Libertalia: Stealing Equality Chapter One

What are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD), City of God

CHAPTER 1

Southeast Asia

The Indonesian heat was intense. My thin white cotton shirt had become so saturated in sweat that it was nearly transparent. Through my sleeve, the compass rose tattoo scrolled down my right arm would have been visible to anyone, not that there were any onlookers. I was far from civilization, with only the local wildlife to keep me company. Occasionally a tiny colony of crabs would poke their heads out of the coastal mud to survey if I was a threat. I pushed the thought of the heat out of my mind and focused instead on why I was there. All of my historical research had led to that spot, a bit of coastline known as Diamond Point on the eastern side of Sumatra.

I had begun my trip in Malaysia before eventually making my way to Sumatra. My trip wasn’t intended as some multi-country pleasure tour. My route had been decided just over 500 years earlier. I was following the path of the Flor de la Mar, the flower of the sea. It was the ship of Portuguese Admiral Afonso de Albuquerque. The Flor was heavily laden with treasure intended for the King of Portugal, King Manuel I. Unfortunately, the carrack was caught in a storm and reportedly sunk no more than a cannon shot from shore.
My arm was aching from swinging my metal detector back and forth; however, that was nothing compared to the ache in my back and thighs from digging up the countless hits. I hadn’t come halfway across the world to Sumatra just to cut my search short due to blisters and sunburn. So I kept swinging, walking, and digging. Though I was tired, I tried to recall all the possibilities that could be hiding just inches below that dirt and sand. I also reminded myself of the extra week I had allotted in Thailand to do a bit more exploring and some relaxation after finishing in Sumatra. Those two thoughts helped lift my spirits.

I was sure my research was sound. If the 2.6 billion in lost treasure was anywhere, it was there. The treasure ship had been traveling up the straight of Malacca, one of the busiest shipping trade routes of the 16th century and still one of the busiest trade routes of today. As a result, that coastline was littered with jetsam. Most of the rubbish was metal or foil wrappers which would also set off a metal detector. Since I was looking for evidence of a shipwreck, I was looking for nonprecious metals such as nails or cannons, not just gold and silver. That fact meant that every hit was worth investigating and taking the time to dig up. Given the amount of metallic garbage washed up and buried over the years, the task seemed incredibly daunting.

Often in life, I have felt like the mythical Greek figure Sisyphus from Homer’s Iliad. The character was doomed to an eternity of rolling a massive boulder up a hill only to have it roll down the other side and then forced to roll it back again endlessly. Life can sometimes feel that fruitless. My lack of success after having dug up countless amounts of trash while metal detecting in the relentless heat had driven that feeling home.

I had felt that hopeless and defeated once before. It was in post-earthquake Nepal, trekking the Himalayas not far from the quake's epicenter. Landslides had wiped out many of the trails making the journey even more hazardous. While hiking through the mountains, the tea houses only served one option, a meal called dal bhat. The spices included in that local dish had done a number on my system. I fell ill partway through, and the sheer calories burnt each day had taken its toll. Although I had somewhat prepared for the physical strain, I had not counted on the mental toll that the journey would take. If you looked too far ahead and sized up the subsequent assent or stared too far into the distance and imagined the sheer number of steps still lying in front, it would defeat you. You had to go somewhere in your head, accept your fate and just put one foot in front of the other. That must be how Sisyphus endures.

Despite the occasional hardships, these sorts of adventures are what I live for. It’s about exploring the unknown, unraveling clues hidden in old documents, and the thrill of potential discovery. A large part of what makes up a person is based on their own interpretation of what gives life meaning. I feel the goal of life is to come to understand your authentic self. Carl Jung once said, “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” I think most people try to achieve that at a young age and somewhere along the way decide it’s too difficult. People then often settle and end up in a routine, chasing the comforts of life.

My greatest enemy is routine. I often refer to it as Groundhog Day. Much like the Bill Murray movie, living the same day over and over. To better understand your true self and the world around you, I feel you need to experience as many things as possible. In my opinion, a repetitive existence limits your potential growth. Some people love the familiarity of routine, knowing what comes next, and taking comfort in the lack of surprises. On the other hand, it is akin to an early death for people like me. If each day is so similar that you can predict what will happen, what is the point of doing it? It’s Sisyphus and his boulder, mindless repetition, and I view it as a self-imposed torment.

