We tried not to bang into people as we passed stalls selling necklaces, wood sculptures, Thai-dye t-shirts and shark’s teeth. A myriad smells; coconut oil, joss ticks, grilled chicken, henna, petunia… sensory overload, we needed to find a room away from mangy travellers just back from India. And we weren’t the only ones white and pale, there were other newcomers just like us, giving it away with that nervous look as they tried to appear relaxed, the West written across their faces.
‘Where are you going?’ I heard an attractive Israeli girl asking a bare-chested bloke with dreadlocks.
‘Cambodia.’
‘It’s still a little dangerous in places. Head northeast to Ratanakiri – cool crater lake, no travellers around there, know what I mean?’
The guy shook his dreads like a poodle, his tattooed biceps threaded with the dark scales of dragons, his deep tan that marked him out as a serious traveller not a short timer. The Israeli girl looked over at Skip and smiled at him. Typically, he didn’t even notice.
‘Really? That’s lush.’ Said the poodle. ‘Bit of trouble in that temple by the Thai border though huh?’
A minor gripe if you will - there’s nothing worse than professional travellers who collect memories like stamps in a passport. They talk about places they’ve been and list them like medals, always outdoing each other with tales of hidden beaches and snatches of knowledge. ‘The roads there are really bad, the buses are freezing cold… at night this place is noisy… yada, yada, yada.’ Truth is it all comes from the same source, Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. It’s all second hand knowledge.
We moved down the crumbling Siam street past internet cafés and brightly-lit tourist offices advertising trips to aquamarine places. Tuk-tuk drivers waited at the end of the strip in the cross wind of barbecued food and car exhausts, while some slept; little pockets of zeds found between fares. Some were buzzing on meth-amphetamine to stay awake, their eyes wired.
‘Ok traveller, where shall we stay?’ said Skip as if he was on codeine,
‘No video lounges, agreed?’
He nodded, rocking asleep under the weight of his rucksack.
Every guesthouse seemed to be full, in the end we managed to find one called ‘Luckies’ just off the main drag. It was strung with fairy-lights, its entrance crowned in a peeling Bhudda statue that looked like it’d been here since the city was built. Still, there was no video lounge or deadbeat travellers.
The girl behind the counter barely acknowledged us as she took down my passport details. ‘You older now than in your photo, less hair, but hansom man.’ she laughed, handing it back to me. I looked back at her tight-jawed monkey face and smiled.
She handed me a key. ‘Your room upstair, creen sheet, shower at end of corridor. Go to bed handsom, you tired.’
She checked in Skip. ‘You also hansom, but more hair than your friend!’
We could have picked a lot better, it wasn’t as if we were trying to stretch our money out. The room was padlocked from the outside, and inside there were no windows, just a wooden box of a cell with a small vent in the corner coated in cobwebs. At the end of our corridor outside the bathroom, a crone was washing sheets and singing. Skip stuck his head in my doorway,
‘I’m deadbeat, let’s get some sleep.’ I said.
‘Come on Al, here we are slap-bang in the busiest travellers’ Mecca in the world and you want to sleep? That job of yours has ruined you.’
Maybe he was right. ‘I feel as if I need a drink, Skip. If I get up I’ll may have to have one.’
He looked at me quizzically as if to say, what the hell’s wrong with you? And why on earth do you need a drink? Although of course he said nothing. ‘Alright, you win. I’m knackered too actually.’
I didn’t believe him for a second and felt bad for being such a downer, but there were lights swimming at the edges of my sight and my body felt as if it belonged to another. ‘Night pal.’
‘Goodnight, thanks for inviting me.’
I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have with me on this trip, but of course I never told him, you never do. Maybe it’s a man thing. I tried to sleep but it didn’t work, it must have been about 8pm Asian time when I got sick of tossing and turning and sat up. Maybe a can of iced Coke would do it. ‘Skip,’ I shouted through the wall, ‘you still awake?’
