Minds Your Head/BAGAN

I wear my Moustache Brothers shirt to the airport in the morning, just to see if something happens. Maybe 'cause I haven't done anything reckless and stupid in too long, and I had a blog to write. I'm looking out for you guys. Unfortunately (?), nothing happened. I very coolly unclenched my buttocks and took my unassigned seat on the plane. Emergency exit seat again, as luck would have it. That has to be about one out of every three flights on this trip, not that it's foreshadowing anything. Really, it's not. Where was I? Oh yeah, right before this dude Chekhov let me hold his gun. But before that...

A taxi from the Bagan airport into Nyaung-U costs 5,000 ks, which leaves me with less than 100,000, or a little over 100 USD, for the next six days. Which should be fine, it's not like Myanmar doesn't have ATMs or any other way to get...oh. Time to hit the shoestring section of Lonely Planet harder than a silverback gorilla playing whack-a-mole in a middling New Yorker cartoon.

I price shop hostels like a person who is responsible with money, and still end up paying 7 USD, which is a little heftier than the $3 quoted in Lonely Planet. On the bright side, I meet a French couple who let me borrow their battery charger. It's for a different model, but if I shove it in haphazardly I can get the metal contacts to touch. On the non-bright side, I get all this done just in time for the electricity to be turned off for the afternoon. Which means no camera for the temples of Bagan, one of the most amazing sights in the world (maybe? doubtless with my luck). Something out there really just does not want me using consumer electronics.

Regardless, I'm going to use photos from when my camera did start working, just to break up this wall of text. If you're a dude who has "verisimilitude" tattooed across your chest in Olde Englishe font then I apologize, for this and a lot of things in general.

So you don't have to wait to look at this.

I'm late for a horse cart I arranged to meet earlier, but as I walk around looking for a new one, his brother stops and picks me up. We talk mostly about Korean movies and Korean girls. He thinks Korean girls are the hottest. Not a bad stance. I'm still curious about those Uzbeks, though.

Bagan is stunning. More than 2200 temples, monasteries, and pagodas crowd the dusty, clay-red landscape. Climbing to the tops of certain pagodas offers some of the most incredible views I've ever seen. And it's all barely regulated. Whereas similar sites in the world would have UNESCO crews fixing up everything, and barring entry in half the temples, the closed government here means you practically have free reign in the 13 x 8 km plains. Clambering through narrow, claustrophobic stone staircases and all over massive, decrepit stupas is the shit, and that same oppressive government meant I had all of it more or less to myself. There were touts outside all the major temples selling postcards and paintings and lacquerware, but other tourists were few and extremely far between. The entire experience can be boiled down to this: Feeling like Indiana Goddamn Jones. Few things get better than that.

Fuck lacquerware, the market here is wide open for fedoras and bullwhips.

One of the big stops on the horse cart circuit is Shwezigon Pagoda. Some women and children immediately beeline towards me an insist on giving me a tour, but I'm onto their game. I keep trying to split off before I'm pestered for money, but they're persistent, so I give in. They want to give me a tour, let's go. What's that, another Buddha? Careful, I'm not sure my heart can take much more excitement. They half-follow me and I half-follow them around the place, the women occasionally clucking and warning, "Minds your head!" They show me how to wash the Buddha heads, and rub the Buddha tummies. The cutest little girl pins a tiny paper butterfly to my shirt. Once they're done showing me around, the women ask for a "present". I tell 'em I've got nothing for 'em, and they see I mean business. They all stomp off, muttering angrily. The little girl unpins the paper butterfly from my shirt with great efficiency and solemnity, like I've just been dishonorably discharged from her adorable army. I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting a little.

Before breaking for lunch, we knock out a couple more temples, I see more Buddhas than Siddartha's mirror, and I disappoint even more vendors and touts.

Do you think they call Christmas lights "Buddha lights" here?

Regardless, they still all insist "Minds your head". I'm not sure if this means anything, but the one time someone tells me to minds my head without trying to sell me anything, next thing I do is bash my head in an especially narrow staircase. Probably doesn't mean anything.

This place does look like it's lousy with curses.

The horse driver takes me eat at a vegetarian restaurant called Be Kind of Animals, which pretty much nails the point. I get some tomato curry and tamarind juice, and an elderly Swiss gentleman at the next table orders orange sodas for his horse cart driver, before chatting me up. My first thought is he must be a rich prick, but it turns out he's a retiree building schools in rural Myanmar.

"I always come out to Bagan every few weeks, just to have a shower and an aircon. There is no electricity in the village I stay in. It takes eight hours for me to walk from the village to the road where taxis are, so I cannot come too often."

Fuck me. After he shows me some pictures of the school he's currently building, I mention my stuff stolen in Ko Tao so that I can futilely try to keep up in the hardship game. He insists that Burmese people could not have stolen my things, and it must've been the Thais. Apparently he regularly leaves around a bag of all his cash, thousands upon thousands of dollars, and even though all the villagers know where it is, none of them touch it, nor would they even think of touching it. I don't really know how to respond, so I ask what it is he used to do, and he tells me his work was mainly around Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East. He says he built textile factories, but that's exactly what the world's most charming retired arms dealer would say. He goes on to say that he's been to the USA 50-60 times, and every state but Hawaii.  I ask if he's been to Seattle. He loved the fish tossing at Pike Place. Before he leaves, he regales me with a tale about his favorite place in America.

"I love Las Vegas! Do you play poker?" I reply that I know of Texas Hold 'Em, and that's about it.

"Texas Hold 'Em, that is poker for babies! I play Omaha Poker. It is the most difficult. One time I was in Las Vegas playing Omaha, and I was playing with the world champion, the 3rd best in the world, the 7th best, and 3 others. It was my greatest game. I was up 50,000 dollars, and I took it and walked away. I knew it would get no better, so I walked away. It was a good day."

