Shit! The tourists are coming

Temporarily Thairish arrived at the My Way Bar the other night to find Kes the barman sitting in his usual place (on the wrong side of the counter) with a sly smile tugging frenziedly at the corners of his mouth. “Allo there, Olaf,” he said. “And ‘ow are we this evening? Good, are yer?”
Kes is as subtle as a sledgehammer at the best of times, and never this friendly. I immediately clocked that he had some news to impart that he gleefully expected would ruin my night. “What the fuck are you smiling about, you skinny English wanker?” I asked (we have that kind of relationship).
“I’m not...ha...smiling,” he smiled, almost choking on a hysterical giggle. “Why would I be smiling?”
“You’re dying to tell me something. I can tell from the way your eyeballs are bulging. So cut the shit and tell me!”
“Oh, it’s just that I woz, like, filmed for, em, a television documentary today,” he announced, as casually as he could. This wasn’t very casual. He was now smirking like the fat cat who got the creamery.
“Really?” I said. “What was it about? The Koh Pha Ngan watered-down vodka scandal? I’ll have a vodka, by the way.”
“Nah, it woz for Spanish television,” he explained, as he went behind the counter. “They’re doing some kind of travel show about life on tropical islands. I think it’s like some really big show, you know. Like national TV in Spain. I think they said that they, em, – oh, wot’s the word? – oh yeah, syndicated it as well. You know, to Europe and America and suchlike. Probably to Asia as well. You know, probably the whole world, really.”
“Wow!” I said, pulling back a bar stool. “Sounds great. Are they still around?”
“Nah, they’re gone!” he snapped, suddenly looking fearful that I’d track them down and try to steal his thunder with a better soundbite. “They woz only ‘ere for the afternoon. Anyway, they said they only wanted to talk to long-term residents. As you know, I’ve been living and working here for six years. I think you’d still be considered a bit of a...a blow-in.”
At this moment, Jacques the long-haired, long-tail boatman awoke briefly, raising his head from the bar counter long enough to snarl, “Ha! You fuckeen Irishman! Not ze only media star on ze beech now, eh? Ha, ha! Fuuuuck you!” Then he conked out again.
Kes grinned even more broadly and continued with his story. “Yeah, they spoke to me for, eh, quite a while actually. The director or producer or whoever it woz actually said to me that I woz the best person they’d spoken to.”
“Did they speak to Jacques as well?” I asked, sliding the Frenchman’s head aside as I reached for an ashtray.
“Nah, he was too pissed. They only spoke to me.”
“Cool! How much did they pay you?” I asked innocently.
His expression faltered slightly. “Em...nuffink,” he admitted, his English accent suddenly becoming even more pronounced. “I didn’t know they, em, paid.” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Do they, em, pay?”
“Yeah, they should’ve given you a spot-fee,” I lied. “Not much though. Probably only about two hundred pounds sterling. Actually, though, it’s a fair while since I’ve done any TV so it’s probably gone up a bit since. Maybe it’d be about three or four hundred these days. But anyway, go on, what did they ask you about?”
“Did you say, em...four ‘undred quid?” he asked weakly, looking a little sick.
“Yeah, but if it’s Spanish TV they’d probably pay you in euros. So I dunno, maybe about six hundred euros.”
“But they woz only talking to me for a couple of minutes!” he protested.
“I thought you said it was for ‘quite a while’?”
“Well, yeah, like, I mean it woz for more than a couple of minutes. Probably four or five. Maybe a bit longer. You know, they were messing around with the cameras and lights and suchlike.” He turned away to fix my drink. I watched carefully to make sure he didn’t spit in it and said, “Anyway, forget about the money. They’re gone now and, if you weren’t smart enough to ask already, you’ll never get it. Go on, tell me – what did they ask you about?”
“Just ‘ang on a minute there, will ya?” he said, handing me my drink, and suddenly dashing out the side door of the bar in the desperate manner of somebody with an imminent case of the runs. The sounds of a muffled scream could be heard and the entire wooden structure of the bar trembled as something hard banged off the outside wall.
A minute later he returned, with a bruise yellowing on his forehead, saliva all over the front of his T-shirt, and bits of thread stuck between his teeth. I felt it best not to comment. Kes forced a smile and, unprompted, began answering my original question. “Well, they were just asking about life on the island really. I just talked about running the bar and the retreat and the kinds of tourists that you get over ‘ere. And a little bit about my young son, Jessie – you know, wot the ‘ospitals and schools are like, and all that kinda malarkey.”
“Sounds good, yeah,” I nodded. “You know they probably won’t use the whole thing though. Was there any particular thing you said that stuck out?”
