Beachisms

So tell us: how did it start?

It all started the night England got booted out of the World Cup. I
hadn't realised it had started because I'd missed the match and, cooped
up in a top floor flat in Delhi recovering from Malaria, it would be a
few days before I discovered that fatal score. Nevertheless, it started
then, whether I was aware of it or not.
It's not that I was, or am, an avid fan of the game. There's just
something about being away from home that seems to stir up a sense of
patriotism you rarely feel when you're there, especially being an
Englishman, a term I'd never even have thought of using to describe
myself until now.
Oh, and I'd always shown an interest in the big games, even when at
home - with Euro '96 especially. You couldn't help it really. The town
where I was living at the time was a riot of slogans, live bands in the
street and foreigners in daft hats or ridiculous national dress.
Now though, with my own country well and truly out of the running,
making a real effort to catch the rest of the tournament seemed a bit
pointless. Thinking back to those first few games, where I'd watched
various foreign countries fighting it out for points on hotel TVs in
the south, I'd only really had a passing interest. Sure, I'd had my
favourites in each match, but it had been nothing compared to the
tension of the last twenty minutes of the first England game. I'd never
been so wrapped up in a sporting event as I was sitting on the floor in
a tiny room in front of a black and white set with a local family in
Hampi.
The irony of the scene should be pretty evident to anyone who's
visited this Karnatakan tourist magnet. Here I was, surrounded by
breathtaking scenery and one of the most impressive collections of
ancient(ish) Indian architecture, all the more inviting for the fact
that the 'season' had long since passed and there were now very few
visitors to spoil the view, and I'd devoted only an hour and a half to
seeing the sights while surrendering the rest of my short stay to
vegging out, smoking the odd joint and writing long-overdue postcards
home. And now, to top it all, here I sat, transfixed by that most
anticultural of Western inventions: TV. Well, at least I was watching
it in a properly Indian home with an acceptably Indian family reclining
on the floor in authentically Indian positions. Hell, they even had a
sewing machine in the corner of the room, well used judging by all the
scraps of material scattered about its base.
And besides, the World Cup's a multicultural event, isn't it? After
all, you get to see the natives of a number of different countries and
hear their national anthems - and they don't even need to be at war
with each other to get together&;#8230;

The bitter taste of obligation:

Now though, as I lay on my sickbed thinking through the next leg of my
trip, the planned rendez-vous on Lamai beach with mates from Goa to
watch the end of the World Cup seemed rather meaningless. There was
every chance, I thought, that they'd feel the same way and decide not
to bother. If I'd been thinking more clearly I'd have remembered that
they were due there for the start of the tournament. Judging by the
trouble they'd had getting it together to leave Goa, they'd probably
have still been on Lamai until long after the sound of the final
victory parties had died down, regardless of who won. I probably knew
all this in some sense or other. I think I was just searching for an
excuse to avoid Ko Samui.
Why I'd needed an excuse given the mountains of adverse press and
scorn heaped upon the place by even the least hardened 'traveller'
probably needs some explaining. It was a matter of personal honour. I
had made an arrangement with Jez, Nice-but-Nick and Backgammon Pete
back in April and, whether they kept to the arrangement or not, not
being the most reliable or punctual of people, I was certainly going to
do my damnedest to do so. I hadn't had a hand in choosing the venue -
in fact I'd made a mental note to avoid the island entirely, especially
with July being a busy time of year. Nevertheless, the idea of meeting
up again one step further around the world had seemed a good one at the
time, perhaps because Goa had been my first port of call on this maiden
Asian voyage. And besides, I'd figured Lamai had been chosen by
Backgammon Pete, such a seasoned globe-trotter that any destination he
saw fit to pick couldn't really be all that bad.
Add to all this the fact that I'd told just about every other person
I'd met on the traditional India-Thailand-Indonesia-Australia tourist
trail that I'd be there and you've got a pretty hefty obligation.
This great burden weighed heavily upon my disease-ridden frame as I
lay under a slow moving fan in Delhi, covered by a thin layer of
lightly chilled sweat and with only a few drops of water left, planning
what I'd do instead.

Of trains, guilt and tightness:

India had been a light introduction to travelling and after three
months of ambling around the South I found myself frustrated. It had
all been a bit too easy. The sole hurdle had been booking long distance
train tickets, which I'd been forced to try on only three occasions
thanks to my habit of travelling no more than a few hours at a time.
The first time, attempting to escape from Trivandrum, I had simply
backed down deciding I didn't really want to make the trip that
desperately after all and could just make my way to somewhere a little
bit nearer. And while my third attempt had been a breeze thanks to
Calcutta's separate office for tourists - an idea that would reap much
praise were London Undergound to catch on - my second encounter had
been something of a disaster.
The problem with long distance trains in India, as anyone who's been
there will know only too well, is that sleeping berths and even normal
seats in both First and Second Class often become fully booked weeks in
advance. This means any travel plans should ideally be made long before
you arrive in the place you wish to leave, an idea that is anathema to
anyone with a backpack and intentionally loose schedule. It's hard to
be spontaneous and decide on a whim to stay somewhere for a while or
take a sudden detour when you've a pre-booked, prepaid departure to
consider. By the same token, in a country as varied and temperamental
as India, there are bound to be plenty of shitholes you'd sooner leave
that little bit earlier.
My own calamity involved the train from Bangalore to Bhubaneshwar. In
complete contradiction to my guidebook, which I'll admit was two years
out of date but which had also been mistaken on a number of less
changeable points, trains only ran on Thursdays and Fridays. I really
wanted to leave on Monday, but was willing and able to wait. No such
luck, though, as both trains were already fully booked with waiting
lists of well over 200 that I was told I'd have no chance of
leapfrogging even as a tourist. With the alternative being a series of
long distance bus journeys over several days and passing through no
places I had the slightest desire to visit, I was rather humiliatingly
forced to fly.
Internal flights are a backpacker's nightmare. While a welcome luxury
compared to the train or bus, they involve a crushing sense of failure
and guilt; an inescapable sense of hypocrisy and pettiness that is no
doubt magnified by the extent to which you consider yourself a 'budget
traveller'. All those times you ate in grubby meals houses rather than
a nice restaurant for the purpose of frugality rather than to
'experience the culture' were for nothing. That amazing Kashmir carpet
the sensible you looked at as another week away from the drabness of
home could have been waiting for you back in England, post and packing
fully paid, if only you'd booked the train a fortnight ago, or bitten
the bullet and gone by bus. If any of these things really mattered,
it'd be a soul-destroying experience.
As it was, this one forced internal flight was the only real hiccup in
three months of what I'd dearly love to call something other than
travelling - but that's another aside, a rant I sent from Goa in a
letter to a friend back home.
Having had such an easy time of it, I desperately sought something
more different. While I lay there in Delhi I imagined myself pushing
alone through the jungles of Sumatra in search of Lake Toba, beard
filling out after I'd given up shaving in the crappy metal mirror I
bought from the YHA on Kensington High Street. "Great for cutting up
your Charlie on," the assistant had wittily pointed out. Maybe so, but
fuck all use for its prescribed purpose.
Pretty soon this image of the intrepid explorer collapsed. With
absolutely no experience of jungle trekking I would need a damn sight
more than a map and compass to get me safely through the wilds of
Sumatra. And besides, I was reasonably confident there'd be a string of
hotels and restaurants marking the route from Medan.
But the need for a change remained. I wanted to do something
challenging or off-beat, something to be proud of, a departure from the
typical Lonely Planet package tour. It's what we all want, I'm sure.
It's certainly what we all seem to talk about in our Western caf?s
drinking coffee and Coke and waiting for the next banana pancake, which
is exactly why I was afraid I'd never take the plunge myself. So many
things seemed possible, from finding a reasonably secluded island and
spending a few weeks in isolation, to joining a monastery and indulging
a new found desire to learn about meditation, to heading up into Laos
where at that point not so many tourists had gone. All three of these
options smacks of a need to escape, and it's no small wonder that I
also felt a very strong urge to 'disappear'; no calls or letters home;
no hours spent on Email in yet another Cyber Caf?; nothing. It's a
selfish and vindictive thing to do, I know, but the idea filled me with
even more of a sense of adventure. To think that people wanted to get
in touch but couldn't; how mysterious.

Just another friggin' postcard:

Having had time to reflect on it now, it seems pretty clear that my
dreams of disappearing were inspired by a novel I'd just read,
something I'd carried all the way around India saving for the last few
weeks before Thailand. It seemed appropriate: the book was The
Beach.
It would be easy for me to say now that I should have learnt from the
experiences of the main character, who also disappears from what he
calls The World, but I don't think contact with the folks back home
would have made much of a difference in my case. Maybe if I'd been
forced to describe in detail what I'd been up to, but you just don't
get that much depth in postcards and five-minute phone-calls. At the
time, though, even these seemed too much of a shackle, holding me to
the tired normality of the beaten track.

A short hop to shit pop:

