This is not a love story (sorry about the spelling)

This is not a
Love story.
By Festusanderson.














Chapter one

- You see it’s all about peaking at the right time are kid.
The beer wasn’t going down well; the last couple of mouthful’s tasted as if someone at the brewery had been pissing in it. My bollocks were developing some sort of tropical heat rash. They were so raw in places you would have thought I’d been dragging them across the carpet. My arse was numb from sitting on bar stools, designed to cripple overweight English backsides. Welcome to Thailand.
- Got the air-con, but I don’t want to see her till next week, cause she’ll want it a least four or five times.
He’s on about the bird from last year, well tasty! But he wants to be up for it and give a decent performance. As for the air-con we moved out of the cheap rooms that day. Five nights of sweating my puss off in a fan room and flushing the toilet with a bucket, I’m thirty fucking two and don’t need that shit. Especially when it keeps bobbing back up to greet me.
Lamai’s main strip was just kicking off for the night. The girl’s calls and shouts from the open-air bars, doing battle with the monster bass beat blasting out from a multitude of stereos and sound systems. Techno, house, rock and Thai pop hits coming at you all at once, from every direction trying to attract the attention of any passing trade.
-Helloooo!!!! Welcome!!!!!
-You sexy man!!!
-Come sit down !!!
-I love you long time!!!!
Lamai’s changed loads over the years, something for everyone and every possible taste, sun, sea, sand, girlie bars and it’s now even got it’s own Macdonald’s. We pay up and shuffle the five paces to the next bar. The only difference the techno beat and the girl on the center pole. Tight jeans, long hair and an arse like a choirboy. But it’s tit’s I’m looking for but the thing is over here if they look too good to be true then they usually are. You just have to hope it earned enough last year to get the rest of the Operation done.
-You want to play game?
The drinks are already on the jump and the girls are crowding in. Holding out their hands for us to shake and offering you the chance to get beaten at connect four. You’ve all seen the game before. A blue plastic frame with holes in both sides and a slot at the top. You take turns to drop round discs in. The idea is to get four in a row, if you manage to get two in a row before she nails you your doing well.
-No game love, maybe later.
She’s well fucked off but who gives a shit. She was ugly anyway. Me and our kid both fall into an easy rhythm, were making small talk but scanning the girls. Avoiding eye contact or they’d be over straight away and some of them look as though they’ve been round the block a few to many times already. There’s one on the other side of the bar, entertaining a fat kraut who’s older then me mother. But even my old girls in better shape. Alan’s already giving a tidy young thing the verbal, asking if she’s got kids, while doing the old gypsy fortuneteller routine. You can never be sure and it’s good to know what you’re paying for. A thousand BHT for stretch marks and saggy tit’s. I don’t think so. I know it’s less than fifteen quid but over here you can afford to be picky.
Less than a week ago we were in Bangkok after surviving an eleven-hour flight with S.A.A the pride of South African aviation. They believe in service the same way the white Afrikaner’s believes in the ending of apartheid. You got more chance of achieving peace in the Middle East. Economy class only means you need a shoehorn to get in and out of the seats. The entire cabins got less room to move than Christopher Reeves. The one guarantee is that thirty minutes after take off the toilets resemble something out of Crossroads. I’m not talking about the Britney spears movie but rather the Capetown Township. But you would be hard pushed to tell the difference as there both a pile of shit. Not to mention why the fuck their still building planes with ashtrays and No Smoking signs. What a fucking wind up. Is it only me or has anyone else noticed that air rage only started when they banned fags from planes.
It’s a shame they don’t ban male flight attendants. What the fuck are they all about anyway? What happened to all the tasty birds you used to get serving you? Probably all up in first class hanging all over the well off and company executives. While back in the cheap seats the male flight attendants push trolleys from one end of the plane to the other. Serving piss water tea and what they laughingly refer to as food. It’s muck, Stale rolls, tasteless meat, over cooked veg and unidentifiable desert. You’re better off bringing along a packed lunch or a packet of crisps, theirs more flavor and nutrition in the aluminum containers and plastic cutlery. Flight attendants what sort of title is that anyway? Apart from in the movies I’ve never seen anyone of those fruits attend to the flying of the plane. Flight attendant my arse. My boss back home used to be a flight attendant? And surprise, surprise for S.A.A, explains why I need a holiday and he walks around as if he’s mincing meat out of his arse.
Baggage done, customs next. So I might show them my tribal rain dance or sacrifice a goat in their honor. Where out the door without having to under go any baggage checks or cavity searches which makes a nice change. I got pulled once for suspected dealing and since then I’ve had more hands up my crack than Sooty. Got a ciggie going already and I’m puffing away like a chimney. Sweating buckets as the damp Bangkok heat starts to close around me like a fat whore’s legs.
Some say I’m big boned but that’s just a polite way of saying fat bastard. A hundred and thirty kilo’s, six-foot and a skinhead, I’m hardly what you’d call an oil painting by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose your now thinking that’s the reason the dirty fat old bald bastard is over there. Can’t get a regular ride back home, so now you’re off over to the Far East with its hoards of rice fed fucking machines. I wish it were that simple really I do, I admit I’m no Casanova but I don’t do to badly you can ask your own mother. The truth is I like screwing. You could quote sigmond; blame it on my mother or some deep-rooted penis anxiety. Who knows you might even have something there. Problem is it’s not just me, their are hundreds of thousands of blokes like me out there. All some mother’s son, some bodies brother or boyfriend, a husband or farther you've probably done it yourself or thought about doing it. I mean hell we all like sex but not all the shit that comes along with it.
You pay your money and you take your chances. It’s a lot cheaper than taking out that tasty bird from work and then only ending up with a hand job at the end of the night. Trust me I speak from experience. No lies, no having to bullshit your way in to her pants. You don’t have to pretend to be in touch with your self and understand what the fuck she’s going on about. You don’t even have to leave the room to fart or blame it on the dog when one slips out. It might lack depth and emotion but I’m not the one looking for a love story.
Sweated through my shirt already, but I’m in no rush. Chain smoking, sparking one off the butt of the other. Well glad to be free of another No Smoking zone. Airports, government buildings, shopping centers. All over the world where gradually being forced out victimized for are love of tobacco. You can spot the nicotine tribes everywhere, huddled outside office blocks, crowding pavements and doorways. Outcasts thanks to the Corporate boss’s, do gooders and politicians who try to make us feel ashamed of our dirty habit, while they light up there Cuban cigars after enjoying three hour lunches and a round of golf. The powers that be claim they’re looking after your health but truth be told it’s all about prolonging the life of their ventilation system. It’s the same on airplanes, instead of ventilating and filtering the air they just re-pipe it right back at you. No wonder you get headaches and feel irritable. Blame it all on the smokers and their nasty second hand fumes. When all you’re really doing is saving money on refitting and fuel.
I can remember when you could smoke anywhere. Trains, planes, the London tube. They reckon at kings cross it was a fag butt, which caught fire after smoldering away in all the filth and litter under the escalator. So what do they do they ban smoking (why not just clean up all the shit?). Even in the cinemas the seats had ashtrays and on the screen the old movie legends always had a fag sticking out of their mouth. It used to be the best way to chat up a chick was to start by lighting up her cigarette for her. Now you offer her a pill, dance all night like a demented Red Indian shaman. Then take her back to your place while your still all loved up. The only problem is your dicks gone into hibernation, at least until the speed wares off. Me I’m a dedicated smoker, before and after sex, it used to be during but theirs always the chance of starting a bush fire.

The airport limo is doing the stop start cha-cha through Bangkok’s rush hour traffic. As usual, everyone’s rushing but getting nowhere fast. Except for the motorbike taxis and psychotic tuk-tuk drivers weaving in and out of the traffic, trying to gain an extra couple of centimeters within the haze of exhaust fumes. Last time we were over we got our tuk-tuk driver well pissed up after an all day session in and around Bangkok’s sex streets. You haven’t lived until you’ve puked up off the back of a high-speed tuk-tuk, out of control and going the wrong way down a one-way street. That was just before a platoon of armed police turned up at the hotel to arrest us for causing a riot. Have you ever tried to plead diplomatic immunity while theirs a used condom hanging off your knob? They weren’t wearing it either and I’m not talking about the johnny, but they fucked off for reinforcements, must have been worried about my firepower. The air conditioner in the limo is giving it everything it’s got. The rivers of sweat running down my back and neck are slowly turning into Icelandic glaciers.

Nana hotel, air conditioning, swimming pool and a monster breakfast
Buffet. Not to mention massage, room service and Angels disco. Beats formula one motels and most importantly bang opposite Nana plaza. Three storeys of open-air bars and go-go girls. By day it looks like a co-op in a run down shopping center on some forgotten housing estate but as the sun starts to set and the neon lights take over you feel like a kid at Blackpool pleasure beach with your own stick of rock and free entry to all the rides. Everyone’s got their own favorite spot in Bangkok. The legendary Patpong road, now more of a rip off than ever before. A tourist trap and one of those must see attractions for all the Kodak addicts. Family snaps of sweating Germans and yanks giggling at the tarts in the doorways. They wonder around moralizing, unable to fathom why anyone would want to? Well now Mrs, if you want me too I can tell you. It’s simple If you weren’t here your old man would have been in like a shot and who could blame him. The chance of something new, better looking and a lot less hard work.
The night market drags in more of the crowds, selling all the usual ripped off label gear, bootlegged CD’s and tourist tat. But saying that I did go and see the Thai version of Tom Jones they’re last year. He has to be seen to be believed, and heard to be fully appreciated usually after a skin full. Then theirs Clinton plaza with its White house a go-go (I kid you not) cigars sold separately. Soi cowboy is still going strong and a hundred other streets where the girls spill out onto the sidewalks under neon signs. While the mental musical beat and car horns are overwhelmed by the sound of the sky train as it rumbles overhead. It’s the sex symphony of Bangkok.
Been in the room less than thirty minutes and Alan’s already knocking at the door. First day of the holiday and were set to go large. We’ve been talking about and planing this trip like an S.A.S mission. First a bit of re-con, see what's about and what's changed from last year but like all great plans it’s doomed to failure. The first bar and the first sing-ha a local brew that should be sold with a health warning. It fucks my guts up something rotten, but I’ll never learn. Tomorrow morning I’ll be shiting piss. So much for re-con. Started drinking at lunchtime and now it’s almost nine, haven’t even had a short time let alone left the bar. I couldn’t perform now if I wanted to and I do want to but even a viagra fueled Pele would be like a eunuch in a harem after twenty beers.
Darrio is giving Alan the Italian mime act; the man’s a fuckin demon. A forty five-year-old, self-exiled Italian. Failed member of the red brigade and failed football star. As he tells it the weekend games used to fuck up his social life, Darrio’s best friends at the time being Mr. Johnny Walker and a bloke called Charlie who happens to gets right up your nose. His face looks as if it’s worn out two bodies but it’s his teeth that are in a class of their own. I don’t know what you notice first, the colour of dark wood stain or the stench it could also be their resemblance to a row of bombed houses he makes the Queen mum look like an advert for Colgate (god bless her). He’s dressed like a Cambodian refugee and the sweats pissing off him. Every hour or so he whips out a roll on deodorant from his pants pocket and gives himself a bit of personal maintenance. He even offers it around the bar complete with curly armpit hair, outfucking standing. Darrio’s been holding court since we made the mistake of saying hello. We had to get pissed just to understand him.
-I, I, I
He raises both his hands giving it a bit of the godfather, shakes his head pouts his lips and walks away. By the time Alan and me look at each other, he’s back.
-You understand?
And the amazing thing is we do, maybe it’s some sort of mind reading or E.S.P thing like on the X-files as he looks a bit like a pikey. More likely it’s got something to do with the fact that we’ve reached the stage were beer has managed to bridge the gap between our pigeon English, and his personal hygiene.
-I meet her in Patpong
Darrio’s accent more Italian than the pope but that’s not too difficult as the old boys a pole. The man can’t talk without the use of his hands and the sad thing is it’s contagious. I’m asking the girl behind the jump for another round while waving my hands around as if I’m parking a Boeing 747.
-I paid bar, three thousand
He’s off again, wondering around the bar doing a circuit, while waving his hands like a loony.
-You understand?
We show him with a flick of the hands that were all on the same wavelength.
-She is beautiful and only just had operation.
He finish’s the sentence with a magician’s flourish, before digging in his pocket for the roll on. He’s outfuckingrageus. The long and short of it is he’s married a geezer or katoy as the Thai’s call them. It’s had the full operation, and judging by the pictures a great pair of tits straight out of Silicon Valley. According to Darrio the snip and tuck is a work of art, to quote him it looks and tastes as good as the real thing.
-Every day it’s like making love to a virgin.
You would think with his appreciation of modern medicine he’d do something about getting his gob sorted out. Darrio lives up in the northeast, a stone’s throw away from the Laos border. That area of Thailand being famous for it’s cultivation of girls to be sent to the bars and brothels of Bangkok and Pattaya, rather than the narcotic producing golden triangle of the north west. He left the geezer bird minding the paddy fields and his collection of bootleg Pavaroti and rolling stones albums so he could come down to the bright lights and flushing toilets of the big city. He was supposed to meet up with another fine example of Italian manhood, unfortunately Darrio lost his mate somewhere between the classroom a go-go and the no hands bar. An interesting place for the first time visitor. You sit down at the bar, which is draped around the edges with curtains. After ordering your beer the top of a head pops out from behind the fabric, hands expertly dealing with your fly. Then the head starts bobbing up and down, an unseen mouth swallowing your dick like something out of deep throat. Spark up a fag, drink your beer and chat with the lads about the chance of David Beckham being back in time for the world cup. Who ever comes first has to buy the round and take all the abuse. I know a couple of Welsh builders who go down there regularly. They have a tug back at the hotel before hand so as to be sure of getting their moneys worth. The conversation across the bar is usually interrupted by.
-Your mouth, not your hand.
-No hand bar. Not hand job bar.
But your can’t blame the girls. The taffies having already shot their bolt, thanks to their five fingered girl friends are settling in for the night, while nursing a beer. The only way there going to come again is to the sound of an all male choir or a miners brass band from one of the remaining pits still in operation. The Welsh are a bit like the jocks but without the education.
So Darrio’s mate does a duck. Taking along with him all of Darrio’s worldly belongings except a roll of cash, which he has brought to buy rice seed with. Judging by the amount of short times he’s been having, theirs going to be a serious famine up north this year. If your wondering about the roll-on deodorant one of the bar girls bought it for him along with a new set of threads. He gave the clothes back, but kept the roll on. Didn’t like the tartan design, not very Georgio Armani. The first night in town, he took five girls from Voodoo a go-go. The bar fine alone could have solved the economic stability of some third world countries. He then turns up at the flat of the antiperspirant and clothes buying bar girl, along with his trusty roll-on and five scantly clad go-go girls. Didn’t go down to well but the boy’s oblivious, the bar girl ended up sleeping on the floor while her unwanted house guest had a roman style orgy with him as Caesar.
I suppose this whole Thailand scene would make a lot more sense to most people, parents included if it was the usual once off trip. Next year heading off to some other far flung destination. Not the yearly pilgrimage it’s become of late. Like everyone else the first trip over here was just a laugh with Alan and me blowing off a little steam on the way to Australia. Then we stopped here again on the way back two years later; maybe I should have noticed a pattern then.
Al and me have been mates for years, we meet sharing a company flat in Cape Town. I was only nineteen and South Africa was a lot safer for me than staying In England. Lets just say the local drug squad and me didn’t see eye to eye. As for Alan, he’s always been on his own mission to have the crack. He’d driven half way across Africa to start work in Cape Town, all his worldly belongings jammed in the back of a Mazda 323. He even brought his dirty washing complete with wicker laundry basket. He’s a few years older than me but looks a lot younger a bit of a ladies man but he’s always had his priorities right. Mates, football and beer. Originally from London but we all have are cross to bare.
We’ve worked all over the world together with Alan sorting me out more jobs than the D.H.S job center ever did. South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Arabia we’ve been cooking up a storm, been arrested, shot at, ran out of town and every thing else in between. Don’t get excited and start flicking the channel to check out the cooking programs, were not your superstar type chef like Gary Rhodes or Jamie Oliver “its puka mate, puka” what a prick! No were just your run of the mill screaming, shouting mental cases. So as such were cursed to live or lives after every normal person has gone home. We work while your all out enjoying your self, by the time we finish work and join the party the only people left standing are your low life’s and dregs of humanity or even worse more fucking chefs.
The last few years we’ve been back in sunny South Africa. Home to white guilt, diamonds and the rainbow nation. God alone knows what was going through Mandela’s mind when he pulled that title out the bag for the people at the southern most tip of Africa. How many black, white and brown rainbows have you seen? It’s ether he’s colour blind, smoking some serious weed or it’s some marketing ploy by Sachi and Sachi.
It all makes no difference to this story. I’m just trying to delay the inevitable, the answer to the question I get every year before I fly out
-Why?
Everyone that comes here has their reasons, some are worse than others, some sicker than most. Theirs the three favorites sun, sea and sand as for beer and Thai food you can get that down any high street from Glasgow to Auckland.
Why do I come?
Easy really, to forget, for my brain to vegetate and for a while at least to feel totally free. I wake up every bloody day to the sound of an alarm clock. It’s dark when I go to work and dark when I come home from work. I do an average of fourteen hours a day six days a week, trying to control a kitchen brigade, which resembles Monty Pythons flying circus. Daily carnage is commonplace and with the crew I’ve got working for me it’s disaster management all the way. Being a head chef is a cross between a nursery school teacher and a prison warden. What with the hours you have to do there’s not much of a chance for anything else? My old dears came over to visit. Stayed at our place and apart from four days off I spent with them it was lucky if I saw them to say good night to when I got in. I hadn’t seen them for three years, they travel half way across the world to visit and I spend my time doing stock takes, new menus and running around after food critics who can’t tell the difference between Scottish salmon and a tin of tuna. What a way to make a living. I haven’t got the time or energy to go looking for anything as taxing as a relationship.
I did it once, well once for real. The classic love story, meet a girl and fall in love. The whole shebang even started thinking about getting a house complete with white picket fence. Christ it makes me feel tired just thinking about how much energy I but in to that crock of shit. I’d do double shifts and still hang around waiting for her to finish the late shift. Then we’d go out drinks and dinner (if any where was still open) anything to make her happy. Then it was back home to make love as it’s not called screwing or fucking when your in a relationship, god forbid it could be so base. I was lucky if I got two hours sleep a night. It didn’t matter, nothing did apart from her and the she goes and gets a job in the states for a year. No problem, right? It’s only twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred and sixty five days no worries. We love each other a long distance relationship shit we could handle that. It’s the age of communication letters, e-mails, sms and phone calls. Bollocks! The first girl I never cheated on and she couldn’t keep her knickers up for more than two months. A telephone break up with a time delay.
I admit I was pretty fucked up and she kept on phoning, going on about seeing me when she got back. What the fuck was all that about I don’t want second hand goods, it’s ok if a girl takes a guy back after he’s been putting it about a bit, but you never take a girl back no matter how much you love her it’s just not fucking worth it. I’d never felt so bad in my life and never will again. Thirty odd years before I got kicked in the bollocks and no matter what me mates had said I never thought it could hurt so much. Alan was there for us bailing me out again. He’d just gone through the same shit with his bird. He organized us both jobs out in the bush and off we went, no forwarding address and an x directory phone number. Threw myself into the work clocking up the hours, as you then don’t have time to think about it. Then the work becomes routine and all of a sudden that’s your life. Apart from Alan, the dog and less than a hand full of people I can say I trust, that’s it. Then again that’s all I need, well that and the annual holiday in Thailand.
It’s a chance to get away from all the shit. Time to relax and time to stop thinking for a while. It’s therapy, well it works for me but I’m increasingly in need of more and more time off every year. That’s my problem and their my reasons as for Alan same same but different as they say over here. So what’s your reason?
As for Darrio he still wants to go back home to Italy, his craving for cheese and pasta is tugging at him. The homesickness gripping him stronger than the surgically enhanced lady boy waiting up north. The only thing stopping him is the Mafia landowner, who’s not to pleased about the fact his wife fell in love with our toothless hero. What gets me is what did the other guy look like? Check bin.














Chapter 2


Hot climates produce fierce dreams. Back home in the England people are praying over their morning papers, while David Beckham is limping through my dreams dressed like a Bangkok hooker. Offering short times and a discount if I spank him.
Had a body massage earlier. You get to pick your chick from behind a window. Gawking at the girls as if picking a new race horse, while lounging around on over stuffed sofas with mama San whispering in your ear, touting her best girls and explaining the pricing and services that the girls offer. Theirs fucking loads of them, most dressed the same except for what mama San calls the super stars. Their wearing cocktail gowns and sitting behind the window like bored debutantes, waiting for their dates to pitch up with an arm full of flowers and a pocket full of condoms.
All the girls are wearing numbered badges and I must have turned up during shift change or something, as theirs well over a hundred girls. It’s a bit like the changing of the guard, but a lot more colorful and theirs no dodgey geezers in fur hats and breastplates; instead it’s hair spray and wonder bras. I’m sweating my puss off as last night’s booze is starting to leak out of my pores, even in this air-conditioned palace of the flesh. So no point in hanging around.
-Number one one four.
-One hundred and fourteen?
Replies mama San. I tell you we English think were well superior. Practicing our second language of pigeon English to anyone who looks as if they weren’t born on the motherland. The chirpy cockneys are the best; they even give it the pigeon when they go up north. They all reckon the Queens English stops when you get past Watford. They need to have a word with themselves, up the rubber duck, plates of meat? Its fucking gibberish; all dressed up in the pearly king and queen outfits. Listening to Chas and Dave, belting out the classics on a lager stained Joanna. No wonder there are so many tourists down there it’s a freak show.
-Yes please.
Even to my own ears I sound like a Pratt, problem is you start talking pigeon and you can’t stop. I sound like a Chinese chip shop owner with a scouse accent.
One hundred and fourteen’s well tasty and she doesn’t speak a word of English. So small talks out of the question. She leads me off into the bowls of this palace of sin and flesh, only stopping to grab a key off mama San.
The room is well nice, fuck off double bed with a monster TV and video takes up half the room. The rest is filled with a bath big enough to swim in and a tiled floor area with a lilo that’s almost as big as the bed. She does a bit of a mime routine which I think means that I’m supposed to undress so no point being shy. I strip as requested while she starts filling up the Olympic sized bath. Dump my sweaty clothes on the bedside table and stand there in the buff smoking a fag. I guess I’ve gotten over the old embarrassment of taking my kit off while at school. I always reckon it’s an evil and twisted teacher who makes sure all the fat boys are playing five asides on the same team, which is always the one that has to take its sports top off. Minus ten degrees in the school gym and five sets of flabby bellies and saggy tits are bouncing around like some surrealist rodeo. She’s testing the water, doesn’t want to scold my crown jewels. You’d think the teachers would have realized, that after going to school with the same set of freaks for the past five years we would know by now who to pass the ball to without emotionally scaring the lard arse’s. I reckon that ninety percent of teachers are twats mostly entering the educational profession because of some weird sexual orientation or the fact that they don’t stand a chance of making it in the outside world, a bit like priests? They prefer to hide within the education system. The comforting familiarity of staying inside the same familiar surrounding. Ten percent of teachers are there by vocation; you can spot them a mile away. Even the thickest kid’s like yours truly listens to them, but unfortunately there few and far between. I reckon that they should be paid by results, the teachers in the lower class’s just starting out would have to perform not like the usual neurotic useless bitch that you get, straight out of university or teachers training collage, with a head full of facts and a mouth full of shit. Then again you could always pay better and only take people who have already succeeded within their careers, writes teaching English, math’s taught by accountants you get the picture? They know why it’s done that way and what it takes to get their it makes a lot more sense than having someone who’s only claim to fame is a poxy diploma from some back water collage. The waters well hot and I have to ease myself in, ducking my balls a few times before totally submerging them. One hundred and fourteen is smiling at me as she gets her kit off, outrageous body. She’s climbing in the bath with us, and pulling my legs above her own before starting to soap me all over. My dicks rising like a periscope with my torpedo tube fully loaded. It’s like an X-rated advert for imperial leather. Where out of the bath all washed and now laying face down on the lie low, while she covers me in soap bubbles before climbing aboard and sliding up and down. Her little bush of pubic hair scrubbing my flesh. Check bin.