I love to travel and enjoy adventures because it is all about embracing the unknown. Second, to that, I love history. I am admittedly a bit of a Luddite and see technology as just another wall between us and being present in the moment. I think we have all spent far too long experiencing life through screens. In history, we can find stories of people who truly lived in the moment, and I find that inspiring. I also tend to be a minimalist. With many backpacking experiences under my belt at a young age, I quickly learned every pound you possess is a pound you need to carry, either physically or psychologically. I once heard someone say that “not wanting something is the same as owning it.” I am rich in the things I don’t want.

Having less makes me feel lighter, carefree, and able to pivot as needed towards the next adventure. Like Caine in the Kung Fu TV show, I would love nothing more than to walk the earth and have stories to tell. People often ask how I can afford the travel that I have done. I don’t come from wealth, and I have managed it by taking jobs that involve travel and making minimal purchases. For example, I own fifteen shirts, wear the same hiking boots every day and always brew my own coffee. When I do travel, it is usually to remote parts of the world where each dollar can be stretched pretty far. If you approach travel as an explorer rather than a tourist and life as a creator instead of a consumer, you would be surprised how little you can get by on. My one indulgence is my Jeep Wrangler, but more on that later.

I suppose stories, photographs, sketches, and things of that nature are what I care to collect. I fully respect people who find solace in their material collections and well-worn armchairs, but I am not that guy and never have been. I struggle because there is no place for me in this time and age. In a world of Netflix and Funko pop shelves, I don’t belong. I am less interested in a long life and more interested in a fulfilling one, and I prioritize decisions based on that fact alone. I feel life is short, and we have to make it feel longer than it is. Embracing the unknown and rejecting routine are the best methods I have encountered to achieve that goal.

Though rejecting routine is easier said than done, especially when modern society seems to be engineered for it. Often if you want to do something out of the ordinary, you need to be socially connected or affluent enough to afford a path through the bureaucracy and permits that stand in your way. However, I wasn’t going to allow something like permits and social standing to stop me from living out my sense of purpose.

I often don’t have all my permits in order, to say the least. However, as a man not wealthy or connected enough to be at liberty to make the rules, I don’t always see the obligation to strictly abide by them. For example, governments used to make deals with independent treasure hunters for a sort of finder’s fee. By having the government authenticate the find, the value of the discovery increases due to the official documentation of its historical worth. In that case, it was worth handing over a great deal to the government as it would also increase the value of that which you were permitted to keep. Things have changed. Now, the trend leaned toward bullying tactics. Hand it all over, or the government will put you in jail.

I understand the need to preserve historical artifacts, to study and learn from them, but without independent pioneers like Mel Fisher, many great finds would still be lost. With a take-all greedy attitude, governments are just pushing finds onto the black market and increasing the number of artifacts disappearing and never being adequately studied. That fact makes me think the government’s motives are mainly financial. They make the rules; they can imprison you, so why not just take it all for themselves? The governments, like most of the powerful, have gotten greedy.

To me, the real treasure is the discovery itself. I see myself as more of an explorer than a treasure hunter; I am more interested in uncovering the story than hunting precious stones or metal. Not that I wouldn’t be ecstatic to recover a small fortune in precious artifacts, such as finding the vast treasure aboard the Flor de la Mar when it sunk somewhere just offshore. Of course, that was why I had traveled to Southeast Asia in the first place.

I had been following the trail of the Portuguese Admiral Afonso de Albuquerque. He was made the Governor of India after his successful conquest of Goa at the behest of King Manuel I of Portugal. The King then sent him to conquer Malacca, a strategically located trading port made wealthy from the silk and spices of the East. King Manuel had previously sent Diogo Lopez de Sequeira to conquer the spice port; however, Diogo returned unsuccessfully. Where Diogo had failed, Afonso succeeded. In 1511 with just 700 Portuguese and 300 Indian soldiers, Afonso conquered Malacca; he plundered the port and the Sultan's palace. Today, Malacca has a reconstruction of both the Sultan’s palace and Afonso’s ship, which visitors are welcome to explore.

After securing Malacca, Afonso intended to return home to Portugal. He had a tribute of treasure from the King of Siam (now Thailand), his personal fortune from India, and the riches of Malacca and the Sultan’s palace. A total estimated to be worth 2.6 billion dollars. He had so much treasure that the only ship with the cargo area capable of holding it all was his own ship, the Flor de la Mar. It was a formidable ship at 120’ long, 110’ high, and with forty cannons, but it was old. When most ships were built for just three years of service due to wood rot and insects, the Flor de la Mar was in its ninth year at sea. It had the capacity but was now fully loaded and pushing its luck. Leaving most of his soldiers to defend Malacca, Afonso set sail in the Flor de la Mar alongside a few smaller ships. Somewhere off the coast of Sumatra, he sailed into a massive storm, and his luck ran out. Afonso managed to survive and was rescued by one of the smaller ships, but his grand treasure ship had been lost to the sea.

