Amen to the cavemen

Hustling and weaving through the impregnable wall of attentive touts hawking bungalows we force our way out of this flesh prison, birthed unto the Phi Phi islands finally. Bungalow secured, we were keen to explore the hype.

I don’t know a man alive that didn’t see ‘The Beach’ and dream of island paradise, though I was instantly skeptical. To be fair, we had arrived during the wet season, evident in the streets paved with water and, of course, that peculiar moist substance falling from above. Derp. Obvious references aside, it seems there was a pattern developing. Wherever there are too many Western tourists, our vices and exclusion from our societal norms tend to incentivize the locals into situations that don’t benefit them long-term. Again, we could not get a packet of crisps without being accosted by prostitutes, the sea was awash with plastic bottles and walking the streets was a breathe-through-your-mouth exercise.

It’s hard to believe it was only 7 years ago that a tidal wave came through here and washed it all away. Men, women and children, pets and houses. Dreams, or at least memories. Though if you were not told about it you would not know, as it had only taken the industrious Thai’s 3 years before they had rebuilt their infrastructure and begun the upswing back into a tourist hotspot. Now all that was left for us was to judge first impressions for ourselves by becoming part of the problem. We grabbed a few bottles of Thai rum and whiskey and began our experiments.

Thai spirits are an experience unto themselves. They taste like they have been bootlegged in a bathtub out the back of a shack illegally, after Prajuk and his 4 kids have all bathed in it. The 2012 bathtub vintage, a hearty flavor, full of rich aroma and brewed in only the finest Thai porcelain. I swear I seen a pubic hair once, but such testimony cannot be relied upon, with the alcohol content being unregulated in these cheap bottles of muddy delight. Smeared memories, a panorama of echoing laughter, booming bass, sand, strobes and sexuality, plus the insecure feeling of not knowing where my pants had gone.

We didn’t meet too many people we didn’t already know in Phi Phi, despite the heaving droves of drunken youth in a dizzying nightlife spectacle of unbridled puberty. This extreme inequality of a male/female ratio necessitates deployment of an intense social defense. Males revert to a cave-like state with clenched fists and short tempers, whilst the girls scrum together in closed circles, tactically blocking the advances of potential suitors with effective collaborative body language. Necessarily, as the intoxication of the whole event leaves the males a side step away from clubbing women on the head and dragging them back to a cave. Play by play analysis of the whole spectacle is tiresome when all you want to do is sit around a table making new friends and laughing about life.

A visit to the beach where Leo pranced about stealing girlfriends and murdering marine life was an obvious inevitability. I counted 27 of us in a teak longboat, packed as sardines, juddering over the chaos of the ocean channel. Mounting obstacles into the cove itself, it’s obvious what all the fuss is about. Man could not dream of such things, our slumbering imaginings could never compare. I hope there is such a thing as in intelligent creator, just for the wide-eyed awe she may garner from admirers such as I in her creating something so beautiful. I’d definitely throw a few pennies into the hat.

But like most tourist traps, there is consequence for too many humans in one space. I had to remove myself from the water soon after we had begun snorkeling, the decimation of the ocean ecosystem cutting me deep. Snapped coral is such a shame. And then there was Monkey Island.

I don’t traditionally like monkeys. At best, they are nimble, inquisitive marvels of nature’s evolutionary process. At worst, they are angry little humanoid idiots capable of malice without remorse or compassion. Plus they throw their shit at each other. That’s psychopathic, and these island monkeys have been shaped by humans as such. The meeting of man and his evolutionary forebears was heralded with flying sand and rocks. Not without provocation, as the monkeys grew angrier and more bashful the more time we spent in their dominion. I stood close to Laura on the boat in a silent protest against this sort of thing, praying for our side to lose the war. I longed for a cause and effect that would leave one of these cruel boys riddled with bite marks. Is that sadistic? Maybe so. Mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns. Or more appropriately, mess with the monkey, you’ll get the rabies.

