After breakfast we split up to improve our chances. I went north, towards Ko Mat Lang, and the other two went south, aiming for a small town we’d passed on the jeep ride. Our rendezvous was in three hours’ time, back at our huts.
The sun came out as I set off down Chaweng, but it did little to salvage my mood. Flies buzzed around my head, smelling the sweat, and the walking became increasingly laborious as last night’s rain dried off the sand.
I began counting the guest-houses I passed along the shore line. After twenty minutes I’d counted seventeen, and they were still showing no signs of thinning out. If anything, the palm trees were more cluttered with Ray-Bans and concrete patios than before.
In 1984 I was in my sitting room, playing on my Atari, and listened to the babysitter talk about Ko Samui. As I mopped the screen clear of space invaders, names and places stuck in my head.
Pattaya was a hell-hole. Chiang Mai was rainy and cold. Ko Samui was hot and beautiful. Ko Samui was where she had stayed with her boyfriend for five months, hanging out on the beach and doing strange things she was both reluctant and keen to talk about.
A-levels out of the way, my friends and I scattered ourselves around the globe. The next August we started coming back, and I learnt that my babysitter’s paradise was yesterday’s news. Ko Pha-Ngan, the next island along, was Thailand’s new Mecca.
A few years later, as I checked my passport and confirmed my flight to Bangkok, a friend telephoned with advice. ‘Give Ko Pha-Ngan a miss, Rich,’ she said. ‘Hat Rin’s a long way past its sell-by date. They sell printed flyers for the full-moon parties. Ko Tao. That’s where it’s at.’
After an hour of walking I gave up trying to find a fisherman. The only Thais I met were selling gemstones and baseball caps. By the time I got back to my beach hut I was exhausted, sunburnt, and pissed off. I went straight to the restaurant and bought a packet of cigarettes. Then I chain-smoked in the shade of a palm tree, looking out for Étienne and Françoise, hoping they’d had better luck.
TV Heaven
Thais, or South-East Asians in general, make eerily convincing transvestites. Their slight builds and smooth faces are a recipe for success.
I saw a particularly stunning transvestite as I waited under the palm tree. His silicone breasts were perfectly formed and he had hips to die for. The only thing to betray his gender was his gold lamé dress – a bit too showy to be worn by a Thai girl on a stroll down Chaweng.
He was carrying a backgammon set under his arm, and as he slunk past he asked if I wanted to play a game.
‘No thanks,’ I replied with neurotic haste.
‘Why?’ he wanted to know. ‘I think maybe you afrai’ I win.’
I nodded.
‘OK. Maybe you wan’ play in bed?’ He tugged at the long slit up the side of his dress, revealing fabulous legs. ‘Maybe in bed I le’ you win…’
‘No thanks,’ I said again, blushing slightly.
He shrugged and continued walking along the beach. A couple of beach huts down someone took him up on the backgammon offer. Curious, I tried to see who, but they were blocked by the trunk of a leaning coconut tree. A few minutes later I looked back and he was gone. I guessed he’d found his punter.
Étienne appeared not long after, beaming.
‘Hey, Richard,’ he said. ‘Did you see the girl walking this way?’
‘With a lamé dress?’
‘Yes! My God, she was so beautiful!’
‘She was.’
‘Anyway, Richard. Come to the restaurant.’ He reached out a hand and hauled me up. ‘I think we have a boat to take us into the marine park.’
The man was the Thai version of a spiv. Instead of being lean and weasel-like, with a pencil moustache and a flash suit, he was short, fat, and wore drainpipe marbled jeans tucked into giant Reebok trainers.
‘Tha’ can be arrange’,’ he said, quoting from the universal phrase book of the entrepreneur. ‘Of course, yes.’ He grinned and made an expansive gesture with his arms. Gold sparkled in his mouth. ‘No’ difficul’ for me to do tha’.’
Étienne nodded. So far he’d done all the bargaining, which was fine as far as I was concerned. I don’t like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between feeling that I shouldn’t haggle with poverty and hating getting ripped off.
