TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 10 - TRANG

27/12/02: Leave for Surat Thani, book back into same hotel as before, eat at MPA Café; early night.

It was strange going back to Surat Thani with only my partner for company. We had assumed that S would still be with us at this juncture, and that even M and E might have tagged along for a little while longer. Then when J and H had made their second showing, I thought we’d have a crew of some shape or size for a good couple of weeks yet.

In fact, M and E were travelling in a different direction and were at least a week ahead of our schedule. J and H, on the other hand, were seasoned travellers, making it up as they went along, and it was not impossible that we could meet again. But S’s departure was a surprise, albeit one whose possibility had revealed itself gradually over the course of the last two weeks. He was supposed to have been with us for at least three months, but had now decided, for whatever reason(s), to cut his trip short. (S would spend a little more time in Samui – in Chaweng of all places – before flying back to Bangkok where he would spend a couple of days on the Khao San Road, waiting for an early flight to materialise and take him home.)

My residual anxiety had subsided on the islands, but back on the mainland I could sense it creeping back. Surat Thani seemed a rather miserable place that night, although the meal we had at MPA café, an establishment with decor stuck in the 1950s, did me good. I was looking forward to getting to Trang, away from the hordes and to somewhere with a more sedate pace of life, but not so much as to give me the creeps. Because, to me, Thailand was beginning to feel like it was haunted. I had not entertained the idea that entire countries could be haunted, let alone cities or towns, but this was the only way I could explain away the eeriness I detected here, when I wasn’t surrounded by people or hanging out in bars. Maybe it was some of those rooms we’d rented, or the lack of people in a few of those urban conurbations we’d visited.

The coach station at Surat Thani is a case in point: noisy but not busy, dirty but not untidy, unfriendly but not outwardly hostile. You're never left feeling re-assured that you’re in the right place in Thailand. I think I’m stood in the right place and I think that’s our coach over there, but I can't be sure. Trang should only be a few hours away, but what if we end up taking some scenic route? What then? What will we do if it is dark and we are dropped off along some spectre-bothered highway, with nothing but wild dogs, mosquitoes and ghosts for company?

Louise has decided she wants a bottle of water for the journey. She goes off in search of some while I sit on the public bus minding our bags. She is taking too long about it. I’m not worried that anything has happened but I am worried that we might drive off without her.

We don’t.

28/12/02: Catch bus to Trang. Book into the Queen Hotel. Lunch at Koh Teng (curry). Drink at what should be the Old Time Pub but doesn't appear to be; eat fries with chilli sauce and play cards.

There is something oddly European about the wonderfully named Trang, with its wide roads and shallow undulations. Clean, modern concrete structures cohabits with older but no less functional architecture, not too dissimilar from French football stadia design of the 1970s (Strasbourg’s Stade de la Meinau being a good example). Its role as a stop-off point means, like Chumphon or Surat Thani, the 'farang' here are in limbo. Consequently, Trang possesses little in the way of entertainment. However, there is a bar just up from the cinema, run by a Belgian guy, that wouldn't seem out of place in Hoxton, were it not for the tiny, red ants that make their home in the bamboo furniture.

The public bus again, which means terminating on the outskirts of town. Fortunately, we did board the correct vehicle and it didn’t take the scenic route, and so after finding ourselves a taxi we are booked into the Queen Hotel by a reasonable hour. It is mid-afternoon and I am in desperate need of sustenance.

We'd read about a place called Koh Teng in our guidebook and liked the sound of it, but we saw the Queen Hotel first and our driver seemed the pushy sort who’d had somewhere specific in mind for us, so we made out we had reservations at the Queen and had him stop there. Now we’ve found Koh Teng and it seems like the more interesting place to stay. With an open, street-side atrium doubling up as a cafe, it’s like an old, colonial hotel that’s seen better days. It is also cheaper than the Queen, so we decide that tomorrow we shall defect and offer our residential allegiance to the Koh Teng.

In the meantime, we'll try their chicken curry with rice, as recommended by the genial gentleman who has taken our reservation. Louise has been living on green curry for some time now, while I have been taking full advantage of our coastal proximity, eating mostly fish. But we are inland again and it is time to cut back on the expenditure, and curry fits the bill.

Koh Teng’s speciality is not your normal Thai curry. Neither green, red nor yellow, it might be a variation on the thicker massaman curry, a dish that originates from Thailand’s Muslim south. It blows my mind and revitalises my appetite for proper Thai food. When we move here tomorrow, both of us will feast on this house speciality for a second time.

Trang is pleasant in a sleepy sort of way. There are newsagents, a few cafes, raised grass verges and flower beds that run down the middle of the road. There is a shopping mall a bit like the one in Surat Thani, but with fewer people and less merchandise. There is very little to occupy the traveller in Trang but I’m hoping we might stumble on something of interest soon. We’re off in search of The Old Time Pub and are having to walk down some fairly dark streets to find it. In a way, this is a very genuine Thai experience, similar to Surat Thani but without all the people and no sign of tourists. Or is it more akin to Prachuap Khiri Khan, except with more people but still no sign of tourists?

We eventually find what we think should be The Old Time Pub but it’s hard to tell.  We’re the only people here, there isn’t much on offer in the way of food, and the staff look us over like we've made some sort of mistake. We settle for a couple of servings of fries, chilli sauce to go with them, and many beers. Across the road there appears to an outdoor party taking place. We cannot be sure because it looks like it’s going on in a parking lot, but there is a lot of noise. Buoyed by the alcohol, I half-seriously suggest we go and check it out. We don’t but I get the sense it would either have been either a really good idea or a very bad one.

29/12/02: Move to Koh Teng. Have breakfast, check email, visit shopping mall, drink coffee. More curry, and a few drinks in bar run by Belgian chap.

Ko Teng – what a place. The rooms are actually very similar to those at the Queen – large, slightly shabby affairs with an open-topped en-suite bathroom shoved in the corner – but the many flights of stairs and the landings in between have a dilapidated grandeur about them that is very pleasing. The strangest thing of all is that the hotel seems to have been built just inches from a neighbouring tenement block, but to save on bricks and mortar they’ve left the joining walls exposed so you can see across onto the other building’s landing.

Once we've dropped off our things, we have breakfast, walk around town, stop for a coffee and to check our emails, before having curry again for tea (dinner, if you prefer). In the evening we visit a bar run by a Belgian chap just across from the Queen. It is a good day and Trang has served a purpose. It has helped me readjust to the pace of travelling, and I am finally beginning to feel like I know what I’m doing.

TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 9 - BACK TO HAAD RIN

23/12/02: Leave Mae Nam, board boat at Bo Phut, return to Anadin Bungalows, check email, go for a drink at cliff-top bar – rain. Eat at sit-down-on-the-floor place, then drinks on balcony. Avoid beach and go to a rock bar instead. Give Mellow Mountain a go, the cliff-top bar on the other side of the bay to the one visited earlier. Form a gang and take them to the Drop In.

24/12/02: Get up late. Discover ‘Gatorade’, a panacea for my hangover. The Bakery for breakfast, buy Louise a wooden monkey, meet our new friends at Bongos for dinner, then back to the Drop In for drinks.

25/12/02: Feel awful – drink Gatorade and eat crisps. Bamboozle for dinner, chill with our neighbour, an Israeli hippy who’s been here since our first visit to Haad Rin. Drop In for a few beers.

26/12/02: Breakfast on the beach. Spend most of the day in hammock reading. Try the Bongo Bar for dinner, then joined by our new gang for drinks on our balcony.

