Samui & The Witch

Where to next?  The decision between more islands or the jungle was decided by the footwear I'd brought with me.  At home, I had ideal boots for trekking in Khao Sok National Park, but my current shoes weren't up for the task of mud and leeches.

Another item on my to-do list was "dental tourism".  My last dentist visit claimed that a couple of fillings required replacement.  The savings of having it done abroad could offset a large chunk of the travel expenses.  Thailand's hospitals have a good reputation for quality work and I'd looked into a particular place in Phuket.  I was now intent on leaving Phuket and a bit of online investigation revealed that my next destination also had an international hospital used for such treatments.

An hour's flight over the tail of Thailand's mainland and I landed on an island experiencing a different season.  In Koh Samui, it was raining heavily enough to thwart my plans of walking out of the airport grounds before finding a taxi.  I had booked a one-way flight and one night's accommodation, but the weather today didn't favour exploration.  When I arrived at my room, the rain stopped.  This allowed time to explore a little, but I didn't venture far as recovery from the previous week was still needed.  The rain came again and soon flowed into some delta brain waves.

The next day I ventured along the main street and parallel beach of Chaweng.  I didn't have a feel for enjoying Samui.  As far as I could tell, it catered to the vacationist - a subspecies of the tourist that favoured the sedentary dip of deck chairs.  There was a strange mix of middle-aged couples milking their golden watch years, and younger, bar-bound groups (mainly Australian males).  The beach had a trashed-beauty to it, and in the morning resort employees would use wide brooms to sweep in the direction of the ocean.  I wasn't sure why this was necessary until I stepped on a fragment of broken glass.  A beach-strolling hawker offered me cocaine for sale.  Apart from being a bad choice of poison at the best of times, it seemed a strange market for such a stimulant here.  What were people doing - relaxing by the beach with a really intense focus?

I checked in with the dentist and made an appointment for my last day before flying home.  I then booked a ferry to another island to the north, although that would leave tomorrow morning, so I also arranged another night's lodging.

While again walking the main road, I thought to explore the street behind and a set of steps appeared to go up and over.  I climbed the stairs and came across several makeshift curtain-divided rooms that each had a thin mattress on the floor.  In the same second that I realised what this was, a lady emerged from a darkened tent which may, or may not, have contained a cauldron.  I couldn't guess her age as she was withered by more than time.  An unidentified facial malformation spread across part of her nose and upper lip.  Immediately my mind flashed to a graphic witch scene in a novel I'd recently read (The Sad Tale of the Brother's Grossbart).  It was daytime, but she was working the graveyard shift.  As her eyes locked on and she hovered towards me, I abandoned the idea of taking this shortcut.

"Massage?"  If I didn't recognise this as a codeword, she rasped straight to the point, "I'll give you happy ending". 

She had the voice of a retired death metal singer who still chain smoked all day and gargled gravel for breakfast.  With insistence she added, "Happy ending good for you."

In this particular instance, I felt a strong degree of skepticism.  I thought that the opposite was more likely true.  Obscure damage to the mind, body and spirit via PTSD, STD & possible need of an exorcism.

I backtracked with a distance-creating hand that I thought might look like a wave goodbye, but was less concerned with the pleasantries.  She might think it never hurts to ask, but I can still relapse the shivers.

Questionable Crotch Contents

Saturday night.  Time to see what Patong is all about.  I had two keen tour guides, including someone I'd recognised from back home and now officially met.  Located half an hour taxi ride away on the west coast, this is Phuket's debauchery district.  Getting there involves driving over a steep hill in the middle of the island.  Buses severely struggle when climbing this and they are a known cause of death to anyone behind them when the brakes fail.  Our taxi driver was quite eager to overtake the faltering bus in front, although that came with risks of its own.

Patong nightlife is mainly spread over Bangla road.  This is a wide street for pedestrians that was far removed from being pedestrian in the "dull" sense of the word.  A flood of people wandered along a smorgasbord of brightly lit neon disorientation.  Instead of sex being used to advertise everything, here it was direct marketing.  I'd say it was at least ten times more available than coffee.  Families kept a firm grip on each other as they navigated the outskirts of the zoo.  Budget party goers sipped their alcoholic beverages from straws in small buckets.  Middle aged men exchanged cash for charisma as Thai bar girls let them role-play high flyers.  Lady boys (and work-in-progress lady boys) made their presence know too.

