The Martlet

Thailand was the first place I ever saw lightning without thunder.

Storms would appear with little warning. Some faint flashes would illuminate the clouds in the distance, then a single electric volt would jaggedly split the sky. The rain wasn’t far behind.

Though the storms are impressive, the Thai people hardly notice. These storms are just a fleeting part of their lives. They usually pass in less than an hour.

Trouble in paradise

I was sleeping on the floor of a small room in Koh Samui. It was 5 a.m. when my two British friends, Craig and Liam, finally returned from the bar. Our hotel was on the tourist strip of Chaweng Beach, comprised mostly of restaurants, bars and little shops where eager tourists can barter for T-shirts, trinkets and paintings of familiar Hollywood icons, like Joker from The Dark Knight.

We arrived in Samui looking for a party, and for the first few days we wandered up and down the beach despondent. Enormous resort bars were left deserted while their establishments blared popular Western tunes. We ran into some locals trying to sell us kites or marijuana or bead necklaces. Mostly we just saw honeymooning couples.

“This place is empty, isn’t it?” whined Liam.

Liam approached Thailand with an excited innocence, like a child in a playpen. He wanted to meet people, swim in the ocean, ride an elephant, try mushrooms. He was wide-eyed over the flaming skipping ropes at the beach parties we’d been to, the buckets of absurdly cheap vodka, the gorgeously tanned women who passed him on the street in tiny bikinis.

Ever since we’d left Koh Phi Phi, a majestic Eden off the west coast of Thailand, Liam had been repeatedly disappointed by each new place we traveled.

The problem was that while Liam, Craig and I were living a life of itinerant hedonism on the various islands of the Gulf of Thailand, riots were raging in Bangkok. A general was assassinated in the streets. Major buildings were being reduced to simmering rubble. Black plumes of smoke snaked into the sky, obscured the sun.

And all of this was starting to ruin our fun.

Thai limbo

Thailand seems to have trouble deciding what kind of country it wants to be. It relies on tourist and visitors from the West, but clings to its Eastern identity. It seems unsure of how it will fit in our newly globalized world.

Buddhism is widespread, but Islam also has a significant foothold. A mosque or temple may be on the same street as a strip club or a bar. The rich are pitted against the poor, and political instability is the status quo. It has teeming urban sprawls and polluted cities, but it also has remote villages and picturesque tropical island paradises.

There is a constant battle in Thailand between East and West, between light and darkness, between heaven and hell.

Making acquaintances

It was our third night on Samui when Liam stumbled into our room with a young Thai girl in tow. He almost stepped on my head, as I’d been asleep on the floor for a few hours.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by a wide smile from Nook, the prostitute Liam had brought back. She was short, dressed in a slinky red dress and had kind eyes. She smelled like the perfume section of the Bay.

“You have to be kidding me,” I said.

Liam started to giggle violently and threw himself on the bed. Craig was similarly shit-faced, stumbling heavily towards the bathroom. Apparently they’d found a party.

“Was your name?” asked Nook.

“I’m Will,” I said.

“Imwell?”

“No, Will. I am Will.”

“Wayle.”

“Will.”

“Well.”

“Will.”

I’d had this identical conversation with a number of Thais, all of whom seemed baffled by the vowel in my name. Often I settled for something like “Whale.” Close enough.

“Nice to meet you, Will,” she said.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Farang

I had met Liam and Craig by a swimming pool in Bangkok only weeks before the violence started to get out-of-hand. We’d heard murmuring about an escalating threat, as Red Shirts poured in from the North. But none of us took it very seriously. We were comfortable on Khoa San Road, the official backpacker destination of Bangkok.

“You should travel with us,” said Liam.

When you’re traveling alone, sometimes it’s as simple as that. I’d already spent three days staying with a Danish dude I met at the baggage carousel of the airport. Liam and Craig seemed chill, fun and young.

