Metropolis Reality Forums - On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise

Sponsored by: The Fans!

Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register.
Sep 16^th, 2025, 12:51am

Upcoming Premiere Dates:
Survivor 23, Season premiere
Thursday, September 14 (8:00-9:30 PM, ET/PT) on CBS

Metropolis Reality Forums Ť On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise ť

   Metropolis Reality Forums
   Survivor
   Survivor General Gossip & News (Moderators: lakelady, yesteach, MediaScribe, Isle_be_back)
   On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise

Previous topic | New Topic | Next topic »

Pages: 1

Add Poll

Notify of replies

Send Topic

Author

Topic: On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise (Read 700 times)

Rhune
ForumsNet Administrator

Gender:

Posts: 292

On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise
« on: Sep 9^th, 2002, 10:25pm »

Quote

Modify

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/entertainment/4024453.htm?template=co ntentModules/printstory.jsp

Posted on Sun, Sep. 08, 2002

Jonathan Storm
On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise
Baked and buffeted, watching contestants flex and preen.

By Jonathan Storm
Inquirer Columnist

TARUTAO, Thailand - It was June 13. Public boats had stopped running weeks before. Charters took workers and visitors back and forth to this island where Survivor: Thailand, which premieres Sept. 19 on CBS, was being shot.

The light was waning. A band of pigtailed macaques, maybe 30, sat together on the shore, peering through wind-driven rain, bopping one another on the back and head, pointing toward the Andaman Sea and cackling, in monkey-speak, "Do you believe those people?"

The waves moved inexorably. The little shuttle boat bounced in them like a rubber ball on a Philadelphia summer sidewalk. The big, wooden, ancient, decrepit floating miracle of a ferry rolled and creaked like a dreaming giant. As each wave passed, one boat would rise and one fall. One second the decks were even, the next, one was 10 feet higher than the other.

On her first attempt to transfer from the bouncing ball, the woman before me almost broke her ankle when it caught in the ferry rail. She jumped successfully aboard on her second try. When my turn came, I just dived - splat! - onto the drenched deck.

The Thai passengers, returning home after a day of security duty on the spread-out island set, all laughed.

The Thais are fervent Buddhists who seem to regard death as just the beginning of another go-round on the big wheel. On this vessel, young men huddled in the rank passenger compartment. They wore life jackets! We four foreigners didn't know where to get them.

A small man scurried frantically around the exposed engine, which chugged spasmodically and belched fumes, tightening this and that with an oily rag. I remembered the legions of little news stories that I'd seen and ignored in my lifetime, "250 lost as ferry sinks." Stories from Bangladesh, Madagascar, Malaysia.

Thailand?

I'd traveled five days and 12,000 miles, and survived a stint with Survivor, but I wasn't so sure I'd survive the 15-mile trip back to the mainland.

Observing Survivor contestants in their habitat is like going to the zoo, except there are no bars, you must remove your watch so the animals can't see what time it is, and you are not allowed to eat or drink in front of them. They might get jealous.

Prohibited from making eye contact or any sounds that might distract the human guinea pigs, you and 10 or 15 other people stand five feet away, and the Survivors go about their business: gathering water, building shelter, ostentatiously displaying their eye-popping physical attributes, explaining their motivations in unintelligible surfer-speak, and cheering on their cohorts in excruciating Southern drawls.

Some of the contestants seem pleasantly normal. Most are not. The TV shows are mercifully edited. Actually spending two or three hours with these people, who are desperate for money, desperate for attention, desperate to be loved - by the entire country! - is more daunting than any adverse weather, environmental conditions, or bizarre flora and fauna you could imagine in any jungle hell.

On Ko Tarutao (Ko means island in Thai), the bugs are so loud I first thought their noise was feedback from a network of loudspeakers set up in late spring for the taping.

People in the Survivor crew, especially the publicists, who stop at nothing to exaggerate the drama of their show, told all sorts of stories of the danger. Spiders and snakes. Deadly nettles. Menacing wild pigs. The worm that waits in the sand and then shoots up, drills into your foot, and crawls toward your heart, under your skin, like some vision from The X-Files. My favorite was the 14-foot king cobra, stretched, ditch to ditch, across the road, that made them stop their Jeep.

During three days on the island, I saw some very silly people trying to Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. But I never saw a snake. I never saw a spider. No plant wrapped itself around my leg and started chewing. Nothing crawled into me, and, thanks to Amazon-strength insect repellent, I wasn't even bitten by a mosquito.

Besides an angry producer or a double-crossed Survivor, the mosquito is probably the most dangerous animal on Tarutao, the biggest island (about 100 square miles) in a group that is the southwestern outpost of Thailand.

