Harry Nicolaides' Weekly Column
Exclusively for Phuket-Info.com
Travelogue
from the Tropics
Travelling from Bang Tao Bay on
the Northwestern coast of the island of Phuket towards Patong, the
main tourist precinct, I was thrust into one of the many treacherous
turns that characterize the mountainous peninsula to confront a
small crowd gathered on the side of the road. A spoked wheel on
a fallen motorcycle spun with unspooled momentum, weaving a web
of interest for the few Thais who were drawn to the scene. The engine
creaked with pain as it hemorrhaged fuel onto the bitumen. The pieces
of a crushed mobile phone littered the road. Many more vehicles
passed the scene, some slowing to gawk while most continued unperturbed.
Above and beyond the steel barrier,
two feet down an embankment, lay the prostrate body of a young Thai
girl, gasping and spluttering for air through a blood-red face mask.
The colour of her blood is similar to the vermillion-coloured Orchid
which flourishes on the escarpments and in ravines of mountainous
Phuket and is as prolific as violent death is on the island. A Farang
(a Caucasian tourist) stooped over the girl imploring someone to
call an ambulance. The small crowd moved on from their curious fascination
with the steaming, mangled motorcycle to soon disperse. Before they
walked away, some of the locals turned to give the dying girl a
momentary glance. The Tuk-Tuk drivers scampered away for fear of
being commandeered without remuneration to transport the young girl
to hospital. Twenty minutes later, a solitary policeman on a four-wheel
lunar-buggy arrived. This is death in Phuket, Thai-style.
Phuket, Thailand is the emerald
jewel of the Andaman Sea. The Island is a blend of the beautiful
and bizarre, the surreal and sublime. Patong, the main tourist precinct,
lights up each night, plugged in at about 6pm, like a huge pornographic
Christmas tree of neon signs, bar names and shop fronts. Hundreds
of Honda and Suzuki scooters line the streets like a gauntlet. The
skyline features satellite dishes on dilapidated, ramshackle, crumbling
buildings and massive, black, electronic transformers sitting on
small wooden telegraph poles with corkscrew rods and discs jutting
out from them like the antenna of a gargantuan beetle. A hotchpotch
of mongrel-vehicles (half-Toyota Landcruiser, half-Ford Bronco Jeep)
crisscross through chaotic intersections. The gilt-framed image
of the King of Thailand is everywhere. Gilded shrines, large and
small, paying homage to Buda are equally ubiquitous.
The sheer sun-worshiping hedonism
that sweats through the lush landscape of white sandy beaches and
azure waters during the day gives way in the evening to buttock-slapping,
beer-swilling debauchery and buccaneer carousing in the hundreds
of Go-Go bars and beer-bars that characterize Patong. Freddies,
Manhattan, Crazy Chicken, Milan, Easy, Joe Banana's, Captain Kirk's,
Parmacie 99, Shipwreck Bar, Kangaroo Bar, Sydney Bar, Viking Bar,
Navy Bar, Butterfly Bar and The Cockpit, join a catalogue of others.
This is the place the dissolute and profligate Errol Flynn may have
retired to if he had lived today. Thousands of young Thai girls
posture and preen like incandescent stick-insects on stilettos to
a swooning parade of Caucasian males. Other girls sit tandem on
the back of motor-scooters with Western men whose Hawaiian shirts
billow like triumphant flags of sexual conquest while they weave
up and down the labyrinthine streets. Peroxided hermaphrodites,
transvestites and transsexuals crow with a seductive, beguiling
vulnerability.
This elaborate pantomime unfolds
nightly from 6pm and intensifies towards the witching hour. The
Andaman Queen, a bar on the notorious Bangla Road (Soi Bangla) throbs
with music while Katoeys (lady-boys) swan and saunter on table tops,
seducing crowds with their siren songs of androgynous sexuality.
Bar girls come and go paying homage (clasping their hands together
and kowtowing) to the gilded statuettes of religious figures that
form a small wall-mounted shrine in each and every bar. A woman,
whose face looks like a topographical map of Thailand and is probably
over a hundred years old, waddles down the street selling Wrigley’s-stick
chewing gum out of a small cardboard box. Small wooden carts selling
ice-cream, fresh fruit and racks of dried, flattened squid dangling
from clothes pegs and illuminated by pink fluorescent lights crowd
the street. The smell of crackling corn licked by open flames fills
the nostrils with palpable sweetness. Secularism and spirituality
intertwine like columns of smoke while the open sewers spill the
toxic effluent of the Western free market.
