2007: at the BKF I found a specimen of N. mirabilis from this
island in the Khuraburi province, but I wasn’t sure
it was actually mirabilis. And the boss of the Adang national park told me that
he had worked at Ko Pratong
for many years, and the place was full of Nepenthes. As the Thai islands are
becoming one of my favourite targets – it seems that they host the rarest
species – I decided to include Ko Pratong
in the list of the places to visit. From Takuapa,
where I only spent one day, I went to Khuraburi, a
place well known to some of you for N. “Khuraburi”, a
very strange plant that seemed to be coming from this province. Eventually we
all found out that it was the usual lie of the villagers who found the plant,
as they gave a wrong location to avoid people going there and steel their
source of money. Khuraburi is not the big place that
you could expect after having heard its name so many times on this website. I
arrived in the morning, and as far as I know the town which
appeared to my eyes, when the bus left me in the middle of the main
road, was made of a piece of road of maybe 500 metres, rounded by old and dusty
buildings, mainly tourist agencies and bars. Something
similar to the old far west. It seems that the farangs
who stay in Khuraburi are only there because they
have lost their boat to the islands. I took a motorbike taxi and I reached the
pier. At the pier a boatman, who couldn’t speak
English, passed me someone at the mobile phone, so that I could say where
exactly I wanted to go, as Ko Pratong
has more than one village around its coast. The lady
at the phone worked in a resort. “I’m looking for mokao
moken ling”, I said. And of
course she said “no mokao here, sorry”. And I said “yes, there is, there is, don’t worry, I just
don’t know where exactly”. She asked her colleague and then she said that the mokao was not on their side of the coast, but I had to go
to Pachoi (I’m not sure
about this name) and ask the villagers, as they knew where it grows. Now, I don’t want to spend too much time discussing once more the
absurd way of doing of this people; about how, when they have no idea about
something, they will just say “there is not, sorry”. How is supposed anyone,
Thai or farang, to proceed with any kind of research,
in any kind of field, if that is the general attitude over here?! Imagine the new doctor who goes to the hospital and asks
where is the intensive care unit. The nurse doesn’t
know it and she will say “sorry, no have”. Anyway, for about one hour and a
half the boatmen told me that we were going to leave in ten minutes. Eventually
they loaded the long tail boat with food and they let me sit in the middle. I
was the only passenger. For another hour we followed
many channels, surrounded by mangrove forests. Then, as soon as we faced the
open ocean, where the waves became stronger, the boat began jumping a little
bit too much and I started wondering where the hell we
were going, we turned left and we reached a little bay. On one
side of the bay a large savannah with palms here and there, on the other side
some big rocks and the white beach preceded by the forest. Quite
suggestive. I was thinking about the movie Blue Lagoon, when as a matter of fact a
blond guy, with curly hair and blue eyes came out from the forest with some
other Thai people. After some handshaking – while the expression of my face and
my open mouth seemed to say “is this a dream?” – he
told me he was working there, at a resort. He had been there for one year and a
half, and he could speak Thai. “Ask Tanja about the
plants you’re looking for, for sure she will be able to help you”, he said. His
Thai colleagues unloaded the boat and put all the food on a pick-up. They
brought me at the resort, which was apparently just made with simple and typical
pile-dwellings, but was in fact a luxury resort for farangs.