No sir, I wouldn't mind being that guy for a a few years to a lifetime, even if he does remind me for some reason of one of those old Nazi war criminals who escaped to South America. But that's just me being an asshole, and why I'll never be that guy. Bummer.

Just as we finish the tour it starts to rain, so we start to head back to the guesthouse. Along the way, I run into Mathieu, and I'm a little surprised to actually see him. I know we said we might meet up, but it's still a pleasant event when it actually happens. Probably something to do with my insecurities. He's with Kim, a Dutch girl who was also at the Moustache Brothers show. We eat dinner together, and hear that tonight is the Full Moon Festival. According to Lonely Planet, this means a lot of drunken revelry. According to the horse cart driver, it means absolutely no drunken revelry, because it celebrates the day Buddha became...Buddha. And I guess he didn't like the sauce. We spy a parade cruising by, and it leads us to a local volleyball match next to a pagoda. We sit on a wall to watch, and are immediately beset by a mob of children asking our names, asking for money, asking for food, water, candy, high-fives, handshakes, photos, to be picked up, to be swung around...I play jankenpo and do some clapping games with some, while other children keep trying to smell and kiss my hands. One of the children is wearing a Nazi shirt. Kim takes a boatload of photos, and finally the volleyball match ends with a fight. We promise the children we'll come back the next day, which was a lie.

Feeling dusty and filthy, we split up to take showers. The shower stall at the guesthouse has a red lightbulb, for that special gas chamber ambiance that you want. Our night ends with a puppet show at Pyiwa, that just consists of a lot of manic puppet dancing. It's not bad. Kim is leaving the next day, so I arrange with Mathieu to move into the room they're sharing.

In the morning, I give back the camera battery charger I've borrowed, psyched to finally rent a bicycle and get some pictures of those temples. Of course, it's raining. After breakfast, I use a squatter toilet for the first time, IN MY LIFE. My thighs felt like hot, quivering jelly that had just lost a fight to a much stronger alpha-jelly. No wonder you see old Asian people wandering around parks at night, doing their little exercises. Gotta get shredded if you wanna poop.

The rain finally stops around 1pm, so I try to check out of my guesthouse. There's no one at the front desk, only a boy outside asleep. I wake him, but he doesn't speak English or know what "checkout" means. I point to my money, my bags, and my room key, but he's still clueless. He calls in some old guy, who notices that I'm supposed to stay 2 nights. He fucks me on the exchange rate from kyat to USD, but there's not a lot I can do about that.

At the other guesthouse, Golden Village, I ask for Mathieu's room. "What country?" "France." "Room 202." He greets me in the room and we meet Kim at a restaurant. There, I find out that Mathieu is into punk music. I ask him what bands he likes. "Rancid, Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Choking Victim..." It's like he's reading the handmade liner notes of one of my high school mix CDs.

Way too eagerly, I ask him, "Oh my god, 'Crack Rock Steady'?!"

"Are you ready to stop / The rotten blue menace, let's go kill us a cop!" Mathieu sings back.

In unison, we belt out the chorus: "Crack rock steady! Are you ready?! Living above the law!"

Kim looks on with what a fancy man might call "abject horror". I don't give a shit. I just found a new best friend for the day.

Before Kim leaves, she the two of us sign a friend journal that she keeps, which strikes me as a fantastic idea for traveling. We both write a little note in the book about meeting her and jot down some contact info, and read some of the notes other people have also left her. Then she packed her bags and took off, and it was just me and my new punk buddy.

It's now around 1pm, so we've got a decent amount of time to still hit the temples. We rent bicycles, and set out on a road picked at random, singing "500 Channels", "Ca Plane Pour Moi", "Danger! High Voltage", and anything else that has a dumb chorus you can sing loud enough to spook the locals.

It should come as no surprise when I say this, but the pictures I finally managed to take did not match the initial wonder I felt the day before.

Total bullshit.

The lighting was poorer, and the temples we saw a bit less magnificent. Yet...I was having immensely more fun. And it was all thanks to the music, because music matters to me. If I may, a moment about music:

I think most people would agree that good music feels like the greatest, coolest, most fun guy you'll ever meet. You love hanging out with him, can't wait to introduce him to all your friends, invite him around everywhere you go, get really excited when he shows up at the bar. He's life of the party. For me, I was a socially awkward kid for most of my life. I found I could protect myself and deflect attention with a pair of headphones. When I had few friends, or none at all, music was there for me. Music was love. For me, that great cool fun guy that everyone wants to hang out with, I had a not-so-secret crush on him. I was, and continue to be, enraptured by him. I want to know all about his friends, his parents, his children. I want to live inside him, have him always around, have him never leave my side. I want to introduce him to my girlfriend, and see where things go. I want to know his other lovers, and bicker and rejoice over his being.

Hence why having any sort of mp3 player on my trip at all times feels so vital. Hence why I nitpick over the songs that go on said mp3 player, and waste time at slow-as-molasses internet cafes downloading new ones. When I'm traveling, access to music can be more important than my passport. For me, singing punk songs with an agreeable Frenchman while biking through a rust-colored mythscape could be considered a transformative experience. A+, highly recommended, would bike again.

It could just be the sugarcane juice talking, though. I drank a lot of sugarcane juice.

Apparently these new, box-looking pagodas are built by all those corrupt government officials trying to buy their way into nirvana.

A guy on motorcycle stops and says he can "show good sunset". We take him at his word, and of course when we get there he turns out to be a painter and wants us to take a look at his paintings. Mathieu buys a small one of a monk. Still, he told no lie. It good sunset.

