Bangkok revisited
Between the week I stayed in Bangkok before heading to Bang Saen and my final week after leaving Pattaya, I spent about two weeks in Thailand's capital city, where we had first landed on October 17.
In that time, I learned to use the skytrain and metro without a map, I met beautiful and dangerous people, and I became well-acquainted with the vast city, from the tourist ghetto in Banglampu to the Silom drag show, from the yaa-dong whiskey stand to the ultra-high-so supermall utopias.
Banglampu
Also known as the Khao San Road district, I think an easy shorthand to describe this area is a list of the most common streetside shops: electronica CDs, Jimi Hendrix/Radiohead/Scarface T-shirts, pad thai, swimwear, banana roti, day-glo velvet art, tuk-tuk sculptures made from crushed Chang beer cans.
I'm not going to lie and say that I liked this place. I spent most of my time trying not to judge everyone, not to assume they were just vacant stoners who were only there to get drunk with other hippies and buy a token of (fake) Thai culture as a joke or something. Meanwhile I was walking around in sandals, khakis, and a Bob Dylan T-shirt, eating spring rolls and roti, and by appearances could have easily evoked the same sort of disdain from myself.
While Mike and Jeremy were still with me, we stayed across the road from Banglampu, on a little canal. One thing that did interest me about this part of town was the uncanny presentation of trash. Thailand at large had garbage issues, but in parts of Bangkok there was so much of it that it became not an obstruction but its own sort of artifact.
I remember one collection in particular, an abandoned lot between two streets. The ground, high with rubble, was strewn with fliers, bottles, and everyday trash of all sorts. In a way the lot seemed like an authorless, self-conferring sculpture with a hive-life all its own.
The maw of an old vacuum cleaner gaped after a bitten pear, wasted bamboo leaned lattice-like against a half-wall, and transparent snack wrappers whirled together in a little twister. I almost felt like I shouldn't walk across it.
Chinatown
The sky overhead is so polluted that stormy weather seems imminent all the time. Through its veneer the sun looks like the moon.
The streets are lined with produce stands, clothing outlets, and gadget shops. Great vertical signs in red Chinese characters advertise warehouses and restaurants. Smoke rises from squid grills. The sidewalks crash with people, but human shouts are tinny under the noise of the motorway.
There, trucks, taxis, and jalopy motorcycles fight for forward motion, and I don't think Thailand has any kind of muffler standard. The raucous tuk-tuk, whose name is onomatopoeic, clamors over all the rest.
The sound is constant and everywhere, so that you look down the street and the whole cityscape -- buildings, people and the space between them -- seems to rumble and thrum and growl like a restless monster.
Center World
A flute melody charms me along its wispy path, through sets of glossy black couches accented with chrome furnishings, beyond an array of plasma screens on which wild horses run through vivid meadows, and past beautiful women with impossibly smooth faces holding jewels or perfumes. At the store's exit, a man from Panasonic is demonstrating the first battery-powered personal car.
I emerge onto the fourth-floor concourse, where a curtain of huge green pearls hangs from the ceiling three floors above, catching golden sunlight from the western window. I feel lighter than air. I feel non-existent. This place is designed to ease the pain of shopping, but, like morphine for the unafflicted, the effect on the penniless is plain bliss. No one knows that I’m not here to buy anything! While part of me is worried that I’ll be found out and ousted – or worse, jailed – another part is mourning the passage of time, because with it comes night and the closing of Center World. Its big sister, Paragon, shuts down just an hour later.
I try not to think about this as I drift toward the glass wall behind the escalators, where the newest Lamborghinis, Maseratis, and Ferraris are on display. In my travels so far, it’s been the lowest of everything – the barest room, the cheapest restaurant, the darkest bar – but when I arrived at the Silom Center shopping district, I was flung straight to the top. Maybe that’s why this is so overwhelming. The best of the modern world, all being presented to me as though I deserve it.
And the scale of everything. I feel as though I’m in the presence of some vast, cutting-edge, superficially good deity. An ivy-strewn waterfall covers seven floors of the northern wall. In the atrium, three towering, orange-glowed letters spells out “ZEN.” And outside, the glossy face of a Thai girl smiles down from a screen in the sky.
---
During my last stint in Bangkok, I finally got to be around money. I made some high-so friends who changed my clothes, took me to posh restaurants, and bought me cosmopolitans. One was the owner of a Silom nightclub and a modeling agency. Another was the former Miss Thailand. The most imposing was champion strongman and action-movie star Nathan Jones. He was General Boagrius in Troy. Thais know him as the foreigner in the hit martial-arts film Tom Yum Goong. He is enormous.
Walking around the movie theater with Nathan, or standing in the elevator with him, something seemed incorrect. Art often imitates life, so that movie scenes blur with our personal memories, but there are certain things that you know exist only in cartoons or special effects: dragons that breathe fire, steamrolled faces that blink twice, and human behemoths. Yet there he was, bumping his head against the ceiling of the elevator, making movies seem all the more lifelike or reality seem all the less real.
Coming home
One of the most striking things about arriving at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., was the American conversation happening all around me. In certain parts of Thailand, English speech was normal – that was how Europeans often spoke with each other or with Thais. I even overheard an American accent every now and then. But they were speaking about Thailand, or speaking about home as a place that could be abstracted. It wasn’t the verbal exhaust of everyday life, as natural as breathing.
I wrote down a scrap I overheard soon after arriving, a Virginia mother talking on her mobile phone: “Band teachers are saints. They’re all saints. They should all be sainted…Okay. Yeah. Oh I’m having a Valentine’s Day potluck on the fifteenth.” People cursing to themselves. Thoughtless exchanges with service personnel. Black people talking. I’d seen almost no black Americans in Asia, and now I was in Washington D.C. There were even sorority girls, twittering away at a speed that would be inaudible to foreigners.
There was a downside to this. In Thailand, the sound of other people’s conversations, of PA announcements, of song lyrics, had about the same relevance to me as the sound of distant hammering. Ambient speech was a sort of silence, in the sense that I could remain absorbed in my reading or in my own thoughts because my brain never processed the words. Even if they were in English, the accents were often thick enough that the words did not have easy passage to my listening center.
At the airport, everyone was having American conversations in American English all the time. When I sat to think or read, I was surrounded by what I now recognized as a frenzy of meaning, a patternless web of expression that my unconscious was curious enough to get tangled in.
---
Because United Airlines screwed me over, they put me up in a D.C. hotel on the night that I was supposed to fly to Miami. It was a Holiday Inn, but damned if it didn’t seem like a palace. I was used to a closet-sized room with a hard mattress and a table fan.
I sat down on the hotel bed and my bottom sank for what seemed like forever. I had two pillows, and they came with a menu that offered extra pillows in four consistencies. There was cable TV, body wash, climate control, a razor, a blowdryer, hot water, and a shower head that let you select from six different spray shapes. I drank the tap water!
---
So now I’m in Gainesville, and I spend most of my time in disbelief that I’m actually here. At times I feel like I’m in a dream that I had while I was in Thailand, a dream about home, because I had many towards the end. Or I feel like Jan. 31, 2008 came right after Oct. 16, 2007, and I’ve been here the whole time. I have a very hard time reconciling the two lives. I fear this present life burying the other under mounds and mounds of time.
I don’t have any final thoughts. When people ask me what my trip was like I just say something meaningless. Pretty soon I’ll start to look for a job. Maybe if I was smart I would just wrap myself up in my arms and do as Beckett said: “Sleep now, as under that ancient lamp, all twined together, all tired out with so much talking, so much listening, so much toil and play.”
Friday, February 8, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Alone!
Yes, it's been weeks since this stuff happened. But I can't write a conclusion until I catch up to the end first. Besides, this one's short.