Khao San Road was a total headfuck. After three months ambling around
southern India with very few white faces in sight, I was suddenly
confronted with hordes of Westerners milling through mazes of stalls
selling the usual 'ethnic' crap or sitting drinking German lager in one
of the multitude of hectic bars. TVs screened monotonous action movies
or World Cup replays as sound systems thumped out the latest remix of
some shitty European pop song.
But it wasn't all bad. For the first time in ages I actually had
something to do at night, something I should have been accustomed to
and easily got back into the flow of, not least because of the company
I was keeping. God bless Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport and all its
monumental cock-ups.
Sandra was actually on her way back to Zurich, via Bangkok and Kuala
Lumpur for reasons essentially amounting to a lack of planning. As luck
would have it, the plane was so delayed she missed her connecting
flight and I managed to convince her to extend an overnight stay by a
few days. Not that I was after anything sordid, of course. We just got
on really well in the departure lounge and once she'd changed seats on
the plane so we could spend the whole flight chatting away about
virtually nothing at all.
But all was not well in the Garden of Eden. After an initial knowing
look when I suggested sharing a room - two single beds, of course - at
the area's least friendly hotel (inappropriately named the Khao San
Palace) in a bid to save money, I became slightly unnerved at the
obviousness of my approach. True enough, we got on like the proverbial
burning house, but I found myself trapped in that old nightmare of
'friend or bedfellow'. As the number of signals that Sandra knew I
fancied her grew steadily in proportion to those I could, at a pinch,
interpret as indicating she felt the same way, my eyes began to wander.
While she spotted wats and amazing bargains and made interesting
conversation with our numerous new acquaintances, I gawped, gasped and
grew ever more aroused as I was confronted by a hitherto unimagined
selection of delectable young ladies of various ethnic origins.
Now Bangkok is enough to try anyone's patience. After an excessive
amount of temple-hopping back in India, the delights of Wat Pho, Wat
Traimit and the Grand Palace were tragically lost on me. Within two
days I was trying my damnedest not to appear bored shitless. Ultimately
this pretence took the form of copious alcohol consumption. Fully aware
that I'd be having a far better time down in Lamai with the guys from
Goa, I was nevertheless hanging in there with Sandra, hoping for a
little excitement before our inevitable parting of ways. There can be
no doubt I should have gotten my arse into the wilderness far
sooner.
One of our favoured haunts, especially in the earlier evening, was
Gulliver's, a TV-packed refrigerator masquerading as a bar and
restaurant. In all fairness, the food was great and table football was
a welcome distraction from the constant reminders that you were, to all
intents and purposes, slap-bang in the centre of Western culture.
Nevertheless, the food and beer were hideously overpriced - even
allowing for Bangkok being considerably dearer than the land of Gandhi
and Aloo Gobi - and the endless World Cup coverage was a perpetual
roll-call for me to be somewhere else.
One fateful night, while I watched disinterested through a frosted
beer glass as one non-British team thrashed another, I found myself
falling into conversation with a girl I'd just happened to notice in
Gulliver's virtually every time I'd been in. Less conventional in
appearance than Sandra, although I'd be hard pushed to decide who was
the more attractive, Lydia proved a fascinating source of conversation.
Or at least that's what I thought at the time; in all honesty it could
well have been the case that I found myself fascinating and did most or
all of the talking, such is the power beer and of Sang Thip.
Regardless of the exact cause, once again I found myself engrossed in
totally immemorable chatter for the best part of eight hours. Well, I
say 'the best part', but I really mean 'most of'. The best part was
undoubtedly the build-up to our frenzied kissing spree. This took place
just outside her room and involved the two of us adopting uncomfortable
poses, me confessing to feeling like a schoolkid, and constant scanning
of the world around us for some omen, a flash of lightning or roll of
thunder that would instigate physical contact. Despite Bangkok being a
city well and truly situated in a tropical region and it being the
rainy season, no sign came. I've no idea who broke the deadlock, but
what a flood of emotion when the time finally came. From that point on,
conversation was limited to compliments and the odd grunt and
groan.
By the time I'd seen her onto the 8am tourist bus to the airport,
she'd come out with the words "I love you" - rather bizarre under the
circumstances but with all the churning going on in my innards I could
kind of understand. Nothing particularly untoward happened - I hadn't
so much as entered her room - and in fact would probably have ruined
the whole episode, but I did feel an incredible amount of affinity for
this gorgeous German woman who, rather inconveniently, was headed
straight back to Germany. Of course, there's always a touch of irony in
these situations. In this case, it was that she was starting a three
year university course in the Midlands only two months later.
And as if it wasn't cruel enough that I'd found and lost a perfectly
acceptable partner in all things carnal within just a few hours, I
returned to the icy environs of the Khao San Palace to find Sandra
gone. No note; no address; nothing. It didn't take a background in
social psychology to work out she'd gotten the hump with me. I reckoned
it was time to leave.

Thailand gets a bum rush:

So where does a guy go when he's alone in Bangkok, having just lost the
company of not one but two perfectly amiable young women? Not to Pat
Pong.
Thailand clearly wasn't it. Countless reports from the many people
we'd met on Khao San Road described the south as little but a
collection of islands and beaches, some secluded and relaxed, others
filled with whores and sex tourists or techno-worshipping ravers, all
involving copious amounts of drugs of one description or another. The
north had no more excitement to offer: entirely organised,
run-of-the-mill treks, essentially zoos where the animals get more food
and toys for doing their best to act natural. Sure enough, there were
massage and language courses, Muay Thai schools and monasteries to
join, but formal education just didn't cut it.
There was only one thing to do: get the hell out. Having had Laos
pretty much ruined by more up-to-date descriptions of a place suddenly
engulfed by manic tourism, and realising that at that time of year rain
would almost certainly stop play, I decided that Sumatra was the one
for me. Why I didn't opt for Sulawesi or Irian Jaya, far more remote
destinations, is beyond me now; but at the time, strings of hotels and
restaurants marking the way or not, the fact that Indonesia as a whole
was belly-up in the middle of a socio-economic crisis made it seem
ideal.
Of course, I could do with a quick beach stop first.
Having decided that Thailand really wasn't all that great - a
conclusion drawn from my own limited experience of Bangkok, a brief
perusal of the old Lonely Planet and the declarations of a thousand
regulars that such and such a place was "like Thailand thirty years
ago" - I opted for an island jaunt in Malaysia, kind of on the way to
Sumatra but mostly not. Bangkok to Medan (of further) is an easy two
day, one stopover trip. The way I did it took me nearly two
weeks.

That elusive road to nowhere:

My island paradise was one of the Perhentians, just off the eastern
coast of the peninsular, not all that far from the border with
Thailand. Easy enough, I thought, when I bought my ticket to Sungai
Kolok from one of the ample travel agents in the environs of the Khao
San Road. And it would have been.
The first thing one notices about Thai tourist buses is their apparent
inability to leave Bangkok. Fair enough, as someone attempting to
escape the usual routes, I shouldn't have been taking a tourist bus in
the first place, but it usually works out cheaper and well, yes easier.
Easier in that you usually get picked up and dropped off at a
convenient place, rather than some remote bus station or long lost
motorway pit-stop.
So there I was, rucksack between my legs due to an incomprehensible
lack of storage space, tutting along with the rest of the tourists
while the driver repeatedly set off only to return to our starting
point five or ten minutes later. Given the ridiculous traffic at that
time of day, it all seemed entirely nonsensical.
And then the coup de gr?ce. Having performed a series of loops for
over half an hour, we finally pick up the one remaining passenger (from
the Siam Oriental on, you guessed it, the Khao San Road) before racing
off to another spot, at least half a kilometre away (sorry, but we're
all metric out here), where we are all turfed out to be transferred to
a full-sized coach. This coach is due to leave (shock, horror!) in half
an hour or so. Does it make sense? Does it?
To complain is, perhaps, to be ungrateful. We certainly had more space
(I'd managed two seats, at the front, to myself), there was a TV and
video so a movie was on the cards - albeit one plastered in Asian
subtitles and with indiscernible dialogue - and the air-conditioning
worked so we'd be travelling in a freezer rather than an oven. Never
mind, eh? Wafer-thin blankets had been laid on at no extra
charge.
And that was how I got to Surat Thani for 6am. A reasonable movie,
zero conversation and some god-awful free food at about one in the
morning courtesy of the grottiest roadside caf? this side of the
Andaman Sea.

I just want to be left alone:

At Surat Thani, bleary-eyed and frozen-toed as I was, I was forced to
talk to someone. Unavoidable. As I innocently supped a cup of lukewarm
piss-weak 'tea', some scruffy-looking extra from Das Boot asked me
where I was headed.
"Sungai Kolok," I mumbled.
"Oh, excellent: so am I," he beamed with all the infuriating gusto of
a Northern European.
"Oh, good," said I, with all the desperate enthusiasm of an Englishman
facing several hours in the company of an over-friendly, over-excited
foreigner. Of course, being typically English, I couldn't possibly tell
him to fuck off then spend the rest of the day locked in a minibus with
him.
"Yes," he continued, apparently oblivious to my drooping eyelids and
fading attention, "I am going to Malaysia. There is excellent diving on
the Perhentians &;#8230;"
I let out a strangled squawk, hastily converted to "Oh, is there?" as
I struggled to breathe through a tea-stricken windpipe.
"Yes, I have been there last year for six weeks to do my Divemaster
course," he informed me.
"Sounds impressive."
"Thank you. Have you tried diving?"
"No."
"Oh, you really should. It really is amazing."
"Don't like water," I told him, hoping that would do.
"So, you are not going to Perhentian or the Tiamen Islands?"
"Well, yes," I confessed.
"Why? You don't want to go swimming in the clear blue sea? If you are
wanting the partying lifestyle, you should get off here and go to Ko Pa
Ngan or Samui - or is this the visa run?"
"No, it's not a visa run," I glared, pouring the remainder of my tea
into the gutter. "I'm going to Perhentian for some sun, a bit of a swim
- just as long as I can touch the bottom - and a nice relaxing
time."
"You could do some snorkelling if you are afraid of the deep
water."
"Look, I hate fish, turtles are dull and I fail to see what's clever
or exciting about wandering around in scuba gear or a mask and snorkel,
hoping to discover a great big shark."
"Okay, okay; I am only trying to make conversation. I just got back
from Burma - sorry, 'Myanmar' in your cool travellers' language - and
it has been a long time since I had somebody to speak with. Two days by
bus on the worst journey I ever have; fucking strip search on the
border; then an hour in shitting Bangkok before I get this freezing
cold ride to Surat Thani&;#8230;"
"Shitty."
"What?"
"It's 'shitty', not 'shitting'. You said Bangkok was 'shitting'," I
pointed out.
"You are trying to tell me it's not shitting? Look at all the whores
and package tourists it's shitting out! And you: looking at the state
of you, I would say that you were shat out of Bangkok."
Okay, so there wasn't much faulting his grammar. I'm buggered if I can
play games like that with my schoolboy French.

A psychogeographical theory of national identity:

On the minibus to Hat Yai, it turned out the guy's name was Thomas and
he was in fact Norwegian, rather than German, Austrian or any other
insult I could have heaped upon him. Being typically English in my
experience of Europe as well as my crippling sense of etiquette, this
revelation gave me very little to go on. Ironic that I can tell the
difference between the native Orissan villagers of Puri and the
immigrant fishermen from Andra Pradesh living only yards away on the
beach, yet the difference between citizens of Northern Europe
completely eludes me. I knew Sweden was Abba and Denmark was drugs and
free love, and a few run-ins back home had taught me that Fins are,
without exception, a bunch of psychotic alcoholics. But how did Norway
fit into this jigsaw? Psychosis, Abba, drugs and free love: not much of
a common denominator to be fair. Perhaps I was supposed to look for
what was missing from the pantheon of English xenophobic stereotypes.
Stupid? That normally does the job. A bit too obvious, though. Too much
like the Irish, Welsh or Belgians - although each get their own
personal accolades to set them apart: Guinness-drinking,
sheep-shagging, moustachioed welly-boot-wearing and the like.
Regardless, I'd still be left with their unique qualities to suss
out.
Perhaps it was geographical. The Danes are near Holland and they're
notorious for drug-use and a relaxed attitude to the pleasures of the
flesh, although Denmark actually borders on Germany, which may relate
to some underlying imperialist urges.
Finland borders on Russia, well known for vodka, Mafiosi and a
collective difficulty controlling its urge to perpetually develop a
huge arsenal.
Stockholm, if you look at it on the right map, is virtually at the
centre of Europe, so it's no small wonder that Sweden is the true
essence of Eurovision.
So Norway's the other side of Abba from psychotic, just north of drugs
and free sex, its nearest other neighbours being the Shetlands (a
non-starter), Scotland and Iceland - spawning ground of Bj?rk. Based on
this analysis, Thomas was likely to do well in cold climates, probably
lived in a small hut made of ice and would do a lot of fishing while
being occasionally difficult to understand. He might also show leanings
toward disjointed, whining music with orchestral accompaniment and the
odd frustratingly obscure video, but would be generally witty and above
all hard as nails, verging on mad. Oh, and he'd have a taste for the
beer.
The parts to do with the cold would, I figured, prove hard to check
out. He'd already proved himself blessed with a sense of humour and a
liking for beer and fish could be assessed on the island. As for
communication skills, a Scotsman would've been infinitely less
comprehensible, and when it came to being hard and mad he displayed a
satisfying amount of each. His tales of unapproved trips to the
furthest reaches of Burma (as he preferred to call it) smacked of an
admirable balance of self-assured bravado accompanied by a reassuring
appreciation that what he was doing wasn't 100\\\\% safe or
normal.

