Mike Mate

There is a beach, long and white and sandy. I walk up and down its length feeling the waves crashing at my feet. With each step I feel Earth – I’m alone. My cabin is of wood with a grass roof, it’s on stilts and has shutters and door that open onto a balcony looking over the sea. I can hear the ocean churn when I lie awake in bed at night. This is Sihanouk Ville, on the coast of Cambodia. Here I am swimming, walking, and diving. But the Boogie man comes to get me at night. I awaken, sometime after midnight, to a recurring nightmare – ‘there’s something I haven’t done’. Sometimes I’m already on my feet before I realize that I am no longer on board the Rainbow Warrior. Rainbow is in good hands – someone else is taking care of her needs. I lie down again and wait for the sound of the sea to take me away.

I have taken in eight of the great temples in Angkor. Each is individual, distinct; the pink sandstone of Banteay Srei, the size of Angkor Wat, the reclamation by jungle in Ta Prohm, the faces of Bayon. In the shade of their crumbling archways I have allowed my eyes to feast and my soul to drink to the call of my temple thirst. But most, my imagination has been ignited – I have felt neurons explode, or collide – I felt creative. My mornings have spent out and my afternoons in – both meditation and massage. In the evenings I listen to the frogs – they sound like dogs barking.

A merchant seaman is not permitted to remain for more than three days in Thailand and so I have escaped to Cambodia, close to the temples of Angkor. It is lush green sub-tropic here and in the evening of my arrival I lay down on a killing field and, looking up into the trees, watched flying foxes awake. They chirped, became restless, whistled and unfolded their wings, then dropped into the air, circled, landed, more and again, and then they formed a ribbon heading on their journey into twilight – a black cloud. I watched them go and continued my way. I have come across a well that is inviting, it is deep in the jungle. Massages are cheap in Siem Reap, an hour costs US$6 – meditation is naturally free. I am stretching my wings and going out of my mind. I may disappear for a little while, take my leave. I go that way with love and with peace.

In Map Ta Phut the world started to turn faster. It started happening when two keys turned inside the lock, one was from the Natural Resource and Environment Commission and the other from the Sub-Commission on Good Governance of the Senate. Each key called for an immediate halt on the construction of the Belgian owned GHECO-One coal plant. It seemed as if it happened to easily, there were no men in black. But it was the right time and so our anchors came up, Rainbow Warrior sailed away – FREE. In Bangkok we talked about what we’d done and why, there was a lot of interest. And then Derek walked up the gangway. I shook his hand, relieved to see him after three months. “There you go Old Man, she’s all yours,” I said to him. My bags already packed. Now I sit in a hotel room where the bed is large and white and an orange ribbon runs diagonally across it. There is a chocolate on the pillow. Looking out through the windows I see the city of Bangkok. Here my journey begins.

Water cannons blasted up into the air, both from the tug protecting the berth and from the power station itself. I held the Rainbow Warrior on a straight course, 30 metres off the berth, I put the windscreen wipers on. The first anchor dropped. I think they had expected us to try to come alongside, but instead we laid out 180 metres of anchor chain on the harbour bottom. When we got to the end of the chain and it pulled tight we let go the other anchor. The police were ignoring our small boats now, all attention was on us, some policemen giving us the thumbs up, they all wore smiles – this is the land of smiles – I waved and gave one of my own speciality Cheshire cat grins. With Rainbow Warrior pulled up tightly between her anchors we unfurled our message – QUIT COAL.

Map ta Phut industrial area is home to two coal-fired power stations. Now, the Belgium-based company, Suez Energy International, plans to build another 660 MW plant – they’re calling it GHECO 1. At the same time the Arctic ice is melting and Polar Bears have a one-way ticket out of this reality. We have nothing to loose, really, by taking action. We have everything to loose if we don’t. The thing that makes me most sad, however, is that Europe has committed to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2020, but the largest energy consortium in Western Europe plans to build one of the largest CO2 emitters in Thailand.

The fact that Map Ta Phut port control was calling on VHF radio channel 16 was not my concern, I maintained full speed towards the harbour entrance with both engines clutched into the propeller.  My first concern was a small tug and a dredging barge.  The tug was anchored mid-channel but it was hard to tell whether a towrope was stretched across the channel joining the two until we were right up on top of them both.  All clear, I zigzagged between them.  The port control had given up calling; they had received our statement of peaceful protest, of non-violence.  Next concern was `Coast Guard 99′, all grey and black with a three inch cannon pointing our way, she sat in our path.  I brought the engines to half-ahead and steered straight for her midship sector and then hard-a-starboard the wheel, full-ahead on the engines.  We swung around her stern, a couple of metres off, hard-a-port and we were back on track.  Concern three was a huge harbour tug, the kind that pushes around super-tankers.  It did the same, only it reversed in to cut us off, but the skipper must have been dozy and thought I was going to either stop, or turn the Rainbow Warrior around.  As soon as the harbour tug was in spitting distance on my beam, I swung the wheel over the other way and gave the engines everything I could.  Rainbow Warrior slipped past her too, and then straightened up to run down the side of the coaling jetty of the Belgium owned coal-power station, GLOW.

Thap Sakae is a small fishing village near Prahchuap Khiri Khan. Fields of coconut trees and swamp forest are held between its golden beaches and a low mountain range – Kao Ban Tad – that separates Thailand from Burma. Rainbow Warrior anchors off the beach and her crew go forward to receive a hearty welcome from the people of PKK. We are laid with garlands of flowers and then drawn into dance and song – it’s a celebration of kindred spirit. Here the people are heavily opposed to the development of a coal-fired power station that is planned to provide the energy for a proposed steel-smelter. Nine local environmental activists have been assassinated in their defiance, but the community have only grown stronger in their opposition to the plans of government.

They chop the heads off coconuts and hand them to us, to quench our thirst. They hand us leaves and onto them ladle rice and a hot Thai meal. We share food with a thousand before being whisked off, in the back of pick-up trucks, to the forest defenders camp. Here the people of PKK have built shelters and tied together bamboo to form a lookout-tower that rises fifty meters into the air. We climb to the top and view the swamp forest all around, I can see Burma from here. This forest is to be cleared away for the new industry. But, that has not been able to happen since the camp has been occupied for two-and-half years, no bulldozers have been able to get through. Such solidarity in a community I have never experienced quite like this and I am inspired. It gives me hope that if we want to save ourselves from extinction, we can stand together. These are the warriors of PKK.