I Have Something For You

I landed in Pattaya at 5.20am, an hour ahead of schedule and well before sunrise. As soon as I stepped off the bus I was accosted by all manner of taxi drivers, as is the tradition in Thailand. I asked how much to the Soi I needed and was told 200 baht which I baulked at, in the hope he might bring the price down. He didn’t. Not wanting to lose dignity or face I tramped off to sit in the bus station. I considered setting off on foot but a) it was still dark and b) I didn’t have a bloody clue where I was. I sat there waiting for the sun to rise and the muggers, robbers and villains of Thailand’s hedonist capital to call it a night and head home. I’m no Ray Mears (except for the extra baggage around the midriff – his formed from eating Elk gizzards in sub-zero temperatures sat in a sleeping bag in a forest surrounded by bears, wolves and madmen; mine by too many calls to Shai Naan Kebab House on Roundhay Road at 4am on a Sunday morning) but I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and if I clocked the sun I could roughly make out west and head towards the beach, which in turn would lead to where I needed to be.

My simple task in Pattaya was to track down a minibus to Koh Chang. My (rapidly ageing) Lonely Planet told me I could get one from the Koh Chang Business Centre on Soi Post Office. It also told me that it was about a 1km hike. Sitting in the bus station I observed my first Pattaya people. What a crowd. There was the fella in a Harley Davidson vest, big paunch, ZZ Topp beard, camo shorts and Guns n’ Roses cap, cracking open a beer; the couple who went to the toilet only to re-emerge in time to see their bus and baggage reverse out of the bus station and leave; and the taxi man, who try as he might couldn’t find a fare at his exorbitant prices.

The day got lighter and I decided it was safe enough for me to hit the road. I guesstimated that I needed to turn right then left to go off in roughly the right direction. I stopped to ask directions “which way to the beach?” – to be fair I didn’t look like your typical beachgoer at this point so the Thai blokes odd look wasn’t wholly out of place. An elderly aussie chap answered on his behalf and I was off on the 1km hike.

Soon after 1km and with no beach in sight I did begin to wonder whether the aussie was laughing his elderly, sagging manboobs off somewhere at the Pom he’d pointed in the opposite direction. Luckily a further 200 metres or so the gently lapping waves of the Gulf of Thailand appeared, and I was on the road running parallel with the beach – handily called Beach Road. Pattaya beach is about three deckchairs deep and a good 2 miles long, and filled from one end to the other with three rows of deckchairs stretching out for 2 miles. I walked a good portion of this counting up the Sois. I started at Soi 7 and needed Soi Post Office, which was somewhere beyond Soi 13.

Beach Road at 7am provided my first real experience of what was awaiting me over New Years. There were blokes clearly still out from the night before, blokes clearly very much out for the count from the night before, people jogging up and down the path behind the beach and Thai women looking remarkably well dressed and refreshed for such an early hour. After about 5 minutes and many of these women saying hello, it dawned on me that these were actually prostitutes trying to mop up the last men standing before they crashed in to a Chang-induced coma. And also trying to mop up me. I didn’t oblige as I looked directly ahead and marched on to my goal with a quickening pace. As I marched on I heard a shout of “Hello…handsome man! HELLOOOO!”, I looked round but couldn’t quite place it. Then again: “HELLO HANDSOME MAAAN! I have something for yoooou!”. I looked round again and spotted a gaggle of Thai lasses in a bar, a bar that was open at 7am, waving at me. I quickly surmised that the only likely thing they’ve got for me a good dose of the clap and walked on with a cheery wave back.

Soi 13 came and went. Soi 13/1, Soi 13/2, Soi 13/3 and Soi 13/4 also came and went. No Soi Post Office. I cut up a Soi and doubled back on myself – more to avoid the baying prossies than owt else – and wandered passed a plane stuck out of a building (Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), a building with the frontage of something out of The Flintstones (Aloha Polynesian Restaurant), The Nag’s Head pub and about one hundred fleapit hotels. The best I can describe the form of Pattaya is like one of those downmarket Spanish resorts – Torremelinos; Magaluf; The Costas - only in Thailand.

