The Adventures Of Sweep: Thailand Edition

By sweep July 26, 2010 24 Comments

I'm back home.

 Back to the world of mentally crippling social networks, commitments and protocols. I only got back from Thailand yesterday and I already miss it. 
 
I travel a fair amount, and this was my second trip to Thailand. 3 Years ago I hopped from Bangkok to Chang Mai, in the north, then to Koh Samui, one of the larger more commercial islands in the south. This time we opted to skip the foreplay and hit the Beach from the getgo. Koh Chang became our home for 2 beautiful weeks. Koh Chang is the largest of a small group of Islands in a marine park in the east of Thailand. 

So let's discuss the politics

As Thailand is often used as an example of the negative effects of Tourism. The Beach is perhaps my favourite book of all time and through my repeated readings I have reached an understanding. 

 It's 2010 so the whole country has committed itself to the plague of tourists that  flock there each year, but Koh Chang is still in the early stages of development so it hasn't reached the level of fucked-upness that can now be associated with a large chunk of Thailand. That's a dickheadedly elitist attitude to take but the idea of people travelling halfway round the world to some of the most beautiful tropical islands on the planet only to get trashed at full moon parties and eat pizza kind of offends me. I'm a hypocrite, but at least I know i'm a hypocrite. What's perhaps worse is the pretentious bohemian backpackers who display every contempt for the mainstream tourists without realising they are just as bad, if not worse, in their contribution to the corruption of Thailand.
 
The only way to be completely safe is to never travel anywhere, terrified of fucking up someone elses "pure" society. Don't panic. They are fucking it up quite competently themselves.  
 
So the options you have are xenophobic smallmindedness or arrogant western imposition. My solution, and consequential attitude, has been to say "Fuck It" and do what I want. I'm going to travel as much as possible, but I'm not going to be a cunt about it. That's as much as anyone can ask. I try to moderate my hypocrisy.
 

 So yeah, back to Koh Chang.

 We got a minibus down from Bangkok which took about 5 hours, after an 11 hour flight, which drove us to our Island of choice. We had to get a ferry over there, then a taxi to our first hotel - a larger resort with a 200 meter stretch of perfect white sand. We stayed there for a week. It was low season, so there wasn't much activity. A lot of the other bars and resorts had closed down for the summer, the only other tourists were Eastern European families who sat around the swimming pool looking glum and ordering increasingly alcoholic cocktails. A perfect example of why I resent most tourists - you fly to a perfect beach in Thailand then spend the day sitting by a swimming pool. Cunts. The sort of people who put on aftershave instead of mosquito repellent - then complain when they get bitten. By the end of the week I had taken to walking further down the beach to avoid that crowd completely, and in the second week we (My brother and I) packed up our shit and moved to a much smaller, cheaper beach-hut resort further down the island. 
 

You probably have pretty romantic ideas of what a beach-hut consists of. You would be mostly right aesthetically, but the reality of actually living in one is slightly sobering. Those beach huts (lovingly referred to as the "first generation" of beach huts) were the super-cheap wooden shacks picked up by the humble broke backpackers and the pretentious kids who wanted the "real" Thailand experience. Apparently you aren't fully appreciating Thailand unless being eaten alive by mosquitoes and chewing splinters out your own feet. We got a pretty cushy concrete hut slightly further back from the beach (about 100 meters away) but a lot more secure and comfortable. We then proceeded to spend the week sitting on the beach under palm trees, chatting to other backpackers and groups of Thai kids on vacation from Bangkok.  

 

We got up to all sorts of awesome stuff.

 We went snorkelling around some mind-blowingly beautiful corals, we swam with elephants (yes, you read that correctly), we ate large quantities of rice, noodles and seafood. Some of my best memories are sitting in a bizarrely warm sea in the middle of a thunderstorm (welcome to the rainy season) and watching the mountains slowly disappear behind a wall of water. We chased monkeys, we played jenga in a monsoon (monsoon jenga is the best jenga) and we got to meet some of the greatest, most friendly people on Earth. Wake up, go to the beach, drink some beer, go for a swim, play some frisbee, relax till dark, go to a bar, eat some rice, drink some more beer, find a girl, go to sleep, wake up, go to the beach... 
 
Thailand. 
  

  
Now i'm back I have some blogs backed up. I played a hella lot of Phoenix Wright on my DS which I want to write about a little (That game is fantastic) and I have 2 weeks worth of news to weigh in on. It's going to be busy busy. 
 
Stay tuned, kids... 
 
Thanks For Reading 
Love Sweep

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