Last day in Bangkok before flying over to Samui, all thanks to the company who are wearing the expense. They thought that we would have wanted a flight to England; back home to the mother land but I don’t fancy that. not for a holiday anyway, funerals and weddings fair enough but for a holiday, going to see all the old face’s doing the same shit that they were doing five years ago you must be having a laugh. Got the usual deal from work twenty paid days but also managed to wrangle another thirty in days owed. Total outcome ten weeks holiday. Now they really do think I’m having a laugh. More like taking the piss, i've spent less time on the dole. Still got one more place to visit while were in the capital and it’s not the reclining Buddha or golden temple. Alan found it on the Internet it looks well outrageous, soi seven off sukhumvit road. We slide out of Nana hotel ducking past Nana plaza just in case Darrio is out on the prowl already, couldn’t handle another marathon session with him.
Its mid day and the girls are already hanging over the balconies giving it the large. I’m gagging for a short time but were men on a mission. The street vendors are setting up their stalls. We pass row upon row of t-shirts and ripped off designer labels as we make are way along sukhumvit. Most of the vendor’s around Nana are as deaf as a doorpost; it’s all sign language and shoving calculators in your face. You can buy almost anything, toys, football stripes (Newcastle colors with a Liverpool badge), flick knifes, handbags and lighters in every style and shape you can imagine. At every street corner there are tuk-tuk drivers touting city sight seeing trips and massage parlors. Waving laminated cards with photos of semi naked girls. You shake your head cause you’ve done it all already, but the tuk-tuk boys always have something else up their sleeve.
-Sexy show. Young girls??
It’s all well illegal but theirs no way of stopping it. Personally I’m not into kids. I’m not a fucking Gary Glitter or Johnathon King. Most guys I’ve met while doing the rounds of sex bars and brothels from Soho to Sydney wouldn’t do that sick shit. It always seems to be the four eyed little fucker from down the road the one with the steady job and dumb as shit wife or girlfriend. The same cunts that always seem to be down the swimming baths when the junior school turn up for their weekly lesson, or volunteering to help out the local scout group. You moralist are probably sat there shaking your heads as if there is no difference, but what you don’t understand is that brassing is a selfish kind of love, you don’t want to go with somebody who hasn’t got a clue what there doing. I mean you want good sex, that’s why you go to a professional. If you wanted your car fixed you wouldn’t take it down the local girl guides hut. Every time you open the paper some new kid has gone missing, in the past everyone put it down to runaways blaming it on the parents. Now nine out of ten times it’s some sicko pervert who’s abducted them. So have things really gone that bad or were we all to fucking stupid to notice before? More likely it boils down to the fact we now live in a disposable society, before they used to hide the bodies. Now they just toss them out with the rest of the rubbish. The biggest surprise is that anybody still notice’s. The newspapers and television stations like to ride the stories using the public outcry to increase sales. With all the best intentions in the world they wouldn’t do it for nothing. You get the politicians shouting the odds and demanding changes in the law while side stepping what most of the country want, bring back hanging! Why the fuck should we pay to keep some creep in Her Majesty’s finest, three meals a day, sky TV and a roof over your head. It’s the same everywhere; in South Africa the A N C gave all the convicts the right to vote. Fucking madness can you see any murderer or rapist backing a party with capital punishment as an agenda? Thabo Mbeki the president doesn’t even believe that HIV causes Aids, the blokes living on a time bomb child rape is commonplace no thanks to the witch doctors who have given black male’s the warped belief that fucking a baby cures you from Aids. Murder is now the national past time, enjoyed by more people than rugby and cheaper to watch. Back in Briton Tony Blair is not much better; it’s all right to sanction the murder of a few thousand Muslims so as to protect are way of life and keep the yanks happy at the same time. While back home the likes of Ian Brady and Peter Sutcliffe sit on their arse at the taxpayers expense, frigging madness!
Where just passing the mutant bar, got no idea how it got it’s name but while I’m sober I’m a bit weary of picking up a girl from there. Soi seven is just another side street much like any other. Puddles of water caused by the leaking air conditioners above, scooters parked in-between American cars and Japanese 4x4. As for Club Eden it looks a bit sad. A large sign of a naked woman points the way to door in the wall, no heavy musical beat or fancy neon.
-Well?
-You first.
-No, it’s your turn.
Were like two little kids daring each other to shoplift in the sweet shop. The sign on the door says OPEN, so I don’t suppose there is much point in knocking.
It’s a narrow room; half filled with a bar on the left-hand side and about thirty birds are sat along the other wall in different stages of undress. There’s a yellow strip running from the middle of the bar along the floor and up the opposite wall, a bit like a no parking line with about half the girls sitting ether side of it. The music is purely background, some weird continental number. A guy appears behind the bar from out of nowhere and I get a flash back of the shop owner in Mr. Ben. He greets us with an accent slicker and more French than any Eric Cantonna karate kick.
-Welcome, I’m mousier Marc.
It’s a statement rather than an introduction. He pass’s us both a menu each, we settle for beer which appears on the bar before we’ve finished saying please.
-Have you gentlemen been here before?
-No.
-No.
We both pipe up, but this guy knows that already. He turns over the menu cards like a magician finishing a trick, gives it a saintly smile and steps back allowing us time to read the prophecy. The opening line grabs you and you have to reread it just to make sure you got it right the first time.
ONE MAN + TWO GIRLS = FUN. Mousier Marc steps back, he know reminds me of Mr. Rooke from Fantasy Island. I don’t want to ask where the midget is, just in case he thinks it’s part of my special request which according to the new set of Ten commandments in front of me he is well capable of providing. The oracle speaks.
-It’s not the same as Thai style, one in the bathroom while one’s on the bed.
I’m ashamed to tell him I know what he means.
-We don’t do singles, but if you do all the girls at one time you will be immortalized.
He points to two photographs behind the bar that bear witness to the fact, and I’m glad to find out that they are both British. Long live the bulldog fighting spirit.
-Ninety minutes is what you pay for satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
The blokes totally serious.
-The girls do everything and will bring along a bag of toys.
Our eyes widen but I reckon its best not to ask.
-It’s better for you if you pick your girl and let her choose her girlfriend.
In my head all I can hear is a little voice saying “da plane boss, da plane”.
-And the yellow line?
-Oh yes, only the girls on the left hand side take it from the behind, we like to cater for every taste.
He’s not fucking joking the rest of the menu reads like a what not to do on your fist date, scat play, water sports, bondage the list is endless and I haven’t got a clue what half the stuff is. Well when in Rome, I pick a bird and she picks her mate, I’m not saying from which side. They collect there little bag of party trick from Mousier Marc and I’m lead off like a lamb to the slaughter. It’s a cross between the big brother shower hour and a Ben Dover trilogy. Ninety minutes at Club Eden beats Andy Whorals fifteen minutes of fame any fucking day of the week. The strap-on was a bit leery but you can’t be in two places at once. I’m back at the bar and Mousier Marc wants to know if I’m satisfied. The guys the Obe-one Kenobe of the sex world.
-Would you like to go again?
The Jedi master of filth has spoken, may the force be with me young Skywalker.

Its time to find another bar, but I’m already having trouble standing. I ask one of the bar girls to the check the bin and I don’t mean for her to go riffling through the trash. If you ask them for the bill they just look at you daft. The only bills these girls know are the ones that turn up every year from America with their lily-white skin and the all-powerful dollar. The guidebooks reckon Koh Samui is part of an island group that used to be called Muu KO Samui, so now you know where the name comes from. At 247 sq km Ko Samui is Thailand’s third largest island, and before you ask I haven’t got a clue what the other two are called. According to the Lonely Planet there's no going back to 1971 when the first tourist arrived on a coconut boat from Bangkok.
After that their was no stopping the tourist invasion and all the shit that goes along with it, more rubbish, more noise and hippies. The coconut farmers sold their beach side plantations to the property developers. You now get ex coconut pickers racing around the island in brand new 4x4 and diesel twin cabs.
Hat Lamai after chaweng is Samui’s most popular beach for travelers. Several lanes run of the main Lamai drag and are lined with Pattaya style outdoor bars. By and large it’s a farnag (Thai for foreigner) male dominated scene, where western males tend to take on Thai females as temporary appendages. There continue to be reports of burglaries and muggings in Lamai, mostly occurring in dark lanes and along parts of the beach.
You have to love the Lonely Planet, guiding another batch of university students through hot steamy jungles, deserted beaches, lice filled doss houses and mosquito bites. You can spot them allover the place with their monster backpacks and tribal clothes. My little brother went off to do all that shit, by the time he got over to south Africa to visit me I reckon he had lost it. He and his mate had followed the well travelers path Oz, New Zealand, South America, south East Asia and of course it wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory pilgrimage to Tibet. Their attitudes and perspectives of the world shaped in youth hostels and backpacker dormitories from Outer Mongolia to Peru. If were not careful were going to end with a new world order, who will follow the holy writings of the Lonely Planet. Sitting in their apartments and loft conversions, comparing saris and photographs of the nice little Himalayan boy they befriended. As well as a dog-eared copy of the Dali Lamas autobiography laying on the coffee table. They’re all full of wind and piss, reckoning they know it all. We where sat at one of the beer bars last night already well on the way, when a couple of backpacking tarts sat there arse’s down opposite. One had a serious pair of lungs but I don’t reckon she would have gone for the usual two hundred Bht bar fine. Me and Alan were just having a bevy catching up with the Robman who had arrived in town that day, and these two birds were just staring and pointing at us like bystanders at a traffic accident. Obviously we must have meet with disapproval. I always find it amazing that a couple of tarts (have you noticed they always hang around in pairs much like tits, but with a pair of girls there is always one well uglier than the other) like these do the beer bar tour. They must have heard stories back at the doss house or crappy A-framed huts from the other enlightened travelers on the path towards bullshit fulfillment. All about the soulless dredge of humanity who are well past the joys of S club 7 and don’t get cheap drinks down the student union anymore. Yes I mean people like you and me. People who have to pay for our own holidays, as mother and farther don’t sponsor us for a gap year. A gap year? Just an excuse to take a year off doing fuck all. Lazy twats! So anyway out they come to see the show and admire their own self-importance. Me I can’t see the difference myself. We go out, wonder around the bars. Stop off at a couple of the locals where we know the girls and can have a laugh or stop in somewhere new with a welcoming smile. Yes we all know the girls have sex for money, but as most of the girls will tell you they don’t go with just anyone (unless there skint or mama and papa need a bit of cash) because they don’t have to they get enough offers they can afford to be choosy. They go with guys they like as well as wallets that turn them one. There like everybody else, all they want is someone to treat them nice, speak to them like a human being and show a little bit of respect. It’s nothing at all like picking up an old slapper back in your hometown or off some street corner in the seediest part of the city. So what's the big deal? The two backpacker chicks check there bin, splitting the cost of a beer to share and head off to one of the islands discos or beach parties, where they’ll get pissed out of there heads on some other wide eyed students pocket money courteously of his folks back home. Then as long as the guys still buying the round they will get there tits out for the lads while some dick does a bit of fire juggling to the Techno beat. All that before heading off with the last man standing, to make the beast with two backs. You see them in the morning walking down the beach, shoes in hand trying to look dignified as they search for there A-frame. So who are the real tarts? Answers on a post card to the not so Lonely Planet slag backpacker competition. Self-righteous tarts, they should act there age not there fucking shoe size. The reasons were here and as of lately a younger and younger crowd of guys is cause we’ve all had you and you were crap. Saggy tits and fat arse’s, you watch them walk up the beach and from behind they look like John Wayne’s horse the only difference is there constantly pulling there swim suit out of there backsides. Shouldn’t have taken a chance with last year’s swimsuit girlie, thought you’d lose weight while doing fuck all for a year apart from stuffing your face’s with the local feed. All because they’ve got the impression that if the locals aren’t fat, it must mean the food is good for you. There not fat because they work all day or owing to bad hygiene and sanitation standards spend half their lives on the crapper. I suppose there’s always the Lugging of the backpacks over the vast distance of airport car parks to help fight the bulge. More likely getting some local to carry it for them to the waiting mini bus. It’s time to break the seal so I let gravity do what it does best as I topple from my lofty bar stool perch. My sandaled feet doing there utmost to find a firm footing on the gravel floor and lurching like a spaceman I head in the general direction of the toilets. There’s no signage but the smell leads you along like a lamb to slaughter. It’s a communal affair and to say the smell is a bit ripe would be an understatement. I’m sloshing through other peoples piss, but I’m in control of the bile rising in my throat. In to the cubicle and it’s the usual basic Thai squat down number, so you can't blame the people for their lack of marksmanship. I step up, pulling out my tackle and look down so I can get the aim right. There’s a fucking great log with all the extras staring back at me. Singha beer and half a bottle of Mekong whisky start to come out of both ends. The initial spray covering my hand, which is taking all of my weight on the back wall. The second blast shoots out like something out of the Exorcist, my other hand grabs for a firm surface leaving my tool to fire away like an out of control Uzi. The vomit sprayed walls offer no purchase and I go arse over tit.
The lad’s voices bring me round calling through the door. I’m lying in puke and piss, with one arm twisted around my back and the other down the toilet with my hand wrapped around the offending floater.
- Are you all right in there?
- Yeah.
- Well hurry up then.
I can hear their footsteps as they make there way out to fresh air. The sound changes as they reach the gravel, the crunching of stone stops as rob calls back.
- You want another beer?
I’m covered in sewage and smell like a Camden town tramp, sat on my arse in what has to be one of the worst toilets in the world.
- Fuck it I’ll be there in a minute.

Thomas Crapper is credited with the invention of the modern flushing toilet, but it wasn’t him. It was some other poor sod forgotten to history that used to work for him. Old crapper stole the idea from right under him. I hope the poor cunt wasn’t using it at the time. I’m sat in the resort restaurant which is right on the beach and feeling a little the worse for ware or to but it more correctly like death warmed up. My throats scorched and my eyes are sticking out on their stalks. I’ve still got the puke snot up my nose and my head is beating like a heavy rock drum. Second cup of tea but the fag packet is feeling a little dejected on the table. Don’t worry my twenty little friends; I’m just building myself up a bit before we can renew our acquaintance. The cleaning girl wasn’t to impressed this morning but I can’t say I blame her. The clothes from last night looked like they had been dragged through a gutter before being flushed down the toilet. Which is not that far from the truth. You got to look on the bright side, I haven’t shit myself this year but it’s still early days.
Going on a trip tomorrow to the marine park. You have to do something tourist oriented in case your folks ask when you get back home. I reckon my parents know the score by now. I took my brother over to Amsterdam, years ago. On the last day we realized we hadn’t taken one photograph, but all was not lost. One canal tour and a city walking tour, five films in two hours. More pictures of bridges and buildings then you can shake a stick at. So when Alan and me did are first tour over here I got a bit clever. Take a camera and an extra couple of t-shirts and you can fill a holiday album in an hour or two. Problem is my mum and dad still reckon I got some weird fascination in bridges because of all the photos. When the old lady came over to Oz for my brothers wedding she made me walk across the Harbor Bridge with her thinking that I’d enjoy it. I was thinking about going back next year as it’s always better to say hello to the living than leave it to long and end up paying your respects to a granite slab. The thing that’s holding me back is my folks are going to want to take me across every bridge in the British Isles.
You’re never going to believe it but I’ve taken a night off the piss. A bit of scran with the lads and a couple off beers at panties bar, I’ll explain the name later on. Then home for an early night. No dramas, no hassle and a bit of telly in my air-conditioned temple. Three beers with panties to cool down the red curry I had earlier with the lads, I’m now crashed out with the air-conditioner on full sending an artic wind over me. Just about nodding off or it could be the first stages of hypothermia setting in, when suddenly the door is nearly knocked off its hinges as someone outside is kicking the shit out of it. I jump up grabbing the nearest thing to hand to cover my nakedness, which ends up being a pillow complete with love heart while the banging starts to reach a frenzied crescendo.
- Yeah I’m coming.
Bang, bang, bang.
- For fucks sake!
I unlock the door and look out. The artic wind at my back and tropical night air pouring in over my chest. There’s a vampire on my balcony? When I say she’s a vampire it’s a bit out of order. The girls got the body of an Olympic gymnast but a face like Parker from Thunderbirds not forgetting the fangs of Count Dracula.
- Pom poy, pom poy!
It’s the Thai way of saying fat bastard.
- What do you want?
And with that out jumps Magic from behind the open door. Her real name is Tong but she does card tricks at one of the bars for the punters who don’t want to play another game of connect four. I’m clutching the pillow to my groin as they both push past me.
- Come in why don’t you.
- Eh?
- Eh?
Sarcasm is wasted but you have to try even if it’s only to amuse your self. I close the door shutting out the tropics and turn around to the girls who are both staring at me. You can’t blame them, as the crack of my uncovered arse doesn’t rank up there with the Seven Wonders of the World. They’re probably wondering how it got so big. I sit on the edge of the bed while they raid the mini bar.
- Help yourselves girls. Don’t be shy.
They’re chattering away like chipmunks. All I can see of them are their arses, while their heads are stuck into the Kalvinator checking out what’s worth taking. Magic comes over and sits down next to me while the vampire squats down on the floor in front of us. She’s checking out my tackle, but that’s ok as I’m getting a lovely view of her tits.
- Why you no come to bar?
I don’t answer magic straight away as the vampire is changing position and I can almost see her nips.
- Why you no come to see me?
- Cause I’m having a night in.
- No see you for four days.
- No I saw you yesterday.
- Why you no come to bar?
- I was there the other night.
- No you liar! You have new girlfriend she here.
The girls go off in chipmunk between themselves before the vampire jumps up drawing back her lips so I can get a good look at the fangs, then she darts off in the bathroom while magic looks under the bed. It’s fucking bizarre.
- Where she?
- -There’s no one here.
- Ok I stay with you tonight.
It’s like meals on wheels. Same same but different.
- No not tonight.
She looks well pissed off and it serves me right. I’ve taken her twice before, she’s not bad but nothing to write home about. Can you imagine that letter?
Dear mum and dad,
Hope your both well. Just a short note to say everything’s going well and having a great time, by the way I had a tart last night and shagged her senseless. Didn’t do much for me so I’ve blown her out.
Love Pete x x x

I can’t see her sticking that one on the fridge with one of her magnetic pigs.
- Ok we go
A bit more chipmunk gibberish and there gone. Check bin.









Chapter 3


The girls in the last bar have all had kids. We’ve had a few bevies already doing the usual nightly tour. It’s a bit of a quiet evening; most of the tourists that come here arrive during August through to April. That’s the peak season, but it’s May now so there’s less sweating Germans to worry about which is never a bad thing. Saying that, I did notice a beach bar the other day with one of those wooden prefabricated swimming pools. It looks a bit like a fucking great hot tub. Full of mullet haired krauts with one hand around their dodgy German beer and the other below the watermark clenching there mates knob. There a fucking ugly race, how the hell some sad demented Austrian mistook them for the master race is a mystery to me. No wonder they swept through Europe and North Africa so quickly, who’s going to stand in the way of an army made up of the Village People. Jack boots, black uniforms, riding croups and a missing ball. A marching fetish battalion, bursting from the closet that is the fatherland. You have to be suspicious of any country who reviver David Hasselhoff as a singing god. You would have thought they would have learnt after trying it on the first time, apart from doing the world a favor by shutting up the French for a while, it was a total fucking disaster. It’s said that history repeats it’s self and with the E.U slowly being taken over by German banks and bureaucrats it’s going to be a lot sooner than you think. Single currency, European courts dictating our laws, immigration policies that let in anyone and his dog or in the case of the Paki’s they’re whole family. England’s future could still go ether way, turned into just another European country or end up as the 52nd state of America, as Tony Blair goes about his routine of rolling over and wagging his tail to George (kill them all) Bush. Global conditioning it’s called next thing you know were all peasants ruled over by an elite few. Told what we need to make us happy by a controlled media. This is good for you, this is bad for you, this is in fashion, this is out, buy this, buy that. Economic control, political control, media control equals mind control. There’s got to be a backlash but then again there always is, be it in fashion or music used as a way of demonstrating our individuality. But as quickly as it starts, it’s bottled and packaged and sold to the masses by the very people it was aimed at as a statement of dissent. If you don’t conform then what? Last time it was the Jews who were used as a scapegoat and hidden enemy by the Nazi’s to rally there people and push for a master race an ideal that belonged more to a dream then any achievable goal. Even communism has its good points, but there’s no way it could have ever worked. Especially when you take in to account human nature. Look at the Jews, never before has any other group of people been treated so badly throughout history. But have they learnt fuck all? Have they fuck. Israel lashing out and stamping its authority in the Middle East. You can’t blame them when bombs are going off, but they must have learnt by now that violence can only bring more violence. The arrests and shooting might cause a shortage in suicide bombers now. But they’re only creating more martyrs. Sons will follow their fathers and their sons will follow them. You just got to look at Ireland to see that. So who’s next to get the shitty end of the stick? Beats me. Watch sky news or CNN as they start bending to the politician’s voices. There’s nothing like a good war to push up the ratings, but you got to have a villain. Iraq, Afghanistan the old favorites in the war on terrorism. Why not South America surely the drug trade has killed more Americans. I’m sure if the president asks Tony Blair for help he would be over like a shot, even though you yanks did fuck all for us during the Falklands. Yes our two countries have a dialogue; problem is its all one fucking way. Walkies Tony, walkies. As for me I’ll hopefully be sat under a palm tree well out of the way when it all goes off.
Met a bloke last night whose name has to be changed to protect the guilty. So from now on I’ll call him diamond geezer just incase anyone from crime watch U.K is reading. Fulltime Millwall supporter and part time bank robber. That said he’s a nice enough geezer and a bit of a legend back in old London town. His face as got so many laughter lines it looks like the London underground map. The geezer is heading back tomorrow as he is running low on funds, so I suppose TSB will be getting a visit in the next couple of days. Followed by a serious cash withdrawal. The guys off his head, striping off in the open air bars and climbing the go-go poles and can he fucking drink. The geezers pickled from the inside. Knocked off designer gear and a rent a scooter, he’s living a jail house dream with one girl disappearing as the other turns up straight from work, with a pocket full of dollars and a cunt full of come. She’s the love of his life well at least this year, fourteen trips and eight tattoos everyone bearing the name of a previous bar girl. He falls in love like old people fall over. I suppose your wondering why this is not a love story. Who knows maybe it is but it’s not mine, not this time any way. Alan refers to her as she who shall remain nameless but that’s now a long time ago. This whole love thing isn’t fucking easy, well not for a bloke anyway. I think men love more intensely then chicks; most men have one or two best mates that usually last a lifetime. Women on the other hand have more best mates than flies around shit, you just got to listen to them slag each other off when one’s not there to fully appreciate the depths of there feeling. Guys on the other hand except their mates, for who they are, piss heads, wankers and cunts. While the women just want to try and change them, turn you into some sort of perfect partner. A Hollywood movie were everyone is fan fucking tastic and you live happily ever after. Shame life’s not like that. When it’s over the woman moves on but the man goes to Thailand, carrying his last love like a demon on his back. This is not a love story, even though it might have started as one. Here loves a commodity that’s bought and sold, haggled over like farmers at a cattle auction. Each party after the best deal they can get. Try Pattaya when the American fleets in, prices got up through the roof. It’s all about supply and demand, now you know why I come over during the off-season. Can I compare thee to a summer’s day? No but give me a fiver and I’ll let you play with my tits. Old Willy Shakespeare didn’t have a clue.
- Are you pissed or what?
- No lar just thinking
- Well think about checking the bin it’s your round, and I’m off to Chaweng
With that he hops down from the bar stool and legs it across the road to jump on the back of a waiting Bht bus. Last seen giving it the closed fist and bent arm, with the immortal words.
- Gagging for it! See you tomorrow if you’re lucky.
I watch the Bht bus disappear up the road through my beer goggles. As it winds its way up the street past the neon signs and vanishes into the night.

