Travel
diary 2015
14th
December
I arrived in Bangkok last Wednesday after my stop over flight being
unexpectedly upgraded to a Thai airways direct one. I spent a few
days getting used to the lovely heat and humidity and holiday pace of
life. I met Rosie, an English girl I used to teach with 5 years ago
in Krabi. She is now living in Bangkok, working only 3 days a week
and earning more than twice what we were earning working full time
all those years ago. However, she isn't saving much as she seems to
spend her free time meeting up with and having sex with guys that she
meets on Tinder – a dating app. Most of these guys are western men
because, as she puts it, 'my fanny is really big and stretched now so
I need a big penis otherwise I can't feel anything. The best guy was
this German boy. He had a huge fat cock and he shoved it right down
my throat and my eyes were just streaming. It was amazing.
Unfortunately he comes really quick. And the worst were two Italian
men I dated. They were a nightmare and tiny penises – who would
have thought it?'
Rosie sighs at the problems of modern dating. 'To be honest, I
wouldn't mind dating a few Thai guys – but think I'll have to lose
some weight first.'
Leaving Rosie to sort out her sex life, I fly down to Phuket. It is
hot, crowded and frantic but is also clean with perfect beaches.
Everywhere I go, tarted up Thai women offer me a massage and fierce
dark skinned men offer me a taxi or tuk tuk. I suppose I will have to
have one soon. Everywhere are western men from young lads to old
wrinkly men living the dream. Cigarettes and beer can be had for less
than a pound, women for twenty. The men, young and old, ride about on
rented scooters which are also readily available and cheap;
semi-naked in just their swimming shorts, their bodies an angry red
from too much exposure to the fierce tropical sun.
Yesterday morning, I awoke early and went to the beach before
breakfast. The sun was up but it had not yet attained the
characteristic fierce tropical heat and half the beach was still in
the shade of the tall palms. I swam out to the limit of the swimming
area and then looked around me. It was paradise. The beach was a
gentle curve of white sand with swaying palms. The sea was clean and
turquoise and just the right temperature. Out at sea was a huge
cruise liner, white against the morning sun, its huge windowed side
sheer like a cliff. Further in was an antique sailing boat with two
masts. Maybe it was a clipper.
I swam in and decided to go for a run. I ran towards the north end
of the beach and then slowed to a walk to admire my surroundings. The
beach was even more beautiful here with lush green hills curving off
into the distance. A tall, very athletic looking black man ran past
me. When he was about 50 yards ahead, he performed a smooth shoulder
roll on the sand and then carried on running, seemingly without any
check in his forward motion. I have often noticed people doing all
kinds of extraordinary things on the beach from extreme yoga poses to
backward somersaults.
I neared the very end of the beach where the white sand gave way to
sheer black cliffs. A young woman standing in thigh deep water caught
my eye. She was slim and tanned with small breasts and black hair
pulled back in a smooth ponytail. She was wearing a black bikini, the
bottom half of which was a thong. I could help noticing how
extraordinarily beautiful her bottom was.
'She looks more goddess than human, like a nymph,' I mused to myself
as I walked past trying hard not to stare and appear like a pervy
satyr. I reached the end of the beach and turned back. As I walked
along the waters end, the nymph with the beautiful bottom came out of
the water accompanied by another nymph equally beautiful, also dark
haired, also in black bikini thong, also heavenly bottomed. They
could have been twins, in fact the only difference between the two
was that the second nymph had bigger breasts. They passed very close,
within touching distance of me.
I walked on, intensely conscious of the heaven world that I was in,
complete with bright sunshine and heavenly nymphs. As a child, this
was always how I had imagined heaven must look like... although I possibly hadn't included the nymphs. For me, heaven
had always been a beach. Ahead, the tall black man was doing
extraordinary things on the sand. He had fallen onto his hands as if
he was going to do push ups but instead was doing vertical jumps into
the air like a frog off his hands and toes. There was a boat anchor
with its rope stretching a foot off the sand down to to a long tailed
boat and the black man was doing his incredible frog jumps back and
forth over the rope.
This was no ordinary mortal, I realised. This was some lusty young
god showing off his physical prowess. The heaven world was complete;
the nymphs, the young god and the thoughtful satyr walking through. A
middle aged man came running towards me from the opposite direction,
his flabby chest bouncing painfully up and down to his ungainly
movements, his face twisted in physical and mental agony. Here was a
being from the Underworld and I doubt he even noticed the heavenly
inhabitants of this place anymore than they noticed him.
Back at my apartment, I received a message from Rosie via Line
messenger. She was down in Krabi for a short break and was just about
to visit her ex boyfriend who was now in jail. I wondered what she
would make of Thai jails. I had once taught some Thai lawyers in
Bangkok several years ago and they had painted a grim picture of what
jails were like over here.
'50 or 60 men crowded into a room no bigger than my office,' said my
student Chang. 'No fan or air conditioning. Not enough room for
everyone to lie down on the floor to sleep. Have to take it in turns
to sleep or sleep standing up. One bucket to shit or piss in, emptied
once a day. No showers or place to wash.'
What would Rosie, a middle class girl from sheltered England, make
of this hell hole? Would she still cherish romantic feelings for her
ex lover, the violent petty criminal who had rebelled against his
rural Muslim upbringing to spend his days and nights drinking,
gambling and smoking the illegal yar baa?
At the end of the day I had my
answer in the ecstatic message from Rosie. 'Omg! I love Thailand! I'm
sat eating strawberries with the prison guards. I'm feeling really
horny. So many dark bad boys with their shaven heads and prison
uniforms! Why am I such a freak? I've got a crazy plan to shag the
guards and then sneak my bf out of prison. They say I must pay 3
million baht to get him out of jail. God, I'm so wet!'
Unlike the simpler Christian
concept of heaven above us and hell below, Buddhists talk about
several different worlds from the lowest hell worlds to the highest
heaven. All these various worlds or perhaps levels of experience
exist simultaneously so it is perhaps more like 3 people sitting in
the same room, each with a TV tuned to a different channel. This day
I had seen heaven worlds with nymphs and young gods, I had seen (via
my lawyers) hell worlds and now here was my friend Rosie, a bit like
in an inverted version of the Bob Dylan song 'Knock, knock, knocking
on Hell's door'.
