Snakes alive
Abandoned like a jilted lover, our old Australian friend SatNav Ken has been replaced by the silky tones of Kate, her digital English voice providing more detailed driving information as we familiarise ourselves with our newly-arrived-in city, the West Australian capital of Perth. While it may seem disloyal to Ken after his superb assistance as the voice on our satellite navigation system during our travels through the United Kingdom and parts of Eastern Europe, we have been unable to find room for sentimentality as we come to grips with this huge country. He is, we are afraid, history.
The vastness of this country may be explained through the example of our friends and former Christchurch neighbours, Barbara and Terry Anderson, who drive a road train (comprising a 30 tonne Kenworth rig and up to 60 tonnes of freight on three trailers) between Perth and Sydney every week. The 4,000 kilometers trip from coast to coast takes 48 hours essentially non-stop, each drives a four hour shift while the other sleeps. Each week, they do a return trip and then have a couple of nights back home in Perth, and on one of those nights off we caught up with them to share respective stories of life on the road, not to mention Barbara’s always brilliant cooking and Terry’s very generous hand with the wine.
To some extent, Perth seems like Auckland with endless spread out suburbs centered on a beautiful harbour (in this case the Swan River estuary) with marinas and elegant little bays housing some obviously very expensive real estate and then there is the University Club of Western Australia which looks out in splendid grandeur on Matilda Bay. The beaches seem endless and the comparison with Auckland was enhanced by a trip to a local Sunday market with cousin Fiona where, it seems, there were more identifiable Kiwi’s than Australians, bone and pounamu pendants the order of the day. Notable differences between the countries include that coloured birds, such as parrots and galahs, usually caged in New Zealand, fly free, and there are signs on the approaches to beaches warning of venomous snakes. Unlike Auckland there is an effective highway system crisscrossing the city, the main arterial routes lined with scrubby bush and in our rental Toyota we are starting to get to grips with the new geography.
Barbara and Terry’s nomadic lifestyle is common here, many people use Perth as a base and work in remote places outside the city. Seath and Nicole, who work somewhere in the north doing things associated with the mining industry, spend four weeks away and then fly back for a week - and then the cycle endlessly repeats itself.
It seems that we have arrived at the right time, Seath and Nicole have brought a section and yet-to-be-built house in a place called Ellenbrook which is billed as Australia’s most awarded new town, whatever that might mean. In reality it is one of these places that developers have created out of nothing (other than the sandy terrain) near the Swan Valley, about 20 kilometers from the centre of Perth. It’s nice and handy to the vineyards and the wine making area but because it is located a significant distance from any other amenities, everything is brand spanking new. This means, for example, that the whole town is pre-wired with fibre optics for high speed broadband and cable television, and so everything should work and function perfectly. Apparently Ellenbrook already has the largest Woolworths in Australia but that sort of commercial ugliness is balanced out by 25 percent of the town’s land being set aside for conservation and recreation areas. The new houses come with free bicycles; optimistically in order the residents make the most of these facilities.
But for Seath and Nicole, Kaelene is here just when they need to think about all the practical things that a well-practiced mother (and mother-in-law) with expert knowledge of homes and gardens has. Colours, light fittings, number and location of power points, landscaping and all of that sort of stuff. The prospects are high for many a trip to the site and probably every decorators shop in Western Australia; and just for practice we found and cased out with military precision the Perth Ikea store within hours of arrival.
It is too early to report on the Australian people, we aren’t sure we’ve seen any given the high Kiwi population, but we have discovered, or been discovered by the West Australian flies. These persistent things like to land and crawl in and around moist parts of the human body. Nostrils, ears and mouth are all like little oases from the hot, dry desert. We had lunch the other day with Fiona at a place called Mandurah (pronounced by everyone but Kate as Mandra) and this seemed typical; as we ate outdoors enjoying the picturesque view over a promenade and the town’s river, the flies engaged in a full-on battle for supremacy over the food, like kamikaze dive bombers even following forks full of tucker into our mouths. No-one else seemed to notice the flies and as we ineffectively tried to swipe and swat them away Fiona just laughed and assured us we needed to get used to them. Maybe that’s how we can distinguish the Australians; those who nonchalantly spit out the flies as they chew on their barbequed chops.

