rice for four days afterall) and Matt must be feeling it as he had just kayaked for 2 hours from Ton Sai to get here!

So when in the distance we saw some squid boats we figured, f*#k it. We'll try them. So we paddled up to one and climbed aboard. No point bing shy about it. We then had an animated hand gestred conversation with the skipper (spoke one word of English - no) who agreed to drive us around even though he obviusly had not a clue what we were on about or where we wanted him to take us - what a champ!

Fisherman + Thai person = real nice person. So he drove us around to the bay (his boat was taking a pounding) and then me and Matt went and ferried the gear to the boat with Jo while the others swam across. By this stage there are 5m swells in the bay so landing in the kayak was stupid as it was rocky and i was not loving it! we flipped once with Jo's gear but otherwise made it on board safely and then got driven back to Ton sai.

There, the local climbers watched with interest as a squid boat (never usually in this close) off loaded of a random assortment of people and gear. We made it to the beach, after paying the skipper handsomely for his troubles, and grabbed ourselves a much deserved beer. We then went and gorged ourselves till we felt ill and later learnt our story had travelled around the whole climbing area and people we'd never even met knew all about it and us.

Note: see the icelandic guy's blog (follow link on the right column of our blog) for some more awesome photos...

Freshly arrived on the beach this is the view we arrived to:

All three sleeping quarters, hammock, tent and ground floor:

A "tourist"relaxing with his inflatable pillow:

The water catcher trying to do it's job:

Minigolf on the beach:

Rescued at last?

Shortly before it got bad...