The Backpacker

by John Harris

  However, I did have a choice when leaving Bangkok to either go by train or bus. The bus was slightly cheaper, but in the end, having weighed up the situation, I chose the train. A wise choice because although the bus left earlier, getting me away from pigs and dogs, I didn’t feel up to sitting in a seat for ten hours. At least on the train I could kill two birds with one stone: get there and have a good sleep.

  The train pulled out of the station, and at about nine o’clock, after dinner and one beer, I zonked out, fully dressed. The sound of the other travellers around me laughing and discussing their various ports of call faded into infinity along with the sound of the train wheels, and I drifted off, cosy in the knowledge that there would be nothing to disturb me.

  The next thing I knew, the guard was walking up and down the train waking everyone up for breakfast. We were transferred onto a clapped-out ferry early in the morning and I lay on deck, soaking up the magical first rays of the sun, content that I was finally, truly out of Bangkok and among blue sea and palm trees.

  Little green islands were dotted around the place, coming into view and then, when each person on the boat had discussed whether or not it was their island, passing us by. I had just muttered, ‘Ahh, this is the life,’ to myself and lain down on the top deck, when I heard a vaguely familiar voice above the whine of the engines shout, ‘Hey, Suzy, isn’t that John over there, that British guy?’

  I opened one eye. There was a pause while Dave fought his way over to me, across the bodies strewn on deck, occasionally giving a one fingered gesture to anyone who complained.

  ‘Well, la-di-da!’ he said, standing over me, the sun eclipsed by his head. ‘Hey brother, you too huh? Me an’ Sooze couldn’t take it either.’ He did his familiar secret agent style glance over his shoulder and crouched down beside me. ‘To tell you the truth John, heard there’re some, er, babes on this island of ours. Thought I might bag me a couple. Whaddya say?’

  I agreed half-heartedly before Suzy came over lugging Dave’s guitar and looking thoroughly pissed off. She shoved it at him angrily as he stood up. ‘It is John,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Well this calls for a celebration. You hang onto this while I go downstairs and buy us all a beer. How’d that be, Dave?’

  Dave watched her storm off. ‘Whoo-ee, getting touchy aren’t we?’ he called after her, and, conscious of the guitar that was propped up against him, tried to make light of the incident by kissing it. ‘C’mon baby, you an me, don’t need three,’ and rode astride it.

  We drank the beer that Suzy bought, and Dave toasted freedom and ‘La-di-da British girls’ before dozing off, using his guitar as a pillow. I pretended to sleep to avoid having to talk to Suzy. She seemed nice enough but I had other things on my mind; like how long the rest of my money would last, and what I was going to do if, as I feared, Rick wasn’t on the island any more.

  I was still thinking about these things when we pulled into the ferry pier on Koh Pha-Ngan and transferred ourselves into one of the waiting Isuzus that took new arrivals to various parts of the island.

  Dave loaded himself and his gear into the back of the pick-up and held out a hand, pulling me up. ‘Where’re you heading John?’

  ‘Hat Rin,’ I said, brushing the dust off the seat before sitting. ‘You?’

  ‘Same-same, bro.’ He dusted a seat with Shakespearean melodrama, intended for Suzy, but she ignored it, tutting and sitting on the opposite bench to us instead.

  Following a bit of negotiation we sped off up the bumpy track into the island, clouds of dust billowing around us and covering everyone except the driver, who sat in an air conditioned cab, in a fine yellow layer.

  ‘You, ahem, know where you’re gonna stay?’ Suzy asked, opening her guidebook on a map of Hat Rin, leaning across and balancing it on my knees.

  I shrugged, twisting my neck to read the map that was upside-down. ‘Play it by ear.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ Dave snatched the book and threatened to throw it out the back of the pick-up. We suddenly hit a bump in the road and the book jumped out of his hands and tumbled out onto the track.

  ‘Stop!’ Suzy banged on the cab window. ‘Make them stop, Dave, John!’

