The Midnight Boat to Koh Tao (Horror Boat)

Two days have passed since we were in Chiang Mai, comfortably celebrating Christmas with eclectic foods, live guitar, and freshly poured lager. We saturated ourselves completely in a sensory buffet. Now, the hull of a decrepit boat clutches the coastline, a still and soundless corpse staring blankly bank at Nic, Sam and I. Beneath our feet, the red, damp soil gives way to our steps and I am reminded of chilled animal fat as my sandals wetly peel away. Our anxiety escapes in short bursts of nervous laughter. We walk towards the midnight boat to Koh Tao, an island of the eastern coast of Thailand, hiding our apprehension from each other and our selves.
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Inner conflicts mount.

“Haven’t you seen this before? It’s every bad horror movie ever! You know this is how they begin! Look at that thing! It’s not a boat. It’s a casket!”

“Don’t you think I know that? I know that! But what options do we have? Turn back?”

(What would I write in this story’s place?)

My inner monologue has every right to be suspicious. The closer we draw to the boat the more dauntingly it looms over us. Unappealing details develop as we walk up the small mound that is the coast. Barely audible creaks are the closing hinges of a lid closing, stealing the silence. Metal clinks against metal like the chiseling of epitaphs. The boat is so still that the silhouetted forest behind it seems to rock back and forth.

My pack feels as heavy as an anchor and my stomach is one. I am unsettled and quickened by the excitement of this pending adventure. No great thrill has come without risk.

Our feet hit the metal floor of the rusty hull, sending hollow thuds throughout the boat. We stop for a moment and contemplate our next move with unsure smirks and glances at one another; there is no clear path up into the cabin of the boat. A Thai worker, covered in dirt and grime, points down from the narrow side of the hull to three barred steps, also dusted with rust. He isn’t wearing shoes.

“What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” Nic asks with rhetorical softness. The boat’s floodlights throw macabre shadows on his face and while others recoil into the trees behind us.

“He’s not wearing shoes,” exclaims Sam, building on Nic’s surprise of the developing dilapidation.

“I know!”

I am too overwhelmed. I am trying to gather as many details of our boarding as possible: the barred steps flaking with rust; the thick silence of the night swallowing our voices and breathing; our onlookers; the musk of wet, oily metal. There are a few boatmen standing and squatting from stairs on the other side of the boat. Their glossy eyes feed on our responses to such utter unfamiliarity. To them, we are merely new actors in the rerun that is their lives. Travelers are the only nuances in the nightly audience of the nautical misfits.

The path to the cabin squeezes us between a six-foot fall to the hull’s floor on one side and a wet splash into the littered black water off the other. Jutting two-by-fours lie parallel to the path with boards sticking out from underneath them waiting for a clumsy passerby. Carefully, we leave the hull and enter a hallway where ‘clean’ clothing stiffly hangs in the paneless windows.
Flickering fluorescent lights sickly reveal insect peppered spider webs on the walls and in the corners of the hallway. Even the spiders, it seems, had the good sense to abandon ship.

Ascending a set of stairs at the stern, our sleeping quarters come into view.
Dozens of dingy bare mattresses line the walls on two stacked shelves. A few were already filled with weary travelers. Some are wearing shoes. ‘Ironic,’ I thought. ‘They’re wearing their shoes in their dreams and while there are workers not wearing any in their reality.’

As I set down my backpack and claim my bed on the top near an open window, Nic and Sam tuck themselves into a bottom corner on the opposite side and almost immediately fall asleep. Restlessly invigorated, I wander the boat.

The top of the boat is empty. Flaking rust crunches beneath my feet. Across from the stern I see that the silhouetted forest is an island of trees severing us from the Gulf of Siam. Our journey is almost made palpable by the night’s humidity. Even the breeze seems to struggle in moving the air.

Hours pass without any sign of embarking. A worker says that we’re waiting for the tide. After another hour, I know we’re waiting because they’re hoping for more passengers. Only a quarter of the beds are occupied. Content and tired, I take a beer from my pack and go sit on the stairs where the misfit audience had been.

A blond man sits observing the busy workers. Wearing jeans, sneakers, and silver rimmed glasses, he and his smile are humorously stark. We greet one another and amicably go through the traveler’s routine questions. He’s from Sweden and has been traveling for quite some time. He had spent some time in the DRC as a reporter.

Violent vibrations steal our attention. The boat’s crane roars with grinding gears. It slowly swings toward three workers standing near three barrels towards the open tail of the hull. All of them are shoeless. The Swedish man and I discuss our backgrounds and histories further over beers and cigarettes as the workers hurriedly load the barrels.

After four heavily loaded vehicles are driven on, the boat again grumbles with great complaint. Screeching cables fail to lift the tail. Like a tree branch in a wind storm, a cable snaps and the tail falls to the ground with a shaking thud.

“WHOA!” everyone unanimously exclaims.

Several previously sleeping workers gather around us to watch a man spark welding cables without any safety glasses. Bright lightning flashes in the welder’s dark face and light up the surrounding trees as if a group of tourists were somewhere back on shore.

