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Queer news
There has been a reunion of sorts; and it is good to be able to report that all of our old friends are back at the Kiwi bar in Patong. Good in that we had heard from some Australians that our favourite two staff had been sacked for misbehaving too much and there was neither sight nor sound of the third so we assumed she too had gone; the bar appearing to be staffed by a new collection of much younger girls. But we were wrong; something was lost in translation, one favourite had been sick not sacked and the one that liked Kaelene quite a lot, although no longer working there, was still about. The third also appeared on our return for a pre-arranged barbeque, all keen for a repeat of a sambucca-fueled night which occurred somewhere in a distant, hazy past.
But it wasn’t just the difference between sick and sacked that was lost in translation, we enquired after the health of the Canadian boyfriend of one of the staff who, on our last day here in May, was reportedly hurt in a motorcycle accident elsewhere in Thailand. Upset that day, the woman explained that she did not have the money to travel to see him. It may have been a hint for financial assistance but we didn’t offer, and our subsequent request for an update on the boyfriend’s health led to a complete absence of recall on the issue of either Canadian boyfriends or motorcycle accidents. Two other Australian patrons sharing the barbeque were also surprised to hear us getting an update on the proprietor’s two sons who live with their father in Bangkok as on three previous holidays to Patong they claimed Tikki had told them she had no children at all. Indignantly, she denied denying motherhood, and it could be that these moments of confusion are simply that. We almost feel part of the family there and would hate to think that they would spin us a line.
Prior to our departure from New Zealand last year a professor of food science offered some handy travelling advice and that was to eat yoghurt on a daily basis as its active bacteria are just the very thing a human gut needs to maintain its good working order and to fight off, as far as possible, the ill-effects of unfamiliar foods and bugs on and in the digestive system. Mostly we have maintained that regime and there has not been a day of illness, until now and it coincides with a slip from our precautionary consumption of yoghurt. It’s not on the breakfast menu at our hotel and we hadn’t gotten around to getting some from the local supermarket so the inevitable happened. The indignity of description is unnecessary suffice to say that the last week has been slow going and ventures too far from our hotel infrequent. There is a lesson for all travelers to exotic destinations, and that is to heed the advice of professors of food science.
Keeping relatively close to home meant that the Vegetarian Festival has passed us by, and if it was thought vegetarianism is for the lily-livered the calendar of events should dispel such notions. There were a number of sacred rituals performed each day at various shrines, including fire walking, self mutilation and climbing ladders with bladed rungs, and good fortune is said to be bestowed upon the devotees, or mah song, taking part. The Phuket Gazette reported: “… the mah song have shoved axes, fake guns, swords, tree branches, bicycle cahins and even umbrellas through their cheeks. In one such act about twenty of the mediums took axes to their tongues in a bloody ten minute act to appease the gods.” Now that’s not for the faint hearted.
In its Queer News column, the Gazette reports that a family in another part of Thailand has set up a shrine to house the body of a stillborn, headless baby. “Relatives took the baby home, setting it up in an old fish tank converted into a display case. They placed the baby in a sitting position and put a baby’s bottle and nappy in the fish tank. They also lit incense and set up a donation box for visitors.
“If the body of the baby did not start to decay, they would keep it in the fish tank permanently for people t come and give worship,” the baby’s great Aunt said. “If it began to go off, they would give it a proper burial,” she explained.