  ‘Shit.’ Dave slapped the car roof with the palm of his hand, bringing us to a skidding halt. We reversed, picked up the battered guidebook and drove off again. No one talked for the rest of the journey except Dave, who kept apologising.

  We must have passed at least a dozen different sets of beach bungalows as we followed the coastline intermittently across the island, each one stunningly picturesque, but nobody got out. Everyone, it appeared, was heading to Hat Rin beach, and when we finally arrived I could see why: a single crescent of gleaming white sand hemmed in by a turquoise sea. Dave and I dropped our gear on the beach as we ran down and plunged into the warm clear water.

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ He belly-flopped like a starfish, turned over and went into a handstand. I dived and swam underwater, and swam and swam, not ever wanting to stop. My eyes opened and the world became a soft blue that was so pleasant I kept swimming until I was in about twenty-five feet of water. A turn onto my back enabled me to see the surface: a gently rippled glass ceiling through which saturated rays of sunshine pierced like a thousand torch beams. Running out of air, I stood on the bottom, did one quick three-sixty to locate the sloping beach and pushed upwards, breaking the surface with a gasp.

  ‘John!’ Dave thumbed towards the beach where I could just make out Suzy, standing over his guitar with her arms folded across her chest in anger. ‘Gotta go, you coming?’

  ‘You go and find a place,’ I shouted. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

  He marked the air with a forefinger and attempted a back-flip. It went wrong and he walked off up the beach rubbing his head.

  Floating, that’s all I wanted to do, face up and face down, forever. Or until the previous two days and two countries’ worth of sweat, grime and dust had drifted silently off my body. I felt like a shirt in one of those washing powder adverts, where they have a close-up of the dirt particles lifting off the material. ‘Whiter than white,’ I mumbled, looking up at the azure sky and marvelling at the single white cloud that looked like it had been stuck on, like a ball of cotton wool on a school kid’s collage. ‘Bluey-white’.

  I floated so long that afternoon that not only did the dirt drift off my body but so did my shorts. The constant use was more than they could stand and the stitching gave way all at once, so that I had to hold them on with both hands when I walked back up the beach. For that reason more than any real sense of bargain-hunting I booked into the first set of beach bungalows that stood on the sand, and, after a filling meal, set about the task of searching out the person I’d come here to find.

  I still had the crumpled piece of paper that Rick had scribbled on when we had parted company in India, and after asking a waiter at one of the beach restaurants and being told that the Back Yard Pub was up on a hill overlooking a beach, I went on my way. I was directed down through the main street, and after five minutes was climbing a hill into the trees, with no sign of human activity. ‘Shit, this can’t be right,’ I muttered, and stood, sweating in the evening heat.

  ‘Keep going. You wan’ Ba’ Yar’ Pu’?’ A lithe young Thai man pointed further up the hill and walked off into the trees, to do whatever Thai men do in trees, and I continued.

  The top of the path levelled off and swung left into a small yard, behind which was a large wooden house. A yard, I reasoned, a pub at the back of that yard. It had to be the right place. I walked up onto a wooden veranda, onto what was obviously a dance floor, and strode over to the far end, facing a jungle hillside. The whole place had a fantastic view overlooking palm trees that ran downhill to another beach. On the blue horizon was another island, lit orange by the evening sun.

  ‘Wha’ you wan’?’ I spun round, startled. The Thai man who had vanished into the trees climbed over the wooden handrail and jumped onto the veranda.

  ‘Umm, I’m looki
ng for Rick,’ I said, slightly unsure. ‘Is he here?’

  He started to fiddle with the wiring on the sound system, seemingly ignorant of what I’d said.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Excuse me, is–’

  ‘Li?’ he said looking up. ‘You wan’ Li’? No have Li’ here.’

  Maybe he was wrong, or maybe he hadn’t understood. Pointlessly pulling the scrap of paper from my pocket, I repeated, ‘Rick. I am looking for a man called Rick. Do you have any messages for me? My name is... ’

  ‘No have.’

  I sighed and leaned against the handrail, sweat pouring off me from the combined effort of climbing the hill and asking the question. ‘Are you sure you don’t have any messages?’

