We crawled out of our tent on the beach of Lao Liang Island to gray skies and choppy waves. The turbulent waves kinked our plans of onward travel. We had planned to take a direct ferry to Malaysia but getting to the Malaysian ferry would have required a long ride through big waves on a 30 foot long-tail boat. (For reference, a long-tail boat is a ubiquitous simple heavy wooden boat pictured below and found throughout Thailand.) Since a long-tail boat was not making that trip in this weather, we had to adjust.
But first we had to get on the long-tail boat and through the waves to the middle of nowhere. We bagged up our stuff in plastic bags. Then we waded out into the sea up past our waist to climb into the boat. Climbing into the bobbing boat was no easy task, as it rocked well past 20 degrees port and starboard. We had to avoid the long reach of the motor and heave ourselves and our stuff onto the boat. Once our stuff was covered with a tarp and we strapped on our life jackets, we were off.
Two guys managed the boat. The driver with the engine and rudder in the back and his assistant up front standing and holding on to a rope, looking out and providing a counter balance when the boat pitched ominously to the side while going through some of the bigger waves.
The boat ride began with a nervous energy. Its wooden frame violently hit sand as we started to go -- the shallowness required the driver to slowly edge the boat out as the assistant grabbed and manipulated fixed lines in the water to direct the boat in the right direction. All the while, we were buffeted by waves. Once we got into deeper water, the ride got worse before getting better. We made slow progress as the driver and assistant expertly navigated the waves on a case by case basis. The boat cascaded deep into the sea's bigger waves often. At worst, the boat tipped and we were enveloped by buckets of water. But inevitably we emerged each time. 30 minutes of slow motoring felt like an hour as we were deluged by the sea water and my heart stayed in my throat. Eventually the sea calmed, my heartbeat calmed, and we reached the fishing village pier.
Upon arrival at the pier, we arranged for a $3 dollar ride to the junction of a main road where we could hitchhike south. There, we quickly found a ride with a 3 car caravan of a family heading to the most southern town on the west coast of Thailand. The car that we were in belonged to a charming family. So charming that the 38 year-old dad, who is a special forces policeman, sang "Take me to your heart" in English as he drove us. He sang along to his phone and, surprisingly, he was a beautiful singer. But, keep those eyes on the road.
En route, the family stopped and took pictures of us holding water bottles. The water bottle, "Mirin", in the middle of the picture below is the family business. All three water bottles in the picture were given to us. In Thailand, people often offer us potable water (drinkable water) -- from the hostel owner to monks in a remote monastery to street food vendors. It is wonderful and needed in the heat. Especially since many places that we have traveled, potable water has to been hard to find. It is usually not available at public taps and can cost more than a meal in places like Madagascar.
In Thailand, potable water is also not available from public taps -- but potable water seemed abundantly available not only for us, relatively rich as tourists, but to everyone via the large 20 liter water containers that seem ubiquitous. The availability of clean water that we saw in our travels is not the same story as those told by UN statistics. As of February 2013, the UN said that the current rate of access to safe water in Thailand is approximately 25-40 per cent. That number is so low.
The low access to clean water is a shocking statistic given our own experience and how Thailand has been a sanitation success story. In 40 years, from the 1960s to 2000, Thailand went from less 1% of people being able to safely dispose of human waste to almost 99.9% of Thai people having access to safe sanitation. Thailand's sanitation success story has been largely attributed to positive political will that relentlessly used funding, education, and partnership to provide this essential public service.
In contrast to sanitation, clean water access may have stalled because providing clean water is a harder public policy problem to tackle. There are ability to pay, free-rider, and leakage problems to name a few. And beyond the economic problems, I wonder about the political will of providing clean water. From a political perspective, there may not be too much pressure to provide clean water from public taps. Many middle class Thai can afford to buy clean water and, as we saw, there seems to be a few water companies turning a profit from provision of bottled water.
Like many problems in the U.S., it is so easy to be complacent when it is not your family or neighbors who need the water {or basic service]. You think that because {basic service} is abundantly available to you and people you know, then no one is lacking. But our experience in Thailand showed us that even though water was abundantly available to us, it wasn't to others.
Water taught us some powerful lessons. It, first, reminded us about the fraility of life as we were tossed about in the Andaman Sea. And second, it reminded us how easy it is to not feel or see the deprivation that others experience even in your midst. Especially one so serious as clean water -- a basic human right and key to life.
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