Travel like the wind :
Suchart Choolee
The world is full of love stories—some couples find happiness and live together until their final days, while others are tragically separated, left only with hope of reuniting someday.
In late 2015, a former high school classmate posted a photo titled “Camping and watching the sea of mist at Khao Soon.”I couldn’t believe that a place like Khao Soon—once filled with the haze of dynamite dust, gunfire, curses, and the weeping of fortune seekers—could now be peaceful.
She wrote that she brought her parents to “revisit the past,” since it was at Khao Soon that her father and mother met and fell in love.
As for me, I’ve come to know another love story—one I heard from my mother. Her eyes always shone with joy when she told it, although sighs of sorrow often escaped between the lines.
Years ago, my mother sold rice noodles with curry in Ao Luek District, Krabi Province.Business was going well until a conflict arose between her siblings. She closed the shop and left her two-year-old daughter with her sister,then took a job as a cook (เถ่าซิ้ว) at a curry shop in the mining area of Khao Soon, Chawang District, Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Locals say the original name was “Khao Soon” either to reverse bad luck or because a telecommunications center was established in 1965 across 25 square kilometers in the area. Since then, the name stuck.
The turning point came when Mr. Krid Khongsin discovered a shiny black stone that sparkled under light—wolframite ore (or “luk-plad” to local miners), which sold for 38 baht per kilogram at the time. This discovery sparked a gold rush.
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“Khao Soon has ore, but will be left with nothing in the future.”
Newly working as a cook there, faced hardship almost immediately. On the first day her shop reopened, a shortage of food provoked an armed mine supervisor to shoot her curry pot. It was only thanks to the intervention of elders that it didn’t escalate.
Still, amidst the violence, danger, and chaos, my mother found love—with a mine supervisor of the Pratu Thong pit, a man who once courted her by offering dim sum daily. Eventually, they became life partners.
However, the return of the shop’s original owners forced her out of the business. She adapted, this time panning ore with her bare hands in the Open Market District, one of eight districts of Khao Soon.
Despite overcrowded living conditions, Khao Soon had schools, clinics, temples, and even a local justice system run by “Khao”—a term used for communist leaders who earned respect through fair yet strict governance.
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In early 1976, she was pregnant. That year, a deadly conflict erupted between mining factions. The government finally intervened, ordering the mines to shut down and evacuating 20,000 people. She left Khao Soon to give birth back home in Krabi.
A year later, the mine supervisor returned to take her and their child back. Life began to stabilize—until silicosis (lung disease caused by rock dust) took him, like so many others. All their savings were spent on treatments. He passed away without her by his side, as she was still panning ore to pay his hospital bills.
When she received the news, she finished her work before taking their son to see his father’s body for the last time. Even as the funeral flames rose, the boy, only three, pointed at the coffin and asked, “Why is Dad in the fire?”
That night, when asked where his father had gone, she could only offer a red harmonica as comfort. The sound stopped after a few breaths. She sat in silence, tears flowing.
They later lived near a rambutan tree, with a small concrete yard. That tree, once climbed by the boy, became a symbol of home—of what once was..
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