Pagger wi a Swagger

Since I’ve been away I’ve been relatively well behaved with the ole’ bevvy and trouble and the likes but the last couple of days I’ve had a wee hankering for a bit of patter so I set about finding some.

First we went to a place called the Reggae bar, which has a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, and really cheap booze filled buckets.  I didn’t go there with the intention of fighting as I had already had a fight the week before but after a bucket or two a scrap was on the cards.  A wee guy, who we’ll call Jimmy (as everyone is called in Thailand) walks around with a big sign that asks for fighters to come up, if they do they get a free bucket.  I was pretty into the idea of a free bucket as we were getting a bit worried about cash so I thought I’d give it another bash. 

My opponent, to my surprise was around the same height as me (so he’s the one!) which suited me fine as tall people with a much bigger reach punching down on you does nowt for your beauty, or your confidence.  I asked him if he was a boxer and he told me he wasn’t.  You see a lot of guys fighting up there that really take it seriously and most of them are in Thailand to train at the Muay Thai Gyms with the best in the world, Tong Po and all that.  So, he tells me he doesn’t box, which may have been true,  he didn’t speak a lot of English but then he started warming up doing high kicks well above his head height.  I found out from his pal that he was a Karate instructor in France so I got a bit worried but didn’t want to give too much away.  Around 10 years ago I studied Tae Kwon Do and got to a really good competitive level at it but 10 years caning it with the best in the business seriously degrades your skill, stamina and confidence to fight a French Karate expert.

I kept it quiet and tried to stretch my legs as best I could under the table so I could at least kick him in the head then we were called to the ring.  They play Eye of the Tiger and The Final Countdown when you’re getting in the ring and between the rounds so I hammed it up a bit and did a wee dance in my Thai Boxing shorts which surprisingly got a good round of applause from the audience, I’m a wee dick.

The last time the bell rang for the first round the guy I was fighting came out like a whippet on eccies so this time I wanted to come out fighting.  To my surprise I landed 2 head kicks straight away and the rest of the fight went really well.  My balance isn’t what it used to be but the Frenchie got a kicking.  I was pretty pleased, 2 out of 2 but I can almost guarantee I’m gonna get my teeth knocked out by a Russian Mafia Don or a pre op transsexual with an attitude problem next time I decide to go up.

I spent the next day taking some photographs, which was quite fun, if not a bit lonely. I spent at least half an hour chasing a dragonfly trying to get a good picture of it in flight.  I managed to get a few but I realize that I don’t really have the equipment for it so the results aren’t exactly up to national Geographic standards.  Another thing I notice from walking around this Island all day and night is that there are only about 5 bloody songs on repeat in every bar, club or restaurant.  This can get a bit grating after an hour.  I also decided to get myself a wee haircut so found a guy we’ll call Jimmy Barber who was pretty much the best barber I’ve ever seen and would put anyone in the UK to shame.  He gave me the exact haircut I wanted, a shave, a massage and cracked my neck, which had been giving me hassle for a wee while…all for 4 pounds!  I highly recommend him

 That night we went for dinner with my better half, where we met a couple of nice English girls who had just arrived on the Island so we took them out to some of the good spots.

I don’t really know what got into me, apart from buckets of course!  I also had a day of boredom while Holly was diving which won’t have helped matters.  We went to some beach bar called Slinky’s and there was a policeman with a gun keeping an eye on things. 

I deemed it a good idea to stand behind him making ‘gun gestures’ with my fingers to the back of his head and the like.  As if that wasn’t bad enough…some burly Dutch guy with his shirt off and some UV paint on him started hitting on the English girls and I thought it would be a good idea to start hitting on him! 

He tried to shake my hand and I obviously refused and went for the more refined gesture of getting him to kiss my hand.  As you can imagine he wasn’t really up for it so I proceeded to plant a wee smacker on his cheek.  Holly and the other English girls feigned lesbianism to detract attention from themselves while I kept up the camp pretense and claimed his prey as my little sister, forbidden fruit of course…but I assured him that my cherry was fair game.  Half way through the charade I forgot to keep up the gay tone to my voice and went to my usual Scottish accent and he caught on to the fact that I was taking the piss.  For some inexplicable reason…one of those things that only happens when you are extremely inebriated we ended up standing on top of a fucking table and arguing!  He was a good foot taller than me and the pair of us were well above the rest of the crowd so we must have looked ridiculous squaring up on top of a table while an armed policeman was prowling the bar.  Somehow, I managed to get away with it and didn’t get my head kicked in from this Beowulf meets Victorian bare knuckle boxer sleazeball and we moved on from the bar.

On the way home, I must have had a look about me that attracted trouble and another foreign guy gave some comment about my wife’s derrière and I obviously couldn’t let that one lie either.  I stopped and spoke to him and stated quite simply, in my mind at least…that I wouldn’t batter him as long as he let me tap him on the head with my packet of sweets (kinda like a packet of fruitella) and that would be it, just a wee tap. 

As one can surely imagine he didn’t like the sound of this but I gave it a bash like any Glaswegian would and my arm was promptly batted away.  I tried twice and finally thrice then commented to the girls he was with that he must have been scared of a wee packet of sweets.  They laughed at him, he got embarrassed and instead of beating me up he said another very rude comment about my wife so I threw the whole packet at his head.  I don’t think I actually hit him and I’m almost certain that I hit one of the girls.  The stars must have been in perfect alignment or the Buddha’s luck was shining on me because we simply just walked away and that was that!  Wan tae me!

When we got back to the room Holly went for a shower and I was still in the mood for a patter so I barged in and took a pee on her.  Not the best or most, genial thing to do to your wife but it was funny to me at least.  As any guy will tell you, when you start pissing it’s real hard to stop so Holly is screaming and pushing me away while I’m getting soaked by the shower while I’m fully clothed and pissing all over the whole bathroom while laughing my head off and pee streaming out of me like some 90’s Mr. Bean sketch

Holly commented that the hot pee mixed with the cold shower water was the worst part, but for me it was the fact that my wallet, my I-Phone and my Thai Phone were in my pockets and were now covered in water and piss. 

