Home

 

VOL. 12.9

ARCHIVES:

By Thom Henley with Thaworn Thamluk, translator
 

Uncle Chai cuts an imposing figure; at 6'4'' tall, he stands head and shoulders above the average Thai, and at age 86 he still has a full head of hair and a physique from a life of hard work that would make a fitness buff envious. If you didn't know that the man had a good heart, your first encounter with him could be a bit unsettling. Legally blind in one eye and with fading vision in the other, the old bearded patriarch walks around Krabi's Dawn of Happiness Beach Resort brandishing a Thai-style sickle, looking every bit the Grim Reaper. He walks right up to guests along the trails and stares them sternly in the eye - face-to-face - not to be intimidating, but just to see who the heck they are.

Like those of many traditional Thai people that tourists see going about their daily tasks, Chai's life story goes unknown and unrecorded, but it is really material for a movie or novel. Born in the Thai year B.E. 2459, DoLek Hafaa, nicknamed Chai, has spent his entire life on the spot where he took his first breath. His father, a former pirate from Koh Taratao, and his mother from Langu village in Satun Province on the Thai-Malay border, were the first people to settle in this bay now known as Ao Nam Mao. It was a very different place in those days. Lush lowland rain forest cloaked the land in an unbroken mantle right to the edge of the sea. Fresh tiger tracks could be found running the length of the beach each morning, and huge estuarine crocodiles inhabited Klong Kay, the nippa palm-lined creek beside Chai's family home. Where today international tourists sleep in the sound comfort of seaside bungalows, Chai’s father regularly lost fully grown water buffalo to tiger kills. He vividly recalls the night his father, during his sleep, shot a tiger when the unlucky feline tripped a wire attatched to the trigger of his dad's gun near the buffalo compound.

Crocodiles posed the bigger danger to the people who started to settle along the bay and the nearby mouth of the Krabi River. According to Uncle Chai, the crocodiles living here had a penchant for killing but not consuming their human victims until the bloated corpses ceased to float and sank to the river bottom.

In spite of these and other very real dangers, Chai speaks of life in his youth with a longing to return. He tells of huge groups of dugong, or sea cows, coming into the bay at high tide to graze on the rich beds of sea grass. Today there are none. By the time Chai was 40 years old, the tiger and the crocodile were both extinct in Krabi and the forest itself was fast disappearing.

From ages 26 to 40 Chai supported himself and his family in a way that no one today would dream of - he rowed his sea-gypsy boat as a trader eight days round-trip from Krabi to Phuket Island. Standing upright and leaning forward into his oars, Chai's trade route took him from his home in Ban Ao Nam Mao to Laem Nong on Koh Yao Yai. After a night's sleep, it was then on to Koh Hong Nga on day two, then Koh Yao on day three, Klong Klien in Phang Nga Province on day four, and finally Phuket Island. He would sell dried fish and live chickens by the stan (1 kilo=30 stan). If he had a favourable wind, Chai would hoist a sail to cover some of the return four-day journey to Ao Nam Mao, but most often he rowed. He ran this same trade route for 15 years.

Chai is the last living person in Krabi who knows the area's full history. The name of the bay where well-heeled tourists board jet boats destined for the luxurious Rayavadee Premiere Resort on the Pra Nang peninsula, for instance, was not always named Ao Nam Mao. According to Chai, the bay was earlier known as Ao Thamaa. Thamaa is the word for "house" in the northern Malay dialect, and the house referred to was the house of Chai's birth. The name Ao Nam Mao only appeared on Krabi maps from about 70 years ago, when people drinking from a creek that entered the bay got absolutely plastered from the water. According to Chai, the creek drained a large forest grove of keepa trees; the large yellow fruit of the tree falling into and fermenting in the creek, often turned the water into a type of jungle moonshine. The trees are no longer there, nor is there much left of the creek, but the name Ao Nam Mao (Drunken Water Bay) has applied ever since.