After we've headed back to our guesthouse, Mathieu asks if I've heard of the band Morning Glory. I say no, and he says the most French thing I've ever heard: "Tonight, you will fall in love." He may even have kissed his fingers "muah". They're a crust-punk band similar to Choking Victim, and he plays me their song "Gimme Heroin". I do fall in love, and in return turn him onto Aesop Rock and Dead Prez.

Mathieu also brings up something I said earlier about running out of money, and offers to loan me some money. I balk, but in time accept $25 from him. I need it. All in all, I've got about 64,000 KS (66 USD) now, and a heart that would put the post-holiday-terrorism Grinch to shame. My situation's still rough, but a little less blowjobs-in-the-near-future grim.

Drinking and Diving/KO TAO

Somehow, incredibly, I wake up on time to catch my boat. Well, not on time-on time, but only a little late, as opposed to major missed-the-boat-fuck-everything late. I'm finally getting off this rock. Ko Tao here I come, to dive and relax and be merry. I throw my stuff together in a rush and check out. The guy at the desk only charges me 300 baht for losing the key, instead of the full 500 penalty they have written. I'm all feeling good vi-bra-tions.

As per the instructions on my travel ticket, I wait on the side of a road about 10 minutes walk from Venus. A songthaew (a modified pick-up truck with bench seats and a roof in the back) pulls up, a few minutes early.

"Are you the pick-up?" I ask.

"Yes yes!" A middle-age Thai woman in the passenger seat nods, and waves me in. I heave my backpack onto the vehicle, and we take off. There are three other foreign passengers, none of whom seem to have the same ticket I do. Before we reach the dock, the driver lets out two of the passengers, who, instead of handing the Thai woman a ticket like mine, pay in cash. A few minutes later, the driver stops again at an ATM, so another passenger can withdraw some cash to pay the woman.

"Do you have a boat ticket yet?" the woman asks me. Considering I have a joint ticket with the car pick-up and the boat arranged together, alarm bells are ringing. Man, am I tired of metaphorical alarm bells.

We pull into Thongsala Pier, where I get out and start walking away. Immediately, the driver and the woman start yelling at me for money. Pulling out my ticket, I insist I've already paid, because hey look at this ticket I have that I paid for. "That is for van! Not us!" she yells.

Dammit. Yes, it was probably my fault that I got into the wrong vehicle. Yes, considering my recent transformative drug experience, I could probably be a little more patient and understanding. But I've just had way too little sleep for this enlightenment bullshit. Breakthrough drug trip or no, I'm ready to get ugly. I mean, unless they call over the cops. If that happens, I'll totally pussy out and pay them whatever they want and apologize shamefully and profusely. But otherwise, I'm your motherfucker.

"You told me to get in! You can call the ticket people and get your money, but I'm not paying!" In response, the woman calls for the driver, a short and stout older gentleman, who steps out of the songthaew. In the back are still two German girls, watching the whole scene. The driver walks up to me and brandishes a handful of coins.

"You call! You call people! Here, I even pay for phone!" I check the ticket, and as I thought, there's no phone number, because why the hell would there be. My resolve starts to let up, and I offer him half the cost of the ride. No dice. Growing angrier, he demands the full amount, shouting that it was my mistake, that I need to call the travel people and get my money back, and pay him his due.

"I can't! I'm leaving! Take half, or nothing."

He stops shouting now. "See what happens if you leave," he says, leaning into me.

I figure if this dude really wanted to pursue a legitimate restitution, he would've called the cops over at any point. And as it is, despite the number of brutal Muay Thai matches I've seen, pudgy 5-foot songthaew drivers just don't intimidate me. That's just the form my racism has taken, I guess.

"I will leave!" I wave my ticket in his face. "I've got my ticket! My boat's over there!"

"See what happens," he goads.

"Okay," I say, and turn to walk towards the ferry. He grabs my arm. Every muscle in my body tenses at once. I lean right up into his tiny, fat face.

The woman calls out something in Thai from the songthaew, and the man relents. He gets in the vehicle, while she waves me off angrily. I walk away carefully, an enormous knot of adrenaline vibrations tying up my joints. I buy a tuna sandwich for the boat ride. 100 baht. That's how much he wanted me to pay. I almost fought a cab driver for 3 bucks, and it was probably really my fault to begin with. I really need to get off Ko Pha Ngan.

At the end of the pier I find our cast thus far: Sander, Tyler, Hefina, Cyndi, Bethany, and another Brit girl, Anna. Janice has left, off to pursue her own interests. As we wait for the ferry, Hefina mentions how she and a few of the others had to wait while their van made a stop for some "boy" who never showed up, and asks where the hell I was. My answer is vague, as I don't feeling like telling them about the songthaew. The less I think about it, the less my actions have consequences.

The ferry to Ko Tao takes about 2 hours, during which we're solicited by a handful of shills for the island's various diving resorts. The decision is made to stay at Big Blue Diving, on account of someone having seen the name in Lonely Planet. Apparently my new traveling buddies make a vast number of decisions this way. The brochure-pusher for Big Blue makes a call, and by the time we dock there's a ride already waiting for us. Great schools of fish coil beneath our feet as we walk down the pier to meet the Big Blue rep, and get taken to the resort.

Once checked in, we're all split into two rooms with bunk beds but, more importantly, AC. After dropping off luggage, we all reconvene to peruse the diving packages. I opt to get my Advanced Diving license, because Ko Tao is one of the cheapest and best places in the world to do certifications, so even if I can't actually "afford" it, at least it feels like I'm saving money. Everyone else opts to do various fun dives, except for Anna, whose leg is still healing from a scooter accident, and Hefina, who is terrified of diving, but we peer pressure into getting her Open Water license regardless.

Sander, having sat still for over an hour, does flips for awhile.

Not only does Big Blue have some decent deals on diving, but it also has a floating bar, where you can wade knee-deep into the ocean to drink beers from a boat moored twenty feet offshore:

It's...beautiful.