Still, it was a good laugh regardless.

Phi Phi Continued and a day of opposites

After a day long freak out about our finances I decided a few things had to change.  If my wife was going to do her Dive Master course then she would have to officially clock up at least 40 dives and subsequently hold up about 40 7-Eleven stores to fund it.  It shouldn’t be too hard as there are about 300 of them per every acre of Thailand! 

Doing the course is an investment in a way as she will get work and I can hopefully be a kept man in some of the worlds most beautiful locations, but for now it means spending a good whack of our budget on her qualification, accommodation, food and of course booze for little ole’ moi.  The main thing that was bothering me was where we were staying.  Although it was beautiful and only 400 Baht a night it was so remote that we had to take a long tail boat there at a cost of 150 Baht per person each time.  I don’t mind walking through the jungle in the daytime but at night, with all the snakes, spiders and tree dwelling ladyboys it’s not as desirable.  The solution seemed to be to move into town, get an apartment for a month and for me to get a job. 

The town of Ton Sei is a lot busier than at Shark Point (the end of Long Beach) so there is more to do and there is much cheaper food and amenities on offer.  If Holly is diving every day then I am either going to kill myself with boredom, alcohol or simply melt under the sheer unwavering heat of the sun.  I went for a wee jaunt and surprisingly I had a glimpse of a couple of jobs in about 15 minutes, but as you may or may not know, it is illegal for a Farang (a non-thai) to work here unless it’s something specialist like teaching English or catching Haggis.  An Irish owner of a decent bar was telling me that he had met a Russian broad and wanted to take a week off from running the bar every day and night and run off with her to the Mainland for some International Relations.  Another bar offered me some work flyering but I know I’m not really cut out for that with a sunburned face like a Chicken McNugget and the fun-loving, outgoing personality of a Victorian Grave Robber.  Apparently there are a lot of Police on the Island at the moment, which is unusual but it does mean that you have to pay a fine or do the time if you get caught.  The bar would pay the fine but it’s rare to get work as the Thais apparently only get 200 Baht for a whole day but Westerners get at least 100 an hour.  It’s still working for pennies but it’ll help and keep me out of trouble and boredom.  If you flyer then you get free beer and buckets all night so I might give it a bash with a stagger and a swagger at some point!

So, with a spring in our step we went on the hunt for long term digs, which is pretty hard to find during high season as the proprietors obviously make more money per night than they do per month.  After checking out nearly every guest house a wee guy caught wind of our search and followed us down the street and led us down a back alley where some women were playing cards.  It all seemed a bit shoddy as we were led down the back lane of some restaurants where they cut off fish and chicken’s heads, industrial fans expel hot air and the flies buzz aimlessly through the air to a set of stairs that were so steep that I hit my shin on the higher step each time I ascended.  The room we were led to was amazingly clean looking and had a big bed, air conditioning, a fan, a fridge, cable TV and a private bathroom.  The price she offered us was very good considering it was high season, about £300 for the whole month and only 100 Baht more each night than what we were paying to stay in an shed on the edge of a cliff.  The deal was done and some much needed smiles returned to our weary faces.

Over the last couple of days Holly has been off diving and I have been saying goodbye to friends, the Aussies Mike and Ally and Hello to a new couple Austin and Emer all the way from Ireland.  We only knew the Aussies for a week but I can honestly say I’m really gonna miss them.  As many of my friends know, I’m not the most tolerant person and there are only a few less irritating people in the world than Australian guys, controversial I know but the bottom line is that I never really thought I’d hit it off with them but in the end they have opened my mind and lifted a bit of the worry I had about leaving home and hating everyone I met.  A big thank you to them and the best of luck, they are actually gonna hook up with a couple from Glasgow who are staying in Melbourne and show them a right good Jewish knees up.  Mazel Tof!!

The Irish Gent, Austin was on a dive course too so his girlfriend Emer and I decided to spend the day together.  I think I drunkenly told him the night before I was taking her Dogging but, more innocently we met up and went on a 4 or 5-hour walk around the Island swapping each other’s life stories and how much we detest smoking.  I actually had a really nice refreshing day meeting someone new who was the same age as me and was willing to here me warble on all day.  She was also the victim of some kind of killer insect and had an amazing bite on her leg that kept swelling into a ball and oozing puss all day, I got to watch her Lance it so that was pretty satisfying and beat Dogging any day of the week.  That night we had to say our goodbyes to them also, so we had a really nice dinner, a bit of Thai Boxing and had a lot of chat about movies over several 2 for 1 buckets.  We had an early night as Holly was diving in the morn so retired to our boudoir for an air-conditioned viewing of a terrible pirated DVD.  By the way, if you’ve seen Coyote Ugly then you don’t need to see Burlesque…although Cher would still get it , even at 64.

Today on the beautiful Island of Phi Phi has been one of opposites for me.  Yesterday was the first overcast day we’d had and I was quite thankful for it, it was also the first day we had the luxury of air-con so I took the opportunity to slip on some jeans, as I really do hate wearing shorts.  Today though, the sun was beating down hard and I was struggling, I didn’t want to sit in the room all day watching TV…although, the only channel with cracking reception is Fashion TV, which any young man or teenager will know is the only channel you can see sexy models with their baps oot on TV at any time of the day.  Also today, I had almost literally no money on me at all as we had to pay for our Room and for Holly’s Dive Course.  You can only take out a certain amount each day from the ATM so it was a bit shit having a whole day with nothing to do, scorching sun and no money to do, eat or drink anything.  I bought a small kettle the other day so I was able to make some 8 baht noodles (about 10p) and boil off some water to put in the fridge and drink.  I had to go to a café to use the Internet and buy a single scoop of ice cream for 30p so I could use their wifi and do a bit of research online to keep myself sane.

