I was looking through some old photos the other day from when I backpacked through Asia and thought I’d recount some of the details of our time spent getting down through Thailand as parts of it were quite bizarre especially the zombies.
Bangkok
After a week in Chiang Mai we had headed south to spend a couple more days in Bangkok before going further south to the island of Ko Samui.
Our days in Bangkok were more relaxing than our first time there as we knew our way around and were savvy to all the tourist scams.
We went to the cinema a lot to retreat from the daytime heat. They appear to have no cinema ratings in Thailand which leads to the situation whereby you can go to a harmless children’s flick in the daytime such as Peter Pan and be visually assaulted by a half hour of previews for horror films such as Dawn of the Dead and some of the more gruesome local fare with severed heads and bodies being flung from buildings and giant mythical Garudas destroying Bangkok in a massive bloodbath. Great for the kids 
But seriously keep an eye out for “The Eye 2″ and “Garuda”, they’re excellent Thai flicks for the twisted at heart!
Another weird thing about the cinema is that before each film the whole cinema stands for a homage to the King, while a photo montage of his majesty is played along with the national anthem. Very strange! My other half liked this as it meant that the horror ads were now over and the film will begin!
Among many bizarre things, one which stood out was when we went out to eat in a Japanese restaurant. When you went in you slipped off your shoes to put under your seat (toes first). No problem there! Then appears the member of staff whose sole job (excuse the pun) was to run to your table when you were half way through your meal to turn your shoes in the right direction (toes poking out). As you paid the bill she would return to fetch them from under your chair for you. What a job!
Ko Samui
Anyway after bidding farewell to Bangkok we got the overnight train down to Surat Thani and boarded the ferry to Ko Samui. We’d booked the first few nights in this health resort mainly because it had a vegetarian restaurant on the premises and we thought it would be nice for a change to go somewhere where we didn’t have to make an effort to find food.
At first everything about the place seemed normal but the following morning it all began. I awoke from my slumber and went to the balcony to see the sun rise when I heard a slow mumbling noise. Looking down I saw a line of what appeared to be zombies (remember I ‘d just come from a Bangkok horror cinema binge) stumbling along with arms held out being led by a cross between gandhi and the pied piper. Anyway this head zombie starts saying “breathe in the light, feel the earth in your toes etc etc” and heads for the beach with his flesh eaters loping behind him. Once there they stood still looking out to sea, becoming one with their inner fish or something. At this point the sun rose a bit higher and I realized they weren’t the undead trying to eat my brains but harmless hippies on a “morning meditation stroll”.
This was beginning of several days of observing just how much people will pay to relax. While we sat in hammocks reading books and staring out to sea for free, those around us paid a fortune not just to relax but to get certificates in the Twelve Step Guide to RelaxationTM, and next year if they come back they can become 2nd Degree Masters of the School of Harmonic RelaxationTM While we ate hardly anything because of the heat, others paid to fast (over 300 euros!!). At one point I even came up with my own Celtic Celestial Star Wisdom Course involving a stick stuck in the sand and lying around looking at the sky from different angles. I was all set to sell it to the punters but my other half stopped me, saying something to do with ethics. I could have made a fortune especially when the book and audio tapes came out.
Of course nowhere is complete without the Obligatory Loud American (no offense to any Americans in the audience!), I’m sure there were plenty of quiet ones but the loud ones always stand out. Anyway this American whom we called Dorito, as she referred to her friend constantly as Fajita was on holiday with her mother called Frito-lay (we guessed).
Despite the size of the place there was nowhere we could go where within five minutes the whole group of assorted snackfoods would not come through bawling about the latest Cosmic Healing experience they’d undergone. When they weren’t there, we were followed by the water man, who insisted on going up to every new female who arrived with the amazing chat up line of ” you know you should drink 12 glasses of water a day, it changed my life”, and the number of glasses changed every time!
Anway despite all this it was a delightful place, deserted beaches, palm trees, coconuts and we got used to the morning zombies.
Then we switched to the more touristy side of the island and had to wear shoes again. It had all the usual touristy things even the obligatory go-go bars. We stayed near two with the excellent names “The Nice Lady Bar” and “The Sexy Night Bar”. We didn’t give them patronage as my other half shot down my suggestion they might be a valuable cultural experience
At that point we decided to stay for another week in Ko Samui generally doing nothing and enjoying it before heading back to the mainland and then down to Malaysia. We were going to go to more places in the deep south of Thailand but they declared marshal law there due to some shooting and arson attacks, so while we could handle the flesh eating undead hippies we thought we’d skip that.
