Day 18 was a completely free day on the Gecko itinerary, but I had some pressing needs to attend to, such as finding something to wear on my feet. I walked over to the local village on the other side of the island with Lorna, with rope and shoes on my list. I needed the rope because I had bought a hammock in Sangkhlaburi that, as I discovered later, only had one piece of rope with it. The island had three major settlements. The one we left behind was the tourist village, spread out and fairly sparse. A path led across the island, through a big rubber plantation, and into the first of two local villages. This one was small, about the same size as the tourist village I would guess, although it was much more compact. Bits of old rope were lying about all over the place, but none were long enough for my hammock. I picked up a small fragment which I hoped might help me make my intentions understood when we finally found a shop. There were none in the first settlement, and we quickly left it behind, continuing on the path.

The path now followed the coast for the most part, and included a long wooden bridge (complete with extremely dodgy section in the middle) over a wide but shallow inlet. It was more of a pier really, but with both ends connected to land. The second village, what appeared to be the island’s main settlement, appeared more of less out of nowhere. We came across a shop, but the owner was uncommunicative and it appeared to be a grocery store, so we continued on. Another shop about 100 metres along the path was more of a general store, and seemed the sort of place that would sell both shoes and rope, though I didn’t immediately see any.

I approached the proprieter, a middle aged woman who was watching some kind of western-style music show on her TV. She obviously didn’t realise that they were singing Christmas songs. I caught her attention, smiled, and pointed at my feet with a questioning look. She showed me straight to the rack of flipflops, and I rummaged. We shared an unspoken but clearly understood joke about the size of my feet compared to the sizes she had to sell, and I bought the largest available. Now for the difficult one.

I pulled the rope fragment out of my pocket. Again she got the picture and showed me to a big drum of nylon fishing rope. I held my hands about a metre apart, and held up five fingers, which I hoped she would understand as “five metres please”. After a rapid discussion of the issue with her fellow shopkeeper (probably her husband) he disappeared briefly into the back of the shop. When he reappeared he was carrying some rope offcuts, easily long enough for my recreational aims, but probably of no use to the local fishermen. They were clearly trying to get rid of these ‘useless’ bits by selling them to me, and I couldn’t have been happier to take them. A perfect deal all round.

Minutes later I was the proud owner of two five metre lengths of extremely strong rope, and no-so-proud owner of a pair of bright blue flipflops that were two sizes too small, all for less than a pound.

In the afternoon I used my rope purchase to construct my hammock, and spent the rest of the day lying in it, reading my book and admiring my superb feat of engineering.