Thailand travel writing; Journey 1998

(⛔️ ✋ Language or scenes may offend)

Bullets or tranquility

With twenty-four hours to go before I was due to fly out to Indonesia, I lost my bottle and cancelled the flight. In the weeks leading up to this date civil unrest across this country was getting progressively, for want of a better word, worse.

Out of all the nations in the Far East, this place had been hardest hit by the regional economic turmoil of 1997/98. To say that the Indonesian economy had taken a turn for the worse would be a gross under statement. It was, in effect, in a state of utter collapse. Hyperinflation meant that the price of basic foodstuffs was leaping several fold on a daily basis. Quite literally, the Indonesian rupee was not worth the paper it was printed on. A westerner with dollars in Jakarta would have been a walking treasury. Other Far Eastern economies were also in dire straits, but Indonesia was the only country where the political stability of the regime was under serious threat as a result.

With one week to departure I was scrutinising the quality newspapers on a daily basis looking for snippets which could help inform my executive decision. Surprisingly enough I found precious little coverage of this situation, just the occasional small paragraph. Even the Foreign and Commonwealth Office were not advising people to stay at home. I was finally persuaded on the matter by a substantial article in the Observer, which said something like: ‘If you want to witness the last bloody revolution of the twentieth century, get yourself over to Indonesia within the next couple of weeks’. The collective disapproval of friends, parents and colleagues did the rest.

So, at the same time I was due to fly out to Jakarta, I found myself airborne for neighbouring Malaysia instead. The island of Langkawi in the far north, just off the coast of Thailand was my destination. Given that Malaysia’s northern reaches are predominantly Muslim states, even more so than the rest of the country, I thought better to opt for a serene clean living life style that this should provide, rather than dodging bullets under some Jakarta hotel bed.

Sure enough this tranquil Island and the Muslim family run beach chalet complex in which I stayed, led to me living quite a conservative life style indeed – cruising round the island on a hired motor bike, stopping off for a coke here and there, sitting on the beach outside my chalet in near isolation, going for a swim and watching the golden balmy sunset each night; quite a settled and civilised daily routine if ever there was one. Even intoxication at the chalet complex was out of the question, with no alcohol allowed or sold on the premises.

At the end of my first full day, I ventured down the narrow road that ran past the chalets and sat down inside an open fronted cafe, which in addition to a range of sizzling, spicy king prawn meals, also had a range of exotic soups on its menu. Now many travellers to far-flung Asian destinations seem to spend most of their trip looking for local cures to upset stomachs. Here though was a remedy, which if it were to be believed, wouldn’t so much cure the complaint as multiply the pain greatly. At the top of the list of stews, and I tell no lie, was a novel brew called Crap Soup. Well all right, on refection I’m sure they meant crab soup, but I was not going to try it just in case.

The Tree

The prohibition regime at the chalet was now starting to irritate me. All this staying dry wasn’t my idea of fun. Instead I went searching for beer and found it by the side of a tree in the middle of a distant field. This converted tree, or The Tree as the establishment was called, had a circular bar counter built around it. Langkawi is a Malaysian tax haven and so all manner of ex-patriots hung out at the place. The Tree was owned by a German couple and was frequented during my visits by Thais, South Africans, English, Australians, Chinese, Japanese, further  Germans and of course Malaysians; quite an eclectic gathering which generated an infectious atmosphere. This was helped in no small part by Rose, the co-owner, whenever a customer neared the end of their can of beer, opening a new one and sticking it on the slate. All this before anyone was able to consult their addled brain to ask if they had had enough?  Putting ones foot down and deciding that you had reached your limit wasn’t, it appeared, an option.

For four consecutive nights I set out at eight o’clock for a bite to eat and a beer, fully intending to be in bed by 10.30 p.m. This was essential to be up bright and early, in order to get to the island’s only sizeable town, from where I would catch the daily boat to Thailand – that was the theory.

However, for four consecutive nights Rose said, ‘Forget it. You won’t make that ferry tomorrow. We will see you back here instead.’

And for four consecutive nights, as 8 p.m. suddenly became 4.30 a.m., I staggered home with the rest of the crew, as the Far Eastern sun started to come up over the horizon. On each of these occasions (and I lie not), I slept through my 7.30 a.m. alarm call and woke up at 1p.m. instead, and of course trudged back to the Tree in the evening, for all the ex-pats. to laugh and say we told you so.