A reluctant departure
This was a trap for the inexperienced, landing in Kuala Lumpur without money, reliant as usual on airport ATMs for the cash needed to get safely to our hotel and to pay such incidentals as the bill, in this case at an establishment without credit card facilities. We joined the queue at the money machine, and watched as everyone’s hopes for a wad of Ringgit, the local currency, were dashed. The same at four more machines, it turns out that in Malaysia ATMs go offline between midnight and 1.30am for routine maintenance and whatever else might be needed. There were some troubled people around, but we presumed rightly that our hotel would be tolerant of us cashless souls, at least for until morning.
To call ours a hotel was something of a misnomer. Booked over the internet as a modestly priced four star establishment with pool, complimentary breakfast and wireless internet close to the airport, the Jawadene turned out to be more a large private residence and something we would associate more as a guest house or B & B than a hotel. Nevertheless, it was rather good, beautifully furnished with exquisite Burmese, Indonesian and Japanese furnishings. Run and owned by a former US Marine and his wife, this was elegance itself and certainly not the place you could stumble around after a night’s binge drinking. That may have been the reason it did not have a bar.
Our plans for a relaxed day around the pool recuperating from our holiday in Phuket were dashed; an unfortunate consequence of staying in a place like this is that it always feels a little like you are intruding in someone else’s home. It just doesn’t feel right to wander around half naked and it didn’t help that the sun refused to shines as well.
Still, Walter and Janet were very conscientious hosts and one of the services they provide is to drop off and pick up guests from the local train station, Salak Tinngi. An exceptionally good public transport system got us within a short distance of the KL Tower, although it could be imagined that Kaelene cursed Marty as he took her cross country through a steeply-sloped urban jungle and below a family of deranged, threatening monkeys from the station to the tower. A taxi would have been easier. Still, the tower, at 420 metres above sea level provided a commanding view over Kuala Lumpur, even if the weather darkened the skyline and reduced visibility to a minimum, but not too much for us to spy, at the base of the tower, the ubiquitous logo of the Hard Rock Café. We knew in an instant where we would be having dinner (The 11th HRC we have been to on this trip).
By the time we returned to ground zero, the dark clouds had delivered their promised storm and it was for an hour at least that we sat downstairs in a half-ordinary place drinking tea and writing postcards, an old-fashioned practice in the electronic age of instant communication.
Entry to the tower came with complimentary ride in a simulated formula one car around a digital racetrack, a pony ride for those under 50kg and a look inside something called animal world. Of the three all we managed were the animals, and what an interesting experience. Pythons and other snakes (including albinos), tarantulas and a variety of inhospitable spidery things and big goanna-like lizards. Then, outdoors, a huge McCaw, not to be mistaken with the All Black captain, this one of vivid blue and yellow.
Back down the hill, the Hard Rock Café was up to the expected standards although something has intrigued us about our visits to their various cafes around the world. At a number during the earlier part of our journey we filled in customer review questionaires, the reward for doing so a $US5 voucher to be redeemed at participating cafes. It seemed however that every subsequent café was not a participating one: Cairo, two in Singapore, Bangkok and then KL.
Next day we took advantage of Walter and Janet’s hospitality to drop us at the train station and then pick us up again later and transport us, with bags, to the LCCT, the Low Cost Carriers’ Terminal, for our reluctant departure from Asia. In the meantime we crammed in a bit more of KL this time the Petronas Towers (although by early afternoon all the tickets to go up and view the city had gone) and a huge shopping mall within its lower levels and then on to Chinatown, the latter of which is not a patch on its Singapore equivalent.
That done, and with more rain, it was clearly time to head to the airport and await our Air Asia flight to Perth, a city and culture dangerously close to home. So dangerously close that we looked at the departure boards for Phuket and pondered just getting on the next plane and heading back.

