The Archive

Thai a yellow ribbon

Wednesday 28th December
Quite a chilled day today, topping up my sunburn (my shins now glow in the dark) and wandering up and down the drag hearing how handsome I am. I managed to do a bit of work on the book, have a short swim and eat. So a big day then.

Oh, also I cleared out the entire contents of the local pharmacy to take care of my sunburn, my cold (which I haven’t mentioned so far because I’m such a trooper) and to pick up some Tiger Balm which I could just as easily get in England but is much cooler here. I know that’s pathetic and puts me right up there with people who wear Thai Red Bull tee shirts, but that’s ok, I am pathetic.

So not much to tell, adventure-wise, so I’ll fill the time with some unoriginal, unfunny observations. As you may or may not know, Thailand is a kingdom and unlike us, they take their royals very seriously over here. Consequently, there are pictures of the king, quite elaborately done almost like little shrines, all over the place. I have to say this is a good thing and if I were king I’d be sure to pass down all kinds of edicts making the erection of statues to me mandatory.

But would it work in Britain. Whichever way you cut it our royals are ugly buggers. So who would want a picture of Auntie Liz or her big eared boy gazing down on them? Nobody, that’s who.

So, what to do?

Simple, I propose ‘Monarch Idol’ (as opposed to the current monarch, idle). Every week contestants compete in rounds such as ‘regal waving’ ‘avoiding casual racism’ and ‘the commonwealth – not just ignorant savages, also a great source of revenue’.

Weekly voting will whittle down the applicants until a final, good looking king and queen are elected (text voting revenues going to pay for crowns and carriages and such).

And then we could put pictures of them up everywhere and be proud.

Or I suppose we could just elect the woman in the picture of the tennis player scratching her bum. And she could train the corgis to play poker.

One other observation in Koh Samui. There are no tourists women on their own here. It’s all either guys or couples. This means the only game in town is Thai women, and that’s no game at all – the dice are loaded so heavily in your favour it’s no satisfaction to play and win.

So all you who predicted my return to the UK sporting a shiny new STD, it’s not looking good for you so far.

Oh, we just bought a DVD (arrr, Jim lad) only to find it’s in Thai. We’ve selected English subtitles and found that they’ve helpfully subtitled approximately every tenth line of dialogue. Even better, every now and then, there are subtitles put on when nobody is actually speaking.

This is particularly noticeable in the sections of film that are set in Australia and so have English dialogue which is also subtitled, although the subtitles are entirely different to what is actually being said. Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight.

After the movie it was off to a bar where I finally found two women on their own who were clearly tourists. A bold hop over to initiate a conversation revealed a) they were Italian and did not speak a great deal of English and b) they were there with their father. So that went well. Although I did find it rather disturbing that their father was also with someone – his attractive young Thai girlfriend. Hmm.

So finally I got into the game with some unloaded dice. I lost of course, but it’s nice to get back to normality sometimes isn’t it?

On the plus side, I did manage to get drunk, which was nice.

Oh, I also forgot to mention the cab ride back from the fight last night. We jumped in the back of a pick-up truck style cab (benches in the back, hold on for dear life, you know the deal). As we set off, it soon became clear that the driver was not being paid by the minute as he proceeded to race, full tilt, through the streets of Koh Samui as we in the back gripped any hand hold we could fine with white knuckles, adrenaline racing thought our veins and our lives flashing in front of our eyes like a movie (mine wasn’t very interesting, incidentally. I’d give it three stars. Not suitable for children).

Astonishingly, we made it back in one piece. There’s nothing quite like a near-death experience to make you appreciate life is there?

Thursday 29th December
Let’s get ready to rumble. That’s right, today is Muay Thai boxing training day, also known as ‘Peter once again pays to get punched in the face day’. What the fuck is wrong with me?

So we slipped over to the gym (which was little more than a roof with a couple of boxing rings and punchbags around the place) to warm up. The fighters there all appeared to be moulded out of steel and had a very interesting selection of tattoos, which all added up to give the place the air of an old pirate’s den.

Soon I was breathing hard, sweating profusely and wondering how much longer I could go on for. Fortunately, the warm-up was nearly over by that time.

After a few more stretches, it was time to learn to be a ferocious killing machine. The good news was that for this session, as it was my first time, the dude wasn’t actually going to hit me. Result.

Less of a result were the gloves he gave me to put on. They looked cool, yellow with a kind of flame effect (the go-faster stripe of the boxing glove world I guess) but when I pulled them on I found they were drenched in the sweat of dozens of other boxing novices.

Apparently, they smelt pretty much as you’d expect too, but fortunately for me I have a cold so couldn’t smell a thing. Maneesh on the other hand is still complaining about the smell now and it’s nine hours later.

Never mind. Us hardened fighters don’t worry about such niceties as sweaty gloves. I was ready to fight. The instructor dude took me through punches, kicks, blocks and knee and elbow blows until I really began to feel like I had a grasp of the basics. It’s amazing how much you can learn in a couple of hours with one-on-one tuition.

The downside was that the combination of my cold, the heat and, let’s face it, the fact that I’m just not as fit as I could be, meant that after just an hour and a half or so I was absolutely fucked, drenched in sweat and ready to die. I begged him to let me stop hitting him. Surely that's not the right way round to do things is it?

So to sum up, the Thai dude let me hit him for an hour and a half and at the end of it I was the one face down on the floor. Maybe I won’t enter tomorrow’s championship bout after all eh?

Then it was time for a lovely lunch on the beach under the palm trees (reading this at work? Ha!) and, after that, it was decided that I needed a haircut.

We found a salon and popped in. Unfortunately, just as she was finishing cutting my hair (not too badly either), the power went out. I didn’t mind this at all. More surprisingly, neither did the (incredibly attractive) Thai girl in the seat next to me, which was pretty cool of her considering she was halfway through having her hair dried and straightened and faintly resembled Tommy Lee Jones in Batman as a result.

After that, back to the hotel, where our newly fixed air conditioning had turned our room into a meat locker, where I ‘sat down for a moment’ and woke up two hours later.

Next stop, the club. We met a couple of Thai girls yesterday night who said they’d take us to the next town to an allegedly good club… on their scooters. Should be interesting.

UPDATE: The night at the club was hilarious. Normally in the clubs, the biggest problem is that hot young girls keep coming up and trying to 'get with' you. I know, sounds like a nice problem to have, but it is kind of annoying.

Not with our Thai friends though.

Have you ever seen American football, when the defender is running hard and about to smash into the chap with the ball, but then is totally wiped out by someone running interference for the ball carrier. Well that's basically what happened in the club.

A hottie would come over and try to dance with me or Maneesh, then BOOM, the girls with us would leap in between and totally close out the interloper. It was hilarious (unless, I suppose, I'd actually wanted the girl, in which case it would have been rather annoying. But one thing about this place, you're never more than 5 minutes away from another fit young girl approach).

Also, at the end of the night, the girl turns to me and says "you're the man, you have to drive."

What?

She was serious. She wanted me to drive her moped back with her on the back. Her moped. I haven't ridden a bike for years.

Nevertheless, too embarrassed to just admit I was terrified, I jumped on and we wobbled our way back to the hotel. At the end of it, I'm sure I noticed a few grey hairs that weren't there before, on both of us.

Anyway, good dancing, copious sweating and a good laugh was had by all.

That's all for now folks.

posted by Peter The Great @ 3:43 AM