It was hard to know whether we were doing the right thing, but we didn’t have the time to deliberate. Part of me wished we’d stuck it out in Lamai for a few more days, or maybe even squeezed in a few nights in Thong Sala, or even Nathon – that could’ve been interesting – and then we could have spent Christmas in Mae Nam. Having said that, would Mae Nam really have been the best place to celebrate the festive period? At times it had resembled something of a ghost-town. At least in Haad Rin there would be a palpable sense of occasion.

They knew what they were doing in Haad Rin. The prices for our humble abodes – for we returned to the same in search of affordable accommodation – had gone up from 350 baht a night to 550, but we were running out of time: the place was filling up and rooms were at a premium. S tried to negotiate something cheaper but was so disturbed by the concrete cell he was offered, with sinister looking stains covering the walls, that he bit the bullet and paid the full 550 for his own hut. In truth, S was not well. He was worried about an on-going skin condition, concerned about the price of things, and hadn’t taken to the wildlife at all. A man who values both personal hygiene and space, he hadn’t warmed to the rougher elements of travelling and was starting to imply that he might cut his travels short.

Attempting to put a new spin on things, we go for a drink in a bar perched on one of the outcrops that flank the bay. We haven’t been here before, and it’s not anything special, but they are playing Lou Reed. My drink – for we are supping an afternoon beer – doesn't got down very well and makes me think that I should probably take a break from all of this.

We have dinner at the same place we had dinner when we first came here, where we had to remove our shoes for the first time. After getting ‘back on the fish’ in Mae Nam my digestive system is now screaming out for some heavy, western sustenance, so I order the chicken burger with fries.

We’re going to mix it up a bit tonight. We might even bypass the Drop In entirely.  (We will start by drinking on our veranda, though.) We’ll try the ‘rock bar’, playing The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the like. It makes for a nice change, but S and Louise aren’t entirely convinced so we decide to move on to Mellow Mountain, the larger bar built upon the larger outcrop on the other side of the bay.

It’s good up here but the clientele seem to be letting the place down a little. Or are they? In truth, S and I are starting to regard our fellow travellers with marginal hostility. I blame Chaweng for this, as well as our exile in Mae Nam where we spent most of our time in the company of Thai nationals. Nether the less, a nearby crew, comprising of two Irish girls and two English boys, seem to embrace us, so much so that we feel compelled to take them to the Drop In, whereupon everybody gets very drunk.

On Christmas Eve I was violently sick. It started off well: I was hungover, for sure, but I slept in until about noon, then armed myself with Gatorade before hitting The German Bakery for brunch, where I digested, among other things, the day’s Bangkok Post. There was a buzz about the whole place, and I purchased a wooden monkey from the shop next door to the 7-Eleven for my partner’s Christmas gift. The evening then followed the same routine as the one before, just with added vomiting.

Christmas day itself was spent in a state of general disarray. I invested much of my time suffering in a hammock but managed to get it together to go to Bamboozle for dinner, my first and only meal of the day, which never lived up to the standard set on our first visit. I should have been phoning home too, but there was no chance of that: the queues at Haad Rin’s ill-equipped internet bureaus were hanging out of the door, and they were charging a mint for the privilege.

I tentatively gave the evening a bit of go, chilling with the Israeli hippy next door who had been staying here since the tail-end of our first tenure. Up until meeting him, the travelling Israelis had aroused some suspicion. I’d had no opinion of them at all before coming to Thailand, but they travelled in packs, fresh out of national service, bronzed, toned, wearing tight vests and dark glasses, avoiding mere gentiles. The Israeli hippy was different and unwittingly quashed any lazy, inexcusable antipathy that might have otherwise crept in.

We eventually made it to the Drop In to meet our new crew, but after two unsatisfying drinks I decided to call it quits. When I awoke on Boxing Day, feeling relatively fit and healthy, a cache of oddments awaited me. They were from our neighbour, the Israeli hippy. He had moved on and had left us the surplus bits and pieces he’d accumulated during his month’s stay in Haad Rin. This was compiled of books mostly, and I spent the day swinging in my hammock reading one of them – Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Not before I had breakfast on the beach one last time, for it had been decided that Boxing Day would be our last spent on the islands. The party was over and we had to get back on track. The evening was spent drinking sensibly on our veranda with the Irish girls and English boys who had served us well on our second bout of debauchery in Haad Rin, before we bade them farewell.

The next day my partner and I separated from S, who returned to Samui to try and exploit the island in the way only a single person maybe can. It was a sad but not totally unexpected end to our travelling triumvirate, but S had financial concerns as well as physical ones. To the latter he could now add the irritating bites of the many sand fleas that had infiltrated his discarded trainers and feasted upon his ankles. That he’d managed to find his pumps after losing them on the beach was surprising in itself: even more so when they were subsequently pinched from the relative safety of his veranda the following evening. And so he was forced to invest in a pair of flip-flops, something that he and I had hitherto resisted. S was not built for travelling, but then I wasn’t so sure if I was either.

TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 8 - MAE NAM

18/12/02: Move on to Mae Nam; more rain. Book into Anong Villas, dinner and a few drinks at a bar on the beach served by a young Thai gentleman who’s been to Doncaster.

The middle point of the beach is typically furnished with the staple palm tree, and plays host to a smattering of pleasant bars and eateries facing north towards Koh Phangan. Lorries hurl along the main drag at break-neck speed, shedding light on a statistical analysis that informs us that Samui’s road are the most potentially fatal in the whole of Thailand. 

In spite of this, Mae Nam is a delightful place with only perfunctory facets of the commercialism that mar the rest of the island. The residents are welcoming and possess a playful sense of humour that offers relief from the understandable cynicism found on display elsewhere.

I love the postcard. My favourites are those depicting antiquated coastal vistas, faded in the light, drained of the overly rich colours that spoil more recent pressings. The postcard succeeds where other forms of communication cannot in establishing a tangible link between sender and recipient, and the journey that the laminate undertakes is an adventure of Odyssean magnitude.

When we were researching into our travels, it was discovered that Thailand's rainy season (ruedu fon) begins in June/July and hangs around until October/November. It was now mid-December and yet we were still being subjected to intense downpours interrupted by random bouts of sunshine, rather than the other way around which had been the state of play on our arrival. I don’t think the south of Thailand ever really frees itself from the clutches of these south-western monsoons.

Mae Nam was to be Samui’s saving grace. Our last roll of the dice, we couldn’t get out of Chaweng quick enough. It was a bit of a gamble and suffered the most inauspicious of beginnings.

Up until now I’ve been wearing a ‘body wallet’ with my passport, money and other particulars contained therein, and my passport is beginning to suffer the consequences of being moulded around my waste on a daily basis (our guidebook encourages not to leave valuables in one’s room – especially on the islands – and I’ve followed that advice religiously). On top of that, I normally have a camera slung over my shoulder.

I’ve decided to lump everything together in some sort of bag, as small as possible and in a colour befitting a someone who once served in the Air Training Corp. Such is the profusion of stalls selling this sort of tat, I don’t expect to pay a huge amount of money for the privilege, but I do anticipate having to haggle for it.

