Day 27 - Sat Nov 28 - The fast boat to Koh Tao was not fast enough

The trick, we learn later, is to take the morning boat because the sea is calmer and hasn't yet worked itself up into a wavy mess. December, too, is known for being a month of rough seas so it's best to be prepared. Neither of us get motion sickness easily, but we both got queasy once on a rough 2-hour ferry, so we know we're not immune. We buy no-name Gravol from a pharmacist 10 minutes before closing on Day 26 (25 CAN cents for 10 pills). After breakfast on Day 27, we take a pill on the way to the boat - me a half hour before the boat leaves the dock and Pierre as we settle in on board.

To buy the pills, I had to first describe to the pharmacist, who spoke no English, that we needed Gravol so in my notebook I drew for him a tiny sailboat on a wavy sea. This turns out to be an understatement - today's ocean is brought to us courtesy of a 6-year old's crayon, the waves higher than they are wide. They swell up metres high at times, and our boat is very thorough about riding down one side and up the other when it isn't busy crashing into them, shoulders first. Just as my stomach peels itself off my clavicle it drops down past my diaphragm like a lead weight. Stomach no likey.

"I wonder if anyone will get sick on the way to the island," Pierre says a few minutes into the trip, craning his neck to assess the other passengers.

With one hand already holding the seat in front of me and a bad feeling about my decision to eat breakfast, I say "I wonder if I'm going to get sick."

A few minutes later, I've devolved to the crash position, eyes closed, searching my memory for any acupressure points relating to nausea, but all I can come up with is something about pinching the web of skin between the left hand's thumb and forefinger. Anti-nausea pressure point or trigger for child labour? Don't know, don't care, it gives me something to do for 15 minutes. Things go pretty well until I think to myself, hey, prepping a plastic bag just in case might not be a bad idea and I simultaneously lift my head, release the pressure point and learn that multi-tasking while nauseous doesn't pay.

Pierre's strong Acadian tummy holds out for an hour and twenty minutes, but mine loses the fight at around minute 25. Pierre holds my hair like a good wing-woman after a particularly rough staggette. I'm not alone in this, and I can hear a few "cousin Huey" 's* and "Buy my buick" 's* in other parts of the boat (*= brilliant Billy Connolly stand up sketch; if I ever find the clip on youtube I promise I'll post it here)

The boat staff dole out swabs of camphor/menthol; as an aromatherapy remedy or to dull the smell of vomit, I'm not sure which - either way, it's a nice distraction because there's not much else to do other than press my forehead against Pierre's knee, wish that Pierre had fatter softer knees, hold a fresh bag at the ready, and ask Pierre "Do you see an island?" from time to time. And while I'm hunched there, looking for random thoughts to distract myself with, it suddenly occurs to me that all of my relatives on both sides of my family (and on both sides of those families) hauled themselves over to Canada on boats. All of them. And as surely as I've inherited the mishmash of traits that mark me a Graham/Merrick, I've inherited this anti-sea tummy from them as well. Possibly all of them.

A few years ago, one of my uncles told me a bit about a trip he'd taken to the UK. I don't have my uncle's knack for details or I'd remember exactly where it
was that this happened, but suffice it to say that he and my aunt visited the port where the Graham side would have boarded ship for Canada. This particular town had restored one of the boats that emigrants/immigrants (potato/ potahto...) would have travelled in for however many weeks that it took to cross an ocean in those days. He described to me how dark and stale and cramped it was in the hull of the ship, how glad he was to get back into the fresh air after only a short tour inside, and shook his head: "They must've really wanted to get here."

I'm not in steerage (turn-of-the-century speak for "economy class"), and my trip has a countdownable length - 1.5 hours, a little longer if the waves delay us. Still, I cannot imagine endless weeks of this. Calm days might have been tolerable, though stuffy and claustrophobic, but rough days or storms that went until -who-knows-when-it-will-end... those days must have been a nightmare. Anti-seasickness pills need to be taken before the nausea kicks in and some people have jobs at sea with work shifts that last for weeks - if they discover they're violently ill when it's too late to take the pills or get off the boat, then these people curl up in a bunk till the ship docks again and are put on suicide watch. That's how bad seasickness can be.

For Pierre and I, the trip to Koh Tao isn't a walk in the park, but it's no worse than the penance you'd pay after an irresponsible night of drinking. This is been-on-a-bender grade nausea, and it will start to disappear as soon as we hit shore so it's no big deal and we treat it accordingly. Pierre finally says the magic words ("I see an island") and the vain part of me staggers into action long enough to shift the pressure on Pierre's knee from my forehead to my hairline so that I don't spend my first 20 minutes on the island with a big red dot in the middle of my face. As we exit the boat and pass the passengers remaining on board, I'm grateful that I'm wearing the pink sticker for Koh Tao and not the orange/blue stickers for Koh Pha Ngan/Ko Samui that are another hour or two further along the boat's route. Our nausea dissipates over the course of the afternoon, though it's really only 2 days later on Day 29 that my stomach is convinced that there's no reason to feel a little queasy.

"They must've really wanted to get here" indeed - no wonder they never went back.

No pics today. It's for the best.