So, at the moment I am working on the beautiful island of phi phi being paid £1.60 an hour to drink vodka out of buckets, dance on tables, watch fire shows and hand out flyers. It’s pretty fucking awesome – clarified last night when, perched on a table sharing my bucket with a delightful rabble of French revellers, my spectacularly hammered friend Erica came sailing threw the air and literally face planted on my head (even the Thais were shocked – she, probably luckily, has no memory of it, I’m finding it harder to forget as my neck is still twinging). It’s a great place and loads of people stay for months but it would be completely easy to go fully wild here, there literally are no boundaries. If you can remain sober for long enough to actually look through the haze of booze, smoke and gyrating Thai fire boys dripping in sweat and gasoline, the undercurrents that make up the secret fabric of this place are sometimes alarmingly evident.
For example, last night I finished at 1am and, totally exhausted from 4 hours of my fabulous dancing, flopped into one of the beanbags lying around. I was immediately joined by one of the French wearing a t-shirt wrapped round his head. He was pleasant and earnest enough and we spoke about elephants and tigers and such like, before strolling down the beach with his friends and sitting on the sand. I was well into full swing on my opinions about the Vietnam war, when I suddenly noticed there had been no replies for a while, most of the others were lying down, and one was looking at me somewhat vacantly, nodding in all the wrong places. With one eye open. Deciding to test this out, without breaking my tone at all, I slipped in “…and then the unicorn flew past, do you know what I mean?” Yes he did. Of course. If he hadn’t of had a slightly Labrador-ish quality about him, I would of been offended that my conversation skills are clearly not as interesting to others as they are to me lol. Taking my leave of the French group, I headed off back down the beach passing a completely comatosed Thai lady lying flat on her back, mouth open. A group of about 8 were huddled around her. One, looking thoroughly baffled and seemingly for a lack of anything better to do, was shining a torch in her face. One was taking pictures on his iPhone. Two were eyeing up the girl holding on to the unconscious ones hand. I kept walking.
It was then that I noticed the twinkle of eyes hidden in the dark, the flash of a smile from a closed bar, the murmur of voices with no bodies, and one very passionate and definitely illicit rendezvous in some shrubs. Nothing here goes unseen, you can be sure of that.
Ploughing on, I reached the main strip and decided that as a treat I would splash out on a slice of pizza. Munching and musing, I was on the way home when I came across one of the charming topless Brazilian contingent that works opposite us. He had found a tourist and she was, clearly, up for it. I’d been spotted but was keen to not interrupt so settled for a quick high five in passing. Cue, a marvellous flounce off by the apparently outraged tourist! She was heading off at a fairly impressive pace, leaving me staring after her, eyebrows raised and grinning (really, it was one of the best over reactions and subsequent storm off to a high five I’ve ever seen, I’d quite like to be friends with her) and him staring at… Me. I was still grinning when I looked at him, and then that moment of realisation hit. As quick as I could I cleared up the situation and was like “oh no no, I’m not having sex with you, quick run, run you’ll catch her!” Looking from me to her retreating figure the decision was instantaneous. The last I saw was his back disappearing down the street. Lol.
I made it the rest of the way unscathed, thoughtful but content. I climbed into my mozzie infested nest of a bunk bed, and was just settling into a comfortable doze (my 12 or so resident mozzies waiting patiently for my eyes to finally close and then get the party started) when, right next to my head, a shriek pierced the air! Me, the mozzies and roughly half the dorm room jumped about 6 feet in the air, and as I wildly scrabbled around in the dark for my glasses, another one came! Peering out into the gloom I inspected the bundle of mozzie net, clothes and towels lying prone in the bed next to me. “Erica!?” I whispered, and sure enough the bundle went “aaaaarrrrggghhhhh”. And then proceeded to keep doing it. Loudly. Now, those that know me will know that when something strikes me as funny, I find it really funny. This struck me as funny, so in between bouts of hysterical laughter I tried my best to be soothing, stack my stuff up out of potential barfing zones, and at the same time in the nicest possible way, get her to shut up lol. It seemed to work as a few minutes later a little voice croaked weakly into the night “Niki??” “Yes babe” “I’m going to die” (me, trying not to laugh) “no you’re not angel, you’re just drunk, you’re gonna be fine”. This seemed to do the trick and apart from the occasional squeak, everyone went back to sleep, all was as it should be here, and the mozzies had a fabulous night at the expense of my legs, right arm and eyebrows (they’re getting adventurous the little bastards I tell you).
And as for Erica today, well, she’s still drunk but being much less ‘exorcist’ about the whole thing. Haha.