Temporarily Thairish: True stories

Oh Buddha! Temporarily Thairish caused no small amount of controversy last week – both at home and abroad. It came completely out of the blue. A disgruntled reader posted a message on the hotpress website, seriously questioning the veracity of my recent claim to have anally smuggled four packets of Wrigley’s Spearmint Extra into Singapore. I don’t have the exact words to hand but it went something along the lines of, “Anybody else think this Olaf guy is a bit of a dick? I think he makes his column up. I reckon that story about him smuggling chewing gum in his arse into Singapore is complete bollox.”
Anyway, to my horror, this rather insulting posting served as a call-to-keyboards to all the Olaf non-fans out there. Pandora’s Box spewed forth a furious torrent of abuse and wild, ridiculous and downright nasty allegations about yours truly.
As if being accused of making this column up wasn’t bad enough, I then wound up with the fucking Thai media on my case!
Of course, with the electronic age we live in, it didn’t take them very long to find me. I woke up on Friday morning with a big crowd of reporters outside my hut. The following story appeared on page three of last Saturday’s edition of the Bangkok Post.

IRISH WRITER SEEKS TO “FREE THE SINGAPORE CHEW!”
An Irish writer who has been living in Thailand since February found himself in a sticky situation this week. Olaf Tyaransen (26) says that he’s “shocked, outraged and offended” over allegations that he fabricated a magazine story about anally smuggling chewing gum into the city-state of Singapore last month.
The allegations first appeared on the Irish website hotpress.com. following publication of Tyaransen’s fortnightly Temporarily Thairish column in hotpress magazine – a lowbrow Dublin-based publication, rumoured to edited by a “hippy” and staffed by people with genital piercings.
“I’m shocked, outraged and offended over these wild allegations!” Tyaransen told the Bangkok Post yesterday. “Of course I smuggled four packets of Wrigleys Spearmint Extra up my arse into Singapore. Didn’t I say so in my fucking column! I’m a fucking respected journalist! You hardly think I make these things up, do you?
“Anyone who says that I didn’t stick that chewing gum up my arse can stick it up their arse!”
Although the Singapore authorities deny any knowledge of the incident, Tyaransen claims that he can prove it. “That hotel was shite and they never cleaned the rooms,” he explained. “I’m willing to bet that there’s still some hard evidence on the bedposts and under the writing desk. It’ll probably be a bit congealed as well.”
“Fuck off out of my face you lowly Bangkok Post hack!” he roared. “Those begrudging Irish gobshites don’t know the real me! They just see some really cool cat living in a tropical paradise, surrounded by naked beautiful people, and effortlessly turning out brilliant articles. Those pricks don’t know my inner pain! The only people who really understand me are my BPH and the three B’s – my good friends Bono, Bob and Beep!”
Tyaransen, author of a book called Sex Lines, once stood for election in Ireland on a legalise cannabis ticket. He says that he now wants to see chewing gum legalised in Singapore.
At this point, Mr. Tyaransen opened his suit jacket to reveal a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘FREE THE SINGAPORE CHEW!’ and blew a very large and defiant bubble.
When asked why he smuggled the chewing gum in, Mr. Tyaransen seemed to break down. “I admit it – I have a problem!” he sobbed. “I started on penny gum back in primary school but by the time I was in secondary I was hitting the Bubbilicious hard...”
At this point, Tyaransen’s landlord Mr. Pong came and took him away. “It is tam for his vodka-spearmint shake,” Mr. Pong (78) explained.
* For further reading see editorial ‘Singapore: Is Olaf Tyaransen another Jason Blair?” on page 13.

On a more serious note, here’s one I didn’t make up...