Down and out in northern Malaysia:

We rolled into Kota Bahru, the first noticeable settlement on the
Malaysian side of the border, a while after nightfall. Paying off the
taxi driver in Thai Baht and receiving our change in the local moolah,
we realised we were in a bit of a pickle. Not only were we searching
for somewhere to stay in the dead of night, we were skint. Two
Malaysian Ringgit spells 'bugger all' in any language. Forty pence
might go further in Asia than on the streets of Soho, but it's still
not going to feed and house two growing lads for the night.
Despite all this, we muddled through. After the initial 'oh my God,
everything's closed, full or too fucking expensive' shocker, we
stumbled across the night market area. Here we were accosted by a Malay
guy and his Dutch sidekick, offering us (sorry 'recommending') a cheap
place to crash with free breakfast - unfortunately not available 'til
morning. Of course, we could pay once the bank opened - rather
paradoxically the ATMs refused to function outside banking hours - and
they'd even lend us some money to help us through the night.
Naturally we refused the loan, but the City Guest House was far too
good an offer to resist. The place was situated on the second and third
floors of the building next to KFC - yes the KFC; we're not in the
wilderness yet - and was, indeed probably still is, run by Malaysia's
answer to Camp Freddie. A bit of a dive, really, even with the 'all you
can eat' toast, jam and rambutan brekkie, but well worth it to see a
fully grown Malay man fawning over a small kitten as it hitches a lift
on his dustpan-on-a-stick while he does his best to clean the place
up.
And somewhere within all this we managed to drag ourselves to the
night market, where we procured two pancakes and a shared bottle of
some innocuous fizzy drink for less than our two ringgit. My
self-righteousness felt a tad restored after that internal flight from
Bangalore to Calcutta.
And so, a dodgy night's sleep and a hundred financial pollavas later,
we were on a boat to Pulau Perhentian.

Scorpions, squat bogs and the girl with the angelic arse:

It would have been nice if we'd turned up early, but then of course we
hadn't. Regardless of how many people told us the better accommodation
would be full if we arrived too late, we'd had errands to run. And so,
by the time we had landed on the longest of the smaller island's
beaches we'd had to fight for the last of the rooms. Winning left us
rather unpopular with the competition - including a girl who it later
transpired had the most perfectly formed arse either of us had ever
seen - but memories of gallantry offer precious little solace when
you're sleeping in a tent on the beach. And besides, it further
transpired that the girl with the well-sculptured buttocks was fully
aware of the fact, resulting in an ego that more than made up for what
God had given her in what must have been a moment of true inspiration.
Well, Christ, he must have been up to something since that stunt on
Mount Sinai.
Oh, and she wasn't that much to look at with her clothes on, either -
not that she had much cause to wear them and not that she covered that
beautiful arse with more than a smidgeon of cloth even when out and
about of an evening... Fuck it; what am I wasting my time for? Neither
of us stood a chance, and we both spent the next week or so, along with
a host of other unfortunates, denigrating her personality and the fact
that she insisted on presenting her weapon even to those with whom she
was in supposedly deep conversation. If you'd seen a script of these
moments, the names of the participants removed, you would have thought
us a bunch of jealous women, distraught at the site of such beauty in
the face of our own imperfection. Sickening.
But anyway, back to accommodation. The little hut that was to be our
abode for the next ten days, and after only a few actually began to
feel like home, lay surrounded by jungle on the side of a steep
slippery hill. Without doubt the only hut beyond the reach of the
establishment's six-hour-a-day electricity, our little shack initially
filled me with a knot of fear like I've never felt before. Mosquitoes,
cockroaches and geckoes I'd suffered in ample quantities in India -
even giving the larger, more permanent residents names I had become so
accustomed to them. But here it was different. Here I might find
scorpions, snakes, rats or full-sized lizards crawling around in my
bed, shoes or underwear. Make no mistake: I was afraid.
But it's amazing how soon I got over it. A city boy like me, living at
the edge of a jungle, sharing a bed with a bloke I barely knew,
'showering' at the bottom of the hill from a bucket then walking
barefoot back to my room to get dressed for the night by the light of a
doddering oil lamp. Within days I never wanted to leave.
The island itself was fantastic. None of the foreigners cruising
around on motorbikes picking up whores or breaking their necks that I'd
heard of in Thailand. No thunderous machine guns and explosions as
countless action heroes fought their way through armies of bad guys in
search of Truth, Justice and a beautiful lay. No drugged-up crusties
waffling on about the time they spent in an ashram in Rajastan, where
taking an Aids test was a prerequisite to achieving spiritual
enlightenment. Here there were no motorbikes; there weren't even any
roads. As far as I could work out there weren't any whores, although a
couple of hopeful kotois minced about in one of the beachside
restaurants. There were only three TVs, never switched on in the day
due to the island's reliance on generators for power and only showing
one movie each in the evenings. And not a crusty in sight: what
joy!

Davey Jones's Locker:

After a couple of days I confessed that I'd lied about diving. By this
stage Thomas knew me well enough to forgive such a minor transgression,
accepting my reasons with no obvious signs of distress at what had been
at most an impersonal snub.
In truth I'd always been curious: I'd seen the programmes on TV and
been amazed at what 'a wonderful, mysterious world' it was. But I never
thought I'd do it. It all seemed so difficult, so utterly terrifying.
You can drown in the bath, for God's sake, why compound matters by
laying another 20 metres of water on top?
But then a friend from home had started a course and it had suddenly
come into perspective. Jon was such an incorrigible fuckwit there was
no way it could be all that perplexing. Now all I was left with was
'terrifying': now I was a coward, not a man short of technical
prowess.
I'd buggered about with a bit of light snorkelling for the first few
days while Thomas launched himself into diving, but now I was ready to
scuba. I could tell he was extremely impressed!
Myself and a guy we'd met on the beach were in the classroom the very
next day, 'classroom' being Island-Diver-Speke for a couple of chairs
and a picnic table plonked in some shade away from those who knew what
they were doing.
That same afternoon we were floundering in shallow water within
laughing distance of the beach. Duncan proved a humorous bloke,
infinitely more active than me and with a physique to prove it. If I'd
known then what I know now about his foray into Taman Negara with a
bunch of Malaysian paratroopers I would have felt hopelessly outclassed
and may have bowed out prematurely. As it was, I just hid my
lovehandles under a strategically-placed sarong and got down to
business.
The two of us had soon mastered our regulators and a new way of
breathing. We'd fart-arsed around in the shallows long enough,
surrounding ourselves with clouds of sand as we faffed about removing
and replacing our masks and mastering the art of neutral buoyancy. So
it was time for our first serious dive. Fair enough, it was only to
twelve metres and we still had basic training exercises to do, but we
would no longer be able to stand up if anything went awry.
When we first hopped into the sea from a rickety longtail boat I was
sure I'd lose all my confidence. Nevertheless, I kept my shit together
and weedled my way into the BCD, strapping it on to counter the
downward pull of the lead attached to my waist. Three variedly
convincing OK signals later, we began the descent.
How to describe the sensation as you slide slowly into the depths? My
first reaction was 'Oh fuck,' but within moments I felt nothing but
wonder: I was actually doing this shit; I was really scuba diving,
exactly like I'd seen on the telly.
I had a slight problem with my regulator - the thing you breath
through - on the way down. Busy equalising and making sure I didn't
plummet too quickly, I simply dismissed it as me being a bit of a
fuckwit and not having it in right. Not a problem, I decided.
Definitely something that'll sort itself out.
But it didn't.
As we knelt on a sandy stretch at the bottom, preparing to go through
the few remaining exercises beginning the actual dive, I felt my intake
of water increase. I took off my mask as instructed and replaced it,
going through the motions of clearing it but for the first time failing
dismally. Our instructor looked on in confusion while the proportion of
water to air flowing into my mouth steadily increased.
I signalled that something was wrong. Still thinking my predicament to
be the result of my own fuckwittage, I failed to indicate what exactly
was up. Instead I just pointed to the surface with my thumb, my mask
now so full of water that I was forced to close my eyes. The last thing
I saw was her signal 'OK'.
If all this sounds very calm and reserved, a bit low on the old
excitement for an incredibly close scrape with watery death, then I've
made my point. All the time this was going on, all the time I thought I
was going to drown, I was as cool as an iceberg in space. Yes, Davey
Jones had a morgue shelf reserved for me, but it was pretty obvious I'd
be more likely to join him if I panicked nearly forty feet down.

If it weren't for the octopus:

The ascent was painfully slow. While K held on tight to my forearm and
guided me back to the surface, all I could think of was the customary
three minute safety stop and whether I was rising too fast. It's all
about pressure, this diving lark, and the last thing I wanted was to
get safely to the boat only to get a dose of the bends once I thought I
was fine.
No: I have to confess that, all sensible forethought aside, 'the last
thing I wanted' was to be waiting at five metres. Such a short distance
from safety for a further three minutes of squeezing air through my
tongue as my mouthpiece drew in yet more water.
Thankfully I needn't have worried. As quick as she could, K had led me
back to the surface.
No need to describe the abject relief. As I coughed up lungfuls of
water while my inflated BCD kept me floating, head high, only a few
feet from the boat, we searched for the cause of my problem. By this
point it was clear, even to me, that being a fuckwit just wasn't
sufficient.
The gaping hole in the rubber of my regulator located, an abundance of
apologies from K flowed forth. With a fortitude I'd never suspected, I
shrugged the matter aside. To be honest I was glad it had happened so
early on. Now I knew that if the shit hit the coral in Davey Jones's
Locker, I'd be able to avoid filling my wetsuit.
When I'd emptied my lungs and gathered my breath, I swapped the
regulator for my reserve and continued the dive.

