Temporarily Thairish

Some evil-minded Norwegian bastard spiked my drink last week. Three separate times, no less, at regular two-hour intervals. Despite this, and the fact that I was at a jungle party in the middle of an actual jungle, I still managed to have a good night, morning, afternoon and evening out. A couple of days later, though, having exhausted all of my rhythm, I came down with a serious case of the blues. Actually, I felt a little homesick.

I de-hammocked, sunblocked, shaded, saronged and glided down to the local internet café to check out the happenings back home. Same ol’, same ol’. No shock, no horror. Shootings and stabbings in Dublin and Cork. GBH in the GAA. Bertie blustering. McDowell menacing. Harney eating. Adams and Sinn Fein denying. Rabbitte rabbiting. Banks being robbed. Banks robbing (still can’t afford that exclusive shoebox). Snow Patrol bassist sacked etc. etc.
The more I read, the worse my homesickness became. By the time I logged off, I was in a really bad way. Definitely homesick. Have been for a while. That’s why I left.
I sent a quick email home, in response to one I’d received: “Yes, I was drunk when you rang. You misheard me before I left. I never said ‘detox’. I said ‘retox! It’s going very well, thanks’.” Then I went onto the Lufthansa site and extended my temporal stay.
Last week, I visited the mainland for the first time since I arrived. My 60-day visa was about to expire and I had to cross a border in order to renew it. Overstaying your visa is a really serious offence in Thailand. If they catch you at a border, it’s not such a big deal – you simply pay a €4 fine for every day you’ve overstayed. However, if you’re caught within the country, you’re arrested, heavily fined and then deported. All told, it’s best to play by the rules.
I had originally planned to go to Burma but there was a mix-up with the ferries (i.e. I missed the one I was supposed to catch), and I wound up going to Malaysia instead. I also had to spend a night on Ko Samui, the neighbouring island, the big ugly brother. There’s a scene in Alex Garland’s novel The Beach where Richard, the narrator, leaves his idyllic beach paradise and briefly returns to civilisation in order to buy rice and supplies. Having spent a couple of months in peace and tranquillity beside a field-full of weed, he’s totally shocked by the crass and tawdry commercialism of the place.
I understand exactly how he fictionally felt. Ko Pha-Ngan is a fairly busy island but, lacking its own airport, it’s nothing to Samui. And the beach I’m on is particularly quiet and secluded anyway. To my shades, the place was chock-a-block with tourists, the roads were chaotic and congested, and the prices were an absolute rip-off (seriously, €6 for a three course meal with drinks!). Within about ten minutes of arriving there, I was desperate to leave.
Unfortunately, I had to stay the night. Somebody had recommended a place called the Sea View Hotel, but when I went to check it out, I wasn’t particularly impressed. In typical Thai style, it was actually called the ‘See View Hotel’. They couldn’t be done for false advertising. If you looked out the window you could See a View. Unfortunately, it was of the back of another hotel.
I wound up staying in a cheap room above the 7-11 instead. The lock on the door was one of those push-button affairs but, having lived lock-free for the past two months, I didn’t pay much heed to my security arrangements. It was silly of me. At around 4am, I awoke suddenly to discover two spotty Thai teenagers in my room, creeping slowly towards my bag. I roared at them just in time to save it (the little fuckers laughed at me as they shot out the door). Not the kind of morning call I’m used to. When I went down to the 7-11 to complain (despite its name, the shop was open 24-hours), the ladyboy behind the counter simply shrugged and gave me an unconvincing apology. Thinking back on it, she/he was probably the one who tipped them off. The bastard! The bitch!
My ferry to the mainland was going at 5am so, heart still thumping, I was there in plenty of time. I’d booked through a company that specialises in visa runs and I met some of my fellow passengers on board the boat. It transpired that, out of ten farangs, I was the only visa-run virgin on the trip.
Aged from six to sixty, all of them were long-term Thai residents, and a few were even married to Thais. Even so, they all had to make a regular border run - either every thirty, sixty or ninety days, depending on their visas. Nobody seemed particularly happy about this. It’s just a pain. Apparently, up until about three years ago, it was possible to pay an agency to carry your passport through and get it stamped without you having to actually go anywhere yourself. However, that was in the good old days when bribery and corruption were more openly rife. Nowadays, the regulations have been stereophonically tightened. You have to go there to come back.
We were travelling to the border in an air-conditioned minibus. The guy sitting beside me was Welsh, facially tattooed (though not in his passport photo) and a visa-run veteran. He was the same age as me but, having lived in Bangkok for four years, looked significantly older. It’s a four hour trip to the Malaysian border and we spent the first twenty minutes or so chatting about our respective homelands. When I told him that I was a friend of Howard Marks’, he grinned widely and pulled something out of his shirt pocket. He handed me what looked like a piece of melted liquorice. Suspiciously, I took a sniff. Then a lick. “This is opium,” I said.
“Yeah – the best,” he grinned. “It makes the journey go much faster. Or slower. Ha, ha!”
“Are you crazy?” I snapped. “We’re going to Malaysia. They hang you for opium possession!”
“Nah, not for this amount,” he replied cheerfully. “They’d just cane you and lock you up for ten years.”
“So why are you carrying it?” I asked, aghast. Then I realised that I was the one carrying it and quickly handed it back.
“It’s cool, man, chill out,” he said. “They never search farangs for drugs at the border.”
“How come?”
“It’s because their laws are so strict,” he explained. “They know that farangs are all shit-scared of getting busted so they reckon nobody would be dumb enough to carry anything on them. I’ve carried through the border loads of times and they’ve never once searched me.”
I considered this for a while and then asked him, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Not yet,” he grinned, biting a pistachio-sized chunk off and settling back in his seat.
The driver put a Mr. Bean DVD on and I spent most of the journey watching Rowan Atkinson pulling a wide variety of funny faces. I was only actually in Malaysia for about twenty minutes but it seemed like a nice enough place. Kinda strange though. A big purple elephant in mirrored sunglasses stamped my passport and waved me on. I spent the whole journey back thinking about it. Elephant passport officials. In mirrored sunglasses! Whatever next?