So that is my experience of Phi Phi. Sorry if it sounds a little pessimistic, but it wasn’t the most fun I’ve had, and I’m okay with that. The paradise lost destinations that guidebooks and internet message boards steer us away from are built on secure foundations of experience. One would be tempted to run head first into the place with the most people to be social and meet friends, but this is just not the way life works. Villages are friendlier than cities and pubs are friendlier than clubs. Maybe we lose a piece of our humanity with the over stimulation and poorly administrated gathering of multiple social tribes, too many animals competing for a wide range but limited supply of different objectives and resources. It’s probably quite a lot for our primal brain faculty to compute at one time; so many assessments of friend or foe in the darkness of a place unfamiliar. And all whilst intoxicated by freaky Thai bath whiskey…… Lord, the body truly is a marvel.

Blue Rooms, Goons in Lagoons while the Tunes Boom

The catamaran rocked gently against the rolling water. Teary eyed performances played on the DVD screen of America’s Got Talent unlikely underdog stories. Simon from American Idol is a nobhead, but I have to admire him; he played us all for idiots and won. His character is almost believable.

My thoughts are as a shiny ball rolling from side to side of the insides of my skull. It’s been a massive few weeks emotionally, but as the ferry pulls into port at Koh Tao, I feel old loops being untied. I’m here to get healthy in body and mind.

The first week passes by without much ado. I have little to no interaction with other island patrons, as I just hit the gym and the water and try and piece myself together. I am aware I am just a weirdo in a room on an island in the middle of nowhere, so far from home. Is this how the homeless start off? I don’t care to find out, I quite enjoy sleeping in a bedroom instead of a bathroom, and egg in a beard is not a good look for anyone. Lest we forget.

I drew up a list of things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile but have lacked motivation or life situation to complete. Top of the list is learn how to freedive, which is descending down into the ocean deep on a single breath. Moving into a more social accommodation, I book a two day course.

Freediving is all about the preparatory breathing. Bobbing at the surface, cycling deep long breaths, I grab the line and gently pull myself down into the deepness. The nerve that safeguards breathing function begins to scream at around 8 metres, though I have been trained to ignore it. At 10 meters it is quiet. And then before I know it, I am at 20 meters, lost in an expanse of weightlessness. I hold the line gently and observe my surroundings, a single white speck in another world. If a scuba diver is the astronaut of the ocean, then I must be some sort of space angel, drifting through the ether, gliding through the cosmos. In reality though, I’m just a pasty white guy with no shirt on getting punished for his hubris by stinging jelly fish. Maybe a worm at the end of a twenty meter fishing line? It must be humbling existing anywhere other than at the top of the food chain, and it’s been about twenty seconds in such a foreign place without oxygen. The surface is far, but I am at peace. What an experience.

I had started the friendship momentum, engaged and interested in people again. The homeless ethos begins to subside. People are actually good, and life begins to turn itself around. I hit bars with my new friends, dancing on the beach with enough enthusiasm to get hit on by at least two homosexuals per night. I resolve to be a bit more cooler. My gaydar calms its beeping and I reach equilibrium, interested and firey without looking himterested and fairy. I imagine the ‘beep’ sound on a gaydar would evolve to be a bit more camp. Probably a fem-sounding “hayyyyyyy”, or “mmmmm” or “darrr-ling”…... but I digress.

The full moon party date looms closer and it’s been awhile since my insanity has been sanctioned and validated by thousands of others. And with that, I book a room at Coral Bungalows. Again. And here I am, surrounded by youth a side step away from comatose, covered in fluro paint. Again. That side of it is a bit of a drag as I realize I’m not 18 anymore. I have to be told about Instagram and Pinterest by people that are younger than me, like it’s such an inconvenience for them to visit me in the old folks home and teach me how to work the DVD player. I resolve to never eat butterscotch candy just in case I accidentally slip into my twilight years whilst chatting to these kids.

The upshot is I befriend a crew who are cooler than frozen polar-bear-flavored icy pops. Brennan, Charley, Emily, Nick and Laura shine an affinity I could only find in my bestest of friends. Love is people accepting you for who you are and not wanting you to change. So when we sit around the war table playing drinking games, my stories make people laugh as I don’t feel the need to muzzle who I am truly; an eccentric weirdo. We all laugh and make merry, and as usual, the days after the madness of the Full Moon Party are the most fun. The ladyboys have garnered enough validation sexually from unsuspecting English alcoholics to stay at home, the pickpockets sit atop a pile of swag in their tin roof shacks and the hippies on mushroom shakes have enough room to dance like water flowing through a maze without upsetting the steroid swelled Australian dudes with their shirts off. Peace in the shire.