‘No,’ he groaned, ‘traffic’s driving me mad!’
‘Fancy a walk?’
I put on a fresh t-shirt and stood under a fan in the corridor. The street was darker now, the shapes of buildings blurred. We walked past a tattoo parlour by the entrance to an arcade. Through the window a pretty girl was having her ankle illustrated with some sort of garland. Her face winced with pain each time the needle blew paint into the fresh wound. Her skin was tanned, eyes a coral blue, she looked Nordic. I think for a moment she flicked her gaze up at me. On the walls of the parlour were designs ranging from the crass ‘semper fi’ daggers you see on GI biceps to dragons twisting around in black ink. I took another look at the girl in the tattoo place but she didn’t look at me.
We walked to the end of Khao San Rd and looked down the adjoining street; the air smelled different, less interesting, and the buildings were dark. Outside the traveller bubble of cafés and wayfarers with visa cards was Bangkok. I looked back at Khao San, decked in lights and stalls like some beacon in a foreign jungle. Then we headed for the nearest bar, a bamboo hole-in-the-wall called the Silver Lotus. The bar lady was an exquisitely petite woman with lustrous black hair in a plaited rope hung over her right shoulder.
Skip had on a fresh t-shirt with a picture of the Wombles. Anyone else might have looked like a cock wearing something like that but not him. He could get away with wearing a bin liner. We sat on some scatter cushions in the corner of the bar.
‘I know it sounds weird, Skip but, well maybe my dad was here once. Not in here exactly, but in Bangkok. He must have come here on his operations before heading into Vietnam.’ I said.
‘I wish I’d met him, I’ll bet he was a real card,’ said Skip, and as an afterthought, ‘That’s where you get it from.’
‘What?’
‘That streak, it’s like steel or something. Now why do you suppose that is?’
I didn’t like being psychoanalysed, not even by him. Skip looked at me with a knowing glance, ‘Middle class kid who goes boxing and finds he’s better at it than he should be? You were sorting out bullies way before you learnt your ring skills. You got me out of a scrape when we were twelve and that’s how we got to know each other, remember? You want to tell me where that stuff comes from, because you didn’t learn it at school in Richmond.’
I fiddled with my Coke self-consciously. He was drinking beer and I was fine with that. I didn’t need a drink, I’d been dry seven months now, almost to the day, and it was getting easier. Since I’d actually accepted I had a dependency it made it easier not to touch. It didn’t make me feel like singing but I felt as if I was more in control.
‘We’re all scared when it comes down to it mate, I just hide it better than others.’
The place smelled of joss sticks, I noticed the bar lady relighting some tea lights. For now the fatigue was at bay helped by the sugar rush of the Coke. Skip was on his second Tiger beer. ‘You want the truth? I thought I’d have a better picture of who I was by the time I hit forty.’ I said.
‘At least you’ve achieved something.’ Said Skip. ‘You’ve been to AA, written a novel… written hundreds of articles and travel tomes. Me, I thought I’d be in L.A by now, swimming in a kidney-shaped pool with Natalie Portman calling on my iPhone. Instead I’m generally in the red, fighting off demons that tell me I’ll never make it, and that I should have had a little more discipline and gone for a normal job.’
‘The difference is,’ I said fixing him, ‘you know who you are and where you’re from. I never h
ave. You look at your old man when you go back to Cornwall and you see yourself in him. You can ask him silly questions about growing up that he may or may not remember. My answers are bound up with a man who disappeared over three decades ago.’
I lit a cigarette and handed it to him. I had to get a hold of my mood; I felt sentimental and petulant, reddish anger not far from the surface. ‘You’ll make it eventually pal, it’s just a question of time,’ I said.
He rubbed his chin and looked wistfully at his nails. ‘What’s it they say, “The quality of a character can be determined by the difficulty of the journey he’s undertaken” or something?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well it’s been a fucking rollercoaster and I wish it would get easier.’
I clapped him on the arm and smiled. ‘You’ll make it - even if I have to pin those casting directors against the wall. You’ll make it because you deserve it.’