A vacation on holiday
Mike and Jeremy abandoned me on Jan. 9. My American friend returned stateside, a homecoming I was already dreaming about at night, and Jeremy went to Cambodia. I stayed one more day in Bangkok, then took a bus to Bang Saen.
Bang Saen is a popular beach getaway for Bangkok Thais. The sand is moist and clumpy, the surf pushes up litter, and artificial light hangs over the ocean like smoke.
As I paced the beach one night, I was ensnared by a group of dark-skinned sirens huddled on a mat. A less lonesome traveler would have jeered at their crude seduction tactics, but they winnowed one hundred baht in beer money from me. I remember being kissed in the dirty sea, flailing my arms about indignantly.
Pattaya, a family kind of place
It's possible that life on Earth -- that is, across most of the globe -- is inherently good. In this scenario, one can imagine that there are certain epicenters from which spread all the madness, pestilence, and perversion in the world. Cities like Las Vegas, Rio, and Pattaya, Thailand.
I arrived in Pattaya in the middle of the afternoon, and nearly everyone was asleep. I approached the first inn that showed signs of life. An older Thai woman and a pale Swedish man were chatting across the Thai woman's desk in a junky garage below the rooms. I asked them if they had any vacancy.
"How long you stay here?" the Swede asked.
"Maybe a day or two," I said. "I just arrived. I was going to sort of feel it out."
"How many time you come here before?" asked the Thai woman.
"None. This is my first time in Pattaya."
At this they began to laugh, and they went on long past what seemed normal. I chuckled, bit my fingernail, craned my neck around in surveyance of the garage. They were still laughing when I told them I was going to look at another guesthouse.
The ground floor of the next place was white and flaky, but tidier. I asked the young man behind the counter about a room. He just shuffled toward the staircase, sniffing and rubbing his nostrils. I thought back to this when I learned about yaa-baa, the drug that etches Pattaya's neural framework. Its name means "crazy medicine," and it's ingested by snorting.
I followed the man into the building. Dark, withered women hunched behind crumbling doorways, watching me with nervous eyes. One of them crept toward me reptile-like. "Would you like to see my room?" she said vacantly. Some sort of cream-colored ooze showed between the scattered follicles on her scalp.
After missing the doorknob a few times, the young man inserted his key and opened the door to a vacant room. Facing me was the open bathroom. I determined this after my eyes identified a cracked toilet amid all the rubble. I looked to the rest of the room. There were no windows, even though we were at the building's edge. Insects moved on the unmade bed.
I told the man thank you, I was going to look around some more, maybe I would come back later. It was the first time I'd turned down a room that was cheap enough for me. I descended the stairs and emerged onto the bright street. The next room I checked out became my home for what turned out to be a long and strange six days.
[omitted]
A vacation on holiday
Mike and Jeremy abandoned me on Jan. 9. My American friend returned stateside, a homecoming I was already dreaming about at night, and Jeremy went to Cambodia. I stayed one more day in Bangkok, then took a bus to Bang Saen.
Bang Saen is a popular beach getaway for Bangkok Thais. The sand is moist and clumpy, the surf pushes up litter, and artificial light hangs over the ocean like smoke.
As I paced the beach one night, I was ensnared by a group of dark-skinned sirens huddled on a mat. A less lonesome traveler would have jeered at their crude seduction tactics, but they winnowed one hundred baht in beer money from me. I remember being kissed in the dirty sea, flailing my arms about indignantly.
Pattaya, a family kind of place
It's possible that life on Earth -- that is, across most of the globe -- is inherently good. In this scenario, one can imagine that there are certain epicenters from which spread all the madness, pestilence, and perversion in the world. Cities like Las Vegas, Rio, and Pattaya, Thailand.
I arrived in Pattaya in the middle of the afternoon, and nearly everyone was asleep. I approached the first inn that showed signs of life. An older Thai woman and a pale Swedish man were chatting across the Thai woman's desk in a junky garage below the rooms. I asked them if they had any vacancy.
"How long you stay here?" the Swede asked.
"Maybe a day or two," I said. "I just arrived. I was going to sort of feel it out."
"How many time you come here before?" asked the Thai woman.
"None. This is my first time in Pattaya."
At this they began to laugh, and they went on long past what seemed normal. I chuckled, bit my fingernail, craned my neck around in surveyance of the garage. They were still laughing when I told them I was going to look at another guesthouse.
The ground floor of the next place was white and flaky, but tidier. I asked the young man behind the counter about a room. He just shuffled toward the staircase, sniffing and rubbing his nostrils. I thought back to this when I learned about yaa-baa, the drug that etches Pattaya's neural framework. Its name means "crazy medicine," and it's ingested by snorting.
I followed the man into the building. Dark, withered women hunched behind crumbling doorways, watching me with nervous eyes. One of them crept toward me reptile-like. "Would you like to see my room?" she said vacantly. Some sort of cream-colored ooze showed between the scattered follicles on her scalp.
After missing the doorknob a few times, the young man inserted his key and opened the door to a vacant room. Facing me was the open bathroom. I determined this after my eyes identified a cracked toilet amid all the rubble. I looked to the rest of the room. There were no windows, even though we were at the building's edge. Insects moved on the unmade bed.
I told the man thank you, I was going to look around some more, maybe I would come back later. It was the first time I'd turned down a room that was cheap enough for me. I descended the stairs and emerged onto the bright street. The next room I checked out became my home for what turned out to be a long and strange six days.
[omitted]
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Pat Pong show, Bangkok
Important disclaimer: If you're ever disturbed, whether easily or with difficulty, you might not want to read this post. It covers a certain show involving certain talented ladies working off a dark road in Bangkok. The experience was interesting, and our curiosity was satisfied, but we were made to squirm -- first in our guts, and later, at the final act, in our souls.
(This disclaimer is directed explicity at our parents and other relatives. If you're one of our necessarily perverted friends, please read on, and I'm sorry for the delay.)
We sat down in the front row and a couple of working girls, their parts barely covered, sat beside us and tried to siphon away our money. The room was small, and the rest of the crowd was mostly European. About forty percent of it was female. On stage, a woman lay on her back, puffing excitedly on a cigarette with her vagina. I never saw her face.
The bargirls deserted us quickly. Apparently, our boyish charm did not make up for our frugality. A new woman took the stage and began slicing bananas into chunks. "Banana Boat Song" filled the room. She propped her feet up on a pole and, with a wet "thwuk!" each time, she launched the chunks into the air, sending them over her head behind her reclined body. To my disappointment, she made no effort to time her shots with the exclamations of the song ("Six foot, seven foot, eight foot, bunch!/thwuk!").
She then pointed to someone in the room and indicated that he should open his mouth. He refused, and she tried several others to no avail. I pointed to Jeremy, who was sitting to my left. She prepared to launch, and Jeremy dove behind me, clutching my shirt, which is all stretched now thanks a lot. The banana went behind us somewhere.
The next act was a younger girl, and her expression invoked a high school sophomore reluctantly at band recital. The crowd was becoming rowdy and self-involved. The girl looked around insecurely, then seemed to get a cue from somewhere. She itched at her labia and from between them produced a string of bright-pink flowers.
The girl scanned the room again, and I saw disappointment strike her face as she observed that no one was watching. She continued pulling on the string, which yielded a rainbow of day-glo colors. Still no response. She waved her hand like a magician and quickly left the stage.
A taller, meatier girl came on next, carrying two bottles of soda water. My first thought was, "How is she going to open those bottles? I don't see an opener anywhere," and my second thought was, "I am far too delicate to be here."
The fifth act began curiosly. She held a folded piece of paper in one hand, and with the other, she pulled from her vagina a string that was hung with charms. Dido sang from the speakers: "My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why-yy..." The girl took one of the charms between her fingers and I saw that it was in fact a razor. With the boredom of a schoolgirl, she began cutting the folded paper into a snowflake. Mike still has it, which means that it's somewhere over eastern Siberia right now.
