Buffalo Soldier

Generally speaking, in the normal night-to-night run of things, no animals get hurt or killed in the writing of this column. True, I’ll happily swat, spray, stamp or otherwise slay any insect that breaches the restricted airspace around me and my laptop, but insects don’t count (over here, they’re countless). When was the last time you saw a bunch of plastic-shoe-wearing protestors around the fly-spray section of Dunnes? Exactly! Nobody gives a flying fuck about little flying fucks.

This week, though, I’m sorry to report that, in addition to the usual dead insects, there were a couple of Temporarily Thairish-related animal casualties. No fatalities, thank Buddha, but a buffalo and a dog got injured in two separate incidents. I wasn’t responsible for what happened to the buffalo. I was simply there when it happened. I did lame the dog, though, I’ll admit that. In my defence, all I can say is that I didn’t mean to lame it quite so badly.
Anyway, the buffalo. My landlord Mr. Pong brought me to the buffalo fights the other day. At first, I thought I’d misheard him. For some reason, I’d always thought that buffalos had been hunted to near-extinction a century ago (I mean, ask for buffalo wings in a restaurant, and what do you get?). But no, buffalos are still alive and well, appearing in U2 videos and fighting for sport in Thailand.
Buffalo fighting differs from bull fighting in that the animals take on each other. The fight was taking place in a fenced-off jungle clearance near a local temple. There was no admission fee, but donations to the temple were appreciated (in other words, it was 20 baht). When we arrived, there were two buffalos already in the ring, separated only by a large white sheet hanging between two coconut trees. I asked around but they didn’t seem to have names, so in honour of their world-famous Wings, I christened them Paul and Linda.
It wasn’t exactly a major sporting event, but some efforts had been made. There was some tinkly Thai music being played through a loudspeaker on the roof of a car (though nobody thought to play Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ or Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance’), some food and drink stalls, and several hundred people hanging around.
I’m no vegetarian, and I’m even partial to buffalo wings, but I still felt pretty bad for Paul and Linda. They knew something was up and kept on trying to peek behind the sheet, but their ropes didn’t allow it. Their handlers kept them cool by hosing them down with water. Unfortunately, this quickly turned the earth to paste and it seemed more likely that we were going to wind up watching buffalo mud-wrestling.
As we watched and waited, Paul suddenly pooped voluminously all over the ground. “Ah look,” I said to Pong. “The poor thing’s terrified.” Pong gave me a withering look. “It is a buffalo,” he said. “Dey do dat all de time.”
Just before the sheet was pulled away, the handlers got the buffalos really riled up. They did this by poking them with sticks, pulling their ropes every which way, and telling them about the proposed Boyzone reunion tour.
And then suddenly the sheet was pulled away, and the fight was on. Neither buffalo moved. One of the handlers hissed, “They’re going to make five million from the tour!” Nothing. “Each!” That did it! The enraged buffalos charged furiously at each other and their horns collided with a mighty thunder crack. For the next 90 seconds or so, Paul and Linda had a clacking hornfight of musical differences. Buffalos have extremely wide horns and watching them locking and unlocking was a little like watching two furry snowploughs jousting. Then Linda slightly gored Paul, drawing blood with a neat sideswipe. The injured animal turned and fled. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to flee to. Round and round they ran and ran.
“This isn’t much of a fight,” I said to Pong. “It’s more like a race!”
When Pong didn’t respond, I turned and saw that, along with everybody else in the vicinity, he was now standing a good twenty feet back, waving at me. I looked back towards the ring and realised why. There was a 2000 pound buffalo charging straight at me, closely followed by another 2000 pound buffalo, and only a loose bamboo fence between us. Somehow managing to not repeat Paul’s earlier performance, I dived away into the dirt just as the animals veered away into the distance. If I’d stayed where I was for just a second longer, the Thai people would have been in awe of my steel farang nerves. Instead, they were in hysterics.
In the car on the way home, I finally started speaking to Pong again by asking if any spectators ever get killed at the buffalo fights.
“Not velly often,” he replied. “But sometimes, yes. Dat’s why dey have dem near de temple.”
“As opposed to the hospital?”
“Angry buffalo charge you – you need temple better than hospital.”