Initially, I’m being asked for 850 baht (about £12) for a satchel no larger than a 1 kg bag of sugar. I consider this excessive. Bear in mind that I am on a budget and that this bag has been knocked up for next to nothing with the specific intention of being sold to farang at an inflated price – they’ve even gone to the trouble of attaching a fake brand-name to the thing. Some friendly to-ing and fro-ing ensues and we’re quickly down to 500 baht, which justifies my position on the matter. I’ve entered into this whole process hoping to pay around 350 baht, but I am beginning to sense that I have pushed him as far as he is prepared to go. The bag has a number of external pockets, an adjustable strap and is coloured battleship grey. What’s more, our hustling has been carried out in the most civil of manners, my interlocutor smiling and laughing the whole time. I hand over the 500 baht and he shakes my hand.

Songthaews are the primary means of getting around in Koh Samui, and they run fixed routes just like any regular bus would. This can lead to some confusion. Songthaews aren’t numbered and there aren’t designated stops, so you need to tell the driver where it is you would like to go, and you’ll either be waved away or told to jump on, regardless of whether the vehicle has any obvious capacity.

We find ourselves a songthaew with ease and are instructed to get in, although there seems to be something not quite right. After about half a mile our songthaew intercepts another travelling in the other direction and enters into a discourse with the driver. An exchange of hostages then takes place, of which we are involved. This makes complete sense now, because we were driving in the wrong direction: south, back towards Lamai, when we needed to be headed north, towards Mae Nam. Really, we’d been waiting on the wrong side of the road.

We’re the only farang sitting in the back of our new songthaew. This isn’t a problem in itself but we’ve become accustomed to aping what other travellers do in order to get where it is we want to be. It’s left to me to interpret our rudimentary map, and because of the speed at which we’re travelling – fast – I am finding it difficult to discern where it is we should alight. Moreover, we are not familiar with the protocol: did our original driver explain where it was we were supposed to be going or merely convey our general direction? Are we expected to bang on the separating window when we want to get off – the only obvious means of communication between driver and passenger – or is there a more subtle means of passing information that I’ve missed?

Eventually, fairly certain that we can afford to travel no further, we gesticulate in random directions that we would like to disembark NOW! Our fellow passengers get the message and bang on the window to alert the driver and he drops off at the nearest roadside café, the only sign of life in the immediate, foliage based vicinity. I am not concerned because I know we’re somewhere along the 4169 and that if we move north we’ll hit the coast in next to no time. Safe in the knowledge that we’re not completely lost, we decide to take this opportunity to pause for lunch – grilled chicken costing next to nothing. This remote shack isn’t set up for tourists; this is a service-station for the locals serving up 'street food', and it's very tasty.

Now for the small matter of finding our resort. Over there, down that dusty back-road. It takes us through a wood and brings us out at the dog-end of a long beach – presumably the right one. As we amble back along the shore, stumbling over driftwood and flotsam, the monsoon decides that we’ve had enough sunshine for one day. My colleagues are losing patience. Acknowledging no responsibility whatsoever for our predicament (I didn’t see anybody else reading a map) I volunteer to scout on ahead, leaving my friends under something resembling a bandstand to shelter from the rain.

It’s evident that Mae Nam is trying to cater for a different kind of tourist, although there’s little sign of life here. I suspect that a lot of these substantial guesthouses are new and that the area is still finding its feet. I’m surprised, then, that when I do find more modest accommodation it’s priced as high as it is – more expensive than Lamai but with little on show to justify this. I also find the eight foot concrete pillars on which most of these bungalows sit a little disconcerting. All the cabins we’ve stayed in so far have been raised a few feet on the ground – to discourage insects, I presume – but this seems extravagantly high.

I report back to my colleagues, explain the situation and they’re content to pay the going rate. Anong Villas will do for now; maybe we will move on in a few days’ time.

19/12/02: No rain and very hot. walk into town with S to look for a post office and an internet connection. Discover a nice bar run by another young Thai gentleman. Back to villas, eat at a restaurant on the beach; find another nice bar – Café Tatay –  staffed by two young Thai gentlemen.

20/12/02: Another dry, hot day. Breakfast at Mummy’s down some dirt-track. Eat at restaurant on beach again, find another bar, this time set back from the shore where yet another pleasant Thai gentleman plays us his guitar. Return to Café Tatay.

21/12/02: To the post office. Have food at our resort followed by a beer appetizer on our veranda. Eat at Mai Nang, try out Gypsy Pub but it's rubbish, so return to Café Tatay and get drunk with a middle-aged German couple.

22/12/02: Lunch at Angies, where the Samui-renowned pies disappoint. Follow up with terribly bland fodder at Mummy’s. Return to Café Tatay to bid farewell to our new friends – the German couple, too. Leave my group to watch Liverpool and Everton play out a bore draw at a bar called New Wave.

Separating the shore from the main drag (if you could call it that) is a myriad of bungalows, back roads and diminutive plantations. Take a left and suddenly you’re surrounded by woodland. Turn another corner and you stumble upon a small shop selling Pringles, suntan lotion, flip-flops and tins of Beer Chang, having passed a few grazing water buffalo along the way.

Back in the other direction and you’ll chance upon a typical outdoor Thai bar. Stop for a quick beer, maybe something light to eat, and then head on your way. You’ve hit the main road now, but you won’t find much along there, save for the odd internet café and a modest 7-Eleven. What a curious micro-environment. It’s almost like a village, Mae Nam, or it seems to have a village mentality. There aren’t any girly bars or establishments showing pirated films on rotation, and not a Bucket of Joy in sight. There are many places to drink, however, and they’re decent establishments too – there just doesn’t seem to be anybody drinking in them. This breeds the perfect environment for getting to know the locals, and it is at Café Tatay that we spend an inordinate amount of time chatting to a long haired Thai guy called Samiya (sic). He is typical of the look a lot of young Thai men go for on the island – sort of late '70s rock – and he is as friendly as most of them tend to be. In every bar we visit there seems to be some unassuming Thai chap in his early twenties keen to interact with his Western guests and serve them beer for as long as they want it.

In Cafe Tatay, on our fourth evening In Mae Nam, we find ourselves in the company of a middle-aged German couple. The guy’s as loud as hell, but he loves Thailand and its people, and he very much likes the English, especially their sense of humour. His favourite film is The Plank, an almost silent film starring Eric Sykes and a young Tommy Cooper. It’s not my cup of tea, The Plank, but I like this German guy and a good time is had by all.

We spent five very relaxing nights in Mai Nam, sleeping, watching MTV at Anong Villas, eating fish on the beach, wandering around in our own private jungle and drinking at Café Tatay. It was a good place to regroup, even if we were still getting drunk, to at least some degree, pretty much every night. The place wasn’t overrun with farang and in-between the showers the weather was pretty good.

But five nights is five nights and we couldn’t see any point in stretching our stay on this damned island any longer, for the percentages suggested that we’d been lucky in finding Mae Nam at all. For Christmas, at least, we wanted to be where the action was, so, for better or for worse, we decided to head back to Haad Rin.

TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 7 - LAMAI AND CHAWENG

14/12/02: Boat to Koh Samui; pick-up truck to Lamai, in the rain, to find accommodation. Go into town, back for food, return to town and make an ally with a Japanese guy along the way. Drink at Bauhaus and Fusion.

15/12/02: More rain. Hang around, check emails, eat lunch, sink a few beers, then head to Churchill’s for tea. 'Live Music Bar' with Louise after she has a funny turn. Drink with J, H and S with the ‘Dogfords’ – two Doberman Pinscher style canines who follow us around a lot – on J & H’s veranda.