Doctor Fish
Bond, James Bond. The big bloke from Birmingham on our long-tailed boat was fulfilling an almost-lifelong ambition to be on the island off Phang Nga in the Gulf of Thailand where the 1974 movie, The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed. His surname is Bond, but better, his father’s name James Bond and he couldn’t resist visiting the family’s namesake territory. Officially re-named James Bond Island, it is one of a series of rocky outcrops in the gulf which rise dramatically from the sea and make this area eerily stunning. Spooky enough that the producers saw fit to have the island home to a Bond villain, this time Francisco Scaramanga; they always pick places where deep in the earth, under a huge, dramatic natural feature there is sufficient bad-power to blow up the world. Bond and the beautiful heroine (this time, Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight) usually end up trapped, facing death, then escape, killing the villains and, in the process, blowing up the island, all the while making the world safe again. An intoxicating formula, we had to go there, not only because the area is now a regular tourist haunt, but also because we had seen these limestone projections from the sea on our earlier flight to Samui and were intrigued.
Earlier in the day, a group of Russian tourists became quite concerned when the guide on our Sim’s twilight tour said we were going to a cave temple controlled by the Mafia. The Russians failed to grasp the rest of his explanation, that the mob in control was of rabid monkeys who plague tourist for food and bite the occasional one that annoys them. His warning to be careful of the monkeys was taken as a more sinister caution than intended by this group who, we think, wanted to get off the bus there and then and walk home rather than be exposed to this particular mob. The guide, a very comical Thai, reassured them patiently that this was just his sense of humour but they still looked unconvinced.
We stopped later at what was described as a sea gypsy village, Koh Pannyi, although the guide quite rightly thought this misnamed since these people stayed put living in this village built entirely on stilts above the water. It is a traditional fishing town, a Muslim one, the occupants of which now make their living also through tourism. And they start young judging by the kids that sold Kaelene postcards she didn’t want and the ladyboy who posed with Marty, this time with a monkey on each shoulder, each (the monkeys that is) trying to supplement their earnings by pick-pocketing.
If the twilight tour was the formal sightseeing, the motorbike was its informal counter. Our backsides were battered black and blue exploring the northern part of Phuket, the western beaches right up to the remote Mai Khao in the north, to an exquisite Chinese furniture and picture gallery in the middle of nowhere, the little towns along the coast and the big new tourist developments, past rubber trees and an anteater and up hills that our little bike could barely make to the top. There is no insurance for motorbikes in Thailand and, despite that, we western tourists ignore formal advice and good sense and hire them by the thousand. And by the dozens it seems there are tourists hobbling around on crutches with bandaged arms and legs, which all goes to show the consequence of ignoring wise counsel. Perhaps our only disappointment was being waved on at a roadblock where the revenue-gathering traffic police were checking the licenses and helmets of tourists. After being fined 300 Baht on our last visit, we wanted to be able to smugly produce all of the correct credentials this time, but it was not to be.
Our motorbike-bruised and weary bodies didn’t go without treatment, we’ve discussed the sublime nature of Thai oil massage before and we indulged again, almost every day (our recommendation for intending travelers is The Mango Tree at the southern end of Rat u Thit Road), but the novelty this time was doctor fish, a treatment where little fish called Garra Rufa nibble on your lower limbs clearing them of dead and diseased skin (as if we had any). Rather than bite, these little things hoover away the affected areas leaving tingly fresh, smooth skin. Our legs and feet were obviously in poor condition as our tank full had a field day, whereas they took barely an interest in the disappointed couple dipping into the next tank. It is quite an unusual experience feeling these creatures working their way up your legs, banging into the soles of feet and having a good old crack at the stubborn bits of dead flesh.
Along with those treatments there are the manicures, pedicures and face cleansing (yes, they mine all that pimple juice from clogged facial pores), and it is all so unbelievably good and inexpensive that we looked at our departure tickets and pondered a visa run and returning, never to leave again. And we have made a few reckless promises; after a farewell barbeque at the Kiwi bar (after which Tiggy closed early so the staff could come to Rock City and hang out with us), we have promised to find husbands for five of the girls and then to buy the neighbouring bar to keep them all employed, and we’ve also accepted the invitation of Mr Kit, the taxi driver at the Andatel Hotel, to return in January and visit his family somewhere in remote rural Thailand.
The final anecdote should be about our friend, Bathhurst John. He doesn’t talk about it, but he was in Patong when the Boxing Day tsunami hit in 2004. He credits his being alive today to a night’s drinking at the Andatel after which, instead of going home to bed (at another hotel by the beach), he wandered down to the shoreline and saw the dramatic emptying out of the sea from the bay prior to the big waves rolling in. Realising something was terribly amiss as the first wave started to appear in the distance, he turned and headed for higher ground and made it. His hotel room was smashed to smithereens and had he been in bed, he would undoubtedly been among the casualties. There were 260 killed, 1100 injured and 700 reported missing on Phuket.