Footballs a funny old game. Someone famous said that but I have to go with Shankly’s quote footballs not life and death. It’s more important than that. The guy was a genius, taking the Red army to glory. If you haven’t guessed by now I’m a scouser, please don’t spit. Liverpool born and breed, at least until my old dears packed up and got out. Defiantly a good move, career opportunities back in the Promised Land used to run between the dole and thieving to supplement your income. My folks once out of the pool kept on moving. Short spells between England and abroad, minimum of six months to keep the taxman at bay. It must have past on some sort of wonder lust because out of three brothers two live on different continents and one lives off on his own planet.
There’s an old saying in South Africa, it’s not used any more for obvious reasons. You can take the kaffir from the bush, but not the bush from the kaffir. You’d understand it if you’ve ever worked over there. Much the same can be said for me, I got no love for terrace streets and moldy tower blocks. A dockland, which was once filled with ships and cargo from all over the world. It’s now been turned into an up market Barret housing estate with posh shops and bistro’s. As a kid you see thing different, slag heaps are proud hills to fight over with the kids from the next road. Alleyways and entries you’re own private highway between streets and the prying eyes of your family or more importantly your enemies. I remember the local park with its duck pond as if it was a fine country estate. Not a graveyard for shopping trolleys and used condoms. We were the first city in England to go bankrupt, the government trying to solve the problem by giving it a poxy flower show. Through it all there was Liverpool football club, the pride of half a city and the whole of Merseyside when we beat Manchester Ufuckingnited. Teams are a reflection of a city, so with Liverpool F.C. finally escaping the barren years. With the help of our own Napoleonic French general. Gerard and the pacemakers, we had are best season for years. So this year has been a bit of a disappointment. Final game of the season and we need a result or the scum from across the way will finish ahead of us again. The gooners did us a favor, but took all the silverware themselves it wasn’t in Anfield long enough to gather dust. Tossed out of Europe by the cross dressing krauts and some seriously bad substitutions. We beat fergie twice (I refuse to call him sir no matter what her majesty says) both home and away. This leads me to ask why their stadium is on the motorway? Maybe its because all there fans are Welsh or sad southerners. They’re only redeemable feature being Beckham now back with England as captain. Amazing really as he cost us the last world cup, well that and a disallowed Sol Cambell goal.
Alan’s been having some serious premonitions lately. In his last dream he offered Becks our couch to chill out on. Then we was all off to a roof top party were Mark Hughes and me got into a fight and we ended up tumbling thirty floors to the swimming pool below after the taffy git slated me for being a scouser. Hidden meanings or to much vodka red bull. I don’t know, but maybe I should give Sven a bell, a top man in my book. I was doubtful to begin with but if he can get Ulrich Johnson in the sack then any things possible. Except Stan Collymore being picked for the squad.
The lads must be waking up as I just clocked panties ducking out of Rob’s room. He got here just after us and has been doing the Thailand tour on his inheritance. He’s only here with us for a couple of weeks before heading over to South Korea to cheer on Bafana Bafana well someone has to. We all used to work together back in Capetown, but we dragged him over with us on last year’s tour and now he can’t get enough. Were the same age, but he looks about four years younger. A good bloke and as resilient as Teflon. The wedge he is spending comes from his folk’s estate. Lost both of them last year, the old girl was a bit of a piss head. As for his dad, Rob found out after his death the old boy was a transvestite. So maybe bringing him over to Thailand wasn’t such a good idea. Loads of booze, loads of drugs and enough geezer birds to populate a small country. I haven’t seen him cross-dressing yet so there’s still hope. It’s all a bit freaky but I reckon Rob’s sister topped it all off, after placing an advert in the paper for surrogate grandparents for her daughter. I never saw the advert but you can imagine it? Experienced drag queen with boozy partner needed, job includes attending school plays and family events. Send police and psychiatric records to-

Rob was over staying on the Phi-phi islands with his bird from last year. A nice little thing that wanted Rob to set her up in Africa. She latter turned up off her own back but couldn’t handle the local clients (mainly black miners). I’m sure Rob would have moved her in but his diseased dick shamed him into ignoring her pleas. Don’t know what he was worried about some girls like something a little bit different The Phi-Phi islands the same place they filmed the beach. The glorification of feral backpackers and coming of age movie. It looks like when the movie studio packed up and left they forgot to take the cast with them. Somebody should phone Hollywood and tell them to come back and pick up there hippies. It would be paradise if it weren’t for the hoards of backpackers. Sharing out there half loafs of bread, showing off body piercing and tribal tattoos. May be its me but don’t you think it’s a bit strange that the lonely planet faithful rock up in Thailand to get tribal tattoo’s, so they can look like one of the All Blacks?
- Morning our kid
- Alright lar
- Where’s Robman?
- His birds just ducked out a minute ago, so he’ll properly be over in a mo
- So what you get up to last night?
- Chaweng
- Two teas love
The waitress takes the order; well I she looks as if she understands which is close enough.
- What times kick off?
- Five
We watch Rob come limping across the drive looking like shit.
- Howzit
- Sweet son, sweet
- How’s your girlfriend?
Alan pipes in with the first dig of the morning. Robs ignoring it
- How many nights is that our kid?
- Seven on the bounce.
I answer Alan while he’s staring sugar in to the pint pot of tea.
- No I had Sunday off.
It didn’t take rob long to bite. He’s been doing the same bird since he got here. An attractive girl with a fair command of the English language even if she can’t say the letter r. so Lob’s a bit touchy especially on the subject of love. A true cynic but he hasn’t fallen yet. Doesn’t know what he’s missing and hasn’t realized that’s what he’s been playing at.
- Why don’t you bring her for breakfast?
- What times kick off?
Nothing like changing the subject, but pound to a pinch of shit she’ll be sneaking out the door again tomorrow morning.
- Got to tell your Mrs.?
- Five Rob, who’s for a swim?

Good game, well we won. Anelka putting one in at the end to add insult to injury, but at least the poor bastards are not going down after getting lucky with the other results. As for are mortal enemies a no score draw, so were second. No silverware in the cupboard but at least were straight in to Europe next season and Fergie has to go to the play offs. Now just the world cup but Erickson men are already dropping like flies. Dwyer and Gerrad limped off; they’re saying it’s only a groin strain. So no training or playing with there plonkers. Now for some more beers, a bit of snatch and take the piss out of some of the manc supporters that are knocking about.
First time we came to Thailand it was outrageous. South East Asian virgins didn’t have a clue. First day in Bangkok we were rip’d-off down Patpong road. Three grand for two beers. Didn’t know the show we were watching was priced ala Carte. Must say though the girl could throw a dart better than the crafty cockney. I’d like to see him laid out on the Ocky with a blowpipe up his arse, going for double top. The commentary would go something like this, Eric’s at the Ocky and what marksman. It’s like his arrows are laser guided and what sphincter control. Jocky Wilson is trying to fight back but ten lagers and a pre match mutton vindaloo has left the Scottish lard arse without a chance in this match. Poor performance and a spray of muck really isn’t something you’d expect from a former world champion.
We left Thailand after two mad months me with no cash Alan missing his appendix and with a warning from the Bangkok police department not to come back. Second time around we did the Pattaya scene. Two hours by limo from Bangkok airport or three if you stop on the way for a massage. Pattaya by day is a run down seaside town filled with over weight Germans and Russians running around trying to find some shade. There’s a two-meter stretch of beach running around the length of the bay. Which is mainly used as a parking lot for high-speed powerboats and jet ski’s driven by fat Russian mafia dons and ex K.G.B hard men at break neck speed. While the Germans Para sail overhead, the boats jet engines at full throttle lifting the sausage guzzlers air born. Pattaya’s dirty, noisy and more dangerous than a united airlines flight with a pilot called Mohammed and I fucking love it. The sun never sets in Pattaya; it runs away screaming into the sea as Pattaya lights up like Hiroshima. It is truly the sex capital of Asia with more whores per square mile than Bangkok and Phucket’s infamous Patong beach but together. I knew a lad who brought his girlfriend over on vacation. A package holiday with the offer of cheap accommodation, sun, sand and lots to do; talk about taking coal to Newcastle. Every birds up for it even the hotel maids will toss you off for a few Bht. The girls fight for trade while e-mailing fiancées and boyfriends for more cash, as this months rent money is already gone and you don’t want them to go back to the bar because they love you long time. Early doors at the open air bars and the girls ask you to read e-mails and letters from there distant lovers because there only education comes from serving drinks and servicing farangs. I’ve read sad dopey love letters from Matthew’s and John’s, marks and Luke’s and the rest of the apostils. The guys are convinced of the girls undying love and spend there time between e-mails running around trying to organize visa’s, so next time they can go back together as long as some other brass doesn’t get her nails into him between the airport and happy reunion. The girls have got no idea what life in Preston or Bolton is like. They have some idealized notion of living a movie style life. DVD, CD players, leather three-piece suite and a big house right next door to the Queen. Then they get there only to find a terrace house, alienation and no money until love you long time Johnny has paid off the last three weeks in the sun. There was this geezer married one of the girls. Went through all the shit with immigration and home affairs, while sending over the monthly retainer to keep her off the game and enough money for the mother and farther living on some rice field up in the northern province. Everything sorted and they fly back to England in the middle of winter to some poxy village in the middle of Derbyshire. The girls quickly up the duff, friendless except for her fella who has to go out to work. Living in the arse end of nowhere, a slave to the central heating system. It wasn’t like that in any of the movies she watched and as far as she was concerned they’re sure, as fuck wasn’t going to be a sequel. She ransomed the kid and fucked off on the next flight, can you blame her? Love in Thailand is long or short time, nobody ever said it was forever.
Marilyn ago-go used to have the best show on the Pattaya strip; a girl would dance naked around the dance floor. Performing cartwheels and doing the splits before squatting over a giant brandy glass and letting goldfish drop into it from her pussy. I never did see anyone pay her bar fine and I can’t imagine anyone going down on it, not without a portion of chips and a large amount of salt and pepper. H is coming back on tour this year. The last time he was over we were in Pattaya. He’s a recovering drug addict a member of the AA and a vegetarian. The last time I saw he was pissed, stoned and eating a Big Mac. His first night in town and we took him to Champion ago-go, nothing special but the beer was cheap. He fucks off after being in there for ten minutes and Alan and me are left waiting like lemons. He turns up again half an hour later and sits back down and carry’s on drinking his beer.
- Where the fuck have you been?
- The toilet dude.
- What you been doing, having a wank?
- Yes
- Fuck off
Alan's tapping me on the shoulder.
- Where’s he been?
- Having a wank.
- No
- Yes
- Hey dudes if you go to the toilet don’t use the hand towel.

England verses South Korea and there’s already talk were down to four fully fit midfielders. We used to only have to worry about the left-hand side, now it’s the whole pitch. The tabloids are full of rumors that Beckhams almost fit can’t kick a ball with his left foot though but some say he never could. So first tackle and he’ll be off doing the Gazza. Erickson has gone for a four-three-three reckon that’s a bit naïve, with what he has got on the pitch and even worse if he is using Hesky on the wing have to wait and see. All suited and booted and were off to the Bauhaus to watch the match. The biggest nightclub in Lamai, famous for having the largest T.V screen in town. It also holds regular Friday night foam parties, which I’m trying to avoid like the plague. It’s as dark as the bowls of hell in there and by that time of night and the state your in when you get there you’ve lost all ability to discern between goddess and dog ugly. Last year at the foam party, after a bout of spontaneous puking, I ended up waking up next to a geezer bird. So you can understand me being a little wary about the whole affair. I bumped into the same katoy at one of the open bars two nights ago. I didn’t even clock her at first. It gave the lads a right laugh. We skirted around MacDonald’s on the way to magic’s bar when we got the usual chorus of welcomes and hello’s interrupted with
- I know you
The voice was at the same pitch as fingers running down a blackboard
- You what?
Why do I automatically think it’s me, must be a guilty conscience.
- I know you last year
She must be trying it on but the lads have slowed there pace enjoying the floorshow.
- You sure
I’m starting to worry and getting flashbacks like in a B-movie
- Best resort
Oh fuck I’m thinking and the lads have stopped
- Yeah
Here it comes and the lads know it. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.
- I go with you last year, boom boom in your room, best resort
If she smiled any more her face would split in half.
- Nice to see you to darlin
Please god swallow me up, a year later and in good light she really does look like a bloke even with the Op she’s got a fucking chin like Jimmy Hill. We start walking again and the fingers drag back down the black board
- See you soon
It’s like a knife in the back, not if I can help it but I got a funny feeling she isn’t taking the piss.
The Bauhaus is filling up mostly steamers like us but there’s the usual late arrival of backpackers. A beer to share and roll up fags cause it’s all a bit laddish even the girls are all licking away at their Rizla’s, but it’s ok because there don’t inhale. They only suck and blow just the way we all like it.
One up thanks to Mickey Owen but otherwise it’s a well poor performance, it’s only the first half though. Martin Taylor and Butch Wilkins are doing the commentary. Good old Butch hasn’t got a bad word to say about anyone, he must be watching a different game or taken half an E before kick off. The backpackers are Humming and arring, they haven’t got a clue of course and wouldn’t know an off side trap from a mousetrap. Not surprising really as the universities and student body usually follow rugby or cricket as well as that daft boat race. My younger brother's like that, says he loves football because he is a bit of a lad and all that, know what I mean. Doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, he would rather be at Lords or Twickenham with all the other hurrah henrys and hockey stick brigade. It breaks my heart it really does but you have to humor them.
Half time and the conversation in the bar is at a low, bit strange because of the amount of people packed into the place but not really considering the first half. The Thai T.V. network switch back to the satellite link before the start of the second half, catching Butch and Martin on their tea break. Only a picture of an empty pitch and their voices.
- How much a ticket
- About thirty quid, no wonder the stadiums half empty
- There greedy bastards, but the longer this goes on the more I can see Argentina winning it
The highlight of the match is Butch Wilkins blowing out England in favor of the Argies. He then spends the rest of the second half saying how good England’s chances are. Two faced twat and what a second half. Forty-five minutes of disappointment. South Korea get one back, equalizing with a set piece. They ran our midfield and defense ragged. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for Sven and the boys. Were still sat in the bar and Alan’s still not wearing Sinclair.
- Why Sinclair and not Parlour?
- I haven’t got a clue
- Who’s your midfield Rob
- If there all fit or with what there is
- Are you sure Gerard’s not coming back?
- Yes! He’s out I told you before
- What you saying Rob he’s not coming back?
- Don’t you fucking start as well
- Sorry to interrupt you two but he must be back for the final
- He’s out!
- All right Rob keep your shirt on, so who’s your four our kid?
- Becks, schole’s, Cole and Gerrad
- Gerard’s fucking out! Out! Not fucking playing
Time to go before Rob has a heart attack; he storms off while Alan and me piss ourselves laughing. Check bin
Morning after and Alan and me are having breakfast as panties slips out of Robs door and disappears down the street. Why he doesn’t bring her over for a morning feed is beyond me. Maybe it’s us, afraid we’ll take the piss or he could be worried that she might start doing her evening routine. Dropping her strides and showing off her panties in-between bites of our bacon butties. I must tell him not to worry, as I wouldn’t mind one bit as long as she doesn’t knock me tea over.
Pissing down with rain and the powers down throughout Lamai. So I’m held up in my room smoking fags and reading by candlelight. No wonder some one invented the television cause this is taking the piss. I’m paying for TV, and air-conditioning and there both sat there silently in the shadows laughing at me. Nothing else for it, cold shower and get suited and booted. It’s going to be a funny old night, warm beer and bar girls by torchlights.

Wish it was still torchlight but the daylight burning through the curtains is revealing a scary sight. Fuck knows were I found that, but judging by the wet cloths on the floor and the smell of washing up liquid it was the foam party. At least I don’t have to gnaw my arm off. Climb out of bed and hit the shower but don’t forget to take my wallet with me. Make enough noise and she gets the hint, by the time I’m finished sorting my self out she’s dressed and ready waiting by the door. Hand out waiting for the tip, which I pay without knowing if I performed or not. Then she’s gone back to her room and more than likely back to sleep. The boys are watching from the restaurant and I walk over to the sound of their slow clap. Another morning in paradise.
Spicy mango salad, crispy pork with Chinese kale, roast duck with black pepper and garlic as well as chicken green curry or it could be the vodka lippo. Lippo being a bastardized version of red bull with enough chemicals in it to fill a high school lab. It’s got more kick than speed and keeps you awake longer without having to end up being hung like a rat, searching for your dick at three in the morning. What ever it was I’m going to have enough time to think about it. I’m shitting piss and have been doing so since yesterday, Alan’s next-door doing the same. My guts are cramping up and I’m aching all over from dehydration. Every joint is screaming out as my muscles spasm. Not to mention my arse, my sphincter’s sore from constantly clenching my cheek muscles tighter than a ducks arse and that’s watertight. The toilet smells as though something died in there after crawling out my backside. I’m reminded of stories from the Pattaya bum boys who frequent its boy’s town area. If local urban legend is to be believed a lot of working boys walk around with toilet roll rammed up there arse’s, after having there sphincters snapped like elastic bands from over use by all the German sausage meat. What a way to make a living. Then again Bob’s coming over next month a bit of a Bacardi geezer so the Lamai queens had better start to do themselves up. If I ever get off the crapper long enough I’ll e-mail him to bring over some proper tea bags and more importantly some two ply bog roll, so he can give the boys a real treat. The gays over here are camper than Michael Barrymore at a scout jamboree. There’s one that works in panties bar that we’ve nicked named Adam after my brother. There is some weird sort of resemblance, but the Thai version isn’t pleased with his new name. Nor would my brother be if he found out. The long hair and cross dressing doesn’t help turn him into a woman by any figment of the imagination and no I’m not still talking about my brother unless you know something I don’t. According to the other bar girls he spends his free time jerking of in the shower and wearing their clothes. Even at the foam party he couldn’t score. There is a rumor going around that he offers to pay the holidaymakers? Never seen it happening but I don’t think I’m his type. We’re trying to set him up for Bob but I don’t think we can afford the bar bill to get Bob that pissed first.

Can hear the music from the beer bars. The bass beat is making the whole room vibrate. I think me and my spastic colon have been reunited at long last but I’m still holed up with my fetid stench and filth. I had two slices of toast and a boiled egg for dinner but it went through quicker than Michael Schumacher. I’m gagging for a beer but the arse is twitching again. My only joy is knowing that Alan’s guts are just as bad as mine or maybe worse by the amount of times I’ve heard his toilet flush in the last half hour, the poor bastard already shat himself twice while trying to see if he could fart without following through. Can’t take the piss much as I’m now wearing my swimming trunks to bed. I don’t want to end up like the poor sod spud in Trianspotting. I still reckon I’m on the mend but definitely not peaking. Even David Beckham is going to be ready for Sunday, while I’m sat with my arse in a sling.
Low and behold you mere mortals for on the sixth day they found the tomb empty. I’d risen from the dead, like a phoenix from the ashes. There was much rejoicing in the resort restaurant as I downed my first cuppa. After the locals first checked I wasn’t some sort of ghost, a shadow of my forma self after shitting away ten kilo. Even my mans boobs had begun to sag deflated and hanging like your granny’s tits.
Alan arrived and sat down opposite and banged his closed fist on the table twice.
- Well?
I rapped my knuckles twice back.
- Hard as our kid, hard as
From the restaurant we watched as two of the cleaning girls carried my fetid sheets from the room. Even from over here you could make out the outline off my body, which had sweat stained the material. A group of Buddhist monks stopped while on their way to collect their daily alms. Frozen to the spot as their eyes caught sight of such a curios religious artifact. We all watched the sheets being carried to there new home. A place where many pilgrims would surely travel to marvel at the Samui shroud. The striking image of a fat Buddha with skid marks. It would surely become the stuff of legends. The two cleaning girls tossed the holy relic into a barrel poured in some liquid and tossed in a match, woooooof.
- Well that’s the carbon dating done
- What the fuck are you on about?
- O nothing, so how are your guts?
- I’ll be there are kid
- Who’s the first game?
- Ireland verses Cameron
- What time
- One thirty
- Fuck’n have it
- And no Keane, fucking bonus
Everyone has got a soft spot for the paddies (southern ones that is), and Mick McCarthy has done a decent job just getting there. Their teams played well with some good new players as well as the usual suspects. As for the Manc captain what a cunt, does a duck putting himself before his country and then reckons he’s done nothing wrong or anything to be ashamed of. What a prima donna could you see an England captain or player doing that? He’d be lynched it’s desertion which ever way you look at it. Retreating out of the trenches before the whistle has been blown to signal over the top. For your paddy’s it must be worse than finding out Jesus was Jewish. To be sure to be sure.
- I’ve never seen a black Irishman
- There’s loads
- Yeah I know but you can’t see them tracing there roots back to old kunta-kinty Malone
- What are you on about?
- Well can you imagine a paki Scotsman?
- There’s loads
- I know there is but it’s a bit weird
- Your half sweaty anyway
- So are you
- So who would you play for?
- England who else
- What if they wouldn’t have you, which looking at you is pretty obvious
- Fair point
- Look at the English cricket team, Indians and aussies
- Can’t get in there own home sides
- Exactly
- Vinnie Jones, cockney hard man played for Wales. He used to be a dish pig at a boy’s school. So there’s hope for me yet
- Not if you don’t shut up. You’re giving me a fucking headache.
Watching the football in my nice clean room. The guts are behaving themselves but it’s to early to start throwing down the beers and we have to be fighting fit and ready for the big one tomorrow. I don’t fancy sitting in the Bauhaus with a bucket attached to me arse.
- Couldn’t believe your bird
- What, oh that
- Her coming round to tell you she’s on the rag and wants to borrow a grand
- She’s just taking a chance
- You should have offered her five hundred for a blowy
- I would of but she doesn’t suck cock
- Your having a laugh
- No, I tried last time
- Then again I can’t say I blame her
- Fuck! That was close
- He should of put that away, if it wasn’t for the goalkeeper that would have been in.
There’s no answer to that, but it does make sense. If Ireland ends up going through to a penalty final they should get Reed to take it. It could be the Guinness equivalent to Roberto Baggio’s Johnny walker ad. The slogan could be "It might not make you black like me, but it will turn you shits the same color." It would be better than there other adverts, like the one “It’s hard to be a dolphin” which should really of been used by John West salmon. One-one and the lads in green did well. Bet that winds the shit right out of old Roy Keane even more than the fans chant of “are you watching, are you watching, are you watching Roy Keane”.
There’s still two more match’s to go today and I’m supporting the Danes next up. Come on you bacon slices, but I think it’s time for a quick dip in the sea before kick off.
The sea’s as warm as a bath and the sun is scorching. What more could any man want. Football, beer and women fucking perfect and I’m starting to peak. I’ll have to shag for England tonight, I did it for all of Liverpool’s cup finals last season and look what happen. Mere coincidence or something out of the x-files. I was doing it for England but my bird blew me out before the England verses Germany game at Wembly and we all know what happened. Lucky we were back together before the return match. As for Liverpool this season it was fucked before it began, stroopy cow got the hump that I was going on a two-month holiday to Thailand without her and gave me the choice we go together or it’s over. Sorry Gerard and the lads but you know how it is. They’re over here all the time themselves. Pre season warm ups against the Thai national team, god knows what else they get up to but theirs a few bar girls around Bangkok who say they’ve helped the boys with their ball skills.




























Chapter 4

The Bauhaus is emptying out faster than my guts. A sea of white shirts and painted face’s shuffling to the exits. The odd cry of “eng-a-land” and some other sad sods try to start a chant of Vindaloo, which is mainly ignored by the disappointed mass of bodies. All heading back to their hotel rooms and holiday resorts to wipe the face paint away, shame we can’t wipe the last forty-five minutes away as easily. Totally pants after the expectation produced during a great first half. My guts healed, beer going down well and Sol Campbell climbing high to score a header for the England, which would have had the roof lifting off the bar if it had one. Everyone went fucking mental. So what the fuck happened? Beckham was obviously tired after his first game in seven weeks. Goes off early in the second half and on comes Dwyer? Maybe his old man and the cronies down the Caribbean club think he is the savor of English football and that his sole presence on the pitch will help England win the world cup, but after that performance their the only freaks who do. It’s a good lesson for the kids out there and goes to shows you just what much rum does to you, start talking shit or let a sailor boy up your arse. Hargreaves was anonymous after two outstanding friendly games, Owen with little to do and no ball to do it with. Hesky left midfield! Every manager tries it; at Anfield and for England it never works. Ashley Cole played a blinder of a game; why not stick him up in midfield with Bridges behind. Felt sorry for Mills after a good performance, ended up looking the cunt cause of one mistake.
- What you want to do?
- Get a shower and go back out on the piss
- Alright, I sweated my puss off in there
- Well it could have been worse
- Not much, now we need a serious result
- What against Argentina and Nigeria?
- Yeah, piece of piss
Have you ever noticed that the English don’t see the national squad in any sort of reality? Any other group of supporters will tell you how it really is, maybe France or Italy are in with a good chance. It all depends on injuries and form; maybe there own team will do well to make it to the second round. We the English on the other hand live in fantasyland. We know it’s pointless and don’t stand a snow balls chance in hell, but then again where convinced with the same passion a condemned man has for life that we and only we could win let alone will win. Not just win the group but have the cup. Where living in a dream, we don’t stand a chance but then again beat the Argies and the Nigerians and we can still go top. Then it’s all the way, who’s going to stop us.
Adams all alone so we go over to take the piss and have a beer.
-Two Heinekens Adam
He blush’s and rubs his chin, the five o’clock shadow is coming through the layers of make-up, is he ugly or what. The Swedish cunts have all crawled out of the woodwork. God knows were they have all been hiding themselves but they must have gotten kitted up after the match once they knew the result. There’s now so many yellow shirts the town is turning in to a canary nightmare. My usual shit aside there a friendly enough bunch. Not trying to large it too much but they know they’re safe from any agro and if I’m honest the result was a fair one in the end. I don’t think it will be the same on Friday, I’m sure as hell there isn’t any one with enough front or mad enough to wear an Argentinean strip. All you got to do is look around to see that most of the English round here are left overs from the eighties. Ink stained skin showing team allegiances. Tattooed badges of honor still well worth fighting over.
It’s now well late as the early kick off gives you more drinking time. The beer bars are now a mix of yellow Danish strips and ripped-off England tops straight off the presses of some Bangkok sweat shop. The regular girls are giving me the cold shoulder; there all convinced I’ve been seeing someone else for the last week. Shacked up in my room with some dolly rather than a tube of pile cream and a family pack of bog roll. Alan’s meet up again with the girl from last year, he doesn’t think he’s up to his best yet but there’s no getting out of it now. She clocked him staggering between the bars about an hour ago trying to find a toilet that isn’t a hazard to your health. She still looks good, I know it’s only a year but it’s easily a lifetime in their game. Showing off her new piercing and much improved command of the English language. Me on the other hand have as usual fucked myself over. Rob’s bird was doing the big come on now that he’s been gone for all of eight hours. So I like a cunt told Alan I was going do her, yes I know I’m a cunt. So we make a bet and then she goes and fucks off with some Swedish guy while her sister is beating me at connect four. The forfeit with Alan is that if I don’t do the deed within Alan’s time limit I have to jog bollock naked up the beach using the sun-tanning backpackers as hurdles. Time to Check bin and head back to the Bauhaus, see what’s knocking about or more importantly not see anything at all.