Then, as if by magic the whole day kinda changed for me when I realized I still had some Singapore Dollars that I could trade for Baht at the Currency Exchange.  I also asked them if I could withdraw more from inside the branch than the ATM.  Apparently I can, as long as I bring my passport, so I just needed to wait on Holly coming home with the card and we’re back on top.  I had one beer in the fridge that I was saving for Holly coming home so decided to have that and start a bit of writing.  I had the air-con on full but I could still hear a very strange rumbling sound so I looked out the window and realized that full on Monsoon rain (Gene Hackman circa 1998) was falling from the sky.  The back alley that my looks down onto was flooded almost instantly and the posh private pool of a fancy resort that you can see from my window was almost overflowing.  There were very well to do Japanese girls in bikinis hiding their cameras under towels to catch a snap of them doing that 2 finger thing in the intense downfall. 

It’s only rained here once since I’ve been away and although we moan about it in Scotland, I think we secretly love it.  I got out of my jeans as quick as I could and put on my swimming shorts and went for a walk around the deserted streets with my sunglasses on and a cheeser of a grin getting looks from the people huddled in the bars and shops like I was looking for a ‘special’ bus window to lick.  I headed for the beach, which was almost deserted too, apart from some guys quickly taking in the deck chairs that line the beach.  I dove straight into the sea which was deliciously warm and swam just on the surface so my ears could hear the dull patter as the rain pelted off the surface of the water.  As I was saying, today has been one of opposites…I am sitting here happy as Larry after a bit of dancing in the rain in nothing but my shorts when this morning I was hiding from the sun in my jeans in a foul mood because I couldn’t even afford a fruit shake. 

In other news, I hired the worst guitar in Thailand from a Bamboo Tattoo Artist but at least it gives me something to do.  My fingers are aching already, so it doubles up as something to moan about too…everyone’ a winner!

Phi Phi Island - Feb 2010

I am now on the Island of Phi Phi and in many ways the game has completely changed.

After we left Bangkok we returned to Phuket and found that the lovely chaps at the Last Paradise Guest House had organized a room for us even though they didn’t know when we would be back or if indeed we were still alive.  I am very thankful for that and even more thankful that the taxi driver who took us from the airport managed to stay awake.  Holly and I could see his eyes in the rear view mirror and he kept falling asleep, at one point he had to stop and pour a bottle of cold water over his face.  We sat in complete silence gripping each other’s hands until the ordeal was over.  It reminded me of the first time I ever properly drove a car when I was in LA a few years back. We had had a fairly wild night out somewhere and my American friends’ Mother came to pick us up in her frankly massive SUV that was made all the more worrying by the fact that they had put on oversize wheels so the speedometer didn’t give you the right reading.  I had tried to learn the basics watching Chris drive it earlier in the day and he let me drive it round the block with his help and I was pretty pleased with that.  So, I was telling their mother this when she came to the bar to pick us up and she offered to let me have a shot of driving the car home, it was an automatic and she would be sitting right beside me so thought it would be fine.  What she didn’t know however was that I was just sick all over a toilet cubicle, Robbie B and my own shoes following a day long alcohol binge and a particularly nasty shot of something or other.  The rest of the boys, of which I think there were at least 6 of (that’s how big this fucking car was!) didn’t really catch on to what was happening until we got into the car and realized that I was the one who was backing the car up and heading off down the street.  From this point I have never heard a group of Banff Boys (Scotland and California divisions, respectively) at the end of a night out so completely silent.  Because it was their Mother in the front seat telling them it would be OK they pretty much had to deal with it.  The look of utter fear in their eyes as we crossed a bridge was only trounced by the look on my face when a Police car began to follow us as we were coming off the bridge.  I was told to ‘stay cool’ and to my surprise the following car exited down a side street after a minute or so.  The warm breath from the sighs of relief completely negated the cars air-con and made the whole other business of parking all the more sweatier.  Although I in no way condone or promote such dalliances with the law and the safety of my friends, and myself it will always be a fond memory…for me at least!

And now, back to the present.  We stayed at the Last Paradise for a few more days so we could sort out the particulars of our new plan to explore South East Asia.  The plan was to buy a second hand Motorbike and get a custom built sidecar made (they are everywhere here, people carry their whole families on them) with a lock box and a seat on it so we could both travel around the country with our bags in tow.  We had pretty much got it all sorted for a pretty good price and had planned a basic route around the country and I was very excited about the freedom doing it this way would provide us.  Then I did what I always do…I ‘googled the banter’.  This is a surefire way to freak yourself out, if you get bitten by a bug then suddenly you read on forums and websites that there is a chance it could be a fucking killer ninja spider and you would turn black and die within 3 days or your ears will fall off.  Anyway, I got to reading about all the Thai laws and the regulations of the roads and access to countries like Vietnam and Cambodia and freaked myself out.  If you are in Thailand in on a tourist visa then you cannot get the right papers.  The vehicle comes with something called a ‘green book’, which outlines the vehicles history, and must correlate to a ‘blue book’ that is attached to a Thai property and name.  Without these things you cannot get road tax or insurance for the vehicle.  If you go through all the websites on bikes, ex-pats and the forums from people who have done it all before then you get a 50/50 split between ‘you can bribe anyone here and get away with it’ or ‘I’ve not had any paperwork or a licence and have been here 20 years’ and ‘if you get caught you are fucked’.  The resounding thought that I had was that I wouldn’t even consider doing anything like this in my own country or America or even most of Europe so why would I show such little respect as to break the law here.  Common sense prevailed and disappointingly we figured it wasn’t worth the risk. God forbid any kind of accident would happen but if it did we would be seriously shafted, so now we’re gonna do it by bus and I imagine it will make the Glasgow to London for a Tenner trip seem like flying Concorde. Pfft.

