After my encounter with the canine crew, I had a pretty embarrassing spill on the scooter. I had just finished having a beer at a bar that provided an amazing view of a small cove. The place was literally at the end of the only road on the island, so there were very few travellers hanging about, mostly huts and their residents, which I was happy about, for I have no qualms about embarrassing myself in front of Thais, that's what I'm here for. Anyhow, I had just mounted my scooter and pulled out my camera to show you, Merica, a pleasant ride through the Koh Tao countryside, and as I began to accelerate, I noticed a couple of Thai kids on a scooter of their own about to pull in front of an oncoming truck. What ensued was nothing short of hilarious for the handful of Thai's that got to witness a tall goofy farang eat dirt road after valiantly, however unnecessarily, trying to save two kids who it turned out were actually driving up to meet the truck that I thought hastened their doom. I have footage of this crash, but it's stuck on my laptop which has been out of commission since December, so hopefully I can rescue it once I return Stateside.
When I got back to Ban's, I hooked up Yair, Laura and Amy and we took a stroll down the tree-shaded avenue that skirted the beach for miles, taking in the sights and smells. We passed several seafood joints with everything on that day's menu lavishly displayed on tables outside each restaurant; squid and octopus, snapper and shark and the like. After eating some savory shrimp and snapper kabobs and catching some of the World Series, we headed back to Ban's but agreed to say hello to a friend of ours and grab some dessert. Our friend was a little Burmese dude named Get, and he served some of the most delicious pancakes, of all different flavors, from his little cart, one of dozens that dotted the avenue.
As we chatted with Get and watched him cook and flip his little fruity delights, a truck full of very serious Thai dudes looking very much like the canine killers I saw earlier, rolled past behind us. Get immediately stopped talking and started looking extremely nervous. I asked him what was wrong and he uttered one word, "Police." He kept craning his neck in the direction the police had driven, and became very distracted from his pancake making. I began to assume that Get was not operating his pancake stand within the confines of the law. A few more minutes went by, when all of a sudden Get dropped his spatula and disappeared behind the house we were standing in front of, Laura's pancake still bubbling on the grill. Then from behind us a fist of surly "cops" punched their way through the small group of Get's customers in pursuit of Get. We soon heard shouting and scuffling coming from behind the house, and the cacophony soon turned very unsettling and down-right stomach-turning. I looked at my companions and their faces shared the same look of disbelief that I was feeling. In the middle of this Burmese beat down, one of the cops casually strolled out from the grisly scene and headed for the pancake cart. Without so much as a glance at the onlookers, the cop grabbed all of the cash in Get's money jar, pocketed it, scraped the now burning pancake off the griddle, set it on a plate, and walked off with a smile on his face and pancake in his mouth. I could not believe what had just transpired, but fearing the Thai police more than any force of curiosity or gallantry, I wisely decided not to get involved. I mean, seriously, what could I or any of my friends do anyway? For all we knew, Get was drug-dealing rapist without a green card, but the guy seemed pretty friendly and carefree the several times we bought pancakes from him, often chatting about how much he missed his family back home. We stood there for another minute or so, still in shock, the only words spoken were along the lines of, "What the fuck?", and then, with reluctant American indifference, I walked away and finished my pancake.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Koh Tao, Part V: The Island's Canine Problem
Wow, been a long time. Seems like all of Surat Thani has the swine flu paranoia bug, so I got a six day weekend...time to catch up on this here sclog, if you're still reading that is...
On the Tuesday, another 6:ish wake up call from roosters, buffalo coitus, and Three Billy Goats Gruff: The Musical. I got out of bed and hit my head on the bathroom doorway a few times (I'm way too tall for this country), enhancing the already maddening array of hangover stars and colors cascading from my brain. After washing up, I headed down to the beach for breakfast and more scuba fun. It was pouring down rain, so we took a vote and dove in the rain. We had an uneventful dive (if you call a teeming coral feast for the eyes uneventful), but the dive-squadron was a little more tight-knit this time round, what after being responsible for each others lives on two occasions already, and there was of course the seven birthday fuck-buckets we all enjoyed together. So we all had a little more fun going through our bullshit little scuba maneuvers. (Fuck-buckets are Thai whiskey (which is actually rum, but everyone calls it whiskey), coke and redbull tossed into a bucket. The drink of choice for deuchebaggery)
We got back to the beach and decided to do our last two dives the next day, giving us the rest of the afternoon to relax, finally giving me a chance to rent my first scooter (ever!) and explore the island. Koh Tao's a small island, and I covered its expanse in less than an hour. It was a roly-poly little sea-mountain covered with goat farms and coconut groves, and dirt roads to nowhere in particular. It was on this little day-trip that I had the privilege of witnessing Koh Tao's finest and their methods of canine control in action. Just like every other part of Thailand, Koh Tao is crawling with dogs. But this being a resort island, mangy dogs are an unwelcome part of the scenery.