All shit games today so it’s back on the lash and try to save the forfeit, as theirs no way I’m jogging down the beach, Belly and arse bouncing about like the Michelin man with one hand cupping my testicles. The bastard wants fireworks now, he’ll be insisting on a sparkler strapped to my nob and a flare up my arse next. I’ve already pulled out the chat up line and been blown out. she’s already booked up for the night, so now I look a real prat. That’ll teach me to keep my big gob shut in future.
- Gonna call you Burt from now on
- What the fuck for?
- Your new nickname, Burt
- Burt??
- Yeah, cell-a-Burt
- Funny cunt
Compared to last year I’ve been well under performing, a lot like Liverpool when you think about it.
- Well what have you screwed since you got here?
- Done magic a few times and the other bird
- That’s it nothing else?
There is more but the less he knows the better.
- Two katoy’s
- You what! You done the same amount of birds as blokes, have a word son
Never going to live this down and I know he’s filing it away for spare ammunition. All to be used at a later date with the rest of the arms stock pile he’s been hoarding on me for the last twelve years. Who needs weapon inspectors in Iraq? The U.N should send some over here and help disarm him. Thank god I’m not famous or nothing, with what’s in his head and on some dodgy negatives somewhere he’d make a fortune off the news of the world or the currant bun.
There’s a fuck load of new faces around the town. Must be the Thomas Cook package brigade, all mates from the same local. Following some mouthy Johnny no-mates who’s full of it and how he’s done it all before. Gagging to large it in front of all the lads. The same blokes who back home ignore him like the plague. So now he’s the center of attention, shirt off and sliding up and down the bar poles. Top boy at least until the holiday snaps have been tossed into the back of the sideboard draw and life has fallen back into it’s dull routine of familiarity. Each week blurring into the next, the monotony only broken by the paycheck and monthly bills. Saving your pennies so for three weeks every year you can be the big man. It’s no wonder that people end up getting married and in most case’s divorced it’s a break to the boring humdrum of life. A little bit of excitement just to keep you interested. Has your life lost its luster, relationship getting a bit stale? Well ask the dozy cow to marry you, it should spice things up for a while and you get a few good piss ups in with the deal. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think all marriages are like that but you have to admit you properly know more than a few that are.
Now Ken is a real sad cunt, but what can you expect from a septic tank. His hair’s styled by Martel like Barbie’s boyfriend ken hence the nickname. The guys to stupid to realize were taking the piss. An ex-high school quarter back from some small town along route sixty-six who’s let himself go a bit. He should try wearing a corset to save him from sucking his gut in all day. We didn’t know the guy from a bar of soap but we were sitting opposite him in the voodoo bar and with this guy that enough to make you blood brothers. He’s sat down with one of the young raver girls; I wouldn’t have said he was her type. Then again the accent is a real turn on for these girls who spend all day dreaming the American dream. An old dream for the bar girls which has been passed down the generations since the Vietnam War. Now days it’s fueled day in and day out on a diet of H.B.O and Hollywood. Big Macs and K.F.C popping up all over the country there even in Vietnam now, if the bullets don’t get you the burgers will just before they napalm you with the colonels secret recipe. Beverly hills 90210 compared to Coronation Street, need I say more we don’t stand a chance. The yank cunt is straight in my face
- I’m going to fuck the shit out of her
The accent could be mid-west but he defiantly isn’t a Quaker
- Fair enough mate
He’s staring at me or trying to focus, because on closer inspection his eyeballs are all over the place.
- She’s a looker and I just pulled her
-Well-done mate
Why the fuck is it all ways me that the piss head wants to be best mates with. Alan is ear wigging on the conversation and starting to lean across.
- You want to see the photographs?
What the fuck is this, he must be having a laugh
- Sure mate bring them in tomorrow
Alan’s jumped into the conversation
- I’m recording my whole holiday
- For what?
- Let me give you my e-mail it’s what I do, Websites I’m going to put my whole holiday on the net. With pictures of all the prostitutes I’ve fuck’d
Alan’s cracked up laughing while Ken is now trying to pay Barbie’s bar fine but now there’s some other bird mouthing it from the next bar. Ken’s now going backwards and forewords between the two birds as there both giving him the Oliver North. He comes heading back after the last tongue bashing.
- You guys won’t believe this but they say I can’t drink in that bar any more if I go with this girl
- Why you had the other one before
- I’ve been fucking her all day but look at this
He drags Barbie over, wanting us to justify his decision
- Do what you got to do
Alan’s words of wisdom and Ken’s nodding his head while the girls next door are giving him the wanker sign.
- What is this? Prostitution politics in the third world.
It’s a quality line but don’t pay a bar fine in the bar next door than try to shag the girl at the neighboring bar. He looks at his bin and hands it over to us
- There trying to rip me off
We have a look but nothing is out of order. It’s even written in English, which makes a change.
- Two hundred bar fine for the girl and it looks like you bought her a drink, plus two Singha.
- I had two beers
- I just said that
- I only had two small beers
How the fuck am I supposed to know what he’s been drinking, five hundred and seventy Bht. It’s fucking peanuts compared to the dollar. In the end he hands over six hundred like a good boy
- Twenty bucks a day and she’ll do anything for me. I love it over here. When I get back state side I’m going to look into retiring over here.
- Sure mate
- No! I really am. As soon as I hit the big four o I’m here. Look at all the girls you never have to pull yourself off again.
His change arrives, thirty Bht about a dollar and he pockets it before climbing on to his moped. Gives it the easy rider bit with the bird on the back. Brando would turn over in his grave that’s if the fat bastard was dead.
- That boy is going to get himself into some serious trouble over here.
Alan’s smiling as he watch’s Ken and Barbie head off to their dream house. Batteries sold separately.
- Spends to long on the internet that one
- For sure, a one handed typist.
Why is it that Americans are so cock sure? I mean if you look at there past record what have they really got to shout about? Take human rights for a start, there always having a go at everyone else for violation and injustice. The unfair treatment of people and cultures just because of colour, race and religion. Now look closely and what do you see? Enforced segregation due to economic policies. Blacks living in ghettos and the poor white’s not much better off. Overcrowded prisons where miss treatment and torture are common place. A law system that can be bought and abused by the rich and famous. A political system that is slowly turning into a dictatorship with enough clout to influence the decision making of the United Nations. The central intelligence agency that invented the word Black Op’s, so as to hide they’re dirty dealing with and within other countries. Arms deals, espionage, terrorism and armed rebellions all in a days work for these good old boys.
What can you expect when nutters run the country. The American political system based it’s self on Rome. The Senate, The House of Representatives, and Senators it’s amazing that old Abe Lincoln didn’t call himself Caesar. The blue print of democracy founded on ancient Rome and like Rome was through the years it’s been run by some loony’s. Ronald Reagan crap actor and some say had already lost his marbles before taking over the Oval Office. Jimmy Carter better known for supplying salted bar snacks, Bill spunk stained dress Clinton to name a few. When they do get a good one they shoot the poor sod and then cover it up.
Then look at their war record. Korea, Vietnam, Cuba yes we all know the Bay of Pigs was down to you fuckers. World War Two was just another European thing until Pearl Harbor otherwise they were quit prepared to sit back and see what happened. Desert storm what a joke they bottled out before the end, worried about casualties. I’m not for people being killed but you start something you had better finish it. In the old days if you wanted a new kingdom you killed the king took the land and then set about finding and killing anyone who could come back and make there own claim latter. It saves having to watch your back. Imagine if the allied invasion would have stopped before hitting Berlin. Hitler alive and well and ready for a rematch. When the troops stopped short of Baghdad Saddam must have been thinking thank fuck for that. All that leads us on to Afghanistan. No media circus this time and a lot of missiles to start with against the armed goat herders, why? Fucking obvious really look what happened to the Russians when they were there? It’s quit amazing when you think that public opinion can swing around, a few years ago the yanks were sat in the movie theatres cheering on John Rambo as he helped the same goat herders fight the communist scum.
The tart from the Elephant Bar is hanging around with some young lad who looks like he could be the missing link. His forehead sticks out further than his nose, which isn’t that small ether. She wants to go dancing tonight, have a quick ride and be home in time for her Italian boyfriend’s phone call. Not interested in some old arse like me, who’ll make sure he gets his moneys worth?
No bird and I’m past caring. The bass beat in the Bauhaus is shaking the walls like an earthquake and I’m riding the sound waves. A techno surfer, my legs absorbing the monster rhythm. I’m Zebadee on acid bouncing in the demonic din. Strobe lights turning real time into Thunderbird mode, faces around me contort into horror masks while their open mouth’s scream in silence as the beat washes over the dance floor. A tidal wave of sound filling my senses and pouring into my mouth. I’m drowning in noise my head’s forced beneath the music as every thing goes black.

















CHAPTER 5



- Off your arse Lar, got to sweat the devil out off you.
The sun’s turning the sand to glass and I’m already sweating like a pig before we clear the shade of the palm trees. The original idea seemed sound enough a bit of exercise in the mornings so as to sort you out for the day. Improve the big match performance and all that. Now I’m beginning to wish I was dead, plodding along behind Alan with a couple of badminton rackets and a shuttlecock as well as enough water to fill a fair sized paddling pool, it feels like lead weight’s Dragging me down in to the sand. The sand is cooler on your feet nearer the waters edge but the sun is melting me. We’re trudging along past all the pukka hotels and beach bungalows. Following the shoreline around the bay. I’m dripping in sweat, which is butting the sun-tanning holidaymakers off their bacon butties. If the sun weren’t so bleeding hot I’d be leaving puddles in my wake. It’s well over a mile away to the net but feels like ten, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lawrence of Arabia come past on a camel or riding an Arab. They reckon there was many a Bedouin goat herder abused by the English war hero. I’ll teach you to fight the Nazi’s as long as I can bugger your kids. Another fine example of a private education.
I worked in a boarding school once it was just like the animal kingdom. You could easily discern the hunters from the hunted as the later sought out the shadows and dark hiding places of the ancient building. While the hunters stalked it’s passageways and dormitories searching for they’re pray who’d run to ground. With no one to turn to except the house masters who in turn are just a product of the same up bringing. The three B’s bondage, buggery and blowjobs. Little kids getting dropped in to ice cold baths late at night put into shock and easy to keep silent. Bullies demanding hand jobs off the juniors after catching them in the toilets during break. While I was there I never once read anything in the paper about the suicide attempts or success’s.
The wealthy and upper class’s always seem to top the headlines. Politicians, lords and landowners trapped by their own past forcing them to seek forbidden pleasures in public toilets and behind the closed doors of specialist brothels. Hunting rent boys and Kings Cross slappers who don’t mind taking a bit of punishment if the cash is right. The wives know what’s going on but turn a blind eye for appearance sake, their personal trainers giving them what they can’t get at home. Not unless there prepared to dress as a schoolboy and call him sir. Money buys power and power buys silence. The old school network and mystical handshakes hiding the worse of sins.
- Going to make you work a bit today son
I’d answer but I haven’t got the breath. I’m covered in sand from head to toe. After diving around the beach court trying to hit the shuttlecock. The sands now starting to crack, it’s gone like cement after mixing with all the sweat and I’m now cooking like a gypsy hedgehog. All covered in baking clay and thrown into the coals to cook.
- Last night our kid then it’s forfeit time.
He’s gobbing off trying to psych me out before hitting a power serve which I almost manage to return before ending up on my arse. Two overweight Englishmen playing badminton on the beach in the full glare of the noonday sun was never going to go unnoticed. The watching gallery is made up mainly of beach vendors who seem quite impressed neither of us have had a heart attack before half time. I’m three sets down and in need of the respite. Even Alan’s is giving it a rest as we both find it hard to catch our breath. My heart rate is going like the clappers and I can even hear it in my own ears as the blood flies round my body like an express train. So that must mean its time for a ciggie.
- How many big rallies you got left in you?
- Two more set’s but I don’t think I’ll be doing my game justice.
- Two that all? You got to work that excuse for a body.
- Fuck off we got to walk back yet.
The crowd is starting to get restless as the break drags on and some of the vendors start to head off early, must be so as to avoid the traffic. They were expecting action and secretly hoping for an ambulance so as to increase the drama. Not such a great way to go, in my swimming shorts, covered in sand and clutching a racket. I hope that they would clean me up before shipping the body back home.
- You seeing that chick tonight?
- Set for nine thirty, so we head out early and get some beers in.
- I hope you’ve taken your vitamins son.
- Fucking need to if it’s anything like last year.
- Whose service is it?
- Yours.
Back on center court and the gallery goes quiet. I toss the feathered missile into the air and give it some welly.
- Out!
Here we go again.
Alan’s suited and booted in a new shirt and the cologne fighting for dominance over the mosquito spray. The girls won’t stand a chance but I don’t know about the mossies. Cruising the bars before the deadline and getting in a bit of lubrication. Showing my face at magic’s, just to keep her sweet, as you never know if you might need a return game one-day. She’s all over me like a rash. Well in love with me she is or it could be my wallet. Alan reckons it’s really the air-con, as she likes her luxuries. Headed over to the Werepigs bar, the werepig being one of those slimy English cunts. A right sad twat, he’s even got his old lady in there dancing on the pole. Flashing her tits to get the punters in. greased back hair and one of those nose’s like a pushed up pig snout, hence the name Werepig like a Werewolf but different. The Werepigs not there and there’s a new Mama San. A lot can happen in a day over here. The new boss lady is large'ing it over the girls who haven’t changed except the bride of the Werepig isn’t there anymore. Mama San is giving me the eye as we knock back a quick beer and duck out. Heading towards the back bars were Alan’s meeting his chick. Turn up half an hour late just so she knows whose boss. Ken’s already there and well paralytic. Trying to get back into the good graces of his latest Barbie. Pulling out all the stops and giving the rose sellers some business as he tries to say it with flowers. Buying rose’s as if they’re going out of fashion. He’s even giving it the big heart to heart with her. She’s not bad but got a chin like my bulldog.
- What do you think mate?
- Fuck all to do with me ken.
But the bulldog is giving me the eye while were talking. Can’t say I blame her, as he is a right mess. Wearing the same gear he had on yesterday and he stinks like a paki. What away for a girl to make a living.
- She’s got an arse like a five-year-old choirboy.
He’s holding his hand together and has got a faraway look on his face. Properly a flash back from appearing on Jerry Springer “confessions of a catholic choir boy”. Alan’s well in with his bird so I duck back down to the Werepig’s bar.

Sit straight down next to Mama San and let the CK One do the business. Nice bird, she also owns the restaurant opposite and I’ve already been promised a free feed. Problem is the forfeits right next door and I can’t give up that easily.
- Hello darlin
- Peter, how are you
- Good baby, you?
- She’s not looking to bad and the bars quiet so I might as well get it over and done with. I can always pick the fireworks up on the way home if it’s another blow out.
- You want a drink?
- Heineken?
- Up to you
She starts rabbitin away and I’m nodding my head feigning interest. Plotting the next move so much I almost miss what she said.
- You pay bar?
- Sorry?
- You like pay bar for me?
- Fair enough.
- Two hundred
Piece of piss I must remember to thank old Calvin Klein. I’m thinking I should feel a bit bad about the fact I’m about to shag Robs bird but she’s probably had ten other guys since he left and right now I feel fuck all. Just a staring in my pants as she starts rubbing me up.
- Thought I’d find you groveling down here.
Panties fucks off to eat just as Alan rocks up.
- What you want to drink?
- No I’m not staying, just come down to check you out.
- Well you can forget the forfeit.
- Nort!
- She’s gagging for it.
- Jammy cunt, you’ll have to ask her how you compare to Robman?
- What about yours?
- She wants to drink, full of shit but it will be worth it. Ken’s already offered me ten thousand Bht for her.
- Fuck off
- No straight up, reckons she’s the best on the island. He say’s her hair reminds him of the love of his life.
- She Probable went off line or the batteries ran out.
Panties comes back and Alan scoots off back to his bird before Ken does something stupid.
- You like boom-boom?
She’s a bit forward but it makes life easier.
- Yes I like boom-boom but want to eat first.
- You hungry?
- Only for your pussy.
Sticking out my tongue and licking air.
- I like!
Well that’s settled what I’m having for starters. Now the only thing is how I want my main course done. Better make the next drink vodka and Lippo cause it looks as though I’ve got some work to do. I don’t believe it Ken’s around the other side of the bar looking like he’s just mugged a flower girl. Then I spot the young girl beneath the flowers trying to support the piss head. He’s trying to sell the kid’s flowers for her using the great American tactic of sticking your face were it’s not wanted. The passing tourists are all being hassled and molested buy the rose wielding mad man.
- Buy a rose!
- No thank you
Answers a young couple with a southern English accents probably newlyweds.
- Buy a rose!!
They’re trying to push past but Ken’s having none of it.
- No thanks!
- Buy a god damn mother fucking rose you limey fucks!!!
That’s got there attention maybe he should start training Avon Ladies.
- Ten fucking Bht man, ten fucking Bht it’s not even fifty Cents.
It’s hilarious when you think he’s only been here a few days and around the island he’s already known as cheap Charlie.
The couple are shitting themselves and looking around for help.
- I’d buy one if I were you.
The husband looks over at me while Ken staggers about; the little girl under him is taking all the strain.
-That bloke used to be in Nam, special Ops and all that Rambo shit.
- Buy a fucking rose man!!
Ken sounds a lot like a pitbull as he growls the words at the ashen-faced couple. The husband takes charge at last handing over a hundred BHT note and Ken gives him back ten roses, with the help of the flower girl.
- But I only wanted one
Ken hands him another rose.
- Ten Bht please?
Fucking priceless.

Panties and me are walking back to my resort through the coconut trees. On the way passing Magic’s bar and the chick looks well pissed off, eyeballing us all the way.
- You no tell Rob?
- No me, never.
- And Alan?
- Won’t say a word.
She’s got to be having a laugh. If she says I’m top boy this is going to be a total wined up.
- He tell me not to go with you.
- Eh?
- He say I no go with you or your friend.
- Why?
- He say you no good.
He surely doesn’t think I’m so low as to do a mates chick. How could he?
- What else he say?
- He say he come back for me
- Maybe he will.
I hope so otherwise I’ll have to wait until I get home to tell him.
- Rob say he shy, that I only girl he go with.
- Say what?
- It not true? You tell me?
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. All right I’ll lie don’t want to burst the girl’s bubble.
- It true.
- For sure?
- Yes of cause.
- Some farang talk bullshit you no talk bullshit?
- Never.
- I like no bullshit you good man.
- Thanks a lot.
- You good at boom-boom?
- Wait and see.
The sun is trying to burn through the curtains and a crack of light is cutting right across Panties breasts like a laser, as she gets dressed it dancers over her body, an X-rated music video without the sound. She’s going back home for a couple of weeks with a few of the other girls form the bar. Off to see there parents and in most case’s children. Flash the wedge about thanks to Rob and me. A lot of the girls tell the parents that their waitress’s or work in factories but I don’t think they believe them. As long as they’re working and making money to send home and help out the family there’s fuck all wrong with it. A lot of the girls even have Thai husbands who actually but them on the game, now that I have got a problem with. You’ve probable all heard the urban legend of the farang who was going to get hitched to a bargirl. The bloke meets her whole family and thought they were all very nice. Took them all presents and even stayed with one of the brothers while they were both up country visiting. He later finds out that the brother was really her husband. Fucking gutted but wanting revenge he tells her he wants to get married and she should organize the celebrations and he would be back again for the wedding and party. He even told her to buy a 4x4 for the family to use on the farm. They have the party; the whole town’s invited, spent a fortune and a down payment on the car. All done on the plastic, which he sorted out every time he came over. This time he didn’t pitch but sent the not so happy couple a telegram wishing them all the best for the future and the loan repayment. Fuck knows if it’s true but I reckon a lot more farangs get ripped-off then ever get there own back. In the end the girls are only looking after their families the only way they know how. Not to mention all the happy tourist they create.
Watching her is giving me a hard on and the girl knows it, the towel covering below my waist is looking like the big top at Billy Smarts Circus. We kiss goodbye and she gives my old man a little squeeze for good measure.
- You very good boom-boom, I see you when come back.
- If you like.
- You no take my sister when I’m gone.
I kiss her again because I’m not promising that. Her sister is better looking, top body and tall with it, also a lot less used if you know what I mean. Two weeks before Panties gets back to protect her sister, no forfeit and England are playing again tomorrow. Fucking hav’it.
Morning cuppa watching the sea and waiting for Alan to get rid of his bird for the day. He came over earlier looking as though he had only just survived the Normandy Landing. The bird’s mate had turned up to give her a lift. She went in Alan came out. The girls were in there for half an hour but no one came back out. He’s gone back over to shift them but it’s been a while. He reckons she wouldn’t stop gnawing on his dick as if it was a T-bone. No fear of B.S.E that girl. According to a story in the Loaded mag if you drink vitamin D enriched milk it gives you gallons of Harry Monk so when he’s finished were off to McDonalds for one of there thick shakes.
The girls wave goodbye leave, two up on a moped and heading off to there English lessons.
- You wont believe it.
- What now?
- I go back in there and both of them are on the bed.
- No way! Going for it?
- No! Her mates gone straight in and gone to bed, fuck knows if she was pretending or what.
- So I sit down on the edge of the bed and she starts gobbing me off again.
- What with the other one right there?
- Yes! So like I shoot my bolt and she starts pumping me up again. She only wants the ride again. So we go for it and the beds bouncing around and her mates just lying there, while she’s going off. After we finish her mate stretches and gets up and tells her it’s time to go.
- Outfuckingragous.
- So what you want to do?
- Head down Chaweng and pick up some new clothes as the wardrobe is starting to look a bit sad.
I defiantly have to go as Lamia’s clothes stores don’t cater for a man with a fuller figure and what they have got is all the same Polo and Nike fakes as well as the usual shit tourist t-shirts you take home as presents that never get worn “ hot in Samui or beautiful Thailand”. Jump on the back of a BHT bus, twenty BHT around the island unless you’re a farang and then it’s fifty for half the distance. They must have to use more petrol or something when the whites are onboard.
Alan’s gone for this years fake Timberland collection, while I’m in the XXL
For Men shop. Fat bastards anonymous between you and me. The clothes are a cross between Dads Army and Ben Sherman but the clobbers cheap with lots of room to grow, as your old girl used to tell you. Just before she spat on a hanky and tried to scrub an imaginary smear of filth from your face as if you were a new pair of boots. The only two things I can’t forgive my old girl for is that and throwing out my first wank mag. I blamed the offending piece of pornographic filth on my brother. Dirty little bastard, he kop’ed the bollocking and he hadn’t even reached puberty yet. He’s progressed since then but like my older brother he’s a bit straight laced always looking for love between fucks. The last bird took him for a right ride before blowing him out after he had given her presents and proposed. Needless to say the slag didn’t give the presents back.
Relax the rest of the day on the beach, improving the tan. I’m after an all over lobster red with a hint of flaking skin and a touch of Melanoma.
One of or old suppliers had skin cancer. He had the chemo and radiation done before they had to cut off his three of his toes. Fucking weird place to get skin cancer but it’s the last place you would think to smear on sun block. He used to say he could still feel them wiggling about inside his shoe or under the sheets. Nowadays all the parents on holiday dress their kids up like mini Jacques Cousteau in multi coloured diving suites. Face paint and floppy hats, little mini pressure cookers boiling away under all the protective layers. While the kids are turning in to pot roasts mum and dad are sprawled out in the sand directly below the thinning ozone layer. Their bodies dripping in bronzing oil as they try to out do last Years Street wining tan of Mr. and Mrs. Jones from number forty-three.
The Germans have the own style smearing their blotted carcasses in factor fifty-two so they go back whiter than when they left. It’s like bleach that stuff it even sucks out freckles. They stand there on the waters edge with their warm beers looking like snowmen. The Italians mean while strut up and down the beach in the thongs. Greasy hair and garlic breathe, their skin quickly going back to its original colour of dirty fucking Arab more Lebo than European. The frogs are all wan-a-bee’s, full of Gallic pride what ever that is? Probably just trying to cover up there uselessness. They’ve been bailed out more times than a Bangladesh ferry and sunk just as easy. Churchill knew the score and even scuttled the French fleet before they could swop their frog’s legs for swastikas. Cunts got their own back killing our princess but she was getting it up the arse from some Arab in gay Pare at the time. Al Fayed is still screaming conspiracy while begging for an English passport in the next breath. He’s just another Paki with a corner shop! Ok a big fucking expensive shop, it doesn’t matter he’s still just trying to smuggle in the rest of his family. Making party donations and dishing out the Harrods Christmas hampers, he should know that doesn’t work buy the M.P’s a brass or rent boy and he would have had his passport by now. Buying up English heritage and we’ll throw in a free football club. England for sale any offers? Get in the queue along with the rest of them. We’ve totally sold out of stately homes they’re all owned by Japanese corporations. Footballs sponsored by coke and teams owned by foreigners. We should have left Adolf to it but our sense of fair play and bravery long forgotten and not just by the rest of the world but by our own people. Today’s youth more interested in Dragon ball Z or M.T.V, fads and styles more important than there own history. Forgotten Just like the commonwealth now only remembered for a second rate Olympic games. Now that era is dying along with the Queen mum and an ever-dwindling number of ex service men, since I was a kid that procession is getting smaller and smaller. Give it another few years and Pepsi will sponsor remembrance Sunday or Budweiser with wreaths supplied by Volks Wagon. The palace guard all decked out beneath the golden arch’s, trooping of the colour overseen by Ronald MacDonald. The royal family packaged and served up with French fries and a cut out crown in a happy meal. Kid’s brought up believing in a Hollywood history as Slim Shady plays Richard the third and Britney Spears performs on Broadway in Queen Victoria the musical, while we sit with or fading dreams of Dan Dare and Roy of the Rovers. England’s glory years now covered in dust and wrapped in mothballs.
An hour to go before the game and the bars packed, a sea of England shirts and painted faces. The sound system is cranked right up blaring out Vindaloo the chorus picked up by the masses. The beat banged out on the tops of tables, which sends the piss warm beer all over the place. The atmosphere is electric. Student backpackers and Essexs slags rubbing shoulders with the local tarts and aging steamers. There some Yiddo’s in the front starting up the chant “Were where you in eighty-two”. I don’t know were the Argies where but the yid boys weren’t even out of nappies then. There yids so obviously tossers but its England verses Argentina so that can be forgiven. Even the fact that judging by their accent the closest they’ve ever been to Whitehart lane was watching Sky sports in their Oxford local. An Arsenal chant starts up from somewhere in the back of the pub and the Yiddo’s shut up sharpish lowering there voices to a quiet murmur and the insults to sign language hidden beneath the table top. So it goes to show you the value of an expensive education they know when to shut up especially when there out numbered and out classed. They all join in with the classic “argy bargy wank wank wank” obviously to young to remember Ossie Ardeliase.
The big screen flicks back to life showing previous games and high lights and a young Maradona appears giving it the hand of god. More like cheating bastard. The boo’s and whistles erupt immediately drowning out the hundredth repeat of Vindaloo. Everyone starts screaming scum, bastard, wanker it’s total rage if the twat walked in now he’d be ripped limb from limb and that would just be the chicks. The atmospheres thicker than a London fog, the noise is deafening and it’s almost time for kick off. It’s a massive game the only game bigger is when we play the krauts. Theirs a lot more than football and a slot to the next stage at stake. It’s all about revenge! Revenge for Beckham, for Sol Cambels disallowed goal, that cunt Maradona, the Falklands war [only England would go to war to protect the rights of our penguins to be British and our islanders to marry sheep, has anyone ever meet anybody from the Falklands? Not that it matters much. Fuck the channel tunnel we should dig one to the Falklands and build our own fucking Disneyland fuck that Euro crap], imported beef and Evita!!! They’re asking for it.
We need the result, a draw would be all right but no one here is going to be wearing that. The whistle goes and it’s not going to be a cagey affair by any stretch of the imagination.
- Yessss, no!
- Fucking have em!
- No!!!
You can’t look at times but you can’t turn away. Life stands still and the world has stopped ninety minutes is all your life’s worth and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.
- Tackle
- pass pass
- No don’t pass it you cunt
- Go on Mickey all the way
- PENALTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The ref points to the spot and its madness until we all see Beckham stepping up for the spot kick.
- No fucking way
- Shit
The world is now in slow motion as Beckham bends down positioning the ball as if he’s at Twickenham. It feels as though I’ve been holding my breath for hours and I gulp for air as number seven starts his short run up
- No!!
We can all see from here were he’s going to place it, for fucks sake.
- YESSSSSSSSSSSS
For the last ten minutes they’ve been throwing everything they’ve got at us and fuck knows how nothings gone in, were now down to the last five and what ever the officials want to add on and it doesn’t want to be much. A shower of sparks and the world goes black it’s like being in a vacuum before the hundreds of fans start going mental the tellys blown and taken out the lights to the whole town. People are running from the pub and jumping on to rental mopeds, heading off in all directions to find a telly with power, theirs a Thai shouting “no problem power come on now” but nobody gives a shit they just want the score. As fast as the bikes are leaving there coming back with updates as everyone counts down the minutes. The stereo blares back to life and we can hear the whistle a moment later as the TV lights up. The lads are going off on the pitch and the scores still one-nil. I can die now.