There are some vague historical references to where the Flor de la Mar had been wrecked. However, most involve place names that are not recorded on any known map. Ironically, though Captain Diogo had failed the King in securing Malacca, he hadn’t failed me. In letters written by Afonso to the King, he mentioned the ship sunk near a place called Paśe, a place not found on any map. However, an earlier letter written by Diogo mentions he left Pedir (which can be found on old maps) and sailed twenty leagues east, where he was greeted at Paśe. Cross-referencing those two old historical letters and that little bit of information I had gleaned in the process was what had brought me to the area now known as Diamond Point. Not having the gear, funds, or permits to stage an underwater search, I opted for searching the coastline, being confident that one of the many tropical storms to hit Sumatra would have washed at least some items up on shore.

I had been metal detecting since the first light of day. At least there, unlike Malacca, my camera didn’t bring any unwanted attention. I could see that the crabs grew in number slightly further down the beach, where a mangrove forest had swallowed up the sand. I mindlessly continued sweeping my arm back and forth and headed towards the crab’s mangrove metropolis. I could hear the growing noise of what sounded like a distant motorboat. I focused long enough to realize the sound was coming from my own stomach. I had brought enough water but hardly any food. I swung the detector and tried to think of anything but my hunger. I let my mind drift off again to recent pleasant memories.

I imagined I was back in my hotel room in Malacca. Wonderfully air-conditioned with upbeat desk attendants. A small white picket fenced-in pen held a family of Guinea pigs in the middle of the lobby floor. It struck me as a whimsical yet unusual feature to find in a hotel lobby. They seemed much happier than the Guinea pigs I had seen while motorcycling through Peru with a friend to Machu Picchu ten years earlier. Though to be fair, in Peru, Guinea pigs were served up fried or roasted as a dish called Cuy. I didn’t partake as my first pet was an albino Guinea pig, and I could not imagine ever being hungry enough to resort to eating “Pinky.” That thought pushed the hunger out of my mind.

I staggered into the mangrove territory and tried to be a bit more mindful not to step on the little crabs. Back in Malacca, I had visited the reconstructions of the Sultan’s palace, the Flor de la Mar, and the remains of A’ Famosa. A’ Famosa, or “the famous,” was a fort commanded by Afonso after conquering Malacca. Unfortunately, today only one gateway remains. However, on the way to those marvels was another fantastic gem. I hadn’t been able to enjoy it since I was a child. Against all odds, Malaysia was home to one of the world’s last remaining Kenny Roger’s Roasters restaurants. Ahh, the hickory spit-roasted chicken was as good as I remembered as a child, and yes, I did go every day I was in that city. With that memory fresh in my mind, my stomach let out another long groan. “Ah crap!” I really should have packed more food.

Beep, beep! The metal detector made a new squeal. The hit came from under some mangrove roots that reached over the sand below like Nosferatu’s outstretched fingers. Against all hope, I dug. The Mangroves afforded me some shade, but that shade came with a side of mosquitoes. While slapping my neck and digging deeper, I caught a glimpse of something shiny. At first, I thought it was a button given how small it was, but upon closer inspection, it was a small yet very thick coin. It was tarnished silver, but the sand had preserved a little of its former luster.

On both sides, I saw the unmistakable flowing lines of Islamic script. In 1511, when Afonso conquered Malacca, the Malay empire was a Muslim territory. I could hardly believe my eyes. It’s not the value of the silver that intrigued me or the monetary value of any given artifact. Picking that coin up was like opening a gateway to the past. A connection through time, knowing that the last person who handled it lived hundreds of years ago and that I had just become the next in line to see it, touch it, and be part of that story. It’s the closest thing to time travel that we have.

I was no longer salivating over memories of hickory roasted celebrity-endorsed chicken. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry or tired at all. With renewed enthusiasm, I spent the rest of the daylight hours and the following full-day digging that sand and mangrove forest. I knew I was running out of time. I still hoped to get to Thailand, but before I had wandered into the Sumatran jungle, the news had been filled with a mysterious virus coming out of China. I had come to Southeast Asia at the start of Chinese New Year, and the virus was spreading rapidly alongside an increase in air travel by the world’s most populous nation. My window was closing fast. In the end, I only found a single silver coin. However, that coin had given the validity of my research some serious merit.