After nearly two weeks spent in just two resorts on Koh Phangan, it was time to move on. M and E had already left a couple of days earlier, but J and H were willing to travel with us to Koh Samui, after announcing their intent in typically spontaneous fashion the evening before. Their escort was to be short lived, for Samui would deliver the same kind of conditions that drove them away from Hua Hin three weeks prior.

We embarked on what was to be an almost 10 day tour of Samui in good spirits. After narrowly escaping a soaking in the back of an open-top pick-up on our way back to Thong Sala, we were pleased to discover that the next boat due for Samui was a modern affair, as opposed to the decrepit vessel that had delivered us here. Riding atop the bow, we reached Samui in no time, getting a bit wet in the process, not from the rain but the boat’s tendency to hydroplane.

Nathon, the port of destination, seemed more substantial than Thong Sala, yet more sedate. There was still the anticipated melee awaiting us on our arrival but with J and H in tow I really didn’t have to worry about things like that. Hungry, we bypassed the braying mob and went straight to a restaurant across the road and had lunch. I then purchased a wooden, ornamental owl for my mother from the tied in gift shop, before slipping out the back into the second pick-up truck of the day, arranged by J, to take us on to Lamai.

It rained almost from the off: tropical storms that would whip in off the sea, painting the sky a deep grey. Then there was the rent, which was significantly higher than we’d become accustomed to despite our bungalows being some of the cheapest we could find. Admittedly, they were bigger, better built and more comfortable than the wooden piles we had dossed in on Phangan, but such luxury was offset by the good 15 minutes’ walk into town, located as they were at the very end of the resort’s shore.

Only our first night offered any real taste of the local action. Lamai’s bars are gathered on the middle section of the road running through it, so there’s no vibrant beach scene here, and although reaching them via the coast was possible, it was too dark to do so by night. Consequently, we were obliged to circumnavigate the beach and head town-wards via the main road.

We joined forces with a young Japanese guy called Hitachi along the way. A keen dancer, he put on a bit of a show in one of the bars, pulling in the punters and ingratiating the bar-staff, who rewarded him with a free drink, before he cut his foot on a stray shard of glass. Our female contingent provided medical assistance and Hitachi offered tantalising tales of Laos in return.

The night ended with a spot of teenage Thai kickboxing and – fighting over – the chance for the female contingent to muck about in the empty ring, treading on the amassed red ants in the process, punishing them for their japery. This excursion – deemed a success – was as close as we got in Lamai to the persistent socialising that had become the norm.

The next morning was spent idling on the beach before popping into town in the afternoon, whereupon we ate at an establishment run by an expat bearing an uncanny resemblance to the ex-England, Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur manager, Terry Venables. We followed this up with a swift drink in the rather forlorn Live Music Bar next door, before opting to buy a few cheap beers from the local store to consume on our porch, with Daniel and Deidre Dogford keeping sentry.

16/12/02: Yet more rain – J and H leave. Walk to Lamai and find The Manneg(?) Arms. Get songthaew to Chaweng: Déjà vu, the Frog & Gecko, Legends and Full Cycle.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve never had to worry too much about the condition of my epidermis – pimples are mere aberrations, and I tan easily – but the constant stream of sweat coursing through my pores is a real boon to one’s complexion.

My facial hair follicles aren’t quite so compliant: patchy and of a varying hue, my previous attempts at beard growth have been unsuccessful. But the hassle of shaving in cheap accommodation, using only shaving oil and cold water, has encouraged me to give it another go. Alas, after four or five days, my sketchy stubble itches and prickles to such an extent that I am persuaded to reach again for my blunt razor.

Talking of beards, I’ve not seen many about. I suppose it’s the heat.

When we awoke on the 16th, J and H were gone again. There had been talk the evening before of us meeting again in Laos in about a month’s time, but that seemed a long way off. In the meantime the East Coast Crew were now required to make its own arrangements.

We had envisaged spending Christmas on Koh Samui, and maybe even the New Year. However, this plan was contingent on us spending a similar amount of time in Lamai as we had just done in Haad Yao or Haad Rin and the same again in Chaweng.  Anything more than a third night in Lamai was going to be a real effort, especially now that our numbers had been depleted, so it was time to reappraise the situation.

The three of us strolled into town looking for inspiration. What we found was something approximating an Irish Pub – or an English/Thai interpretation thereof – complete with draught beer and leather upholstery, which provided comfort for my abraded nerves (on the television, PJ Harvey’s 'Good Fortune' never sounded so good). The price of European beer on tap dissuaded us for hanging around too long, but we established our next move over a pint: that evening we would hitch a ride to Chaweng, check out the scene and maybe find somewhere we could stay a while with the intent of moving there the next day.

I have never been on a club 18-30 holiday – nor do I want to – but that’s what Chaweng felt like. S and L, who have visited some of the more debauched pits found around the Mediterranean, could make the connection. Déjà Vu, Gecko, Legends, Full Cycle – just some of the bars we frequented before heading back to Lamai for a post-mortem.

The next day we packed our things and moved to Chaweng, despite what we’d found there the night before – it was either that or sit it out in Lamai for another night.

17/12/02:  More rain. Move to Chaweng into very basic accommodation. Walk into town for something to eat, drinks on our veranda, then the Scream Bar & Déjà Vu.

Tourism has turned Koh Samui into a freak show. Suspiciously laid-back locals, pushy prostitutes and automotive maniacs are rampant, and the less said about the tourists the better. The problem rests within the twin demonologies of Lamai and Chaweng. Lamai is tolerable, despite being mostly inhabited by Hua Hin rejects, tattooed skinheads and lascivious middle-aged men with a penchant for ladies of the night. Any tension is eased by a steep, clean beach that induces impressive waves, abetted by the sudden storms that creep in from the Gulf.

Chaweng offers no such solace. Pizza Hut, Boots and Burger King all stake their claim to a town that has taken the bait of mass tourism hook, line and stinker. It has its advantages. The roads are certainly more formidable than the quaint excuses on Koh Phangan, and the songthaew drivers seem to have no regard for the 45 km per hour speed limit, which, after a few beers, makes for an exhilarating ride home.

Being in Rome, we drank fairly heavily the night before, a habit that was beginning to take its toll. After eating mostly fried-rice based dishes (and tuna rolls) on Phangan, I’d begun to develop a craving for Western food. In such circumstances, you can do a lot worse than eating out in Chaweng. I’d already gorged myself on a roast chicken back at El Tel’s place, and now I wanted pizza. Like tuna, pizza normally goes down well when my stomach’s feeling a bit delicate, so Pizza Hut should do nicely. Unfortunately, it is not to be. I can’t finish my pizza for fear of throwing up, which saddens me. I think I really need to address my drinking.

Ostensibly, I like where we’re staying. It’s centrally located and, like at Haad Rin, the path from our front door leads straight down to the beach. The problem is the people we’re sharing with. At Haad Rin, the clientele were pretty well behaved, by day at least. Here, there’s a licentious air that pervades on a perpetual basis. Folk seem rougher and I get the sense that not everybody here is actually travelling, that they might be here for a two week vacation.

I get stuck in early; I can’t be sober in an environment like this. We still haven’t decided how long we want to stay in Chaweng but already I’m entertaining the possibility that we leave tomorrow. We move up Chaweng Boulevard and work our way back down, stopping off for drinks where we see fit. It is still early so the bars aren’t as hectic as they can or will be, and this exposes just how charmless a lot of these hang-outs really are. Did we really travel to the other side of the Northern Hemisphere for this? Do other people travel across to the other side of the Northern Hemisphere for this? I’ve never seen anything like it: a complex of clubs, it’s like an alcoholics’ Christmas market. We eventually settle on the Scream Bar, before returning to Déjà Vu because it’s the most innocuous place we can find.