- Have it
- Unreal
Where floating about in the sea, bobbing up and down as the waves gentle lap up onto the beach. The powers blown out again but it was on long enough to see the result. The occasional torch light flashes along the beach as we float about waiting for the electric company to get their act together. It must have blown every TV on the island as the Thai’s follow England like it’s there home team. It must have all been too much for the jumble of power cables and rusty fuse box’s that snake their way across the island from town to town. It’s so black that you can’t see were the sea ends and the horizon begins. There are light’s out there the bright glow of squid boats creating false sun’s which entice the catch up to the surface. I’m drifting back in to shore and the waves are lapping over me, the salt water cooler than the night air but only just. Lightning lights up the sky briefly as a distant storm rolls in from the gulf still to faraway to hear the thunder. I’m slowly sobering up but as soon as the lights go on it’s time for shower hour and straight back on the lash. I can still hear the occasional shout of England as our countries finest bounce in to the palm trees along the beach, pissed out their brackets and lost in the darkness. It’s all fucking madness.
The morning after the night before and my heads beating out a samba rhythm, my tongue’s got the same texture as a pub carpet and there’s something lying next to me. Fuck knows what it is brown skin; long hair and I haven’t got a clue what it is or where it came from. I just hope to fuck it’s not a katoy. I should really check it out but I don’t think I can face it at the moment. Quick quite shower and get dressed, leave a grand on the bedside table and I’ll tell the maid to wake it up after I’ve gone. Play it safe and make it a long breakfast and lunch maybe even throw in dinner as well cause I’m fuck’n starved.
- So what happened to you last night?
- Fuck knows I was wasted when I left you and the rest is a bit of a blur
- You didn’t do a bit of trawling?
- No, no to pissed mate
I’m not saying a word about the u.f.o. [Unidentified fucking object] or he’ll want to go back to my room to check it out, see what I managed to end up with. It might be drop dead gorgeous but after a case of beer and going mental on the vodka lippo I’d properly sleep with my own granny even if I did have to dig her up first.
Tyson Vs Lewis tomorrow morning, Alan’s checking out the times on the sign out side the Bauhaus. So it want be a late one tonight. As if.











Chapter 6




Every bar we’ve been in I’ve been checking out the girls for any sort of sign of recognition. So far fuck all so god knows where I found it, theirs just the usual shit about. Alan’s meeting up with his chick again so I’m flying solo and trying to keep it dignified for a change. There seems to be a lot of hounds out tonight fuck knows which kennel they all escaped from but it’s not pretty. The average age in this bar has to be at least forty. It’s difficult to tell with Thai women, as one day they look great and the next fucking ancient. It’s the same with all Asian people and Africans; it might be something to do with the hot climate, drying them out like prunes. Most likely it’s the life as this sort of game steals your youth quicker than a catholic priest in Boston. It works both ways with the punter living the same sort of life, fast foods, booze, fags and late nights. Parasite and host but no one is sure who’s who. The only difference is that the punters live on, we just get older but it’s a young girl’s game and these old girls are flogging a dead horse. You feel for them in a way but I wish they’d fuck off as there butting me right off my beer. The saddest sight in this dark world is the flower girls, theirs hundreds of these kid’s. Wherever there’s a bar the flower girls are not far away. Anywhere from six years old upwards, as long as she can carry an arm full orange blossom necklaces or heaps of dying roses she will do. Night’s spent pushing between the sweating foreigners trying to sell last weeks flowers. It’s a cycle bar girls past, present and future. The flower girls in awe of the bar girls nice clothes and the easy money they make, the bar girls looking at the old timers still trying to get a punter, a daily reminder to them that they need to find a better life. Get a guy, get out of the bar, get out of Thailand before it’s to late and there the ones stuck in the corner serving the drinks while the young one’s chat up the guys.
In the Bauhaus but not for very long as I’m getting led outside and around the corner to the back streets were the girls live. Whole bars sharing one room paid for by the mama San and taken out the girl’s salary, that’s if they get one. The room’s dark, hot and smells like something has crawled into the corner and died but I’ve been in worse so we get down to business. Fish sauce breath and sloppy kisses as she searches for my fly. Keks around my ankles and my arse pushed against the damp plaster of the wall. She’s down on her knees as if in pray but the bobbing head and sucking sounds blow that image and gives the game away. All I want to do is shoot my bolt but the longer this goes on the worse I’m feeling. It’s out of order but it’s never bothered me before. I just want to blow my load and get a beer. I might be feeling lower than whale shit a belated sense of morality seeping in after all this time but I let it carry on. I should just go home but I’m to long in the tooth for that. I tell her to finish it off with her hand and come all over her boat, check bin.
Sunday lunch in the rising sun and last night is just a memory. Lennox Lewis is still undisputed champion of the world and Tyson is begging for a rematch and another big payday. All the pre match hype and overboard security another gimmick of the promoters to sell the pay per view and grab the attention of a disenchanted public. As in most cases the theatre and hype out play the event, but Lewis did fight well. Tyson a shadow of his former self, another has been with a bit of a reputation. Nothing compared to your sporting greats like Mohammed Ali and Pele. Nowadays the price of fame and expectations is a burden to heavy for many to carry. Too much to young and out of control, it results in them making caricatures out of themselves. Living on past glory’s you just got to look at George Best, Gazza and Maradona to name a few. The managers and the usual array of hangers on helping screw up talent before it can achieve its greatness. It’s not always down to the manager thou look at Gazza “who ate all the pies”, “you fat bastards, you fat bastard, you ate all the pies”. Good old Paul Merson down the bookies and it wasn’t twenty pence each way either. The thing is you got to remember where most of are sporting heroes come from. Most of the time it’s from poor families, inner cities. The sporting fields are places were you can’t hide behind daddy’s money or the old school tie. You don’t need and oxford education to kick a ball just a bit of talent. So what should we expect, you go and stick fifty thousand pound in some kids hand from the local housing estate and he’ll be straight down the pub and then over to one legged Sussie’s for a knee trembler before starting a fight outside the wine bar while on the way to grab a Donna kebab at the kebab house. The only difference between them is the fact that no one writes a story about Joe Bloggs kicking in the doorman down the local shitty wine bar in some market town in nowhere, but an England international in some swanky club in London will always grab the headlines. The lads are no different same up bringing same mates one’s a pair of hands on a production line the other a footballer. As for the gambling what a laugh, they can afford to drop a couple of hundred thousand a night, I drop a couple of hundred and I don’t eat for a week and no one wants to buy my story for the news of the world. It’s no wonder they go off the rails it’s not just there weekly performance which is watched by hundred of thousands it’s the pressure to perform. Imagine if you had a shit day at work that one-day would affect the lives of thousands. You’re shaping their mood for the week and not just there mood but every one they come in contact with that week is going to suffer cause you fucked up. It’s not helped any by the tabloids who are as quick to knock them off their pedestal as to put them up there. Is it any wonder were not getting anywhere, to quick to scorn and pass judgement? The English press had a field day after the disappointing draw with Sweden ‘half fit half home’. Now it’s all Becks revenge and Sventastic.
Eleven men are carrying the expectation of a nation as they run out on to the pitch. I’m as bad as the next guy is. One bad pass and the blokes a useless cunt a sweet cross into the box and the ball finds the back of the net and the lads a god. A rash tackle in the area and the defenders a fucking two-legged donkey but the next minute I’m screaming for him to take the opponents legs off. Football passion giving an emotional high a release from the daily grind, a bittersweet love affair as deep as any family ties.












CHAPTER 7


U.S.A verses The Republic of South Korea and CNN are having a field day going on and on about how the security will be tighter than a ducks arse for the game. The international papers are awash with stories about France 98 and Bin Laden. According to Bin Laden’s biographer Adam Robinson, Bin laden had funded and helped to organize a plan, as well as offering additional support. Robinson says that the attack was planed to take place on the fifteenth of June when England would be playing Tunisia in Marseille. The plan was to massacre the English players while they where on the pitch, then burst into the hotel where the American team would be watching the game and kill all them as well. If you’re going to do it you may as well do it big. As we all know it didn’t happen, but our own boot boys did their best to cause their own international scene. Sorting out the French Arabs on their own doorstep.
What I don’t understand is how Bin Laden could even think about doing something so outrageous, cause back in ninety-four everyone’s favorite Arab nut head spent three months in London. Hanging out with all the other fanatical rag heads and watching Arsenal play, by all accounts at least four times. Then again maybe it was watching them that pushed him over the edge. Can you imagine being in the stands screaming for the lads to get it up and the guy next to you is cursing the American infidels and begging Allah to help but one in the top corner.
Doing a little bit of snorkeling down grandmother and grandfather rock. A natural rock formation at the southern tip of Lamia beach. Ester Ranson would have loved it, the grandfather rock stands proud on the waters edge, the grandmother rock is just off shore. The constant erosion off the sea has made a small crack in the rocks resemble a virgina. This in its self wouldn’t have been noticed but for the grandfather rock and it’s undeniable penis appearance. Erect and over shadowing grandmother who lies in wait the warm waters of the Thai gulf gentle lapping over her. The waters clear and were swimming between the boulders that dot the shoreline. Below the surface its home to coral and multi colored fish. While up above on the rocks hoards of tourist take photographs of the stone genitals. Parrotfish, stonefish, squirrelfish, and sergeant majors, banana fish it’s like an aquarium. I’ve even scored a pair of sunglasses that some dozy tourist must have lost over the side. Theirs alleyways between the rocks and swim troughs to rock pools full of mutant crabs and hungry fish that nibble at your skin. Ten minutes away the bars are stocking up their shelves with beer and cranking up the hi-fi. Where else can you get this on holiday? Time to head back, swimming around the point back to Lamia and the booze, the football and a chance of another knee trembler. Walking back along the beach and the sands melting the skin off my feet. The afternoon sun is forcing us to walk through the soft damp sand at the waters edge; it’s harder going but blister free.
- I didn’t tell you.
Alan says before coming to a stop and sitting down in the sea.
- That’s better
- Didn’t tell me what?
- About ken
- Why what’s he done now?
- You know he’s always on about how many birds he’s done in a day
- Yeah, he reckoned four the other day and was out looking for number five. Can’t see it though as he’s always pissed.
- That’s the thing, he does take them, he just doesn’t do anything with them.
- You what, why’s he take them then?
- He’s got a bag of toys and according to one of the girls, the one with red hair who looks like a bulldog.
- Go on
- He gets them back to his campsite and pulls out the dildo and gives them a good seeing to, but most of the girls blow it out
- Sad twat, waste of money if your not going to do the business
- The girls say he keeps his pants on, because he’s hung like a rat
- Probably pulls himself off after they have left. You should have sold your Mrs., ten grand for a bit of plastic.
- Come on
We stand up and trug back. The gentle waves wiping away our footprints as if we had never been there, much like Ken and his plastic appendage. It reminds me of the time I was working in Holland. On the TV they have this public channel where viewers and armature filmmakers can send in their home movies. So some budding porn director had given his kids Barbie given her a stick on bush and opened her up, while boyfriend Ken got his own manhood. A sizeable weapon that would have left Action Man hiding in his plastic tank in shame. Every week you would get a new episode Ken and Barbie in the pink dream house or pink pool with garden furniture, batteries sold separate. Barbie’s friends where always on hand to help satisfy Ken’s increasing libido, even Barbie’s horse got a look in. the last episode I saw Ken was dressed up like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction, Barbie was strapped down and her friends where chained to the wall. The realistic pink barbeque set with glowing coals was ready in the corner of the room. It beat Thunder Birds hands down. The guy got famous, even did the Dutch chat show circuit. The sex shops where selling stick on pubic hair for your kid’s dollies all in different colours and styles, who said Barbie was a natural blonde you could even buy sets of stick on dicks for your little boys G.I Joe. Maybe our Ken has spent a bit too much time down Toys R Us. Have to start giving him a wide berth in case the girls start thinking were weirdoes as well. I mean I’ve heard of being tooled up but that’s ridicules. Maybe he’s scared of catching something but if that’s the case he should rather be hanging out with the backpackers comparing mosquito bites and henna tattoos. Not trawling the bars with promises of long time and California dreams. The reality being made in Japan and powered by Duracell.
Feeling well horney but this isn’t Bangkok with the all day beer bars. There are a few but the girls that do the day shift behind the jump you wouldn’t want to touch them with a ten foot barge pole. The massage gaffs on the island don’t specialize in the full body number with lots of soapy bubbles. You get a tug but that’s about it. The first massage I ever had was in Kula lumpa. I thought it was all straight and above board, a little naive back in those days. She finishing me off and asks me
- You want to shoot the monkey?
- You what
- Fire the airplane?
I didn’t have a clue what the fuck she was on about.
-Shoot the monkey, fire the plane.
I’m lying back looking totally bemused while she is going off so loud the whole place can hear. She grabs my knob beneath the towel and starts yanking it and screaming
- Wanker, wanker, wanker.
- Don’t mind if you do.
Three weeks left and the boys will be over soon H first then Bob. Hopefully England will still be in the cup, but with the lads over here we’ll have to do some of that tourist stuff which wont be a bad thing as all the booze and late nights are making the days go by in a blur. The day light hours are made up of sweating out the alcohol from the night before, getting the scran down the neck to line the stomach for the next session or soak it up from the night before depending which way you look at it and how much you drank. I’ve been over here so long now I’m on first name terms with all the girls, no longer sexy man, or hansom man. I’m just some pissed up tit who’s been over here to long and old enough to know better but young enough not to give a shit.
The paddies are through to the next round along with the evil Hun and with only ten men. They lasted longer than Hitler’s bunker. The French have gone back home already with their made in Korea holiday presents for the family. The frogs had so many chances but couldn’t but any of them away. Not having Henry for the last game and a one legged Zidan screwed up any chance they might have had. I’m not going to mention England’s piss poor performance against Nigeria. Where into the next round and that’s all that matters, well that and the Argies have been sent packing. You’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for them. Sent back to south America where their money is worth shit and the only way to get a good meal is by digging around in dust bins or killing a stray dog, road kill is a luxury item served up in the top restaurants. They had it coming after trying to teach our penguins and sheep to speak Latino, cheeky bastards.
Absolutely bollocked last night and after the game ended up with some boys form Wigan and Manchester. Two of the Manc lads own the bar we were drinking in. one of them had brought his old man over on holiday with him, free beer and free birds the old guys as happy as a pig in shit. My old man would love it but I don’t think my mum would wear it. Old Ken is still knocking about but minus Barbie, as he has been black listed on the prostitute grape vine, branded a cheap Charlie with a small dick and a flash bulb. Still reckons he’s getting all the action though, all mouth and no trousers. The assembled English crew cut brigade have told him to fuck off as he has been making a bit of a scene with one of the bar girls. He paid the girls bar fine and took her back to the love shack. It didn’t last long after she saw the waiting Kodak and Kens bag of party tricks. Cant say I blame her and if Kens not careful he’s going to get a good kick in unless he skips town, but with all the shit he’s getting up to his life expectancy is dropping by the day. I hope he took the optional travel insurance before he left home cause the girls now telling her newly adopted English daddy all about what the strange man wanted to do to her.
One of the other English lads is on the pounce big time according to the other guys he’s been skint for days, even did an ET and phoned home begging his mum to send him over five hundred quid. The boys reckon his old lady is some sort of market trader, specializing in wooly socks and pensioners underwear rather than stocks, shares and saving bonds. He’s already done runners from two bars and still hasn’t paid up his hotel bill. Thinks he’s a bit of a boy with dyed blonde hair complete with optional ponytail and two day designer stubble, looks more like he just walked off the set of Miami vice ten years to late. The cunt even followed us to the next bar, doing the duck before we had finished our beers. The mama san wanted to but his vodka lippo on our bill, but I told her to fuck off and now he’s on a hatrick. If he’s got any sense he should join up with Ken for Samui’s Mr. popularity competition. Last thing I remember is staggering down the main drag. Fuck knows how I got back home.
Its morning and I’m doubled up over the toilet bowl spewing up Heineken and Thai green curry. It’s amazing that you always have to look at it when you’re finished it’s the same as having a shit, you have to turn around and take a look. I think it’s got a lot to do with potty training. Every time you managed to drop one in the potty and not your pants your old lady would go off as if you had just won an Olympic gold, lifting up the plastic craper and staring in to it as if she was admiring some celestial beauty, for Christ sake it’s only a turd. So it’s no wonder we look back in wonder waiting for praise and congratulations or sympathetic words about the state are arse must be in. It’s the main difference between men and women, how can you ever have a conversation with a chick about your turd, when she doesn’t even want to know when your going for one. While your mates on the other hand can go on for hours about the subject, even nipping off for a quick one and coming back with all the details. The puke that’s now floating and splattered around the bog bowl is a brilliant example of post modernist form I could sell the toilets contents to the Tate gallery. Why not if their prepared to show a dead cow and floating fetuses then my multi colored puke spectacular could be right up there with the best of them, transferred to canvas and hung next to the Mona Lisa that would wipe the smile off her face. I could even branch out from the medium of puke and experiment in shit. Force out a log and see how much I can get for it. With practice I could even shape the faecel masterpieces using different size bums and stronger and tighter sphincter muscles to add contours and shape. A change of diet for color and texture, I could even do a bog roll collage stuck to a nappy canvas. All it takes is one of those art critics talking their usual bollocks about strong statements, changing the paradigms and symmetry and I could be quids in, but as a famous man once said “if shit was worth money poor people would be born with their arse’s sown up” so I may as well flush it.
It’s my birthday in two hours and I’m on the look out for someone to take the last of this year’s vintage semen before it takes up residence in the cellars of my scrotum. I’m past the point of being picky and getting well fed up with the French Gary Macalister look a like sat next to me. He’s not a bad bloke considering he’s French, works in some place in china doing fuck knows what cause his accent is thicker than a plate, but if it’s anything like what he’s doing over here it involves getting his knob out every few minutes and measuring it against the bars wooden dildo. First time gets a laugh but now it’s more in than out. It’s creating a urinal mentality with everyone at the bar facing forward and conversation dropping right off except for the occasional throaty cough. Theirs another guy sat opposite on his last night in Thailand before he heads back tomorrow to some slum in Wigin or Leeds. He’s been over here for two months, meet some bird (as if that’s hard to do over here) and she’s going back with him. You can see she’s been around the block and that’s an understatement when she went round the block the last time she was being dragged behind a couple of scooters. She’s got more chins than the Chinese phone book, so fuck knows what the guy sees in her. She properly swallows; think about it a minute would you marry a girl who didn’t give head or one that loved it? Especially if you’re prepared to spend time doing the old cunniglingus. Look back for a second and remember all the girls and who stands out? The first blowjob, the first girl that swallowed after that it’s the one who did the German porn star impression, swallowing and shooting it all over her face. Harry on the boat and down the throat, what else you need for the perfect marriage?
Another beer while I watch some Thai guy at the end of the bar sat with the newly weds fall off his bar stool. He almost wipes out a flower girl who manages to dive to safety at the last possible moment. Nobody does much, their isn’t anybody doing a scene from E.R and if it wasn’t for the fact he’s blocking the entrance to the toilet he’d still be their next week. The girls drag him out the way with the help of the French Gary McAllister and as the poor sod starts to come around the first thing he sees is the French mans nob hanging over his face. Its all to much and an hour before my birthday and I’m surround by nutters. I pay the bar and panties wants to come around later.
- Room same, same?
- Yeah
- I come later knock your room?
- Up to you baby
- Maybe I come
- You come I come, no problem.
She doesn’t get it and I can’t be arsed trying to explain, say goodbye and stagger off. Just enough time to say so long to last year, with a beer in my hand and a girl on my dick.