Next was the girl who, using a small pipe to direct the puffs, blew out twelve candles one by one. This was impressive, but not so much as the last of the solo acts, performed by the oldest and most wizened member of the crew.
After laying out her drawing paper on the stage floor, she inserted into herself the butt of a blue dry-erase marker. She was waiting for a cue from another woman, who was taking drink orders from a group in the back of my room. Wearing an expression of pained impatience, she barked at the girl in Thai. I couldn't understand the words, but I imagine it was something like, "What's the holdup? I'm clenching a fat marker in my goddamn vagina."
Finally, the other woman gave her the okay. "What's your name?" the performer called out to a man at our left.
The man was wearing a white linen suit with a pink handkerchief in the pocket, and his head was tortoise-like. Beside him sat a young and polished blonde, whose bejeweled hand lay on his thigh. In a thick Mediterranean accent, the man croaked out a response that even I couldn't understand. The Thai woman asked him to repeat several times, then decided to go with what she heard.
Supporting herself with her hands, she moved in midair like a gymnast, the fat of her buttocks brushing against the paper. When she was done, the second girl looked at the paper and said something in Thai, which I can guess was, "I can't read this shit. This isn't even English." This girl approached the old man and asked him to write his name down. Then she took the message back to the performer, who began to write again. When she finished, she showed her work to the crowd. We all applauded. The paper read, in perfectly formed English, "Welcome to Thailand Vittorio." Two girls brought the paper back to Vittorio. He accepted with a little nod, then handed it to his beautiful girlfriend.
After this act, the lights dimmed, and a romantic air began to play. A man walked out in briefs and started rubbing his crotch, glancing here and there. What now? I asked Mike. We hadn't heard anything about a man. Murmurs of uncertainty filled the room.
Then his partner came out wearing lace, and they both undressed. Quickly he took her in his arms and laid her down on the floor. I first mistook their speed and fluidity for that of ballet dancers and not, say, professional movers.
The man was paunchy, and the woman was sickly-looking, with prominent ribs and pelvis. They moved through every major sexual position: her leg vertical, he standing behind her, and at the end, the two of them hanging from rings on the ceiling. It was like an instructive demonstration of sex, though entirely passionless. They changed positions every three measures if you counted four beats per. Once or twice I saw her fidgeting her hands, touching his chest maybe. At first I thought it was actual female pleasure or an imitation of it, then I realized that she was just making false starts before the time to rearrange.
I consider myself pretty blase about things like purity, sanctity, blasphemy. I believe, maybe naively, that anything powerful enough to be sacred is too powerful to be marred by a little abuse. Still, I found myself diverting my attention when the sex demonstration began for the second time. I think that was silly now, but I'd never watched other people having sex before, and I'd imagined my sex life henceforth changed after seeing the act reduced to begrudged choreography, thick slapping sounds, and the restrained grimace on a face whose cheek is pressed against the floor.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Sun of the beach photos
Koh Turatao was overrun with monkeys, I caught this one in the act of stealing a girls sandal.
Cooking crabs on our driftwood fire.
Arriving on Koh Turatao, the water is crystal clear. 
A monk finding solitude in the still water.
The island-scape of the Andaman Sea and Turatao Marine National Park.
The port in Pakbara.
I couldn't decide which of these two I liked more.
A man bathes in the Andaman Sea.
This area was hit hard by the tsunami and now there are many signs telling you which way to run if you see a wall of water.
One of the brothels that fronts as a karaoke bar in Haat Yai. This was the view from our hotel room.
Justin tries to decide what size cobra he wants to eat at the snake restaurant.
Caged song birds for sale.
Justin and Jeremy, seen in the mirror, try to decide if they want a massage. 
Street food for New Years in Haat Yai.Sun of the beach
We had just finished a few drinks at an open-air restaurant, the night was ripe, and Jeremy announced that he wanted to spend some money on a lady. This southernmost city, Haat Yai, had at least one brothel on every block, usually under the marquis "Karaoke" or "Ancient Massage." There were a few prostitution supercenters, like Pink Lady Complex and Turkish Bath, which had numerous floors and rooms, each specializing in a different service.
The first place we tried was Piano Bar. Here, the girls sat on a tiered platform behind a glass wall, brightly adorned like tropical fish. They preened aloofly or winked at us while patting their bodies.
Each wore a number, and you had only to tell the manager which number you would like to order. The three-digit girls were about $30, and the two-digit girls were about $25.
We visited several shops with a similar layout. Others had no aquarium; instead a bevy of girls greeted you when you walked in. They tried to win your favor while the manager discussed business with you. To keep up the ruse, someone often sang dischordant karaoke in the back of the room.
At each place, Jeremy would ask the manager an assortment of questions. "What for all the presents?" when there were large gift boxes stacked behind the girls in one aquarium. "Why I cannot have for all of one day?" because he had heard this offer earlier that night.
He would haggle over the price stubbornly, then back out when the manager finally agreed on a discount. When we showed him our puzzlement, he would wrinkle his nose and tell us he didn't like any of the girls.
We literally visited every shop in town. It took hours. We knew we couldn't go back to any of these places, or walk by them without shading our faces.
It had been the same when I went shopping lady with him in Mueng Laa, China (fruitlessly, if it matters to you). I think the thing is that he wanted a girl, but he didn't want to go through the disreputable process of paying her and following her away into some dim and overly efficient room. It was enough to look and be on the brink of the actual event, or to be fawned over by the girls and enveloped in their auras of guaranteed sex.
Once, though, at one of the aquariums, he came very close. She was an absolutely stunning girl in a coral-colored dress, seated with her legs crossed at the edge of her row. She had lustrous black hair, cream-colored skin, and lively, smiling eyes. Her number was fifty-eight. Its clunkiness seemed to make her more accessible, which was some trick considering the fine liquidity of her contours and the grace of her gently nodding leg, of her blithely turned head and the swish of silken hair that followed it.
Jeremy had the sense not to duck out this time, and he ordered her. I'm sorry, the manager said, she has already been requested by that gentleman. He pointed to a Thai man sitting at a table and drinking a cocktail. Why he hadn't taken her yet, I'm not sure. Perhaps he was savoring this anticipatory gaze, which was sure to be better than the necrophiliac automation to follow.
We were on the top floor of our hotel, which we shared with a group of teenagers from Satun province, close to the Muslim nation of Malaysia. Most of them looked like emo kids in America, but grungier and meaner. Their T-shirts promoted bands like Nirvana and the 80's hair-metal sensation The Scorpions.
The room was mostly empty though the club was packed. We wore our short sleeves and let the cold air feast on our skin as we danced in the new year.
The day was clasped in the arms of what some would call poor weather: a low bank of clouds, grey light, and cool, electrostatic wind. A fine rain could be felt but not seen. After walking through the interior Ko Turatao, we followed a white path out onto a bright green peninsula, an island of lucidity amid the dream of grey water and drizzly haze. Likewise, our stark waking minds were ringed all around by the drone of cicadas. The sound cleared for us a silence in which we sat side by side between the palms.
We began by talking about societies, how any society, as well as any frendship or relationship, is characterized by commonality, and commonality breeds conformity, which entails restrictions on behavior. At Ko Pha Ngan, there were literally hundreds of disparate societies mixed together. Commonality, and with it restrictive conformity, broke down.
I suppose I could mention here that on the other side of the rock mountain that blocked off our beach, there was a small and overpriced bungalow complex with a restaurant. By the inland trail, it was about three hundred meters. Jeremy made this trip regularly.
When we arrived, all was black, and the restuarant was closed. The lock on the cooler, though, was unhinged. Jeremy went in, using his lighter for illumination, and I waited on the sand.
"Okay fine, let's go back."
"What the fuck?" I said. "You didn't get any water."
"No," I said. "Let's just go."