I’ve reached that stage now where it’s an effort to get drunk, so I don’t really bother.  I think my colleagues are experiencing the same frustrations, and after a brief assessment of our situation it is agreed: we will leave tomorrow.

TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 6 - HAAD YAO

07/12/02: The German Bakery for breakfast. Mancunians leave. Check out and arrange transport to Haad Yao with Louise, S, M and E. Book into Ibiza Bungalows. Lounge about on the beach, get bored and go for a drink at the Eagle Pub with S. In the evening, persuade the rest to do the same.

08/12/02: Quiet day spent relaxing on the beach. Eat big for tea before checking out cliff top bar with Louise and S. Relax by an open fire on our return – quiet night.

09/12/02: J and H arrive unexpectedly. Have drinks at the adjoining Ibiza Bar to celebrate. End up rather wasted at the Eagle, but in a mellow sort of way.

I wish I could provide a soundtrack for the people of Thailand to put on during my stay. I have a tune for every moment, but it’s never played. Moving north to Haad Yao, the music does get better. The laid back atmosphere here is anathema to the decadence of Haad Rin, and although electronica and Bob Marley are still the order of the day, the Eagle Pub will play Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd on request, although not much else. The relaxed approach to life is only slightly undermined by an air of snobbery that permeates throughout the older, more travelled clientele, who seem to have made this place their home – for now.

Bungalow installation is intense, but there is an agreeable lack of bars and 7-Elevens. When the sea presents the land with a gentle breeze the rustling palm trees sound much like rain. At night the squid trawlers imbue the beach with a bizarre and calming glow, the rocks adopt images of grotesque faces, all to the sound of the miscellany of creatures that favour a nocturnal existence.

10/12/02: Generally lounge about. Green curry for tea, a few drinks and games of cards on M’s veranda.

11/12/02: Explore a neighbouring beach with J and S, hacking through vegetation to get there. In the evening we all drink at Ibiza Bungalows and end up lighting a fire on the beach.

I spent a lot of time in Haad Yao doing next to nothing. This invariably led to boredom which in turn led to intoxication, but not of the frantic kind. I think it was at this juncture I began adulterating my beer. The 6.4% of Chang was starting to gnaw, so I would buy a bottle of Sprite or 7 Up and make my lager a top. It still must have been about 4% despite the interference.

One of the most pleasing aspects of Haad Yao was the feeling of being close to nature. I had observed this to a degree when we first arrived in Koh Phangan and I had wandered off down dusty roads in search of accommodation, finding myself surrounded by a whole host of alien noises competing for my attention. It was the same at Haad Yao, a resort with two shops and one internet repository but the threat of a whole lot more. At night these strange chirps, bleeps and clicks could be heard wherever you went, because wherever you were you were never far from unkempt vegetation or outright forest. And in the morning, awaking to the sound of waves meeting with the shore… there isn’t a more agreeable resonance.

The huts we slept in were even more basic than the ones at Haad Yao: wooden shacks with a concrete shell stuck on the back with a shower and a tap, no sink and a visiting cockroach present with every visit. If you had geckos, which you invariably did, you were glad of them because they kept the insects at bay. Unless you were my friend, S, who recoiled at every intrusion nature threw his way. Ironically, it was he who was to find a foot long lizard hanging in the rafters after a heavy night down at the Eagle Pub.

Then there were the dogs. There’s no getting away from dogs wherever you go in Thailand, but these feral creatures seemed even more so here. When we set off down the beach for a few jars at the Eagle, the local canines would form an escort party. Then, when we reached a point roughly equidistant between our departure and arrival points, the pack of wild hounds that made their home on the south-side of the beach would rush towards us to confront our chaperones. After much barking and gnashing of teeth, our original retinue would retreat, leaving the south-side contingent to escort us the rest of the way. When we arrived at the Eagle the dogs would sit down, job done, but always with one eye on the game should their north-side rivals seek revenge. On our walk home the same sequence would be played out in reverse. This would happen every time we traversed this particular route.

Louise is beginning to tire of me borrowing her sarong every time she takes a dip in the sea, whereupon I emerge from the shadows and into the sun and sit myself upon it to read a few chapters of a book. I say sarong but these gossamer-like sheets are probably intended for more general usage – everybody on the beach has one to lie on. Not being much of a beach kind of person I have not hitherto established the need to acquire one for myself, but perhaps it is about time I did.

Off to the local store, much like a 7-Eleven but not. This is fast becoming the highlight of my day, unless a heavy storm is in the offing. I like the air-conditioning and the muzak there and looking for new crisps and soft drinks to try.

 My partner’s sarong is blue with small, lighter blue tie-dyed lizards crawling all over it. It is an inoffensive sarong and I would like to find something similar. Alas, the sarongs on offer here are far more elaborate, covered in bizarre shapes and involving at least three colours apiece. The least gaudy example I can find still incorporates orange, dark green, black and white in its make up, but it will suffice. For some reason the cashier is not so sure. She seems to think this colour combination raises doubts as to my sexuality, assuming quite correctly that I am of a heterosexual persuasion. I study the thing more closely but still can’t see it. I can accept that the orange is a bit on the bright side, but I’ve never associated this colour with a predilection for people of one’s own sex.

There is another issue to factor in here: my ‘self-drying towel’. My self-drying towel is made from a fabric – or weave – that is purportedly inured to the towel’s normal tendency to absorb moisture. This same quality, coupled with a reduction size, should make it the perfect travelling partner. Except the thing is about the size of a tea-towel and its dehumidifying properties have been overstated. It pleads washing on a regular basis, lest it doesn’t start to kick up a mildewy-like fuss in my rucksack, and using it to wrap around my waste demands complete privacy. Because of this I’m thinking that the sarong will be a welcome addition to my ablutionary armour. Its lightweight nature should guarantee rapid desiccation, while simultaneously having a minimal impact on my luggage capacity. I buy the ambiguous shroud, despite whatever subliminal sexual messages my giggling Thai cashier thinks I am going to end up putting out there.

12/12/02: M & E leave, with the prospects of meeting up again very slim – a shame for it has been a pleasure having my old school chum with me these past 10 days. 

Attempt internet communication but it’s not very well connected around these parts. Try 9000,000 Baht – a bar at the other end of the beach – and down a few shandies (even the tops are starting to bite). Come evening, eat fish on the beach and make it an early one. Am aware of a heavy storm passing over during the night.

13/12/02: It was no illusion; thunder and heavy rainfall accompanies the morning and persists for much of the day – great stuff. By the evening it has a passed. We drink first with J and H on their veranda, and then with ‘Mel and Kath’ on theirs, two young newcomers who may or may not be potential friends. End up in the Eagle Pub in a rather half-hearted manner.

It was fair to say that we’d exhausted whatever it was Haad Yao had to offer us, but I was glad M and E had brought us here. Mostly, I’d taken pleasure from both the music and the weather, and the coffee-flavoured milkshakes had been a revelation.

Dance music is alright – of a type – but I’m not sure if the beach is the ideal environment in which to fully appreciate it. When Haad Rin did let up on the Hard House it normally fell back on Bob Marley, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or The Doors, only the latter capable of providing me with any aural stimulus. Haad Yao – or more specifically, the Eagle Pub – took a more open-minded approach to its playlist, which I was grateful for.