Where are your cheeks when I need them?:

That night, of course, I had a fabulous story to tell, and as we sat on
the beach in front of our 'guesthouse' for its Almost Full Moon Party I
told it over and over with glee. Naturally it received a few dramatic
embellishments but only to capture the mood, the fearful undercurrent
as I tried to figure out what was wrong. Yeah, yeah, I milked it, but
Little Miss Honey Buns was there and I had to come up with something to
compete with Duncan's spellbinding drumming. A frequent attraction at
the Ministry and other London to Bristol night-spots, Duncan's frantic
djembe-bashing was a welcome addition to any sub-tropical beach party
and inevitably made him a lot of friends. So while he was becoming a
celebrity through a profusion of musical talent and a well-suited and
worldly disposition, I was cashing in on the near-disastrous events of
the day in order to cadge some attention.
The Girl with the Golden Bum remained suitably aloof. Clearly my
exertions at the volleyball net had all been in vain. Try as I might, I
could barely maintain her attention. Granted, there were several other
people who seemed properly impressed, but this was largely lost on me
as I struggled for a match-winning twist.
But the time was never to come. A few hours later, when Duncan was
bored and the party had lulled to a hum, we were off for a late night
swim and those two mystic peaches were lost. All tears aside, though, I
soon had a new problem to deal with. Having spent a large part of the
evening talking to a perfectly amiable American girl (they do exist out
here) I found myself in a rather sticky situation. It seemed that
during the course of our conversation and - I'll admit, rather
flirtatious - gallavanting in the sea, she'd come to misunderstand my
intentions. All of a sudden, as it dawned on me that the others had
gone, I was confronted with an awful dilemma.
There was no actual physical contact, but from the state of our
postures, it was clear there was only one way to go. The most obvious
move from this point of no return was a sweeping lunge and full frontal
attack of the lips. Seconds later we would have toppled over and been
tearing at the remains of our clothes, frantically trying not to drown
as we struggled to get ourselves naked.
A vision of this pre-empted my response, heightened by Angel Bum's
effect on my hormones, but it was swiftly succeeded by thoughts of
disastrous frustration at being ill-equipped for the job. By the time
we'd rustled up condoms from my shack at the top of the hill, the fact
that I didn't fancy her would surely have diminished my urge.
So, of course, I handled it properly. Diplomatic as ever and
determined not to offend, I came out with the line of the year.
"Shit; it's really cold isn't it?"
Without waiting around for a reply, I stood up in the ankle-deep water
and strode from the sea to the shore. Not wishing to appear rude, I
could do nothing but keep my back to her as I pulled on my trousers for
fear of displaying just how much interest she'd aroused.
And yet still she wasn't disheartened. When I'd walked her back to her
room, which was considerably plusher than mine, she asked if I was
staying the night. Well, the Buck (as Yank's say) stopped there. Either
I stayed and got myself into all sorts of pleasurable but string-ridden
trouble, or I made it perfectly clear that there was no way I'd be open
for business.
But still I adopted the cop-out. As scared to offend as I so Englishly
am, I explained I was diving the next morning.

ScubaTwats are go!:

Thankfully I was promptly delivered. Acting stupid the following
evening, I was able to deflect a reference to my being flirtatious -
obviously aimed at a more decisive repeat performance - with deft use
of the old blank expression. By the end of the night, my attentive
American was quite clearly somebody else's. I'll admit I was slightly
put out.
And so the pattern continued. As the Yank disappeared and the best
arse on Earth became an increasingly focussed hub of contempt, Duncan
and I continued our sub-aqua instruction under the tutelage of the most
obnoxious, irresponsible individual it has ever been my pleasure to
meet. A tattooed, hulking Walthamstonian, this bundle of jokes and
illiteracy guided the two of us through three days of what can only be
described as anarchy. It's amazing we can even be qualified as deep
divers, given that our 30 metre descent left us hanging on a rope, the
bottom way beyond reach, unable to see more than a metre in a part of
the sea apparently devoid of marine life. Just as well, really, as even
the densest of fish would have been dumbfounded by the ridiculous
spectacle of Duncan and I, perpetual diving 'buddies' (in horrendous
bonding PADIspeke), signalling to those above us that something was
wrong, that someone was failing to ascend, when we were in fact last in
line. Add to this our astounding ability to navigate consistently badly
underwater yet still make it to where we were going, and you have a
couple of divers that would strike terror into the heart of the most
hardened instructor. Still, we got all the right bits of paper.
Wondering what to do next, now that we were classed as Advanced and
too skint to carry on diving, I mentioned to Duncan my old plan to
check out Sumatra. Thomas had long since departed, in search of work
with a dive shop, and I was eager for a spot of company after nearly
four months on the road.
It was a plan he readily endorsed, so djembe and rucksacks aboard, we
joined the 8 o'clock boat to the mainland. Such spontaneity; such
adventurous spirits&;#8230; such a languid existence this travelling
shit.

Attack of the Fifty Foot Sphincter:

Kota Bahru was unsurprisingly much as I'd left it. Only a week and a
half away yet it seemed like the world should have moved on at least a
little in the time I'd been gone. Duncan had been attached to the
island for weeks and still the surprise was the exchange rate: the
pound had fallen as Asia showed the first twitches of recovery from the
economic crisis of the previous year.
We spent the night there, opting for the more luxurious surroundings
of Carly's Guesthouse, where you could pay someone else to do your
laundry rather than cram it all into a ramshackle washing machine like
City's.
That night we ate in the night market, a treat for me as I now had
enough cash to try out a load of strange foodstuffs. The following day,
however, the day we were to catch a nightbus over to Butterworth in the
first major leg of our bid to escape civilisation by losing ourselves
in the jungles of Sumatra, we ate breakfast at Ronald McDonald's and
lunch at none other than Pizza Hut. Well, you've got to take these
things one step at a time.
Arranging the trip on the nightbus was a pretty simple affair - not
quite Thailand as we actually had to look for the place where we
purchased the tickets, but not much of a challenge all the same. And
everything went pretty well until we arrived at the other end.
First off, Duncan mislaid his wallet. Convinced it was still on the
bus, which had pulled away from where it had dropped us and might have
been anywhere within a 20 K radius, he vanished in hot pursuit. Fifteen
minutes later, he reappeared with no further joy. Not too disastrous,
he admitted, since the credit card the wallet contained had failed to
work at the cash point in Kota Bahru. Now he could report it stolen,
which might get a quicker response from the producers of flexible
friends than the claim it had merely malfunctioned.
And so we went in search of the ferry. We had vaguely intended to make
it to Penang then catch the 9am boat to Medan, the capital of our
jungle-filled Mecca, but at this point we were simply too knackered.
Enough for today would be to get to Penang, a brief ferry ride away,
check into a convenient dive and get some well-earned kip. Sumatra
could wait 'til tomorrow: we figured extensive deforestation unlikely
in the next 24 hours.
After a quick jaunt on the Butterworth-Georgetown ferry and an
exorbitant taxi ride taking in most of the sights on our way to a place
only metres away from our point of origin, we were waking up the
occupants of the Hammer House of Horror begging for a place to
sleep.
It was here that Duncan came out with a rather confusing
exclamation.
"Well, time for the fifth dump of the day."
This in no way fit with my knowledge of his toileting activities over
the past few hours. Not once had I seen him go for a shit, not even in
the toilet at the back of the bus, and I could think of barely a moment
when he was out of my sight. By the look of anguish on his face, now
was not the time to address the contradiction, but upon his contented
return I was determined to extract the full story.
It turned out he'd had quite an adventure, for while I was wandering
blearily about, desperate for a comfortable bed, he had been finding
the most unlikely spots and marking them with the contents of his
horribly troubled bowels.
Picture the scene as a man running after a bus, having clearly left
something on it, suddenly doubles over - a look of panic on his face -
and scrambles into some dark recess fumbling at his belt. Chuckle again
as the same man heads to the back of the ferry, figuring no one will
see him so intent are the passengers on the island ahead, and squats in
plain view, his expression one of abject relief. Roll on the floor as
the same huddled figure holds a sheet of corrugated metal up to shield
him from the eyes of a countless passengers and unscrupulous taxi
drivers in the car park of a crowded ferry terminal. Wince when a
desperate Duncan finds the only cubical in a restaurant toilet occupied
and is forced to pebbledash a urinal.
Laugh? Well, sympathetic as I was to the white-haired one's
predicament, if my own ringpiece had been as feeble as his I would
undoubtedly have shat myself.

Persistent fuckwittage:

We managed to leave Georgetown the following morning. Duncan's bowels
were still in a hideous state of disrepair, confounded no doubt by his
insistence on joining me in a beautiful Thali courtesy of one of the
area's superb south Indian restaurants. The look of pleasure on his
face as he shovelled it into his mouth with eager fingers was almost a
match for the look of distress not half an hour later when he dashed to
the khazi to check if it was going to burn twice.
The boat out was, of course, far from uneventful. Having bought our
tickets as the vessel was due to leave under assurances it would wait,
we thought nothing of it when ushered through the baggage check ahead
of hundreds of other tourists. Ambling through the hordes of locals
offering to sell us rupiah, we simply followed everyone else in a
snaking line toward the pier. Sure enough, bobbing in the murky harbour
water was the predictably ramshackle pile of rusty nuts, bolts and
propellerheads. As everybody stood around in the usual confused
frustration, we joined in the fun of sliding our belongings down a
woefully narrow plank onto the back of the boat, where it was duly
stacked in orderless piles to be covered with inadequate
tarpaulin.
Soon after, as Duncan chatted with a couple it turned out hailed from
the same part of England as himself and I fretted as to what exactly
was going on, a van rolled up and some officious-looking Malay guy
hopped out and started shouting at everybody, seemingly trying to find
someone. Now it's hardly unusual for any form of transport to run late
in this part of the world, but the boat was due to have left over
fifteen minutes earlier and we were all still waiting to board - and,
somewhat miraculously, there didn't even seem to be anything
wrong.
So as the van disappeared back up the jetty, I pulled out my ticket
and showed it to one of the port attendants. Sure enough we were
waiting for the wrong boat.
I am still astounded how we managed to get our stuff back off the
boat, two anonymous rucksacks and a djembe, without even climbing
aboard. But we did, and as we hurried our way after the van it
thankfully returned to help us.
Yes, there was another boat - a better boat at that - and it was
dutifully waiting for us, Customs officials at the ready to stamp us
out of Malaysia. Our relief was such that Duncan momentarily forgot his
bowel problem and neither of us noticed the terrible irony of having
Titanic as our entertainment for the crossing.