The bar girls travel to Phuket
from all regions of Thailand including Bangkok. Most are from rural
areas of abject poverty and come to Phuket to raise money for their
embattled families. Most bar girls are available from 1000 Baht
($40 Aust) for a 24 hour period. A 200 Baht ($10 Aust) is usually
paid to the bar to compensate for her absence and all incidental
expenses - taxi, food, entertainment - is usually paid for by the
Farang (Caucasian male). Many girls have rooms nearby for short-time
bookings while hotel rooms can be arranged for as little as 400
baht. Many Farangs return to their own hotel rooms with their girl
and spend the next day shopping or at the beach. Some stay with
the same girl for the duration of their holiday in Phuket.
While some freelancers will sell
their services for as little as 500 Baht (or less for specific acts
of sexual gratification) these girls usually have acute drug or
alcohol dependencies or are experiencing acute poverty. It has been
said that the reason why many Thai girls have precocious sexual
experience is that their father allocates sexual duties to the eldest
daughter when the wife is absent, deceased or convalescing. There
are also rumours of 'Chicken Bars' on remote mountain roads and
in some of the shanty towns that litter the island, where sex with
preteens and children is available for even less than that paid
to the freelancers. These 'snail trails' are followed by sophisticated
web-savvy pedophiles who belong to world wide internet clubs. The
current administration in Thailand is involved in a robust campaign
to discourage Westerners to visit Thailand for these illicit experiences
with severe and long periods of incarceration and active extradition
arrangements for offenders.
Stories circulate through the bars
about some Farangs who would wake several days after being with
a freelancer to find neat little scars on their abdomens where organs
were removed to be sold on the open market! (Reliable sources inform
me that Thailand is the best place in the world to get surgery done
with its medicos specializing in appending severed penises). Others
are more fortunate and have their passports, wallets, money, jewellery
stolen or are billed for expensive international calls to their
room phones or have money extorted from them on their return home
by emails requesting $10.000 Aust to raise a child or facilitate
an abortion. Some simply form loving relationships beyond the commercial
transaction while a few become romantically attached and marry.
When tourist visitation levels to the island (Nov-March) are high
all bar girls make a reasonable income but during the low season
(May-Sept) other sources of income are sought. The month of April
is referred to by ex-pat residents as the 'thievin' season'.
The topography of the island is
mountainous with the flatter expanses covered in open fields and
lush, green trees, shrubs and thick foliage forming canopies in
the jungle regions. Large parts of the island’s hinterland
are scarred with stalled housing, business and government project
developments. Rubber and coconut plantations line the roads towards
Phuket airport while private secluded coves with vestal white sands
and emerald waters rippled by the breath of Aphrodite are the playground
of the super-rich cognoscenti.
When paradise and all of its carnal
temptations become too much the most experienced ex-pats head down
for a good dose of reality at Diver's Bar at Surin Beach, half way
between the venal excesses of Patong and the cocooned 6-star resorts
of Bang Tao Bay. Ian 'Dick' Diver is a retired lifesaver from Bondi
Beach who became a local legend when he lunged courageously into
treacherous waters to save the life of a Japanese pediatrician swimming
in the crystalline waters of Surin Beach. He continues to save lives
by extending daily his own, unique Aussie brand of salvation - cold
beer - to the growing legion who gather each and every day to exchange
ideas, discuss politics, engage in one-upmanship, swim and play
touch footy on the beach each Sunday. (One of these regulars came
to Phuket on a short holiday two years ago. His car is still parked
at Heathrow airport, rusting away). Simon, a heavily tattooed and
opinionated Irish ex-serviceman, Wayne, a wealthy Aussie entrepreneur
with business interests in Phuket and property in Queensland and
the Gold Coast and Dave, a directional driller on an oil rig offshore
who rides a monstrous chrome Harley-Davidson are bonded together
by the heartbreakingly beautiful vista of the Andaman Sea from Diver's
Bar.
Towards twighlight, when the fiery
tentacles of the sun give up the glorious remains of the day and
the crystalline waters glow with phosphorescence from marine organisms,
rambunctious discussions mellow to a quiet natter. Dark shadows
descend while the branches of huge palm gently see-saw. Long tail
boats return to shore and the cacophony of the cicadas begins. As
the boys at Diver's continue to 'sink the ink' and relate stories
about boat races - Diver: " swearvin' Mervin T-boned the other
yacht like a juggernaut and sent her six feet under into ol' briny"
I smile and watch the Thai staff kowtow to the religious shrines
on the wall before they leave to go home. This is the land of smiles
which dismiss and disarm entrenched ideologies and religious doctrine.
This arcane culture manages to reconcile the bizarre with the sublime
while we in the West see only conflict and contradiction. A bar
girl in Patong told me she has four rooms in her heart: one for
her family, one for her self, one for her husband and one for the
'butterfly' (Farang lover). My summer as a 'butterfly' was now over.
Harry Nicolaides
Patong Beach,
Phuket Thailand.
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