Travel Diaries: Thailand Revisited pt.3
This entry is NOT sponsored by Bet365 - the world’s favourite online betting company.
I firmly believe that the notion of having a bet is a wonderful thing. One can put actual money on their opinion of an outcome, and make a profit if they’re correct. It’s unlike anything else - there’s few other things in the world that can pay you for just… being right. It’s the ultimate pastime. It’s sensational, entertaining, exhilarating, and like many other sensational, entertaining and exhilarating things, it’s addictive.
And it’s for that reason (and I assume that reason only), that it’s so bloody hard to place a bet in South East Asia. Even playing around with private browsers and VPNs, it’s difficult. The only Coral you’ll find here is in the sea (good joke), and the only Ladbrokes you’ll find is a lad who broke a beer bottle by accident (not a good joke).
I like having a bet, I’ll be the first to admit it. Sorry Mum, I know you don’t like it, but I do, and when myself, Mia, Eden, Dylan and James reunited one evening to attend our first Muay Thai fight, I had a bright idea…
The day after being robbed by that bastard monkey, we set out for Blanco’s Hostel, which had been recommended to us by someone (I can’t remember who). Apparently it was a social place with a nice pool, and was generally where the party was at on Koh Lanta. We arrived and found a packed pool with absolutely no room for three more people, so had to rethink our plans. I spotted some glistening blue water through a gap in the fence next door, and upon closer inspection, discovered a tranquil swimming pool belonging to the accommodation adjacent to Blanco’s, boasting three empty sun loungers. We were going to sneak in, but whilst walking past reception, bottled it, and instead did the ethically and morally right thing - we politely asked if we could use their pool in return for spending money at the bar, to which they duly obliged.
The pool was like a warm bath (honestly, you could’ve poached an egg in there), and was far from refreshing. Therefore, the only option was to do as we’d promised to reception, and buy shit loads of beer. Fast-forward a couple of hours, and I found myself speaking to a middle-aged, French wine expert named Alexandre. He had an awful lot to say about wine and was so stereotypically French, but all in all he was a pleasant chap.
Tipsy and sun kissed, we had a wander back next door to Blanco’s to see what the atmosphere was like there, as we’d pretty much scared everyone away from the pool we were at, by drunkenly playing Who Am I? at excessive volume.
We found the staff at Blanco’s to be advertising a pub quiz that night. After our recent horrific experience in Ao Nang with the last quiz, we were reluctant to take part, but signed up anyway. There was, as there so often is, a prize for the best team name. There were some good ones, notably “Quizlamic Extremists” and “Shooting Blancos”, but we won the Best Team Name Prize for our extremely witty and sacrilegious “Crystal Methodist Church”. We were rewarded with a couple of nondescript shots, which had a much higher sugar content level than they did alcohol.
During the quiz, we got chatting to some Mancunians who were coincidentally part of the arsehole brigade at the last pub quiz in Ao Nang. They had adopted a lad from Cornwall who was solo travelling, who introduced himself as Beans.
“Beans?” I asked, confused. “That’s your name?”
“Well, no,” he replied. “My names Macauley, but,” and shrugged.
If I was called Macauley, I’d probably nickname myself after a full English breakfast component, too. Luckily, I’m called Kai, but if I was Christened as Macauley, I’d probably nickname myself Mushroom or Black Pudding, although the latter could be taken the wrong way by some people.
The next morning, hungover and wearing an invisible bronze medal from the previous night’s quiz, we left the Lemonade Inn to go to the beach, and on our way out, we spotted a rather large lizard in reception. The owner of the guesthouse noticed our admiration, and once we’d got halfway out of the door, called us back as she’d managed to catch it. As she gripped it tightly and proudly to give us a closer look, the lizard bent it’s neck in a fascinating fashion, and bit hard down on the receptionist’s hand. She winced, but chuckled through the pain as we stood perplexed, wondering why the hell she’d grabbed the poor thing. It’s hard to tell which grip was stronger; the woman’s index finger and thumb round it’s neck as if trying to pop a spot, or the creature’s bite. In order to get the lizard off her hand, she swung her arm up and back down again, as if in slow motion, but with great power and determination, absolutely choke slamming that shit. It splatted on the floor with a bang, before erratically scurrying away under a sofa. The receptionist giggled like a school girl, as we stood in the same position, now even more freaked out, worrying for our physical safety and scared that we’d get the same treatment should we fail to return the towels we’d rented.
