After breakfast we split up to improve our chances. I went north, towards Ko Mat Lang, and the other two went south, aiming for a small town we’d passed on the jeep ride. Our rendezvous was in three hours’ time, back at our huts.
The sun came out as I set off down Chaweng, but it did little to salvage my mood. Flies buzzed around my head, smelling the sweat, and the walking became increasingly laborious as last night’s rain dried off the sand.
I began counting the guest-houses I passed along the shore line. After twenty minutes I’d counted seventeen, and they were still showing no signs of thinning out. If anything, the palm trees were more cluttered with Ray-Bans and concrete patios than before.
♦
In 1984 I was in my sitting room, playing on my Atari, and listened to the babysitter talk about Ko Samui. As I mopped the screen clear of space invaders, names and places stuck in my head.
Pattaya was a hell-hole. Chiang Mai was rainy and cold. Ko Samui was hot and beautiful. Ko Samui was where she had stayed with her boyfriend for five months, hanging out on the beach and doing strange things she was both reluctant and keen to talk about.
A-levels out of the way, my friends and I scattered ourselves around the globe. The next August we started coming back, and I learnt that my babysitter’s paradise was yesterday’s news. Ko Pha-Ngan, the next island along, was Thailand’s new Mecca.
A few years later, as I checked my passport and confirmed my flight to Bangkok, a friend telephoned with advice. ‘Give Ko Pha-Ngan a miss, Rich,’ she said. ‘Hat Rin’s a long way past its sell-by date. They sell printed flyers for the full-moon parties. Ko Tao. That’s where it’s at.’
♦
After an hour of walking I gave up trying to find a fisherman. The only Thais I met were selling gemstones and baseball caps. By the time I got back to my beach hut I was exhausted, sunburnt, and pissed off. I went straight to the restaurant and bought a packet of cigarettes. Then I chain-smoked in the shade of a palm tree, looking out for Étienne and Françoise, hoping they’d had better luck.
∨ The Beach ∧
12
TV Heaven
Thais, or South–East Asians in general, make eerily convincing transvestites. Their slight builds and smooth faces are a recipe for success.
I saw a particularly stunning transvestite as I waited under the palm tree. His silicone breasts were perfectly formed and he had hips to die for. The only thing to betray his gender was his gold lamé dress – a bit too showy to be worn by a Thai girl on a stroll down Chaweng.
He was carrying a backgammon set under his arm, and as he slunk past he asked if I wanted to play a game.
‘No thanks,’ I replied with neurotic haste.
‘Why?’ he wanted to know. ‘I think maybe you afrai’ I win.’
I nodded.
‘OK. Maybe you wan’ play in bed?’ He tugged at the long slit up the side of his dress, revealing fabulous legs. ‘Maybe in bed I le’ you win…’
‘No thanks,’ I said again, blushing slightly.
He shrugged and continued walking along the beach. A couple of beach huts down someone took him up on the backgammon offer. Curious, I tried to see who, but they were blocked by the trunk of a leaning coconut tree. A few minutes later I looked back and he was gone. I guessed he’d found his punter.
Étienne appeared not long after, beaming.
‘Hey, Richard,’ he said. ‘Did you see the girl walking this way?’
‘With a lamé dress?’
‘Yes! My God, she was so beautiful!’
‘She was.’
‘Anyway, Richard. Come to the restaurant.’ He reached out a hand and hauled me up. ‘I think we have a boat to take us into the marine park.’
♦
The man was the Thai version of a spiv. Instead of being lean and weasel-like, with a pencil moustache and a flash suit, he was short, fat, and wore drainpipe marbled jeans tucked into giant Reebok trainers.
‘Tha’ can be arrange’,’ he said, quoting from the universal phrase book of the entrepreneur. ‘Of course, yes.’ He grinned and made an expansive gesture with his arms. Gold sparkled in his mouth. ‘No’ difficul’ for me to do tha’.’
Étienne nodded. So far he’d done all the bargaining, which was fine as far as I was concerned. I don’t like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between feeling that I shouldn’t haggle with poverty and hating getting ripped off.
‘Actually, my frien’, your gui’ book is no’ correc’. You can stay Ko Phelong one nigh’, two nigh’ – is OK. Bu’ this island you can only stay one nigh’.’ He took Étienne’s book and laid a chubby finger on an island close to Phelong.
Étienne looked at me and winked. From my memory of Mister Duck’s map, which was back in the beach hut, our island was the next one along.
‘OK,’ said Étienne, and lowered his voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one around to hear. ‘This is the island we want to see. But we want to stay more than one night. That is possible?’
The spiv furtively looked over his shoulder at the empty tables.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, leaning forward, then looked around again. ‘Bu’ is mo’ money, you un’erstan’.’
The deal was eventually struck at 1,450 baht, diligently knocked down from 2,000 by Étienne. At six the next morning we were to meet the spiv in the restaurant and he would take us to his boat. Only then would we pay him the money, a point Étienne wisely insisted upon, and he would take us to the island. Three nights later he would come back to pick us up – our contingency plan in case we got stuck there.
That left us with only a couple of problems.
If we made it to the next island along, we would be missing when the spiv came to collect us. To deal with this, Étienne invented a story about some other friends we were going to meet there, so we might come back early – no cause for alarm.
Another difficulty was how to get from the drop-off island to the beach island. We could have asked the boat to take us directly there, but not knowing exactly what we were going to find on the beach, we didn’t want to blunder in on a motor boat. Anyway, as the beach island was out of bounds to tourists, we thought it better to start out from one we were allowed to stay on – if only for one night.
Étienne and Françoise seemed far less concerned about this last step of the journey than I was. They had a simple solution – we would swim. By examining Mister Duck’s map and the map in their guidebook they’d decided that the islands were roughly a kilometre apart. According to them, that was a manageable distance. I wasn’t so confident, remembering the diving game from the day before. The tide had pulled us a long way down Chaweng beach as we swam. If the same thing happened between the islands, the length of the swim could effectively double as we corrected and recorrected our course.
The final problem was what we would do with our bags. Again, Étienne and Françoise had worked out a solution. Apparently they’d done a lot of planning last night while I was getting stoned. Later that day, sitting in the shallows with the wash collecting sand around our feet, they explained.
‘The backpacks will not be a problem, Richard,’ said Françoise. ‘Actually, maybe they will help us to swim.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘How’s that?’
‘We need some plastic bags,’ said Étienne. ‘If we have some plastic bags we can tie them so water does not enter. Then…they float. The air inside.’
‘Uh-huh. You think it’ll work?’
Étienne shrugged. ‘I think it will. I saw it on television.’