  He went back to his fiddling. ‘Tol’ you, man, no have, no have! Why you no listen?’

  I deflated. It wasn’t possible. I’d come so far. Partly to see other places I had to admit, but mainly to meet up with Rick. Reluctantly I walked out of the house, still wanting to ask him again but knowing that it would lead nowhere. If Rick was, or had ever been to Koh Pha-Ngan he clearly would have left a message. That was the arrangement and I felt sure that he would stick to it. He must have reached the island all those weeks ago and been persuaded, by a girl probably, to go to a different island, or up to Chiang Mai.

  No longer wanting to think about where I was going to go next or what plans to make, I went back down to the beach, bought an ounce of Thai grass and crashed in my beach hut. I felt gutted and suddenly very alone.

  I rolled a joint and had only smoked half before the room started to spin. I hadn’t smoked for a while and the effect seemed to be double what I remembered it to be. Suddenly overcome by a queasy feeling, I lay down in an attempt to keep the room from moving. Phew! Was this strong or was I simply unaccustomed to smoking? I closed my eyes and felt worse, the room whizzed, my stomach felt woozy and I belched before running into the toilets and throwing up a barely digested green curry. ‘Fuck!’ The sweat ran off my head and fell like rain, cratering the leafy green liquid. I ladled some water onto my head and the dizziness eventually cleared enough for me to go back and sit on the bed.

  After half an hour, my body recovered just enough energy for me to stand and fix up my mosquito net, but it felt like such an arduous task to tie a piece of string and attach the loops that I did it incorrectly. I fell back onto the bed; one end of the net pinged off and it smothered my head like a mist. Too tired and too pissed off to bother, the sleep my body craved enveloped me like the net and I quickly drifted off.

  I hadn’t even noticed the scribbled message that had been stuck to the inside of my door with a Rizla.

  THREE

  John.

  Fucking good to see you!

  Contact soon.

  Sir William.

  I pulled the piece of paper from the door leaving half the gummed edge behind, and stood, pondering the note. The early morning sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the planks of the door making vertical lines like laser beams across my chest. Squinting and moving my eye out of the line of fire, I sat on the edge of the bed. What did it mean?

  Of course, I should have been wondering how on earth someone had managed to get into my room the night before to post the message. The door had been locked so whoever it was either had the key or knew someone who had it. The previous night’s events went carefully through my mind, stage by stage, in an attempt to sift out a face or a figure that had been hanging around my hut, and who may have been the intruder. I suddenly felt the urge to check my belongings, to make sure that nothing was missing. My passport, video camera and money were all still there, nothing had been touched.

  The next question that entered my head was why Rick hadn’t spoken to me himself. If he knew I was here why had he only left a message? And what was all this knighthood stuff?

  Unsure exactly what to make of these events, I unzipped my holdall, pulled out the postcard he’d sent me and cross-checked the scrawl. The note was indeed in the same handwriting, and not only that but it was written in the same garish purple ink.

  Fucking good to see you! I imagined him saying it as he wrote it down, wondering whether or not to spell it Fooking. Fook. Fooking fook. The words on the paper went over and over in my head. Written on a Rizla, I thought, and sat with my back against the shuttered window, how typical of him. More typical would have been to include a rolled joint as a welcoming present.

  I rolled the note into a tiny ball and pushed it out through the window shutter, momentarily blinding myself in the sunlight. Outside, the beach looked almost deserted through my limited strip of vision, and blinking rapidly to stop the bright light from stinging my eyes, first the beach and then the sea came into view.

  I pulled away from the window, startled as someone suddenly walked onto the wooden veranda of the hut. ‘Goo’ mornin’, sir,’ came a delicate female voice.

  My heart beat a little faster, and I pushed one eye up against the shutter again to see who it was. The woman arranged her things on the wooden platform, and soon the sound of fruit being chopped drifted in along with the sweet sticky smells. Peeping through the shutter and manoeuvring my head, I tried to get a look at her face, but my field of vision was restricted so I just eyed her technique. One hand held the machete while the other spun the papaya around in quarter turns, her lurid blue nail varnish like lapis scarabs clinging to the side of the dark green fruit.

