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 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 to. 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 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 out to us, 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.]
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. It's also 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 things 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, it's 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.