Alright, here’s what happened with the dog. I’m not particularly proud of this, but nor am I ashamed either. It was an accident. Of sorts.
There’s twelve separate businesses on the beach I’m staying on – bars, restaurants, bungalows and hotels – and each establishment keeps several dogs for security purposes. In common with their human equivalents, most of these canine security guards have a massively inflated sense of their own importance, hunt in packs, feel that they own the place, and make a hell of a lot of unnecessary noise.
Of course, if you stand up to them, they back/bark off almost immediately. But show them any fear at all and they’ll completely dominate and humiliate you. Over the last few months, I’ve spotted more than one group of terrified tourists fleeing for their lives down the beach, literally hounded by a pack of snarling dogs. Depending on my mood (and their gender), I’ll either go and rescue them or else shout from my hammock, “Watch out – the black one has rabies!” I’ve pointed out to some owners that their dogs do a better job of scaring off business than protecting it, but to no avail.
Mr. Pong has two dogs, intelligent mongrels named Bobby and Bessie, who sleep under my hut at night. I get on very well with both of them, but recently they’ve been causing me some problems. They’re currently at war with the dogs from the restaurant next door, and every morning at around 5AM, they have their first skirmish of the day. Bessie is the worst offender and seems to be the cause of all the trouble. She howls like a premenstrual banshee, really stirs it up, and then lets Bobbie fight her battles. Every morning, without fail, I wake up to the sound of barking, bitching, snarling and snapping. It’s like listening to Morning Ireland.
Pong offered me a different hut, but I like the one that I’m in as it’s right on the shore. It seemed that if I wanted the spectacular scenery, I’d also be stuck with the snarling soundtrack. Last week, though, he came up with a solution. Don’t tell the Thai-SPCA but he gave me a wooden catapult and permission to use it. Now, every night before I go to bed, I gather some small pebbles and shells from the shore, and leave them by the shutters. When the dogs of war start their morning exercises, I simply throw the shutters open and, with a natural accuracy no doubt genetically inherited from my great Viking forefather Denis The Menace, let fly with the catapult. ZING!
A seashell travelling at 100kph impacts sharply on a dog’s hindquarters and produces a satisfying “YELP!”, followed by the ever diminishing sound of distant barking, but does no lasting damage. A 10 baht coin (roughly the same size as a euro) travelling at 100kph, on the other hand, pierces the skin and really hurts. It was my fault. I’d forgotten to gather any ammunition the previous night.
The worst part is that, as I write these words, Bessie is lying bandaged and brooding at my feet, looking for sympathy, totally unaware that it was me who sniped her. But the best part is that they seem to have postponed the morning barkathon until she’s recovered.