  Watching the fruit being prepared made me so hungry that I completely forgot to question how she had known I was awake, and after taking a quick bucket shower and dressing, I opened the door and walked outside. She was gone. There was no mess, no peel, just a huge bowl of chopped tropical fruit sitting in the middle of a small red cloth beneath my hammock.

  I quickly jumped off the veranda and looked around the rear of the hut. She was nowhere to be seen. I walked around the hut twice, not quite believing the past ten minutes had really happened. I expected to return to the front and find the bowl of fruit gone but it was still there, shining, mouthwatering, like a mirage.

  At first I was reluctant to eat it. I wasn’t sure whether I was being suckered into some scam whereby I ate the fruit, watched by beady eyes, and got pounced upon and presented with an outrageous bill. So, hesitating for about two seconds, I picked up the bowl, arranged myself in the hammock, hesitated for another second or two while scanning the beach, and started scooping up the fruit whilst swinging to and fro.

  A door opened in the next hut along from mine and Dave the American emerged, stretching and yawning. As he came out his hand went down the front of his shorts as though searching for something, his face frowning and confused. Funny how people look different when they don’t know they’re being watched. I struck the side of my bowl with the spoon. Bing!

  ‘Hey,’ he said, quickly dropping his hand and walking to the edge of his veranda. ‘What’s that you’ve got there John?’

  I watched him through my swinging knees, ‘Fruit salad,’ and struck the spoon against the bowl again.

  ‘Fruit salad?’ He looked at his watch – which wasn’t there. ‘Jesus, are they open already?’

  ‘Don’t think they are,’ I said happily. ‘You could check though.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘So where’d you get that?’

  ‘Some woman’s walking around making them.’ Another succulent piece of pineapple was slurped into my mouth. ‘Jush left.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ I said, grinning, ‘they’re free.’

  ‘Fuckin’ what? Don’t kid me now John. Don’t bullshit me.’ He leaned over the handrail, balancing on his stomach. ‘You tellin’ me you didn’t have to pay for that?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’ Barely able to contain my laughter, I stuffed the rest of the fruit into my mouth and nearly choked. "Ucking tashty, too.’

  Dave vaulted over the side onto the sand and stormed off between the huts towards one of the restaurants. A minute later he was back, empty-handed. �
�You’re shittin’ me John, there’s no one there yet. Just some old guy picking his nose.’ He stomped onto the wooden deck of his hut and leaped heavily into his hammock. The rope snapped and brought him crashing onto his back. ‘Fuckin’ Jesus!’

  I sniggered. ‘You OK, Dave?’

  ‘Arrgh!’ He rolled over onto his side and rubbed his spine. ‘You just eat your free food John, don’t worry about me.’

  Suzy appeared at the door, looking down at Dave and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, no doubt awoken by the thump. ‘Thought you navy boys were used to hammocks and all that? Morning John,’ she said, noticing me.

  Dave heaved himself up. ‘Modern ships don’t have hammocks, Sooze. I was on the USS Enterprise, not the fuckin’ Mayflower.’

  She raised her eyebrows towards me, took a towel off her washing-line and went back inside.

  I steadied my hammock by placing one foot against my door. ‘You were in the navy, Dave?’

  ‘Bet you didn’t guess that one, eh John?’ He jumped down off his veranda and limped over towards me, pulling a face at Suzy’s back. ‘Man, what a start to the day! Wake up, some guy next door gets a free breakfast, an’ all I get is freefall!’ He sat down with his back against my door and looked out to sea. ‘Yep. Never came to places like this though.’

  ‘How long were you in for?’

  ‘Two years basic.’ He pulled his knees up to his chest and rubbed his back, wincing in pain. ‘Nothing else for black guys to do in the US. No, that’s not strictly true, there is something else but that involves breaking the law, so count me outta that shit.’