There are two points here:

I’m sure it is not that unusual for those on a say, ‘Club 18-30’ holiday in Majorca to be living it up till dawn, but the tiny settlement where I was staying was just a small water front street with a handful of small shops, a garage and a couple of cafes – a picture of inactivity. Yet, come dark, for some curious reason, a tree in the middle of a field, which is itself several fields back from the road, acts as a magnet, for people who must live quite a distance away to come and get bladdered.

Point two – and this is really where the story starts in earnest – during my last session at the Tree, a German customer on hearing that I was heading for the provincial textile city of Hatyai across the Thai border, passed on a tip for a hotel. ‘Stay at the King’s,’ he insisted,  ‘It’s not five star, but it’s very comfortable, safe, modern and reasonably priced.’

I was grateful for the advice and so made a note. I was equallly grateful that the Tree was closed on Wednesdays. So at the fifth time of trying I gave my liver a night off and got an early night.

Hatyai Bound

My transfer the following day to Thai territory was a whistle stop tour of different modes of transport:

First of all waiting by the side of the road, in this sparsely populated place, for what felt like an eternity, until a vehicle came over the horizon and praying that it was a taxi;

Getting over to the other side of the island and grabbing a ticket at the port for the launch boat to the Thai entry point of Satun;

At the other end, standing on a small platform which is bobbing up and down on the quay side, whilst my credentials are scrutinised by custom officials and a curious assortment of locals -not one of the more common entry points for johnny foreigner, this;

Haggling over the fare for a ten mile motor bike taxi ride to one of Satun’s sister towns;

Sitting quite nonchalantly on the back of this bike, with my pack wedged between myself and the real cool dude of a driver, relishing the cool breeze with my shades on, dreaming of Peter Fonda on his Harley Davidson in the film Easy Rider, and in a touching moment of profound eloquence, thinking Fuck me, this is cool;

Alighting at the taxi rank in Saturn, where the driver of a Mercedes Benz is waiting for his car to fill up with Hatyai bound passengers;

And finally two hours late being deposited at the King’s Hotel –  all in a day’s work.

Hat Yai, Thailand

Langkawi, Kedah, Malaysia

Room service at The Kings

The hotel looks quite promising from the outside – no run down establishment this. Things brighten up even more as I mount the steps and enter an icy air-conditioned foyer. At the same time I clock an aesthetically pleasing marble floor and reception counter. The staff are very polite with their greetings. All of this is given further elegance by their corporate uniforms, ID badges complete with photos and a computerised booking system. I am in no doubt that a place like this one year previous, before the melt down of the tiger economies, would have cost me double.

Having slapped my Visa card down and signed on the dotted line, I am escorted to my room by another member of staff who is wearing a differently coloured chic uniform. She smiles, jangles my keys and we step into the lift.

Riding up to the fourth floor with this twenty something women, I found myself in awe of her stunning looks and shapeliness. Cor blimey, I thought, she is beautiful beyond belief. We get to my room and she unlocks the door. She proceeds to give demonstrations of how to work the shower and television. Hardly worth her making a special trip up to the fourth floor just to show me the obvious. But she insists on drawing these demonstrations out over a few minutes; obviously angling after something I thought. Finally she keeps asking me a question in Thai, which unfortunately is not my mother tongue. Well of course I knew it was something to do with nooky, especially when she kept pointing to the bed, but I was not going to let on just in case. I mean really! There would have been no scope for confusion if she had just come right out with it and said Jigger jigger ok?

Eventually, my apparent stupidity proves too much for her and she leaves the room. No sooner had I got my kit off and there was a knock at the door. Before I could reply, the door opens and she wonders in with an older colleague. Much to their amusement I quickly grabbed a towel and covered my embarrassment.

Unfortunately, I could not feign stupidity this time, as the older women in fluent English says, ‘Sir would you like a lady for this evening.’  Well that was clear enough I suppose – I could not really say, with a boy scoutish innocence, ‘Of what use would she be. Is she any good at ironing, map reading or whatever?’

Over the next twenty seconds, two related thoughts crossed my mind, both related to the passage of time:

Now on most occassions my ability to recall events past, at the drop of a hat is exemplary. However, try as I might, I was struggling to recall the last occasion that one minute I find myself melting into a women’s face, so stunning was her appearance, and the next she effectively turns around to me and says, ‘I suppose a quick shag is out of the question?’ This is not something that happens to me most weekends, you might say.