After sunbathing for the majority of the day, we apprehensively headed back to the Lemonade Inn to get changed. We’d received word from James and Dylan that they’d arrived on Koh Lanta safely, so made arrangements to meet at the Williams Boxing Stadium at around eight o’clock that evening. The flyers and posters advertising the event that were scattered around the island displayed a collage of faces - faces which would be black and blue come midnight, for these were the combatants fighting for glory in the ring. The leaflet displayed six pairs of fighters, with match-ups involving children as young as eight or nine.
It’s the national sport of Thailand, the gear and merchandise is available to purchase on every corner, and they absolutely live and breathe for kicking the shit out of each other. I don’t know anything about combat sports, I’m not one of those people who stays up until the early hours to watch the big MMA fight, or keeps up-to-date with which boxer has slagged the other off. It’s never interested me.
But wow - let me be frank when I say that this event absolutely captivated me from start to finish. It’s easy to forget that it’s a sport when you’re watching two people purposely try to inflict as much pain on each other as physically possible. Even with the referee in the ring with them, there still didn’t seem to be any rules or regulations. They were proper going at it, even in the first fight between two little boys who were probably born whilst I was doing my GCSEs. At some point between now and then, these young lads had been trained and nurtured into being absolute warriors, and I… I’d tossed it off at university and doubled my weight through alcohol and takeaways.
I was mesmerised. Particularly during the third fight, which consisted of a young Thai lad and a Swedish kid called Leon. The latter’s entourage was recognisable by their distinctive bleach blonde hair, and they cheered and screamed and bayed for blood as he bashed this little local boy around the ring like the teddies I used to wrestle with when I was his age. The ref declared him the winner after three rounds, and he celebrated by doing a kart-wheel and back flip in front of his fans. There were about eighty people in the stadium, but it must’ve felt to him like eighty-thousand. I’d never seen such a celebration of individualism, not that I could remember anyway, and it made me envious. I’d fallen short somewhere, and I wanted a piece of the action. I’d let myself go, and had a desire to make up for lost time. It was at that point I decided that I’m going to become a professional Muay Thai boxer once we’ve finished travelling.
As the night went on, the combatants got older, and the fights got more competitive. It was only when the first pair of adults started scrapping that I introduced my bright idea to Dylan.
“Who are you backing in this one, then?” I asked as the opponents were performing their pre-fight ritual around the ring.
“Blue gloves I reckon,” he replied.
“I’ll have 100 Baht on red then,” I said as I extended my hand to shake on the deal.
With eyebrows raised, he smirked and shook on it. The blue lad got absolutely pummelled, and Dylan had paid me out before the end of round two. Having a bet is one thing, but winning is something else.
But, what goes up must come down, so they say, and I lost the 100 Baht on the next fight. Despite only being the equivalent of £2.25, I was devastated, and it was all or nothing going into the last scrap.
It was a beyond entertaining spectacle. My pick was getting battered for the first two rounds, and with about forty seconds left on the clock, he completely turned it round in my favour with a ruthless elbow knockout. Dylan paid for my supper that evening, as we made a celebratory snack stop at 7-Eleven on the way home.
I’m sure there’ll be a fair few people reading this who couldn’t think of a worse way to spend £18, i.e. the elderly and/or the faint-hearted (hi Nanna), but it may serve as a consolation that this event, and all the others that happen three or four times a week across Thailand, are so community driven. Whole villages come to the stadium to watch their stars fight, there’s no gender discrimination, and the children play a huge part in the entertainment, too. Not just the ones who fight, but the ones who jump into the ring in between rounds to pour water over the boxer’s heads and give them some motivational instructions. I can imagine them going to school on the Monday after, and saying to their classmates, “I jumped into the ring and gave him a pep talk!”