The midnight boat doesn’t leave until 3:00am.

Satiated with many beers and local entertainment, I roll into bed. My pillow is small and slickly stained with the oils of many faces. The boat slowly lurches. I sleep.

Great nausea wakes me. Everything in the room shifts as the boat ferociously careens in a pummel of enormous waves heard splashing outside the open window at the head of my bed. Boxes of beer clatter down the stack and shatter. The lurches are so extreme that I begin to slide up and down in my bed. I am forced to lie flat so that I don’t fall out of bed.

It was around 4:30am that I puke for the first time. My head sticks out of the window, projectile vomiting into the gulf. I am exercising demons from the church of my stomach. The light of the hallway below flickers, strobe lighting my pungent stream. Throughout the night, this continues. I don’t fall asleep again and only leave my bed twice to endure the horrors of the bathroom.

Green, murky water with unidentifiable bits sloshes against the peeling sky blue paint of the bathroom walls. A rusted barrel of water is the only thing I have to support myself. The light switch hangs from a pipe, exposing copper wires that damply glint. Everything drips. The floor water washes over my feet and I cringe. Using water from the barrel and my hand, I clean myself leave quickly enough to vomit over the rail into the abysmal churn.

Having returned to bed, I drink water so that I have something to vomit for what feels like an eternity. My abdomen is sore.

The night progressively worsens. Below me, the woman with the puntable, yappy dog thunderously vomits. I’m infuriated by her intrusions; I’ve been trying to remain quiet out of consideration for the other assumedly sleeping passengers for hours and she is a wildebeest birthing a pineapple horizontally from her throat. In this moment, I hate her. All of my frustration, all of my pain, all of my weariness now has a body. It’s curled in the fetal position in the darkness. My hatred bellows and slides in the night.

Nic visits me in the early morning. It is still dark. He heard me from across the room, from across the ocean of an engine’s drone beating against the inside of my forehead.

“Are you alright, buddy?” His voice has a comforting tone and his hand rests coldly on my ankle.

“No. Not at all,” I groan. My throat is a broken bottle covered in sand.

“I’ve been vomiting for hours. I’m drinking water just so I can have something to vomit.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, man. Is there anything I can do for you?” He sounds grave.

“No, man. Thanks.”

“It might help if you move to the bottom. The rocking doesn’t feel as bad. I went up to the top and closed my eyes and almost got sick, but down there you’re closer to boat’s center of gravity, so you move less.”

“I can’t move right now. Thanks for checking on me.” Besides not having the capacity for movement, my only friend is my window.

The waves grow and send the boat swaying more drastically. I rely on the tilt of the boat to send me to the window when I need to puke. My shoulders stop me. I aim my head and use the momentum of the tipping boat like a finger down my throat. My water bottle rolls off my bed during one of my more epic episodes. Dry heaves follow. When daylight breaks, I retch for the last and most painful time. It is tar thick and dark green. Bile. The part that felt unsettled on the bank of animal fat in Chumphon. The ooze slides down the side of the boat in the dimly gray dawn. An oasis of land breaks the oceanic desert’s horizon and I feel relief I had had in my mind all night.

After the boat docks, I achingly stand and put my pack on my back. My movements are awkward and feel new with atrophy. The stale stink of beer rises from the sticky glistening floor. Surprisingly, I don’t feel nauseous.

On the bank Nic argues with a taxi driver as I muster my all to stand. The price is negotiated and agreed upon. Nic taps me on the shoulder.

“Come on, man. Let’s get outta here.”

“That was the most horrible experience of my life.” My eyes are only half open and are dry, keeping my lids motionless.

“We’re with you on that,” Nic says with the same sympathetic softness heard last night. Samantha is silent.

“No. You’re not. No one is. I have never felt so alone,” I coldly and curtly retort. My words feel like they are still stabbing at the puking woman and her barking poodle. I immediately regret them and avert myself from his static gaze. I feel ashamed, for my thoughts and my impatience. The truck starts up and takes up the road, away from the beach as it fills slowly with hundreds of tourists.

To see more pictures of the midnight boat, click on the link below.
The Midnight Boat to Koh Tao

4 comments:

Raili said...

The internets ate my first comment, but I'll try again. I loved reading this - you have such a talent. I particularly loved the metaphor about the wildebeest birthing the pineapple: pants-pissingly hilarious.

Chavez said...

My god, man! What a terrifyingly, wonderful experience. Sometimes a writer must experience (and hopefully live through) utter hell and torment to bring his readers pure realism with a side of entertainment. Thanks for that, friend!
em

Ammo said...

i totally agree with raili, nothing more to say man, oh yeah, talented wrighter:P

KK said...

I would love to see more about this nautical audience of misfits! There is so much uncharted territory to map out for us, your loyal readers.

If I were your English teacher, I'd say good use of imagery, metaphor and simile. You're a master of figurative language.

Although sometimes I feel like I'm reading Nathaniel Hawthorne or Oscar Wilde, because you're so wordy ;)