I was riding my motor-bike along a hilly stretch of road, when all of a sudden a pick-up full of Thai rough-necks and covered in mud pulled up along side of me. There were about six or seven of them piled in the bed, and a couple were brandishing pistols. These bruisers looked like they had just left a tea-party with some Malaysian guerrillas. They gave me some not-so-charming smiles, then suddenly their truck veered off the road at a clip and headed for some bungalows scattered over a field. I slowed down curiously, and noticed a pack of dogs about a hundred yards away, fighting and snarling around the small huts. The truck headed right for them. When they saw the truck careening its way towards them, the dogs immediately scattered, as if they knew what was about to ensue. I actually thought the men would whip out their pistols and start firing, but what they did was even worse/better/more bizarre? I don't know the right word for what I saw. One of the men hoisted a long length of pvc pipe up to his mouth and aimed it at a handful of dogs headed for the trees. One of the dogs let out a yelp, stumbled and continued into the trees. At this point I was stopped on the side of the road. The man with the pvc pipe leaped out of the truck and ran into the bush where the dogs had disappeared. He came back out a minute later carrying the limp body of the dog he had just shot with his plastic blowgun. I shit you not. One of the dudes in the cab of the truck yelled something at the man carrying the dog, who then turned around and threw the body back into the scrub. Something else was yelled at him, after which he fetched the body a second time and took it deeper into the woods, presumably so that the decomposition stench wouldn't reach the nearby bungalows. I had just witnessed Koh Tao's canine control unit in full force.
On the Tuesday, another 6:ish wake up call from roosters, buffalo coitus, and Three Billy Goats Gruff: The Musical. I got out of bed and hit my head on the bathroom doorway a few times (I'm way too tall for this country), enhancing the already maddening array of hangover stars and colors cascading from my brain. After washing up, I headed down to the beach for breakfast and more scuba fun. It was pouring down rain, so we took a vote and dove in the rain. We had an uneventful dive (if you call a teeming coral feast for the eyes uneventful), but the dive-squadron was a little more tight-knit this time round, what after being responsible for each others lives on two occasions already, and there was of course the seven birthday fuck-buckets we all enjoyed together. So we all had a little more fun going through our bullshit little scuba maneuvers. (Fuck-buckets are Thai whiskey (which is actually rum, but everyone calls it whiskey), coke and redbull tossed into a bucket. The drink of choice for deuchebaggery)
We got back to the beach and decided to do our last two dives the next day, giving us the rest of the afternoon to relax, finally giving me a chance to rent my first scooter (ever!) and explore the island. Koh Tao's a small island, and I covered its expanse in less than an hour. It was a roly-poly little sea-mountain covered with goat farms and coconut groves, and dirt roads to nowhere in particular. It was on this little day-trip that I had the privilege of witnessing Koh Tao's finest and their methods of canine control in action. Just like every other part of Thailand, Koh Tao is crawling with dogs. But this being a resort island, mangy dogs are an unwelcome part of the scenery.
I was riding my motor-bike along a hilly stretch of road, when all of a sudden a pick-up full of Thai rough-necks and covered in mud pulled up along side of me. There were about six or seven of them piled in the bed, and a couple were brandishing pistols. These bruisers looked like they had just left a tea-party with some Malaysian guerrillas. They gave me some not-so-charming smiles, then suddenly their truck veered off the road at a clip and headed for some bungalows scattered over a field. I slowed down curiously, and noticed a pack of dogs about a hundred yards away, fighting and snarling around the small huts. The truck headed right for them. When they saw the truck careening its way towards them, the dogs immediately scattered, as if they knew what was about to ensue. I actually thought the men would whip out their pistols and start firing, but what they did was even worse/better/more bizarre? I don't know the right word for what I saw. One of the men hoisted a long length of pvc pipe up to his mouth and aimed it at a handful of dogs headed for the trees. One of the dogs let out a yelp, stumbled and continued into the trees. At this point I was stopped on the side of the road. The man with the pvc pipe leaped out of the truck and ran into the bush where the dogs had disappeared. He came back out a minute later carrying the limp body of the dog he had just shot with his plastic blowgun. I shit you not. One of the dudes in the cab of the truck yelled something at the man carrying the dog, who then turned around and threw the body back into the scrub. Something else was yelled at him, after which he fetched the body a second time and took it deeper into the woods, presumably so that the decomposition stench wouldn't reach the nearby bungalows. I had just witnessed Koh Tao's canine control unit in full force.
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