The following morning we found ourselves packed into the back of a tuk-tuk again, en route to the pier. We were seated with a Polish lady, a German couple and a French pair, like some watered down version of the Treaty of Versailles. It’s one of my favourite things about travelling - listening to the different languages and accents and trying to guess where people are from.
We boarded the boat to Koh Phi Phi and I spent the journey considering what my walk-out music would be for when I become a professional fighter. I couldn’t split two options, and narrowed it down to the quintessentially English folk song “Greensleeves”, or “Numb (Encore)” by Linkin Park.
We arrived on Koh Phi Phi to find everything we’d anticipated a Thai island to be like before we came. It was beautiful, bright white sandy beaches sat at the bottom of kelly green tree-covered mountains, which cut through the bright blue sky. It looked like a beautiful misshaped warp of the flag of Uzbekistan (I’m really proud of that description, Google the flag if confused).
We rejected the offers from locals to have our bags carried, and instead lugged them ourselves through the cobbled alleyways of Phi Phi town to our hostel, the Happy Hostel. The Happy Hostel had uncharacteristically made us very unhappy just a couple of hours prior, by sending me a WhatsApp message before we boarded the boat to let me know that the price displayed on booking.com is actually incorrect, and was in fact double. I gave them an earful (or eyeful as it was over WhatsApp), but reluctantly agreed to keep the booking and pay the difference, as our options were very limited.
The hostel itself was ok. It was relatively clean but had only just opened, and I got the impression that the staff were just making do with what they had, instead of opening once everything was actually ready. The accommodation also housed the Phi Phi Booze Cruise company, which was personified by a muscly, Brummie salesman, who sat at the front of the hostel all day saying:
“Oi gorgeous gals, what you doing tomorrow? Fancy joining us on our unlimited drinks boat trip? We go to all six islands it’s gonna be mega!”
Despite actually being a guest there and chatting to him several times, he mistakingly tried selling me the boat trip on numerous occasions, as if he was just in auto-pilot mode with his sales speech.
That evening, Villa were playing away to Preston North End in the quarter-final of the FA Cup. We parked ourselves on a high table at the Dubliner Irish Pub next to the only other Villa fan on Koh Phi Phi, and watched them cruise to a 3-0 victory. At half-time, however, before Marcus Rashford had opened the scoring, I received a tap on my shoulder.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Asked a chap in his fifties with silver spiked hair and a Kiwi accent. “Is this a big game here on TV?”
“Well, I suppose so, yes,” I replied. “It is to me anyway, my team is playing.”
“Right, and who’s your team?”
“Aston Villa, the ones in claret and blue.”
“Right, I see,” he said, nodding. “This is the Premier League, right?”
“No, no. This is the FA Cup.”
He looked at me half-confused, and I got the impression he unashamedly knew nothing about football.
“Are you from New Zealand?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“So you’ll know your rugby league then?”
“Sure.”
“Well this is essentially football’s version of the Challenge Cup,” I explained. “It’s a domestic knockout competition.”
We eventually introduced ourselves after talking sport. He was Steve from Auckland, accompanied by his son, Trae, roughly my age, who was an amateur kick-boxer, looking to do some training in Thailand. It may come as no surprise that I kept my future fighting ambitions to myself.
They were a great pair, Steve particularly was full of anecdotes and stories, and by the end of the match, I even had him singing some Villa songs. He worked in the restaurant business, and he stressed that should I ever be looking for some work or a meal in Auckland, I should give him a call.
We had a couple of nights left on Koh Phi Phi, and we wouldn’t have been able to say we’d been had we not visited the famous Reggae Bar. Anyone who’s been to South Thailand will know about it - it’s the island’s main spectacle, a breeding ground for wankers, and probably the only bar in the world which actually *encourages* fighting…
The Reggae Bar doubles as a Muay Thai stadium, with a boxing ring taking up the majority of the floor space in the centre. Around the edges of the ring sit tables and benches, occupied by drunk tourists, who are invited to adorn some gloves and a head guard, and spend three rounds scrapping someone of a similar size. The prize for the winner? A free cocktail bucket and a massive ego boost.