‘Actually, my frien’, your gui’ book is no’ correc’. You can stay Ko Phelong one nigh’, two nigh’ – is OK. Bu’ this island you can only stay one nigh’.’ He took Étienne’s book and laid a chubby finger on an island close to Phelong.
Étienne looked at me and winked. From my memory of Mister Duck’s map, which was back in the beach hut, our island was the next one along.
‘OK,’ said Étienne, and lowered his voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one around to hear. ‘This is the island we want to see. But we want to stay more than one night. That is possible?’
The spiv furtively looked over his shoulder at the empty tables.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, leaning forward, then looked around again. ‘Bu’ is mo’ money, you un’ erstan’.’
The deal was eventually struck at 1,450 baht, diligently knocked down from 2,000 by Étienne. At six the next morning we were to meet the spiv in the restaurant and he would take us to his boat. Only then would we pay him the money, a point Étienne wisely insisted upon, and he would take us to the island. Three nights later he would come back to pick us up – our contingency plan in case we got stuck there.
That left us with only a couple of problems.
If we made it to the next island along, we would be missing when the spiv came to collect us. To deal with this, Étienne invented a story about some other friends we were going to meet there, so we might come back early – no cause for alarm.
Another difficulty was how to get from the drop-off island to the beach island. We could have asked the boat to take us directly there, but not knowing exactly what we were going to find on the beach, we didn’t want to blunder in on a motor boat. Anyway, as the beach island was out of bounds to tourists, we thought it better to start out from one we were allowed to stay on – if only for one night.
Étienne and Françoise seemed far less concerned about this last step of the journey than I was. They had a simple solution – we would swim. By examining Mister Duck’s map and the map in their guidebook they’d decided that the islands were roughly a kilometre apart. According to them, that was a manageable distance. I wasn’t so confident, remembering the diving game from the day before. The tide had pulled us a long way down Chaweng beach as we swam. If the same thing happened between the islands, the length of the swim could effectively double as we corrected and recorrected our course.
The final problem was what we would do with our bags. Again, Étienne and Françoise had worked out a solution. Apparently they’d done a lot of planning last night while I was getting stoned. Later that day, sitting in the shallows with the wash collecting sand around our feet, they explained.
‘The backpacks will not be a problem, Richard,’ said Françoise. ‘Actually, maybe they will help us to swim.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘How’s that?’
‘We need some plastic bags,’ said Étienne. ‘If we have some plastic bags we can tie them so water does not enter. Then… they float. The air inside.’
‘Uh-huh. You think it’ll work?’
Étienne shrugged. ‘I think it will. I saw it on television.’
‘On TV?’
‘It was The A-Team.’
‘The A-Team? Oh, that’s great. We’ll be fine, then.’
I lay back in the water, propping myself up on my elbows.
‘I think you are very lucky to have met us, Richard,’ Étienne laughed. ‘I think without us you could not reach this beach.’
‘Yes,’ Françoise said. ‘But also we are lucky to meet him.’
‘Oh, of course. Without your map we could not find the beach either.’
Françoise frowned,
then smiled at me. ‘Étienne! We are lucky to meet him anyway.’
I smiled back, noticing as I did so that the bad mood I’d been carrying all morning had completely lifted. ‘We’re all lucky,’ I said happily.
Étienne nodded. ‘Yes. We are.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes, basking in our luckiness. Then I stood up, clapping my hands together. ‘Right. Why don’t we go for a long swim now? It could be a practice.’
‘It is a very good idea, Richard,’ Étienne replied, also standing. ‘Come on, Françoise.’
She shook her head and pouted. ‘I think I will stay in the sun. I shall watch you two strong men from here. I will see who can swim the furthest.’
Doubt flickered in my mind. I looked at her, trying to see if her words were as loaded as they appeared. She was watching Étienne as he made his way into the sea, giving nothing away.
‘That’s it, then,’ I thought. ‘Just wishful thinking.’
But I failed to convince myself. As I waded after Étienne, I couldn’t help wondering if Françoise’s eyes were now on my back. Just before the water became deep enough to swim I needed to know, and glanced behind me. She had moved up the beach to the dry sand and was lying on her front, facing the land.