We ended up becoming short term groupies to a local cover band who were playing in different bars for most of the week. When I say “groupies” and “we” I am of course talking about my other half. The band consisted of several cute asian heavy metal blokes with long hair playing 80’s “Big Hair Metal” tunes. For those who know my other half well I need not say any more, for those who don’t, it basically means I had the week to myself 
So what did I get up to? Well the weirdest experience was when I left the other half with the band for a while to go to the bathroom. Thinking that this would be easy I followed the sign saying toilets, which led me on a 10 minute walk through the backlanes and rooms of various bars where I saw plenty of things I wish I hadn’t.
Finally the toilets loomed before me and given the rather sleazy route they were quite flashy and even had one of those toilet attendant blokes who lit up when I entered with all the usual pleasantries, which with hindsight might have been a bit too pleasant. Anyway, as one does, I proceeded to do what I was there for, when I suddenly felt a wet towel on my shoulders and the enthusiastic hands of the attendant beginning to massage my shoulders and work his way down my back.
Now given that both my hands were occupied and due to a large of amount of liquids consumed previously I couldn’t exactly move, so I waited and chatted in a nervous amiable fashion to the attendant as he offered me “full massage, for you sir”. Needless to say bathroom attendant massages don’t really do it for me, so once my bodily functions had completed I hurriedly tipped him and left via the nearest exit. However in my confusion I had left via a different door to the one I had entered and found myself in a massive pulsing strobe lit nightclub with two women (I presumed) in hotpants dancing on stage to that Russian Tatu song with several men in various states of undress prancing around them.
Not wanting to return to my new friend, I pushed through the dancefloor and after realizing somewhere in the middle that I was getting nowhere I stopped and started dancing as the music was fun and at least I might eventually drift to the side with the door. Eventually after about a half hour I managed to groove over to the front door, by which time I was quite enjoying myself and was chatting to several people. I had however at this time surmised from the complete lack of women (still not sure about the dancing girls) that I was in a gay bar, and of course this was confirmed by the sign outside which prominently advertised “boy massage” among other services available.
I eventually got back to the other half who hadn’t even noticed I was gone, in thrall as she was to The Asian Gods Of Rock. She did tell me later though that the ladies toilets were in a much worse state, obviously they weren’t trying to attract that sort of clientele.
Eventually we had to leave Ko Samui and we went down to the reception to checkout. I noticed the manager listening in to our conversation with the receptionist, and suddenly she ran over and said “where are you from”, we said “Ireland” where upon she profusely apologised explaining that the staff at checkin had thought we we said “Israel”. She then proceeded to take a form out of a cabinet with our names on it, and peeled off a massive security sticker saying “ISRAELI”. I have no idea what that was about, maybe they thought we looked like Mossad agents or something, I wouldn’t fancy being your average Israeli bloke on holiday though.
Malaysia
We then got the 1.30 AM train to Penang in Malaysia. There’s something surreal about sitting in Thai railway stations in the early hours of the morning. You’d think they would be empty but they never are, they’re full of food vendors, harmless lunatics talking to themselves and smiling continuously at you for hours on end, small children running across the railway line with no regard for safety, and groups of dancing women doing aerobics at random intervals, starting up again just when you thought you’d imagined it. On an aside, we are convinced that the same odd harmless drunk bloke followed us through every train station for most of the trip through Thailand. We may even have spotted him in Penang a few days later!
Sometime the next morning we entered Malaysia where we noticed a sign at the customs point informing us to “report to the customs officer if we exhibited or were likely to exhibit during the course of our stay, “hippy characteristics” such as “open toe sandals” or ” long untidy hair on men”. We were the first off the train through customs and immediately the customs guy called us over and much to the dismay of the worried crowd behind us, appeared to interrogate us for a long time.
However all he was doing was improving his geography and proceeded to chat to us for ages about Northern Ireland, where Dublin was in relation to Belfast and so on, convinced as he was that Ireland belonged to the UK.
Once through we spent a nice few quiet days in Penang, a former Colonial British settlement off the north coast. It was quite charming and full of little backstreets in Chinatown and Little India where I spent several days with my arm swollen to the size of elephant after being bitten by a strange looking insect.
I have to mention that I love the Malay language, it’s full of borrowed English words spelt phoenetically as you’d say it in an Asian accent. For instance RESTORAN is restaurant, FIZIK is physics, clinic is KLINIK (they have an obsession with the letter K). Actually at one point we came across a dark doorway with DR BORIS OORLOFFS KLINIK written on it, I half expected a hunchback called Igor to come loping out of it hissing “master, master” but hey that’s just how my mind works.
So that was my memories of our Asian travels, hope you enjoyed them.