I didn’t believe a word of it.
Sadness and relief flashed across his face, he let out a breath and looked around at the sunburnt travellers and posters of the Islands on the walls, ‘God it’s good to be away, I feel like I’m out of the treadmill for the first time in years.’
‘Me too, we should do it more often,’
Skip nodded. ‘You ever get the feeling everyone else is so much more sorted than us. Our mates, they’re either mortgaged or parents or both. I feel as if I’m struggling up that wall of mud to glimpse the Emerald city, you know what I mean? It’s as if I can’t figure London out because I always feel like such a failure there.’
‘Not many people have the guts to pursue such a difficult career. I mean that. One day you’ll get your lucky break and it won’t be in a Jif suit.’
He pumped my hand, ‘Thanks mate.’
‘What for?’ I asked,
‘For being my best friend.’ In the flickering light, he looked like a child sat in the glow of a fire,
‘Piss off!’
‘You piss off, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
A group of Israelis with skinheads and loud voices were getting drunk at the other side of the bar, we tried to ignore them. He saw my expression as I looked at them a moment longer than I should have and tapped me on the arm, ‘Oi, live and let live, they’re just excited - probably just got out of the army.’
Just then a Doors tune piped up, ‘The Unknown Soldier’, an anti-war anthem of the Vietnam conflict. I listened to the rickety Hammond organ as our shadows wavered on the walls. I’d been thinking about my dad and the war.
“Breakfast when the news is read, television, children fed, unborn living, living dead. Bullets strike the helmet head.”
‘Morrison was a cat.’ Said Skip.
‘No he was a bi-polar headcase with a Jesus complex.’
‘Well he made some bloody good music.’
‘Yes, he did. Here’s to The Doors.’ We clinked our glasses together and hummed along as some Thai men entered and took seats at the bar. One of them was smartly turned out in a tailored suit, while the other two wore vests emblazoned with Red Bull logos. I noted one was corded in muscle, tattoos all over his arms like tribal designs. The one in the dapper grey suit looked different, hair greased back across his long face, his skin paler as if he’d suffered a dose of malaria. But for my mood I wouldn’t have noticed - a hangover from my boxing days taking stock of perfect strangers that presented the slightest threat - but they looked over at us as the guy in the suit leant toward them and whispered something. He snapped at the pretty girl behind the bar and the music changed to kitsch Thai pop.
‘Bollocks,’ said Skip, ‘turn that back on please!’
The bar lady shrugged apologetically.
‘Al, do you think Morrison is still alive? Maybe some old bearded tramp picking up garbage on Venice Beach?’ he asked in earnest,
‘No, I reckon he’s probably pushing up daises… he was on self-destruct. Actually, my Grandmother’s now buried in the same cemetery in Paris; they keep each other company.’
‘I’m sorry - I haven’t asked you. How are you feeling about it?’
Actors, they’re a funny breed - they’re pretty frank about talking feelings. ‘I’m ok, it was a bit of a shock that’s all.’ I said.
‘You don’t really think she was murdered? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to harm a little old lady.’ He added as an afterthought.
I thought back to the wind blowing through her curtains and the open latch, ‘No, I think my imagination was running away with me and I was upset, that’s all.’
I didn’t want to worry him about the men by the bar watching us, maybe it was just jet lag playing tricks on me, but then one of them broke my bubble and swaggered toward our table with a plastic smile. He moved on the balls of his toes like a kickboxer, then crouched down beside us on his haunches, ‘Hey, you look for good time, you want see bar in Pat Pong, lady fire dart from pussy… you want smoke reefer?’ His English was sparse, the kind a man picks up in snatches of conversation. A purple, risen scar traced a path from his lip down the side of his chin.
‘No, I think we’re about ready to turn in,’ I said politely, ‘but thank you anyway.’
I noticed a tattoo of a two-headed snake slithering over the veins on his forearm. ‘Engrish?’ he said scanning us.