We spent a good couple of hours watching people of all sizes and nationalities try to give a good account of themselves. Some of the combatants evidently had some fighting experience, some however, did not - and they were often the most amusing. We sat comfortably a few metres away from the luxury of our table, criticising and analysing the fights like combat sports pundits would, laughing and baying for blood. The funniest part, however, was in between rounds, where the fighters’ respective entourages would jump onto the corner of their ring and give their pals a pep talk and a swig of lager, like a drunk, embarrassing, pathetic version of John Fury… or to put it a better way, like John Fury.
An Irishman around my age who had evidently made the most of the cheap cannabis on offer sat beside me, and it didn’t take long for me to strike up a conversation and turn the subject towards betting. Easy target, I thought. Fast forward a few fights, and he’d fleeced me of 300 baht. “Luck of the Irish,” I thought to myself. Winning a bet is one thing, but losing a bet is something different altogether.
The next morning I rose penniless and hungover to the sound of “Oi gorgeous gals, what you doing today?” We were indeed going on a boat trip that day, but not the kind that this guy was selling, as we’d paid about £20 each for a tour of the neighbouring islands, with no alcohol involved. After being instructed to arrive at the meeting point just before two o’clock in the afternoon, we suspected we’d be at sea within twenty minutes. Instead, we were led from pillar to post on the mainland; “go with this staff member to get your wristband… come back this way to get on the boat… wait over there to get on the boat… come this way to get on a different boat because that one’s full…”
Eventually we were sat on a long tail boat in unfavourable weather conditions. I grabbed a seat on the deck beside Fred and Rose from the South West who, despite sharing a striking resemblance, stressed they have absolutely no connection to Fred and Rose West. Fred was a couple of years younger than me, and had just graduated from university in Bristol, his girlfriend Rosie had also just graduated, although coincidentally from Leeds. They were having a big blowout around South East Asia before entering the “real world”, and we soon sparked a brief friendship.
The boat trip was fun. We attended Monkey Beach, a destination that couldn’t have been further from my bucket list given my recent encounter. I had little to worry about though, as the monkeys were all seemingly in bed when we arrived, much to the girls’ disappointment. We then went and visited the Viking Cave, which was a disappointment to us all. Not just because the vikings were all in bed, but also because it was a far from pleasant looking rock structure, and the sea was starting to get even choppier.
We then visited Maya Bay, the filming location for Danny Boyle’s The Beach. Having been ruined by tourists in years gone by (ironic if you’ve ever watched The Beach), the Thai government have now declared it a national park, and have workers patrolling the beach with a megaphone instructing people to get out of the water. You’re not even allowed to stand in it, not even for the perfect photo which, in reality, is the only reason anyone actually goes there.
We sailed around the rocky bay after a couple of portions of fries from the national park’s restaurant, to a portion of the sea we were allowed to swim in. Snorkels equipped, we jumped into the water one by one to find an array of fish all around us. They weren’t the most beautiful looking fish, but it was still an enjoyable experience being surrounded by so many sea creatures of different shapes and sizes. The closest I’d ever come to something like that is having those weird fish nibble the dry skin off your feet, and it was a little bit disconcerting whenever the sailor threw some bread in my direction, causing them all to surround me at once frantically. Whenever I touched one, I cringed a bit, like one does when they’re washing up and touch a bit of wet, soggy food that hadn’t been scraped off of a plate properly.
That evening, we found ourselves having one of the better meals we’d had on the trip so far. Myself, Mia, Eden, Fred and Rosie had all agreed to go for an Indian together, despite only having known each other a couple of hours. Rosie even remarked on that - back home, there’d be no situation where you’d get chatting to someone for a few hours and then invite each other to go out for tea! I enjoyed a mighty fine chicken tikka masala, with some, if I’m honest, average naan bread, washed down with a beer to cement our newfound friendship. Whilst at the dinner table, we arranged to meet up a couple hours later after a shower to go watch some drunk idiots think they’re Frank Bruno at the Reggae Bar, and another night of terrible analysis and laughter ensued.
Our short time on Koh Phi Phi had come to an end. It had been nice, but if we’d had better weather conditions I’m sure it would have been a whole lot nicer. Little did we know, that the weather we considered to be dull on Phi Phi would be nothing compared to what was waiting for us on the relatively undiscovered island of Koh Yao Noi.
