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.
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