“Actually, there woz!” he beamed. “There woz indeed.” He took a step back, puffed up his chest and went into documentary interviewee mode. “As you know, I lived on Ibiza for years. This woz before it got really trendy, you know, back in the early 80’s. There woz fuck-all people there and it woz just like this great secret. We’d always have friends coming over from England and they’d have a right fuckin’ laugh. The only thing is – they went and fuckin’ told everyone else!
“We’d always tell ‘em before they went ‘ome to keep their mouths shut. We ‘ad paradise and wanted to keep it quiet. They didn’t shuddup about it – and look wot ‘appened! Fuckin’ millions of people started coming and fucked the whole thing up! So the thing is not to make that mistake again.
“And it woz just when I said that bit – ‘If you do find paradise, there’s one important rule. Don’t tell nobody about it. Cos if you do, before long it won’t be paradise no more’ – that the director or producer or whoever said ‘Cut!’ She said that woz perfect. She said they’d probably end the whole show on my quote. And on me, of course, seeing as it woz me wot said the quote. Pretty cool, eh?”
The cheesy grin had returned to his face. I decided to remove it.
“And did you say in the preceding interview that you think you’ve found paradise here?”
“Yeah, course! I mean, look at that,” he enthused, indicating the waves crashing milkily off the reef in the moonlit bay. “This is paradise, man. I’ve been around a bit and I’m telling yer – this is as good as it gets.”
“So, to sum up your interview, you basically said that you’ve found paradise on Koh Pha-Ngan. And that you’d had paradise before on Ibiza, but it got ruined by people talking about it. So the golden rule is to never tell anybody that you’ve found paradise.”
“Yeah, don’t never tell no-one!” he said, stabbing a lecturing finger in the air. “Keep it to yerself! Cos if you don’t – it gets fucked!”
I let those words hang in the air for a little while...
Then I said, “Well, you’re kinda breaking your own rule there, Kes, don’t you think? Saying that on television.” I took a sip from my drink. “I mean, that makes you look a bit stupid really. You know, saying that you’ve found paradise here and then saying that the rule is not to tell anybody. On television. You know, saying it on television.”
Kes became quite flustered. “Nah, well...you know...maybe I didn’t...I mean, em , I ...” Then he became quite agitated. He glared at me, reached down below the bar, and then angrily slapped his little red book down on the counter so hard that Jacques almost woke up again.
“Enough about all that!” he snapped. “I think it’s about time we discussed your bar bill!”

The following afternoon, myself and Kes’s nubile young wife, Teresa, spent a hot, sweaty and physically exhausting 90 minutes rolling around together on the wooden platform adjoining his house. Relax, it’s not what you’re thinking. We weren’t doing yoga. Oh, hang on – sorry, we were doing yoga. Kes was out the front, watering his orchids.
In addition to the My Way Bar, Kes and Teresa also own and run the Koh Pha-Ngan Yoga Retreat. It’s a neat way of running things. Kes pollutes people’s minds and bodies in the bar at night, and Teresa cleans it all out of them the next day. They’d asked me to help write the blurb for their new brochure (in return for the cancellation of my bar bill) and said that I’d need to experience it at least once.
“Honestly, there’s no need for me to actually experience it,” I assured them. “I’m a journalist – I’ll just make it up.”
“Come on, Olaf,” Teresa said. “It won’t kill you. You’ve been here for months and you haven’t tried it once.”
As it happens, Temporarily Thairish has been on something of a health kick in recent weeks. I swim twenty-five metres every morning, I’ve cut my smoking down to two packs a day (and then just two more at night), and I eat several pieces of fruit every day (though, admittedly, these are usually small pieces picked out of a cocktail glass with a toothpick). Amazingly, this regime has yet to produce any noticeable physical results. I decided to give yoga a try. Why not?
Teresa does two 90-minute yoga sessions a day – something called ‘Pilates’ in the morning, and ‘Hatha’ yoga in the afternoon. She told me that after 15 days of Pilates I’d have a whole new body. I took this to mean that I’d die from overexertion and be reincarnated as someone else, and went for a Hatha session instead.
The Yoga Retreat backs right onto the jungle valley and the view from the yoga platform is truly stunning. Teresa winced slightly when I suggested that she should put a bar there, but let it go. There were two other guys doing the session – an Israeli and an Italian. Both had the calm confident air of experienced practitioners. “Yoga’s great,” the Israeli guy told me. “Especially for sex!” For those of you who may be confused about it, yoga actually has nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s one of those mind/body aligning disciplines, which basically involves lots of deep breathing, meditating, balancing and contortionism. We began the session with deep breathing exercises, inhaling and exhaling only through our noses. To avoid snoring, I cheated a little on this one.
There was some gentle ambient music playing in the background and Teresa talked us through each exercise (called ‘asanas’ or ‘pranayama’), explaining about energy levels and blockages.
Then we did some slow stretching exercises. “This is easy,” I thought to myself, as I stretched my arms skyward, aligning my chakras and feeling the energy of the entire universe coursing through my body. “Any arsehole could do this.” Needless to say, I had spoken too soon.