After what was a rather dramatic speed boat ride through thunder and lightening through the Andaman Sea, we arrived safely to our next destination at around midday. After disembarking the boat and collecting our luggage in the belting down rain, we hopped into another tuk-tuk and instructed the driver to take us to the Big Hug Home. Off we went through the winding roads of Koh Yao Noi, which were somewhat reminiscent of a very wet Goa. It was noticeably much quieter than any other island we’d visited, not least due to the lack of traffic.
We arrived at our accommodation to find three or four separate wooden shacks on bamboo stilts around a pond. It may not sound like the perfect, isolated retreat for a budding young writer to clear his mind and reset, but believe me, it was. One of the shacks was reception, tended to by a wonderfully kind lady, who promptly showed us to the “boat house” after checking us in. The boat house was where we’d be spending the next couple of nights, it had a kitchen, a couple of beds, a charming lounge area, a bathroom, a resident cat, and a mast. One thing this renovated ship didn’t have was any glass windows, and appeared extremely easily accessible to anyone who had ever practiced rock climbing, mountaineering, or parkour.
“It’s lovely, but it’s a bit open… isn’t it?” Said one of the girls.
I was way too smitten with the aesthetics of the place to really care.
“It’s fine,” I said, reassuringly. “Let’s be honest, what can actually get in here that would hurt us? A snake wouldn’t be able to get in, a crocodile definitely wouldn’t.”
“A human?” Offered Eden.
Even though it looked like the filming location of one of those slapstick horror films, or somewhere you’d see on the news with the headline “INNOCENT BACKPACKERS MURDERED IN THEIR SLEEP”, I dismissed Eden’s fears, and got myself comfortable in the lounge area, which was essentially a blanket on the floor with a table. Not long later, after realising we had no food or water whatsoever, I had a wander towards reception and asked our new host about the possibility of renting some bicycles so that we could go out and get some basic supplies - the idea of solitude on an island is all fine and dandy until you realise you can’t get a takeaway or your Friday big shop delivered.
The guesthouse owner kindly picked out the only three working bicycles out of the five on display, and informed us that one of them had a flat tyre, so we’ll need to go and put some air in it. She waved us off like children going to school as we peddled away in the direction of the island’s only 7-Eleven, and we soon found that we had more than just one flat tyre.
Mia led the way on her bright red children’s bike, which, if belonged to the fleet of vehicles owned by my former employer, Zenith, would be rendered unroadworthy by the wonderfully diverse and hard-working accident management team. Essentially, her brakes didn’t work.
Eden came next in the convoy, pleading with us to slow the pace, as she had pulled the short straw and had the bike with the flat tyre. I was the back marker in the Tour de Koh Yao Noi, and soon found myself at a disadvantage too; not only was my front tyre pissing out air, but my rear one, too.
Despite riding on what were essentially two carrier bags for wheels, we made it work - at least for some of the journey. I’d overtaken Mia and Eden, who were showing a really poor account of themselves. We were about halfway there, when riding along the near deserted roads past more wooden houses on stilts, I looked to my right and into the mangroves. I was met with the piercing gaze of a little family of monkeys, evidently confused, but impressed, as to how or why I was riding a bike with two flat tyres so effortlessly. At first I was excited, and shouted back to the girls “Look! Monkeys!” It was only when I turned back around to face the road ahead of me that I saw the rest of the monkey family, sitting in the road. Blocking my path. Waiting.
“Surely I can peddle faster than a monkey can run” I naively thought to myself. I had two fucking flat tyres, for God’s sake. I also had, as the only male, the responsibility to take care of the girls. Perhaps a rather regressive and traditional view, given that they could look after themselves, but we were in the company of apes, who live and die by the notion of gender hierarchy, and presumably saw me as the alpha. They couldn’t have been more wrong… and to make matters worse, the monkey was a creature I’d omitted from my mind when doing a security inspection of the property we were staying in, deciding what could and couldn’t break in and eat me alive. Suddenly, the rural life didn’t seem quite as appealing as it had done an hour or two earlier.