Devil-may-care Susan Hawk, the truck driver on the first Survivor who told cast mate Kelly Wiglesworth she would like to leave her for the vultures, caught dengue (rhymes with Ben-Gay) fever from a mosquito bite. The virus, also known as bone-crusher disease, causes rash, high fever, profuse sweating, uncontrolled vomiting, intense headaches, and excruciating pain in the joints for four days. It is not usually fatal in healthy adults.

"I wished I was dead," said Hawk, who had come to Tarutao to cover Survivor: Thailand for the TV Guide Channel.

I never saw a wild pig, but was in the constant company of a ham. Extra's garrulous Jerry Penacoli - longtime Philadelphians remember him from a varied career in local television - was among the band of producers, on-air types and camera and sound people visiting the island to cover the show. I was the only print reporter.

We were constantly shepherded by vigilant publicists, eager to get the word out about Survivor's wonderful fifth installment, but anxious to make sure nobody discovered any of their little "secrets," such as the supposedly revolutionary way that the teams were selected this time; the palatial digs of executive producer Mark Burnett, removed from the tent city occupied by the horde of underlings - that sort of thing. Not that anybody would tell anything to ruin surprises for the viewers. We had already signed our lives away promising not to do that.

You don't need dengue fever to sweat profusely on Tarutao, such a remote and jungly place that it was home to a notorious lockup for political prisoners before World War II and was a haven for pirates for centuries before the government turned it into a national park in 1974.

Heat and humidity make Bangkok the world's stickiest capital, and it is 500 miles to the north.

The humidity never dropped below 85 percent. I rose at 10 minutes after sunrise each day, not because of the light, but because the heat in my tent would soar past 90 degrees in that brief time. Once, I awoke at 4:12 a.m. from fitful sleep on a broken cot, and the temperature gauge on my travel clock had fallen to a balmy 81.

One producer sweated so much without drinking enough water that her kidneys shut down, and she had to be helicoptered back to civilization.

Standing under the rudimentary showers - which frequently would simply stop while some poor cameraman was covered with soap - was moderately comfortable. Drying off afterward was impossible. Reapplying the gooey white insect repellent made the whole exercise essentially pointless. Many long-timers on the production crew basically gave up washing and just slapped on more deodorant every now and then.

You don't want to hear about the toilets.

Blessedly, the ferry made it back to dry land, a jumping-off town called Pak Bara. The van from there went the two hours to Hat Yai, commercial capital of southern Thailand, without killing any cyclists. From there, a crack express called a sprinter train took me four hours north (all of 180 miles) to the city of Surat Thani, where I got off to spend the night.

Hours later, as I slept in a real bed, more than 20 of my former fellow passengers were rushed to the hospital. The train had hit a Toyota at a grade crossing. All the cars derailed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------
Contact Jonathan Storm at 215-854-5618 or [email protected]. "Tarutao National Marine Park is officially open November to May and closed the rest of the year, when monsoons lash the island and boat services are shut down." - Thailand Handbook

IP Logged

Addams
You Bet Your ASS Team
ForumsNet Member

Gender:

Posts: 5398

Re: On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise
« Reply #1 on: Sep 10^th, 2002, 6:01am »

Quote

Modify

Is that because it was the real world and not the commercial, concrete jungles of north america? I think this article is very whiny. It's very typical of SE Asia.

By the way, the boats are old and they do not have the safety standards of north america. Few places in the world have the wealth of north america. So it's really a very snobby and typically north american attitude that's reflective in this sad little self centred piece of journalism.

He does give any one secret though. The producers of S5 have always said there was a "twist" at the beginning. He confirms that it is in how the teams are selected. He confirms it was hot. BTW if you ever go to a hot country like where Survivor shows are filmed. DO drink water and keep up your electrolytes (only the survivors have the hard time doing the latter). Do use mosquito repellant. It's not forever. Goodness in his case it was only 3 days. We know why this journalist wasn't selected for the show :rolleyes: wimp

Plus for all those rushed to hospital, I would say most were not prepared for the conditions. It's too bad that they were not properly informed of what to expect and what to do. For those like Susan Hawk who contracted mosquito borne or other illnesses this is one of the sad truths of living in these countries and a risk that you take if you choose to travel to these parts of the world.

Thanks Rhune for this article.

IP Logged

tahitisweetie
ForumsNet Member

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Gender:

Posts: 73

Re: On 'Survivor' isle, no paradise
« Reply #2 on: Sep 10^th, 2002, 7:53am »

Quote

Modify

This writer says "supposedly revolutionary" way the teams are selected.

Do you guys sense sarcasm here. And that maybe it is not all that revolutionary. Like under where they sit down there is a buff ... like others have been suggesting.

IP Logged