Category: 
It has been a while since I have done anything for the site. Curse my lethargic sole. It is 11pm and I’m on a holiday trip around the south of Thai and I’m a little bored, so I thought it would be a good idea to unzip, unroll, and rub it around the table a little bit.
So to start with, as chance would have it… what the learn-ed Kong thinks of the south of Thailand.
“What?” you say, why in the hell is the dark Jedi master Kong swanning around on tropical islands? Well… because, much as I’m still most totally bad-ass, white sand and freakishly fluorescent water turns me on, and I hope your still enjoying going to the same damn one-industrial-room-one-goth-room nightclub you have been going to for the last ten years. Snap.
This is my second trip down here in 2 months. Once with a co-worker and again now with a girlfriend (who is currently asleep, hence me being left alone with my little thoughts). Just to make things clear… I have been to Krabi town, Ao Nang, Kor Phi Phi, Phuket town, and most of the beaches on the west side of Phuket island. Not a particularly comprehensive list (and nowhere near the little skirmishes the Thai army is having with some antsy pants folk down there). As you might be able to guess from the list, these are pretty much all tourist hot spots, and coming here has been my first real look at tourism in Thailand, despite having been here for a year and a half now.
Coming here is almost the same as going back to the old country for a visit. I mean I am surrounded by a majority white people, the only Thais you see are service people and the occasional bar-girl (or boy) going long-time… and oh boy does it remind me of everything I hate about white folk. People say the culture shock is the worst when you arrive back to your country of origin, and in a lot ways that is what happened when I arrived in the south.
So here is a quick piece on what I saw and thought while doing the south thing.
Dear lord and the sweet virgin Mary do people have shitty tattoos. Being in a hot beach like place, there are a lot of shirtless people around, and a lot of shit tattoo work to be seen. It is sort of a two-fold problem as I see it. One, it is shitty work done by shitty scratchers. Two, getting your skin roasted into an unhealthy shade of purple brown is not the best thing for one’s ink. The next time I see a blurry dark green un-comprehensible mess on a man of just 30yrs of age I think I will open a can… and I’m sure that time will be all of 8 hours away when I get out of bed and venture out of my hotel room.
And another thing, never ever get a tattoo in a language you don’t understand. I mean NEVER. There are always the urban legends of the girl who had “fuck my dumb white slutty ass” tattooed on her shoulder in Japanese thinking it was saying “butterflies and ponies are just AWESOME… urban legends because I don’t think even the worst tattooist would do that as a generalization. In most cases I think it is just language barriers coming into play. I have seen quite a few Thai tattoos on the skin of foreigners here, and being with a girl who is Thai, I now have it on good authority that most of what is coming out just doesn’t make any sense…. It reminds me of a good story I read in the BME encyclopedia. A Spanish guy wanted and English tattoo expressing the fashionably existentialist nature of his lifestyle on his chest. Rather than getting “crazy boy”, he got “boy crazy”. Unless you’re fluent in a language, perhaps you shouldn’t get it permanently etched in your skin.
It has been in Phuket that I have also had my first real experience with the boys in brown (i.e. the police). It was really something which I have had coming for a while; riding a motorcycle without a license or a helmet. I do it quite a bit here, so it was really just a matter of time. It’s the kind of thing that would lead to one nasty ass fine in most western countries and most people wouldn’t dream of doing it. Here, it is more or less something that everyone does, and occasionally the gods with give you one up the ass just to let you know who is really calling the shots. So, amongst a myriad of uncertified and un-helmeted motorcycle driver, I was the turtle that didn’t quite make it past the shore.
What was interesting about it was the finely tuned symbiotic system in place. The police were at a street you are almost forced to drive through due to a heap of plastic barriers on the road (a point which will be elaborated on later), and more conveniently within a short distance of the police station. The police stop people, write the ticket whereupon they take the keys from your bike. Then you have to take a motorcycle taxi to the police station to pay the fine. You don’t even have to tell the driver where you are going, he’s at that street because taking people to the station on a round trip each day is his bread and butter. So the police are making a tidy profit, and so are the motorcycle taxi drivers… half of whom aren’t wearing helmets.
The whole process was very polite. The man at the station even tried to teach some Thai, which is normally nice except that he was doing it while shoving is dick in my asshole with his fine. The funniest part was that after returning and getting my keys back we headed off, only to be lead back to the exact same spot through a series of no left/right turn signs, random one way streets and plastic barricades. So yet again I got pulled over. I pulled out the ticket I had just paid and then the original cop who got me came over and told the new cop I had already done my bit for the day. The cop then wrote down the date on the ticket (so I can’t try the same stunt tomorrow) and that was that. I suppose that’s how it is… breaking the law can be punished once a day only, after that the same crime can be repeated with impunity. Good to know.
As to be expected, the prices of just about everything are pretty ridiculous down here. Getting sick of going to stupidly priced restaurants, we ended up eating at the street stalls with the locals. This was the first time I witnessed the fabled one-price-for-Thais-another-for-Whitey legend. One place we stopped pulled out two menus, one in English and another Thai, with massively different prices. I cannot read any Thai, but I can speak enough to order food, which I did, and when it came to the cheque the desired effect was not achieved. Assholes, enough said. It did make me appreciate my little corner of BKK so much more, where folk are decent and prices aren’t based on skin colour.
Another interesting point is the readily available dope down there (I use the word ‘dope’ in the American sense, ie. the expansive way). This wasn’t so much on Phuket, though I’m sure it’s plenty there. On Phi Phi it borders on the absurd. There are very few Thai people on the island, and those that are there seem to be all dope-slinging, Muslim, long-tail drivers (long-tails are a kind of small boat with a lawn mower engine slapped onto a propeller sticking out on a long shaft behind the boat… hence the long tail). It would be kind of a nice lifestyle in a way… spending all day stoned, driving fat Russians around tropical islands safe in the knowledge you are probably the only fit enough to swim back if the thing capsizes (and yes, I say Russians, Americans don’t have the money for tropical holidays anymore haha). We went out with a guy called Aom, and the first thing we saw in the boat was a big bamboo bong. The rest of the time spent on the island, wherever we went, there was Aom trying to sell us pot, big stoned grin on his face.
But enough of the shit… If you can ignore the prices and the crowds it really is a beautiful area. Is it worth flying half across the world to see it?? Not quite, but if you live close by it is worth going for a couple of days. Like most places on the planet, it looks a million times better in photos than it does in real life…
