#6: A Saga of Pain and Suffering, in Two Parts

Edie, looking sympathetic about the fact that her boyfriend is a whiny asshole who might just be dying, right now, maybe.

Week 6, Thailand

LONG WEEKS: are hard to bear. And last week was a long, long week.

I felt a rumbling when I was barely off the bus back from Ko Samet last Monday, and by the next day I was doubled over in my room, my face pressed against the cool wooden floor, feeling ever so sorry for myself.

Food poisoning!! In Australia, if you get it, you've at least got a generally good idea of where you got it from: 'Oh, maybe it was those prawns I left in the boot of the car all summer!' or 'I'll bet it's from that time when we sacrificed a live chicken, left its carcass in the sun for two days and then ate it raw. But goddamn that was delicious!'

Over here it's a different story. Perhaps it was from that brown stuff that was sprinkled over the red stuff, that one time? Or maybe it had something to do with the white goo pouring out of that weird dog-shaped cake that looked like it was covered in raw egg. Who knows? The street stall or the restaurant? The food on the bus? The food at the school? No-one is to blame and everyone is to blame.

And where was my beautiful girlfriend while I lay clawing at my gut like a mangy dog?

Well, Edie decided to stay in Ko Samet a couple of days after I left, since the sun only came out on Monday and it was glorious. I'd ring her up at night after I'd grown tired of moaning and grimacing: 'Oh, it's so cool! I went out drinking with these British girls, then I met up with this Israeli guy and the bar was giving me free drinks all night, then I had to sit listening to this boring fucking Finnish businessman for an hour, but then I went and sat on the beach with a cocktail and the British girls came down and they were totally vomitous but fuck them it was an awesome night, I'm having such a great time.'

'Yeah?' I'd say, 'I just pissed a couple of litres of brown stuff out my ass. I can't go more than eight feet from my bathroom door. How's that for a killer party?'

Yes: making people who are having a much better time than me feel bad about themselves is a particular gift of mine. But Edie arrived back to Bangkok Thursday, tanned, smiling and stunning, and I arrived back from work the same day looking like I'd just escaped from twenty-four years in an Austrian dungeon.

But things turn around. Edie is getting some expensive dental work done over here (well, expensive in Australia: over here a $2000 operation is only about $250. It's kinda tempting actually - I looked into it, and it turns out I could buy a facelift, lipo, penis enlargement and sex reassignment surgery and still have enough left over for dinner and a movie), and by Friday she had a toothache that left her crying on the wooden floor (while I laughed at her and called her names, as is my god-given right). The dental nurse gave her a rainbow of hypercoloured painkillers but it was only on Sunday that the dentist realized she'd screwed up the procedure and fixed all of Edie's pains in two and a half minutes.

Apart from all that, we decided this weekend that in pursuing the Holy Trinity of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, we'd been sadly lacking in the rock'n'roll department. We set off on a mission from god to find out where the cool kids were hiding, since they obviously weren't into riding mechanical bulls these days. We'd found Pisces, but that was more a cafe. We'd found Saxophone Bar, but that was a little older and a little whiter than we were hoping. We'd found Kill Time - and that was awesome - but even there we had to settle for endless games of Jenga over any sort of live music.

On Friday we found the Lullabar, and everything changed. In a tiny rundown terrace house, a big, sad-looking dog sat at the bar. There was no other bartender. A band named Girlfriend From the Internet was playing in the next room, a room so small that band members had to stand apart, in between different tables, and the bass guitar kept smacking innocent diners in the face on every solo. They played a bunch of covers of all that British dance-rock from last year - you know, Klaxons, New Young Pony Club, Kaiser Chiefs, Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, etc etc - and you know, that scene was fun (if totally forgettable) when it was big a year or two ago, but bursting from sloppy college guitars in a rundown college bar, screamed by a singer with big hair, big chains and a cultivated sneer: it sounded like the thing you'd spent your whole life waiting to hear. It sounded perfect.

We woke in the afternoon on Saturday, pottered around until it was time to go out again. Then off to a reggae bar near the river, which advertised a 'ska band' - that should have been our first warning. We let the singer limp her way through 'Don't Look Back in Anger' before we retreated to the blues bar down the street, Ad Here the 13th. Great music but the tiny place was packed to the gills and we could do no more than stand outside and glare at everyone inside. So across the river to Phra Athit, where we found a little roadside stall that had grown into a massive party since a local 21st birthday had come to celebrate there. We downed a mean bottle of Sang Som whiskey, sang along to a far superior version of 'Don't Look Back in Anger' along with about fifty others, drunk as monkeys, and got hit on by the birthday boy (who'd had a little too much whiskey, judging by his hand appearing and disappearing from my thigh like a rabbit from a hat three times over the night). We stumbled to a nearby rasta bar, where we chilled out with a South African soccer player playing in the Asian Champions League (cool) and his Thai girlfriend (not cool, as it quickly became apparent that neither could understand a single word the other said and they needed Aaron to translate).

So we did it, found the rock in the 'Kok. Sunday we watched the rain fall onto the river in bucketfuls (a beautiful sight) but whiskey does no-one any favours and we didn't get much done otherwise.

My, this has been a long and meandering post. Congratulations on making it this far. The longer Edie and I stay in the one place, the harder it's getting to make my life sound interesting in any way. But whatever. Hope you're all doing well and happy Mother's Day to all. I'll be halfway through my placement at the end of this week, then one more week before the half-term break, then off to Malaysia and Singapore to meet my mate Kenny, in the city in which you can be fined for not flushing the toilet. We shall see.

Lachie

NEXT WEEK: Cambodia? Laos? Vietnam? Gotta go somewhere cos the visa's expired!