Google provides the photos I didn't take

Being my first time here, the company I was with were treating it like it was my 18th birthday.  We sampled a variety of establishments.  There was only one place they didn't want to go, but sometime after midnight and vodka funnels, that's where we ended up - at Patong's main nightclub.  In the VIP area we met up with some of the Tiger staff.  Eddie Bravo had been there earlier, but left because of a seminar in Singapore that day.

On nights out like these, there comes a point in time where it seems that a futile chase is continuing for something that has long since fled the area, if it was ever there at all.  After 4-something in the morning, I decided to pull the pin.  In less than three hours I had to be at a meeting spot for an island tour by boat.  I exited the establishment, zigzagged past gender-unknown Thais selling their questionable crotch contents and found a taxi.  I first negotiated the fare then jumped in the back of an empty "songthaew" (I can type it, I can't pronounce it) which is basically two fixed bench seats on the back of a pick-up truck.  This allowed me to lean out the window and appreciate the night view of the island from the climb up the hill on the way back to base.

Sleepless, I prepared my gear for a trip to the Phi Phi islands and then rode to where a van was collecting the tour group.  The morning became a classic case of hurry-up-and-wait and by the time we were in the high-speed ferry, my head was noddy.  I would have caught some shuteye behind my sunglasses if it wasn't for the Russian bikini-clads sitting across from me.

Towards the front of the boat, a heavy-set guy with ill-fitting shorts was giving everyone a cringe-worthy display of bushy buttock cleavage.  His wife failed to address this mutant mohawk.  When the tour guide urged us to see something out the front of the boat, the Australian family sitting near me was the first to make comical remarks about "No thanks, I'll be right" and references to "furry crack".  I laughed and then joined in with comments about a full moon party and how it seemed to go up to the 7th vertebrae.  For the remainder of the journey, the persistent eye-sore allowed a fun trade of amusing remarks.  Childish humour is even better with a dose of sleep-deprived delirium. 

Part man, part stegosaurus.

The Phi Phi islands are beautiful.  The tourist experience of the Phi Phi islands is not beautiful.  I'm sure I've learned this lesson before.

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten."  -- Marie Antoinette

In a horseshoe-shaped bay, short white-sand beaches are surrounded by vertical cliff walls.  Keeping the dinosaur theme, here's what it would look like to a pterodactyl in flight -

As far as I could tell, for all daylight hours a continuous tide of tourists battered the small coast.  The beach was subjected to the relentless unloading of boats, like a re-enactment of the Normandy landings.  Once emptied, each ferry would make way for the next expulsion of people.  As demand was high, the visit was brief, and our tour was soon herded back into our water craft.

Here's a much better picture found online, compared to the overpopulated ones I took from the same location -

Do hospital emergency rooms continuously update the types of grievous injuries for which they keep statistics?  If so, I suggest a new and soon to be increasing category - namely, "Impalement Upon Selfie-Stick".  Most likely administered by others, this penetrating wound is a questionable mix of malice and public service.

I'm sure there's some practical benefit, but holy shit, have you seen the trance people go into when they use this attachment to their mobile phone?  Held like a Hamlet prop, they swirl around taking dizzying footage as nearby people lean out of the way, lest they be clouted.  But there's also a strange stupor cast upon onlookers, as they can't help but stare at the use of this extension to vanity.

I try not to rant on this blog.  It's too easy to fall into the self-indulgence.  This has been an exception.  A recent podcast on my traveling playlist referred to the cleansing effect of getting annoying thoughts out into written form just to clear the way.  The expression was something to the effect of "I'm just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day."

Speaking of monkeys, there was an island with them scheduled on the tour itinerary.  This ended up being our boat watching people from another boat throw pieces of banana at them.  The primates climbed out on branches that overhung the water and took turns trying to catch the flying fruit.  That was a quality encounter, like throwing chips to seagulls.

There was a prior drinking night smearing my judgement, but this tour reminded me that my preference for travel wasn't tourism based.  This experience put my penciled-in plans for the next few days into question.  I had intended on booking a flight to another island for tomorrow, but another option was to explore a jungle on the mainland.  Some research would be nice when I got back to a wifi connection, but priority alpha was sleep.