At the airport, while waiting in the departures area, I made use of the Wi-Fi and uploaded photos of the coin to experts around the world. They identified it immediately. It was a silver tanka that had been minted near Goa, India, and in circulation, at the time Afonso resided as governor there. So it was possibly a piece of his personal fortune that had been lost aboard the Flor de la Mar along with the other various treasures. Then again, it could have been dropped by an Indian merchant or sailor trading with the coastal residents of Sumatra. More investigating would need to be done, but my time and money were both running out for the time being.

I landed in Bangkok for a short layover and noticed that the number of passengers wearing face masks had dramatically increased. After a mad dash through the airport, I just made my connecting flight. After a long day of shuttles and boats, I finally arrived at the island of Koh Yao Noi, located just west of Krabi. I found an interesting establishment called Para Bar, a sort of restaurant that looked vaguely like a ship's prow emerging from a small embankment. The nautical theme seemed appropriate, given that my goal of locating a shipwreck had motivated the entire trip. I ordered nearly half the menu to make up for the last few days and had a little party by myself to celebrate having found the silver tanka coin.

After taste-testing a few local beers, I opted to take the local transportation to my hotel. Unfortunately, local transit on that island turned out to be holding onto the back of a young boy while he navigated dirt ruts on a scooter. As I looked back at the Para Bar, I admired the wooden ship-like structure and contemplated how I had been born in the wrong country at the wrong time. I should have been born during the age of exploration, traveling aboard a wooden galleon to distant unknown lands. That would have been the time for me! I returned to the present moment as my tripod case half slipped down my shoulder, coming just short of the scooter’s rear wheel spokes. Had the tripod dropped a few inches further between the moving spokes and the bike's frame, the ride would have been dramatically cut short. As we pulled up to the modest bungalow I had prebooked, I was suddenly quite sober.

The following day, I went in search of some local fishermen. Luckily, the hotel clerk said they weren’t too far down the beach from where I was staying. We had passed them the night before, but I was too concerned with the scooter’s back tire at that moment to have noticed them. My goal was to rent their boat and services for the next few days. I printed a series of maps in both Thai and English. I marked
both in the same way so we could communicate directions and destinations. That way, even if they didn’t speak English, they clearly knew where I was hoping to venture.

Two years earlier, I used the same trick when hiring a helicopter pilot to drop me near the Mirador basin in the Guatemalan jungle. A 3D mapping technology known as lidar had been attached to a plane flying over the Peten jungle. That survey had uncovered a yet-to-be-discovered Mayan lost city. The scans were quickly published online, and while archeologists looked for grants and assembled a team, I grabbed my backpack and a plane ticket. I wanted to explore the area before it became a theme park. TV host Josh Gates claims he was the first one there… He wasn’t. The basin area where the city had been hiding for over two thousand years was walkable if you trekked there from another known Mayan site called El Mirador. The El Mirador site had a large enough clearing to land a helicopter, so that is what I had instructed the pilot to do. That helicopter pilot spoke some English, but the fishermen I had found in Koh Yao Noi did not.

Part of the Flor de la Mar treasure was an offering to the King of Portugal on behalf of the King of Siam. I wanted to see a remote part of Thailand to get a feel for it as it would have been when it was called Siam back in Afonso’s day. Thailand’s limestone mountains which jut out of the sea had grabbed my imagination since I first saw Scaramanga's hideout while watching “The Man with a Golden Gun” as a child with my father. I had marked several smaller islands on the maps; one had sea caves that interested me, and another boasted a large population of monkeys. I wanted to stay clear of the party islands that most people visited. Maya beach, made famous from Leonardo DiCaprio’s film “The Beach,” had been closed off due to damage caused by tourists. I wasn’t interested in the local party scene, and the islands that I had chosen were far off the beaten path.

I finally found a captain who agreed to take me to the places I had outlined on the map. His name was Sunan. He looked about mid-fifties, weather-worn from a life of sea and sun. He had a mischievous grin which revealed many missing teeth but a quiet confidence that conveyed that he was a master of his domain. The other boatmen seemed to take orders from him, and he appeared to oversee a fleet of longtail boats typical to the region.

A longtail boat is a long and relatively narrow wooden boat. They have a covered interior space towards their middle section and are powered by what looks to be a car engine. The engine gives way to a long metal shaft that sticks far out of the back of the boat and ends in the propellor blade. Some boats were set up for fishing, others as water taxis.