-Going to make you work today our kid.
Its lunch time, its hot and I’m hung over. Regretting last night as Alan sets off up the beach at what he calls a brisk walk. It’s so fast I can hear the sound track from Chariots of fire playing in the background. We had a weigh in two days ago and I’ve lost twelve kilo, fair enough most of that’s down to the food poisoning but the daily hikes and the thrashing at badminton has got to help. Luckily we play at the top end of the bay so theirs only the occasional tourist about or roaming backpacker to see two over weight bright red English men sweating bucket loads and covered in sand. Pete Sampras verses Andre Agassi it is defiantly not, more like Mister Blobby taking on the Honey Monster. I’m still reeling from yesterdays beating and I’m sure my bollocks are hanging differently after over stretching for a return and doing the splits. Two sets in and I’m level pegging but that’s when every thing goes pear shaped the world starts to spin and the alcohol lurking in the blood stream hits the heart and explodes around my system. Pissed up and in charge of badminton racket and the days only just started.
Theirs a couple of Hare Krishna’s skipping up the beach, doing the cymbals and chanting routine. A fat white bloke in robes and war paint followed by his Thai girlfriend who’s finding it hard to keep up the tempo. He’s wearing socks and trainers which finish’s off his fashion statement nicely and marks him down as being a yank or kraut. Their drawing a bit of an audience but it’s mainly beach dogs and hippies the latter thinking there in with a chance of getting a free veggie feed. Theirs some sad English cunt getting a beach massage from one of the resident beach hags. She’s had to cover up his waist with a towel as the dirty gits Hampton wick is standing to attention. Should be ashamed of himself, but he’s paler than a milk bottle so he’s properly just off the boat with a years worth jiz in him.
H turned up yesterday after being missing in action for twenty four hours and is now crashed out on my bed, he’s even got himself tucked up under my duvet with the air conditioner cranked up full, but I’m getting ahead of myself again missing out the birthday fiasco. Started the night at Luna’s bar, she’s a big chick and winner of the biggest tits on the island competition three years on the run. The girls well up for the crack and she has to be cause I've never seen anyone take her. Not surprising really as you’d need a J.C.B digger to take her back to your beach hut. One of Alan’s regular birds works out of the bar, a descent girl but by all accounts she’s beginning to get a little bit to attached so Alan’s looking to give her the old Spanish archer (senior elbow). The problem is the birds gone and organized me a birthday cake. It’s even got my name on it, thirty candles and a couple of dozen bar girls singing happy birthday. Their all giving Alan and me flowers and orange blossom garlands, they’ve even chipped in and bought me a present. Last time I had a birthday party I was seven, I remember it was going well with all the usual party games, pin the tail on the donkey and blind mans bluff, then I took my little school mates upstairs and mum caught me showing them my dads collection of playboy and penthouse. It didn’t go down to well my mates got sent home and I got sent to my room. I didn’t even get any cake. Between Alan and me were down over four grand and the girls are all well out of it. Alan’s bird is well off her face and keeps calling me brother. It’s a little unnerving as her own brother has only been dead about three weeks.
-What you reckon?
-Should duck but I don’t want to look ungrateful
-You’ve bought them all flowers got them all pissed what else can you do
-Yeah fuck it, finish this one and check bin
-Brother, brother what you doing?
She’s clocked me giving the check bin signal to the cashier and she’s not to impressed but for fucks sake, it’s my birthday and it’s still early.
-Brother why are you leaving?
-Go for walk, I promised to say hello to a few other bars, we’ll be back later
The lies just roll off the tongue but I do feel like a bit of a cunt. The girls gone to all this trouble and she’s now started with the waterworks. I’ll have to keep her sweet, comeback tomorrow and blame our failure to return on the booze. She’s not giving up that easy and keeps dragging women up for me to take while I’m trying to pay up.
-She nice lady
-No I go
-She young lady
-No I’m going
-She new lady
-No thanks I’ll comeback later
-You promise
-Yeah I promise (BAD MOVE)
The usual haunts are well pleased to see us and my birthday is turning into a national holiday. There isn’t a flower seller left with any stock from here to Chaweng. It’s time to move the party to the Bauhaus and we’ve teed up plenty of girls so the selection should be better than in a tin of Quality Street. One more quick stop before the Bauhaus and it has to be Panties place. The chicks are well up for it flashing their tits and licking our tonsils. Well over the top and fuck all to do with my birthday. Third world prostitution politics at work again and there trying to wind up Luna’s bar opposite and by the looks of it their doing a good job. Theirs a line of girls giving us daggers as Alan gets a tonsillectomy from one of Panties friends.
-What you want for birthday
-What you give
-Eat your cock
The nice thing about this girl is she’s straight to the point.
-You already do, how about your sister and you
-For what
No point answering just stick out my tongue and show her my diving knife
-Give key we come
-No, come Bauhaus
-No like
She grabs my balls and picks my pocket, the stares are getting worse from the other bar
-I go
She let go of my crown jewels so I can answer
-Ok, see you later
She drops my keys down the front of her pants, before giving me another flash of her tits.
Mad music, mad lights, masses of bodies and foam all over the place. The bars full of world cup football talk, team management and tactics. Hopes and dreams, birthday kisses and false promises. The urge to go forth and multiply wins the battle over the power of alcohol and I make my excuses and leave. I’m walking down the dirt path back to the resort like a pin ball bouncing off the coconut trees and waking the local wild life which hops and slithers to safety away from the sudden down pour of toxic piss.
I must look one hell of a sight with wetties on the shorts, shirt hanging out, enough flower garlands to get a job as an extra on Hawaii five o and a grin from ear to ear cause I’m about to score maximum points. It’s almost incest only one more commandment to break after this one and I’ve got the set. Eternal damnation but it’s nice and hot and full of sinners, so it must be a lot like Thailand. Gods got the harps, cross dressing angels, fluffy animals, smiling babies, fat free food and according to the welsh Wales as well. The Devil on the other hand has got sex, drugs, rock and roll, dirty jokes, gambling, football and every brothel on the planet. I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with the legend good guys go to heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya.

Alan’s missus steps out from the shadows of my balcony
-Brother, brother
-What the fuck
-Brother were have you been?
-Eh
I don’t need this and it’s defiantly not part of the night’s master plan.
-Brother where’s Alan?
-She’s got the waterworks going and she’s screaming at the top of her voice.
-Brother why?
-Why what?
Fuck knows what she’s on about but theirs more shadows coming down the path and the resort lights are starting to go on as everyone is waking up with all the commotion.
-Calm down luv
-Brother why?
Next doors lights illuminate the shadows. There curtains are twitching inside so they can get a better view of the floor show, even the manager of the resort and his wife have come out onto there balcony to get a better look. I can see their heads just popping up behind the woodwork, ringside seats for the main event. Panties push’s past us and unlocks the door to my room. Her sisters stood there watching events unroll with Adam as chaperone. They’re all mouthing off in the native chipmunk tongue and I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse and then someone starts screaming. It’s coming from the car park and then the sound of a moped starting up. The mopeds lights go on automatically and it lights up the drivers agonized face, which is shouting something at me, and I bet it’s not complimentary. I can see Panties is raiding my mini bar and has gone straight for the expensive imported beer. Alan’s bird is shaking and screaming into my face, which is now awash with spittle.
-Brother, brother
Panties push’s past with an arm full of beer and a packet of smarties.
-You have lady
-No
-Brother, brother I bring Magic
The face belonging to the moped rider is now obvious but it looks totally deranged
-You have lady
-No
-Brother, brother
Panties joins her stunned sister and transvestite minder, handing out the beers she liberated from my fridge.
-Brother, brother Magic
I turn to look and see the moped doing half a doughnut before speeding off into the night, the exhaust drowning out the fading screams. I turn back and Panties and Co have left the illumination of the resort lights and are heading back into town
-I haven’t got a lady!!!
I shout but their not listening, there goes the maximum points and they’ve got my Smarties. There goes my birthday present
-NO HAVE LADY!!
-Brother why?
She’s still going on like a fucking record. Just then Alan comes into the light. His bird stops spitting into my face and runs to meet him as he unlocks his own door.
-Night our kid and happy birthday.
They go in and shut the door and I’m left stood on my balcony. The lights around the resort are already beginning to go out and the darkness cloaks the resort again. The blackness must be a signal for the wild life to go into high gear as they all start gobbing off. Happy fucking birthday.
Alan’s laughing so hard he can’t get his tea down as I fill him in with last nights events. So close to my finest hour and that mental bitch Magic fucks it right up with a more than a little help from my emotionally unstable adopted sister who’s still sleeping off the effects of last night.
-Fuck all on your birthday son
-Wasn’t my fault?
-Course it was
How the fuck you figure that
You should have sorted her out
-You’ve seen the face
I’m referring to the imprint on the my window where someone has been pushing there face against it to peer in. I’ve had the boy clean it twice but it reappears like magic especially if I’ve had a bird back.
-Ok I admit it’s a bit psycho
-She’s a fucking stalker, like that bird in that movie with the ice pick
-So what you going to do
-Avoid it her like the plague
-So we’ll have a beer there tonight
-Your sick, you’re loving this
-Entertainment value our kid
-Yeah right
-I’m famished and we’ve got to check out the e-mail
Were still waiting for a reply from H. he gets here today during the second half of the England game. We sent him an e-mail telling him to make his way here from the airport with all the directions and we’d meet him back at the hotel once he’d checked in as the game would be over and then we could take him out on the piss.
-I’ll check it later but look out your birds risen from the dead.
-Hello brother
She’s a bit sheepish
-Hello darlin how are you?
-Ok brother
She gives Alan a peck on the cheek and she’s off, stealing a Cornetto out of the resorts ice cream chest as she exits probably trying to freeze her brain down.
Another thrashing at badminton and a quick dip in the sea' then down to the Internet gaff. Still no word from H but he must be sorted by now as he’s supposed to be here in a few hours. We get some scran down our throats at one of the roadside vendors, beef and noodles but the meat isn’t prime beef more like water buffalo I hope cause I have noticed one of the regular strays is missing but it’s best not to speculate.
-Not bad
-Not good but not bad
-Have you sorted out a room for H?
-Yes at the back but he can pick which one he wants when he gets here
-Time
I dig the Seiko out of my pocket and check the hands; it’s still fucked from going off at the Argies game. A cracked face and a snapped strap not a bad price to pay for beating the south American scum, problem is I don’t want to get it fixed until after the finals as it might ruin the luck. Superstitious me you must be joking.
-Four thirty get there by five
-An hour and a half before
-You know what its like
-All right we’ll chill out for half an hour
-I’ll give you a knock
It’s football politics again but this time with a party atmosphere, were already one up thanks to Rio, you would never say it was the same team who played Nigeria. Their totally dominating the tempo of the game and the passing is slick and accurate.
-Have it!
-Yeah!
-Theirs only one Mickey Owen, one Mickey Oooowen
Twenty-four minutes, two goals and ten beers. The place is rocking as the Danish are well and truly stunned, forty four minutes and Emile Ivanhoe Hesky proves everyone wrong after getting on the end of a David Beckham pass.
-You’re going home with the Argies, home with the Argies
-Three nil to the Eng a land, three nil to the Eng a land.
The next day and the British press would have a field day with headlines like, Svengaland and we’ve had are Danish bacon for breakfast now bring on the Brazilian has beans for lunch. I’m hoping it will be German sausage for dinner, Nineteen sixty-six all over again. For now the sound system cranks up the theme music from the Dam busters before blasting out it’s coming home, it’s coming home footballs coming home. Everyone is dancing around like nutters but this is football and we are England.
-Fucking hell what about H?
-Oh shit
I check the sad excuse for a watch and we’ve still got time, can even slide in a feed
-Hungry?
-Yes
One trip to Mackey D’s and it’s take away outside the rooms while we wait for H to show up and wait and wait and wait.
-Where the fuck is he
-I ain't got a clue, he knows where were staying

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and the cunt still hasn’t pitched up
-He’s probably pissed up somewhere
-Maybe he missed the flight
-Did you give him the number of the place?
-Yeah sure
I can’t remember but theirs no point in lowering the morning’s optimism just yet.
-I’ll check the e-mail
It doesn’t take long before I’m back but I’m more baffled now than before.
-Any news
-You’re never going to believe it but he’s here
-Where?
That’s the thing the e-mail doesn’t say.
-You what
-It says. Hi dudes, where the fuck are u. lost in Lamia. Find me I’m off for a root.
-So where’s he staying
-That’s what I mean he doesn’t say
-How the fuck are we supposed to find him
-What do you call a one eyed deer?
-No idea
H is quality any body else and you’d have to worry, but I still end up sending him another four e-mails during the day. Alan’s done another two but still no answer. The worse that could of happened was if he’s got pissed up and gone off with a katoy. After last time he’s got form for it, on his last tour he pulled one from outside the Reggae bar. To tell the truth we all did, jumping on the backs of the geezer bird mopeds and heading off in different directions through the coconut trees. I was hanging on for dear life to a silicon-enhanced bloke as we flu down rutted paths and over wobbly bridges to god only knows where. It was the best B.J I’ve ever had but what do expect they know what you want because they liked it themselves before they had theirs cut off, she/he even cleaned my plate. The ride back was just as eventful but that was Chaweng back in the old days. Well before the building boom, which sprang up hotels and tailors as far as the eye can see. It’s now more like Pattaya except you can go for a swim without getting run over by a fat German bastard on a jet ski.
By the time I got back to the bar the lads where already there. Nobody was saying much as afterwards you don’t know whether to feel a bit guilty or what but we were all a bit naïve in those days. We bought our geezers birds a post congenital drink each but H decided to play the tight arse and didn’t buy the lad/lass a drink. So she started getting leery shouting at the passing backpackers, who where on their way to dance into the early hours at the Reggae bar
-He fucked lady man
And she’s pointed out a very crimsoned face H as Alan and me pissed ourselves laughing
-You fuck lady man
-You like my dick
-He likes to fuck man
The passing trade tried to ignore the scene but the damage was done and H was mortified until we all agreed to the motto of what happens on the tour stays on the tour. His spurned lover had now got her dress up around her waist and was flashing the surgeon’s scares to anyone who’d look.
-He fuck lady man
-You like Katoy
H was begging us to check bin and do a runner but as we departed his bird went totally loopy and stood on two bar stools screaming after us.
-You like my dick
-You like my dick
-You fuck lady boy
You could fry an egg on his face but you’d have to catch up to him first. As he was up and away over the bamboo bridge quicker than a dog out of the traps. It’s sad to say that both the bridge and the bar are now long gone. The lady boys most likely retired back up north to the land of a thousand paddy fields and enough land mines to match. The dodgy bridge was condemned so as to save lives and mopeds. Their used to be a guy who spent all day dragging out scooters from the muddy filth. The mopeds had ended up there after their inebriated drivers had missed one of the ninety-degree turns. The old bridge had more angles than a fourth year math’s class and so many missing planks you had to jump from one to the next in some places. It was hard enough sober but pissed was a right laugh.
Six o’clock and H turns up banging on the door of my air-conditioned palace.
-Yo dude
-Were the fuck have you been?
-Looking for you dude and getting a root, it’s a total shag fest
-We waited all night for you
-But dude I didn’t know where you were
-What about the e-mail I sent you?
-What e-mail?
-The one we sent you last week
-I didn’t get any till today
-You what you didn’t know we were here
-No dude, the last I heard from you dudes was the call about meeting up for a football shag fest. I got my ticket and I was a bit worried you guys hadn’t got in touch but I thought you dudes would meet me off the plane
-We e-mailed you to come straight to the hotel, directions and everything
-Got nothing dude waited at the airport until it closed and some guy turned up and asked if I wanted a lift. I knew you dudes where going to Lamia so I hitched a lift down here. Found an Internet café and e-mailed you. Then went for a beer and this chick in the bar organized me a place to crash. So I rooted her to be polite and went back out for another beer and rooted this other chick at her gaff. I went back to my love shack and the first birds there waiting for me. She stayed all night, I didn’t get up till gone three
-So how much you pay the girl
-Fuck all dude, checked out of the room and told her I was just popping out and I’d be back later, she’s probably still there kipping. Got any thing to drink? I got some peach flavored southern comfort at duty free but no mixer.
Most other people might have been a bit worried even blown out their trip but He's so laid back he’s almost horizontal. We found out later he’d had the e-mail and deleted it by mistake, he even forgot to pick up his ticket from the travel agent. He was checking his gear the night before. Bag, clothes, money, toothbrush, passport, sorted Oh fuck! Next he’s driving across Melbourne like the cops are on his arse. The travel agents closed but theirs a light on upstairs so he starts banging on the door, it’s two in the morning and the owner comes down sees H in a pair of boxer shorts and his vest and tells him to fuck off. H explains the sad story and the travel agent tells him that the tickets waiting for him at the airport like they told him it would be when he bought it, now wont he please fuck off. He’d done the same with his Padi license spent two weeks abusing them down the telephone line for a replacement. The folks in the Padi office go all out trying to find his records; even hunting down the place he did his training and the retired diving instructor. He felt a right twat when they told him he’d done his training with SRI, but they still got him a replacement. It’s something about him whether it’s the fact he’s so chilled out I don’t know, but he’s like the center of a tornado nice and calm while all around he’s creating havoc.
He was going to come on holiday last year but was all loved up when the time came with some Aussie tart. He reckoned it was the real thing at the time, you know all that shit about soul mates and destiny. So he takes her back to England to meet the folks and tour the holy island, give the girl a bit of culture. All went well for a couple of days then the girl goes loony while their staying in Wordsworth country. She rips up all the travelers’ cheques. Swallows all the pills H has in his wash bag and then runs off into the wilds of the Lake District, living on roots and berries for two days and hunting hikers. H just waits back at the B and B passing the time by sellotaping the travelers cheques back together.
She eventually comes out of the woods looking like a female Rambo. H reckons things were a bit tense but he still takes her to his oldies place to stay. Continued suicide threats and taking the family roast hostage don’t help endear her to the in-laws. Negotiations eventually freed the roast and talked her out of the kitchen, with only the loss of a couple of Yorkshire puddings and the cauliflower cheese. Ma and Pa were none to pleased with their perspective daughter in-law from down under. The threats of self-mutilation and anti social behavior commonplace for a house with six daughters going through various stages of adolescents. But the ruination of the sacred Sunday lunch an absolute fucking sacrilege. Not to mention missing antiques road show. Since then a year of emptying bed pans, dishing out drugs and getting attacked by psychotic geriatrics stinking of piss and carbolic soap have got him well up for a tour. He’s like a dog with two dicks. So it’s back on the piss and once more into the breach, welcome to hell.




.

















CHAPTER 8



Alan’s having a whale of a time with H pointing out all my short times and Katoys. At least it’s only the ones he knows about, which is more than enough. The freak show is already well beyond the boundaries of good taste. With anyone else I’d be a little embarrassed but that’s the punishment for trawling. A new term invented on this tour, it goes further than the usual fishing that involves drinking in the bars using your wallet as bait and catching a chick. Trawling on the other hand is a whole different ball game and only for the more hardened steamer. It’s like playing the lottery but the prize is usually not worth it. You get totally fucked out of you tree around town and end up in the Bauhaus half an hour before closing when the place is awash with off duty bar girls trying to get a bit of last minute business. Lycra mini skirts, boob tubes, g-strings and high heels but with trawling you have to cast your nets deep. To pissed to tell what’s really going on and to pissed to care what you’re getting yourself into. The more pissed you are the deeper you cast, increasing you’re chances of catching a real deep-sea mutant. H is taking to it like a fishing captain, completely off his head and spreading his net across the exit so as to catch the mutants on their way out. I’ve got my catch and it looks half decent through the beer goggles so I’d better get it back home while it’s still fresh.

-What a fucking night dudes!
Morning tea and H is buzzing, Alan and him are waiting for the massage parlors to open for a relaxing rub and a quick tug or in their case a quick rub and a relaxing tug. I’ve still got a UFO lying on the bed so I don’t have to travel to far.
-What you get
-She was all right eh
I look over at Alan for confirmation but he shakes his head
-How bad
-Rank
-What you saying dude
-Don’t you remember asking me if she was a bloke or not?
-You’re having a fucking laugh
-She wasn’t that bad
-Your right, she was worse
-How much you pay
-Fuck all dudes
-What are you a cheap Charlie?
-Naar
-For fuck all what you do, change rooms again?
-Well we went back to her place dude’s and did the business. Then we went back out and I got her dinner at the food center
-What a twenty Baht chicken and rice special?
-For sure dude’s, then she started asking for the wedge
-Fair enough what did you expect?
-Well I told her I thought it was for free, you know what I mean
-Yeah sure a few drinks, dinner and shag what else you expect!
-Exactly
Were pissing ourselves laughing, he’s so serious
-So what happened when you told her it was just a date
-She said it was ok, but could I buy her some stuff from seven/eleven. It’s like four in the morning dude’s and she wants to do her shopping.
-So?
-We go there and the next thing she’s wondering up and down the aisles filling up a trolley with her monthly shop. I said no way baby and she goes off, so I got the fuck out of there dude’s
He’s quality doing another runner and he’s only been in town for two nights, the lad is fast becoming a legend.
-Where off
-I’ll see you later
Got to wake up the UFO and see if she’s up for round two then into town as
I’ve got to send Bob an e-mail as he’s here in a few days and wont wear the same fucked up organization as H. Then it’s off down the beach to catch some rays, maybe see what’s about and get a tug and then in to town to pick up a paper. Catch up with all the football news and see what Sven Groan has to say about the up and coming match with Brazil.
If we can get passed the copa cabaña boys then it’s plain sailing all the way to the final and we can do it. The only thing that stands in our way is the Rio rent boys; it’s so close you can taste it or it could be the bird from last night. Serves me right for going diving but it’s not the first time and I’ve got some pills left from the last time. Thrush of the throat had it so many times I should be able to whistle like a songbird.
The lads are back and H is still buzzing fuck knows what he’s on, he says life but I’m not convinced.
-Dude you missed out
-Good massage
-Outrageous dude
-He’s not lying; I’m lying there and listening to him bartering for a wank
- No
- Yeah, you know what it’s like, we went to that one up passed the dive shop
- The one with the stinky mattress’s and the curtains in-between
- That’s the one, all I can hear is him arguing over the price of a tug, every fucker in there is listening to him going on and on
- Hey dude I got her down to three hundred
- What you actually paid? What about you lar
- Four but I got two tugs and had her tits out
- No way dude
- For sure
H jumps up and heads out of the resort restaurant
-Where are you off?
-To see what I can get if I pay five hundred

-Were cruising dudes?
I don’t know about that, it feels more like a ride at Alton Towers. I’m getting tossed around the back seat of a jeep doing a hundred on the way to Chaweng. H is driving, fuck knows how many he’s had but we’re going to have to stick a beer limit on him before the end of the night. The roads on the island are already choked with piss heads without adding one more.

Chaweng is already kicking off for the night so we hit the strip around the Green Mango. The side streets are packed with beer bars and the girls are standing five deep blocking and tackling anyone who comes anywhere near them, grabbing your limbs, your crotch any thing to slow you down and then drag you into there bar. It’s like running a pussy gauntlet but were not putting up much of a fight and in H’s case none at all. A beer here and a beer they’re working our way through the bars, trying to avoid any casualties. Where gradually working our way in the direction of the only go-go bar on Samui. It’s not all that but when your options are limited it’s like the Holy Grail. It’s a bit pricey thou, mainland prices for island entertainment but the girls aren’t to bad as for the show? not bad at all but it’s nothing compared to watching H. he’s been in some sort of trance since we sat down. He could be getting flash backs from Champion ago-go. You could never let him loose in Bangkok, not without protection anyway and that’s from himself.
-Number seven
-Five hundred and two thousand for the lady
Mama san answers H’s question and he’s back to reality with a serious wallet check
-I could get five roots in Lamai for that
-She’s tasty though
-I know but what you think?
-Check bin
Otherwise he’ll be off like a shot with a go-go beauty. She might be able to dance around a pole but fuck knows what she’s like in the sack. For two and a half grand it’s a bit of a gamble especially when you’re on a budget. We knock around the strip for a bit getting a lot of attention but there’s nothing outstanding so it’s back in the jeep and round to the Reggae Bar and it’s small strip of beer bars outside.
It’s amazing but from number seven he’s gone straight for a pig. She’s well passed forty and even with the silicon I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. He’s like a dog on heat, Alan and me do a duck and leave him to sort out his personal freak show. The other bar is a bit more lively but the girl I like has the personality of a house brick a great looking brick with great brick tits but she bores the pants off me. H turns up again and he’s got the promise of a date for tomorrow night, the lads sick. So it’s back in the wagon for the return trip to Lamai, which is none to soon considering the state, He’s in and he’s got the keys. I haven’t got a clue what the limit is over here for drunk driving but judging by the other folks on the road it’s slightly pissed for a car, bollocked to get in a 4x4 and totally blasted with optional puking to get on a moped. It’s no wonder there’s more traffic fatalities on Samui each year than anywhere else in Thailand. Go into any bar or disco and you’ll see the walking wounded, limbs covered in road rashes and bandages. The locals aren’t immune to the curse of the islands roads and driving out of their bracket, most of the girls have scared knees or arms and wear them like badges of honor. It amazes me there not hurt more as they freak me out driving side saddle even in Bangkok there belting around the town, both legs hanging over one side and nowhere near the back brake peddle. The best is the kids on the way to and from school I’ve seen up to four of them balanced on one bike, and the kid driving is still in junior school. Fuck the Highway Code there isn’t one unless you’re a foreigner and then it’s only as a way of bumping up their personal income. I mean where else in the world can you barter a road fine with the arresting officer or give him a dropsy to let you off.
We drop the jeep back at the resort in time to go and cast our nets but there’s not much biting as a lot of the chicks have gone over to koh Pan Yang for the full moon party so I pull in the nets early as we have to head up to the airport the next day to pick up Bob as for my bait it’s still in the wallet and judging by what’s left knocking around the town that’s were its staying.

As usual where late but that’s to be expected and by less than half an hour were almost being polite. Bob’s already through the baggage check and immigrations and waiting patiently on his case in the car park. I was half expecting him to be dressed in the safari suit number but he’s dressed like a yank. The shorts with socks and trainers thing going on. We get all the greeting out of the way and while we’ve still got the jeep we can do the tourist tour today and the sight tonight. Big Buddha, the water fall, Buddha’s foot print, you haven’t got time to blink as H burns up the tarmac. Bobs camera is clicking away but were going to fast for him to get anything but a blur. H drops it down a gear and were off again to the next place of momentary interest. Were all to busy holding on for dear life to complain as we take another corner at a ninety-degree angle doing terminal velocity?
The girls are screaming at us we cruise back into Chaweng but H wants to do a drop off and head over to the Reggae bar to find his silicon granny from last night and theirs no way we want to get involved in that one.