Just wishful thinking after all.
Eden
Sunset was spectacular. Red sky gently faded to deep blue, where a few bright stars already shone, and orange light threw elastic shadows down the beach as people strolled back to their huts.
I was stoned. I’d been dozing on the sand with Françoise and Étienne, recovering from our epic swim, when Sammy and Zeph turned up with half an ounce of grass wrapped in newspaper. They’d spent the day at Lamai hunting for their lost room key and found it hanging on a piece of driftwood, stuck into the sand. They’d bought the grass to celebrate.
‘Someone must have put it there knowing we’d come looking,’ Zeph had said as he sat down beside us. ‘Isn’t that such a decent thing to do?’
‘Maybe it was a stupid thing to do,’ Françoise had replied. ‘Someone could have taken this key and robbed your room.’
‘Well, uh, yeah, I suppose.’ Then he’d looked at Françoise, obviously taking her in for the first time, and given his head a little shake. I think he was clearing a mental image that had just appeared. ‘No, definitely. You’re right.’
The sun had begun its rapid descent to the horizon as the grass began to take hold. Now we all sat, watching the colours in the sky as intently as if we were watching television.
‘Hey,’ said Sammy loudly, breaking us out of our reverie. ‘Has anyone ever noticed that if you look up at the sky you can start to see animals and faces in the clouds?’
Étienne looked round. ‘Have we ever noticed?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Sammy continued. ‘It’s amazing. Hey, there’s a little duck right above us, and that one looks like a man with a huge nose.’
‘Actually, I have noticed this since I was a small child.’
‘A small child?’
‘Yes. Certainly.’
Sammy whistled. ‘Shit. I’ve only just noticed it. Mind you, that’s mainly to do with where I grew up.’
‘Oh?’ said Étienne.
‘See, I grew up in Idaho.’
‘Ah…’ Étienne nodded. Then he looked confused. ‘Yes, Idaho. I have heard of Idaho, but…’
‘Well, you know about Idaho, huh? There’s no clouds in Idaho.’
‘No clouds?’
‘Sure. Chicago, the windy city. Idaho, the cloudless state. Some weird weather thing to do with atmospheric pressure, I don’t know.’
‘There are no clouds at all?’
‘Not one.’ Sammy sat up on the sand. ‘I can remember the first time I saw a cloud. It was in upstate New York, the summer of seventy-nine. I saw this vast fluffy thing in the sky, and I reached and tried to grab it… but it was too high.’ Sammy smiled sadly. ‘I turned to my Mom and said, “Why can’t I have the candy floss, Mommy? Why?” ’ Sammy choked and looked away. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just a stupid memory.’
Zeph leant over and patted him on the back. ‘Hey man,’ he murmured, just loud enough to hear. ‘It’s OK. Let it out. We’re all friends here.’
‘Yes,’ said Étienne. ‘We don’t mind. Of course, everybody has a sad memory.’
Sammy spun around, his face all screwed up. ‘You, Étienne? You have a sad memory too?’
‘Oh, yes. I used to have a little red bicycle, but it was stolen by some thieves.’
Sammy’s expression darkened. ‘The bicycle thieves? They stole your little red bike?’
‘Yes. I was seven.’
‘Seven!’ Sammy shouted and thumped the ground with his fist, spraying everyone with sand. ‘Jesus! That makes me so fucking mad!’
There was a shocked silence. Then Sammy grabbed the Rizlas and started furiously rolling up, and Zeph changed the topic of conversation.
The outburst was probably a clever move. Étienne’s response had been so charming that it would have been cruel to reveal the truth. Sammy’s only way out was to follow the bluff to its natural conclusion. As far as I know, Étienne believed there were no clouds in Idaho to the day he died.
By the time we’d smoked the joint, the sun had almost disappeared. Just the slightest curve of yellow shimmered over the sea. A slight breeze picked up, sending a few loose Rizlas skimming along the sand. With the breeze came the smell of cooking – lemon grass and fried shell-fish – from the restaurant behind us.