The Muslim call to prayer played out over some hidden speaker, no doubt attached to a tower obscured by the island’s vegetation. Sunan gestured to his wife and himself and then to the general direction of the source of the recited prayer. It was clear he was telling me they were Muslim. Sunan’s wife, whose name I didn’t get, was very kind and offered me some fresh-cut fruit while we pantomimed our plans for the next few days.

The plan was to meet just before the first light of dawn. I got up early and returned to the little covered hut that served as the boat office. Sunan was nowhere to be found. I noticed that the tide was far out from the beach and that the boats were stuck in the mud, moored to posts made visible by the retreating water. I waited, imagining he was running late when his wife showed up on a bright red scooter gesturing for me to sit on the back. “Oh no, here we go again!” I had no way to communicate with her, so I hopped on and hoped for the best.
Where the boy from Para Bar had tried to miss the potholes, that woman seemed to be aiming for them. At first, I had no intentions of putting my arms around her in an attempt to respect Muslim culture. That quickly went out the window as I grabbed on for fear of being bucked off. She didn’t seem to notice my grip and kept flying along at full speed in the dark.

Eventually, we came to a very long dock where Sunan waited with a longtail boat tethered to the end where there was still water to be found. The boat had the name “Chanida” written down the side in both English and Thai, which, as far as I could tell, translates vaguely to “well-loved.” The Dakar rally start to the day became the norm for the next few days. Sunan turned out to be an excellent guide and great at charades, which always becomes the official universal language in a bind. He managed to save me from stepping on a jellyfish and sea urchin both on the same day. When my island exploring ended, he offered to take me to my final trip destination, a place called Railay beach. I had already purchased a ticket on a speed boat leaving from the island’s larger main dock; otherwise, I would have taken him up on the offer. I surprisingly received a hug from both him and his wife as we said our goodbyes.

As I arrived at Railay beach by boat, it signaled the end of the remote part of my trip. I had booked a treehouse-type rental located at the far end of the peninsula’s eastern side. Railay beach is a peninsula attached to the west coast of the mainland. What makes it unique is that it is only accessible by boat. The peninsula is long and narrow and blocked by cliffs and vegetation at the top and bottom tip, making it inaccessible by roads.

The area is like a microcosm of society. Although the eastern side, where I was, was less pretty, it was also far more affordable. It was home to the docks, Muay Thai kickboxing, a pharmacy, cheap bars, and primitive treehouse-style lodgings which cling up the side of the mountain. I reached my hotel after dragging my luggage to the very end of the shore. Along the way, I passed several bars and an enormous mountain of trash piled up by the water, which I assumed was waiting for some sort of garbage barge to come and collect it. There was a sort of Gilligan’s Island elevator for luggage but sadly, no one at the top to operate the generator which powered the gears. After a steep hike up the cliffside, my bags and I found the check-in and our room.

I didn’t mind the cheap and cheerful nature of the place. The treehouse rooms were simple but clean enough. The bamboo handrails and thatched dining area, which hung out over the edge of the cliff, gave the whole place a King Kong Skull Island vibe. It was far from slumming it but compared to the western side of the peninsula, let me tell you! So, to get to the west side, you could go halfway back down the shoreline to where the boats let you off, and the docks were located, or you could go all the way to the furthest southern tip.
The far southern route takes you to a steep rocky limestone cliff face rising far into the sky. Unfortunately, that cliff face blocks your way ahead; however, there is a cut-out walkway that uses some natural cave features you can follow, which exits out on the western side. Once you emerge from the cavernous passage, you will be greeted by rock climbing routes and climbers waving from the cliff face, which continues on your western side. Just past the climbing routes lies the entrance of a large cave containing hundreds of wooden penis carvings piled up as a fertility offering. The cave is a sacred place that local men visit in hopes of increasing their odds of becoming a father. Once you pass that cave, you come to the western beach or what I dubbed as “Instagram beach.”

The western beach was beautiful, covered in perfect sand with a backdrop of deep blue water. Rising from the water not far from the shore were many limestone mini-island mountains just close enough to be perfectly immortalized in a photograph. Somewhere in those distant waters were the islands Sunan and I had been to over the previous days. When I was younger, we went to the beach to relax, swim, or play some volleyball. There you would find none of those activities. The western beach was the Thailand of social media. A massive stretch of paradise facilitating amateur, semi-pro, and professional photoshoots.