Regular readers will remember Jacques, the French, Mekong-swilling, long-haired, long-tailed boatman. Last week, I met him sober for the first time since I arrived on the island. It was just as well he was sober, as he was giving me a lift on his motorbike. I didn’t really want the lift, but he’s a hard guy to refuse.
There I was, hanging around waiting for a cab outside the reception area of a local hotel, when Jacques suddenly skidded his bike to a halt in a spray of gravel. “You going into Thong Sala?” he asked. When I confirmed that I was, he explained that he was going in to pick up some wine. “I weel give you a leeft,” he declared. “Zose fucking cab drivers, you cannot trust zem.”
I told him that I was fine, thanks, but he wasn’t taking no – or ‘non’ – for an answer. “Juzz ’op on ze back,” he ordered. “You weel be fine. I am very safe driver. I ‘ave never crashed.”
I’m not particularly fond of motorbikes, especially when they’re being driven on Ko Pha-Ngan’s notoriously dodgy roads (over here, crash scars on arms and legs are so common that they’re known as “Ko Pha-Ngan tattoos”), but when I explained this to him, he said contemptuously, “Eet’s okay, no problem. I zought you were ‘Emingway but now I see you are juzz an Irish pussy!”
I wasn’t having that, so having ascertained that (a) Jacques wasn’t on any hallucinogens that had yet to kick in and (b) the bike wasn’t stolen, I nervously climbed on the back. We were both shirtless and, reluctant to touch his sweaty skin, I held onto the back of the seat rather than onto him. It wasn’t the most practical way to ride the bike and I felt in danger of falling off at any second. Probably because I was.
We got around 200 metres down the road in this precarious fashion before he started complaining. “Putain! You are like a zack of fucking potatoes, you fucking Irishman! Puzz your arms around me!”
I grimaced into the wind, affected not to hear him, and left my arms exactly where they were.
“Eet’s alright – I am not gay!” Jacques called back to me. “Eet eez juzz ze practical way to be on ze bike. Go on! Puzz your arms around me.”
With extreme reluctance, and more than a little distaste, I put my arms around his sweaty stomach and locked my hands around his belly.
“Ooh yezz, big boy,” he groaned. “Zat eez juzz ze way I like eet!”
He gunned the motor and off we zoomed – traveling at such speed that if I did remove my hands, I’d definitely fall off. I spent the whole journey fully traumatised, with his unwashed hair blowing into my face, and him shouting back at me, “Go on – peench my nipples! Ha, ha!”
As it turned out, we both fell off anyway, but at least we were near our destination. When a dog ran out on the road just as we were pulling up in Thong Sala (curiously, the dog looked as though it was related to Bessie), Jacques braked hard, and next thing we knew, we were both on the road and the bike was fifteen feet away, wheels still spinning.
“Merde!” he cursed, as we both picked ourselves up, bruised but nothing broken. “Zat eez ze first time I ‘ave ever crashed.”
And zat eez ze last time, I weel ever ‘op onto ze back of heez bike.

There’s been a massive corruption scandal here recently – just the latest of many – over bribes allegedly paid to Thai government officials by an American firm called GE InVision Technologies Inc. The US firm was supplying a number of CTX 9000 baggage bomb detectors to the newly built Suvarnabhumi Airport, but the multi-million dollar contract got held up over claims that the Yanks had been bled dry by corrupt politicians and officials (or “Redmonded”, as we call it in Ireland).
As the opposition and media pressure increased, the contract was put on hold and Prime Minister Thaksin reluctantly ordered a corruption probe (to be headed by the Deputy Prime Minister), stating that if any underhand payments had been made then the deal would be called off to “save the good name of the country.”
Following their own internal investigation, which was ‘screened’ by the US Department of Justice, GE InVision sent a letter to the Thai government stating that no Asian officials had received any improper payments. Of course, if they’d said anything else, they would have lost the contract, and all those (alleged) bribes would’ve been paid for nothing, but nobody mentioned that.
In his statement announcing the go-ahead of the deal, and the immediate termination of the corruption probe, PM Thaksin said, “If a government entity is involved with corruption, the US cannot allow GE to sell us the scanners. As the US allows GE to do business with us, that means no one here is corrupt.”
His chief adviser, Pansak Vinyaratn, added: “All this has happened because of the braggarts who speak only half-truths. Nothing they say is credible. There are too many people of this kind in Thai society so the government will no longer waste time on this matter.”
Case closed. Nothing to see here. Move along now.
Seriously, compared to these guys, the likes of Lawlor, Lowry and Burke look like rank amateurs.

Last issue, I wrote about having my flip-flops stolen from outside a bar. This week, I discovered what probably happened to them. Feeling in need of some comfort farang food, I went into a Thong Sala restaurant and ordered a beef stew. One spat-out mouthful later, I realised what’s been happening to all the missing flip-flops.
A gristly fate. b