Wanted, men with good hearts
There is a view that Australia is the lucky country, but it could equally be Thailand such is the exceptionally good fortune of many of the young women who live here. Where else in the world could stunningly attractive, petite young things form liaisons with particularly undesireable types of Western men? The big oxen-like ones with ample bellys hanging out from of the fronts of beer-brand tee shirts, the best of them with shaved heads and grossly tattooed skulls and spider-webbed elbows the withered old decrepit ones wearing roman sandals with socks pulled up over skinny white legs which have snuck out from under hideous, short shorts, the lecherous men of our age who should know better than to have ponytails and gold chains around their necks and then there are the plain old larrikins out to have a good old time. We watch them, these lucky girls, as they look bored rigid while some self-important nonentity tells them the generally unlucky but detailed story of their life in a language the women can barely understand. How lucky can they be to be towed around all day after these men?
Where else but in Thailand could such eye-catching women have their backsides slapped and be groped in bars, be leered at and have these men dribble over them in public displays of lust -as if to show the world that, even though they cannot attract a woman at home, they are kings here and spoiled for choice? The exceptionally lucky of these women can even display love bites as temporary souvenirs of just how much these men like and care for them. Truly they are blessed.
But not all Thai women are so fortunate. We have been given the task of finding nice husbands for the owner and four of the staff at the Kiwi bar we call our own. Only Pons and Saw are not on the lookout, they currently have boyfriends, but it seems the criteria for the others is quite simple. They want men with good hearts who will be kind and look after them. For most, the money doesn’t really matter, but even so it may be a tall order.
Two are over forty and so they think not even the geriatric tourist are interested in them, although the twice-previously-married owner, Tiggy, has currently got an Australian with a mad keen crush on her. He texts her incessantly with proposals of a life together but she tells us, for all she knows, he could be an axe murderer, and she’s not having that. She wants someone over the age of forty-five, and definitely not one of these young ones who just want sex all the time!
It was an interesting discussion, another of the women has been previously reported on this blog as in a lesbian relationship with the Australian woman we met, and we raised this as a slight but potential complication to securing a husband. Not so, we were assured that Thai women are 10 percent lesbian or 10 percent of them are lesbian, we are not quite sure which, but in any case, the Australian woman has gone home and our Thai friend revealed that she would prefer a husband if at all possible.
Many of these youngish women (the youngest at our bar is twenty-eight) come from the country and from poor backgrounds, and most have children being looked after by others. Tiggy’s two boys live in Bangkok with their father, Na has two boys somewhere, Ione two sons and Pons two daughters who live with their respective parents and Kid has one who lives with hers. Theirs is a tough life, they open the bar each day at 10.00 am and close when the last customer goes or when they are so bored they can’t hang on a moment longer. The town is so quiet at the moment that almost no-one drinks at their end of town, but the women still get only one day off each a month. All proudly show us photos of their children, Ione says she sees hers (aged four and two) only about twice a year and she cries at missing them so much.
Now a seasoned agony aunt, Kaelene lent a sympathetic air to Kid, one of the original staff from our earlier visit. She and two others crashed their motorbike (yes, three to a bike is legal here) into a tuk tuk, injuring them quite badly and causing 6000 Baht worth of damage. At less than $300 New Zealand, that may not seem a lot of money, but for a Thai in the hospitality industry it is the better part of a month’s wages. Kaelene’s young friend has been recuperating with family near Chang Mai, but is now back and almost ready again for work. Saw, our other friend who was in the accident has a rich boyfriend at the moment and so she has been away holidaying; aside from one brief appearance, we’ve not seen sight of her.
As for us, it may be that a life of indolence is drawing to an end. Instead of boogieing on Bangla Street, Marty spent Sunday night editing photos and uploading them onto the internet site of a top-draw London publisher; phot-editing may be the beginning of a new career but just in case it is not, it is to Kuala Lumpur on Friday and then on to Perth for our first look at Western Australia.