The second thought, and this is what I have really been building up to since line one, is that I found it quite incredulous, how I could move from the far north of Malaysia, where the culture was most reserved and conservative – just forget the Tree for a moment. I’m referring to the indigenous population – and quite literally, within five minutes of having settled in across the Thai border, the attitudes I encounter are more akin to take a walk on the wild side. Across the relatively short distance I had covered between Malaysia and Thailand, the contrast in social mores was startling, shaped in no small part by dominant religions.

Running this knocking shop on the side, presumably with the counter staff’s knowledge, gave it an air of legitimacy. The existence of hotel uniforms, ID badges, lavish surrounds and so on, made it feel like a respectable profession, and maybe this was how it was viewed from the Thai side.

Sure, it would hardly be surprising if this had happened at some upstairs room at a bar in the Patpong district of Bang Kok, but this was a two hour flight away. Of course if a bloke says he’s off to Bang Kok for his holidays, this is inevitably met with muffled snorts. But Hatyai? Have you previously heard of this provincial Thai city, whose main out put is textiles? I think its unlikely.

I found the whole situation very intriguing and could not help emitting my own muffled snorts. Bugger me, I thought, I have not had chance to catch my breath yet, and these are the attitudes I am encountering.

I locked the door, and crashed out onto the bed, alone, for an hour, then showered and stepped out into the late afternoon humidity.

The Pink Lady

After a couple of hours of stocking up on clothes for the next week, I dined at two kinds of establishments. The first was in the midst of a mecca of impromptu food stalls and tables in the city’s open air market, where steaming Thai grub abounded. The second, in the heart of town, was an open fronted restaurant, where as well as consuming another plate of king prawns, I whiled away the time with a few Thai beers. Now at this point, things started to take a turn for, not so much the worse, as the bizarre and kitsch.

Given my next discovery, it was a good job I had not held back on those Thai beers, rendering as they did certain bodily functions inoperable, particular those down south.

I had spotted a shopping mall across the road from the restaurant, and so idly tottered over. At the bottom of the stretch was a frosted glass building called the Pink Lady, which housed a variety of establishments. Inside, at the bottom of a plush flight of stairs, I spotted an intriguing notice board of sorts. This contained in the region of two hundred passport size photos of  masseurs, with their first names typed underneath their photo. Maybe, I thought it’s a respectable massage parlour, but then realised that no respectable massage parlour would feel compelled to display staff details in this manner.  Also correct me if I’m wrong, but even if it did, the photos would not need to display so much cleavage – or if there was such a need, I have been missing out on something for the last twenty years.

What to do next ? Well in total disgust, I turned around and started off back to my hotel. Yes, of course I’m lying. Instead I walked up those stairs, but with a fair degree of trepidation mind you. 

At the top of the stairs, through an open doorway on my left was a counter with several members of staff on duty to process bookings. As with the Kings Hotel, corporate uniforms and ID badges gave the whole affair an edge of respectability, that is until I paint in what was on my right.

 A few strides away from reception was a vertical, semi-circular glass capsule which rose from the floor to the ceiling. The radius of the piece of geometry was about twenty feet. Embedded inside it was a series of velvet steps, which ran from the front of this construction to its flat back in concentric semi-circular form. I guess there was sitting room for around a hundred people on these steps. The capsule was half full with women.  On the left hand side they wore black, in the middle white and on the right, pink. They could hardly be accused of wearing skimpy bed time attire; far from it. Instead classy evening dresses were the order of the night. Given the lavish appearance of their garments, the women could have doubled up as bride maids at some wedding, except the ones in black of course.

Each participant, in what felt like a surreal stage play of an adult version of a Grimms’ fairy tale, had a unique number tag hanging from her chest. None of them seemed particularly concerned about the parts they were to play in this production. The only matter of concern to them was choosing a channel to watch on the large TV set which took centre stage at the foot of these stairs. Those who weren’t interested in the TV, happily passed the time by chatting to a neighbouring colleague.

In between the reception desk and capsule were dotted leather sofas, where men idled away the time, sipped drinks and eyed life up behind the glass shield. After they had decided which bridesmaid was the most  bodgeable, they went over to the reception, presumably quoted a number, handed over payment and were handed a large printed receipt (maybe they could claim it back against their tax allowance). The receptionist then spoke into a microphone linked to the capsule, and low and behold number 69 or something like that would stand up, be let out of a rear entrance and glide around to the reception, be issued with towels and something in a silver foil and disappear with their latest business partner in the lift.