Skip put on his finest Etonian accent, ’I most certainly am.’
I think the Thai thought the jest was on him. ‘So you Engrish? He said coarsely. Skip didn’t realise the mood had changed, ‘I am a member of her Majesty the Queen’s Commonwealth yes, and you are?’
The guy’s eyes flicked deadly, he smiled and shrugged. I knew we’d meet him again. He left without ceremony, spoke briefly to the man in the grey suit who nodded, looked at Skip and walked briskly out of the Silver Lotus. It was so cheesy it might have come straight out of a bad John Woo film - except it was directed at us and it was scary. I felt my stomach lurch, as my body released an overflow of adrenalin. Fight or flight. Someone had noticed us, put us on their radar, and I had no control or understanding as to why.
Skip lit a cigarette and tried to smile. ‘Spooky huh?’
Butterflies were flitting around in my stomach and I was too tired to deal with it. ‘Ignore them, just a bunch of hustlers pal. No need to worry.’ I said.
‘I don’t think he liked me very much!’ Skip said finishing off his Tiger beer.
That was my cue. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘Good call. Tomorrow the islands?’ he said hopefully.’
‘Yeah, tomorrow the islands. We’ll get ourselves a week on the beach, read a few thrillers and meet some girls, then see what my research turns up with the phone calls to the Vets. You can either come with me to Laos or Vietnam or stay sunning yourself in Ko Lanta.’
‘And miss the cold noodles and grey Vietnamese skies? I have to admit Laos sounds more like fun, we could do a jungle trek.’
‘Let’s just see if the numbers in Dad’s old diary come up with anything. After that there’s always that freaky old soldier I told you about.’
‘The mystery unravels,’ said Skip in a Vincent Price voice.
I paid for the drinks and left. To my relief there was no sign of the men out on the street. Skip rummaged through his short’s pockets and looked at me in a panic - we’d run dry of cigarettes. He offered to get some from the 7 Eleven halfway up Khao San Rd. A few lights were still on, the farang trail still burning.
‘Can’t you wait until the morning?’ I said impatiently,
‘No, I’m so excited I can’t sleep. How many hours ahead are we now?’ asked Skip.
‘Seven or eight.’
‘I feel like I’m in a surreal dream or something.’
A tuk-tuk honked a block away cutting through my thoughts. ‘We’re a long way from home my friend.�
�� I said randomly. A half-broken neon crackled on and off at the side of the road, its emerald light casting a pall of light on his grin and for a moment my best friend might have been a leprechaun from County Wicklow,
‘Don’t - I know what you’re about to say!’ I said wearily.
‘Oh come on Al, one more drink won’t kill us?’
‘Coke doesn’t hold the same appeal as Tiger beer.’
‘Come on mate, let’s not end the first night of the trip on a bum note cos we got spooked by a couple of hoods.’
‘You should be doing commercials for Lucozade, never mind Jif. You must be knackered? Seriously, I’m going to bed.’
He shook his head, ‘You do this traveller lark for a living - I haven’t been outside Watford bloody Gap in the last two years!’
‘Ok, just don’t talk to any more strangers? I’m not going to sleep until I know you’re back in one piece. I’ll wait up until I hear your door shut.’
He laughed and disappeared up the road. I walked on to Luckies Guesthouse looking over my shoulder as I did so. The girl at reception was asleep on the desk. I went silently past her and up to my room, washed my face and wondered what the agenda was of the men in the bar. Then I fell asleep waiting.
I jolted up from a nightmare. Sammy Casbaron was burning in a fire and calling out for me. Christ, it was hot in that little box; the fan in the corner may as well have not been there - my fault for choosing such shitty rooms. I banged on the wall to see if Skip had made it back, taking it for granted he had, just as I always knew however late he was for a drink at the pub, he’d infallibly emerge with his lop-sided grin, come up with some pathetic excuse and blow away any of my irritation with his boyish charm.
No answer.
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