At the start when I said that everything has changed now we are on Phi Phi I am not kidding.  We got the ferry out here and immediately there was a breath of fresh air.  The ferry itself was filled with younger people (and even a guy who was the spitting image of old Leo DiCaprio, Holly sneaked a photo) who seemed to have a little lighter step and a more optimistic view on the world.  After about 10 mins on the boat we bought some beers and got chatting to a lovely young Aussie couple on their holidays and an Irish guy with some good patter who had been teaching in Taiwan for 8 months.  We had been staying in Yanui and hanging out with much older people for the last couple of weeks and apart from Natalie and Mike (who is 42 but acts 22) we hadn’t really hung out with anyone our own age so this was quite surprisingly, to me at least, really nice.  It turned out that the Aussie guy, Mike and I had a ton in common and he was very much not your stereotypical ‘Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy, Oi, Oi, Oi’ kinda guy and his girlfriend Natalie was the same age as Holly so they hit it off no problem.  I also got a much needed dose of patter from James, the Irish guy who would hold his own without a hitch with any of my friends at home.

We got onto the Island and to our surprise the place we had booked to stay at (the night before) had arranged for a longtail boat to come and pick us up from the pier.  We didn’t realize that there are pretty much not cars or motorbikes on this island and the only way to get about it by boat, walking through jungle, swimming or customizing a kids bike or BMX into a Hello Kitty themed fanny magnet.  If you’ve been anywhere else in Thailand you’ll appreciate how refreshing this is, although the boats are pretty expensive.  We had booked to stay at a place called Phi Phi Hill for 700 Baht a night, for that we got our own spacious Bungalow with a sea view, a toilet, shower, deck with chairs and a solitary fan which was a pretty good deal.  The place was right at the end of Long Beach which was a hell of a lot quieter than the other beaches but still had a few bars, restaurants and a couple of dive centres.  As it was so secluded and chilled out it was the premier spot for going topless, which, excuse the pun has it’s perks!  With the bungalow, the clue was in the name…it was indeed on a hill, a very steep one so you have to ascend steps that are themselves like a hill.  Imagine each step is like a ramp so you’re constantly leaning back as you walk up them, which totally kills you!  Luckily they had a pulley system like you would see in a coal mine to take our heavy bags up to the top of the steps but after that we had to go to the other side of the hill (a cliff) to get to the bungalow.

That afternoon we went and met the guys we had hung out with on the Ferry trip and drank some buckets, played some pool and had some laughs.  We had heard that there was a bar that had a boxing ring in it and let tourists get up and have a go at Muay Thai Kickboxing so thought we would give that a peek.  We were all pretty blootered by this point so the others convinced me to get up and fight.  I thought fuck it, When in Rome and all that and gave it a bash…you also got a free bucket for fighting whether you win or lose.

Luckily we had arrived quite early and I hadn’t seen any of the other fights, some of which were very scary indeed with big guys from all over the world who had come here to train in the many Muay Thai gyms.  I got pretty lucky as I was fighting an Irish guy about the same size as me who didn’t have a Genghis Khan complex.  They provide you with gloves and headgear and you go at it for 3 rounds.  I spoke to the Irish guy beforehand and we decided we would take it easy, then the bell rang and he came out like a fucking hurricane pelting me with punches!  I was quite taken aback but managed to give as good as I got swearing to myself that he was getting a hiding in the next round.  Unfortunately, he threw in the towel after the first round and that was that.  I won the match but it didn’t really feel like it as we’d only had one round.  The next night Mike from Oz and another Mike from England signed up to fight but for them it was a very different story.  Mike from Oz had done a lot of Martial Arts in his time and was still pretty limber with the kicking etc… he was to fight a French guy who looked like a more handsome Ashley Cole with a dazzling smile.  Surely he was a lover, not a fighter so we thought Mike would have it in the bag.  When it came time to fight he had his shirt off and revealed a build not too dissimilar to Bruce Lee’s!  He also said that he’d never fought before but when the bell rang he knew exactly what he was doing, Mike held his own and it was probably the most even fight I had seen all night but in the end the ref awarded Ashley Cole the victory.  Now, mike from England, a very handy looking, tall, well built Cockney Geezer was up next and his opponent was friend of the last guy, also French but this guy was around 6’2, black as 2 in the morning and built like a brick shithouse.  This guy knew exactly what he was doing and Cockney Mike got a leathering.  Most of the other fighters moved their heads, ducked and dived but this guy just stared ahead like Shadow from the Gladiators not moving his head once while he relentlessly pummeled poor Mike.  I saw him a couple of days later sheepishly wearing his sunglasses at night to cover his black eye.  A wee shame.

Phi Phi Island is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life, I’m not even exaggerating when I say that, I was actually taken aback by how amazing it looks when we arrived.  There isn’t really much to it, some parts are busier than others and that suits us because you can choose to go to the bit with all the bars and people or juts hang out on the quieter beaches..  I think the thing that makes it look so good is the water, it is crystal clear and because most of the area is shallow you get a kind of emerald green, turquoise glow coming from it and you can see right to the bottom with all the fish and even sharks in between.  The view all around you is off steep cliff faces with green trees all over the top and vines hanging down.  The horizon is nothing but sea and the smaller island, Phi Phi Ley which has no-one living on it but you can get tours around it, which is what most people actually come here for.  This is the place that they filmed the movie the Beach, so if you’ve seen that then you’ll get an idea as to how beautiful it is.  I could go into more poetic descriptions of the beauty here but I always feel that kinda ruins it for me with things I read, you know when people can’t talk about harmonies without them being ‘transcendental’ or the heat ‘searing’ or the pain ‘exquisite’!  Quite simply this place is ‘pure braw’, enough said.  I’ll set aside some time to go and take pictures so you can see for yourself.