Dirty money
There are some interesting things to be learned from talking to complete strangers. How many Sandhurst-educated former Gurkhas does one expect to meet in a lifetime, let alone one who played for the UK Armed Forces team against the 1967 All Blacks? Marking Waka Nathan and losing by only 14 points to four in the transitional days when the value of tries had inflated from three points to four, but had not reached the pinnacle of five. We were at The Shack in Fisherman’s Village, Bophut, Samui , billed by Jade as the best restaurant in the world, run by a self-described short, Jewish, ex-pat New Yorker Larry Snyder who has a splendid taste for blues music and even better one in food. Larry is one of those people who visited Samui, en route to Christchurch believe it or not, and never left, a true character who impressed us all night with music we might and did like, such as a version of the Rolling Stones' Honky Tonk Woman by Ronnie Wood and Muddy Waters, and too many drinks we shouldn’t have liked but did. As an example to other children it should be noted that the evening was Jade’s treat, and even though she wanted us to try the Wagu steak, we had become used to paying around $NZ5 each for a meal and couldn’t bring ourselves to let her fork out 1750 Baht or $NZ72 each for a main. The Australian rib eye at a third the price was sufficient, particularly after garlic prawns as a starter.
But back to our former Gurkha, John Birt; he has been in Samui for thirty years and around Asia all his life and we argued all night over almost everything, and it was only at the very end, after Larry had shuttered up the restaurant and put out the milk bottles (always a hint that it’s time to go) that he revealed his rugby playing past. We google-checked him and found him described as well-known on the island and occasionally outspoken. That was a positive so was the report that the company he owns has signed a commitment for the implementation of a code of conduct for the protection of children from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism, which involves an active commitment to the fight against child prostitution and trafficking.
Getting to The Shack revealed much about local transport. There are no Tuk Tuks here or proper buses, public transportation is by songthhaew, canopied red pickup trucks with form benches on the back facing each other. Then there are the yellow and red metered taxis, and the story goes that when the meters were installed (as a result of tourists complaints about erratic charging practices) they were set to Bangkok prices which are ridiculously cheap and so the drivers refused to turn on their meters. Agreement was eventually reached that there would be a 90 Baht flagfall charge meaning that drivers could earn a reasonable living. Our experience, however, was that it was just the same as Phuket, a price agreed through the good, old-fashioned art of haggling.
Usually taxis do not attract much attention, but the arrival of one at our hotel from Pattaya did so, particularly when three Middle Eastern men got out clutching briefcases. Pattaya is 550 kilometers away as the crow flies but by road it involves a drive around the Gulf of Thailand and a ferry trip, and an estimated minimum 10,000 baht ($NZ400) fare. These men, our breakfast waiter told us in quite an animated fashion were likely to be runners for the mafia, here to wash the money. At length he described the laundering process and the hotels owned by the Mafia for such purpose but we decided not to verify the accuracy of his account with the men involved. Like good voyeurs, however, we watched them as they went about their business over the next couple of days.
It may be that airports are not a riveting topic, but this visit to Samui would not be complete without a better description of the facility than in earlier comment. Set among lush tropical gardens, the arrival and departure lounges are all open plan, our departure point like a hotel lobby with cane seats, settees and coffee tables, televisions, free Wi-Fi, newspapers and a courtesy corner with fruit juices and savories. To get to departures from the check in area requires a walk down a beautiful tree-lined boulevard for about 500 metres with shops and restaurants. Once through a very relaxed security gate there is another walk through gardens, past lily ponds and a few more shops. We read that Bangkok Airways built the facility after the government or local authorities refused to come to the party, and it is a credit to them. Having visited and grown sick of more airports than we care to remember in the last year, our unshakable conclusion is that this is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best airport we have been in, so good that the island’s local jazz festival was held there recently. Perhaps we might just stay there on our next visit.
It was our practice early on in our journey to try and master a few phrases in the local language, but after about Hungary it all became too much and we gave up. Not so in Thailand, armed with Kaelene’s birthday gift to Marty, a book and CD phrase guide, we’ve learned some very elementary stuff, and so it was a boost to Marty’s ego to be told that he speaks Thai with an accent rather than that his attempts were completely unntelligible.

