News From The Front
originally written Monday, February 15, 1999
I took the night train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, from where I would take a boat the next morning to Ko Pha Ngan in the Gulf of Siam. The train trip was uneventful but stylish? a second class ticket for $13US got me the upper bunk in an air-conditioned car.
The boat was packed with backpackers, mostly European, heading for a place to hang for the winter. I talked to two nice guys en route-- one a Brit from Devon who set type for mathematical academic articles, and another guy from Holland who was a UNIX freak. Watch out all you hippies-- your days are numbered on the isles known for full-moon parties and drugs 'til ya drop-- Bill Gates clones are slowly taking over. The first thing you see getting off the boat at Thong Sala are internet shops. The town has one main street that is about one block long, but there must be half a dozen internet servers amongst the restaurants and market.
I headed up the West cost to Hat Yao, a place I stayed before. I asked where "Pong" was, the fisherman who took us snorkeling around this island out in the middle of the gulf a few years before, but he was in town getting new glasses made. So, I went up the beach a bit further to some bungalows hanging on a cliff facing the setting sun. Well, the cost of living always goes up, and it's no exception here. Three years ago you could get a simple bungalow with no shower or toilette for 50 Baht a night ($1US). Not anymore. It's up to 80 Baht ($1.75)!
Well, there it is folks, all the trappings for a lovely stay in paradise, except for a few things, as follows:
1) It started to rain-- a lot. Torrential downpours you only ever hear about or see on TV, like the storm that crippled the "Minnow" in the TV show Gilligan's island.
2) The Euro-trash woman (German) on one side of my bungalow had two little kids that cried and cried and cried all the time. She was pretty down on her luck, and the kids kinda expressed it for her.
3) These two Irish lads on the other side would sleep all day and drink all night and became noisy. At times I thought they were Rastas, their accent was so thick and they talked so slow. It must have been the years of drink and ecstasy abuse. I had to laugh about one guy. He could hardly walk, both his feet were injured. He said he was pissed drunk one night and while walking home he turned his ankle and sprained it. As he was staggering around in pain from one foot, he stepped on a broken beer bottle (probably his own) and ripped a gash on the other foot. So, he was trapped for a few weeks until he could mend.
There was one nice guy I met-- an Austrian tattoo artist who left his wife in Austria a few weeks earlier after he found out she was seeing another guy. I met him while he was waiting for his tattoo needles to be sterilized. He showed me photos of his work, and along with the usual stuff-- naked buffed chicks on horses in the painted desert with Navaho or Hopi Indians hanging around in full war gear, Harley Davidson logos, and various ghoulish skulls, he did some neat abstract work that looked like shiny metal Celtic patterns. He even had a nice shadow and glass surface effect (well, whatever turns you on I guess). The best part was that he rigged up his motorcycle to power the tattoo needle machine. Imagine getting a tattoo from a guy that used his motorcycle to make it! Wow.
So, I had enough of that place and headed back to town by boat just before the rain really let loose. I decided I didn't want to get stuck on some outport given the bad weather, and saw on a map the one good road went straight up north, and so I went up there. Oh yeah, before I left I shaved my head, just to start again fresh.
This is a much brighter place, and although I had initial problems with ants, it's worked out just fine. It's as cheap as the last place, and the people are as nice as they are everywhere here. So my daily regimen is working on my Japanese (writing, reading, and listening), take a bit of exercise by walking, swimming, exploring around the bay, and working on the computer and playing guitar. I feel a lot more productive than I did in the last year or so, let me tell you!
It rained for two days straight, but it let up a bit and now it's mostly cloudy with sunny breaks. Pleasant as the breeze keeps it from being too unbearably humid or hot. The place I stay has a bridge to get across this small brook. Well, the rains washed away the bridge out to sea, and the brook is a river now. It looks like I'm stuck here for a while. Some days I take one of those swimming pool leisure chairs and float up the river. Just great. These blue swallows entertain with their aero-acrobatics--skimming across the surface of the water at 70km an hour, then suddenly flying upwards and then dive-bombing again close the water. They like flying right in front of me? perhaps aware that I am in awe of their grace and speed. Show-offs!
There are some nice tourists here too--mostly German/Austrian, a Canadian woman who works in Taiwan, and this old hippie guy from California I like the hippie guy as he's funny? a caricature of every San Francisco hippie you'd ever meet. He must be in his 60s, but still has the hippie outlook. It's somewhat of a relief to meet people like him, as society is so different now than in his time. Like he told me, he represents the other side of a lifestyle, just to keep the balance. I like that. Since the current society has become so hell bent on the weirdest things-- like the sex habits of presidents, survivalist brainwashing about the Y2K thing, using "Quicken" to organize your TAXES (yikes)-- a guy who hangs out and channels, talks about finding piece of mind, and who has not an angry bone in his body is a relief!! At least he's a heck of a lot nicer than the Germans, who can be abrupt, crude, and ugly. Imagine if Germany won World War II? Gosh. I hate to think of it.
About the Y2K thing: if anyone out there is so worried about cosmic meltdown in your city because of this computer bug, then I suggest instead of hoarding water and food, digging holes in the ground to live in, arming yourself with AK47 assault rifles, whatever-- plan to spend next Christmas here--on Ko Pha Ngan. The electricity is so erratic they supply their own electricity with gas-powered generators. Besides that, well, life here hasn't really changed much. Sure they have the creature comforts of a stereo, TV, and assorted crap like that, but the folks here also live in extended family units, fish, cook and get off doing simple services for one another. Hmmmm. Not bad huh? Besides, should the industrialized world melt down, you could sustain life rather well here.
Speaking of here, here's some history. The Hainan Chinese came to Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Samui to get the coconuts about 200 years ago, and eventually settled. This week it's been rather noisy with firecrackers as the Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year (year of the rabbit, don't you know). Besides the incessant pounding of rave techno trash across the bay, the firecrackers are a nice way to scare the shit out of any bad spirits!
And so, that's it from my side of the beach. Happy New Year!
