Georgetown to Koh Samui
April 7th 1995
The train to Bangkok left Butterworth railway station at about two o'clock every afternoon. It was a thai train and because the staff at Butterworth apparently didn't have the tool that's required to turn the seats in the carriages round, we had to travel facing backwards until we got across the border, where the thai railway workers turned them round. It was a nice old train, and fortunately there were second class, non-aircon carriages, so you could choose to breathe real air on the journey if you were that way inclined - which i am.
The town on the thai side of the border crossing was called Thungmo, i can't remember now what the malaysian side's called. Anyway, they both shared one railway platform. The train came in to the station, everyone got out, walked in one end of the station building and went through malaysian customs and immigration, then walked a few feet and went through thai immigration and customs and then back out onto the platform again, to get back on the train.
After i'd passed through all the bureaucratic bullshit and was back out on the platform, which presumably had changed from being Malaysia to being Thailand while we were inside immigration building, i was looking back in through the window and i saw a sign. It said that no hippy types of people were allowed in "the kingdom" and then it went on to describe what to look for as a guide to spotting hippies. These included slippers, unless part of national costume; loose silk pants; shorts, unless respectable; singlets or vests with nothing worn underneath them; and a few other ridiculous things. It ended by saying that anyone who's found looking like that after they've been allowed into the country will be immediately deported!
I started thinking, shit! i'd better move away from this sign, in case someone puts me and it together and i find myself unceremoniously thrown back out to Thailand. I wondered if my sleeveless t-shirt, stubbies shorts and thongs (sandals) would pass for australian national costume - specially with my beaten-up old drizabone bush hat!
The rest of the journey to Surat Thani was uneventful. It was interesting being in Thailand in a way, although there wasn't a great difference really noticeable from the train. We arrived at Surat Thani at about eleven o'clock at night - an hour late. There was supposed to be a boat from Surat Thani to Koh Samui, the island i was headed for, at about half past ten, but it looked like it was too late for that. That was predictable. I decided to find a hotel near the railway station, which was actually about fifteen kilometres from Surat Thani itself, and go and catch a ferry in the morning.
However, somehow i got hijacked by these two people who'd been on the train. She was thai and he was belgian and they were married, mainly for immigration reasons, i think. Anyway, this bunch of kids in a ute had convinced them that there was a later ferry and they'd drive them into town to catch it. Somehow, they managed to drag me along, although i was fully aware that there would be no boat and that the people with the car just wanted to take us to town so they could charge us for it. Anyway, somehow i felt it was more interesting than finding a hotel and going off to bed.
And of course, there wasn't a boat. I don't know how much they charged us for the trip into town, but i'm sure it was extortionate. Anyway, there we were, at the dock where the night boat leaves from, in the middle of the night, and no boat till tomorrow sometime. Right next to the dock there was a night market, which was pretty lively and added a bit of interest to the situation. We sat down and discussed what to do. The other two were totally off their heads in a way. They didn't really seem to know whether they were coming or going. In the end, we sat there, in front of the dock, next to the night market, until the morning.
It was weird, but it was an interesting night. I went to the market and bought a half bottle of Mae Kong thai whisky and drank my way through most of that during the night. While we sat there, quite a few different people came up and spoke to us, but no-one hassled us, like they would have done in a similar situation in Indonesia.
One of the people who stood and talked to us for quite a while was, i think, french. He was obviously out of his head on something - probably speed, which you can buy over the counter at the chemists - and was raving on a fair bit. He was talking about people he knows who were in Surat Thani jail at the time. They were tourists who'd been busted for marijuana on the islands and were stuck in jail indefinitely in really apalling conditions, because they didn't have enough money to pay off the police. Apparently the police had been busting a lot of people on Koh Samui and Koh Pha Ngan, the next island to it, with marijuana. It was partly because there was money to be made from tourists and partly as a result of pressure from the US government. What it's got to do with those interfering bastards, i'm buggered if i know, but they think the whole world's their "back yard" and they can stick their noses in anywhere that suits them.
At about five in the morning, the night market was closing up and we got sick of sitting in that spot too, so we went round the corner to where there was a bus office, where you could get ferry tickets to Koh Samui. The daytime ferries didn't leave from the town, but from a port some distance away, and you had to catch a bus there to get the ferry. So we waited at the bus office for about another two hours.
Not far away from there, on the other side of the dock from the night market, the daytime fruit and vegie market was beginning to open. I wandered down there and bought a large bunch of bananas. I hadn't eaten anything much at all since leaving Georgetown, well over twelve hours before. The Mae Kong was alright though, washed down with plenty of water, which is absolutely essential in tropical climates when you're drinking spirits - or any alcohol really. But i was beginning to feel the effect of hunger and half a dozen bananas were a welcome meal.
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The ferry to Koh Samui was a similar type of boat to the one we got from Sumatra to Batam on the way out of Indonesia. But it was much more beaten up and seemed slower and virtually all the people on board were european tourists. The trip to Na Thon, the main town on Koh Samui took a couple of hours, during which time we were in more or less open sea.
Na Thon was pretty horrible. Very touristy and not really my sort of place. I changed some money at the bank there and got out as quick as i could. Someone i'd met in Georgetown had recommended Mae Nam beach as the best place to go on the island and i jumped in the first taxi going there. Here what they call "taxis" are more or less the same thing as they call bemos in Indonesia. In other words, small scale buses really. The ones here were really utes with roofs over the back and benches along either side. You could fit close to twenty people in them with a bit of a squeeze.
At Mae Nam, i found a pleasant, but slightly decayed bungalow, right on the beach for forty baht, which was really cheap. That was the same as four ringgits, or half of what a dorm bed cost in Georgetown. I was spinning out seriously by this time, what with not sleeping, not eating properly and drinking all that whisky. I had some food at the restaurant which was part of the bungalows. It was a really beautiful thai curry vegetables. This was a pleasant change from the food i'd been eating up till then.
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The next morning i decided to have a look at Cha Weng, one of the main towns on the island. When i got there, i was horrified. It was a really ugly tourist trap nightmare hell! I'm sure it was no worse than hundreds of other european tourist ghettos, scattered around the world, but i can't stand them either.
I find places that just exist for tourists competely unbearable. And the bigger and more wanky they are, they more they disgust me. This was big, wanky, overdeveloped and expensive. I wanted to throw up - especially when i looked at the "british" bars with their pathetic bulldogs and british flags and drunk dickheads who probably don't even know what country they're in anyway. This form of colonization by tourism really pissed me off. At that point, i realized what this island was all about and i just knew i had to leave.
A man in the bemo i'd been in on the way there had said i should go to Koh Pha Ngan. He said he used to live in Cha Weng and had lived there for ten years, but he couldn't stand it now. Koh Pha Ngan was much better, he reckoned. I decided to follow his advice and go there.
When i got back to Mae Nam, i found there was a boat from Mae Nam beach to Koh Pha Ngan at midday. This was good as it would save going all the way to Na Thon to catch a ferry. But i only had an hour to get my stuff together and check out of the bungalow.