"No," I said. "You're crazy."
Like most Thai people, they had a fearful respect for sub-tropical temperatures, including that of the sea at night. They seemed to think that I had endured great hardship to reach their boat, so they filled my bag with crabs and wouldn't accept my money. I bid them good luck in the new year and swam back ashore. We ate three steamed crabs each.
The first place we tried was Piano Bar. Here, the girls sat on a tiered platform behind a glass wall, brightly adorned like tropical fish. They preened aloofly or winked at us while patting their bodies.
Each wore a number, and you had only to tell the manager which number you would like to order. The three-digit girls were about $30, and the two-digit girls were about $25.
We visited several shops with a similar layout. Others had no aquarium; instead a bevy of girls greeted you when you walked in. They tried to win your favor while the manager discussed business with you. To keep up the ruse, someone often sang dischordant karaoke in the back of the room.
At each place, Jeremy would ask the manager an assortment of questions. "What for all the presents?" when there were large gift boxes stacked behind the girls in one aquarium. "Why I cannot have for all of one day?" because he had heard this offer earlier that night.
He would haggle over the price stubbornly, then back out when the manager finally agreed on a discount. When we showed him our puzzlement, he would wrinkle his nose and tell us he didn't like any of the girls.
We literally visited every shop in town. It took hours. We knew we couldn't go back to any of these places, or walk by them without shading our faces.
It had been the same when I went shopping lady with him in Mueng Laa, China (fruitlessly, if it matters to you). I think the thing is that he wanted a girl, but he didn't want to go through the disreputable process of paying her and following her away into some dim and overly efficient room. It was enough to look and be on the brink of the actual event, or to be fawned over by the girls and enveloped in their auras of guaranteed sex.
Once, though, at one of the aquariums, he came very close. She was an absolutely stunning girl in a coral-colored dress, seated with her legs crossed at the edge of her row. She had lustrous black hair, cream-colored skin, and lively, smiling eyes. Her number was fifty-eight. Its clunkiness seemed to make her more accessible, which was some trick considering the fine liquidity of her contours and the grace of her gently nodding leg, of her blithely turned head and the swish of silken hair that followed it.
Jeremy had the sense not to duck out this time, and he ordered her. I'm sorry, the manager said, she has already been requested by that gentleman. He pointed to a Thai man sitting at a table and drinking a cocktail. Why he hadn't taken her yet, I'm not sure. Perhaps he was savoring this anticipatory gaze, which was sure to be better than the necrophiliac automation to follow.
New Year's Eve, new ways to party
Do you remember on Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Larry has a whiskey-and-coke in a coke can, and he tells this guy to try his coke because he thinks it will be funny, and the guy is like, "What is this?" because it turns out the guy is Muslim and forbidden from drinking liquor? No? Oh right, that was just my life.
We were on the top floor of our hotel, which we shared with a group of teenagers from Satun province, close to the Muslim nation of Malaysia. Most of them looked like emo kids in America, but grungier and meaner. Their T-shirts promoted bands like Nirvana and the 80's hair-metal sensation The Scorpions.
They were pious about liquor, but they joined us in throwing crude Chinese explosives out the window for New Year's, they tried to steal my T-shirts, and the girl among them tried to seduce me into buying her a Fanta.
For the actual crossing into 2008, we went to Blue Kiss Disco. It was so hip that at the back of the club there was an ice bar, a room where Thais could experience actual cold temperatures. In the anteroom they put on parkas and woolly boots. The room is made to look like it's cut from ice, and vapor comes from your mouth and rises off your skin. Thais venerated Mike when he told them that his hometown was like that all winter long.
The room was mostly empty though the club was packed. We wore our short sleeves and let the cold air feast on our skin as we danced in the new year.
Solitude
After Haat Yai, we took a minibus to the coast and then a ferry out to the island of Ko Tarutao, a large and still-pristine island in the Andaman Sea.
At the pier, there was a visitor's center, a small restaurant, and a shop that sold supplies. We stocked up on food, then hiked about four kilometers to an isolated beach. To our left was a large rock formation whose jungle trees shook with monkeys, and to our right stretched endless sand and sea. We took rest for a moment, then went exploring.
The day was clasped in the arms of what some would call poor weather: a low bank of clouds, grey light, and cool, electrostatic wind. A fine rain could be felt but not seen. After walking through the interior Ko Turatao, we followed a white path out onto a bright green peninsula, an island of lucidity amid the dream of grey water and drizzly haze. Likewise, our stark waking minds were ringed all around by the drone of cicadas. The sound cleared for us a silence in which we sat side by side between the palms.
We reflected on Ko Pha Ngan, on what some call the "laid-back" or "anything-goes" environment of southern Thailand's traveler culture. You can dance how you want to, you can compose paragraphs outside the 7-Eleven, you can go around with whatever guy, girl, or body part you fancy. Nothing is strange or taboo. At the full moon party, for example, no one looks twice at sex on the beach, berserk dancing to no particular music, or at a lone man weeping in hunch.
We began by talking about societies, how any society, as well as any frendship or relationship, is characterized by commonality, and commonality breeds conformity, which entails restrictions on behavior. At Ko Pha Ngan, there were literally hundreds of disparate societies mixed together. Commonality, and with it restrictive conformity, broke down.
Survival
Meanwhile, Mike had sharpened a stick and gone hunting for crabs beneath the rosy sheen on the water. He caught three. We smashed the shells of the small ones and put them in the trap. The third we steamed over the fire. Mike and I shared the meat because Jeremy didn't think it was "comestible."
Jeremy and Mike made their beds on the sand, by the fire, and I hung my hammock in a cluster of trees farther inland.
By the afternoon of the next day, it became apparent that the food we had purchased -- rice and canned fish -- was not only insufficient for three nights but was no longer appetizing even to a very hungry boy. So, I collected a potful of snails, and Mike caught a few more crabs. There was even one in the trap. Jeremy fashioned a bow-and-arrow for hunting monkeys.
This was something to watch. He would approach the family of monkeys, and they would scamper to observe him from behind trees or from a safe distance on the beach. Then Jeremy would hurry toward them in jaunty French leaps and launch his arrow, which veered quickly like a Nerf dart into the sand.
Jeremy also helped us catch minnows from the river with a mosquito net (I fried them in the oil from mashed peanuts.). He was keen on making weapons and hunting animals, but he never wanted to eat them. He would take one look at what we had in our pot -- rice or snails or whatever -- and say, "Okay I go at the restaurant now."
I suppose I could mention here that on the other side of the rock mountain that blocked off our beach, there was a small and overpriced bungalow complex with a restaurant. By the inland trail, it was about three hundred meters. Jeremy made this trip regularly.
By nightfall on the second night, we had no water left, so Jeremy and I made an expedition to the restaurant. We carried heavy, flaming sticks because Jeremy claimed to have been chased back by wild boars the last time he went.
When we arrived, all was black, and the restuarant was closed. The lock on the cooler, though, was unhinged. Jeremy went in, using his lighter for illumination, and I waited on the sand.
When he returned, we went down to the coast and surveyed his booty: one can of Coca-Cola and two cans of beer Chang.
"There's no water!" I exclaimed. "We need water."
"One person, I cannot take my fire for choose all what I want."
"Okay fine, let's go back."
We went back and, as quickly as we could, grabbed some more items from the cooler. "Don't be stupid," I hissed at him. I took two bottles of water and left a twenty-baht note on the railing. On the beach, Jeremy lit a flame and we took inventory again. It appeared that Jeremy had taken another beer and a Pepsi.
"What the fuck?" I said. "You didn't get any water."
"It's okay," he said. "You want to go back?"
"No," I said. "Let's just go."
We scurried down the path in the dark. When we were almost clear of the last bungalow, from which a silhouette appeared to be watching us, Jeremy said in a harsh whisper: "Are you sure you don't want to go back? More Coca-Cola, more beer."