We done the tour of the smaller island with the Aussie couple via a long tail boat driven by a charming wee man called Mustapha who looked a treat in pink.  We swam in the famous lagoon and at Maya Bay and also went to Monkey Bay.  Monkey Bay was pretty dirty with a lot of rubbish lying all over the beach and the apes were sifting through it looking for food.  I thought this pretty bad at first until I realized the reason for it.  Holly was feeding them water from a bottle, this all seemed fine and was infact pretty amazing seeing all these wee monkeys grabbing onto the end of the bottle and drinking from it, one of them even had some of my beer!  All was going well until an older monkey came up and jumped up on Holly and tried to bite her face.  I stepped in and another couple jumped up and hung off my arm scratching me. We had to hot foot it into the sea before they really hurt us, wee bastards.  So, that’s how it gets so messy, people come and give them food then attack them and they have to run away before they can pick up the rubbish.  Again, wee bastards but they were pretty cool to see.  Later that day we all came to the beach that Holly and I are staying at and got to kicking a ball around with a couple of the diving instructors that were hanging out on the beach as there were no customers that day.  Later on one of them, Jay, a guy from Puerto Rico came and joined us for a chat and a drink.  Now, this guy is pretty much the sexiest man I have ever seen in real life!  He is 37 but looks younger than me, has a perfect surfer body, dreadlocks to his ass, Spanish skin and accent, perfectly straight and dazzlingly white teeth and even fucking blue eyes, which you don’t often see on Central Americans.  I asked him if he wanted a beer and he said no, I asked what he drank and he said in his smooth, slow Spanish accent ‘I driiiinnnkkk wiiiinnnne’.  Holly just about slid off her seat!  Despite all this he is actually an extremely nice man that has been travelling the world surfing and teaching Scuba Diving and decided to settle here in Thailand for a while.  That night we met up with him for a drink in the bar on the beach and we all had a really good time. We ended up limbo dancing under burning poles and doing that fire stick malarkey that everyone seems to do at night around here.  There are twins at the beach bar closest to us who look the absolute double of Cedric and Omar from The Mars Volta, afros and everything and they are amazing at the fire stuff.  We got to talking with some of the other dive instructors (including a cracking lad from Wales) and they explained how easy it is to get your Dive Master certification and get work all over the world in beautiful places.  Holly has always loved the sea and has dived in Australia before so this idea planted itself firmly in her head.  She got hopelessly drunk that night, fell off the path back to our Bungalow and doesn’t remember swimming in the sea at 1 in the morning so I said we could discuss it over the next day or so.   It seems like a good idea and she really wants to do it so I agreed to stay here for as long as her course takes and fork out the money for her to do it.  Maybe one day I’ll be a kept man as she teaches diving but for now I’m gonna have to amuse myself while she is learning to dive with the sexiest man on the Island.  Bastards, aw ae them!

Holly has started her course and we have moved to a much more basic bungalow, a hut really that at home would be classed as a sauna but only costs us 400 baht a night.  I have just spent the morning gaffa taping up all the holes in the walls so that insects can’t get in and devour us in the night.  As I said, it’s really basic but it’s all we need really.  I just wish it wasn’t so fucking hot!  There is a communal shower and Asian style toilets (a pure whitey by the way) and we even have our own crusty Berlin punk as a our neighbour who sits outside drinking Chang Beer all day with his bleached blonde double Mohawk.  A real classy joint I’m sure you’ll agree.

So now my days will consist of drinking copious amounts of fruit shakes in the morning, avoiding the intense sun in the afternoon and proclaiming ‘Fuck it, Geez a Bucket!’ at night.

It could be worse.

Crag

Udon Thani & Bangkok - Early Feb 2011

A’richt loons, I figure that the last blog was a bit boring so I’ll try and save on some of the actual details of where we were and what we were doing and focus on the more interesting stuff.  This blog takes in Bangkok so I’m sure it won’t be hard.

We drove across the border back to Udon Thani after watching the sun go down with the intention of just coming across a place to stay for the night.  It turned out that there were a lot of celebrations going on for Chinese New Year and there was a massive street party going on.  The street was cordoned off for about 3 or 4 blocks and had stalls up and down each side of the street selling food, clothes and blessings, tables all the way up the middle filled with people eating and a massive stage at the bottom end with a big screen and a light show.  There were lots of areas where monks would give you blessings and you could give your offerings to the Buddha’s and the like, the locals were all going daft for that.  One of the strangest things I saw was an apparent ‘race’ between 3 pigs who were just spread out on the ground with flashing, colourful bows on their heads hardly moving.  People were standing behind them with back scratchers and what looked like betting slips encouraging them to move forward, hence why I thought it was a race.  I don’t know if the pigs were drugged or not but they did look pretty zonked.  When I saw them later there was what looked like 3 whole bins of scrap food were emptied out in front of them and they hadn’t budged an inch.  The stage at the end of the street was actually pretty impressive, when we arrived there was what looked like a Thai teenage version of Girls Aloud (nae bad) doing a fully mimed and choreographed show.  Later on there were different versions of this, both male and female groups as well as solo old men crooning out the old Thai hits.  The teenagers were all decked out like they were at the disco in Terminator when he goes to batter Sarah Connor,  it was called Tech Noir or something, one of those places that conveys the future or the 80’s if you know what I mean?  It turned out that it was a talent show for the town and it seemed to be being filmed for TV.  We trekked on past all this to find a hotel that we had heard was a good deal. We found it and it seemed like something out of your worst nightmares, totally run down but not in a charming way. The girls went in to use the toilet only to be met with a dog that was close to death chained up inside a dark wardrobe and an ex-pat with the social skills of a cannibal.  The cannibal gave us some directions and shouted at the people in Thai and we eventually found a hotel that had space.  The place was enormous, pretty nice and very cheap.  It must have been the place to stay in the 70’s as there was a device at the side of the bed that apparently played tapes, I half expected Charles Bronson to be in the bathroom advertising Brut but sadly he wasn’t…probably cos’ there was nae hot water!