I spoke with the very kind Tanja, the Thai owner. She
said that the mokao grows near there, but the
previous week there was a very big fire, which burnt the whole savannah, where
the mokao grows. So now she doesn’t
know exactly where and if I can still find some plants. It was lunch time; I had some quick rice with crab. Tanja told me the usual “now relax, sit down, you must save
your energies, take it easy”, but I just wanted to put something in my mouth
and run to find my plants and then go back to the mainland. No way I could afford to sleep in that wonderful luxury trap. While
I was having my lunch I met an Italian girl; she said that usually the lunch
has a fixed price of 200 bat and dinner is 400
(!!!!!!!). But I had already showed my 1000 bat to Tanja, so she knew I couldn’t spend hundreds of bat to eat,
sleep there and take an expensive boat back to Khuraburi
the following day. After lunch I left the resort and she said “Well…it’s…100
bat…is that too much?”. A good price after all. How to
go back to Khuraburi was already becoming a problem,
as the boat that I had taken to come there was free just because it had been already paid by Tanja:
it was loaded with the food for the resort restaurant! They had paid 1500 bat for
that boat. But Tanja told me
that on the other side of the island – if I was ever able to reach it – I could
find a boat for about 300 bat. Otherwise that same
boat that had taken me there was leaving again for Khuraburi
at 4:30. I had to run, do my things
and be back by that time. I walked to reach the bay and from there I wanted to
go along the beach and get to the savannah. I left my backpacks near some
workers huts; they were using some strange machines over some coconut trees. I was in fact told by Tanja that I
couldn’t leave my stuff on the beach and just go to the savannah, as there are
many monkeys around here, and they open and steal whatever they find. When I
arrived on the beach I realized that my way to the
savannah was impossible, due to a little river coming out from the savannah
itself and flowing into the sea right there. I followed the river up to the
resort, and from there I found a way into the burnt part of the savannah. The
landscape was impressive. Probably some Hell’s regions look just like that. All
the grass, for kilometres, was reduced to black bunches. It was not covering
the soil anymore with its leaves, so that among all those bunches you could see
the white sand. The trees were intact, but they were all completely black and without
leaves. The lack of vegetation had changed a climate that had to be quite harsh
even before the fire. It was like being inside a microwave. A part from Hell,
it reminded me of what the human kind could change our planet into in a few
years from now. A thousand different ways were crossing that sad desert in a lot of different directions. They had
clearly been made by the pick-ups, going to and coming from the
different sides of the island. There was no sign or anything else to understand
which directions I was following, a part from a few ones indicating where to go
in case of tsunami. I realized that it would have been impossible to find
anything if you didn’t know exactly where to check.
After one hour I stopped walking. Once again I understood that if you’re walking a lot, it probably
means you don’t know where to go, and you won’t probably find what you’re
looking for. Thai people use to tell you “it grows there, everywhere, just go
there and you will find it” when they speak about mokao
moken ling. And that’s what Tanja also told me. I don’t know
what kind of mental process brings these people to say that, but very often
it’s not true, and the Nepenthes, as they usually do, only grow in very
restricted areas, even if there they’re quite abundant. So
I went back to the resort. I needed to stop to my enthusiasm that would make me
just run towards the plants without knowing exactly where to go; I had to use
my brain instead, and talk with these people until some of them could bring me
right in front of some pitcher plant. At the resort I spoke with the blonde
guy, while the other farangs were sorry about my bad
luck, as they could see how hard my last hour had been from my red face and
from how my t-shirt was completely wet and how my legs were covered with black
ash. The guy said that now the tide was lower and it
was possible to cross the river near the beach and go to the other side of the
bay. There I was expected to find a curious character called Mr. Chuy, who has a bar on the beach; he uses to go all over
the island with his motorbike and for sure he could
bring me exactly on the right spot. That was finally a good track to follow. It
was 3:40, I had to be really fast to get the free boat, or I had to find some way
to go to the other side of the island. This time I had to bring my backpacks
with me, just in case I had to stay with Mr. Chuy on
that side of the bay and reach the other side of the island from there. I
arrived to Mr. Chuy’s bar bent by the hot sun and by
all those walks on the soft, white sand. Mr. Chuy was
a Thai hippy with good English, wearing an open jeans jacket that was leaving
his round belly to breathe some fresh air. He has a hut a few ten metres from
the beach, where he can provide you all the beer you need for a perfect holyday.
I explained Mr. Chuy my problem. He
took one of his three rally motorbikes, with impressive suspensions, and we
jumped up and down for a couple of kilometres on the sandy savannah (during the
whole trip we both had to keep our legs down, to sustain the motorbike that
every ten seconds seemed to be close to slip on the sand, even if it never
actually did) until we reached one of his friends. He told us that the
pitcher plants used to grow all around there, but the fire burnt them all. That
man was in fact living in a hut just out of the forest edge, where the forest
ends and the savannah begins. Fortunately he was
growing some mokao plants near the hut, which
survived the fire. I saw the little plants, they were N. mirabilis. But the
glands were absent on the lid’s midline, and there was a very small swelling on
the same line, just before the lid’s tip. That made me reflect upon the
variability of this species, as N. globosa and N.
mirabilis “Trang” seem to have the same feature, as
you can read in the Trang page.
We took the motorbike and went back to Mr. Chuy’s
bar. It was 4:20 and I ran to see
if I could take the free boat or stop it before it was too far from the bay.