‘I’m hungry,’ I muttered.
‘Smells good, huh?’ said Zeph. ‘I could do with a big plate of chicken noodles.’
‘Or dog noodles,’ said Sammy. He turned to Françoise. ‘We had dog noodles in Chiang Mai. Tasted like chicken. All those things – dog, lizard, frog, snake. They always taste like chicken.’
‘How about rat?’ I asked.
‘Uh-huh, rat too. Distinctly chicken-like.’
Zeph picked up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers, trailing patterns between his legs. Then he coughed, almost in a formal way, as if he wanted everyone to pay attention. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Do you know about Kentucky Fried Rat?’
I frowned. It sounded like another wind-up, and I felt that if Étienne was going to fall for it in the same kind of way I might start crying. I still had a picture in my head of his concerned face as he explained about his little red bike.
‘No. What is it?’ I said warily.
‘It’s one of those stories that get around.’
‘Urban myths,’ said Sammy. ‘Someone got a small bone stuck in their throat. Then they got it analysed and it was a rat bone.’
‘Yeah, and the person it happened to was a friend’s aunt’s cousin. It never happened to the person you’re talking to.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I know.’
‘Right. So there’s a Kentucky Fried Rat doing the rounds at the moment. You heard it?’
I shook my head.
‘About a beach. This amazing beach hidden somewhere, but no one knows where it is.’
I turned my head away. Down by the sea a Thai boy was playing with a piece of coconut husk, keeping it in the air using his knees and the sides of his feet. He timed a flick badly and the husk flew into the water. For a few moments he stood there with his hands on his hips, perhaps wondering if it was worth getting wet to retrieve it. Then he started jogging up the sand towards the guest-house.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard about that. Fill us in.’
‘OK,’ said Zeph. ‘I’ll paint you a picture.’ He lay back on the sand. ‘Close your eyes and think about a lagoon.’
Think about a lagoon, hidden from the sea and passing boats by a high, curving wall of rock. Then imagine white sands and coral gardens never damaged by dynamite fishing or trawling nets. Freshwater falls scatter the island, surrounded by jungle – not the forests of inland Thailand, but jungle. Canopies three levels deep, plants untouched for a thousand years, strangely colo
ured birds and monkeys in the trees.
On the white sands, fishing in the coral gardens, a select community of travellers pass the months. They leave if they want to, they return, the beach never changes.
‘Select?’ I asked quietly, as if talking through a dream. Zeph’s vision had entirely consumed me.
‘Select,’ he replied. ‘Word of mouth passes on the location to a lucky few.’
‘It’s paradise,’ Sammy murmured. ‘It’s Eden.’
‘Eden,’ Zeph agreed, ‘is how it sounds.’
Françoise was completely thrown by hearing that Sammy and Zeph also knew about the beach. She couldn’t have acted more suspicious if she’d tried.
She stood up suddenly. ‘Now then,’ she said, dusting sand off her legs. ‘We leave early tomorrow morning for, ah, for Ko Pha-Ngan. So I think we shall go to bed now. Étienne? Richard? Come.’
‘Huh?’ I said, disorientated as the image of the beach splintered. ‘Françoise, it’s seven thirty in the evening.’
‘We leave early in the morning,’ she repeated.
‘But… I haven’t eaten any dinner. I’m starving.’
‘Good. So we shall eat now. Good night, Sammy and Zeph,’ she said, before I could ask them to join us. ‘It was very nice meeting you. And really, your beach, what a silly story.’ She laughed gaily.
Étienne sat upright, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind, but she ignored his appalled expression and began marching towards the restaurant.
‘Look,’ I said to Sammy and Zeph. ‘I think she’s… If you want to eat with us…’
‘Yes,’ said Étienne. ‘You are very welcome. Please.’
‘It’s cool,’ Sammy replied, smiling slightly. ‘We’ll hang out here a bit longer. But listen, have a good time in Ko Pha-Ngan. Are you coming back this way?’
I nodded.
‘OK, so we’ll catch up later on. We’re here for a while. A week at least.’