Jungles, mushrooms and social unrest:

We had no idea how close we'd come to the riots as we bumbled our way
through Medan. Completely unaware of the potential for one of the
coolest of travelling deaths, we had gladly been duped by the
Indonesian Customs official who'd told us we were best off changing our
Travellers' Cheques at the ferry terminal as the rates were high and
many other places would be closed. Then we'd boarded the free bus,
which had waited an hour before taking us into the city and dropping us
off, with no explanation of our whereabouts, on some wasteland
surrounded by tuk tuk drivers and touts of a thousand descriptions. We
were determined not to fall into their vampiric clutches.
This determination lasted a matter of minutes as several attempts to
locate the bus station proved entirely fruitless. This was largely due
to a phenomenon I encountered in Bombay: you go up to a local and ask
for directions, having previously rejected a taxi. At first the person
is helpful, but within moments he's accosted by taxi and rickshaw
peddlers, clearly threatening him should he impart any useful
information. Pretty soon you are utterly buggered, forced to pay
ridiculous rates or choose a direction to head off in and go it
alone.
So, pretty soon, we were in the back of a taxi; not just any taxi,
however: this was a luxurious 4x4 for which we were paying a fortune.
Clearly we were being ripped off, but there was little we could do to
rectify this - as the driver and his mates were fully aware as they
justified their fare with reference to air-conditioning and electric
windows. Yeah, great, we agreed, but we're only going round the corner
and would've been happy to do the journey in a wheelbarrow.
In real terms the price of the lift was sod all, but this proved
little consolation when we managed to get seats in a minibus to our
next destination for less than half the amount.

Follow the yellow brick road:

Although we'd delayed the decision 'til the minibus owner had asked
where we wanted to go, our destination was the infamous Lake Toba. With
Duncan still thankful if he could muster anything more solid than a
bowlful of Coco Pops in his consistently frequent trips to whatever
could pass for a toilet, we were crammed into the front seat of a
vehicle more suited to Mad Max than the transport of tourists. Our
stuff was precariously perched on the roof, a habit to which we'd both
grown accustomed, but neither of us had before had our belongings
exposed to tropical rains. No surprise that when we finally reached our
destination, most of our clothing was soaked and Duncan's
crowd-pleasing instrument was in need of a considerable amount of
attention.
For those who have never been and will never go to Pulau Samosir, the
supposed island at the centre of one of the world's largest and deepest
volcanic lakes, it's a venue straight out of the Wizard of Oz. When
Dorothy met the Munchkins who told her to follow that Yellow Brick
Road, she would have done well to have dawdled a while, hired a bike
and chanced a brief spin on the more scorched-brown dust and rock
tracks that criss-crossed the region. Had she simply hung around
slightly longer than it takes to sing a catchy but repetitive song, she
would have soon seen a side to her diminutive new friends more suited
to Juliette Lewis than Judy Garland. For the Batak people seem obsessed
with magic mushrooms. Forced to abandon the age-old practice of eating
each other under the pretence of upholding the law, these cheerful
ex-cannibals have taken to harvesting fungus of disastrous distinction.
These they consume willy-nilly and seem determined to share. Within
seconds of arrival we were made privy to the fact that our guesthouse
was happy to oblige did we feel the urge to partake, and the words
'Mushroom Omelette' were daubed boldly on the walls and menus of many a
roadside shack or restaurant.
After a few days of acute relaxation, a small child's mid-conversation
offer of "Hey, Mister; you want skin up?" being far too tempting to
resist, we managed to get it together to hire a couple of bikes. Monday
was spent scrambling into the hills on a madcap tour of the island.
Slapping the hands of young kids as they appeared from nowhere or
dangled from trees yelling "Horas!" we ignored the appointed
attractions, narrowly missing fatal drops off the sides of various
cliffs and standing by as the locals assembled bridges through want of
sufficient materials. In astoundingly comical yet life-threatening
style, these budding civil engineers would edge their vehicles to
halfway then remove the wood from behind, a delicate and slow-moving
spectacle that we photographed and laughed at repeatedly.
Naturally we were late back, arriving long after dark and hours after
we'd agreed to return the bikes. Their owners were suitably worried,
about us as well as the bikes, but were still all too glad to knock up
two 'special' omelettes and a couple of glasses of whiskey to help us
get over the ordeal. Another boring old Monday in a haze of 9 to
5s.

'Moist' is a wonderful word:

After two or three days to recover and freeze my tits off swimming
warily around in the lake, it was definitely time to move on. Duncan
had still to wait for his credit card, which I've since learned took
weeks to arrive, and I wanted to check out the jungle sprawled across
much of Sumatra.
So there was only one course of action: once again I was travelling
alone.
Getting to Bukit Lawang involved a ludicrous sweat-fest of
backtracking&;#8230; all the way back to Medan. Convinced there must
be a direct route, I'd been forced by a need to move on to just take
the quickest way out. Two long and stupifyingly round-about bus
journeys later, I was deposited in Bukit Lawang, surrounded by
mosquitoes and virtually drowning in sweat. 'Air-con' my arse; not only
had the system been knackered, but the minibus windows were sealed and
it had taken an age with my penknife to rip open a window for
air.
Within minutes I was under the shower, fully checked into the nearest
'hotel' and almost still wearing my clothes. And then it was down to
the restaurant, where the sweat poured again and I reverted to much the
same state I was in on arrival. A breeze, some air-con, some ice cold
lake water to swim in, just something to give me time to cool off!
Jungle: however did it get so damned humid?
Sorry, don't usually use the word 'damn'; I usually opt for shit, arse
or fuck, but I picked that one up back in Delhi. I'll try not to do it
again.

Intelligent jungle?:

Now, I've never been that much of a raver; never been all that clued in
when it comes to underground music, but the use of the term Intelligent
Jungle seems wholly inappropriate in the surroundings of stoically
urban London. There is nothing in the snare-filled gibberings of some
hipper-than-thou Tufnell Park DJ that captures the sentient malice of
the roots, vines and trees of the lightest of Sumatran
wilderness.
Sure I've been disturbed by the menace of unintelligible music, the
pent-up aggression of many a Parker'd gangsta, but not half as
disturbed as when chased by an angry orang-utan, well-known for its
violence by the guides who were already some distance away. Riddled
with fear, I was involuntarily last in line in an unavoidably
single-file dash up the steepest of hills with Chuckles only metres
behind, the barbed arm of Satan rather than that of Keith Harris rammed
viciously up his arse.
Eventually, and no thanks to our guides, the monster finally grew
bored. By this time we were utterly exhausted and the four of us
insisted on our 53rd break of the day.
The run-in with the primate from Hell left us all understandably
shaken, and we were quite ill-equipped for the day's second encounter,
this time with two of the strange orange beasts, one of which carried a
baby. With abject terror obvious on all of our faces, we were reassured
by our guides that there was no imminent danger - that in fact, if we
wanted, we could safely feed them some fruit. Cameras were dished out,
bananas were readied and a couple of us tested this claim.
Touching the hand of a wild orang-utan, aware that it could easily
tear off your arm, is up there with meeting an alien. It's something
I'd never have believed I would do. Here I was, standing in the jungle,
in the presence of two and a half of the weirdest looking 'close
relatives' I'd ever encountered, sweatier than Bernard Manning getting
slippery at Megatripolis, and there was no way my photos could capture
the moment, no way my friends would understand the overwhelming awe the
experience inspired. This was what I was after. This was what I had
wanted but been unable to picture as I lay on that camp-bed in
Delhi.

Back to the Wild:

Forty eight hours later, I was in hospital back in Penang. Some sort of
stomach malfunction, I presumed, although scarier things were suggested
by my malicious trekking companions - stomach ulcer, dysentery, the
works. Turns out the internal bleeding I was experiencing was most
likely caused by the anti-malaria drugs I was taking. Marvellous.
Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
The trouble had started shortly before I bounded off into the jungle
but, desperate to go, I'd ignored it. By the last day of trekking I was
in considerable pain. Just as well there was to be no walking, our
return to Bukit Lawang being by river on a raft made of three inner
tubes and a couple of pieces of rope. Great fun: I was almost unaware
of my agony.
So there I was, surrounded by unhappy Malaysians and the smell of
industrial disinfectant, holding a test tube of shit and waiting for my
tormentor to be named. The whole process was to take several days, the
blood test being a more time-consuming endeavour for some reason or
other. But rather than stay on Penang and await the results, I was
persuaded by a rather saucy New Zealander to jump on a night train down
south. The following morning, with me knowing the girl had a boyfriend
and that the journey could only be torturous, we had arrived in the
country's capital, bleary-eyed and with nowhere to stay.
I'd never intended to visit KL - just another big Asian city as far as
I was concerned, full of the same mad rush and filthy pollution as
Bangkok, Bombay or Delhi; endless hordes of touts, cripples and
children desperate to help you spend money. As it happened, this
bizarre hormone-guided sidetrack proved one of the most entertaining
yet.
Sure, Kuala Lumpur is a large Asian city. Naturally it suffers a tad
from pollution. Yes, there is poverty in places. But in the run-up to
the Commonwealth Games, the capital had clearly seen a wash and
brush-up, and the sight of gleaming skyscrapers put even my own town to
shame. It's not that I'm into ridiculously tall buildings, thrusting
their way to the heavens, but there's something undeniably majestic
about Petronas Towers, the tallest manmade structures in the world. The
way they shone in the sun and reflected in car windows and just about
any other reflective surface for miles around imbued them with a kind
of benevolent omnipresence it was impossible not to admire.
And, unlike the other capitals I'd visited, KL offered plenty of
English. Here I could be easily understood. Where in Bangkok, Bombay
and to a lesser extent Delhi, catching a taxi to anywhere but the
driver's brother's shop had often been a gruelling test of patience, in
KL the cabbies could hold stunning conversation on any topic without so
much as a stutter. In the streets, young schoolkids would jabber away
in a format I could readily comprehend, and in bars and clubs the Malay
elite would be doing their socialising in a language that, even as a
typical Englishman, I could instantly understand.
By the time my Kiwi companion flew out the next night, her first trip
abroad complete, there was no chance of me returning as planned to
collect my results from Penang. I had arrived and was here to
remain.
That very first night, we had gone to the Hard Rock Caf? - not a place
I would have chosen under any normal circumstances, but it was the
Kiwi's last night and it had to be done in style. Naturally the place
was hideously expensive, but after months of what felt like incessant
scrimping, I was eager to waste some good money, especially if it
inspired my friend to some end-of-trip indiscretions.

