Thai Girl (7 page)

‘Ben,' Emma suddenly shrieked in alarm. ‘Are our packs on the bus?'

‘I left them outside, but I didn't see them go up on the roof. I wasn't watching.'

‘Ask the driver then. We'll have to go back if they're still on the pavement.'

Maca and Chuck were in the front seat just behind the driver and at Emma's insistence, Ben poked Maca in the neck.

‘Can you ask if they put our bags on the roof?'

Maca leaned forward and spoke to the driver against the loud Thai pop music filling the bus, then turned and shouted back to Ben.

‘Him say, “Ugh, many bag on top. You wait.” So you'll just have to wait, mate.'

‘We're shafted if they've been stolen,' moaned Emma.

The minibus was now in heavy traffic, often gridlocked and then surging forward for brief sprints, the air conditioning unable to cope with the heat and humidity. Ben and Emma sat jammed in together, hungry and thirsty and overwhelmingly anxious. Emma had a feeling that the bus was going round in circles and not making any progress out of Bangkok to the east. It seemed to be negotiating complex one-way systems and taking elaborate rat-runs to avoid the worst blockages. When at last it pulled into the forecourt of a hotel, Ben jumped out to check the roof. Peering in through the door, he told Maca and Chuck the good news that the packs were there, safely stowed on top.

‘Chill out man … cool it, cool it,' said Chuck.

‘No worries, mate,' said Maca. ‘This is Thailand. Things look a bit hairy but it all works eventually. There's not much theft despite us being the rich guys.'

‘Yeah, that's what I said to Emm,' said Ben.

Emma glared and cursed him silently.

The driver soon reappeared from the hotel lobby with two more passengers, a white-skinned woman of the Anglo-hockey stick type in a pale cotton frock, followed by a large Scandinavian neanderthal in jeans. They both climbed in and Emma found herself pressed hard against the man's thigh. Smelling strongly of booze and radiating heat, he began to talk in broken English interspersed with guttural grunts.

‘I feel so sick … please I sit by the door. Last night I meet this German guy and we go drinking … now hangover very bad. Driver, wait me please.' He got out of the minibus, walked slowly across the hotel forecourt and stood bending over a porcelain pot filled with lotus and lily plants. Emma looked on appalled.

‘He's going to puke in the dragon pot!' she gasped.

‘Gross!' said Chuck.

But he did not spew up; instead, putting a finger to one nostril, he blew hard through his nose and directed a well-aimed gob of snot into the lilies.

‘Holy shit,' said Chuck.

‘Nice one, mate!' said Maca admiringly.

The beast climbed back in beside Emma and continued talking in a relentless monologue. Emma would have done anything to get away as far as possible from his massive belly, stubbly receding chin and piggy eyes. It was as much as she and Ben could do to bring themselves to be civil and only their enforced proximity for the next few hours prevented Ben from being thoroughly rude. But contrary to all expectation he turned out to be one of the more engaging characters they had met so far, proving that travelling confounds first impressions and broadens the mind.

His name was Stig Ruud and he was from Norway, a long-distance truck driver and proud owner of a pink nineteen fifties convertible Chevrolet which, he proudly told them, comes out in the summer for a week or so when the retreating snows permit. Taking his winter holidays in Thailand, he freely admitted spending much of his time in bars, chatting to the girls but emphatically denied ever shagging them.

‘What, never?' asked Emma.

‘No never,' said Stig showing his teeth.

Even taking his denial with a pinch of salt, she found him to be a harmless sort of guy whose naive assumption that anyone would enjoy talking to him proved to be broadly correct.

The passengers in the minibus had little in common except travelling, but they all talked freely, learning about each other and sharing their Asian experiences. The woman who had got in at the same time as Stig was Clarissa. She was very English, in her mid-thirties and had recently given up a lucrative job in the City of London as a corporate lawyer. She was excitable and talkative, enjoying being off her employer's short leash and discovering who she might actually be.

‘I gave it all up because the solicitor I worked with was a rotten bastard,' she told them. ‘Couldn't stand a woman being better than him. But he got a partnership and I didn't, so I left. Now I can do more eventing and dressage … and of course go travelling.' She laughed a brittle, irritating laugh.