-I can still appreciate a good pair of tits
We’re sat at the Katoy cabaret and Bobs enjoying the entertainment but who wouldn’t, as it’s way better than the real thing
-You like
She/he is well nice, calls herself Lisa and theirs no fucking way you can tell the difference. She’s been flashing her tits at us since we sat down. Fifty grand a pair and what a pair. Even Bob’s had a good feel and was smiling like school kid.
-What you reckon?
-Could change a man
-What even you?
-I wouldn’t go that far
-You like, you thirsty?
Lisa’s kneeling on the bar squeezing her own tit’s and she’s only fucking lactating.
-You never
-Fuck off
I’m suckling like a bay slurping up mother’s milk out of a guys tits
-You like?
-What’s it like?
Fucking love it, it’s a bit sour, how the hell do you do that?
-I take hormones every day
I’ve probable been sucking monkey semen or some banned substance which means I wont be able to pass an Olympic drug test. Not that I've got any sort of future in athletics unless the governing body starts dishing out medals for riding bar girls and making a cunt out of myself.
The cabaret is so bad it’s brilliant. Looking at some of the chorus line you have to wonder why they bother. A snip and tuck, silicon implants and it makes no difference. Some of the girls could be straight out of the All Blacks back row. You have to imagine Johna Lomo with great tits, dressed in a colorful costume miming and out of step with everyone, but they’re all dancing different steps and it’s total chaos.
H is back a bit early and moping about
-What happened Lar?
-She reckons she’s not on the game
That’s a new one on me. Works in a beer bar, dresses like a tart and got more silicon than Microsoft
-What you tell her
-I told her I wanted to sleep with her
-What you offer
-Five hundred
-Short time
-Yeah
-Maybe she was holding out for a long time
-naaar
-Don’t worry son she was to young for you anyway
He looks crestfallen rejected by his dream goddess. I can’t figure out if his eyesight is getting worse or he sees some sort of inner beauty that no one else can, not that you’d bother looking.
The cabaret is into it’s show stopping finale and Alan’s trying to explain to H that all the girls on the stage are really guys but it’s an up hill battle and made even harder when Lisa returns from the final act with her lactating breasts.
Next morning and Bob’s first up. He gives us a wave from the restaurant as I step out onto my balcony. Last night’s bird pushes past me and flicks us a quick smile before heading off to fuck knows where and who the fuck cares.
-Nice night?
-I couldn’t tell you
-How are you feeling?
-Pretty fucked, what happened to you last night?
-I left you guys at the Bauhaus
-You score or what
-No I’m not into kitchen sinks
-You serious
-Yes
-Fucking hell Bobby I thought you would have been well up for all the Thai boys.
-No not my cup of tea
-Jesus you learn something new every day
-Where’s H
Alan’s just come over so it’s only H missing in action but that’s to be expected.
-Come on our kid, get the tea in
-You’ll be lucky they’ve gone off to get fresh milk
-Naught
Where you last see H
-Trawling in the Bauhaus, but he was well off his head
-He has to give the jeep back today
-Well I’m off
Bob stands up from the table.
-You’ve only just got here
-I want to do the tourist thing
-The what?
-You know, trips, sightseeing the Kodak moment all that sort of thing
-That’s a bit to heavy for us Bob
-I know boys, believe me I know

Sat on the deck as the sun begins its descent into the sea. Bob’s still off on one of his jaunts with a band of camera touting culture seekers. Sucking life up through their zoom lens and poly filters. Now they’ve all got camcorders so every boring minute of their trip can be taken back. Remembered at leisure and forced upon friends after they’ve spent two months digitally enhancing it, editing and adding that really naff sound track.
H turned up eventually, the boy always seems to go one better than the night before. He ended up picking up some well ropey katoy. Even by his low standards she was rank. An outrageous pair of silicon wonders by all accounts but it was as if they had been stuck on to one of the superstars of WWF. Now what is all that shit about pumped up on steroids and choreographed moves, it’s fucking shocking. Grown men dancing around in spandex leotards. What ever happened to Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, where’s Kendo Nagasaki? It beats the crap out of the flashy American shit, but where ever you go you can’t get away from it. From LA to Moscow, you mention the Rock or Triple H and malnourished gutter kids from Soweto to Bangkok can tell you the superstar’s moves and catch phrase. There’s reports of muggings in central Johannesburg were the victims last memory before being pistol whipped was of someone shouting “can you smell what the rocks been cooking”. Next you’ll have witness trying to explain to police that the murderer was wearing red spandex pants, sweating like a pig and covered in grease and fake tan. He held the victim down for a three count before shooting him in the back of the head and fleeing with the dead mans wallet. Even worse there’s a whole load of people out there who actually believe the whole laughable farce is real, it’s pathetic really but what can you do. America does it again, loads of cash, loads of glitz and they’ve got themselves a sport. World Wrestling, they just love to stick word world into the title of everything as if to justify it. Thank Christ it doesn’t always take off; it was only the Japes that fell for the World Baseball series. No matter how you try to jazz it up it’s still rounders. Lets not forget that bastardized version of every girl’s favorite schoolyard sport netball. They rewrap it and out comes basketball. The only reason it was ever invented was so that it gave lanky people something to do other than play in goal or athletics.
-So come on what happened this time?
-You wont believe it dudes
-Probably not but it is you we’re talking about so come on
-We speed off on her scooter dudes, it was about then I realized something was up man. Where ripping down the path to the beach and I realize she’s taller than me. We get down the beach dudes and she wants to get in on in the sea, you now what I mean.
-Don’t stop there
-She’s kissing me dude and then she gives me a blowjob, right there man the waters washing my feet and she’s sucking my nob. I tell you dudes I’m gagging for it; she’s got me hanging man. Next thing were under the palm trees and I’m feeling around and she’s still fucking got one!
-Got what
-You know
-You mean
-Yeah she’s got one and it’s hard dudes, she was pushing it up against me
We’ve cracked up laughing but H is still going on
-I told her I needed a piss first and ducked off into the palm trees while she’s getting ready for me, doing fuck knows what.
-And?
-And she starts calling for me dudes! I’m tiptoeing through the bush trying not to trip over coconuts and she’s yelling out my name. I can see her running up and down the beach and she’s going off her head like a banshee. Next thing she comes into the palm trees looking for me I’m shiting myself dudes. So I drop down to the deck and start doing the commando crawl while she’s going mental screaming and throwing coconuts everywhere. Dudes I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.
It’s fucking hysterical and I’m laughing so hard I think I’m going to shit myself.
It’s almost kick off and were already well on our way with the beer flowing like water. This is destiny. It’s the usual madness; the walls of the Bauhaus are bulging. Were crammed in tighter than a tin of sardines and with so many backpackers here for the big one the smells a bit ripe. Had time to drop Robman an e-mail before the game. He’s back in Phucket already shacked up with his old girlfriend again. It looks like he can’t get enough of her. I don’t think I’ll have to break the news to Panties as I think she’s well on the way to closure, as Oprah would say. Now she really is a useless fat bitch and with more mouth than a cows got arsehole. You wouldn’t believe the following she’s got in south Africa, after Nelson Mandela she’s the next best thing to sliced bread. All the Africans believe everything she says. Sat there listening to sob stories about abuse and heart ache, Oprah’s favorite books and dish’s. It’s surreal. My staff arrive at work still going on about the sad story they watched last night and how the crappy dressed female messiah of the American networks helped the poor and down trodden to see the light. Has nobody but me noticed she just a bloody parasite making money off other peoples misery? She should join the ANC and run for president of South Africa, she’d walk it. It’s scary over there as long as the president black it doesn’t matter what he or she does. Freud, theft, embezzlement, shady deals they will wear anything. Low standard of living, a minimum wage that’s a joke, a health care system that offers services directly proportional to your wage packet, if you can’t afford private health care don’t worry about looking for a retirement company to invest with cause chances are you wont last long enough to start drawing it. Spiraling crime rates and squatter camps where people still have to live in filth and shit. Their homes made out of corrugated metal and old signs. Scrap metal and old planks of wood supporting leaky roofs. You land at Cape Town international airport and the drive into town takes you passed and within spitting distance of crossroads squatter camp.
It’s a great sight for all the tourists. The locals even do township tours were they take the Kodak clans into the ghetto. All very enterprising but why do they still have to live like that do they want to? No but what can they do, you can’t fight a black government a white one yes but black no they just live with it. I wonder what her royal highness Oprah would do? Probably but them all on micro biotic diets, colour coordinate the shacks and get them all to join her book of the month club. The really sad thing is that by spending all day feeling sorry for their African American brothers and sisters they can some how forget about the shit they live in and the daily abuse and devastation that surrounds them. Rape, murder, theft, they’d slit your throat for a second hand pair of shoes, rape a relative cause it will cure their HIV but don’t forget the younger the better. One of the highest violent crime rates in the world, they had this advert on TV before I left which said that every few minutes someone is raped be it in the ghettos or one of the posh white suburbs, I’ve just started another fag and by the time I’ve finished two girls would have been raped and god only knows how many murders committed. Does Oprah really care? Fucked if I know but give me Jerry Springer any day of the week he even does a chat show in Johannesburg flying in once a week to do it live with the proceeds going to charity.
The national anthem is being song from Thailand to Timbuktu wherever theirs a TV and a cold beer. The faithful will have gathered wearing t-shirts and waving scarf’s, voices raised in praise and pride. A nation united for ninety minutes, it’s a party atmosphere. Our rivals Brazil have got the Rio carnival but we’ve got Rio Ferdinand. The commentators are talking some shit or other but their voices are drowned out by the assembled congregation as the eleven men take up their positions on the pitch. The biggest match of their lives. Do this and it’s plain sailing all the way and they must know it.
What a dream start one up and England hasn’t looked so in control since the Falklands invasion. Then it all goes pair shaped and a free kick that will haunt David Seaman and every other Englishman for the rest of our lives. They even go down to ten men and we still can’t hit a barn door with a tractor. The whistle sounds to soon, hopes and dreams fade away quicker than emptying out a bathtub. It’s over theirs no talking not even a murmur, theirs nothing, we should be used to it by now. It’s been a Rolla coaster ride of emotion for to many years now without ever completing the ride. We never seem to get up enough momentum to round the final loop. That little bit of luck that should go our way never materializes. Stunned silence follows us around the bars; even the music seems hushed in some way, maybe out of respect.
The beer still goes down the same way as people start talking ifs and buts. It’s all crap but maybe it eases the pain. The sad loss of life, its no joke! It’s something that you’ve watched grow for four years and with it like a parent you pin your hopes and dreams to it. How it could all be so different if only. The ifs and buts are now changing to blame and anger, but what’s the point? It won’t change anything it will just make the beer taste sour and we don’t need that. As always the healing effects of the magical golden draught and the madness that is the English has us all singing. By the end of the night all the talks about how where still a young team, this being a learning curve, the abundance of talent and how a couple of years playing together will banned them together a whole lot more and the European cup is only just round the corner. Oh shit here we again.
It’s lunch time and I’ve only just managed to give last nights bird the heave ho but then again I’ve only been awake an hour so I didn’t do to bad. I feel as if I’ve got an elephant jumping up and down on my head. One minute I’m lying there as the elephant goes into a solo tap dance number on my temples and then it all comes rushing back. I can see the free kick all over again from every angle and the blissful ignorance is shattered as I remember the misery of last night while the elephant invites his mates round to do a few numbers from Lord of the dance.
-Tea?
-Sorry bad game you no win
-Thanks darlin
-No worry, no be sad
-Yeah, thanks love.
For the tea that is, but she can leave out the entire obituary. There’s no way I’m even going to look at a news paper today and as for today’s match that’s little more than a side show now.
-Afternoon are kid
-Where is everyone?
-Well Bob’s gone off on another tour, something about temples and elephants. As for H last seen walking off into the woods with the old girl that guts and sells the fish from that restaurant we eat at.
It’s not what you’d class as a restaurant but it’s got a place to sit, a couple of stand up fans and a fridge for the beers. Meanwhile the food sits out side all day, they say the flies are the least of your worries. Bad hygiene, left over food that’s been there since god only knows when. Open drains and a staff that’s made up of what you can only class as untouchables. Fingernails caked with filth, Flaking skin dropping in sheets from their scalps and waiters squeezing puss filled zits before they pick up your order. Theirs an Indian restaurant right next door, we used to go their all the time. The daily special was on the board so long it was celebrating its birthday. When they did change it there was almost a riot. What no chicken tikka masala? The last time we were in there the Indian chef/ waiter/ barman/ owner came out and gave us the menus. Tells us to take or time and runs off around the corner. He came back ten minutes later looking like death warmed up. Are you ready to order sirs? We gave him the order and he runs off again as he disappears he takes the smell of shit with him. The dirty bastard had only gone and shat himself. I know what your thinking but seriously he didn’t taste to bad. The meal that is not his sloppy shit but can you tell the difference with all the curry powder and chili they throw in? Why we stop going? Can’t remember but it had fuck all to do with that.
-What the old girl?
-Yeah you should know what he’s like by now
-No he wouldn’t go that low
-You sure
- No, but
-Ask him yourself. What you end up with?
-That one from the Sukara bar
-The nutty one
-No the short one with the reddish hair
-No don’t know, any good?
-Awesome, definitely going back for a revenge ride. You?
-Nan, she’s fucked off for another English class.
-All right dudes?
-He lives
-Eh?
-He might live but something smells a bit fishy
-Now you mention it
-No way dudes, you wont believe it
He plonks his arse down and once again where off on another of H’s true life dramas. It’s like the twilight zone on acid. He met her on the way home pissed out of his bracket. At least I hope it was as theirs no other excuse for it.
-We went to eat at this all night gaff. It was all right
-What a Thai place
-Yeah
-So how the fuck you end up with her
-She’s well nice
-What!
-What!
-She is dude’s, come on
-Are you having a laugh?
-He must be
-No way dudes
-Alright, so what you get up to?
-Down the beach
-Not again
-For sure dudes
-And?
She was all right eh
-I bet she was
-Go on
-Well where still down there and I want to go again but she reckons she wants to know how much
-Yeah
-No way dude I thought she just wanted it
-No!
-Yeah, so I told her I needed a piss and ran off into the trees. I got a little route down there now.
Picture a man, a man without money or shame you have entered the palm tree zone.



























Chapter 9

Another day in paradise, Bobs taken a day off from the tours as he fly’s to Bangkok tomorrow. Only for a few days but without the aid of a chaperone.
So today it’s the first annual Lamai penalty shoot out competition (Prize’s to be decided later). Bacardi Bob is a bit of an outsider as for Alan, ex-London schoolboy, team captain and still holder of the most goals scored in a school season. He’s well up for it and is starting as the bookies favorite by a long way. H is as fit as a butchers dog but his eye sight has got to be a factor, a bit of a dark horse but some nasty banter about the price of fish should unsettle his nerves. As for me, as fat as Mr. Blobby and two left feet to match so that must make me second favorite.
We trug up to the badminton court, along a deserted sand-scape. Everyone else with any sense (sense! do people with sense come to Thailand on this sort of holiday?) have taken cover from the mid day sun along with a cold beer and an air conditioner. Meanwhile four English men followed by a pack of half starved and half mad dogs, make there way across the molten sand. The dogs are hoping one of us drops back enough for them to make a move. Bob looks like he could be first to be turned into pet food as he begins to lag behind. The new flip-flops he bought are two sizes to big and his feet are sliding about in them like Joey Deacon on ice. The badminton net appears like a mirage through the sweat and tears; this signals the chance for a smoke break while H picks up an old stick and starts marking out the pitch in the sand.
-Are you ready?
I’ve chained smoked my way through half a packet of fags already so I’m well up for the next ninety minutes.
-Come on are kid, let’s see what you got
The usual array of spectators have appeared from out of the palm trees like the Viet cong, silently sneaking up on you. They’re all probably wondering what the dick heads are up to this time.
Three rounds of three kicks each so everyone has a go as goalie against each other. I’ll be fucked if I know how the Brazil boys do it. It’s no wonder they beat us, have you ever toe kicked a football in your bare feet it’s ridiculous. I’d like to see the England in training without shoes it would toughen the boys up a bit. Alan’s missing his predator boots and were all square going in to the last round. I fail to even force Alan into a save. I’m blaming it on a dislocated toe but more likely it’s got something to do with the same reason I was never picked for the school team, I’m shit I couldn’t hit a barn door at point plank range. H must be wearing contact lenses as he pulls out some great shot stopping saves against the London schoolboy who manages to do every thing but score. Then it’s H and me one on one. His previous saves must have been some sort of fluke or he’s lost his contacts, as I don’t have to move let alone take the fag out of my mouth. He’s so off target I could be keeping goal from Bangkok. Bob steps up and Alan’s readying himself in the goalmouth for what so far hasn’t been too impressive from our most senior player. Two kicks two misses and it looks as if we’re all set for sudden death. That is until Bob lets go with something special. It’s hardly bend it like Beckham but it does take a wicked deflection off an abandoned sun lounger as Bob’s flying flip flop sends the keeper the other way. The celebrations are a bit overboard as Bob runs round the pitch arms out stretched grasping at the clouds before dropping to his knees in front of us.
-Have it! I’m top boy!
Were subjugated to a rendition of queens we are the champions, which is well received by the crowd who politely clap before disappearing into the undergrowth and the cool shade of the coconut trees.
The walk back is accompanied by Bob’s blow-by-blow account of the golden goal. It’s hot I’m sweating and bob’s ranting like Jimmy Hill dressed in a pair of Speedos. I’m chuffed for him but fuck knows what the prize is going to be as he’s already turned down an all expenses paid night with Adam (the katoy not my brother) so I suppose we’ll just have to get him shit faced instead.
Bob pissed is a funny old sight, I’m sure his mustache starts to drop as the alcohol begins to reach his hair follicles. It could just be my imagination but I’m sure he’s starting to eye up one of the birds. The lads have all ducked off with birds already and Bob making a getaway while he still can and before he does anything with the bar girl that could get him thrown out of the pink party. All alone and Bobs bird is looking a little dejected, she’s a sweet little thing and I’d hate for her to get a complex so I pay her bar fine and we head off for the post match shower.
You pay your money and you take your chances and she was crap. I could have been screwing a corpse for all the movement I got out of her. Surely there should be some sort of training school for tarts offering diplomas or certificate courses. Don’t misunderstand I’m all in favor of on the job training but come on the bird has to get into the whole act. I mean that’s what it all is anyway a big fucking act whether it’s a pro or your missus your always acting some sort of role. It’s a little pathetic but it runs through everything we do. Human nature has conditioned us along with the expectations of society. So we have to play roles, we spend so much time being what other people want us to be it’s hard to know who we actually are and who someone really is. What makes you tick, what makes you submissive what makes you dominate? It’s the way other people react to you that causes your reaction, denotes the role you will play while dealing with them. Your parents look at you one-way, your mates another. They wouldn’t recognize the same person. As for your boss, fuck he wouldn’t have a clue. Where consistently changing roles, swapping characters like some west end lovey. The constant search for acceptance and appreciation, its no wonder people have nervous breakdowns or throw themselves of bridges. The whole thing is tiring very tiring trying to be who you want to be as well as what everyone else wants you to be. Which usually bares no resemblance to who you really are. When somebody does say, “no I want you to be yourself” that’s when the shit really starts. They’re talking out there arse, what there really saying is they want you to be the person they think you are. I’ve got this theory why most relationships don’t last anymore.
You see you start off being the image of what they want you to be, some times it’s intentional other times you don’t even know your doing it. Everything goes great then you start to slacken off, the real you becoming more visible through the visage. That’s when you hear the immortal words “you’ve changed”. No I haven’t I just can’t be arsed anymore or I’ve just become so comfortable the real me has started to come out. She should be pleased that you’re prepared to be yourself with her? I’m older now and more relaxed with myself, I was at this party with the type of people who have full time maids and whose kids are looked after by nannies, you know the sort. The ones with there noses permanently stuck in the air. Even a skin full doesn’t help them relax, always trying to out do each other and trying to be something there not. It was getting on and some horsy bitch wants to play truth or dare! Golly what a good idea chaps. It goes round the table every one their taking the dare as the easier of the options. After a few rounds one of the chicks had built up enough courage to get a bit more exciting rather than the usual questions of who do you like? Have you ever faked an orgasm?
My turn comes round and she almost wets her self with excitement before she asks me “have you ever been with a prostitute?” the conversation around the table died and everyone was looking my way. They all want me to say no, you can see it in there eyes. Please say no we don’t want to sit next to a sicko. What could I do?
-Yeah of course
Loud, proud and with a smile. It was a turning point for the party and me. The guests hung around long enough to be polite before leaving and running home to shower and disinfect themselves but the lack of conversation was comical you’d have thought I was a leaper. Since then I’ve always been me and I don’t give a rats arse if nobody likes it. Strange thing is when people know what you are they still like to pretend your something your not. I think it makes it easier for them to classify you and in so doing interact with you, weird eh? I still play roles but that’s now with handcuffs and leather.
I suppose the motto is the best place for a skeleton is out were everyone can see it. Cause if you’ve got nothing left to hide then you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.
Bob got off on time but judging by the way he looked if it’s a bumpy flight he’s going to be making use of the nice little paper bags the airline leave in the seat pockets. I feel more sorry for the poor bastard who has to sit next to him. As for us a day diving with a hang over is just what the doctor ordered.
Alan and me both did our course over here at one of the dive factories on Koh Toh which turn out accredited divers in their hoards day in and day out. We took one of the four-day courses over there, which is like taking a masters compared to the two-day specials. The islands just dive center after dive center with dive resorts in-between. Everywhere you look theirs holiday makers and backpackers wondering around with the PADI bible under their arms. They question you after each dive to see what type of fish you’ve seen. Fish they joking! Theirs so many trainee divers down there the fish are all in hiding. We did this one dive in the morning after the usual skin full the night before. By the time are boat got there their had to have been well over thirty dive boats circled around as if they where waiting for the Indians to attack. By the time you got under the water the only thing your concentrating on is staying next to your buddy, as theirs so many people down there it’s like a submerged Piccadilly circus during rush hour. Flippers everywhere kicking your mask off and bumping tanks with South Koreans. Everyone’s new to the game and pretty useless so fuck knows how the diving instructors and dive masters handle it, especially when all their charges are all over the place. Some are going in to free fall sinking like lead the others are floating up uncontrollably at all angles. Visibility’s not so sharp and you end up tagging on to the Japanese tour group or some fat arsed Americans, it’s total carnage under the surface.
The afternoon dive promised to be a lot more peaceful at a place they call the Japanese gardens. Pristine coral reef only ten meters down. Were told by big Frank
-This is one of my favorite dive sites
He says this line no matter were we dive, come to think of it he even said it when we did the first dip in the pool. He’s a bald, tanned, Dutchman built like a brick shit house and as close to action man as you can get. A diving instructor of note and a drinker of legend. He came over to visit us in South Africa and go great white shark diving, all before mounting his motorbike and heading off in to the bush and up through Africa back to Amsterdam to face smuggling charges from his lorry driving days. Drugs, people who knows but while it’s still going to court I don’t think I should say anymore.
-We go down ten meters and level off
Everyone nods his or her head listening intently to the pre dive briefing
-Then follow me, there’s lots of fish’s and coral
We all nod again like good boys and girls. Alan and me are the oldest in the group. The rest of them are the usual array of crusty backpackers and parentally supported university students. Again you have to thank the Lonely Planet they’ve got Koh Toh down as the in place to do your dive course so the pilgrimage continues day in day out it makes you wonder if the guys that write the guide books have shares in the dive centers. Great accommodation and family atmosphere. Yeah sure it just means someone was sleeping in the bed five minutes before you got there and that everyone else in the hostel uses your stuff, just like home.
-Peter?
Frank pulls me aside before the off
-You still having trouble getting down
-Depends on the bird
-No not that descending?
-Yeah
With the size of me and the weight of the diving gear I’ve got strapped on you’d have thought I’d sink like the titanic but it’s not happening
-How much you have on the weight belt?
-I’m up to ten kilo
He shakes his head and sticks a few more weights into the pouch’s of my BCD (buoyancy control device)
-That should do it; I’ll see you on the bottom
We jump in and float about on the surface for a while as in turn we give the signal for ok before Frank disappears below the gentle waves. The dive master signals us in our buddy groups to follow one at a time. Now usually I’d take a minute or two to slowly sink and join the rest of the group but it feels like half an hour with everyone staring up at you waiting patiently for the lard arse to appear out of the blue. As always Alan and me are the last to go as the dive master likes to keep an eye on the senior citizens in case we try to bring our Zimmer frames along with us. We get the signal and give back the ok sign by making a zero with our thumb and finger, and then it’s the thumbs down. Deflate the BCD and
-Fuck!!!!
Freefall. A rubber clad A-bomb that sends the waiting divers scattering like skittles. I remember seeing Franks wide eyes behind his mask as I shot past, building up to terminal velocity just before the seabed and coral reef stopped my decent. I think for the first time I took a breath, while my ears were going snap crackle and pop as if someone had stuffed them full of Rice Crispies. Looking up I see the dive masters are already rounding up their charges who’ve been sent sprawling away from the force of my shock wave. Franks just shaking his head and points down at his favorite dive site which after hundreds of years I’ve just managed to fuck up. I inflate the BCD and float up to the group leaving behind the fish and other sea life unfortunate enough to have been underneath me. Jack Costeau it is defiantly not and if Sir David Attenbourgh ever finds out I’ll be an endangered species myself. Were all bunched up together again watching the sand settle below, as the final pieces of coral come to rest you can see the imprint of a pair of XXL flippers that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Hollywood boulevard.
Today’s dive is a lot less eventful and with no loss of sea life or casualties. Theirs loads of fish and a couple of Leopard sharks float silently around us as the vibrant colors of the coral reef try to out do the fish. It always amazes me no matter how many times I dive it’s always as awesome as the first. It is truly beautiful yet totally weird. I fell like a peeping tom in some alien world, which is strange really as this is where we all originally come from. When your down they’re nothing else exists you don’t think about any other stuff it’s as if for as long as your air lasts you’re free. Weightless soaring through the Garden of Eden but like everything it can’t last, so pass me an apple and chuck me out.
Well from sucking on a tank of pressurized gas to sucking on a bottle of pressurized beer. Now I think about it, it’s much the same as diving and if you over do it you feel as if you’ve got the bends the next day. Heading in the direction of the king Kong bar as theirs a well tasty bird there. She clocked me earlier at Lamia food court, gave me the eye and everything
-Hello, welcome
-Sit down
-You want a drink
-Play game
-Heineken please and no thanks
The nice one comes over and says hello I’ve known her a while but she’s always been a bit quiet.
-How are you?
-Good baby you
-Good, you want to play game
-Yeah ok
The other girl who asked when I sat down turns her nose up but she’ll get over it.
-What’s your name?
-Peter
-Yours
-Kai
-Same, same chicken
-Yes
She giggles covering her mouth the way most of the Thai girls do and yes she is very pretty
-When I born mama and papa say the chickens were making a lot of noise so they call me chicken. She laughs again and I’ve already decided I’m going to pay the bar fine. I ask her to sit down for a drink and she thrashes me at Thai checkers. I got no idea what the rules are but she seems to be able to move her pieces wherever she wants and as many times as she wants. While I only get one move or two if I’m lucky. I did win one game but fuck knows how.
We change games, as it’s obvious I’m not offering anything in the way of competition. She pulls out the dice game. Two dice and a board with the numbers one through to nine, which you can flick over. The idea is to roll the dice and use the combined total or the total of one of them to match the numbers on the board if the number matches you get to turn it over. To win the game you have to turn over all the numbers. If you can’t turn over a number you lose and the other person has a go. Simple really and unlike any of the other bar games it takes no skill what so ever, except the ability to count or in Robmans case to cheat. I’ve never seen anyone else stoop so low as to cheat at the dice game. It used to devastate me, I wouldn’t mind so much if he had something riding on it. It is his only claim to shame but come on son
-What you want to play for?
-Drink?
-I’ve just got you a drink, what else?
-What you like?
-You
-Ok, long time?
-You got a deal
First round and she can’t get rid of the nine, then I’m up and two double fives leave me up the creek before I’ve even got started. She pulls it out the bag on the second round, knocking the numbers off like a Nasa countdown. She even finishes with a double one.
-I win
-Sure did baby
-I no go with you long time
-Shame
-I come short time, ok?
I can’t complain about that
-We go now
-You’re a bit egger?
-We go
-Ok
Straight on to the back of her moped and were off. Her driving leaves a lot to be desired as she manages to find every pothole between the bar and the resort. Were in the room and the girls wild, totally outrageous in the sack. Well into the third bout when her mobile goes off it’s one of those ones that the longer you leave it the louder it gets.
-Oh fuck
-No stop, no stop
Were still going at it but the phone is going mental
-Take your call
-No stop, more
It’s doing my fucking head in and screwing up my rhythm
-Kai answer the phone
She gets off the bed and digs around in the jumble of clothes for her mobile
-Hello
Silence
-No I watching movie
Silence
-No I home
Silence
-Yes I do
Silence
-No understand
Silence
-For sure
Silence
-Yes
Silence
-Ok
Silence
-No
Silence
-Love you too
Silence
-Bye bye
She turns the phone off and comes back to sit on the edge of the bed
-Who was that?
-Boyfriend
-Oh
-No he no here
-It ok I go with you?
-Ok
-He from Italian
-Italy
-Yes, he wants me to go with him
-Lucky you
-Yes but he no here, he phone every night and morning
-For what
-No trust me
-No?
-He think a take man from bar
-No really?
-Yes he no trusts me sure
-Can’t see why not
She climbs back into bed and gives me a demonstration of how trustworthy she is. It’s no wonder the guys so into her as she is well up for it and a real honey by the sound of it she has the poor sod eating out of her hand. He sends money over every month so as to keep her off the game and out of the bars a lot of good that does. Then again theirs hundreds even thousands of bar girls running the same little scam. It’s a bit devious when you first see it but think about it from the girl’s perspective. They can double their earnings which means mama and papa back on the farm can have that new TV they’ve been after and as the girls know no matter what the guy says now about how it’s all going to be it might never happen. Some of the girls have been strung along for years waiting for their farang to come and take them away from it all.
Remember we are talking about bar girls, if your stupid enough to send them money be prepared when they don’t go back home to the paddy fields. The reason they didn’t stay there in a lot of cases is their own parents wanted shut of them, to many mouths to feed, otherwise their in the bars because they don’t fancy breaking their backs picking rice all day and running around cleaning dishes and tidying the house. I mean how crap would your life have to be before you’re prepared to sell your ass to some one you meet playing connect four in a bar. Throw them money and expect them to go running home? They want a better life not the same one with a bit of extra cash but if your offering more fool you.
So much for a short time. The phones ringing again and the sun is streaming through the poxy blue satin curtains. Woken up by love sick Italian is no way to start the day but at least it’s short and sweet and she hangs up sharpish.
-Hello
-Morning darlin, he always phones this early?
- Every day
-You ok?
-Yes, you?
She snuggles back in under the sheets and who couldn’t be
-Sure
-For sure?
-Yes
-You want more boom boom?
-Do bears shit in the woods?
-Eh?
-Come here
It’s after lunch by the time she leaves and I’ve figured out why she’s called chicken. Finger lick’n good.