Just at the water’s edge, you would find a line of girls standing just far enough from one another that no one else would appear in their shot. Ten feet up on the beach, there was an equal lineup of boyfriends or paid photographers using everything from cellphones to Hasselblad’s snapping photographs nonstop. The girls would take occasional breaks to walk up, check the playback display, and decide if they had the perfect image before returning to posing or heading back to their hotel room. As soon as one girl walked away, she would be replaced by someone else who had arrived late, allowing them to shuffle into the newly opened spot. Don’t even think about swimming into the background of someone’s shot; the fact that you would need to be photoshopped out later would be met with an audible sigh.

The western shore was home to high-end hotels that looked like every 5-star beach resort you have ever seen. Those hotels were where the elite stayed seated in lounge chairs, awaiting hotel staff to bring them an assortment of cocktails. If you took the other possible path from the eastern docks to the western beach, you would walk through the “Deathstar” trench-style back alleys of those five-star hotels to emerge on the western side. It reminded me of the cast-only backstage areas, which I used to get around quickly when I worked for Walt Disney World in my twenties. Greyish white, industrial trenches.

Oddly, I didn’t feel jealous of the “first classers.” I knew that my treehouse was giving me a far more unique experience than those cookie-cutter luxury hotels would offer. After my stint at Disney, I worked at a Club Med beach resort. It was in America and serviced mainly French guests, speaking to French managers, eating French food, and watching French-themed evening entertainment. The closest thing to never having left home at all. Those French guests would go home to tell stories of how they experienced America in the same way those Instagram girls would walk from the hotel to the beach to get a photo and then return to the hotel bar to post about their great transformative Thai adventure. A five-star hotel is a five-star hotel no matter where you go. They are almost interchangeable.

Right after I turned thirty, I appeared on a show called “Living the Life.” It took an ordinary schmuck and let them live out an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” I got to travel to Dubai, stay in the Burj Al Arab, the world’s most expensive hotel, and fly first-class on Air Emirates to get there. I mean, I’m not complaining. I was glad to be their chosen schmuck of the week. We did activities while on that trip, and one of them was to try falconry and ride camels in the desert. Other set-up activities included a personal shopper giving us designer clothes, an indoor ski hill, spa treatment, and more. In the final on-camera interview, they asked, “with all that lavish spending, what was my favorite part of the trip.” I said, “the camels,” that they were the most authentic thing we had experienced. One Emirates producer freaked out and said, “you can’t say the camels! Anyone can afford the camels!” Some severe editing must have been involved in sorting out that episode’s ending.

Further up the western shore, there were more longtail boats. Unlike Sunan’s Chanida, these boats were the equivalent of food trucks. They were all decked out in advertisements and bright colors, pulling up to the shore and feeding the would-be models and photographers alike. Finally, you could make out another longtail boat further up the beach. That one was a water taxi taking people up the western coast to the nearby town of Ao Nang. Ao Nang was far more commercial. If first classers stayed at Railay west beach, they shopped at Ao Nang. Having already grown tired of the narcissism of Railay beach, I hopped aboard, paid the captain, and made the trip.

I figured I would grab a few small souvenirs. As I arrived in Ao Nang, the most developed area I had been in for quite some time, it was clear that the world had changed while I was digging in the sand. At that point, the virus was full-blown. Everyone had masks. Everyone but me, that is. Masks and hand sanitizer were sold out and had apparently become rarer than silver tanka coins. I ran into a group I recognized from the water taxi while buying my daughter a little stuffed Thai elephant. There were four of them, two young couples by the look of it. They spoke perfect English, explained how they were Chinese, and had come to Thailand on vacation for the Chinese New Year. They were concerned about the coronavirus and afraid that they may not be able to get home with the newly invoked travel restrictions. When they spoke to their family, the family said it was so bad in China that they would wire them money, and they should wait it out in Thailand till it passed. I wished them the best and then headed back to the boat.

A few days later, I was sitting on a plane headed back to Canada. Still unable to find a mask, trapped for twenty hours beside someone having a coughing fit. I looked out the window and wondered how long it would be till I could travel again? How much more “routine” would I endure before the next adventure? How long would those Chinese couples be in Thailand, “waiting it out?”

Loved Chapter one? The adventure’s just getting started. Click below to grab your copy of Libertalia: Stealing Equality and follow my journey through Madagascar’s lost pirate city, filled with unforgettable places, people, and moments.

Amazon