          As for the weather, it had been a place of extremes. There were days in Haad Rin were it rained for hours on end, effectively wiping out whole swathes of time. Here, on the northwest of the island, the storms had been brutally swift with prolonged periods of sunshine in-between: a win-win situation.

So farewell Haad Yao. As it happens, I will return in 2008, stay in the same complex of bungalows (since demolished and now made entirely of concrete) and make friends with a fabulous group of local lads who run a new bar on the beach and refer to themselves as the Thai Bad Boy Company. The Eagle Pub will still be there but a shadow of its former self. Other than that the place will remain largely unaltered.

TRAVEL: SOUTHEAST ASIA 5 - SURAT THANI AND HAAD RIN

30/11/02: Minibus from Chumphon to Surat Thani, Check in at the Muang Thai Hotel, arrange pending transport, eat at fake Pizza Hut, go for a walk on the waterfront, and back to hotel for early night.

Surat Thani is a fairly busy place, bringing to mind the calmer streets of Bangkok but without the hedonism or as much pollution. Its only real use is as a stop-off point prior to getting the ferry to Koh Phangan or Koh Samui; you’d struggle to make a night of it in Surat Thani, such is the shortage of bars. It does, however, lie upon a river. On the opposite side, nothing but palm trees as far as the eye can see.

We decided that we'd have a go at using the form of transport most tailored to the traveller: the private VIP bus. These heady sounding vehicles come in many guises – on short hauls such as this, you’re looking at a minibus – but what distinguishes them from the public single-decked coaches is the price and the destinations they serve. By this I mean that rather than dumping you at the side of a highway, the VIP bus will drop you off pretty much anywhere you like, or at the very least at a drop-off point conducive to your needs. Moreover, the rendezvous for boarding such a bus will normally be locally convenient, and if it is not then the agent you booked the bus with will arrange for it to pick you up from wherever it is you are staying. Although more expensive than the public bus, it’s not so much so that it isn’t worth the indulgence. You might actually break even where the cost of paying for a scooter or taxi is factored into the equation.

As we near Surat Thani, conveniently located accommodation is quickly sourced from the guidebook. Not sure of either what we are doing or where we are going, we ape our fellow passengers and disembark when they do, hoping that we’ve done the right thing. We get away with it, although it takes about 20 minutes of walking up and down the same 50 metres of road before we finally nail our quarry.

Our chosen venue is more substantial in both structure and amenity than we have grown accustomed too. It is more like the establishment we stayed in on our first night in Bangkok, except without the plush atrium or the buffet breakfast and an even shabbier bathroom. This is not an act of deliberation, there just doesn’t seem to be much on offer for the weary traveller on a budget in Surat Thani. It sums the place up: a purgatorial town you pass through, offering no incentive to stay for any longer than is necessary. But stay we do, if only because we still haven’t a clear idea as to how we are supposed to get to those damned islands. We could have sorted all this out in Chumphon or Hua Hin (it might have been a struggle in Prachuap Khiri Khan) but we’ve got months of this kind of stuff to get through so what’s the rush?

We find a run-down travel agent not 30 metres or so from our hotel, all peeling walls and faded posters. The stickers plastered across the window reassure that they know their stuff, and if we’re still in doubt then the proprietor’s spoken English puts us at our ease. It turns out that ours is not an entirely unreasonable course of action. Ferries to the islands start plying their trade from an early hour, and the terminal we need to sail from is about a 40-minute drive away. The kindly, well-spoken Thai lady arranges tickets and tells us to rendezvous back here at 09:00 the next morning to board the relevant bus. We will then be presented with coloured stickers that we will attach to our chests to enable the staff at the port to guide us in the direction of our ferry, which will be the one leaving for Koh Phangan.

This all seems too easy. Every other journey we have undertaken has involved making our own way to a remote terminal and then hanging around for an hour or so, sweating profusely in the process, anxiety building. We’re not entirely convinced that everything will be as simple as it’s been laid, but what’s done is done and so we think about what we'd like to eat.

After a week of eating mostly local cuisine, we decide that we'd like something that we might get back home. It’s no fait accompli, and after walking down a couple of streets the only thing that fits the bill is a passable imitation of Pizza Hut. It goes down well, despite a certain oddness about the taste that I can’t quite put a finger on.

After dinner we take a stroll along the waterfront. This is the weirdest place I have come across yet – not Chumphon, or Hua Hin, or even Prachuap Khiri Kan. Every time I think I’ve got this country nailed it throws me another curve ball. Look, there’s a department store just off that shabby street, where vendors and beggars litter the pavements. The place is surprisingly busy, really quite modern and the prices not much less than what you would expect to pay in England. I’d hoped I might find a Lacoste polo shirt at a significantly reduced price. I’d hoped that the lithe Thai physique would dictate a sizing more akin to my own. Nothing doing here.

Along the main drag there are all sorts of strange boutiques. I suppose it offers an insight into what a lot of suburban Thailand is all about, and it’s putting me back on edge. This last week has been good for my state of mind – despite the heavy drinking – but now I swear we’re being followed. To be fair, it’s possible that we are being followed, although not necessarily for the nefarious reasons that spring to my mind (robbery, extortion, murder). We don’t hang about to find out and could do with an early night regardless. We each grab a solitary can of random beer from the nearest 7-Eleven, repair to our hotel and watch Thai television. We have to be up early for our bus, after all.

01/12/02: Get the bus to port and then the ferry to Koh Phangan. Check emails on arrival so as to establish the position of M. Get songthaew (pick-up trucks that have been converted into taxis by installing a bench on either side in the back and covered with a canopy) to Haad Rin and find M and crew. Eat, go to bar and watch Liverpool 1 Manchester Utd. 2. Go to beach and drink at The Drop In(n); free booze, very drunk.

Refreshed after our quiet night in, we comfortably make our 09:00 rendezvous with the bus, which looks like something Disney might have thrown together had they been asked to make a movie about travelling around Southeast Asia: a preponderance of polished chrome within, sprayed-painted cartoon characters without. Westerners who had previously been conspicuous by their absence now account for the majority of our company. Who knows where they’ve all sprung from because they weren’t out and about in Surat Thani last night. [It was later discovered that most people purchase a ticket that covers an overnight VIP bus from Bangkok to Surat Thani and transfer from there to the port, dispensing with the strange public-transport orientated charade in which we chose to indulge ourselves.]

The ferry terminal is a hub of Caucasian activity. Without realising it, I am beginning to develop a weird suspicion of my own ‘race’. Maybe it’s the collective shrill that emanates from us, and such stridency is not appreciated by our hosts. On top of that, I don’t like what most people are wearing: lairy traveller fatigues, which may well serve some sort of practical purpose but are intended, I suspect, to convey an air of insouciance and/or familiarity with this whole travelling lark. Thais don’t tend to wear their hair in dreads or cornrows, or sport over-sized tie-dyed trousers, finished off with a conglomerate of accessories. They wear trainers, T-shirts and denim just like the rest of us more normally do.

Such nascent cynicism is soon brushed aside when I lay eyes on what I can only assume is our ferry. This rusting hulk of a vessel looks like it’s not been serviced in decades, if at all. It has also started to rain and the sea is far from calm. We hang around in a surprisingly modern waiting room with a ‘who’s who’ of world nationalities until our boat is ready to depart.