Despite the monsoon season we decide to move over onto the West side of the peninsula to visit the small island of Railay. A rock climbing mecca, we find ourselves freeclimbing into the middle of a mountain, slip sliding down vertical ropes in the wet with too many close calls to count.

To the victor the spoils, for in the center of these rock walls lay the most beautiful lagoon I have ever seen. Laying on our backs adrift in the huge pool, we all realize how awesome it is to be alive. Descending into the pool was a baptism of pure peace. I laughed heartily, overcome with emotion. It was good to clean the mud off us, three sweaty shirtless men in the jungle covered in a mysterious brown substance. The picture is suspect if you think about it.

Backstage at a Freddie Mercury concert.... Jokes

What heaven may look like

Goons in a lagoon

Railay was the island getaway we needed. The bars rocked at night, but were friendly enough for even the drunkest amongst us to wo/man the DJ booth. My memory is stained with Laura up on the decks, playing two hip hop songs at the same time, out of time. The dancefloor dispersed faster than even the worst flatulence ever could. Who even cares, we run this town.

Next on the agenda; the Phi Phi Islands. ‘The Beach’ had made these islands famous in the nineties, appealing to mans sense of island adventure. The ferry pulled into port as the rain fell down lazily. ‘Save as’ for next time.

Land Ho

Change, Rearrange, and Feeling Strange

When everything changes, change everything.

The mantra rings out in my mind, echoing off the walls in a reverberant shudder that dominoes its way down the bones of my spine. Lost in a whirlwind of feeling, the actions of an emotion suppressed, the chaos and fury of something pressurized. A painful release. I’m in Saigon in Vietnam, and it’s time for change.

Earlier that week I had been in Cambodia, marveling at the wonders of Angkor Wat and contemplating the plight of desperate innocence in Phnom Penh. Now, despondent and disheveled, I boarded a plane alone. Now as the gentle keystrokes of a soft piano, the sad tones of a story sung through trauma. Let us retrace our steps, as it has been quite some time and quite some change since I last blogged.

Last time we chatted, I had just left Myanmar, swollen with an experience that was equal parts entrapment and enlivening. I felt ensnared by the plight of a people who had lost a genetic birth lottery. I had tried to give where I could, but to no actual improvement for those concerned. It’s an exhausting concept I hadn’t prepared for. I felt as a matchstick burnt out, the light extinguished to leave a warm ember.

In lieu of these feelings, I decided it was important for my development to go somewhere a bit more temperate and comfortable and regain some sort of self control. We flew into Samui, where I adopted a natural foods diet, pumped weights at the gym and started in-roads into changing the old tapes that have been playing in my head since childhood.

Setting up positive habits and change was an important step, as up until that point I felt scolded by life like a sad preteen chastised by mother for touching his wee wee. Through my growth, I now felt I could grip my manhood triumphantly in the face of criticism, with self belief and with minimal ego. It’s uplifting. When everything changes, change everything. It’s not easy growing a pair.

Flying into Phnom Penh in Cambodia was an intense culture shock. The easy smiles of the people there shone beyond the violence of their political history. It must be a heavy cross to bear. I visited the killing fields just outside of the city, where thousands of innocent men women and children had been murdered systematically in the night by torchlight to the musical backdrop of traditional Khmer music and the slow rumbling of a diesel generator to power the speakers. It was chilling. On the way to the fields, my driver had taken me to a shooting range where I could fire a rocket propelled grenade if I saw fit. I couldn’t justify the expense, and in any way I looked at it the whole exercise seemed a tad inappropriate. It’s like playing obvious air guitar at a funeral as they belt out the final tragic song. In my mind, it’s a Bon Jovi song on the speakers, so the sadness of the situation deepened in me. My poor tortured brain, but more so these poor tortured people.

