Night out with Steven and Captain Jack Sparrow

As the ressort -whose bungalows we are sharing and where we eat breakfast, lunch and dinner- is tiny, everybody knows everyone after 3 days. That includes the inhabitants of the (more luxorious but also small) ressort next door. And if not, Lory, the owner of “our” ressort makes sure that every newcomer introduces themselves to “the turtle people” 😉

One of the houses in the next door ressort is owned by Steven, who lives on Ko Phra Thong for over 20 years now. He was born in Hawai, studied psychology and did his phd on the meditation techniques of the world. He went on to learn meditation in monasteries in India, Sri Lanka and Burma (today Myanmar). He even took the ropes to be a buddhist monk in Burma. Unfortunately his friendship with the burmese opposition leader and nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi lead to him being exiled from Burma. So in search of a new home he was looking for a place that resembled “the Hawai of my childhood” and found Ko Phra Thong. He had been leading meditation and yoga retreats with other teachers in Kao Sok (and all over the world) for a while already and so it wasn’t a far stretch.

His daughter approached us during dinner time as she knew Steven had been involved with Naucrates since the early times. Unfortunately Steven had suffered a stroke some time ago and she thought talking about the old times would help him to get his overall cognition back on track. We happily agreed to share time and meals together, especially as I knew old stories would include stories of Pipap.

So one evening he invited the team to “Mr. Chewy”, his favourite bar/restaurant on the island. Mr. Chewy was visibly happy to see him and they talked about Mr. Chewies herb garden, meditation and -inevitable- the tsunami.
The at times quite profund conversation went sideways after a glass or two too many (mainly on Mr. Chewys side. Some of the “herbs” in his garden might also have been involved;-) and ended up in a “pirat party” 😉
After a fun night we preferred to walk back along the beach instead of taking Mr. Chewy up on the offer to drive us all home 😉