In the meantime, last night’s temperance has confused my digestive system and I am forced to utilise a squat toilet for the first time. These resemble our own western toilets in shape, except they are countersunk into the ground, which means they are only approachable from a squatted position – hence the name. There is no cistern, just a bucket to the side, which does the job surprisingly well. I am not squeamish but it is all a bit hands-on, as well as a portent of things to come, because outside of the towns almost all toilets are built like this.

On the ferry I spend most of my time perched on the gallery watching the wake emanate from the boat’s rear end, drinking coffee and chatting to a young Thai gentleman. He is a taxi-driver on the island but had some business on the mainland – I cannot recall what. The journey takes well over three hours and it rains pretty much the whole way.

Thailand offers a dichotomy: the people are extremely warm and friendly and yet persistently try to sell you things, be it cheap jewellery or a lift on the back of their scooter. Unfortunately, this duality manifests itself into distrusting everything they say. Walking through a rural area of Koh Phangan, it began to rain and a lady kindly offered her porch as refuge. I was warmed by the sentiment but politely declined. However, I could not help thinking that had I accepted her offer she would have almost certainly embarked on a long and convoluted attempt to sell me her daughter’s hand in marriage, or maybe cattle. I was certainly wrong to think this, but sadly the seeds of suspicion had long been sown.

I liked the port at Koh Phangan – Thong Sala. It isn’t indicative of life anywhere else on the island, or even what you want to get out of it, but there was something quite calming about the place and a sense that your time here was going to be different. Or maybe it was because my visit had come off the back of a tour of the uneventful triumvirate of Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan and Chumphon? Whatever, you could sense that stuff happened here.

After taking breakfast in a quaint little bistro, I left my companions to check their emails while I had a look around. Nothing except for more rain and a modest herd of water buffalo. I returned to the internet café and checked my emails too, so as to determine the location of my friend, M, and his girlfriend, E, who had been touring the Southeast Asia for about a month now. They had come by way of Malaysia and had moved north from there. Fortuitously, he had indeed despatched a recent email signalling that he was stationed in Haad Rin, the town situated at the southernmost tip of Koh Phangan. This wasn’t a total coincidence: he had contacted me about a week earlier to say he was headed in this direction, and we had factored this into our plans accordingly. In light of this, I saw no point in hanging around and suggested to my cadres that we go straight to Haad Rin.

I catch up with the Thai guy who I’d been chatting to on the ferry expecting maybe a favour, but he’s asking 600-odd baht (about £8) to take the three of us to Haad Rin. It looks so close on the map, but there seems no point haggling and so we stump up the cash and embark on what’s probably the most precarious journey of the whole trip yet.

The roads have been cut into the side of the hills of Phangan with limited expense.  One moment everything’s nice and flat, and then suddenly our vehicle seems to nosedive at 45 degree angles down alarmingly steep slopes, like some kind of kamikaze Stuka, only to have to then do the very same thing upwards as the trough aspires to form another peak. If another vehicle happens to be approaching from the other direction then one of us has to tentatively perch our tyres on the edge of the road while the other creeps on by.

So when we reach our destination the cost seems more reasonable, given the sheer amount of fuel these pickups have probably expended in getting us here. It’s unlikely I make such a re-evaluation at the time; instead I’m taken aback by the scene before me. I’d not realised until this very moment that Haad Rin is indeed the Haad Rin that friends back home had talked about with such enthusiasm – i.e. the place to go if you want to party.

No sooner have I considered this and there’s my dear friend, M. No exaggeration, he just breezes on by, attired from head to toe in standard-issue travelling garb. Like I’ve said, it’s not my style, but I don’t begrudge M the indulgence for he is a man without pretence. After the obligatory hugs and comments about it being a small world and so forth, we are recommended cheap accommodation and invited for dinner. We book into Anadin Bungalows and settle in before re-joining M and his entourage, which consists of his lady friend, E, his Australian work-buddy, D, and two Mancunian girls they picked up, so to speak, in Koh Samui.

A precedent is set here. For reasons I presume are hygienically determined, we are obliged to remove our shoes and sit cross-legged around a very low table. The prostration of the furniture is neither here nor there, but the forced abandonment of our footwear comes as a mild surprise. It probably shouldn’t, for this is a coastal resort and I can see how it protects against the proliferation of sand. (Such behaviour is not confined to the littoral regions of the country, and I suspect it’s probably something that might have been expected of us from the moment we left Bangkok.)

We order from a menu that offers Thai and western fare in almost equal measure. I have a chicken burger and chips/fries because my insides are still feeling a bit delicate. I season my chips/fries with chilli sauce, a strategy that I am starting to embrace wholeheartedly. We then proceed to wash this down with a few bottles of Beer Chang before retiring to our cabins to freshen up for the evening’s entertainment – which never takes me very long.

I head to the shop for beers and let everybody know that I’ll be kicking back on my veranda, should they wish to join me. I say ‘veranda’ and technically it is, but it is also very small. But then our accommodation is very small. It’s basically a wooden hut with a double bed occupying two thirds of the room and a concrete block of a bathroom stuck on at the back. But it is nice and clean with little in the way of nooks and crannies for the ubiquitous cockroaches to hide in, although there is a plank sized gap just under the overhang of the bed, through which one morning a cat will infiltrate, making for a strange start to the day in any territory.

One by one I am joined by our entourage. This beach is renowned for its parties and already I can hear the deep thumping of large speakers. We proceed to drink on my veranda for about an hour until everybody is present and correct, and when they are we descend the 15-odd metres separating our domicile from the beach.

Bars and clubs neatly envelop the bay, but everything’s still very relaxed at this point. We head for an establishment that goes by the name of the Drop In, whereupon we're invited to sit barefoot (naturally) around low tables neatly distributed atop thick Hessian rugs. There are candles and there are complimentary beverages to be claimed. Every half hour the form these free drinks take changes, but they are always spirits, encouraging you to buy beer to tide you over in the interim – not that the beer is expensive. Once the free drinks have run their previously determined course – or you just get bored of them – people start heading to the bar and returning with Buckets of Joy. Consisting of an unholy mixture of medicinal Red Bull and SangSom rum, the stuff is like liquid amphetamine. You chuck it all into a bucket with ice and cola and drink it through a straw, preferably in unison.

While all this is going on, a young Thai gentleman twirls about a baton that has been set on fire. Everyone is impressed. Take a walk down by the sea and the different tunes from the various bars morph into one another as you drift parallel to the strip. Those locals not engaged in commerce, working the bars or selling pizza and garlands, hover suspiciously, waiting to pounce on an errant wallet dropped in a moment of wild exultation. (This does happen, although you will often find that the wallet and all your particulars will make a mysterious re-appearance a day or so later, once anything of any real value has been stripped – sort of like protecting one’s investment.) A couple of English lads suddenly sprint from nowhere, completely naked, presumably rising to some drunken challenge. This is pretty bad form, but the locals have probably seen far worse and don’t seem too bothered.

At some point in the evening, we will walk the 20 metres up to the main drag for something to eat from 'Chicken Corner'. It’s almost as busy here, with people watching movies, others eating and some just hanging out. You could say that Haad Rin is only a few hours short of being a 24-hour functioning environment. The music will eventually wind down at about 06:00, although I wouldn’t be surprised if a few bars kept serving customers beyond that. I couldn’t say for sure because I flaked out some time around four.

02/12/02: Walk down to beach for breakfast and to lounge; Mexican joint for tea; a ‘few’ drinks on the beach at the Cheers Bar and the Drop In.