A few of us grab some kebabs, and explore around our neck of the island. By coincidence, Fred, who I previously gabbed about Dragon Tattoos and such with, has also ended up on Ko Tao. Bethany and I tag along with him back to his diving resort, Lotus, and watch the best fireshow I've seen yet:

Of particular interest is one of the fire dancers will walk into the audience, still spinning his fire cups, and twirl them so near to one's face that he can (and does) light a cigarette.

If we were sober this would probably seem really dangerous.

Staying in the same room is an eighteen-year old Israeli dude by the name of Amzi, whom I meet the following day after an afternoon dive. We hit up the floating bar for some light conversation, and as a perfect island sunset falls into our drinks, Amzi tells me all about terrorism and how this skinny Israeli kid with the goofy hair knows how to drive tanks.

With the appropriate amount of libation, Amzi, Bethany, and I find our way to Ko Tao's only ladyboy bar, known as The Queen, where I may or may not have been dragged on stage to pole dance with the ladies.

To be fair, that could be any handsome, devilishly charming, horribly sunburned foreigner.

Aw geez.

Afterward, our bartender host Mickey challenges me to a game of Connect Four, which is what one comes to expect from bored bartenders in Thailand. And I'm proud to say, for the first time in Thailand, I won a goddamn game of Connect Four. Upping the ante, Mickey brings out a Jenga set, and ropes Bethany in. Ladyboys fucking love Hasbro, I guess. The loser has to drink out of a warm, haphazardly mixed bucket drink that seems to be mostly backwash and sand, so the stakes are high.

Jenga-high.

Cyndi shows up, and makes about a hundred requests for Lady Gaga. I'm done after hearing the second remix of "Just Dance", and leave for a party at The Castle, a club in the middle of the island that takes far too long to get to, and maybe it's pertinent somehow that I have a particularly deep dive early in the morning that I should probably be awake and ready for, but you know what The Castle has a neon glow-in-the-dark triceratops:

Eat it, every other club in the universe.

Now, if only you weren't filled with assholes...

My dive instructor in the morning sees my Castle stamp and expresses grave reservations about me being prepared for the dive, even though he's Scottish, and I feel like there's some type of stereotype there that he's not playing by. Regardless, I dive, and I'm fucking awesome at it. Afterwards, I take a quick nap before our night dive on the same day.

As our last dive for the licenses, Iain doesn't even wait till we've showered off the salt water before taking our diving license photos.

Motherfucking Jacques Cousteau.

Bethany decides spur-of-the-moment that she wants one of them bamboo tattoos, so I go with her as moral and physical support. We end up at The Office, an outdoor bar that has a very strict music request policy:

Good for them. I have some more drinks on the beach with Bethany and Mathilde, our Danish roommate, and go back to the room, to smoke more cigarettes with Bethany and enjoy my first night in Ko Tao without diving the next morning. The only place I want to see now is Chumphon Pinnacle, on the off-chance of seeing a whale shark, but the boat tomorrow is full.

Bethany leaves early in the morning, whispering goodbyes to all in the dorm room. Hefina heads out for Chumphon Pinnacle as the last dive of her Open Water, as I go with Cyndi, Anna, and Sander to inquire about cliff diving. The local shop, Good Time Adventures, disappoints with the news that we'd have to get full-day packages, as a recent storm has destroyed all the bridges between cliffs, making it impossible to go by land. Instead, we ask about wakeboarding. Their boat is broken. The four of us end up climbing rocks on the shore, get ice cream, and venture out to Kimg Rama Rock.

When we stop at a local shop for water, I find this sign, which is far more educational than any number of years in higher education:

Mathilde gets a tattoo, and once again I provide a hand to hold as her foot is punctured again and again by a thin bamboo spear.

When we finally get back to Big Blue, it turns out Hefina's group out at Chumphon Pinnacle spotted a whale shark. As they happened to have a cameraman diving with them, they show the video to the benefit and dripping jealousy of the entire resort. The boat was full, they told me. I sign up for the Pinnacle tomorrow. I will not be denied my whale shark. It's something special to think that these are my life problems now.

That night, I return to The Queen, with Amzi this time. It's finally Cabaret Show night, and we get seats around the stage in the back for an hour of intricately choreographed and costumed lipsync routines.

For the climax of the show, select audience members are brought backstage, dressed up, and then trotted out to dance with the stars. Amzi is picked as I snicker and jeer, mostly to cover up my shamed jealousy. Man alive, do I need attention. It isn't long before Amzi's brought back out in a gold sequined bra, matching pantaloons, and a massive green frightwig:

Drinks are expensive at 200 baht a cocktail, but through some miracle of space-time gymnastic happy hour comes around right afterwards. I have one last drink with Mathilde at The Office, and head home.

I finally dive Chumphon Pinnacle in the morning, but the whale shark has already left the area. Typical. Our divemaster is a tiny girl whom we watch taunt a huge triggerfish on the seafloor for about 10 minutes, because every other divemaster at the resort has been attacked by one, and she'll be goddamned if she's odd man out. Unfortunately for her, the triggerfish merely swims away, confused but unfazed, leaving her totally and disappointingly unharmed. Today's just shit luck for everyone. On the boat I try to show off my language skills by chatting with a Japanese couple, who call my bluff by inviting me to dinner with them. Since using the little Japanese I remember has already given me half an aneurysm, I don't feel up to it, but I do hang out with them and watch the sunset.

Outside Big Blue, the fastest banana pancake vendor alive has a stall. I get a banana pancake that I don't even really want, just to watch the guy make it. Are these the Halcyon days?