"No," I said. "You're crazy."
"You don't want to have this beer?" he said.
"Okay, yes, thank you," I said. "But let's get out of here."
When we returned to the campsite, we had soda pop and beer, but still only modest portions of food. After a pot of noodles, we sat watching the water in unsated silence. Boat lights, or just the glow from them, dotted the horizon. Closer to us, a long boat was shining a light into the water. We watched the boat and it's pool of lit ocean pace back and forth.
The other two figured it was a squid boat, so they sent me swimming after it with a plastic bag and thirty baht. When I arrived, the men invited me on. They were pulling in crab traps, not catching squid, and the crabs were the same size as ours.
Like most Thai people, they had a fearful respect for sub-tropical temperatures, including that of the sea at night. They seemed to think that I had endured great hardship to reach their boat, so they filled my bag with crabs and wouldn't accept my money. I bid them good luck in the new year and swam back ashore. We ate three steamed crabs each.
Voting ourselves off
The next morning, Jeremy leapt from his sleep blubbering in terrified French. He thought he had rolled into the fire. He had not. It was the air itself which was on fire.
We stayed in the shade for the next several hours. When I went into the light for some errand, my skin would shrivel and peel back before my eyes. Finally, at around three o' clock, some cloud could watch no longer and stepped in front of the sun, probably to be dissipated in anger by our torturer.
By that time, we had but one hot beer between the three of us. I boiled two bottles worth of river water in the pot, which I cleaned as best as I could. Still, my water was spicy and sooty to the taste, and clouded with food bits.
"But I don't understand," Jeremy said. "The restaurant is just 'eer!"
Soon after, we hiked back to the port. According to Jeremy and the other Europeans we met at the restaurant there, our behavior at the camp site was distinctively American. Frontiersmanship, et cetera. I don't know. I'd say that smacks of Euro-condescension. Personally, I didn't think the food at the restaurant was that good.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Muay Thai boxing and island life: photos
The scenery of Ko Pha Ngan
The port in Surat Thani
Thai boxing in Chiang Mai
Traveling by tuk tuk through the city Muay Thai boxing and the Full Moon Party
We're at the Muay Thai stadium in Chiang Mai, waiting for the fight to start. Our seats are in the front row, and we expect to be sprayed with blood, especially during the heavyweight match. For this main event, an American fighter is pitted against a Thai.
Muay Thai is a nightly happening here, so the small arena is filled mostly with foreign spectators. Most of the Thais are just there to gamble. They're clamoring and laughing in the corners while the westerners fidget in their seats. Music comes from the speakers, a non-stop needly meandering punctuated now and again by a honk.
Muay Thai kickboxing, if you don't know already, is one of the most powerful martial arts. Fists and feet are used from a distance, but the strongest blows are usually delivered with knees or elbows. Thai people have told me that every Thai male, since childhood, is well acquainted with Muay Thai technique. Like soccer is for the English or whoever, Muay Thai is just part of their motor memory.
The music in the arena has swelled to fill the room. Judges and spectators tap in time on hard surfaces, watching the empty ring. In flecks and pulses, violence slowly populates the air.
The next fighter is a full-sized brawler, about two hundred pounds of hard muscle. Grinning broadly, he rotates in the center of the ring and sweeps his upturned hands toward the crowd.
Just kidding. The next fighter is a child of the same size, maybe lankier. Unlike red, who is compact and expressionless, he is awkward-looking, with a long face, wet eyes, and a slack mouth. He wears the blue gloves.
The boys do this routine in the middle of the ring, a sequence of movements that appear half spiritual rite and half showmanship -- down on one knee, twiddling the fists, moving in lunges. This sequence is meant, in part, to honor the fighters' lineage of Muay Thai teachers and also to allow each fighter to gauge abnormalities in the floor of the ring.
The fight begins. Red dominates early on, driving blue around the ring with kicks to his midsection. Blue is able to parry some kicks, but then red wraps him up. He whirls blue around, lifting knees into his ribcage. Blue's face as it passes me seems to plead with the crowd.
The bell rings and the fighters go to their corners. Their coaches pour cold water over their legs, massaging and slapping the muscles. Here blue's abuse turns to a seed of strength which he nurses during the break.
In the second round, he makes use of his longer reach to keep red at bay while keeping his feet in red's face. He launches a foot thrust at him, and red tries to catch it but the foot goes right through to his diaphragm.
Blue keeps this up in the third round, and in the end the ref raises his glove into the air. He's dripping with sweat. He looks more than anything like a kid who just got out of the wading pool.
FIGHT 2: Bloody
The fighters are young adults now. Blue looks dangerous from the beginning. His posture is low-slung, and his deadly eyes watch red from under lazy lids.
Still, these two fight more tentatively than the children. A kick from one of those long, lean legs is not easily absorbed. They feint for a while before blue connects a swift kick to red's mouth. Red tries a midsection kick, which blue grabs, holds against his hip, and returns with a roundhouse to red's chest.
Blue follows red into the corner, and they wrap each other up. They strike with knees until the ref separates them. Immediately blue kicks red over sideways with his right leg, then knees him in the face with his left. Red totters, blood flowing from his nose and dripping off his upper lip, and falls to the floor.
FIGHT 3: Worth the admission
At the beginning of the fight, the fighters bob their fists and knees to the music, moving like some sort of killer dancers. The opponents are well matched this time.
Blue makes the first attacks because his kicks are longer and quicker. At first he connects quite a few, and seems to be dominating the fight. As his opponent retreats, he takes gazelle-like leaps across the ring, with lifted knee, moving midair into a flying kick.
Red dodges the next one and lands a coil-and-release kick into blue's gut. Blue puckers, then comes at him again. But red catches his momentum and slings him against the ropes. He wraps blue up, and the two exchange knee blows to the ribs, red hitting the lowered side of blue's bent ribcage. With each blow, opposing crowds of Thai bettors alternately cry "Oi!" from their respective corners.
As the fight goes on, the fighters gain respect for each other. Red dodges back, his body forming a crescent around the blur of blue's swinging foot. Blue responds by raising a glove in the air for red to tap. The crowd starts to get disappointed as more and more often the fighters high-five each other when they could be striking blows. At the end of the match, they throw an arm around each other's shoulder. All the fighters have done this, but these two are both grinning.
A man comes to our section holding a fistful of bills and, for the first and only time that night, tries to take bets. I decline because it seems too easy to work.
The fight starts, and the American comes at him like a mad street fighter. He's winning, but the Thai marshmallow is certainly making him work. His kicks seem frightened but still more measured than the American's. When they entangle, the American throws a few knees up, almost formalistically, but he's mostly punches.
They're separated, and they exchange a few kicks. The American ducks and the Thai kicks him in the head with a strong one. He's bent over. The Thai drops two hard elbows onto his back and neck.
The ref steps in between them. He waves his hand in front of the American's face a few times, then brings the marshmallow to the middle of the ring and raises his fist. The crowd erupts with boos. The American looks confused, but in a lucid way, as though he expects to be fighting and can't understand why he's not. A tall, lean American, the fighter's coach, steps toward the ring shouting to the ref, "Get the fuck out!"
The announcer tries to calm the crowd, explaining why the fight was called -- something about the American's mouthpiece. The booing shrinks to a grumble, then to a hard leer across each of our hearts.
The bus from Chiang Mai brought us to Bangkok at 2 a.m. Three hours later, we took a bus to Surat Thani, a small town on the Malay peninsula in southern Thailand. At these latitudes, foliage covers every surface like the blob would have if it weren't for human intervention, and if the blob was dark green and leafy.
Our destination was the beach, though. From Surat Thani, we took a midnight freight boat to Ko Pha Ngan, the prime spot for Thailand's famous Full Moon Party. We arrived at 6 a.m. the day of the party and checked into a bungalow on the beach.