Not an easy run, considering once again the backpacks, the
sand and what I had done the whole day. From the beach, I couldn’t see any boat leaving. While I was walking towards
the place where I was landed that morning, I thought
that I was even ready to sleep on the beach to keep my pride up. By no mean I wanted to pay thousands of bat for a luxury resort
or, even worse, accept some charity. I was even ready to eat my pride for
dinner. The tide was very low; I looked like Jesus with two backpacks, hat and
sunglasses, walking on the surface of the water in the middle of sea in front
of the bay. But did Jesus have a minijeep?
From the forest behind the beach I saw some people
coming towards my direction, and then a minijeep of a
mimetic green colour. The minijeep was also going on
the surface of the water, so that the whole scene would have perfect for a
movie if a camera was filming us from above. A mimetic
minijeep meets a farang in
the middle of the see, two hundred metres from the beach, in the centre of the
bay. At the sunset. I didn’t
expect that the jeep was coming right to find me though. And even less I could
expect its driver asking me “You…go…Khuraburi?”. “Yes!” I shouted with enthusiasm. My hopes and energies were revived. I jumped with my stuff on the back of the jeep
and we moved, providing one more good scene of our
movie thanks to my legs covered with black ash. We went back to Mr. Chuy. My new friend, the driver, had a beer. They spoke for
a bit and then Chuy translated. “There is no boat for
300 bat now at the village on the other side of the
island, but he will bring you there and he will speak with some friends, he
will help you, no problem”, he said. After the beer we
jumped back on the jeep, and I still can’t believe I was able to avoid falling
while we were flying on the dunes all the way to the other side of Ko Pratong. When we arrived at
the village, my host offered me some pineapple slices and some sweets. He
showed me on a 3D map how the mokao only grows on the
west side of the island, which is covered with savannah. The perimeter of the
savannah is more humid and that’s where our N.
mirabilis thrives. The west side of the island is covered
with tropical and mangroves forest. As the pitcher plants all grow in the same
area, I really guess they are all N. mirabilis. He told me to wait for him for
ten minutes in his very nice hut, while he went looking for someone to bring me
to Khuraburi. After one hour
I was still there and the nearly complete darkness was now covering the whole
village. My friend was maybe waiting for the tide to go back up, so that the
boat could be able to leave. I was almost going to think he had forgotten me,
when out of the darkness a man came with a torch. “You…go…Khuraburi?”. “Yes!” I said; we were still at stake. “Come,
come…I…boat…Khuraburi”, he added, while I was already
flying behind him. Together with another friend, we got on a long tail boat. It
didn’t even have the usual central wooden boards to
sit down. One of them was manoeuvring the long engine, while the other one was
sitting on the bow. Thank God the water was calm; many
lightnings were though very well visible on the dark
horizon. The moon was spreading a good light, but it seemed that the sea wasn’t able to reflect it properly, and the black waves we
were sailing through, faster and faster, were only visible because of the grey
foam our boat was crumbling them into. Sailing in the darkness on a little boat
can be scary, and I was expecting a shark to destroy our craft from one moment
to the other. We reached a mangrove forest, with all its typical canals. It hadn’t been raining for months; we were in the middle of the
dry season. But here we go, it started pouring with
rain. Unbelievable, right there, in the worse place and in
the worse moment. I got wet like a fish before I could stand on my feet
and go under the canopy near the engine. The canopy was one square metre, and
we were three standing under its roof. After ten minutes of rain the boat
stopped. “Oh dear, what’s up now? The
fuel maybe?” I thought. The two guys had a
talk; it seemed they didn’t know what to do about it. It wasn’t
a good place to stop. Now even if the water was black, the moonlight was
reflecting on the edge of the mangrove forest around us; the trees and the wet
sand were painted in a strange blue-grey, and you could expect some strange
lizard, snake, any other animal or even a dwarf coming out of that strange and
silent place. It wasn’t raining anymore now. The guy who was using the engine sat on the side of the boat and
put his feet in the water. I thought – I hoped – he just wanted to relax and
wait, thinking to find a solution for I don’t know
which problem. But then I saw him jumping. For a
second I thought “Oh Jesus, there could be anything in that water, what are
they going to do, swim up to Khuraburi?!”. But that was just a second.