‘So you like horses, eh, Clarissa? Beaut' animals,' said Maca. ‘Go try the outback … take yer swag and some tucker and ride a few thousand miles. Then you'll know if you've got the arse for it.'

‘Gosh, yes, kangaroos and koalas,' said Clarissa with relish.

Emma watched out of the window as the high-rise buildings of Bangkok were slowly left behind. But the eight lane expressway and the urban sprawl surrounding it seemed to go on for ever. There were endless factories and industrial sites, some belonging to multinational companies. The land was flat and featureless, the open spaces dried up and colourless, giving her the impression that this was an ecological disaster area, the awful consequence of global capitalism. She was deeply disappointed, expecting that the real Thailand should have revealed itself now that they were out of Bangkok. Maybe there was no amazing Thailand; perhaps it was all an elaborate con-trick.

But when they reached the smaller roads, rural Thailand gradually materialised. She could see houses that looked like real family homes set in groves of fruit trees among jungle-clad hills, substantial farms with fields of pineapple and what Maca told her was tapioca. Rubber trees stood in long straight lines, each with the V-shaped slash where the rubber tapper every morning cuts back a slither of bark and inserts the cup to catch the latex. Then behind one of the big plantations was a row of horseshoe-shaped Chinese graves set into a hollow in the hill from which generations of owners could enjoy an eternal view of their earthly estate.

The road was now narrow and twisty and there were many slower trucks ahead of them. If the minibus driver was lucky, overtaking was just possible. Emma's defence mechanism was to look sideways at the wheels of the vehicle they were passing and not to look ahead; better not to know if you are about to be wiped out in a head-on collision.

After three hours they arrived in Ban Phe where the boats leave for Koh Samet. Like every other small Thai town, it looked as if it had been planned by someone with a pencil and a ruler but very little imagination. It had straight, well-paved roads and featureless buildings of two or three storeys, all linked by a spaghetti of electric cables.

They stopped in a street outside one of the rough concrete buildings, apparently a tour operator's office. As they got out of the minibus, they discovered that its air conditioning had not been totally ineffective; the outside world was even hotter. The bags unloaded from the roof, they were left standing around aimlessly in the entrance to the office.

‘So what now? More waiting?' complained Emma impatiently. ‘When do we get tickets for the boat?' she asked the driver.

‘You wait here … I coming,' he said as he stalked off into the back room. Ten minutes later she found herself trudging down to the jetty with the others, her heavy pack on her back, already soaked in sweat.

The town was a fishing port with several jetties, this one used mainly for tourist boats going to the island. There were booths selling boat tickets and accommodation, stalls with brightly coloured clothes, inflatable beach toys, sun lotions and all the necessities for a lazy beach holiday. Emma cautiously picked her way over the jetty's broken wooden sleepers which rattled loudly under the wheels of the pick-ups and motorbikes taking supplies to the boats. Alongside lay the brightly-painted wooden ferries used for carrying passengers, food and water out to the beaches. Beyond them was a rusty ice crusher flanked by trawlers, the crew lolling around in their underpants, washing and eating after a night's fishing.

They were shown to one of the ferries, a two-decker run by a resort on the island. Ben, Emma, Maca and Chuck sat and lounged on the upper deck, relieved after the long drive to be able to sit back and relax. Savouring the distinctive marine smells of tropical timber, oil and paint, Emma felt that the holiday was now at last about to start for real.

The engine throbbed into life and the ferry began backing away from the jetty. There was a hot following wind as they moved off down the harbour, but turning to port round the end of the harbour wall, amazing Thailand at last came in sight. Heading out into a translucent blue sea dotted with distant islands, a cooling breeze flowed over them, soothing their pent-up frustrations. Left behind was the heat and hassle of the mainland, ahead the long-promised tropical idyll. Maca and Chuck remained unimpressed while Emma and Ben sat entranced.

The crossing was about forty minutes, the island already clearly visible, a low wooded spine of hills lying a few miles out to sea. Its main village was at the closest point to the mainland but the boat did not stop there, instead following the long east coast of the island. Running close under the shore as it rounded a headland, they saw the first of the many beaches of dazzling white sand. Perhaps a mile long, it was fringed with chalets and scattered with bright umbrellas, a jet ski buzzing round like an angry wasp.