We hung around on the shore, kicked a soccerball, tried to make up for three sleepless nights by sleeping in hammocks, essentially killed time before what was to be the biggest party in the entire solar system that night, the biggest that December for that matter, and possibly all year because this month drew especially big crowds.
At around 10 p.m., I got separated from Mike and Jeremy. I wandered around our bungalow complex, wondering what to do. A Thai woman, middle-aged, dark, and meaty, with a shock of yellow hair over her scowly face, asked me where I was going. I said I guessed it was time to get ready for the party. Do you know where I can do that? She said, you come with me.
I got on a motorbike with her, and we rode deep into the dark, mountainous interior of the island. At the top of the highest hill, we pulled over by a side road in the jungle. Up the road were a few small huts and two large elephants, fidgeting in their shackles.
The woman woke a man from one of the huts. Groggy but pleasant, he sold us a bag of food which we used to accent our two bowls of noodle soup. The woman had prepared the soup -- packets of Ramen from the 7-Eleven -- with fresh lime juice and spices. It tasted like an expensive meal. When I return to America, I will prepare my Ramen noodles the same way.
It had been about an hour, and I urged the woman to bring me back to the bungalows so I could find my friends. But she insisted on another bowl of soup, for she was getting ready for the party tonight, too.
I paced back and forth, stepping over huge dollops of elephant dung. Elephant dung is similar to cow dung, with a lot of the same organic properties, except of course that it is greater in quantity and potency. It stinks, all right.
"Do you mind, lady?" I said. "Can we go now?"
She looked up at me with big round pupils.
"Let's get out of here!" I said.
We got back on the motorbike and set off down the hills. Down the third curve, the view opened up to the sea below, whose horizon was lined with lights and whose waves wore capes of moonlight. She wound around and brought me back to the bungalow, but not before she tried to fellate me in a dark meadow. I told her we should go directly to the bungalows instead.
Back at the beach, Mike and Jeremy were still nowhere to be found. The party was ten kilometers down the beach, and there was no finding each other once we were there. Did they go already without me? Did they pass out somewhere down the beach? I was feeling pretty low, as we had been talking about this party for the last few weeks. That's not to mention that Mike had my debit card.
I went into the room and tallied my assets. After the trip to the elephants, I had 170 baht. The taxi ride to Haat Rin, site of the Full Moon Party, was 100 baht each way. I didn't expect to return for at least ten hours. I set off walking.
A motorbike taxi pulled over and offered to bring me to the party for 200 baht. I told him my sad story. I think speaking Thai helped because eventually he accepted my price of 50 baht, which barely covered gas for the trip to Haat Rin. That left me with 100 baht for the return trip and 20 baht for water.
Once I arrived, I fought my way through the barstrip's throng of people, which is what I imagine the gates of Hell to be like if all the madmen and demons were fighting their way in instead of out, and I walked out to the marginally less crowded coastline.
Rolling up my pants, I waded out into the water to be alone and survey the strip. At ground level was the gradient of human bodies, condensing away from the coast and toward the line of bars, DJ booths, and whisky-bucket stands. Above each bar there was a light display bigger than the bar itself. The highest was an abstract form that looked like a peacock's plumage or a weird blue hand. The flames of a fiery sign on the beach spelled out "Amazing Thailand." The strip was about one kilometer long, flanked by two cliffs. Orange orbs floated up from the northern cliffside and disappeared into the air. This Internet cafe is closing soon, so please take these details as just an indication of the whole, as if I told you a pineapple had a couple of spines and maybe a leaf on top.
As I often do, I'd missed what was right in front of me by gazing into the distance. An endless line of drunk men and one black dog was pissing into the water from the shoreline. I darted back inland.
I tried dancing to the music -- mostly psychedelic trance beats -- but I wasn't in the mood, so I went wandering. On the beach right outside the bars, the crowd was as thick as it could get with Europeans, Africans, Indians, Arabs, Israelis, East Asians, Latinos, Australians, Canadians, and here and there maybe an American.
On the seaside fringe, there were people whose dancing was too frenzied, or too personal, to mesh with the crowd; there were people who walked around like zombies; and there were those who just sat in rapturous wonder, who were, say, sinking their hands into the moon-shone mud and watching them with mouths agape. (I had heard before that some tourists, probably those from mainland Europe, take hallucinogenic drugs before coming to the Full Moon Party.)
On the fringe of this fringe, there were the desperate ones, the flotsam of the Full Moon Party. They had lost their money, their friends, or in the case of those who were ill-suited to party drugs, their minds. These were the ones who interested me, for just hours ago I had found myself with no money (almost), no friends, and no comfort. I slipped into the persona of possessionless, wandering Samaritan, or smiling monk what have you. I couldn't offer them food, water, or money, though in my current state I would have given them half or more, but I could tell them my story and listen to theirs.
There was the Canadian who had gotten on a two-way boat from Ko Samui but blacked out before waking up here. His money and return ticket were with his absent friends, and the ticket woman wouldn't hear his pleas. I kept him company as the boats left one by one. There was the drunk Australian, sitting head in hands, whose pockets had been picked clean after he strayed from his group. It seemed that I heard the same stories again and again.
I went back inland and danced for a bit, but I couldn't help that I felt more lured by the dark sky and dark sea. I went looking for a quiet place where I could comfort the swollen night, and maybe vice-a-versa. I walked out along the rocks at the edge of the beach. Here there were more sad cases. And the music from a dozen DJs, which as I got further away overlapped into a mad clamor, ebbed and blared as I ducked behind and moved past broad boulders. A ways out there was a stony ascent and atop it, a rim of rocks by which some ladyboys lurked.
Muay Thai is a nightly happening here, so the small arena is filled mostly with foreign spectators. Most of the Thais are just there to gamble. They're clamoring and laughing in the corners while the westerners fidget in their seats. Music comes from the speakers, a non-stop needly meandering punctuated now and again by a honk.
Muay Thai kickboxing, if you don't know already, is one of the most powerful martial arts. Fists and feet are used from a distance, but the strongest blows are usually delivered with knees or elbows. Thai people have told me that every Thai male, since childhood, is well acquainted with Muay Thai technique. Like soccer is for the English or whoever, Muay Thai is just part of their motor memory.
The music in the arena has swelled to fill the room. Judges and spectators tap in time on hard surfaces, watching the empty ring. In flecks and pulses, violence slowly populates the air.
FIGHT 1: Baby-boy beat-down
Finally, the loudspeaker crackles on with some garbled but excited announcement. The first fighter enters the ring. He's a child of about seven, slight in build, wearing a green robe. He bows to the four sides of the ring and takes a seat in the red corner.The next fighter is a full-sized brawler, about two hundred pounds of hard muscle. Grinning broadly, he rotates in the center of the ring and sweeps his upturned hands toward the crowd.
Just kidding. The next fighter is a child of the same size, maybe lankier. Unlike red, who is compact and expressionless, he is awkward-looking, with a long face, wet eyes, and a slack mouth. He wears the blue gloves.
The boys do this routine in the middle of the ring, a sequence of movements that appear half spiritual rite and half showmanship -- down on one knee, twiddling the fists, moving in lunges. This sequence is meant, in part, to honor the fighters' lineage of Muay Thai teachers and also to allow each fighter to gauge abnormalities in the floor of the ring.
The fight begins. Red dominates early on, driving blue around the ring with kicks to his midsection. Blue is able to parry some kicks, but then red wraps him up. He whirls blue around, lifting knees into his ribcage. Blue's face as it passes me seems to plead with the crowd.
The bell rings and the fighters go to their corners. Their coaches pour cold water over their legs, massaging and slapping the muscles. Here blue's abuse turns to a seed of strength which he nurses during the break.