Escorts, Bescorts: come in if you're saucy!:

But, alas, it was not to be. Throughout the evening, my Kiwi friend
remained politely inaccessible, irrespective of the looseness of my
wallet and silkiness of my words. There was only one thing I could do
to save face: show her she never had a chance anyway by seeking
fulfilment elsewhere.
Strangely, fulfilment was already on the prowl. Strutting our funky
stuff on the dance floor to the World's Best cover band - I kid you not
- we were soon scoped-out by a rather attractive ex-pat woman at the
bar. Within moments she was attempting to open conversation with a
series of strange and seemingly vacuous questions: asking if it had
hurt to have our eyebrows pierced (the shared characteristic that had
acted as a bond between myself and the Kiwi in those first minutes of
contact), wanting to know about any tattoos - that kind of shit.
Seeing as it was pretty obvious what she was up to, I was more than
happy to play along. The fact that she bought us both drinks almost
instantly was a sufficient gift horse to keep the Kiwi quiet. And so I
joined the charade. As my original boozing partner got talking to the
newcomer's mates, I gradually and teasingly made it clear that I was,
despite all appearances, readily available.
When she asked what I did for a living, I couldn't help but explode
into rich fabrication - repeating the same old story is such a tedious
daily chore. I told her I was a 'Strategic Intelligence Analyst',
figuring that even though I knew bugger all about it I could pull off
the blag under all but the most direct or professional questioning.
Luckily the gamble paid off: not only was she incredibly impressed, not
least by my nonchalance over the coolness of my supposed occupation,
she was infinitely less informed than I as to what this job might
involve.
And as for what I was doing in Kuala Lumpur, well as it turned out I
was making the most of a pending assignment in Laos to check out some
of Southeast Asia. I'd taken some well-earned holiday prior to the new
job and had flown out just over a month ago for some beach and jungle
exploration. I'd accidentally wound up in KL and once my short-term
travelling companion was gone I'd be at a bit of a loose end as to how
to occupy myself for the remaining two weeks of my holiday.
"Well, why don't you stay here and have sex with me?" was her
suggestion.
How I managed to maintain my composure I have no idea as naturally I
was understandably somewhat overwhelmed. This was not the sort of thing
I heard every day; indeed not the sort of thing I remember hearing
before. This shit just doesn't happen - not to me, at least.
"I'd never agree to do something for a fortnight I hadn't already
tried for a night," I replied as calmly as my excitement allowed.
Again she was clearly impressed. I rested a while on my laurels.
Nothing more was said on the topic, although it seemed decided that
the matter was closed.
Several drinks later, myself, the Kiwi and a host of revellers of
various sporting backgrounds (the captain of the Australian Women's
Hockey Team and her physio, two enormous US Pro Basketball players
included) and I were squeezed into a motley convoy of private and
public vehicles, cruising through KL on our way to my new friend's flat
- sorry, 'apartment'. Wine, the first I'd tasted in months, was hauled
out and we all set to, drowning ourselves in whites and reds from
around the world. Vintner philistine that I am, I naturally had no idea
what was deemed a classic and what'd just get me pissed, but this
didn't seem to upset the woman who'd taken me under her wing.
By the end of the night, I found myself turfing out the hangers-on,
who fired me a volley of grins and cheeky winks as they staggered into
the lift. Jo was already out cold, or at least so I thought until I
slid under the covers - a leopard skin bedspread no less!
Now, I can only speak for myself on this one, but this sort of thing
is the stuff of schoolboy fantasy. Older, incredibly rich, and very
attractive woman chases young man (or boy!), plies him and his friends
with drink and proposes a fortnight of shagging, apparently with no
strings attached, within minutes of learning his name. And there I was,
suddenly plunged into a scene from The Graduate, slipping into bed with
that very older, richer woman.
I was terrified.
But in spite of the fear, I did my best. It was a tough night, and God
knows I'd much rather have been lying in my bedbug-infested shithole of
a hostel, begging my hormones to leave me alone as I tried to get to
sleep thinking of the delectable Kiwi on the bunk below. Oh, it was
terrible, and as I made my way back in the morning, Jo's business card
and an invite in my pocket, I felt absolutely no smugness at all.
My indiscretion went unmentioned - probably because, as last nights
go, leaving a party with two gorgeous black American basketball players
from the Malaysian League can hardly be considered a washout.
Understandably, though, I wanted to believe it was an emotional thing -
that my blatant snub in retaliation for her having a boyfriend had
actually worked. But I didn't push it too hard: I was already on a
roll, after all.
I acted pretty nonchalant all day, which left me with precious little
time once I'd popped her in a cab for the airport to get some decent
clothes arranged for a do to which I'd been asked that evening.
Needless to say, I was in dire need of a shower when I finally returned
to the Bag of Shite Guesthouse with a decent pair of jeans and passable
shirt. My boots needed a clean after their time in the Sumatran jungle
but, aware as I was of my status as a bit of young rough, I tried not
to go too far with the scrubbing brush. Pretty tough, finding that
perfect mix of wild young stud and acceptably sophisticated
professional. And I thought feeding orang-utans was precarious.

In at the deep end:

Aah&;#8230; jeans. After months of doing the backpacker thing,
wearing tailored Punjabi trousers and baggy combats virtually always
with manky old sandals, it was such bliss to finally don something
smart. Okay, so I wasn't dressed in a suit like everyone else at the
do, but I felt like a right star as I turned up and was greeted with a
beaming smile and introductions to a group of people 'considerably
richer' than me.
I spent the evening generally talking shit and managing to avoid
overly close scrutiny of my mythical occupation. This was rather deftly
accomplished by telling and retelling tales of my past month's travels,
being careful to ensure that any discussion of India was strictly
pinned to some fictional previous trip back in the days before I
entered the real world of work. Not even the slightest suspicious look,
perhaps largely because I kept conversation length with each individual
to a minimum. The tales became quite concrete after a time, mostly true
but with the obligatory tailoring and artistic adornment. The truth is,
after all, dull - at least when you've described it a number of times.
So with each incantation, my memoirs became ever more focussed; minor
asides would blossom into rambling anecdotes, so fluid in the telling -
although names were increasingly a problem - that no one would dream
they were nothing but bullshit.
But inevitably as we sat down for dinner I started to flag. The
endless bottles of wine had taken their toll and my mind was becoming
increasingly garbled. Jo had me sit next to her, an honour I knew in
the circumstances, and around us on the head table sat a number of her
employees and associates. One of these was yet another gorgeous
creature, the wife of the owner of the hotel where the function was
being held, with whom my adopted gigolo status allowed me to flirt
horrendously - encouraged no end by her telling me her husband was out
of the country on business. Not that she knew what I was up to,
shagging my way into a nice apartment, with a postcard view of KL, and
all of the luxuries it conferred; it was just that, having already been
accepted and with nothing substantial to lose, I felt bolder than Her
Majesty's Paras would faced with an army of chipmunks.
But it wasn't the lovely hotelier that almost scuppered my dastardly
scheme. No, it was Rod, the loveable rogue sitting next to her, a guy
so full of filth that no one could help but be shocked any more than
they could control their fits of laughter. In an uncharacteristically
serious moment, Rod had asked me what I did. I weasled about with the
travelling thing but he'd quickly evaded my defences and quizzed me
quite thoroughly on my 'job'. For one drunken moment I thought it was
over. With Jo so close at hand, my response had best be convincing or I
might as well have made my excuses and left. As it did so many times
over the following few days, my life of free sex and luxury hung
uncertainly over a chasm of shitty guesthouses and badly laundered
clothes.
And then inspiration. I have no idea where it came from - probably the
bottom of the glass that I stared at for as long as possible without
arousing suspicion - but it served me well. For the next five or ten
minutes, I did as good a job as I could of sounding like I was playing
down what was clearly a terribly exciting occupation. By the end of
what was mostly a monologue - interspersed by the occasional
appreciative exclamation from the under-serviced woman between us and
unnerving indications from Rod that he knew more than I on the topic -
I was little short of a painfully modest genius, far from resting on my
laurels and keen to head off and explore the wilder regions of the
world. That I wore the same boots to an important occasion such as this
as I'd worn while carving my way through the jungle only heightened my
profile as a man adaptable to any situation yet whose personality was
overwhelmed by none. I almost expected applause.
"So what's the work in Laos?" the amorous hotelier enquired. There was
a sudden intake of breath; the audience shuffled forward in their
seats, praying their hero had an escape plan.
He didn't. In fact, it seemed bitterly unfair that such a test of my
creative abilities would come from such a seemingly friendly quarter.
Surely Rod should have cast this treacherous stone?
"Well, it's all still a bit up in the air," I was sure I drawled.
"Basically, the Government wants to cash in on tourism. It's planning a
'Visit Laos Year' for '99 and wants a bit of help getting it
started."
"And how does that fit in with strategic intelligence? Sounds more
like travel and tourism to me." Rod astutely observed.
Fucked if I know, I thought.
"Well, there're are a number of non-touristy things to be taken into
consideration: making the roads more capable of ferrying package
tourists up and down the country; instilling a bit more faith in the
domestic airline; sorting out the extremely confused system with
internal immigration stamps; not to mention making sure areas are clear
of unexploded ordnance. It's a holistic strategic package that I'll be
working on, not brochure layouts and lists of Five Star hotels. The Lao
PDR is eager to attract mid-range tourists, rather than the backpackers
who've made something of a Mecca of their country."
Roderick was silent. I had clearly won the day. Thank God; my eyesight
was starting to degenerate and I had no way of telling whether my mind
was closely behind or forging miles ahead in a bid for alternate
consciousness.
I was treated incredibly well that night. Jo had clearly been
listening more than I'd thought and was embarassingly flattering in her
praise and recounting that of others. Not only that but, in spite of my
severely dilapidated state, she managed to awaken me to a deluge of
eye-opening delights before allowing me to slide into oblivion.

Armed robbery? Are you mad?:

It was a few days later that Rod called me up with a view to going out
for a drink. He'd given me his card that first night, but I'd been far
too terrified to use it, as close as I'd come to discovery. Jo was keen
for me to go, though, pointing out that it would allow her some time to
get on with some of the work she'd been neglecting since my arrival. So
I gathered my wits about me and spent over an hour in the pool,
thinking through a complex web of contingencies and smokescreens,
careful to avoid cans of worms and honing a time scale for my fabled
career path. Serviced, showered and dressed I was soon in a cab headed
for some plush KL night spot.
As it turned out, I needn't have bothered with all the preparation.
Rod was just out for a laugh. With no hidden agendas on either side, we
just got on with enjoying the night, getting truly oiled and talking
shite of a number of different flavours. No shop; no
near-derailments.
Or at least that's what I thought. At the time I'd been merely amused
when Rod came out with a task for me - a kind of thought experiment,
although not the kind most eminent philosophers would approve of. To do
the whole thing justice I'll try and reconstruct the conversation
through a cunning combination of astounding memory and subtle
imagination.
"I've always been fascinated," he said, "By the astounding stupidity
displayed by many an armed robber in the pursuit of his professional
goals."
I asked him what he was on about, wondering only vaguely where this
new topic had sprung from.
"Well, like the guy who spent ages kicking and punching a service
station door while attempting to escape with his takings, eventually
being picked up by a patrolling police car, when the door was clearly
and ergonomically designed to be pulled open. Or the bloke who accepted
a cheque when his victim claimed not to have any cash and was surprised
to be caught when he cashed it. Or the idiot who robbed a bank then
returned the next day to deposit the whole lot, in cash, into his own
account.
"With crime such a problem and yet with most of it perpetrated by such
a bunch of clowns, it makes me wonder what the world would be like if
people with the intelligence to tackle these jobs properly actually put
their minds to the test." Well, it was something like that: that's how
Rod speaks and those are kind of the things he said.
"Hmm&;#8230;" was all I could manage.
"Sometimes I sit in a place and think how I'd do it over," he
continued, running on his own momentum rather than my enthusiasm. "How
many accomplices I'd need; the level of violence required; the escape
route; the probable profit; contingency plans should something
unexpected crop up."
I confessed that this all sounded a bit odd and Rod agreed.
Nevertheless, in his eyes it was all just an exercise in problem
solving. Set yourself an objective and come up with a plan for
achieving it. It just so happened that, on this occasion, the objective
was stealing someone else's money. Yes, exactly: problem solving,
planning - exactly the business I was in.
Except I wasn't, was I? And there it was - the first hurdle of the
night.
"I bet you'd be rather good at the game," he smiled. "All that
training. What a turn up for the books if you defected to the other
side. No more working with police forces, businesses or government
agencies. What if you were causing the problems to start with?"
I tried to worm my way out of it, insisting on faultless honesty and
harking on about being on holiday. Road didn't buy a word of it and
suggested I was just too drunk for the job. He was right, of course: I
was totally hammered. But as with all true drunkards, from the
dribbling Soho alky to the Managing Director at the office Christmas
party, I insisted I was 'perfickly shober'. Within moments I was
fine-tuning a plan to do the place over, based on a request for
parameters I felt in keeping with my cover as a Strategic Intelligence
Analyst.
Once again, I've tried to piece the conversation together. A bit of
poetic licence is, of course, entirely necessary. I've always had a
pretty crap memory for things like this - obscure place names and
rambling anecdotes, fine; but matching names to faces and remembering
what the fuck I or anyone else was talking about more than a couple of
minutes ago? Forget it.
Anyway, back to the robbery&;#8230;
"First in: one male, one female," I began, trying to come across as
businesslike as possible. "One waits in either toilet, mask readied
'til the others are in. Third takes the fire exit from outside,
remaining on the outside covering the back alley, watching for escapees
and unwanted arrivals. Three others enter when the first three are in
place. One attends to the door, locking it and obscuring all signs of
activity inside with black paper over the porthole windows. Second man
hits the bar, seizing control of all staff, while the third shuts down
the sound system. He uses the PA to announce the situation, speaking
Malay and English with no discernible accent. At this cue, plants one
and two secure the toilets, bringing any stragglers into the main bar,
then they round up the remainder of the clientele, all hostages being
kept in the centre here, well away from any alarm buttons or weapons
under the bar. The bar is emptied of cash, the customers relieved of
all valuables, and the crew leaves via the fire escape in a 4x4 stolen
from the airport car park that afternoon."
"No one out front to check for police?"
"Not necessary. The guy on the fire escape monitors all police
frequencies and can see if anyone crashes the party: it's a one-way
street out front and they'd have to come past the alley."
"And in the event the police do arrive?"
This is almost as much fun to recreate as it was to come up with in
the first place. "The alley cat blasts his way in; automatic gunfire
taking out lights, mirrors and bottles but injuring no-one; mass panic;
flash fire incendiary into the corner; smoke bombs here and there. As
everybody rushes to escape, the crew join in having thrown all masks
and weapons in a canvas bag and left it behind the bar. Meanwhile, the
alley cat continues to generate confusion."
"And what about the 'alley cat'? How does he escape?"
"Needs to be a foreigner, weedy and rich looking. As staff, customers
and the rest of the crew confuse each other and the police, he collects
the canvas bag and throws it into the alley, along with his own gear
and a second incendiary to get rid of all forensics. Then he rushes
into the toilet and hides until he's rescued. Then he puts on such a
sickening show they'll never believe he was in on it."
We rehashed the details of the job: manpower, materials, et cetera,
and I pointed out that it'd all probably cost us more than we'd
actually make out of it.
"Oh, I think you're overestimating the price of arms in Southeast
Asia," he laughed.
And with that he changed the subject, delivering a monologue on the
state of the region's politics and cronyism worldwide. Very interesting
and obviously of great professional relevance to the supposedly
clued-in me, but totally lost on the drunk I actually was.

Just not a gigolo:

The strain eventually proved too much. Not that I objected to copious
copulation after a period of such great drought; not that I wasn't up
to it, although at times it was quite exhausting. Picture a quivering
me locked in the bathroom, crumpled under a scorching power shower as
an eager Jo claws at the door, hungry for a repeat performance. One of
many desperate moments when I could scarcely believe in an existence
before or beyond this harrowing cross between Misery and 9?
Weeks.
That said, though, it was the other side of things I just couldn't
handle. The escort I was attempting to be, subservient toy boy
permanently up for a shag, was a bit of a drain. Make no mistake, I did
fairly well on the old acrobatics front; I just wasn't too good at
doing what I was told. There's only so much pandering a young bloke can
do; only so many posh restaurants and people a global tramp like myself
can tog himself up for; only so many times he can be dragged round a
ridiculously pricey shopping mall in search of designer labels and
exorbitant coffee. In the end I even put my hand in my own pocket and
footed the bill for a meal - ironic seeing as I'd tried so desperately
on that first night to conceal the fact that my credit card was behind
the bar. Christ, at one point I almost let on that I actually had more
than a fiver in the bank, such was my despair at being so
inferior.
And so we had an argument. Not a big one but, yes, a drunken one. I'd
demanded a kiss and she'd been unforthcoming, so I'd stropped off, all
her belongings in hand - money, key cards, the lot - and headed off
back to the apartment. I'd pretended to be asleep when she came home,
lent money by the staff downstairs and reissued a key card, and had
barely apologised the following day. Not that I felt I needed to say
sorry for being pissed off when refused the only thing I'd asked for in
the past week. No, it was more that I'd failed to be what I'd set out
to emulate. There wasn't an ounce (sorry, 'gram') of subservience left
and sparks were soon going to fly.
Add to this the fact that I'd actually come to respect her after all
the time we'd spent together and you have a major problem when it comes
to guiltless free-loading. Irrelevant was the way she acted in the
presence of others, advertising me as her 'lover' to virtual strangers
then bragging about my performance (all very flattering but seemingly
more to boost her own confidence than mine). I'd actually grown quite
fond of her and could no longer view her as a meal ticket, a pathway to
abject luxury. Bollocks.
So I was slowly deciding to leave. With nowhere better in mind, I
accepted Roderick's offer to join him on a sojourn to Thailand. Yes, I
know I'd hated every second of it when I'd been there before, but with
that many million tourists there must've been something more to the
place. Rod claimed there was, and with him I felt destined to find
it.

All aboard&;#8230;:

Of course, I had no idea what Rod had in mind. Never fear: he didn't
have me pegged for the same kind of services I'd been expected to
provide in KL. No, Rod had plans for an adventure of a very different.
No jungles, no whoring myself about town; this was something I was to
send not even one postcard home about. This was way out there, and even
now makes precious little sense.
We set off by train from KL, the night train (James Brown soundtrack
not included) that left us bored but more than happy to indulge in a
Thali at Butterworth while awaiting the connection over the border. The
evil hours of the morning saw us arrive at Hat Yai, where we were
bundled onto a bus that dumped us in Krabi, a pleasant enough seaside
town on the west coast much unlike Margate.
Here, Rod checked us into a guesthouse that was clearly well below his
usual standards. After all, the guy hangs out at expensive dos and
clubs with the elite of Kuala Lumpur. Why would he want to stay in a
dive like the KL Guesthouse - because of the name?
No. Rod's impish intelligence had chosen our accommodation as part of
some dastardly scheme that he - or should I say 'we'? - could never
have pulled off at a more celebrated establishment. Scheduling
breakfast for half an hour after we'd arrived, he suggested I take 'a
good look around' in the time available.
I had a bit of a scout around, getting a feel for the layout of the
guesthouse while trying to make myself look vaguely presentable and
doing my usual terrible job of shaving. How many years? Athletes have
won Olympic Golds with less practice than I've had at shaving yet I've
still to go more than two attempts in a row without subjecting my face
and neck to some horrendous nick or slice.
At breakfast Rod popped the same question he'd popped back in KL: how
would I do the place over? Fair enough for pissed up conversation once
other topics had dried up, I thought, but first thing in the morning
after 36 hours of train and bus travel? Nevertheless, he wouldn't let
it lie. As I tried to avoid answering, chomping on my staple backpacker
fare of muesli-fruit-yoghurt, he just sat there staring at me clearly
awaiting a response.
"Look, I'm not thinking about it," I told him. "I'd like to
concentrate on my muesli, if you don't mind."
Of course I was lying. I'd been able to think of nothing else since
he'd posed the problem, and once the fuzz had started to unwrap itself
from my brain, a plan had started to come together.
"How come you never tell me your plans," I protested.
"I'll do the next one," he grinned. "You just seem to have a natural
flair for these things. It fascinates me."
"So you're saying I'm a born criminal mastermind? Gee, thanks,
bud."
"I think 'criminal mastermind' is overdoing it," he said. "And as for
being born with this talent, I reckon your training has something to do
with it - although, of course, they would have to have seen the
potential to have given you the job in the first place."
'What fucking job?' was the response I was itching to give. But,
naturally, I opted instead for filling my mouth with yoghurt.
Inevitably my shovelling came to an end. Sipping some water I steeled
myself to give in.
"Okay," I sighed. "There are four floors, right? In typical Thai
guesthouse style, there's no first floor, only ground, second, third
and fourth."
Rod smiled at me and leant back in his chair, folding his arms in
triumph.
"The top two floors are the same: eighteen rooms, three bathrooms, a
small area with seats and newspapers and shit that you walk through to
take the stairs up. The rooms are split among three short corridors and
only seven have any possibility of windows. The ground and second floor
are narrower. Second floor has seven rooms, three with windows, plus
two bathrooms and a manager's office, which presumably goes all the way
to the front of the building and therefore has windows. It also has a
window with blinds, that looks out on the seating area and down the
stairs to the ground floor. Ground floor has a front desk, staffed by
two people, for travel and tours, plus the reception desk, near the
back by the stairs and back door, staffed by anywhere between one and
three people."
I swear I knew the layout exactly that well. And the reason I remember
this and the entire plan in such painstaking detail will soon be
blindingly obvious. Trust me, I'm a Strategic Intelligence
Analyst!
"What about exits?"
"The gaping front and small back door to the alley, plus an enclosed
fire escape ladder that runs from the second floor to the roof, reached
from the seating area. The roof itself is level with those of the
surrounding buildings."
"You went up on the roof? I'm impressed."
"Well, you did say to have a good look," I pointed out.
"All that rushing around explains why you did such an abysmal job of
shaving," he smiled.
I probably smiled sarcily back.
"So what's the plan?"
"Strike happens at 5am, when all the backpackers are asleep but the
first staff are probably getting ready for work. Entry team of three,
one a Thai woman, seizes reception and any remnants of guests or staff.
No instructions are used, only gestures. Thai woman takes over
reception duties once the staff are secured upstairs in the manager's
office. They don't wear a uniform so no problems there.
"The rest of the team enters via the alley. On the second floor, one
member of the team covers the stairs leading up and another heads for
the roof to act as lookout. Meanwhile rooms 1, 4 and 7 are taken
simultaneously, preferably using polite knocks on the door, but
forceful entry if necessary. These are the rooms with windows, hence
any danger of their occupants raising the alarm is neutralised."
"Very good."
"Thanks. The hostages are told to bring their passports, cash and
credit cards with them. They are told that the building will be razed
to the ground and that the team wishes them no unnecessary
inconvenience. No other belongings are acceptable. All this is printed
on a large card in English, Israeli, German and Thai - fluent. Again no
words are spoken. No excuses are replied to or tolerated.
"The occupants of rooms 2, 3, 5 and 6 are rounded up in the same way
and all are placed in the manager's office. They are guarded by two
members of the team, one by the window and one by the door. The one by
the door acts as a cover for the stairs down. The desk stooge warns him
in the event of any trouble."
"Seems excessive," he butted in. "Two people to guard them in a room
with two windows. Why not just lock them without a guard in a room with
no windows?"
"The second floor windowless rooms have walls backing onto the place
next door. Unguarded they might be able to attract attention."
"Okay, so guard them with one."
"Then they may as well be in the manager's office. Someone needs to be
able to deal with the stairs up from the ground floor. The receptionist
can't deal with it in an emergency for fear of being spotted from
outside. Any action has to happen on the stairs. And if one guard's
busy with the stairs, he needs another one checking up on things behind
him."
"Fair enough."
"Right. So, the third floor. The three knockers from second head
upstairs and take 305, 6 and 7 simultaneously. Those are the three left
hand rooms of the middle corridor. Using the same drill as before, the
occupants are placed in 305, one of only two rooms that has neither a
window nor backs onto a potentially occupied area. While they're under
guard, the other two members of the team take 301 and 308, leading the
hostages back to 305 before securing the rest of the rooms in the
middle and left hand corridor. Then they take the six rooms of the
right hand corridor before dealing with 317 and 318, which have windows
to the back alley."
"And if the people in those two rooms hear what's going on and try to
raise the alarm?"
"The guard on the stairs should be alert to this and act accordingly
from the inside. Anyway, once the third floor is secured, 305 is locked
with one guard on the inside to keep the peace. The other two and stair
man take the fourth floor as before."
"And who's to watch for those back windows this time?"
"Depends on the state of play. Either nobody does it or the sentry on
the roof's called down to assist."
"And what about the money?"
"Cash, cards and passports are collected once the entire building's
secured. PIN numbers are requested to facilitate use of the cards on
the premise that should the number work, the passports will be found
nearby within 24 hours. Should they be wrong, the passports will be
destroyed, leaving the tourists and any locals without identification
or cash. This is explained as before, with the added detail that if the
hostages are insured they will clearly be covered, with money being
easier to recover than a passport, and that if they aren't, hotel
insurance will provide compensation."
"But it won't."
"Are they going to know that? I certainly wouldn't."
"Devious."
"Thanks. Anyway, then the safe is cleared out with the help of a
member of staff and the team quits the scene via the back alley. They
split up and meet in the street behind, all their takings in
bog-standard tourist rucksacks. The two Thai members of the team, a man
and the woman on reception, usher them into a typical tourist minibus
and they leave town like any other bunch of backpackers."
"And if the police turn up?"
"That's the beautiful bit. Over the previous days, all but one of the
team has booked into the guesthouse in dribs and drabs. If the bizzies
arrive, weapons are stashed on the roof and the members of the team are
thrown into the room designated to their floor like any other tourist.
The receptionist claims to be innocent and tells the police her
husband's a hostage upstairs, and the remaining team member uses the
roofs to escape with the loot, leaving a trail so obvious it'll be
followed but eventually lost. No more than three members of the team
will have been seen at any one time so the police will have no idea how
many people were involved."
"But if the whole team leaves should the police not turn up, won't it
be obvious who the people are?"
"Of course, but we didn't need to show our passports when we checked
in, so the team just gives fake IDs. When the police arrive the
passports are gone so nobody can prove who they are anyway. The
hostages will soon all be released at which point the team just
disappears. And as for descriptions, well the backpackers won't
remember each other and all farang look the same to Thais so that
should never be much of a worry. By the time descriptions are asked for
the team will have made it the hell out of Dodge. Dump the bus at Surut
Thani, and everyone splits up. End of story."
"No madcap gunfire this time, then?"
"None."
"And only eight team members, a few guns and a minibus?"
"Yup."
"Sounds easy enough."
And I suppose it did.

A rude awakening:

So how come I remember the details so clearly? How come I can
supposedly reconstruct such an intricate plan dreamt up over breakfast
in some insignificant caf? in the south of Thailand while I attempted
to recover from the 36 hours it took to get me there?
Because it happened just as I'd said.
At a little past 5am three days later, there's a knock on my door to
which I blearily respond. Within seconds I'm shaking like a spaz at the
sight of a very big gun pointed at my face, a stocky balaclava-wearing
nutter on the other end of it. He holds up a large piece of cardboard
with the same instructions I had suggested, plus a few strategic
spelling mistakes, and pushes me back into the room.
I gathered my stuff as requested, too afraid to think it a joke, and
allowed myself to be directed to room 305, where a number of other
tourists were gathered, all in as crippling a state of fear as me. Yes,
it was Shitsville. The most pathetic collection of white skin and
overused nightwear ever to grace the backpacker circuit, all with a
stench of nervous sweat and slowly drying urine.
I sat quietly for the next fifteen minutes, thinking over the plan I'd
devised and wondering how much of the building was already tightly
secured. Rod was ushered in, too, a few minutes after me, but he kept
his eyes from mine and did a far better job than I of pretending to be
completely surprised.
Now all this was obviously not coincidence. I could hardly believe
that my plan was so close to ideal that someone else would have gone
about it in practically exactly the same way. It did cross my mind that
we might have been overheard, but this seemed highly unlikely and
besides, Rod's insistence on looking the other way made it clear he was
directly involved.
So I should really have felt perfectly safe, knowing that I was in on
the deal. My thoughts should really have been on the cut I was due and
whether I'd get more than a tenth for producing the plan.
I think not. As I discovered that day, it's impossible to feel any
type of 'safe', perfect or otherwise, when locked in a room with a
masked man and a big fucking gun. Forget the possibility that my inside
knowledge could well have placed me in greater danger than any other
person present; the sheer fact that one accidental discharge could
leave me or any of the others gasping for their last intake of breath
created a general looseness of the sphincter that could have easily
given Duncan's a run for its money.
By 5.45 they were gone. We'd been told to wait fifteen minutes and
were happy to wait another ten before attempting to bash down the door.
Eventually, thanks to the shoddiness of Thai hotel workmanship, the
lock gave way and a few of us tumbled into the corridor.

Er, excuse me, but what the fuck's going on?:

By nightfall we'd all been released. The police had questioned us for
hours to no avail. Rod and I hardly stood out against the crowd of
other exhausted tourists and locals and my general shakiness was
clearly mistaken for shock and fear of far less incriminating
origins.
As soon as we were out, Rod booked us a bus to Bangkok for the
following day then took me to eat at one of the stalls that littered
the riverfront. Not a word had been said about the morning's events,
and by my second mouthful it was all too much to bear.
"Rod," I began. "What the fuck have you done?"
"What do you mean, what have I done?" he asked me, incredulous.
"Surely you're not going to tell me you think I arranged that whole
thing this morning?" I almost shouted at him, lowering my voice when I
realised it might get me a free stay at the Bangkok Hilton.
"Well, didn't you? You came up with an identical plan to do the place
over only a couple of days ago&;#8230;"
"But I didn't find a bunch of people and weapons to get it done with,"
I butted in.
"No, but that's the easy part," he grinned. "You did all the real
brain work."
"And I assume you did the rest?"
"Well, yeah. I'd always wanted to see what it'd be like to pull off a
major heist. Eight people is more than I had in mind, but wow! What a
glorious victory. What a rush!"
"The only rush I felt was last night's dinner rocketing into my
pants," I grumbled.
"Oh, come on; we just put together a unique holiday experience. Two
intelligent and respected individuals with no criminal background just
pulled off a work of thieving genius. You should be proud."
All I was proud of was being just brave enough not to ruin my one
remaining pair of Marks and Spencer's boxer shorts.

Oh, I see!:

But I was being unfair. It did feel good. In fact, now that the abject
terror was gone and only the fear of incarceration remained, it felt
fucking excellent. This was definitely not the sort of transglobal
shennanigans my insurance policy catered for, especially not in the
perpetrator's favour. Sure, some jungle foot rot or taboganing accident
at the centre of the great Antarctic, but not gunshot wounds sustained
during the execution of a high profile armed robbery somewhere in the
south of Thailand. Uh-uh; here I was on my own.
And on my own was exactly where I'd hoped to be. Back in that room in
Delhi, with its slowly rotating fan, my bones aching from the legacy of
the Big M, this was what I had dreamed of. Not the gritty realism of
the Khao San Road; not the monkey-ridden jungles of Sumatra, with
banana-toting guides to lead the way; and no, not the self-employed
escort business in Kuala Lumpur. Here I was the guide, and Rod was my
capable escort, recruiting a collection of able bodies for a trek
through wilderness I would never have sampled back at home in the
safety of London. Rod chose the venue, I chose the path and a group of
people I never got to know did the work. While I trod lightly and with
ease through the jungle of organised crime, never leaving a trace, Rod
mustered the eager trekkers who would blunder along behind. While they
sweated and toiled, risking life and limb in the face of adversity that
could only be a threat to them, Rod and I skipped along in our
flip-flops, lining our scheming pockets all the way.
We followed this path for a month and a half, leaving a trail of what
I can still describe as masterful rip-offs across a country that just
wasn't prepared for our intellectual approach to the art of the armed
robbery. Thanks to our confusing use of foreigners and Thais with never
a word spoken throughout, the police hadn't the slightest idea who we
were. And with Rod's widespread connections, we were able to take our
circus to Laos, storming Luang Prabang, Vientiane and the considerably
less lucrative Savannakhet before making our way back to Bangkok.
And it was from there that we went our separate ways. Rod headed back
to KL while I made a dash for the land of 'barbies' and Cell Block H.
Never did I tell him my supposed profession was a lie, though I doubt
he would really have cared, and neither did we discuss whether we'd do
it again, as neither of us wanted to know.
As for me, I'm more than happy with the earnings, though I'm now even
more loathe than ever to make money from a job I don't thoroughly
enjoy. Don't get me wrong, a life of crime's not for me, but I'll be
fucked if I'm going back to the rat race.