Liam is the definition of “farang,” the word Thais use for anyone who doesn’t originally hail from Thailand. He’s good-looking, doesn’t speak a word of their language and is generally out to have a good time. He recently finished a year working in Australia and has no idea what he wants to do with his life.

“Yeah, man,” I said. “I’d love to come with you guys.”

And that was that.

In a matter of weeks, the three of us hit Koh Phi Phi, Krabi, Koh Tao, Koh Samui and Koh Phagnan.

Picking sides

I’d never stopped to wonder how I would react if someone brought a prostitute back to my room in the middle of the night. It didn’t seem like a very likely hypothetical situation. I’d given a lot of thought to the meaning of travel, the need to escape, how I wanted to grow and change as a person during my trip. But this was something I was unprepared for.

Craig had half-heartedly attempted to convince Nook to have a threesome, but ended up passing out face-down on the double bed. Liam and Nook were noisily showering together, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.

Could I just go to sleep?

It reminded me of a moment a few days earlier, when Liam and I had been stumbling home drunk from a night at Lotus Bar, a popular spot on Koh Tao. The walk back to our bungalow would take at least half an hour in our state, and the treacherous terrain was doing a number on our flip-flop-clad feet. Sitting in the trail, waiting for us, was a motorbike.

“Look, the keys are in it,” Liam said.

The entire island was littered with scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. We had been too cheap to rent one ourselves, though. In that brief moment, I had a choice. I could go from a fairly normal, morally upstanding 25-year-old student to the sort of reckless, stupid farang that steals motorbikes.

I haven’t held on to many of the teachings of my Christian youth, but I still believe in right and wrong. I believe we can choose who we want to become and all of us hold the potential to sin. Our souls are jaggedly split in two halves, and we need to decide which side we want to win.

Sleep vs. sex

“He no watch?” asked Nook.

Moments earlier, when I sat up to say something to Liam, I watched as Nook unceremoniously hiked up her skirt and hunkered down on Liam’s penis. She continued to talk as if nothing happened, and I quickly turned away.

“He is gay-boy?” she asked.

“No, he just wants to sleep. To sleep,” said Liam.

“I do good. Love him long time,” she said.

I couldn’t believe she was talking in the clichés of Hollywood Vietnam movies. I couldn’t believe they were talking about me as if I wasn’t there, a foot or two from my head. Their sex sounded like a dry wiper squeaking along a dirty, wet windshield.

I couldn’t help but think of all the women in my life I wanted to have sex with. It seemed absurd that this empty, bucking ritual is practiced by married couples and complete strangers alike.

“Oh, yes baby. You big power,” said Nook.

The act which occupies such a huge part of my headspace and my imagination had been reduced to a sloppy charade. Liam’s cheerful, child-like innocence had devolved into a dark determination while he humped away. I tried to think about something else. In my head I heard the Killers singing “I got soul, but I’m not a soul-jah.” I thought about our trip so far, about my life in Canada, about what sort of person I was becoming.

Then Nook threw her bra in my face. I got up and went outside.

“You a good boy”

I sat outside our hotel room for nearly an hour. I read a book, stared out at the sky and tried not to listen to the thumping and moaning coming from the other side of the wall. A giant spotlight searched the clouds, probing through the darkness.

When I went back into the room, the lights were on and Craig and Liam were unconscious. Nook was carefully getting dressed. She smiled warmly at me as she adjusted her dress. I noticed a long series of faint scars on her leg, maybe from a scooter accident.

Liam paid her 500 Baht, or about $20 Canadian.

“I kiss you?” she asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Just here?” she said, poking me in the jaw.

“Okay, sure,” I said.

Nook leaned in and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

“You a good boy,” she said.

“Thank you.”

The storm’s finale

During our final days on Koh Tao, it seemed every shop had the TV turned on to news about the violence in Bangkok. Small families gathered around and watched while the farang headed out to drink and party on the beach.

Within a few days the army descended on the capital. There were gunfights and explosions. There was death and tragedy. And then, just as if lightning had struck, it was all over.

For now.