-Where have you been dude”?
-He’s been all loved up with that chick from the King Kong bar
-She’s well nice dude
-Now you have to worry if H thinks she’s tidy
-Fuck off
-How was it?
-Well worth it
-Nice one dude
-Going back again
-Yeah
-He’s all loved up
-No sexed up
-Right dude
They both get up from the table
-Come on son, I hope you’ve saved some energy for badminton?
-What about a cuppa first?
-Your late are kid
-Fuck off I always wait for you two
But they’re already down the steps and onto the beach
- Oh fuck hold on!
Got beaten by Alan again but gave H a spanking he wont forget. Shouldn’t feel so chuffed as he can hardly see the shuttlecock, but fuck that a wins a win.
-I’ll see you down the food center
-Yeah
-What time?
-Six
-Ok
-Where’s he off too?
-Massage and e-mail
-What are you up to?
-Sleeping
-Come on are kid only a few days left, theirs no time for that
- I’m knackered
-Oh come on
-Where to?
-Chaweng
-For what?
-Shopping
-What contraband?
-For sure
-Yeah all right
H has been going on and on about contraband since he got here. It’s what he calls all the knocked off gear and I suppose I’d better do the present buying thing before I do all my wedge on girls and booze. The amazing thing about Thailand is that no matter where you are in this country you can buy exactly the same shit as you get everywhere else and it’s all tat or crap. Then again the people back home don’t know that. The only piece of tourist tat I refuse to buy is the crocodile wallet. You’re walking down the street and some dodgy geezer is waving it in your face and trying to set fire to it with a lighter? You get them offered to you even up visiting the hill tribes, their must be an army of the fuckers roaming around the country waving them around in tourists face’s with one hand while the other is clutching the strap of one of those blue expanding hold alls. God! For some reason they piss me right off but I’m sure it piss’s off the crocodiles more.
-What about your oldies?
-Naar, what’s the point buy them a present from Thailand post it back to England from south Africa for them to get when they come home from Saudi
-So is that a no?
-What about yours
-Sarong and useless nick knack
-The usual then
-You got it are kid
We walk up and down the streets of Chaweng until we eventually get everything we could of got back in Lamai while waiting for the Baht bus to pick us up.
What gets me is where do they find all this shit? I can’t begin to imagine the size of the warehouse that they keep getting all this crap from. I could just be being naive. We are in sweatshop city land. They probably just pick it all up from some back ally in Bangkok that knocks the stuff out day in and day out. A lot of the girls who end up on the bars have done that sort of thing before blowing it for an easier way to make a living, makes you think how bad it must be. Little kids cramped up in tiny airless rooms full of sewing machines. It’s not just the knocked off gear I’m talking about. Most of the big named brands have factories all over Asia. You have to admit it’s a bit of a piss take. They make it up over here for peanuts or in the Thais case for the price of a bag of rice. Do a nice bit of packaging and sell it back home at a serious mark up. We shouldn’t just blame the greedy companies with there bottom lines and ruthless marketing campaigns designed to convince today’s youth that they really need to have it, there whole position in society depends on it. In fact there whole existence rest on the fact they have it not just their street cred, so they had better beg, borrow or steal to get it. Send your mum or dad out for it using kiddy blackmail tactics until they get off their arse and dig into the saving account to buy it. What ever it takes “just do it”. And make sure it’s none of that knock off shit from off the market.
You also have to look at the governments as well, with their outrageous taxation. How else are they going to be able to give themselves nice fat pay raises let alone buy all those nice new bombs and million pound planes and submarines so were all set and ready for the next world war when it goes off. I don’t really see the logic in having all those men and machines. What’s the point in having all this hardware and manpower sat waiting around and getting obsolete. All you really need is a couple of nukes looked after by a few computer geeks. Stick all the rest of the resources into the police force and other emergency services you can even get the royal engineers to do a bit of road work and knock up a bridge here or there a tunnel under there and we could be in Berlin by Christmas.
Surely public health, pensions and the education system should take president but that would be to simple wouldn’t it. God forbid anyone would try to improve the average persons life. Less work, more money a better standard of living. Try to bring back the family unit rather than the latch key kids of today. Growing up with out the guidance of parents because they off working all day to put food on the table and buy all the shit we have to have so as to prove to everyone else were doing all right. I don’t think I’m asking for much only the simple things in life. I’m not on any sort of witch-hunt or want to bring down the monarchy and rebel against the class system. Fuck that, they can keep their big draughty houses with their formal gardens, but lets get the homeless off the streets. Sort out the shit on our own doorstep before we go off trying to bail out some other country. It’s just a way for the powers that be to take our eyes off our own problems a little slight of hand to keep the audience guessing. Comic relief, band aid all worthy causes but what about the old dears who freeze to death each and every winter cause the pension doesn’t give them enough money for food and warmth. Supplementary benefit that cant even keep a door mouse alive let alone a family of four when the head of the household losses his job because the car plant gets shut down. All because its cheaper to build motors in Japan or eastern Europe and no ones buying new cars as the government has put so much tax on them only the rich can afford them. The queues for hip replacement at the NHS are longer than those for the January sales. It’s a joke a really pathetic joke and no ones laughing.

Not long left and it’s back to Bangkok for a revenge tour before we fly back to darkest Africa. Only four days but that should be long enough to get us in trouble. Then it’s back to the dog and another year of grafting and avoiding any sort of relationship like the plague. So with such a short time left it’s time to top up the tan so I’ll be flaking nicely by the time I get back as Bangkok’s going to be the all day drinking scene around Nana with all the other old boys and their albino bar tans. H is sat on the beach when we get back and we dump the gear in the rooms and I grab the factor ten which Alan takes from me and toss’s in the trash before going over to the resort kitchen to borrow some cooking oil.
I’m dripping in fat and cooking away like a pork banger but it’s low in polyunsaturated so not only will Oprah be happy but I’ve also halved my chances of having a heart attack. I can feel my skin starting to blister already. The worried looks from passers by who stop and stare soon draws a crowd who working together in teams start a human chain to the waters edge, passing back water to keep me damp before they gather up enough man power to roll me back into the sea. They shouldn’t have worried about the extra muscles as with the first push I slide gracefully down towards sea helped along by all the dripping fat. I could have done with out the smart arse trying to whack me with a bottle and name me her majesty fat bastard. The sound of cheering and the sight of smiling faces, the ribbons being thrown over me as I glide on towards the waters edge while a brass band play away in the background. I hit the water with a splash and then I hear the screams as the spectators catch sight of the iceberg as it appears from nowhere. Not even enough time to lower the life boats before we collide.
-Aaaagh, what the fuck
-It’s only ice dude
-But I was sleeping
-And burning
-Oh shit
I’m glowing like the ready break kid or a Chernobyl survivor. I stand up but it takes a while as I’m so well cooked my skin has shrunk. Hobble down to the sea and shuffle in but the water starts to sizzle as I make my way further in. the salt water takes the bite out of the burn a bit but I’ll need some sort of treatment because if I don’t do nothing about now it’s going to be really burning tonight. So only one thing for it.
-Fancy a beer?
The problem with starting on the piss early is your unplayable by the time your average school kid has finished doing his or hers home work. I’m bollocked by half eight and have to show myself the red card. It feels like its miles back to our gaff and god knows how I pulled but the performance was defiantly not one of my best. She wants to stay long time and is trying her best to get me to let her stay but there’s no chance of that with the way I’m feeling. I slip her the wedge but she’s still going on
-I smoke pipe for you?
-Nah
-I good smoke
Jesus Christ girl, she’s got more chance of raising the titanic than giving me another hard on. It’s a sorry sight but you have to admire the girl’s persistence. Nice to see someone taking a little bit of pride in their work. It doesn’t last for very long before she spits it out in disgust. Put it down to a bad day at the office girl, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Too much beer, too much sex I must be hitting the limit of natural endurance and it’s really no surprise. She’s getting dressed in a hurry and mumbling under her breath so I don’t think she’s too happy. Weird eh, been paid and didn’t have to perform too much. She should be happy, think of it as a testimonial match. I try to say good-bye but she’s still going on
-Moa Loa, moa Loa
It means shitfaced, drunk, arseholed, smashed, pissed, rotten and rat arsed and anything else that would adequately describe how I feel. She slams the door and I’m left guilty as charged, holding on to the sides of the bed as the world spins around me. I wish I could do this trick when I’m sober, motion without moving that is until I have to get off the magic roundabout to go and hurl.
It’s a glorious day and I’m first up which surprises me the shit out of me. No idea what happen to the lads, theirs a pair of platform shoes outside Alan’s door and now H has moved in next-door to me we can keep an eye on him. Just his mouldy old sandals and the front wheel of a moped, sometimes it’s better not to ask.

-You like massage?
I’ve come down to one of H’s favorite haunts. A cheap rub and tug joint, not really looking for any action but someone had to bring back the wheel and now I’m here no point in wasting the opportunity. As massages go it’s pants but the tug is performed with a certain amount of experience and flair so it’s not a total loss.

-So what’s on the cards for tonight?
-Absolutely nothing
-No way dude
-Yes way, feed a movie and other than that I’m doing nothing
-Come on dude
-No
-Up to you son
A night off and I’m in desperate need of it, I really should pace myself or I’m going to need another holiday when I get back just to get over this one. This isn’t everyone’s idea of a holiday and pushes the body and mind way beyond the limits of a couple of weeks in Ibiza. The endurance and stamina needed to complete a tour is a testimony to how much abuse the human body can actually take. It’s the sort of trip that can but years on you. You can spot the guys who have been over here longer than is considered polite. The far away stares, the mind numbing conversation all in pigeon English cause they don’t know how else to talk anymore. Been on their own to long left trying to hold up a bar, playing connect four and having a conversation with themselves. Luckily when we come over there’s always a crew or at the very least Alan and me. It helps with the recovery time when you get back, no serious you spend too much time over here and when you get back you look at things as if you’re still over here.
Checking the e-mails and Robmans already back in Africa. Still not working but he’s got enough money not to stress about it and from what he’s written it looks as if he’s still stuck on the bird from Phucket. So this could end up being a love story after all. That would make a nice change to have a happy ending but what are the chances of that.
Peace and quiet makes a nice change, my love affair with my air conditioner is still going strong but I must admit I’m getting more and more feed up with the lack of water pressure on the island or maybe it’s just Lamai? The TV remote is also bugging me out. We got satellite in the rooms but to change the channel you have to stick your head out of the window and shout across the resort car park for them to change stations. It wouldn’t be so bad apart from when the owners fat little kid starts flicking through the channels while the football is on, little bastard. Back to the water pressure its island style and since the bout of food poisoning the toilet hasn’t been the same. You have to flush it at least three times just to change the colour of piss water to pale yellow. The showers not much better you have to skip in and out of the drops of water just to get wet. I think I’ve got island madness it’s a common condition and can only be cured by the bright lights of a big city.
Feeling fresh and well up for it. The obligatory beach walk but the badminton is cut short owing to wind conditions. I even felt fit enough to swim out to the buoy that marks the boundary in the bay for the jet skis. Fifteen minutes to swim out there and half an hour to swim back which for me is good. All things considered looking back it’s been a top tour with the added bonus that I’ve lost some weight and I’m feeling fitter now than I have in ages. That could be because it’s the first day I haven’t had a hangover for a while.
-Sunday lunch?
-Has to be a roast
-Where?
-Not the Mahoney arms
The things some people do, some mad bastard bought up the interior of his old local after the brewery had changed the décor because the place was a shit tip. He even bought the carpet which came complete with fag burns and drink stains. He boxes the whole lot up and ships all the shit over here. You would have thought customs would have stopped it coming into the country, it’s illegal to smuggle drugs into Thailand as it is in most countries the penalty over here is just a lot harsher, but it’s all right to bring in a container of full of shit? He then sticks it all up again in a pub in Lamai, fucking madness. Most people come on holiday to get away from the same old shit at home he brings it all along with him. The foods not that bad but its got as much atmosphere as the British legion.
-What about Churchill’s?
-No you can’t go there
-Why not dude?
-Haven’t you heard about are kid and the cottage pie?
-Give it a rest
-What’s this dude?
-We had a feed there last year and he hadn’t finished chewing the last bite before he’s up and running to the toilet with his hands holding his arse cheeks together.
-No way dude, it’s not possible
-Tell him are kid
-It’s possible
-It takes hours to go through you dude
-Not me son
-It must have been something else
-No. It was all mash potatoes; peas and diced carrots straight through it even came out with the garnish
-So what’s that leave?
-The Raising Sun
-Sounds good to me
-They’ve got three types of roast on
-What’s that the usual
-Chicken, lamb and beef
-You mean water buffalo
-Yeah but don’t tell H he’ll go back to being a veggie again
-I heard that dudes no way, water buffalo?
-What happened to you being a vegetarian anyway?
-I’m on holiday dudes
I’m sure it makes sense to H but it baffles me

-What the fucks this
-Sunday roast, you like?
-It’s cold
-So’s mine
-You no ask for hot
-You’re having a laugh
-No understand
-What he means love is we ordered Sunday roast not a Sunday salad
-You want hot?
-That’s the idea
-Why you no say?
-Didn’t know we had to
-You tell me hot or cold
-Ok hot
-Yes hot
-Make that three
She picks up the plates and heads back to the kitchen shouting out orders to the cook. It’s all a little bit weird but being in Thailand it’s not at all surprising. The food reapers after a long enough break for the cook to have tossed it around the kitchen a bit first but at least it’s hot. Even the spuds have miraculously changed from cold boiled to deep-fried bullets. All in all it’s not bad by island standards and they give you enough gravy to flood Bangladesh.
-Stuffed
-Come on are kid its just one potato
-Yeah your potato
-I’ll have it dude if you don’t want it
-Be my guest
-Cool dude
-What now?
-It’s Sunday so fuck all and plenty of it
-I’m up for that
-H, get the waitress attention will you
-Yeah dude, oh baby!
-Not what I had in mind H, can I check bin
-You like it hot or cold?
Theirs a comedian born every minute
Chaweng is heaving by the time we get there and start on a bar crawl around the Green Mango area. Theirs loads of bars but theirs also a hefty backpacker presence with an added array of holidaying couples and young families. God knows how but we end up drawn to the katoy cabaret like fly’s to shit. It’s the usual laugh a minute. The geezer birds are handing out raffle tickets and now charging for the show. Who can blame them as theirs loads of people already gathered around to watch the action? It’s not expensive and you now have the chance of winning a free feed at the German sausage shop. Transvestites and bratwurst?
The old boy that does an act with a rubber dick is calling out the winning number and Lisa points out Alan from the stage.
-You win
-No
-It you
-No it’s all right
-He win, he win
Alan’s now surrounded by geezer birds all going off like it’s the Oscars. He’s dragged from his seat as the rest of the audience joins in, clapping and whistling. The geezer bird’s man handle him to the stage and push him up. The old boy is there to greet him waving his rubber dick for all it’s worth. The he jams the mike in Alan’s face, he should be thankful it’s not the dildo.
-Congratulations
-Err yeah thanks
Alan goes to take the coupon off Lisa and do a quick exit stage left but the other geezer birds have covered all the exits.
-What your name?
-Alan
-Where you from?
-South Africa
-You on holiday?
-Yes
-You like lady boys?
-Yes
The geezer birds go wild and jump him it’s a full-scale pile on. The crowd is loving it and theirs a standing ovation. The rest is a team secret.

Last day in paradise but we still got Bangkok with all the beer bars and massage pallor’s, that’s just “one night in Bangkok” and we’ve got four.
A day of floating in the warm sea of the Thai gulf and trying to forget last night.
It’s an early start tonight and we all go are separate ways. Alan’s gone off with Nan saying his goodbyes and I’m back heading over to the Sukara or King Kong bar for a nice farewell as for H he’s still got a couple of more days left and theirs still a whole lot more trouble that he can get himself into.
I pay the bar fine at king Kong bar and tell her I’ll pick her up later as I still have to say my goodbyes. Wondering from bar to bar to say goodbye to all the mama sans and all the long and short times. It might seem a bit strange but I’ve known a lot of these girls for a good few years now and for the most their good people. Theirs even a few tears and a lot of good wishes and worthless promises. Back to Sukara to say goodbye but end up paying the bar so now I’m fucked, but I do like the girl. The one over in King Kong doesn’t mind as long as I have a drink with her before I go.
All sorted so me and my Lamai princess take are last walk through the palm trees back to the resort, I even say goodbye to magic and the vampire on the way past but it doesn’t go down as well as expected. I say it’s the last walk with this girl because she’s such a nice girl I don’t think she’ll be here next year, good luck to her.
She’s gone before I wake up but she’s left her e-mail address, mobile number as well as a photo. You can’t help but like the girl and she didn’t even take any wedge, which is a nice touch. I’m packed and ready go in twenty minutes, outside Alan’s already waiting.
-Where’s Nan?
-Gone already, English class’s
-H?
-Fuck only knows, he’s not in
-We can drop him an e-mail from Bangkok
Say goodbye to the resort staff before the taxi gets here.
Then were off being driven down the main street watching the girls clean up their bars, getting them ready for another night and another guy.



























Chapter 10



Back in the big city and I’m timing how long it takes before Alan’s knocking on my hotel room door. Two knocks, seven and half minutes it’s a new record. I open the door but it’s not Alan, it’s the bellboy
-You like massage, I get lady for you?
-Not a bad idea but I’m waiting on my friend
-No problem he take lady all ready
-Bastard, send one up
-Ok, no problem
I drop the guy the tip nothing to small or he will return the favour by sending me a dog. I’m sat waiting for my room service order; the shower was like Niagara Falls. It’s good to be back in civilization

Sat waiting in the boarding lounge and were both knackered after four days of excess, I’m totally shot I don’t think I’ve been to sleep for the last ninety six hours. Time to go home but I’m not that keen on the idea. We shuffle through the boarding gate with the rest of the peasants who can’t afford club or first class. In the plane pushing past people who are trying to jam their oversized hand luggage into the overhead storage bins. Eventually get past the overweight mamas and slide into my allocated seat, buckle up while Alan climbs in next to me and we wait. The plane starts to taxi to the runway. The engines start to roar and it’s goodbye Thailand.

It took me a month before we could get hold of H. he reckons he can’t remember what happened that night but I’m sure it ended down the beach and in the palm trees.
Bob got through twelve rolls of film, which he’s still threatening to show us.
Ken has got a website and you can find it your self.
Robman, well the girl from Phucket did come over to South Africa. She got herself a job in a brothel in Johannesburg. She would of done anything for him but it didn’t work out that way. It was all right her brassing back home in Thailand but South Africa was a bit to close for comfort, he didn’t want to know. I think he was a bit hurt, there she was doing anything to be near him and all he could see was she was fucking other guys. Sad really it was only her job always had been, it wasn’t as if it meant anything but Robman didn’t see it that way. She left after Robman had given her the cold shoulder once to often. He can see it now but it’s a bit late, he still e-mails her so you never know maybe one day we’ll have a love story after all.
As for Alan and me we’ll be back next year, we always are………..