Koh Phangan. Ko Pha-ngan. Koh Pha Ngan. There seems no standard spelling but maybe the genuine phonetic has been lost in translation. What people want from this island hasn’t been lost in translation, and our Thai hosts understand this perfectly: to do nothing by day and to dance with Bacchus by night. Such excess is what Haad Rin has become notorious for.  Enter the original Full Moon Party. And so as not to limit one’s possibilities there are now Black Moon and Half Moon parties too. If it all sound rather debauched then it is, but it’s rarely vulgar (Koh Samui takes care of that). The variety of eateries and the bars, with their scattered cushions and low tables, bestow a far more bohemian air to the proceedings.

It’s around noon and I’ve just awoke. Unsurprisingly, I’ve seen better days. I invigorate myself with a cold shower – Anadin Bungalows is low-budget accommodation – and then head down to the beach to assess the damage. The place looks like a fragmentation grenade has gone off – maybe a few – but will soon benefit from a mass clean-up operation, making way for the evening’s inevitable repeat debauchery.

Most of last night’s coterie is present in various stages of recovery, some reading books, others just lying there, all wearing sunglasses. We exchange platitudes and then I’m off again in search of food. I take my American breakfast alone in an establishment overlooking the beach, and it is a satisfying experience. Although my coffee is delivered too promptly for my liking – I like to mop up with a hot beverage after having eaten – the overall quality is good. This is not a given with the American Breakfast. Sometimes the toast can be very dry, the eggs a little undercooked and the bright pink sausages almost inedible.

My constitution much improved, I walk the seven-odd metres back to where my coterie are still rehabilitating. One of the Manchester Maidens has turned up in a panic. She thinks she’s lost her purse. She’s willing to accept the possibility that in a moment of clarity the night before she stashed it somewhere for safe-keeping, but she’s quickly eliminating potential locations. At the very least she needs to cancel her debit/credit cards, as a precaution, and goes off to do just that.

S materialises shortly after in circumstances similar to those I presented myself in earlier: hungry and thirsty, with nothing much really to say. Instead he listens as someone tells him about the plight of the Mancunian Maiden, of which he can provide some insight. It turns out that there’s a purse in S’s room and he doesn’t know how or why it’s there, although a possible explanation is very quickly coming into focus. Suddenly, Louise returns from her swim to provide the denouement. Apparently – and I have no recollection of this – S had knocked on our door at some time around 05:00 to ask what he should do about the drunk Manchester Maiden waiting for him in his room. The Maiden in question had somehow tracked S back to his accommodation and was now offering herself to him, but was so completely mashed that S wouldn't take her up on it. Nobody could recall how the situation was resolved, but as both parties had woken up in their own beds one can only assume that they’d sorted something out.

The Manchester Maiden is then tracked down before she’s had a chance to cancel her credit and debit cards.

The rest of the day is spent lounging about on the shore, grappling with our collective hangover until tea time, whereupon we stroll across to the other side of town to watch the sunset on the less impressive east beach. There are more bungalows here, a clinic, and a jetty that services the smaller craft that come over from Koh Samui. Thai fisherman sort out their fishing boats seemingly impervious to this picturesque scene. One of them strolls down the beach with a machete, protection against the barking hounds that leap to the imagined defence of the Caucasian freaks that pamper to their every need. 'Leave that dog alone! You hit that dog and I’ll hit you!' proffers a particularly dreadlocked member of this itinerant gang. Westerners treat these mangy beasts with such unaccustomed affection that they have turned against their more ambivalent hosts who see them as rather less than inconsequential. The poor Thais, barked at by their own mutts and then chastised by some arrogant burk for simply trying to ward off canine hostility.

The sun down, we leave this sorry scene and head to Bamboozle for Mexican food and a game of Battleships. I outwit M with the ‘cluster grouping’ manoeuvre, knowing that I will never be able to use it against him again. Connect 4 follows, before we hit the beach for a second night of intense gaiety. I could get used to this.

03/12/02: Beach for breakfast and more lounging. Early evening drinks on M’s veranda. Aussie D’s friend B arrives: celebrate at – you’ve guessed it – the Drop In.

There are more farang in Haad Rin than there are Thais. The locals that do live here, though, ooze nonchalance and are not pushy in the least. This is almost certainly because there is such a captive market here that it would almost be a waste of time to hit you with the hard sell. Sitting on the beach one finds a flyer casually dropped by your side every half an hour or so, announcing the amount of free booze you'll be entitled to at the advertised establishment.

04/12/02: Beach for breakfast and yet more lounging; try the Lucky Crab for tea – good call.  Catch the end of Jackass: The Movie at some featureless bar; decamp to 2$ (we call it 'The Comfy Bar' an account of its sofas) and then to Cheers. Stay up drinking on veranda with D until 04.00.

05/12/02: The first rainy day since our arrival, on the King’s birthday, no less! The German Bakery for breakfast, to The Comfy Bar to watch a film and play Grass (a drug themed card game) – quite a revelation. Return to Lucky Crab with Louise and S, go to ‘The Doors Bar’ and have singular beer and an early night.

06/12/02: The German Bakery for breakfast again, with M, E, followed by the Mancunian girls – it’s their last night. More beach stuff and then drinks on the veranda with all. End up at the Drop In and the walls start closing in. Insist that Louise comes to The Doors Bar with me to escape the relentless dance music at the Drop In; stay for a bit before deciding to call it a day.

The next five days were spent drinking copious amounts of alcohol and coffee, watching pirated films, reading papers, playing cards, sleeping, and eating – in my case whenever my stomach would permit, which by now was not as often as I would have liked. My digestive system’s chief source of consternation was the Bucket of Joy.

            I can recall a sense of excitement when the rains made their return because it meant I could get off the beach and sit on my veranda with impunity, reading and watching the torrents of water sprinting for the sea, our bungalows having been built on a slight gradient. Or we might watch a film in one of the less auspicious bars set back off the main roads. (If you could call them that. These dirt tracks were mere arteries, connecting the various routes down to the waterfront, or back up past Chicken Corner, The German Bakery, 7-Eleven, Bamboozle and the Lucky Crab, and then on down towards Sunset Beach.)

The films on show were the latest releases, and you took what you were given – only The Road to Perdition and Jackass: The Movie were really worth bothering with. Fortunately we had Grass, a card game that helped us while away many an hour in the afternoon without having to resort to booze at too early an hour.

It was on the last night of the Mancunians that the unrest began to creep in. Buckets of Joy had become a regular feature, despite everybody swearing off them every morning after their consumption. All it would take was for one person to return from the bar kitted out, a straw shoved towards a reluctant mouth, and then somebody else would return the favour, and before you knew it, oblivion. And so it was on that last night, as it had been on our first night, and then B’s first night, and almost every night in-between – only the King’s Birthday was in any way dry. Troubled, I recall wandering off to spend some time alone outside the 7-Eleven. I liked it there, the sounds a distant hum.

Yet I was in no rush to leave. Haad Rin’s modest scale was unquestionably convenient. There was decent food to be had, there were interesting bars in which to hang out, and our cosy little bungalows, with their hammocks and verandas, were no more than a hop, skip and a jump from the beach. The sheer glut of watering holes kept the price of drink very reasonable, which is of real benefit to the traveller on a budget.

When I got wind of where M and E planned to take us to next – our accedence permitting – I wasn’t so sure. But follow them we did, if only because I didn’t feel like I could handle leaving for Samui just yet.