In the second round, he makes use of his longer reach to keep red at bay while keeping his feet in red's face. He launches a foot thrust at him, and red tries to catch it but the foot goes right through to his diaphragm.
Blue keeps this up in the third round, and in the end the ref raises his glove into the air. He's dripping with sweat. He looks more than anything like a kid who just got out of the wading pool.
FIGHT 2: Bloody
The fighters are young adults now. Blue looks dangerous from the beginning. His posture is low-slung, and his deadly eyes watch red from under lazy lids.
Still, these two fight more tentatively than the children. A kick from one of those long, lean legs is not easily absorbed. They feint for a while before blue connects a swift kick to red's mouth. Red tries a midsection kick, which blue grabs, holds against his hip, and returns with a roundhouse to red's chest.
Blue follows red into the corner, and they wrap each other up. They strike with knees until the ref separates them. Immediately blue kicks red over sideways with his right leg, then knees him in the face with his left. Red totters, blood flowing from his nose and dripping off his upper lip, and falls to the floor.
FIGHT 3: Worth the admission
At the beginning of the fight, the fighters bob their fists and knees to the music, moving like some sort of killer dancers. The opponents are well matched this time.
Blue makes the first attacks because his kicks are longer and quicker. At first he connects quite a few, and seems to be dominating the fight. As his opponent retreats, he takes gazelle-like leaps across the ring, with lifted knee, moving midair into a flying kick.
Red dodges the next one and lands a coil-and-release kick into blue's gut. Blue puckers, then comes at him again. But red catches his momentum and slings him against the ropes. He wraps blue up, and the two exchange knee blows to the ribs, red hitting the lowered side of blue's bent ribcage. With each blow, opposing crowds of Thai bettors alternately cry "Oi!" from their respective corners.
As the fight goes on, the fighters gain respect for each other. Red dodges back, his body forming a crescent around the blur of blue's swinging foot. Blue responds by raising a glove in the air for red to tap. The crowd starts to get disappointed as more and more often the fighters high-five each other when they could be striking blows. At the end of the match, they throw an arm around each other's shoulder. All the fighters have done this, but these two are both grinning.
FIGHT 4: Is America ashamed or enraged?
The American steps into the ring. He's a big black brawler, covered with tattoos. A German man behind me reports, "He's from the Bronx, I know it."
His Thai opponent comes out, and no one can believe it. He's a big white marshmallow. Rolls hang from his belly and thighs. Either this is the only heavy Thai person they could find, or something is amiss.A man comes to our section holding a fistful of bills and, for the first and only time that night, tries to take bets. I decline because it seems too easy to work.
The fight starts, and the American comes at him like a mad street fighter. He's winning, but the Thai marshmallow is certainly making him work. His kicks seem frightened but still more measured than the American's. When they entangle, the American throws a few knees up, almost formalistically, but he's mostly punches.
They're separated, and they exchange a few kicks. The American ducks and the Thai kicks him in the head with a strong one. He's bent over. The Thai drops two hard elbows onto his back and neck.
The ref steps in between them. He waves his hand in front of the American's face a few times, then brings the marshmallow to the middle of the ring and raises his fist. The crowd erupts with boos. The American looks confused, but in a lucid way, as though he expects to be fighting and can't understand why he's not. A tall, lean American, the fighter's coach, steps toward the ring shouting to the ref, "Get the fuck out!"
The announcer tries to calm the crowd, explaining why the fight was called -- something about the American's mouthpiece. The booing shrinks to a grumble, then to a hard leer across each of our hearts.
Imagine there's no countries, just one blasted day-glo hive
The bus from Chiang Mai brought us to Bangkok at 2 a.m. Three hours later, we took a bus to Surat Thani, a small town on the Malay peninsula in southern Thailand. At these latitudes, foliage covers every surface like the blob would have if it weren't for human intervention, and if the blob was dark green and leafy.
Our destination was the beach, though. From Surat Thani, we took a midnight freight boat to Ko Pha Ngan, the prime spot for Thailand's famous Full Moon Party. We arrived at 6 a.m. the day of the party and checked into a bungalow on the beach.
We hung around on the shore, kicked a soccerball, tried to make up for three sleepless nights by sleeping in hammocks, essentially killed time before what was to be the biggest party in the entire solar system that night, the biggest that December for that matter, and possibly all year because this month drew especially big crowds.
At around 10 p.m., I got separated from Mike and Jeremy. I wandered around our bungalow complex, wondering what to do. A Thai woman, middle-aged, dark, and meaty, with a shock of yellow hair over her scowly face, asked me where I was going. I said I guessed it was time to get ready for the party. Do you know where I can do that? She said, you come with me.
I got on a motorbike with her, and we rode deep into the dark, mountainous interior of the island. At the top of the highest hill, we pulled over by a side road in the jungle. Up the road were a few small huts and two large elephants, fidgeting in their shackles.
The woman woke a man from one of the huts. Groggy but pleasant, he sold us a bag of food which we used to accent our two bowls of noodle soup. The woman had prepared the soup -- packets of Ramen from the 7-Eleven -- with fresh lime juice and spices. It tasted like an expensive meal. When I return to America, I will prepare my Ramen noodles the same way.
It had been about an hour, and I urged the woman to bring me back to the bungalows so I could find my friends. But she insisted on another bowl of soup, for she was getting ready for the party tonight, too.
I paced back and forth, stepping over huge dollops of elephant dung. Elephant dung is similar to cow dung, with a lot of the same organic properties, except of course that it is greater in quantity and potency. It stinks, all right.
"Do you mind, lady?" I said. "Can we go now?"
She looked up at me with big round pupils.
"Let's get out of here!" I said.
We got back on the motorbike and set off down the hills. Down the third curve, the view opened up to the sea below, whose horizon was lined with lights and whose waves wore capes of moonlight. She wound around and brought me back to the bungalow, but not before she tried to fellate me in a dark meadow. I told her we should go directly to the bungalows instead.
Back at the beach, Mike and Jeremy were still nowhere to be found. The party was ten kilometers down the beach, and there was no finding each other once we were there. Did they go already without me? Did they pass out somewhere down the beach? I was feeling pretty low, as we had been talking about this party for the last few weeks. That's not to mention that Mike had my debit card.
I went into the room and tallied my assets. After the trip to the elephants, I had 170 baht. The taxi ride to Haat Rin, site of the Full Moon Party, was 100 baht each way. I didn't expect to return for at least ten hours. I set off walking.
A motorbike taxi pulled over and offered to bring me to the party for 200 baht. I told him my sad story. I think speaking Thai helped because eventually he accepted my price of 50 baht, which barely covered gas for the trip to Haat Rin. That left me with 100 baht for the return trip and 20 baht for water.
Once I arrived, I fought my way through the barstrip's throng of people, which is what I imagine the gates of Hell to be like if all the madmen and demons were fighting their way in instead of out, and I walked out to the marginally less crowded coastline.
Rolling up my pants, I waded out into the water to be alone and survey the strip. At ground level was the gradient of human bodies, condensing away from the coast and toward the line of bars, DJ booths, and whisky-bucket stands. Above each bar there was a light display bigger than the bar itself. The highest was an abstract form that looked like a peacock's plumage or a weird blue hand. The flames of a fiery sign on the beach spelled out "Amazing Thailand." The strip was about one kilometer long, flanked by two cliffs. Orange orbs floated up from the northern cliffside and disappeared into the air. This Internet cafe is closing soon, so please take these details as just an indication of the whole, as if I told you a pineapple had a couple of spines and maybe a leaf on top.
As I often do, I'd missed what was right in front of me by gazing into the distance. An endless line of drunk men and one black dog was pissing into the water from the shoreline. I darted back inland.
I tried dancing to the music -- mostly psychedelic trance beats -- but I wasn't in the mood, so I went wandering. On the beach right outside the bars, the crowd was as thick as it could get with Europeans, Africans, Indians, Arabs, Israelis, East Asians, Latinos, Australians, Canadians, and here and there maybe an American.
