Ko Chang, Thailand 5

Instant coffee in my mickey mouse cup.

Long swim today. Working on my breast stroke. I’m a traditional front crawl swimmer. But the breast stroke is supposed to be so much more relaxing. I can’t get the leg action right. So my arms get tired. I also can’t swim a straight line, so when I stop to look, I’ve either beached myself or I’m out way too far from shore.

Met Conrad from Puerto Alegre, Brazil. Frank Zappa with a tan, a perm and an Italian accent. He works for Greenpeace, travels the world and has a webpage called “ecocamping.com”. They have projects in Missiones, Argentina, and all over. A chance for me to speak the Castellanos.

In the evening, we took a taxi north up the coast to White Sands Beach. It’s the closest beach to the ferry terminal, and thus to the mainland. It’s also the largest, busiest and most developed beach strip on the island.

Restaurants have large blue signs reading “clean food, great taste !”. Is that a government standard? There’s a new two-level Irish Pub called Paddy’s Palms. Tons of white families with sunburns eating at “Buffalo Bills”, tailor shops, clothing markets, 7-11’s, street food – chicken sticks, pad thai, banana pancakes. Woman at fruit truck lets kids feed her baby monkey. Must be good for business. White Sands beach is lined with resorts from top to bottom and the water is nice but a bit dirty, compared to lonely beach. More traffic.

White Sands is the mistake we could easily have made, if I hadn’t read about lonely beach. They could call this White People Beach. Whites outnumber Thais. Italians eating spaghetti at Italian restaurants, French drinking wine at French restaurants, Americans eating hamburgers at Buffalo Bills.

Went to Oodie's, ‘cause I saw the band gear set up. You could touch the drum kit from the sidewalk. A Brit drinking at the bar said the band was the best on the island. A Thai band playing classic rock. Smoking guitar player covers Hendrix. The old guy sitting back on the bass in the corner is Oodie. He owns the bar and plays bass in the house band. He’s been doing this “since the road was dirt” – about 7 or 8 years.

Met Lou, who lives in Shanghai with his wife and her daughter. He and his wife both teach at the International School there. He smiles ear to ear, loves his life. This is his fifth trip to Ko Chang. He knows Oodie. He’s a PE teacher. He plays guitar and loves JJ Cale. He worked 9 years in Peru and speaks Spanish. He is from California, so he saw Hendrix play at Berkley, saw the Doors, JJ Cale. The older, happier version of me. Told me to come here once without the girlfriend, get better gigs, like international schools, plan my own retirement and that at 36, I was still young enough to figure it out. Somewhat reassuring. Not completely.

There is one element of danger in going for a night out in White Sands. That would be the long taxi ride home in the dark. Taxi service continues all night until about 2 am but after the sun sets, you have to negotiate prices with the drivers and pay more.

We passed the wreckage of a head-on collision between a taxi and a motorbike. A tragic chapter in someone’s Christmas holiday. Everyone rents motorbikes and drives them drunk. For some reason this is fine and acceptable if you’re on vacation, or if you’re not in your own country. I’ve seen the dark side of this too many times to find it funny. Outside of White Sands, cops seem non-existent on the island and you don’t even need a license to rent one. We took taxis. Only slightly safer.

Sitting in the back of the open pick-up taxi, hundreds of little roadside bars lit up in the night with Christmas lights along our ride. Pool tables, lights, tunes pumping, girls. Well, some are girls, most aren’t. I figured the game to play here is guessing correctly, but I’ve noticed that for a lot of tourists here, that just doesn’t matter.

Next day, A day at the beach.

Instant coffee in my mickey mouse mug.

I swam the length of the beach three times today. Working on the breast stroke, which is getting better.

Backpackers with worried faces. Everything is full and booked well into January. Prices are climbing.

There’s no camping on the beach. But you can always pitch a tent at the treehouse or sleep in a hammock at one of the bars if they don’t have a room for you. These are the things you always figure out after it’s too late. So you learn for next time, but then there’s never a next time. Is my head full of useless information? Probably.

Went to Lemon Bar in Lonely Beach for free barbecue and a free drink. Staff mostly boy-girls.

Met Daniel from Lomas de Zamora, Argentina. Another chance to speak the Castellanos. He was all hazy from smoking opium at the treehouse. But he loved my boca junior jersey.

The horizon was all lit up at night with boats fishing squid. Usually the horizon is pitch dark, with just one or two boats.

Collapsed and passed out on the beach. Don’t remember what time it was.