Then I realized that the water was just up to his calves. We had just run
aground because of the low tide. The guys, as if they were used to do that
every day, seemed to speak about completely different topics, while one of them
was pushing the boat from behind, walking in the water and smoking a cigarette,
and the one on the bow, looking for deeper waters, was pointing at one or the
other direction opening his arms. The one on the bow told me many times how
sorry he was for the inconvenience, while I told him more than once how I was
the one who had to be sorry and thankful for the troublesome situation they
were facing because of me! I surrendered to the idea that we were going to
reach Khuraburi in a matter of hours. But after just thirty minutes of walking in the mud the two
guys, who were now both in the water, told me “Ok, come”. I was afraid they
were asking me to jump in the water, with my two backpacks, in the darkness,
and walk like that up to the city. Fortunately it
wasn’t like that, as we were already a few ten metres from a very little pier,
where just a small bulb was sending its light through the mangroves, preventing
me to realize how close we were to the coast. And
fortunately anything that used to live in those waters was now probably
sleeping. When we reached the ground I was happy like
crazy. The same guy who had come to the hut to take me
and who was at the bow during our journey, was now in charge of bringing me to Khuraburi town. “300 bat, ok?” he said. “300
ok! Sure! Perfect!” I replied. “100 bat for motorbike to Khuraburi” he added. I knew the
real price for that ride, so I said “Eh no, that’s 50 bat”. And he said again
“Ok, ok, 50 bat…but boat 300, ok?”. “Ok, no problem!”. I’m never too tired to
negotiate. We arrived in town, I was happy like seldom happened to me. It’s great when not only you come out of very difficult
situations, but you even come out of them like a winner, achieving your
purpose. It’s much better than just stay there and try
to enjoy the result of all your efforts. I thanked my friend, I was happy to
give him the money he deserved. We shook each other hands; he asked me what my
name was and which country I was from and why the hell
I had just had a day like that. Then he told me where I had to wait the bus to Ranong and he left. I went to a nearby restaurant and I
devoured a hot seafood soup. Everybody was looking at me, farangs and Thai people. While I was waiting for the
soup I changed my t-shirt, embedded with sweat, sea
water and sand. After the soup I reached a toilet to
change all my other wet clothes. Looking out of the corner of my eyes I saw myself in the mirror and I realized why everybody
was looking. The lower half of my face was deep red, the upper half being
completely white. A perfect line was in the middle, given by hat and
sunglasses. With my new, comfortable, dry clothes I
had an ice-cream, a cigarette and at ten o’clock the bus to Ranong arrived. What a shame it was just N. mirabilis, it would have been a great day for discovering a
new species.
2008: I went to Ko Ra, the island north of Ko Pratong. I used Google
Hearth to see which areas of Thailand were covered with relatively large sandy clearings. From the
satellite these places are white and very easy to
spot, and they could easily host pitcher plants, remaining hidden by everybody
who hasn't this kind of software. Having a Google Hearth that shows you objects as big as a plant
would be amazing. Not just to look for plants, of course. Anyway, the
first place I decided to visit is Ko Ra, an island
next to Ko Pratong, in the Phangà province; which area could
be better than this to find a sandy clearing with pitcher plants? I arrived to Khuraburi, where I spent the night in a bungalow for 300 bat. The next morning I left my bungalow, well armed with
water and fish in a can. I knew the island is 15 km large, so I was expecting
to be forced to sleep on the island to reach the few
sandy spots I knew in a matter of one or two days, so I brought enough food to
survive. At the pier of Khuraburi
I waited a bit to see if there was anybody going that way. I'm
used to the fact that these islands are not very frequented by tourists, and it
can happen that you have to wait a few hours for a good occasion. An old
motorbike-taxi
eventually saw me and asked if I needed a lift with his
motorbike. I told him I wanted to reach Ko Ra, and he
said he also had a boat, and could bring me there for
500 bat. Good price, fair enough, I've an idea of the
prices to reach these islands. Ko Pratong
can cost you up to 1500 bat, if you want a long-tail boat just for you. The old
man brought me there and gave me his mobile phone number. He said I had to call
him back when I wanted him to come and pick me up. Great
idea. I had been told that Ko Ra is in fact a basically desert island, no way to go and come back
whenever you want. He left and went back to Khuraburi.
I was then on the first sandy area on the south of the island. Walking on the
beach I immediately spotted some kind of large restaurant,
completely made with wood. Very elegant, but I soon realized that it was
completely desert. Tables, dishes, pictures on the wall.