All was good the next morning, we had an early flight to Bangkok so got 2 tuk tuk’s to have a race with 3 of us each in them, we lost.  The two older guys Mark and Giles had went out in Udon Thani the night before and got pretty drunk and don’t remember coming in, well Giles didn’t.  Apparently Giles had came in, stripped naked and jumped into bed with Mark (the long haired one) while he was sleeping.  I suppose there nothing wrong with two grown men lying naked together and having a wee cuddle is there?  It was funny nonetheless.  The flight to Bangkok was cool and we had booked a nicer hotel than we were used to in the city.  It was only £37 for the night and the place was massive, a full on studio apartment with a king size bed, balcony, kitchen, bath, telly, sound system and a private swimming pool with a bar at the side.  We took a well needed and longed for bubble bath before meeting up with the others for a spot of Indian food.  Holly wasn’t feeling too well at this point so I went for a bit then found a Pharmacy to get her all the medicine she needed.

That night she was feeling a bit better so came out on the town with the rest of us but stayed off the booze.  We hailed a tuk tuk and talked the guy into taking all 6 of us on his tiny tuk tuk, a couple of us tried to hang off the back but that wasn’t allowed.  We managed to squeeze us all in somehow, Christ knows how as there was easily 65-70 stone crammed in there.  It was one of those things you have to do while in Bangkok I suppose…among others.  We went to the seedier bar area with me clutching on to my wife and my wallet for dear life.  We sat at a bar and ordered a beer while Mike and I went asked where the gents were.

We were directed through some beaded curtains into a room that was teeming with naked Thai women all dancing on a big stage in the middle of the room to a DJ blasting out Enter Sandman and other rock favourites.  When we walked into the room there was a deafening ‘WOOOOOOO’ for the whole distance of the room to the toilets as they caught sight of two extremely handsome Farangs choking for a pee.  The pee turned out to be quite an experience too, I opted for the urinal and I think Mark opted to hold it in as there was a girl in a bikini standing by the sink then as I relieved myself what can only be described as ‘Wee Jimmy Crankie’ (An old woman, about 4ft tall, wearing a baseball cap tilted to one, a body warmer covered in badges and big Reebok Pumps looking like she was totally ready to go Rollerblading with the Tiger Club on her Butlins holiday) sidled up beside me and bought 3 packets of condoms out of the machine by the urinals.  This was one of the weirdest things that has happened to me but nobody batted an eyelid, I had a chuckle and a wee shake then joined the others at their prime viewing position for the stage.  All the girls were numbered and I think the craic is that you tell Wee Jimmy the number and pay her a set fee and you get the company of the lady for the night.  The girls were mostly good looking (obviously there were a few fatties and pensioners for the deviants) but only a couple of them could actually dance or at least look like they wanted to be there.  Two of the girls, who were the obvious moshers took a wee shine to me and gave it big licks whenever Guns N Roses or the like came on.  At this point Holly noticed a sign on the wall advertising ‘5 ping pong 100 baht’ or ‘50 ping pong 500 baht’.  With this being a ‘Ping Pong Show’ Holly and I figured you would chuck the lassie a ping pong ball, she would inhale it up her *insert colloquialism*and then ping it back at you.  So we bought 5, thinking that we would be here all night if we bought 50!  I don’t consider myself naïve but this was really one of my blonder expectations.  Holly is asking “what do we do?” and I assume we just throw it at the best looking one so she does.  The girls kinda scramble to catch it and I’m thinking, Yaldi, here we fucking go!  But alas, naw.  The girl simply handed Wee Jimmy the ball and showed her the number pinned to her G-String.  It was at this point that I realized that this wasn’t a ping pong show as I had adolescently imagined but actually a tipping system so that the girls got extra money at the end of the night by how many balls they accrued.  Sigh.  If it hadn’t been for the fact they played Def Leppard I would have fucked the bit.

We left this place to another destination that we happened to just stumble across, or so I thought.  Earlier in the day Giles had mentioned a place that had a glass ceiling above you filled with girls dressed in Japanese Schoolgirl outfits dancing around sans panties but had reasoned that it might be a bit too much for the girls and certainly not the kind of place I would want to attend with my wife.  So, as I’m sure you can gather, the place we stumbled upon turned out to be the place with the glass ceiling.  As everyone in the group looked upon our destination in a mixture of awe, disgust and in Marks case…excitement, I gave Giles a sly wink and a silent high five of approval of his duplicitous but cunning ruse.  The place was exactly as it was described, the lower floor had a stage with about 15 girls on it just like in the last establishment but above them were a further 15 or so girls dancing in miniskirts and white shirts.  At this point all the gear was firmly on but after 5 minutes or so, the scants were aff and one girl even dropped the curtains (ahem) as she got down and dirty with her ass to the glass for some R&B number.  Although there were a lot of naked and very attractive girls gien’ it laldy the whole thing was still very un-sexy.  It seemed a bit more novelty, like a circus show or something. 

If the last stop was novelty and circus like then the next destination was a full on Freak Show!  Giles went up an alley for a few minutes then came back and urged us to follow him for a ‘real’ ping pong show.  We were led up a very dirty, seedy looking close with broken fuse boxes hanging from the walls to a place called the ‘Queens Club’ that looked suspiciously like a shitey youth club in Clydebank I was forced to go to as a boy where we were greeted by a 5 ft tall Eskimo woman.  When I say Eskimo I don’t mean that she was Inuit but you don’t see many short, fat, completely naked Thai women carrying what was either a flute or a dart blowgun trying to give you a hug…if she was hairier I would have almost certainly have credited her in the story as an Ewok.