I wake up around noon, having slept about 12 hours. I check Facebook, and there's a surprising amount of talk about Osama bin Laden. More specifically, his being super duper dead. Outside, the TV in the bar is playing a BBC report intercut with Obama's press announcement. I watch for awhile, on uncertain emotional ground, before Iain finds me and hands me my Advance Diver License. Of all the things I'm feeling, at the forefront is how me getting my Advance License just got overshadowed somewhat.

I drink a tall boy in the sand and run around with a pack of beach dogs. It could be the bin Laden thing, or my lack of food and water combined with the burning afternoon sun, but I feel reeling drunk.

I eat dinner with the whole gang, and find out that all these Europeans have both seen and love Napoleon Dynamite. As the only one with an American accent, they're in awe of my impression, which gets those panties a-soakin', or at least until I order a Grasshopper and all my work is undone.

Sander, Tyler, and I go to AC Bar, where we get hammered immediately, Sander does some breaking in the sand, and shortly thereafter he and Tyler pull a pair of girls together. I dance on a stage area by myself for awhile, a lone uncoordinated wolf, until I'm approached by some ladyboys, who dance to Shakira with me. I must have sent out some sort of pheromone, because soon an old Thai man starts hugging me and kissing me on the cheek, saying he loves me, over and over. I get away from him, only to have another younger Thai guy approach and motion to kiss me on the lips. I shake my head no, he kisses me on the cheek instead.

Tearing myself away from all the Thai man-love, I finally find a girl to talk to, who I only realize is Thai after trying for about five minutes straight to speak Japanese with her. Karma, I guess, for missing dinner the other night. Tyler shows up, says Sander is leaving with the girls. We catch up, and I find out that one of the girls is pissed because Tyler called her a lesbian after she rebuffed him. I can identify, I think. They say they're going to sleep. I buy a beer and do the same.

I wake up to Sander coming into the room at 9:50. "Checkout's in 10 minutes," he says. Fuck it. I sleep in till noon and take a shit. I'll be glad to be rid of this toilet, with the cracks in the seat that suck in your ass flesh and pincer it viciously when you try to stand up. Sander and Tyler have already made arrangements at a travel agency for passage to Railay, so I get a ticket for myself and drop off my big backpack at the agency. The sun is starting to set, so I drop my small backpack off in front of the Big Blue reception with a pile of other bags, and hit the Sea Bar for a view with brews.

A Frenchman buys me a beer because of bin Laden's death, and tells me about a "temple valley" in Myanmar that is spectacular "if you have an ipod". A Lebanese girl toasts me "Kessak".

I go to put my sunglasses away, and the reception area that was previously full of bags is totally empty. My backpack is gone. It's 7 pm, and I have to leave at 8. I walk around Big Blue asking people if they've seen my bag, more and more hopelessly. The Thai don't want to help, and the Westerners don't know how to help. After an hour, Sander and Tyler take off ("Sorry man, don't know what to say...Later?"), and I'm forced to check back in to Big Blue. With my wallet (containing 500 bucks in Chinese yuan), debit card, netbook, and a gallimaufry of other electronics and travel accessories in the lost backpack, all I have left is my big backpack full of clothes, and whatever's in my pockets. My camera, and a little less than 200 USD. More time passes, and by now all of the staff know my situation, but no one can offer any help. I decide to drink.

They're playing beer pong in the Big Blue bar, which I hang around while waiting for news and sucking down Long Islands. I have a conversation with the bartender that goes something like this:

"So I heard you lost your backpack?"

"Yup, with my wallet in it, with all my cash and my debit card. Can I get a Long Island?"

"Sure, I imagine you could use one right now. That's so horrible. Anyways, that'll be 6 dollars."

I eat nothing, because I need to save money, and drink more Long Islands. A lot of drunken gazes at my wrist tattoo. "Don't Panic." Probably not the Halcyon days.

I wake up in bed, with no memory of leaving the bar. A staff girl comes in, and asks if James Wilson is here. Miracle of miracles, she has my backpack! Which, when she hands it to me, feels suspiciously light. Sure enough, no netbook (despite the Korean sticker on the cover that says 'Don't Take Shit Anybody"), no mouse, no expensive headphones, no Nintendo DS, all my cables and cords are gone, and I can't find my wallet. They even took my cheapo USB drive and the soap I had just bought. After turning the backpack inside out, I find my wallet in a pocket I didn't know existed. My debit card is floating around outside the wallet, and all the Chinese cash is gone. Curiously enough, the Xanax is still here. I check out, and even if the bartender wouldn't comp me a pity drink the night before, they don't charge me for the room. I get a new ticket for Railay and get some espresso at Tao Cafe.

I overhear some Canadian girls talking about how they heard someone say you don't get hangovers here. And it's true. By all rights, I should be hungover. I should've been hungover from Day One. I check my card's transaction history, which is clear. And so much the better, because I'll be damned if I'm going to stick around for a replacement card. After some prodding from the Big Blue staff, I file a police report, which amounts to exactly what you might figure. Some rumblings of a Burmese culprit ("Couldn't be a Thai..."). Of course the security guards didn't see anything. Of course the cameras are broken. Of course, nothing ever gets stolen here.

I get a massage, only to find massages aren't that relaxing when you're thinking "When I am relaxed, all my problems will be over" the whole time. For dinner, I eat something called the Hungry Hippo burger:

Because I'll always love you, Jamie.

A truck pulls up to the travel agency around 8, where I've been using the internet and feeling sorry for myself. A quick drive, and I'm put on a boat to Surat Thani, where everyone has a 3x5' bit of padded floor demarcated for sleeping. Some try to read, undistracted by how they haven't been robbed.

Like that one there. Look at that smug personal property-having dick.

At least I've got my camera and my debit card, and whatever health left before I soon destroy it with titanic amounts of drink. And to play devil's advocate, the 500 dollars cash wasn't really mine, as I hadn't yet paid Sarah back for it. So really, I'm just fucked out of my new netbook. And my cables. And my DS. And my goddamn soap. Optimism is an uphill fucking battle.