By mid-life, Chai was the <I>pui yai ban</I>, the distinguished headman of his village. There were only Muslim people living in the Krabi area until about 36 years ago, he says, and it was about that time that he arranged to have the first road built. It connected Ban Ao Nam Mao with the Buddhist village of Ban Sai Tai and Krabi Town, which was little more than a small fishing village in those days. But Chai's greatest legacy as village headman was nothing as mundane as the builder of roads, it was rather the three to four months he held the Japanese Imperial Navy at bay.
In World War II, the Japanese fleet fighting the British in nearby Malaysia were turned back by British subs when trying to secure Phuket Island as a base of operations. They chose instead an obscure bay north of the Krabi River mouth - Ao Nam Mao. As village headman, Chai immediately set out to defend the Kingdom. He instructed his villagers to extinguish all house lights (lanterns and candles, at the time) lest the Japanese see how small and utterly defenseless this stretch of coast was. He then told the local people to build many fires every night, the entire length of the bay, to give the appearance Ao Nam Mao was protected by a large army. They kept this facade up for weeks until the Thai army actually did arrive. One night a British sub found the Japanese fleet hidden in Ao Nam Mao and all night long heavy artillery guns fired into the bay trying to hit it. No one got any sleep that night, according to Chai, not even the village water buffalos. A short while later the Japanese commander started light-signaling to shore in Morse code, requesting permission to land. Chai signaled back an absolute refusal: "Under no circumstance must you attempt to land."
When the Thai forces arrived and permission was finally granted, Chai found himself, as village headman, escorting the Japanese top brass to Krabi Town over the road he had built. They took up temporary residence in the town's largest house which, ironically, still stands today as part of Krabi's prison complex.

Apart from his glory days during the war, Chai's life has really been one of quiet devotion to his wife and three children, his water buffalo and the spirits of the land he lives upon. Never having wandered from the location of his birth, he has a deep devotion to it which expresses itself in countless ceremonies to keep the spirits of the land placated and everyone residing on the land in harmony with them. Chai's shamanistic powers - passed down to him from his father, who is a legend among the old people of Krabi - are widely respected. It is said that knives and bullets could not penetrate this man's skin; it is said that he could stop a thief from stealing his boat at night without leaving the comfort of his bed. A nod of the old man's head in the direction of the culprit was enough to leave a thief spinning in an ocean whirlpool all night until Chai's father could go out and retrieve his boat at dawn. Chai's father was said to have had a short appendage from an extended tail bone - a sure sign of his powers. He lived to be 130 years old, according to Chai, and he is buried along with Chai's mother, brothers and sisters near Chai's simple elevated one-room home.

It's hard for people to be the last survivor of their generation, and tears come to Chai's stern eyes when he reflects on how much the world he knew and loved has changed. An all-night karaoke bar and brothel has opened up a stones-throw from Chai's home, and neither he nor his wife can get a good night's sleep anymore. The quiet time with nature he loved so much is now only a distant memory, and his herd of 40 water buffalo has dwindled to one. Still, Chai finds peace and some semblance of solitude walking the lovely grounds of Dawn of Happiness Beach Resort, located on the two rai of land he leased to his great nephew to make a bungalow business 11 years ago. He loves to conduct the ceremonies that keep the bungalow blessed and in harmony with the spirits of his land, and he's amused to see people travel from all over the world to experience the beautiful site he himself has never left.

Uncle Chai, as he is lovingly known by bungalow staff and guests, is still revered for his shamanistic powers. He is often called upon to exorcise people possessed by spirits and, in his own simple way, he still passes on his traditions.
One day a few years ago, Chai's great nephew heard him moaning in agony in his house. Concerned that he might be sick and dying, he tried to rush him to Krabi Hospital.

No, no," Chai moaned. "It's my money." Termites had eaten up 20,000 baht he kept hidden under his sleeping mat.

"The old people not smart or educated." His great nephew laughed later over the incident. "They don't believe in the security of banks."

A month later, with the onset of Thailand's economic crisis and the collapse of many banks, the nephew was singing a different tune: "Why are the old people so smart? How did they know? The termites eat the money, maybe, but the bank eats the money sure!"

Chai's legacy lives on!