By chance I glanced down a Soi and saw the Koh Chang Business Centre. I also saw many, many establishments offering erotic dances for homosexual men. Soi Post Office did not seem to exist or had been renamed. I fell into the Business Centre at 8am and asked for a bus to Koh Chang. Luckily they had one departing at exactly 8am, so I handed the cash over and clambered in to my ‘luxury’ ‘aircon’ minibus. We scooted around Pattaya and surrounding resorts picking up an assortment of men with Thai women, single men, and sunburnt Russian families. A Thai woman also got picked up and I had a brief talk with her – she was living in Birmingham and had a British Passport; she was over here for a 3 month holiday to see the family and avoid the English winter. Fair play, given what it’s been like.

The trip was uneventful. I felt like shit after two nights without a proper sleep. The aircon consisted of the driver winding his window down and holding a newspaper out to circulate some air. The Russian families (awful haircuts) cracked open some vodka. We made the ferry, I treated myself to a beer and watched Koh Chang get closer and closer.

I was heading to Paradise Cottage at Lonely Beach. Lonely Beach is where many backpackers head to but Paradise Cottage was well hidden and very quiet – just the place to chill in a hammock with a beer and my iPod. The place had changed since my last visit two years ago. They’d done away with many of the cheap huts and replaced them with some very nice concrete, modernist bungalows. Unfortunately these were out of my price range, but they still had a row of huts left at 8 quid a night.

All I did for the first 6 days was chill; took a few dips in the sea; talked to people in the bar and slept. One night I hit the town and got badly drunk (see previous blog) but that meant I had some mates to talk to in the bar at least. Also during this time Adam had confirmed his arrival and was reasonably confident he could find his way to me.

Christmas Day came and I went for an early morning dip before opening my presents. Dad had sent me two books, June & Ray had sent me one book and Helen had knitted me a kind of rectangular red and white scarf-blanket affair perfectly suited to sub-tropical climates. A big thank you to you all! The books were devoured. I finished two in three days (A.A. Gill’s Previous Convictions and Robert J. Swayer’s Flashforward) and the last was finished whilst I was sat on the shitter in Pattaya over New Years (Lawrence Osborne’s Bangkok Days). I haven’t read so much so fast since Roger Redhat knocked about in the Village With Three Corners.

On Boxing Day I got a call from Adam saying he had landed, he’d dropped his bike (?!) in left-luggae and was on his way to a bus station to head my way. Having no confidence in the efficiency of Thai transport I had told him not to expect to get to Koh Chang until the 27th. My apologies to Thai transport. Late in the afternoon I got a call saying he was maybe two hours from the ferry terminal. The last ferry left at 7pm so it was touch and go. At 6.30pm I got a call saying he’d made the ferry and he would be joining me for a cold beer very soon. A 40 minute ferry crossing and half hour taxi ride meant he would be here by about 8.15pm. At 9pm he still hadn’t shown up; I was starting to get a little concerned that he’d been trammeled under elephant foot or fallen off the back of the taxi.

At 9.05pm I got a call saying “I’m at the bar, where are you?”. Glancing around the bar and seeing me, a Swedish couple I had been talking to, a dog and two staff I thought he was either hide and seek champion (deposing Madeline McCann) or in the wrong bar… “What bar are you in mate?”, “Siam Bar”, “You’re at the wrong end of Lonely Beach, turn left and keep walking for 10 minutes”.

Sure enough, emerging out of the darkness and in to the light of the reception came a familiar figure. A warm handshake was exchanged, I sorted him a hut out and left him to freshen up. Fifteen minutes later we were rattling on like we’d never left the Adelphi in Leeds a few months ago. A good number of Singha were sunk and food eaten.

It was good to have someone to knock about with; holidaying on your own can start to get a bit tedious after a while. I told him about Tha Bom and congratulated him on making it here. It turns out he’s very keen to stay in Tha Bom for the next couple of months and experience a bit of teaching. If you want to have a deek at his blog you can find it right here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/asphalt_pilgrim/1/tpod.html .

The next few days consisted of Adam feeling increasingly smug about lounging in a hammock and thinking of those back home; eating; drinking; talking about everything; seeing the most German men in the world in a bar; being in a bar full of nobends – literally. Carved wooden cocks hung from the ceilings, provided the handles to the bogs and buttressed the front door; ate some more and kayaked around a few islands allowing goldfish shoals to nibble at our toes (thank you Red Dwarf).

Our time on Koh Chang was up, and we booked a minibus to Pattaya for New Years. If only we had any idea what awaited us.

Next update: Pattaya – Don’t Believe The Hype.