He knows.

Still, I can't bring myself to read, or sleep. Did I mention this is my first theft, ever, in my life? I can see why someone might get worked up! It definitely isn't all smiles and banana splits. Before I left for this trip, I considered doing it Luddite-style: no electronics, no diversions, no Western bullshit. A real gritty classic adventure. Of course, I laughed the thought away a second later and took all my toys, but it seems forces are pushing me the other way. Maybe the thief did me a favor?

Fuck. I had the new episode of Game of Thrones on the netbook. I hope that goddamn thief gets AIDS.

On the Full Moon/KO PHA NGAN

The first order of the day is first aid.  Even for me, I was feeling abnormally blase about the whole burned flesh business.  It was more the continued lack of a hangover that made me awfully uneasy.  Maybe it was cumulative, and at some inopportune time I would suddenly be struck with the skull-rending force of two months of pent-up morning-after suffering, spontaneously-combusting my liver and bursting my brain.  Or maybe it was the humidity.  Still, uneasy...

I saunter over to a Friends bar to google burn treatments, only for the town to have another power outage.  After a few drinks (to taunt the looming specter of hangovers to come), the power comes back on, and I sit down in an internet cafe to do some research.

First, I sign up for travel insurance, while I still have some sliver of self-preservation instinct left.  Also, the laws of irony dictate that by doing so, I'm guaranteed to never get injured again.  Next, I do a search along the lines of "what to do if you're an idiot who burned themselves doing something stupid in Ko Pha Ngan."  There turns out to be a great deal of information on the topic.

It seems many backpackers will get the "Ko Pha Ngan Tattoo" from rental scooter accidents, by either burning themselves on overheated tail pipes, or road rash after wiping out on one of the many dangerous and unfinished roads around the island.  What idiots!  It's those kind of irresponsible assholes who give us careful, sensitive, God-fearing backpackers a bad name.  But, somehow against all odds the same medical advice applied to my case.  And as it turns out, you're not supposed to pop the blisters ever.  So if you're ever in the same situation, make sure to keep the dirty fingernails of that gay whore off your stomach blisters.  A life tip you can take with you.

I amble over to the local clinic, situated very conveniently near the beach, and an unending source of customers.  After talking with the nurse, I find that my shiny new hundred-dollar travel insurance isn't taken up front, and I would have to send off the doctor bill to the insurance company for reimbursement.  Not wanting to spend 3 months waiting to get a check back for 15 bucks, I head to the pharmacy instead.  The way I figure it, the pharmacist'll point me to the same gear the doctor would have, plus I've already got my free internet medical advice.  After an hour of painstaking web research slash Facebooking, I'm practically qualified for surgery.

Inside the pharmacy a young, tanned British woman is consulting the pharmacist, an equally young and very perplexed Thai man.

"You know," she stammers, "When you have in-ter-course...but next day...you regret?"  He nods his head slightly, more of an idle bob, unable to parse out the hussy's demand.

"What do you call it...the pill..." she wonders aloud, before delivering more euphemistic descriptions of her predicament and the kind of help she wanted.

Just as I was about to say the words, it comes to her and she exclaims "Plan B!  I need Plan B!" and to my infinite dismay, the pharmacist understands and fetches the pills, ruining the chance of her resorting to the greatest and most humiliating sign language.

Once the walking paradox of a girl who has one night stands but doesn't know what the morning after pill is leaves, I show the pharmacist my burn and he immediately fetches the necessary supplies.  Either he has House-level powers of diagnosis and treatment, or he's seen the Ko Pha Ngan Tattoo before.  I end up buying antibiotics, bandages, Silverderm cream, and just for kicks, a pack of Xanax.  And seeing as how 10 Xanax costs 10 bucks, it looks like I'll be restricting myself to their intended use: hangovers and drug come-downs.

Speaking of good parties, tomorrow's the full moon.  Twenty thousand desperate fools dancing, thrashing, fucking, pissing, and puking in every predominate European language and custom...A drunk beach of horny werewolves only half-tamed by trance music.  It could be a bit of a spectacle.  I do a final count of limbs and digits before bed.

The day of the full moon begins with another power outage.  In addition to the burn on my stomach, my legs and ass are killing me, and I've found a bloody hole in the bottom of my right foot.  All in all, could be worse.

Before heading down to Sunrise Beach where the Full Moon Party is going to take place, I walk along Sunset Beach for the first time, and watch the sunset with a grocery bag of cold Changs.

I recommend trying it sometime.

Another power outage makes choosing a place to eat very simple, and I grab some food and drinks in a nearby restaurant that has their generator up and running.  As Jackass plays on the surrounding half dozen TVs, I'm chatted up by a German backpacker named Christian.  It would seem he was in Vang Vieng just a week and a half ago, possibly the same time as me.  While he was there, some guy died on the river.  Not wanting to be outdone in brushes with death, I share the story of my sunburn and the more recent actual-fire burn, and my ingenious DIY treatment thereof.

"Wait, jew are dreenkeeng on antibiotics?" he asks.

"Well, maybe, kinda..." comes my sheepish reply.  I hadn't really thought about it.  I come to the conclusion that if I can safely drink and take Xanax (and by safely, I mean hasn't yet made me die), antibiotics should be a cinch.  After all, they're pretty much just vitamins, right?  Like, strong vitamins.  I should be fine.

After a really great discussion about those yellow infected bumps you get on your legs after a killer burn, Christian leaves to search for some missing friends.

"Maybe jew und me will find each other later," he says.  I wonder if I'll be completely alone for the Party tonight.  Even the guy whose friends clearly stood him up doesn't want to stick it out with me.  No time for a pity-party, though.  Only time now for a party-party.