At this point we order some drinks and the real insanity ensues.  There was a square stage in the middle of the room with light up tiles like in the Thriller video; one of the tiles was on the blink, which made the whole thing a lot funnier.  Anyway, another equally unattractive Thai lady comes out brandishing a candlestick like that French dick from Beauty and the Beast, sets it down on the ground and lights the candles.  “This is romantic,” I thought, until she blew the candles out with one puff of her chuff!  Oh aye, this was definitely more what I had in mind when thinking about a Ping Pong Show in Bangkok.  Throughout the next 40 mins or so various women came out and performed some truly impressive tricks that all involved their vagina.  If the women were attractive it might have sent me over the edge but luckily, each one that came out was just as ugly, if not worse than the last.  One amazingly opened two bottles and pinged the caps at us using only her bits.  Another smoked a fag with it, one popped some balloons with a blow dart gun, one pinged a banana at the girls, one blew a whistle while another pulled a 10 foot long flower garland out of herself.  The Pièce de résistance however was the last girl sticking a marker pen up herself and squatting down to a piece of paper on the floor and writing ‘Thank You and Goodnight’ on it, then for added flare she asked Mike his name and changed it to ‘Thank You and Goodnight Mr. Mike’ on it before handing it to him as a shocking reminder of that one night in Bangkok.

By this point it was all getting a bit too much as I realized that Natalie and I were holding ping pong paddles and batting balls back at the girl who was spitting them out of herself at us.  I felt like Forrest Gump, not only was I a dab hand at ping pong but I had the overwhelming compulsion to run, and keep running.  Holly decided, quite fairly I suppose, to give one of the girls a tip. This on reflection was a bad move for it was at this point to the sadness of the whole situation came to the surface as all the girls came running up with their hands out desperate for money like dogs begging for a treat, pretty heartbreaking but I guess it’s just a different world our here.

We called it a night after that, a sleepless one, as Holly took very ill and spent the whole night ejecting the contents of her body through every orifice like the ping pong show that she is.  She was too ill to make it to the airport the next morning so we had to stay at the hotel an extra night, book new flights for the next day and try maybe even get her a doctor as we were scared that she might have gotten some kind of parasite from her wee splash in the filthy Mekong River.  As the day went on she gradually got a bit better but decided to get some bed rest so we could fly the next day. The only upside to this very uncomfortable (for Holly) and expensive (for me) bout of illness was that my good friend Kenny and his girlfriend Emma were in Bangkok for one day after a month around Vietnam and Cambodia and I’d get to see them.  We arranged to meet up via the internet and the plan was to check out the Muay Thai kickboxing at the Bangkok Stadium that evening.  I was pretty down with this as I was certain that it was the stadium that Van Damme’s brother got a kicking at in the movie Kickboxer.

I arrived there about 6pm to find Kenny and Emma on the steps with some beers being harassed by ticket touts who seemed to be the only people that seemed to speak perfect English in Bangkok.  Kenny was determined that we would be on the cheap seats as they were the best despite warnings that we would be behind a cage, in a cage and in a box with no air and recommendations that we could get good ringside for ‘cheap cheap’ seats because Emma was ‘very sexy lady’.  We opted for a wee catch up on the grass outside the stadium then bought the cheap seats.  It turned out that the place was massive and we were in fact behind a big fence on the top tier of the stadium with about 5 other people who must have also been daft enough to buy the cheap seats.  There was a wee stall outside that was selling cheap cans of beer but you couldn’t take them into the stadium so Kenny went and got one in a plastic cup and put two more down his shorts so he could smuggle them in.  When he got to the ticket man and turnstile the cans fell out of the bottom of his shorts and he spilled the one in the plastic cup all over himself trying to catch them.  The guys were so amused by this that they just slagged him off in Thai and let him in with the cans.  This was stage one in Kenny making the transformation into Jelly Minogue, his alter ego that has the power to accelerate while simultaneously destroy whatever situation you are in.  Gid lad.  We spent the rest of the boxing mostly talking, drinking and catching up and not really paying much attention to the fights that seemed to range from children to adults of different weights repeating pretty much the same fight every time.  The only moderately exciting one was surprisingly the one where 2 westerners were fighting, they gave a bit more it seemed.  By this point we had all had a few too many beers and Emma decided to climb the fence that we were behind, she got up about 5 feet while Jelly screamed at her to climb higher, she comlied and the whole crowd of Thai men that were on the other side of the fence turned round and gave her a massive cheer and round of applause.  She came down and not much was said.  Then Jelly decided to give it a go and we get assigned our own security guards to make sure that no men climb the fence.  They spent the rest of the night sitting beside us keeping an eye on us, if we even inched forward they would warn us to stay back from the fence. This is just asking for Jelly to bam you up though so he takes it upon himself to try and swap trainers with the security guards and as you can imagine they weren’t too keen on that.  We did a bolt from the stadium and paid Holly a wee visit at our hotel where Jelly and I tanned a bottle of Sang Som and he pulled over our marble table spilling beer all over the place.  I stayed in with Holy while they went out for a ping pong show.  I would have loved to have seen how they ended up as I’ve been out with him in that state many times and it always ends in good stories, letting him loose in Bangkok will surely amplify that tenfold.

All in all, Bangkok wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  I had it in my head that it was gonna be constant hassle like in Patong, dangerous and seedy.  It really wasn’t that bad at all.  Although it was a shame that my wife was ill the silver lining was definitely getting to see Kenny and some much needed patter that Thailand sadly lacks at times.

Crag

Laos - sometime in Feb, 2010

Ahoy all, it’s been a while since I’ve had my computer so this will either be a very long one or two separate ones.  Knowing me however, it will be two very long ones.  I’m getting into the swing of not doing much so these blogs are getting to be quite the chore as I’m sure you can sympathise.  ;-)

So, we left our base in Phuket with a few of the other folk we have met while staying in Ya Nui, a handsome couple called Mike and Natalie who are part owners of the place we’re staying at, Giles, their good friend and business partner from England here ona  brief holiday and a diamond of a chap called Mark who is the resident hippie type around here while not working as a best boy on movies in England.  All in all, a good bunch to be heading off with on our wee holiday within a holiday. 