On the seaside fringe, there were people whose dancing was too frenzied, or too personal, to mesh with the crowd; there were people who walked around like zombies; and there were those who just sat in rapturous wonder, who were, say, sinking their hands into the moon-shone mud and watching them with mouths agape. (I had heard before that some tourists, probably those from mainland Europe, take hallucinogenic drugs before coming to the Full Moon Party.)
On the fringe of this fringe, there were the desperate ones, the flotsam of the Full Moon Party. They had lost their money, their friends, or in the case of those who were ill-suited to party drugs, their minds. These were the ones who interested me, for just hours ago I had found myself with no money (almost), no friends, and no comfort. I slipped into the persona of possessionless, wandering Samaritan, or smiling monk what have you. I couldn't offer them food, water, or money, though in my current state I would have given them half or more, but I could tell them my story and listen to theirs.
There was the Canadian who had gotten on a two-way boat from Ko Samui but blacked out before waking up here. His money and return ticket were with his absent friends, and the ticket woman wouldn't hear his pleas. I kept him company as the boats left one by one. There was the drunk Australian, sitting head in hands, whose pockets had been picked clean after he strayed from his group. It seemed that I heard the same stories again and again.
I went back inland and danced for a bit, but I couldn't help that I felt more lured by the dark sky and dark sea. I went looking for a quiet place where I could comfort the swollen night, and maybe vice-a-versa. I walked out along the rocks at the edge of the beach. Here there were more sad cases. And the music from a dozen DJs, which as I got further away overlapped into a mad clamor, ebbed and blared as I ducked behind and moved past broad boulders. A ways out there was a stony ascent and atop it, a rim of rocks by which some ladyboys lurked.
It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish a ladyboy from a handsome or even a lovely woman, but on this jetty I figured out how. You can't tell by the body or the face, but from the way they look at you. Thai girls are shy, but ladyboys stare with an aggressive gaze that tries to hook you by the eyeballs.
I nodded to them as I passed, then stopped to rest on a rock. A young Thai man sitting close by spoke up to me in a mincing voice.
"I'm scared of there. I see people going in. It's so dark. I don't know what's inside."
"What happens in there?" I asked.
"I don't know. I think bad things."
He wore a striped T-shirt, two earrings and had a high pomp of bristly hair. His name was Nai. He too had lost his friends. He said he was scared, and he wanted to tag along with me until his boat arrived at 8:30 a.m. We returned to the beach, danced at a few of the bars, then walked by some food stalls. It was about 5 a.m., and I was starving. Nai offered to buy me something, and I could refuse only half-heartedly.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to some sort of big egg rolls.
"This Chinese food," he said, worried. "I don't know what's inside."
I ate one anyway, and we sat against a fence watching fights break out. Then Nai picked up a shell and drew intricate, precisely carved images in the sand -- a dragon, a bird, and some naked lady parts that he tranformed into a cat.
We walked to the middle of the beach and observed the sky. The moon and its party were making a pretty impressive showing in the western sky. But in the east, the sun had had enough of sleeping, and waiting. It was preparing a quieter but admittedly more glorious celebration of its own.
We climbed across the rocks at the edge of the beach, rounded the corner of the island, and took rest on the eastern face of a boulder. I beheld in the sky all the colors of the spectrum, with the saturation turned up as high as human rapture can handle. In the rusty shadow on the horizon, I could make out the craggy forms of distant islands. Then the sun rose like a fireball from the sea.
"Do you like the sea?" Nai asked.
"Yes, I do."
"I don't like the sea."
"Really?"
"Yes, I think Thai people, about fifty percent don't like the sea."
"Why don't you like it?"
He seemed to taste something disagreeable. "It's salty," he said, "and so dark. I don't know what's inside."
After that, Nai left the rock to catch his boat. I took some journalistic-style notes on the sun's presentation, then returned to the strip. I don't know what it was, but I felt much more like partying. I mixed in in front of Zoom Bar and danced like crazy. With my sandals off, I danced a circular pit into the beach. I wondered whether Ko Pha Ngan has any problems with dance erosion.
After an hour, I took to walking laps across the strip. In the light I could see that the bordering cliffs were covered with jungle and punctuated by stone outcroppings. I met Tom, the Australian who was stranded earlier. He was dance-walking around, having had a nice sleep, and we went together to one of the hillside bars. From that height I could see that the water encircling beach boulders was perfectly clear and turquoise.
I bought a bottle of water and went back to the beach for one last stroll. It was late morning now. The drunks were waking up in the sand under the powerful sun. Still without full use of their bodies, they flailed about in discomfort and confusion. Others were leaping about to the music, taking strangers by the hand.
At 11 a.m., I finally got on a song-thaew and headed back to my bungalow. My wallet was empty, which seemed so mathematically perfect. I rode among punch-bloody Englishmen and two lovely Swedish girls, and I couldn't help smiling because it had been a most beautiful Christmas morning.
"I'm scared of there. I see people going in. It's so dark. I don't know what's inside."
"What happens in there?" I asked.
"I don't know. I think bad things."
He wore a striped T-shirt, two earrings and had a high pomp of bristly hair. His name was Nai. He too had lost his friends. He said he was scared, and he wanted to tag along with me until his boat arrived at 8:30 a.m. We returned to the beach, danced at a few of the bars, then walked by some food stalls. It was about 5 a.m., and I was starving. Nai offered to buy me something, and I could refuse only half-heartedly.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to some sort of big egg rolls.
"This Chinese food," he said, worried. "I don't know what's inside."
I ate one anyway, and we sat against a fence watching fights break out. Then Nai picked up a shell and drew intricate, precisely carved images in the sand -- a dragon, a bird, and some naked lady parts that he tranformed into a cat.
We walked to the middle of the beach and observed the sky. The moon and its party were making a pretty impressive showing in the western sky. But in the east, the sun had had enough of sleeping, and waiting. It was preparing a quieter but admittedly more glorious celebration of its own.
We climbed across the rocks at the edge of the beach, rounded the corner of the island, and took rest on the eastern face of a boulder. I beheld in the sky all the colors of the spectrum, with the saturation turned up as high as human rapture can handle. In the rusty shadow on the horizon, I could make out the craggy forms of distant islands. Then the sun rose like a fireball from the sea.
"Do you like the sea?" Nai asked.
"Yes, I do."
"I don't like the sea."
"Really?"
"Yes, I think Thai people, about fifty percent don't like the sea."
"Why don't you like it?"
He seemed to taste something disagreeable. "It's salty," he said, "and so dark. I don't know what's inside."
After that, Nai left the rock to catch his boat. I took some journalistic-style notes on the sun's presentation, then returned to the strip. I don't know what it was, but I felt much more like partying. I mixed in in front of Zoom Bar and danced like crazy. With my sandals off, I danced a circular pit into the beach. I wondered whether Ko Pha Ngan has any problems with dance erosion.
After an hour, I took to walking laps across the strip. In the light I could see that the bordering cliffs were covered with jungle and punctuated by stone outcroppings. I met Tom, the Australian who was stranded earlier. He was dance-walking around, having had a nice sleep, and we went together to one of the hillside bars. From that height I could see that the water encircling beach boulders was perfectly clear and turquoise.
I bought a bottle of water and went back to the beach for one last stroll. It was late morning now. The drunks were waking up in the sand under the powerful sun. Still without full use of their bodies, they flailed about in discomfort and confusion. Others were leaping about to the music, taking strangers by the hand.
At 11 a.m., I finally got on a song-thaew and headed back to my bungalow. My wallet was empty, which seemed so mathematically perfect. I rode among punch-bloody Englishmen and two lovely Swedish girls, and I couldn't help smiling because it had been a most beautiful Christmas morning.
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