Escaping the desperation of a tortured past and, in some cases, a tragic present (I had never seen so many prostitutes) we travelled up to Siem Reap, which borders the magical temples of Angkor. My childhood dreams had long been filled with imaginings of these temples ever since my father had read to me the Readers Digest Book of Facts. The fact that it was a book of facts and not a book of Spot the Dog Goes to the Circus goes a long way to explaining why I am such a sniveling nerd. I still remember the picture in the book clear as day, and here it was right through the scope of my vision, the smirking mug of a popular old king from a moment long passed. I saw the need us men have to be famous, to have something live on after we are but ions bouncing around in an aerated earth soup. Us men, what vain idiots. Stop worrying about the time after your time, you’ve either got loads more stuff to worry about or nothing at all depending on how you were raised and what crazy hat you wear in the weekends. There are way too many life insurance ads on the box, let us fight this terrible daytime television menace with the voices of our non compliance.

Phallic

More Temples

Angkor Wat

Smiley Kings

With Angkor Wat crossed off the bucket list, our next stop was Vietnam, specifically Saigon. I’d heard great things about Vietnam, with its beaches and coast and traditional ways, its history and tales of adventure. Turns out it was not to be, there were other things developing.

Life is the combination of many small things, but every now and then these things culminate into a single moment, and the weight hangs heavy in our throats. This was one of those moments, and with a heavy heart, one single unit ripped and crackled into two separate components. We boarded separate planes at the same time, parting ways at the airport for opposite gates like the low emotional point of a chick flick minus the Dawson’s Creek theme song. No laughter, no smiles, just the incomprehensible weight of sudden and immediate change. I could not forget the experience if I tried, nor would I want to. My memory shall treat that love fondly, and I know this as much as anything else.

So to truncate and summarize these past couple of months, it’s change. When everything changes, change everything. I haven’t written in a while because I have been too busy searching and contemplating, hurting and laughing, putting one foot in front of the other and changing everything.

I had an old acquaintance tell me the other day that my experiences are no more special than the next guy, that I have not accomplished anything different or amazing or helped in any way. As she is extremely well traveled and seemingly level headed, I respected her opinion enough to pursue the question. Am I wasting my time feeling what I’m feeling in a situation that is mundane? Do I think I’m special or better or more of something than the next guy? Am I just another wayward soul, running and fleeing the inevitability of my own unhappiness?

It didn’t take me long to realize that even the most amazing adventures are mundane for someone. The guides that have toured me round these amazing scenarios have just had another day in the office. They too punch the clock at the days end for after work drinks sharing trial and tribulation. I saw in some of them the same contempt as the kids working in KFC on a Sunday, nursing others in a cushion of gravy-like magic to blunt the hangover they were too undoubtedly suffering from. How could this be that my guides were not awed every day with an office that includes the tree tops of Thai rainforests, or the temples of Angkor or Bagan, sitting in the embrace of implausibly large elephants or fishing the waters of Inle Lake with the majestic mountains as their backdrop?

And then I saw an infant in a simple food court, sitting on his father’s lap flicking a piece of plastic from a water bottle on the table with more excitement and joy than a pasty faced Korean teen with the new World of Warcraft expansion set. I realized then that everything is amazing in life if we can hold onto or remember that childlike sense of wonder. I am forever trying to see the beauty and magic in it, and hope that I am able to convey that at least at times to you through this blog. If anything, I’m doing this simply to get better at telling the story because that’s a part of who I am becoming.

My travel is secondary to the conclusions I find in myself and the lense from which I perceive the events that shape them. You can travel the whole world and it will widen your perception, but the only control you have if this is your only avenue to enlightenment is the next adventure, the next trip, the next destination. In this way, travel can become addictive, and the ever changing scenery and experiences make it easy to become cynical about the mundane, the normal, the average, even though it is just as amazing as the plastic wrapper from the water bottle. We're all just big babies at heart, "growing up" in this way is a great tragedy. I’ve seen it lots on this trip but bless them all, because it’s better than nothing.

Sad Face

Thanks for coming along, I’ll keep writing if you will keep reading. xo