“Now just hold that pose and slowly lift your left leg up and place the instep of your foot in against your inner thigh,” Teresa cooed. “And don’t forget to breathe [sound of human body crashing to floor in background]. Em...Olaf? Are you okay?”
Actually, I wasn’t. Not then, and not for much of what followed. After about half an hour, my body temperature was near melting point, there were floods of toxins pouring from every pore (and soaking my yoga mat), and I was shaking uncontrollably. However, I persevered and, touchingly, earned the praise of Teresa and my classmates. Sadly, all the good feelings I was having about myself dissipated the moment Kes laid eyes on me outside and fell over himself laughing.
Still, yoga...not a complete waste of time. You read it here first. Or, at least, that’s the first time you’ve read it here.

To many of the visitors here, Koh Pha-Ngan really is their idea of paradise, but, even without Kes telling the world about it, the secret’s been out for a while now. Tourists have been coming been coming here for more than a decade and there's a lot more of them this year.
The sudden interest is largely thanks to a tsunami aftershock. Many regular visitors to Thailand are choosing Koh Samui and Koh Pha-Ngan ahead of Phuket and Krabi this year. While I personally don’t relish the the beach filling up, the locals certainly do. They pretty much ‘make the year’ in four months, the way most Irish bars ‘make the week’ on Fridays and Saturdays. The whole island has been busy getting ready for the onslaught. New bungalows are going up all over the place, and older ones are getting facelifts.
The Pongs have got the Double Duke in order. They’ve built a new luxury bungalow, and have installed new plumbing in all of their old ones. They’ve invested in kayaks, wooden sun loungers, tables and umbrellas for the beach outside their bar. They’re refitting the kitchen and have bought new fridges and cookers. At my suggestion, they’ve started selling good wines. I’m not regretting it yet, but I’m getting there.
They’ve also finally got some computers in and had email installed (which saves me a walk). While Mr. Pong’s spoken English is improving steadily, his writing isn’t the best. He asked me to help him out with his emails and, to all intents and purposes, I have now become his personal secretary, handling all of the Double Duke’s internet correspondence.
Most of the emails he receives are enquiries about bungalow availability, usually from former customers or friends of same. These come from all over the world, but are always in English. What’s surprising is how articulate and well-written the emails from French, Swiss, Italian and German customers are, and how utterly illiterate the ones from Australian, American, English and – dare I say it? – Irish people are. Here's an example.
HELLOOOOO MR PONG!!!!
It’s Rick and Amanda from England!! Remember us!! Those mad crazeee peeple!! We’re coming back over to see u next munth!!! And guess what???? Little Craig will be coming with us. That’s rite!!! We have a new adition to the family!!! Craig!!! Can we have the big bungilow again? Were arriving on January 12th and will be staying 4 10 nites.
We’were so worried about you all at the Dubble Duke when we herd about the tsonami. We hope everything is alrighjt and that you and Jim and the dogs are all alright. Alright!!!!
See you soon.!!!! We can’t wait!!!!!
XXXXXXX!!!!
Rick, Amanda and little Craig!!!!!!!
Temporarily Thairish didn’t much like the sound of Rick, Amanda and Craig. Anybody who uses that many exclamations has to have serious mental problems!!! Perhaps it was an abuse of my secretarial power, but I sent the following reply on behalf of Mr. Pong. In a little gamble with fate (I’ve just read The Diceman), I did actually ask him if he wanted to read it first, but he said, “No, no – you write English better den me. Ha, ha! I trust you!”
Dear Rick and Amanda,
Absolutely wonderful to hear from you. However, the cynical part of me is wondering why, when the tsunami struck a year ago, you’ve left it until now to enquire about our health and well-being. Surely if you really cared, you would have contacted us sooner? But no matter. As it happens, we all escaped unscathed. As a quick glance at the work of any half-decent cartographer shall confirm, we are actually situated quite some distance from the affected areas.
Congratulations on your new arrival. I’m sure little Craig will love it here. Just be careful to keep him away from the dogs, who’ve grown quite vicious and bloodthirsty since you last saw them. We had a bit of a messy situation here last month. Fortunately the child survived the attack. And as I said to the parents, “You did say you were disappointed it wasn’t a girl. Well, it is now!”
Unfortunately, I’m unable to offer you the big bungalow this year. We have a famous and important Irish writer staying with us at the moment, and he has taken up residence there. You’ll have to sleep in one of the older ones, closer to the jungle. You might bring your own mosquito net. Or better still, a beekeeper’s suit. Those bugs are getting big!
Anyway, looking forward to seeing you again. I’m afraid I can’t actually remember who you are, or what you look like, but I’m sure I’ll probably know you when I see you.
Take care,
Mr. Pong
I’ve done all I can. If they come, they come...b