They sat watching the beaches go by one by one, the bays becoming smaller and more intimate. Finally they reached a rocky point and slowed as they came into a deep crescent-shaped bay, Ao Sapporot, their destination. The beach was a perfect stretch of sand, sullied only by clusters of low buildings along the shore and a red and white communications mast on the hills which rose gently behind.

‘Cool thing is,' said Chuck, ‘Koh Samet's got no roads, only a rough track. Proper roads ruin a place … more buildings, more trippers, more trash and stuff. Samet's getting busier but it's a National Park and it's just about hanging on.'

The ferry picked up its mooring out in the bay and they all climbed down into a flat-bottomed landing craft with an outboard motor which was standing by to shuttle them to the beach. It took them ashore through the breakers and they jumped off into knee-deep water, carrying their packs high to avoid the spray.

‘So this is Thailand at last. The beach!' said Ben in raptures.

‘No man, not
the
beach. This one's handy for Bangkok but it's a bit crowded. Almost but not quite paradise,' said Maca.

‘Looks like paradise to me,' said Emma, taking in the sweep of the bay, the crystal clear water and the unbroken green of the jungle.

Now they had to find accommodation. Emma felt a twinge of apprehension but Maca and Chuck were much more casual.

‘Let's stop for a beer, guys,' said Chuck.

‘Shouldn't we find a place first? With all these people coming off the boat, it'll be filling up, especially as it's weekend,' said Emma.

‘Keep cool, Emm. It's never the wrong time for a beer.'

Maca and Chuck headed for a nearby bar, while Ben and Emma made for the left hand end of the beach where there was a secluded group of chalets almost hidden in the trees. Sinking into the soft sand under the weight of their packs, they struggled sweating up the beach. Inside the palm-thatched reception area, Ben could see a sleepy-looking woman, heavily pregnant, behind the desk. She seemed too hot and tired even to look up.

‘Do you have any rooms?' he asked her.

‘Have.'

‘How much are they?'

‘Four hundred baht up to eight hundred baht, family room with aircon.'

‘Can we see one of the cheap ones?'

The woman called over her shoulder in Thai but there was no response. She slowly got up and selected a key from a rack.

‘No problem, you wait,' she said.

Eventually a dumpy girl with a radiant smile appeared from the kitchen and led them round the back to a wooden hut raised a few feet off the ground on concrete piers. Four steps led up to a small veranda with a rattan sofa. The girl unlocked the door and they peered inside a damp-smelling room almost filled by a double bed. A doorway led through to a wash room with a concrete floor, a squatter loo, a bin of water under a tap and a plastic scoop for showering. Emma looked dubious.

‘You like?' asked the girl. Emma and Ben exchanged glances.

‘Yes, fine, we'll take it,' said Ben.

‘Okay, you check in, pay one night.'

They went back to the reception hut and, with sweaty hands, filled out a form for the pregnant lady and paid for their first night. They were both mad with heat, thirst, fatigue and frustration. After many months of expectation and days of travelling, they were now being held back by a few minutiae from their final release into this perfect cliché of a tropical paradise. At last they shouldered their rucksacks and walked painfully up to their hut.

‘I've got to have a shower,' said Ben. ‘I'm going crazy with this heat.' He dumped his pack on the floor, stripped off and began pouring delicious scoops of icy water over his head. ‘Emm, it's brilliant. I thought I was going to die,' Emma heard him say, but the sounds of splashing were followed by an oath. ‘Shit, no soap! Emm, can you pass me a towel?'

‘What towel? There aren't any in the hut.'

‘Damn. Can you go and get me one?'

‘Why didn't you look before showering. I'm hot too you know.'

There was silence as Emma went off to ask for towels and soap, Ben waiting wet and uncomfortable.

‘You have to pay for soap and a deposit for the towels,' she said when she got back. ‘I didn't take any money with me, but they said I could pay later.' She passed the towel to Ben who dried himself and quickly dressed.