‘Fuck me,’ I said in a blinding flash of metaphoric surrealness

The whole ambience of the place was not exactly that of an establishment whose core business was arranging quick knee-tremblers down dark back streets. The booking staff uniforms ( which incidentally I’m sure had a company logo sewn onto the jacket pocket), the ID badges, the expensive furnishings, the girl’s attire and their smiling faces gave off an aura of a systematically professional operation, and one whose activities were quite respectable – which of course they were not. Despite all the trappings, this was just an alternative slave trade.

By then, my loitering had come to the attention of a receptionist, who walked over and asked, ‘Do you need assistance in choosing sir?’

‘Just looking,’ I replied, and then realised the voyeuristic implications of this. 

‘Why not go for a number 74. She is very good.’

I bet she is, I thought

Her deadpan matter of factness in all this would not have been out of place selling CDs at Dixons. I was half expecting her to wonder over to the glass case, get her keys out, slide back a door, remove one of their core products and say, ‘We are currently doing this model on six months interest free credit.’

Time to conduct a bit more social research. ‘So what is the difference between the different colours of dress?’ I asked.

‘Ah, the girls in black are much more expensive.’  She quoted the prices, which I cannot remember right now. OK, I’ll come clean. It was twenty-five quid a shufty. No seriously, I cannot remember and you try converting Thai currency after indulging in the local brew. 

What I do remember is that the rates she quoted for the ladies in black put them in the super league.  This was a bit strange as I could not make any distinction between the different coloured dresses in terms of their, erm you know.

I then asked what must have seemed a daft question, ‘So what do you get for you money?’

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Time in the jacuzzi together, a massage and whatever else you desire. If you chose two girls, there is a discount.’

Oh, my god, better leave quick, I thought, before the beer wears off and I get my strength back.

She then followed this up with a supplementary statement that had me gasping. This I remember vividly. ‘The whole thing will last for ninety minutes, guaranteed!’

At this point, certain that I would not be able to stay up for the full whack, I was on the verge of asking her to work me out a pro-rata quote for five minutes worth,  but mumbled instead, ‘Later, maybe,’ and headed for the exit.

Far better to leave now, rather than fall for any of her sales talk.  The prospect of having to wait for up to ten years to find out if I had enjoyed any liaisons made me shudder. My fifteen minutes of curiosity had been more than enough to reinforce my earlier impressions about the sharp transformation of attitudes either side of the border.

Ideally I suppose if you were up to it and wanted to design an activity holiday combined with periods of relaxation, you could start off in Hatyai with a week’s damn good shagging; nip over the border to Langkawi and recuperate on a sparsely populated beach, doing nothing more than watching the sun set, whilst simultaneously resting your todger and replenishing its stocks; and then head back over the border for another seven days of damn good shagging.

But right there and then, I found all of this making my flesh crawl. I slept quite uneasily that night, knowing that the Pink Lady was only a stone’s throw from the hotel, and wondering, whenever I heard a slight movement from the room above, if it was my room maid being given a good rogering. In the morning I crossed the road to the Thai Airways office, booked a flight for three hours later to Phuket and got the hell out.

Lady Men

A couple of weeks, and a fair number of propositions later, I found myself returning from northern Thailand, and spending my last night in this country at Hatyai’s King’s Hotel once again. At midnight following another splurge, I sat besides a pavement talking to a mother and daughter, who had just closed down their food stall for the night.

Suddenly in the distance, I caught a glimpse of an extremely well endowed female in a flowing fluorescent white dress walking in our direction. Now the street was busy with pedestrians, even at this late hour, but this beauty, with her well rehearsed swagger, stood out amongst the throng. My jaw must have dropped by the odd inch, as the daughter sensing my reaction said about the looming female, ‘This really man and gay.’  The penny dropped, so this was one of the genetically engineered lady men that I have heard stories about – well the top half had certainly been redesigned, and I’m assuming her lower regions as well.

As the lady man got closer, the mother beckoned her over to me, and jokingly said, ‘English man wants you.’  To which this dubious beauty shook my hand and with a high pitched effeminate voice gently said, ‘I am lady man. You want me?’ All four of us laughed. God, I cannot wait to get out of this sleaze-ridden country in the morning, I thought.

Post script:

I returned from my Far Eastern travels to the UK, one week later. A further fourteen days after this, the balloon really went up in Indonesia and Jakarta in particular, with the country’s life time President, Suharto, finally being toppled amidst wide spread rioting, looting, burning of buildings, and street battles with tanks and troops.  The Suharto regime, with the President himself being one of the richest men on earth, was internationally regarded as being utterly corrupt – a ruling family rich beyond comprehension, presiding over an impoverished nation.

Damian Rainford, 1998.

(All images are authors)

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