No one around. Some kind of ghost
restaurant. A great place to fix your headquarter, just in case. I left
my biggest backpack there, in a corner. That's also to
show you once more how honest these people are, when of course you're not in
the middle of a big city. With my other backpack I
started walking in the sandy savannah near the beach. You know how it is, you
walk, you look down, thinking about anything, waiting that something in front
of your eyes changes, something different from the grass, something clearly
showing some bigger leaves, and then tendrils and pitchers...Your mind is lost,
you just walk and look down. Then a movement in the grass.
How often that can happen? How many hundreds of times I've heard lizards, insects, little snakes running away from
the human noise. So my eyes didn't pay too much
attention, they just moved to see what kind of little animal was running away
from me. They hadn't time to do that. Another noise of something in the grass. Then
a huge "sssssssss". I stopped. That
"ssssssss" was different from the usual
noises I just told you about. I didn't
move. My eyes did, looking for the origin of that noise. The origin was now
about a metre from me. Fifty centimetres of black cobra,
standing straight in front of me, with another 1.5 metre of tail behind.
His head slowly moving left and right, his wings open. When he moved, I could
clearly see on his back a white circle with a little comma at its base. Then another "sssssssss".
He was clearly scared as much as I was. But the
problem is, what would be the reaction of each one of us to that? Was that the
only def snake of the planet? Why all snakes always run away
and that was standing right in front of me? All things
that came to my mind much later. In that moment I just said "minchia" (Italian slang, from our southern dialect, to
indicate the male sexual attribute), without moving or shouting or running. I
just said "minchia" and I calmly - but not
too slow - moved my body of 180 degrees, and just walked away as if nothing had
happened. Apparently it was the right move. Days later I was told that if you run away or if you move to
slow, you risk much more. All that actually lasted just a few seconds. But what seconds. Of course I still
remember that meeting, how close I've probably been to death. But I clearly remember that I was more impressed than
afraid. That's also probably why I had enough brain in
that moment to just walk away, instead of bringing out a reaction that could
have been much more emotive. I don't know, maybe you met cobras many times, but
since then I often thought - just thinking, without being shocked or afraid -
how close I was to die right there, on that island, on a desert beach of
Thailand. A whole life, and then pum, right there,
dead on a desert beach of Thailand, bitten by a cobra. Well, much better than hit by a car in Milan!
Ok, let's proceed. I
kept walking. I reached a little pier. There I saw two guys.
They saw me and brought me to their village, four huts in the middle of the
forest. Three people and one dog. Very kind, they ask
me to sit down, they show me their pictures, their huts, their beds, but, of
course, I'm working here. I take a pen, I take a piece
of paper and I show them a drawing of Nepenthes. They know it, but they say it's not on that island. On the way
back I start again walking around; sandy, white savannah everywhere, but no
pitcher plants. I meet some other huts, near the beach, with some tables. It
looks like a more evolved community: a little kitchen, places to sit and eat,
jeans hanging here and there, probably a place for the few tourists that every
year reach this lost place. A big lady is cooking. No need to tell you the conversation that follows. She shows
a N. mirabilis she is growing in a pot, but she says that she bought it in Ranong, that it doesn't grow on
the island. considering the nice place, instead of my
fish in a can, I asked a kapat-mou (fried rice with
pork). It was very good. I could see how proud she was while cooking, and how
happy, laughing and again proud when I told her how good
it was. In the mean time the guys arrive from work
(guides for scuba divers) for their lunch! A group of 4-5
young men, all wet and wearing swimsuits. One of them, with the happiest
face ever, could speak some English. He asks me if I am interested in snorkelling.
I say no, I tell him about the mokao, he says yes; I
show him my satellite maps, asking where it grows, and he says yes. And he shows me some places on my map. I ask again
"Here? Mokao moken
ling?". And he says "Snorkelling?". He didn't get one word of
what I said. I show him the lady's mirabilis, he
confirms those things don't grow on the island. I gave them
the number of my boat man, they called and there wasn't much need to explain,
he was obviously ready to receive a phone call about a falang
lost on Ko Ra. Waiting for the boat, after lunch and
after having taken my backpack at the ghost restaurant, the happy guy told me
that here many people died because of cobras, that mainly live on the hills in
the centre of the island, and sometimes in the savannah. That's also why this nice island is desert. The boat man
arrived, joking in thai language with everybody, all
clearly laughing about the fact that a crazy falang
paid 1000 bat to eat a kapat-mou on Ko Ra. Too long to explain...My job was done for that day;
one island, one location checked in few hours for 1000 bat. So,
instead of being forced to sleep there, I had enough time to go back to Khuraburi and take the first bus to Takuapa.