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Tsunamis spell bad news for buildings – but not for builders. Six months on from the Asian tsunami disaster, Phuket is still undergoing massive reconstruction.
Thailand’s largest island, and Asia’s biggest tourist resort, is known as the ‘Pearl of the South’, but lately it’s been more of a shell.
Although 80% of the island was unaffected (neighbouring Phangnga province was hardest hit), the wave still claimed more than 5,300 lives here, and caused millions of euros worth of structural damage.
Patong Beach was one of the worst affected areas. Amazingly, almost all of the palm trees facing the pounding Andaman on Phuket’s longest beach remain upright, but many of the hotels, restaurants, bars and shops behind them proved a lot less sturdy.
Walk the length of the beachfront and you can’t help noticing that the sea was crueller to some establishments than to others. What was formerly Molly Malone’s Irish Pub is now just a ruin with a sign. Right next door, a familiar clown statue is still sitting on his bench outside the restaurant. McDonalds was untouched.
More than two-thirds of the Patong beachfront has already reopened for business. Many others are almost finished and will be opening soon. It’s boomtown right now for chippies, plasterers, plumbers, painters, labourers and carpet-fitters. Sadly, business isn’t anywhere near as good for everyone else.
Although many of the hotels and resorts are extremely luxurious and offering amazing deals, Patong is like a ghost-town right now. At night, you don’t see a single ‘NO VACANCIES’ sign illuminated.
June is low-season anyway, but one hotelier told me that tourism figures are just 30% of what they were this time last year. Hardly surprising when you consider that the vast majority of tsunami casualties were tourists, mainly Swedish and German.
Just seven months ago, things were looking really good here. Many locals noticed that there was a marked increase in the numbers of visitors bringing children with them, and hoped it was a sign that Phuket was finally losing its sleazy image.
The prostitute and ladyboy population of the notorious Bangla Road has significantly dwindled, but not through death or injury. Typically, after a hectic Christmas night partying, most of them were tucked up safely in bed when the wave struck. Now, those who can have followed the tsunami-shy sex tourists to Ko Samui or Pattaya.
There’s fairly widespread contempt for Thai Prime Minister Thaksin, who came to inspect the damage and then announced to the world that Phuket didn’t need any outside help, and could fend for itself. Most of the promised government aid has yet to materialise. The rebuilt hotels and businesses are mainly foreign-owned.
It’s all too obvious that many of the locals are facing serious financial difficulties. The streets are lined with hawker stalls and everybody is actively touting for business. You can even buy ‘Tsunami 2004’ DVDs and graphic photographs of bodies floating in the water.
An unhindered stroll is an impossibility. Every passing taxi will slow and beep its horn at you. Many of them insist on engaging you in conversation. “Where you going?” “The Baan Boa Hotel.” “I take you there.” “But it’s only a minute’s walk from here.” “I give you good price!” Their persistence can be annoying, but you can hardly blame them for trying.
The wave travelled about 200 metres into Patong town, with the parallel Rat-U-Thit Road marking the height of its intrusion. Just metres away, on Soi Sansabai, Lek Murphy’s Irish Bar had a narrow escape. Anthony and Tony, the Corkonian owners, showed me some photographs of where the water stopped, ruefully remarking, “We had better luck than Molly Malone’s.”
The tsunami isn’t a taboo subject. In Lek Murphy’s, it was the only subject. It was the thunderous noise of the wave that Anthony recalls most clearly. “It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in me life,” he says. “I hope to God I never hear it again.”
Tony remembers the phone in the bar ringing non-stop, with calls from family, friends and the Irish media. And also the smell of death. “They ran out of body-bags very quickly,” he recalls.
“The stench of rotting flesh was powerful.”
One of their regulars, a former British para, will never be the same again after watching two little Swedish girls being crushed by a BMW. They were in a hotel lobby at the time and had been talking moments before. He held onto a pole and could do nothing to save them.
Somebody else saw their girlfriend being killed by a flying deckchair. Others have seen things that they still can’t articulate.
The physical reconstruction of Patong will probably be 90% complete before this year is out (other parts of Phuket will take longer to heal), but it’ll be many years before the memory of the tsunami fades.
Not just from the minds of potential visitors, but from the minds of those who were there when it struck.
It’s a terrible shame, because it’s a beautiful island, populated by the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. There’s a sadness behind their smiles though, and a damage. I asked Anthony from Lek’s if the people of Phuket could be said to be suffering collective post-traumatic-stress-disorder.
A faraway look came into his eyes as he remembered the horrors of six months ago, and he softly replied, “I’d definitely say so, yeah. It’s not something you’d ever forget.”
News generally doesn’t travel very fast on Ko Pha-Ngan, not farang (Westerners') news at least. Most visitors here are actively trying to escape from the everyday world and, being an island, even the Thai daily newspapers arrive the day after publication. My mate Kes, the London-born owner of My Way bar, once told me that he didn’t hear about 9/11 until early October.
The Buddhist way of laughing at misfortune can take quite a bit of getting used to – especially when that misfortune could be your own. Watching the televised panic on the streets of London, I was obviously shocked but not at all surprised. We all knew it was coming. Sadly, in this insane world, we all know it’ll probably come again. Nowhere is safe and nobody’s really trying to make it safer. Expect to hear the word “freedom” a lot in the coming years, but to experience less and less of it.
Like most Irish people, I have many friends, relations and colleagues living and working in London. I’ve heard nothing yet and I’m trusting to the law of averages that they’re not amongst the casualties. My love to them all. Heartfelt condolences to all those who haven’t been so fortunate.