We booked a flight to Udon Thani in the North of Thailand with the aim being to cross the border at Friendship Bridge into Laos where we could go to the Thai Embassy and apply for a double-entry visa for Thailand which would give us 4-6 months stay instead of the 30 days you get each time you come into the country.  Through some good fortune it turned out that Giles (or Bertie, as he was usually referred to) lived and worked in Thailand and Laos for 10 years so knew his way around somewhat and kept us right along the way.  In the end he proved himself to be pretty indispensable in keeping us all in order, entertained and most of all ticking all the boxes for the experiences we should be having at each destination.  I salute you sir.

Anyway, our wee trip ended up being 3 flights, which would see us spending 2 nights in Laos, 1 in Udon Thani and 1 in Bangkok.  The flights with Air Asia are a very good deal, always cheap and the planes are modern, clean and you’re well looked after – kinda like that Gucci Megabus they tried for a while.  We got to Udon Thani in a relatively painless fashion just in time for the sun setting, although it was 30 degrees it seemed a lot cooler and the light brought a nice wee calm over me.

To get into Laos you have to get in a rickety bus and go over something called Friendship Bridge and go through kinda shady borders that look a bit like that shite subway station at Kelvinhall.  The side of the road that you drive on changes as you cross the bridge too which was pretty weird, you don’t realize that you notice these things until they are different.  The sky was pure pink and orange as we were crossing as the sun was going down and mixing with the smog over the Mekong River, quality.

Laos is really nice, we were only in Vientiane, which is the capital (if you could call it that) but was still really chilled out.  I’d heard people comment that Laos is like Thailand 20 years ago before it got all tourist friendly and westernized and I’d imagine they are right.  The main difference is the attitude of the people, you don’t get people chasing you down the road determined to deck you out in a Juicy Couture jogging suit or the like.  Instead they leave you to it, if you want to buy you can , they’re nae arsed but do like a good haggle.  They seem to set up another world as soon as the sun sets.  Pavements disappear and restaurants, bars and shops all appear as if from nowhere, it’s quite impressive really how people adapt any way they can to make a living.  The electricity poles on the streets are the scariest bit, it looks like everyone just taps into the supply from the poles in the street and they emit a strange crackling buzz that makes you fear the rain like Reekie fears a Sandyford text.  There is a much bigger language divide in Laos than there is in Thailand, most people don’t have even a basic grasp of English which on reflection I kinda liked.  I don’t have a basic grasp of Lao so fair is fair.  Their money is a bit mental though, it’s really very cheap in Laos but it doesn’t seem it as for £1 you get 13000 Kip so buying a 5 grand mars bar gets a bit confusing.

The first morning in Laos we had to go to the Thai Embassy to apply for our Visa’s…words, guidebooks and hand gestures could not communicate this to our Tuk Tuk driver but luckily someone at the hotel desk wrote it down for us in Lao to show the driver.  At this point (even though we weren’t in Thailand) I felt the most like I was ‘Cruisin’ down the streets of Siam’ like at the start of Kickboxer with Van Damme, it was like I was actually in the film and actually in the 80’s so I did what anyone would…hiked up my chinos, slipped on a tight black singlet with buckles, had a wee dance then avenged the crippling of my brother in an ancient underground temple.  Once that was out of the way I went to the Embassy. 

Outside the embassy are lots of wee men with school tables and forms and the idea is that they fill out the forms for you for a pound, that way it all gets done correctly and they provide an address for you to say you’re staying at etc…  You also have to get a ‘passport’ picture done, this was the funniest bit, we had to sit on a plastic garden chair under a sheet of tarpaulin in the street with a white blanket behind you as they took a snap of you on a wee digital camera then they printed the pics off  on a wee printer.  It was a pretty impressive wee racket although it did feel like we were buying acid or something, I tried licking the photograph but unfortunately the walls never melted and the sky never turned to lizards.  After all this we took a number and queued at the embassy and had to give our passports up for the night and pick them up (hopefully) with our visas the next day.  Throughout this whole process we were drinking a carry out, no one seemed to mind, no one complained (about the drinking or the waiting) and all went smoothly.  I figure if we employed a bar in queues or at least allowed people to take a bevvy when they’re doing things that no one really likes to do then there would be a lot less hassle, fights and complaints in the world.  They have it sussed over here likes, you can buy a beer from practically anyone in this part of the world, shops, fishermen, children and even dugs!

The rest of that day we tried to take in a bit more of Laos, went to some museums (which were full of what looked like extra large Blue Peter Thunder Birds Island papier mache models) and monuments before settling on the banks of the Mekong for a bit of a taps af(f)ternoon.  We caught sight of some kids heading down to a pool of water for a wee swim so got some beers and headed down for a wee splash too.  The girls got right into it and had a good water fight with the weans while Mike and I skulked a bit in the shallows with our cameras ($$$).  At this point some guy came along in an army outfit with what, in the sunlight looked like a gun but turned out to be a spear!  He seemed to be keeping an eye on the kids in some kind of official capacity, from their school or something maybe, but then another guy appeared in some completely new capacity, Readers Wives Monthly maybe?  The girls were in their underwear in the water and Jimmy Paparazzi couldn’t get enough of it, he just kept taking more and more pictures to the point where we had to leave.  I hope he got a good chug out of it.  Gid lad.  It wasn’t until after we had left the Mekong that the fear of parasites, beasties and diseases struck us so we headed straight for a shower and an early night while the elder statesmen showed us how it is done as they did every night.

The next day we took in a bit more of Laos, speculated on how we would definitely be back to see more of the country.  Laos is pretty massive and borders about 6 countries, a lot of it is really rural and it has a lot of natural beautiful mountains and waterfalls.  Apparently one of the best ways to see the country is to get a wee vehicle and sort out some home-stays with people in the jungle and the like.  It sounds like it could be a laugh and surely an experience so we have vowed to return.  The Visa’s came back without any problems and we met up with the rest of the group and went for cocktails and dinner while watching the sunset over the river, the colour of the sky was pretty amazing.

Next blog up when I get the motivation will be Chinese New Year in Udon Thani, utter madness in Bangkok and our return to Phuket.

Laterrzz