I head back to my bungalow to make final preparations for the night.  As I'm walking through town, I notice one of the cops on security duty playing with something in his hands, and grinning like a Punch doll.

Even with a picture this blurry, you know he's up to no good.  That's not a smile you should trust.

Now, I have three major fears in life.  One: compound fractures, because man that would suck.  Two: candiru, because oh man that would suck even more.  Three: the foul abomination this officer was holding in his hands at this very moment.  Something I always told myself was an irrational fear, because much like candiru, terrifying though they may be, my chances of ever encountering them were pretty low.  Well, here's irrational:

That's right.  Fear number three is giant centipedes, and here's a guy in the middle of Wonderful Paradise Island who sees fit to play with one of the nightmare factories.  After I stop to take a picture, to document the atrocity that I once thought so irrational, the officer gestures to me.  He wants me to hold it.

Hell, what's the Full Moon Party for if not a bit of immersion therapy.

Oh God I was so right it's so awful

After successfully not dying of the heebiest of jeebies, or from the centipede itself (although the cop did look visibly concerned when the monster started crawling towards my neck, at which point he snatched it away), I shiver uncontrollably all the way back to Venus and make final preparations for the night.  After I've pissed one last time, I ditch my debit card and flip flops to be safe.  I take about a hundred bucks in cash, divided into different pockets around my body to stymy pickpocketers.  And most importantly, I conquered one of my biggest fears in life.  There's nothing like a bit of emotional catharsis to get you in the mood to shake your fucking ass.  Let's do this.

I stop for one last drink in the Venus lounge, to see if anyone I've previously met is around.  There isn't, so I sup my gin and tonic and watch the end of Bruno with some UK girls.  We lightly chat, and as I pay for my drink one of them asks why I'm not buying a bucket.  I'll get one at the beach, I reply, which prompts the Venus employee to warn me about a scam some bucket stalls have where they half-fill their whiskey bottles with water.  It would explain some of the super-faded bottles I've been seeing at some of the stalls.  He advises me to listen for the "click" when they crack open the bottle.  I'm reminded of one of the banners I keep seeing around town, that makes much more sense now:

Another girl pipes in about a specific drink stall that will hold the bottle up to your ear every time so you can listen for the crack.  I'm genuinely enthused about this advice, and the first girl asks if I'd like to join them.  They're meeting eleven other girls, and I would be the only guy.  Well, that was a gimme.

I follow the gals to their meeting point in one of the Friends bars, where the group inside is discussing the gruesome medical photos the government puts on cigarette packs.

Being forced to stare at foot cancer or whatever is still worth the crazy-low prices of overseas cigs.

I make the world's most transparent attempt at learning and remembering names, and am privy to the conclusion that the most choice cigarette pack to have is one where a man's smoke is being blown into the face of a baby in his arms (probably his baby, but who's to say).  Because "while it is 'orrible 'n that, at least there's nofink real nasty."

Maybe the baby's a real dick.  The point is, we don't have all the facts here people.

The ladies tell me they're leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, but should be fine because they're all completely addicted to M-150, a potent Thai energy drink.  The clock hits 11.  The streets begin to fill.  We head to the beach.

My wolfesspack.

The noise starts from far off, a thunderous hum of a dozen different and insistent sound systems battling each other for supremacy.  I recognize a few of the playlists as the same from earlier nights, but they're now joined by music from new parties along the beach, offering bass-ed up techno in numerous and slight genre variations I am nowhere near qualified enough to identify.

I'm immediately reminded of tubing in Vang Vieng.  Like the bars there, there was such variety that you just wandered to whichever party along the sandbar was playing your taste in dance music and had the best bucket drink gimmicks.

Then we hit the crowd.  You can't even see sand, for all the thousands of day-glo painted Europeans dancing together in a half-mile long, claustrophobia-inducing flesh pit.

In other words, the party was hella bumpin'.

I buy a Sang Som and Coke bucket from the girls' favorite place, and we make our way through the shirtless, screaming amoeba that has covered the peninsula.  I dance occasionally, but mostly talk to the de facto mother hen of the group about sunburns and blisters, the usual.

The party keeps building.

It becomes hard to breathe, let alone think, amidst the Great White Throng.  At least, that's the excuse I'm going to go with in a second.  It turns out one of the side effects of drinking a giant bucket of alcohol is a pretty constant need to piss.  One of the girls and I split off from the group to try our luck at finding a bathroom.  What I hadn't counted on, foolishly, was that such massive piss-pot demand would drive all the business owners around here to either close their bathroom doors to the public, or cause them to start charging exorbitant amounts of money.

Now, I've never been a fan of paying money to use a restroom.  Even if I did cough up the cash, the lines were a staggering exercise in bladder torture.  And I wasn't about to pee in the ocean, like some others, like ANIMALS.

Anyways I'm not really sure how it happened, but we ended up sneaking into some store's generator room and peeing in the dark.  On their generator, I'm fairly sure.  And then the store worker walked in.

I freeze, no idea what plan of action to take.  Banking just a little on the worker only being able to see by movement, like a T-Rex.  It's hard to say what emotions played out across his face.  Anger, sure, but more...disappointment.  I let him down.  In a way, it felt like I had let America down.  The British girl had no such qualms.  With the cool arrogance that can only come to those born in a bullshit monarchy, she blows right by the dumbfounded Thai man and mixes back into the street, somehow managing to look bored the whole while.

His gaze returns to me, unfathoming.  Well, maybe a little fathoming.  He knows why his generator stinks of piss.  But there's nothing to be done now.  I shrug.  "Sorry!" I state stupidly, eyes wide, shoulders around my ears.  I follow the girl out.  I didn't even get to shake it off.

I continue down towards the end of the beach, towards Mellow Mountain, alone or with the group I don't remember.  From here I get a better view of the lights of the Party, even if my camera doesn't. This is really something, I think to myself.  Then I black out.