The surrogate grandmother
We may not have found smoking monkeys but this would be a pretty close second best. An old-fashioned animal show, a delight to the insensible; a dancing elephant, performing monkeys and snarling crocodiles; all we missed were the cycling parrots and charmed snakes, but what a reason to return. The Namuang Safari Park has it all, and worth every Baht, including the cost of the blown motorcycle tyre getting there. It would be years since such spectacles were considered unacceptable in New Zealand, a monkey strutting across the stage in orange and blue silks with bright yellow electric guitar doing the Chuck Berry duck walk, a gorgeous, pouting female singer in lime green frock and Grace Jones haircut, face rouged and lips made up (no animals were used in the manufacture of these products), a knife fighting one and then his twirling of the flaming baton. Another jumped through a hoop in which knives were embedded, but we were assured, we know not why, the knives were of soft plastic. Excellent stuff, these were not your snarling, feral creatures and the show would not have been complete without the dressed baby especially for surrogate grandmothers to pose with. The only disappointment, the park guides would not agree to even a posed photo with a dressed monkey smoking. Killjoys.
If the monkeys were fun, then the crocodiles could have been deadly. After paying good money to dangle a chicken carcass and watch their snapping, menacing reaction, we could only be impressed with the four Thais who hopped into a cage with about twenty of the things, big ones too, and performed a range of daredevil feats such as putting their heads inside the crocs’ mouths and then, interestingly, putting a 100 Baht note right down the throat of what appeared as a very nasty one and then retrieving the same note. This is true, arms stretched right down the gullet and, it these are not mechanical reptilian lookalikes, it must be that they hypnotise them because from the quick and unpleasant reactions we saw to their being handled, they certainly weren’t tranquilised.
These acts had followed an elephant that did handstands, walked on its hind legs, played soccer and then the harmonica and had a repertoire with the hula hoop. Impressive, but if there could be a surrogate grandmother to a baby monkey, so too could there be an old papa to a tiger cub and the photos were duly taken. Each at a cost of course.
A week in Koh Samui is drawing to an end all too fast. A jeep hire took us on a circumnavigation of the 247 square kilometer island, to a butterfly farm where probably the plant foliage was more impressive than the butterflies, along the south coast where it seems few tourist venture and then up the west and across the north where the rich and people like our Jade hang out (she’s a regular). Here are the flash restaurants with western prices, the big golden Buddha at Wat Prah Yai , between 12 and 17 metres high depending on which authority you believe, Wat Leam Suwanaram with its fat white Buddha statue and several others and beautiful temples (this was brilliantly impressive but there is almost no information about it), a gold and white temple tucked away in a remote part of the south and then Buddha’s Secret Garden. This garden with a stunning collection of stone sculptures, is so secret that it’s almost impossible to find in the hills and, when you do get there, it has a different name altogether. Such is Thailand.
There were things, disappointingly, we didn’t find. The buffalo-fighting and Buddha’s Footprints which, although we searched the area, were not to be found. A subsequent reading of another guide book told us that the sight is not marked and not really where we were looking. The national marine park was closed for a month's detox and our proposed substitute long-tail boat trip from Bang Thong Krut snorkeling on a southern reef and swimming and sunbathing on a remote island, abandoned because of rough weather. We didn’t go to the full moon party on Koh Phangan, mostly because up to 10,000 young people, mainly Australians, go there and party all night long. A nearby resort has a disclaimer on its website apologizing in advance for any disruption caused by the monthly ocassion, saying that it has no control over events organized by others.
Bt chance we came upon the festival of Loy Krathong, a time when Thai people pay respects to the Goddess of Water by floating candles and joss-sticks on little flower-covered floats in the waterways. We sat and watched for hours as locals came to the local lake and set off lanterns (these hot air lanterns about 4 foot high in which the air is heated by small paraffin lamps) and launch their Krathongs. These are the delights that those behind the walls of resort hotels often miss and they are the worse for it. But, while performing monkeys may not cut the mustard with accepted Kiwi practices, then neither would the sign held by the young woman from whom Kaelene brought a trinket. It explained that she, the woman that is, was completely dumb (as in the sense of not being able to speak) and would be grateful of our support.

The rot sets in
It promised to be the fight of the century, or at least “the worlds (sic) most devastating martial art contest” if the advertising was to be believed. Billed as a night of combat, Collin from the USA was to be tested against Thailand's Ponchai, and the question of whether Koh Samui's 100 pound superboy, Kansak, could beat Jingjodum, his equivalent from Bangkok, would be answered. This was Muay Thai or Thai boxing, Thailand's national sport and Friday night’s bouts at Petchbuncha stadium, Chaweng Beach, are as "super and real fight for the greatest of the year", whatever that might be. Since our arrival in Koh Samui utility wagons have constantly circled the streets loudly broadcasting advertisements for the fights, urging patrons to get there early for the best seats. And if these announcements weren’t already heavy enough, a long tail boat has been running parallel to the shoreline with speakers blaring out the same message. "Tonight, tonight, be there earlier, be there earlier."
We won't be there, despite the stadium being less than 200 metres from our hotel in what appears to be a less than salubrious pocket of town. It's nestled in Soi Reggae which, along with Sois Solo and Mango, is described in the pocket map guide as an adult’s area. If bars with names such as Position 69, 2 Hot 4 U, French Kiss, Thai Smile, Fun Angels, New Teasers, Sexy Nights, Snatch and Harem Bar don't give away their purpose, then the girls that call out to entice patrons in leave little to the imagination. Perhaps fortunately for us the areas is described as busiest between 3.00am and 7.00am, well after our bedtime, although Marty has warned Kaelene that if he wakes in the wee small hours and finds her not there, he will know exactly where she is.
This is Koh Samui, Thailand's third largest island, much smaller and quieter than Phuket and to the surprise of some Australian passengers its airport capable of handing only propeller powered passenger aircraft; that is aside from the executive jets of the rich, one of which landed just behind us. From their reactions to the sight of our Bangkok Airways ATR it would appear that Australians would have you believe they have never seen anything smaller than a Jumbo jet, but those of us who have seen Flying Doctors and other cerebrally important Australian television know this not to be the case.
But back to the airport, it is quite cute with gardens and flowers and open-plan, single story buildings, and it is very laid back. The planes pull up hundreds of metres from the terminal and, instead of air bridges, colorful, oversize golf carts pull up to transport passengers to the arrivals lounge. A bit like at Napier or Invercargill airports, a small tractor then pulls the baggage wagons in and, once the free-for-all of retrieval is over, it is off to your hotel, in our case at Chaweng, via a well organized greeting and taxi system. Nothing is left to chance.
Rather than stay up late and frequent the girlie bars we have been on the tourist trail, what promised to be a four hour around the island programme extended to six in what could be considered a very good value but curious mix of sights. Firstly, a formation at Hin Ta Hin Yai called the grandmother and grandfather rocks, legend having it that an old couple was shipwrecked in the bay and died; their bodies washed ashore leaving this outcrop in their memory. In reality, it is a particularly graphic collection, each one obvious, the postcards on sale leaving nothing to the imagination short of a speculum and torch to look further between the grandmother’s legs.
From there what was billed a monkey show. We have been on the lookout, keenly so, for a smoking monkey, reports have it that there are such shows in Thailand, but what we saw was a monkey being used to harvest coconuts. These are your classic bad-tempered, red-bummed, nasty pieces of work that would infect you with rabies as quick as look at you, this one having a carefully aimed spiteful crack at the tour guide. But he, the monkey, not the guide, did climb the tree, throw coconuts at anyone he could see and then come down to perch on peoples’ arms for the photo shoot This was an exact science, one false move we were told and the monkey would tear you to shreds.
If that was strange, the next was bizarre, the mummified monk at Khunnaram Temple who went into the big sleep some thirty years ago while in the meditation position. At some time, presumably before he died, he insisted that his remains not be burned but kept at the temple and he now sits, still in the meditation position, protected in a glass cage. Without any embalming treatment, it would be fair to say that the rot has set in; his eyes fell out at some point, so this saffron-robed monk is now adorned with a pair of no doubt designer-copy sunglasses - the irony being that visitors have to remove theirs. It’s not really a pretty sight; while he may have some hair, fingernails and leathery old skin left, one arm looks as though it is tuning to dust as if he has succumbed to leprosy.
If the bars in Chaweng are named to give some idea of their purpose, then some restaurants may be named to show that the locals have a sense of humour: Sum Ting Wong, Thai Me Up, En Thai Sing, Soon Fatt, and then there was the Vagina Tandoori. What could that be about?