I wake up in bed, and it's almost noon.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on antibiotics.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on Xanax.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on antibiotics AND Xanax.  I don't know.  I'm not a doctor.

This man is not a doctor.

I take inventory.  There are no signs of puke or sex, the first items on my blackout checklist.  Next, nothing seems to be stolen, broken, or otherwise violated.  So far, looking good.  Curiously, I find an empty cigarette pack in one of my pockets, and I don't smoke.

And it's not even the sweet baby-smoke pack, either.

I probably should've listened to Christian, and taken it easier.  The Full Moon Party is a pretty big thing to just lose half my memory of.  I imagine myself partying bravely and honorably into the dust, like the orchestra on the Titanic, or Slurms MacKenzie.  But I also know that is not ever, ever the story behind a blackout.  Maybe it's better this way.  Maybe shit got dark.  Sometimes it's better not knowing.

I have a slight hangover, despite drinking enough to have retroactively given myself FAS.  The relief of knowing I can still get hangovers, and remain a mortal, corporeal being, is small comfort.  My pain is more spiritual than physical, likely due to complete seratonin crash.  I feel like Captain Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, and wish my room had a slow-turning ceiling fan I could stare into.  All I want to do is read Lovecraft and watch Chris Cunningham videos and be dark.  And really, the Full Moon Party is dumb if you think about it.  The same party they do every night, just with 100 times as many people and anyways it's all commercial and lame ever since the 90s when the cool people did it.  And I really, really wish I had been conscious for it.  I take a couple Xanax, a shit, and walk to the beach.

Most people must have had plans similar to the girls and left in the morning.  The beach is practically deserted compared to the last week.

While I slept, there was a community clean-up event that picked up the trash from the night before, and to my incredible surprise left the beach looking pretty good considering the bacchanalian scale of last night.  A few deserted dance stages still stand, a sobering monument to bittersweet morning-afters.

Much of the town shuts down following the Full Moon.  Food vendors keep earlier hours, there are fewer parties on the beach, and some dance clubs I was planning to check out close down until the next Party.  I spend the next few days drinking, eating, and collecting wifi passwords around town.  I want to move on to Ko Tao, an island north of Ko Pha Ngan renowned for its diving, but I'm still waiting on my stomach burn to heal.  Here, the tourist population seems to have dwindled to just the injured like me, and, for some reason, Israelis.  Everywhere, stores and restaurants start to incorporate Hebrew into their hand-written signs, and advertise Israeli Breakfast, rather than the usual American or British.  Many restaurants put up notices that they have run out of Matzah.

These days of nothing to do last longer.  A kind of Hedonistic Relativity occurs, and time expands.  I become concerned with trying a new restaurant and bar for every meal and drink.

And that's how I ended up eating a bacon sandwich.  Australians,  you're growing on me.

Now that I have the time and resources to find such things out, I realize I vastly overpaid for both my ticket to Ko Pha Ngan, and my scuba lessons.  But that's how it goes.  On nights, I continue to go out to the beach.  New games spring up, where you try to throw a basketball hoop from a distance for a chance at winning a free bucket drinks.

One night I run into the hooker who I told I had no money.  She recognizes me and slaps me on the shoulder, smiling drolly.  It was a relief to know she had a sense of humor about it, as opposed to stabbing me to death.  I also see the boy/girl/brother/sister/whatever hooker team, but they either don't recognize or ignore me.  Which I am totally cool with.

Finally, I have to do something to get off my ass, if just to keep from waking up any more with half-drunk buckets on the floor attracting ants and free drink counters written in haphazard marker on my arm.

I buy a ticket for another Muay Thai event, this time at a different arena.  What’s that, you ask?   You want an exhaustive list of comparisons of these matches to the 80s Jean-Claude van Damme vehicle Kickboxer?  

I mean, I guess I could do that.  Since you asked.

For one, the white guy is always heavily favored, even if you can't do split-kicks!  They also really don't appreciate it when you chant "Nak Soo Khao!" in a fevered bloodlust.  Medical treatment tended to happen inside the ring, instead of not happening at all and the loser being dumped outside in an alley, and the fighters did not once beat and rape women before a fight (Geez, what a movie).  Very few split-punches were thrown, and even fewer split-kicks performed.  At one point a cocaine-addled black sidekick almost stormed the place with a machine gun, but then it turned out I don't have mind powers and it didn't happen.

Just boring ol' concussions.

After the fights, I end up at a bar called Moonstone.  The whole place has a Playboy bunny theme, Jackass 3D is playing on the TV but impossible to hear over the dance music, and when I order a drink, it comes in a baby bottle.

I was also completely alone in the bar, as I sucked on the horridly sweet cocktail through its plastic nipple.  Everything seemed normal and alien and awful all at the same time.  I couldn't tell what I was doing here anymore.  I didn't even know if I was enjoying myself.  All I could feel was my mind becoming more and more unhinged.

Also, the place had one of the most stocked bathrooms I have ever seen.  A lint roller and mouthwash?!

Outside, there's a 3-legged dog lying in the street, trying to sleep.  I don't know why, but I watch it for awhile before going back to my room.

The next day, I'm eating at an Italian place called Fellini (that is decorated entirely in Fellini film posters and movie stills) when Christian, the German antibiotic-police, walks in.  As it turns out, he actually did end up finding his friends, and he tells me I was right to be optimistic.  We have a nice chat, until he leaves to rejoin his friends.  And he's right (about me being right).  I should be optimistic.  More productive.  Meet people!  I'm a traveler (testify!), and it's time to get back into the spirit of things.  So long as my sanity doesn't finally crumble into shards of drink bucket plastic and ridiculous platitudes about "freedom", everything'll be peaches and cream.  Delicious peaches and cream.