Hitting the Beach

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

It's been more than eight months since my last confession. Apologies to anyone who checked this site this year, seeking in vain for a brief amusement, only to be confronted with a giant eyeball and a description of laser surgery. I've been through a period where so much was happening I didn't have the time or energy to write it down. As I rectify that situation over the coming weeks, perhaps some of those stories may come out. In brief, I continued work as a tourism news reporter in Bangkok for most of the year, leaving finally at the end of July.

The Situation as It Stands Now

After spending the past two years living in Bangkok, I believe I have fully explored all the possibilities of that city. In fact, I had pretty much milked all the fun out of the town six months after I arrived. I spent the following year and a half finding new ways to do the same things over again while the lions of boredom circled in the tall grass. Shopping, playing pool, drinking, dancing to bands that never play their own songs, watching the odd interactions of tourists and locals and, well that's about it. The exact layout of every department store and shopping centre is tattooed on the surface of my retinas, I know all the words to every sappy pop song that hit the charts in the US three years ago and is only just now becoming popular in Thailand, and I'm embarrassingly good at eight-ball.

The next logical step, barring leaving the country, which I'm not ready to do just yet, is to move to the ocean. Thailand's got heaps of beaches and it would be easy to find a cheap place with no neighbours, where the waves lull me to sleep every night and a clam breakfast is just a few steps away. However, call me a wimp if you like, I'm not ready to buy into the idyllic island Robinson Crusoe deal quite yet, and I know for a fact I would go insane without the occasional run-in with the beautiful ugliness of civilisation. So my next logical step leads me to Phuket, Thailand's biggest island, which features not only lovely beaches and the occasional clam bake, but department stores, movie cineplexes, traffic congestion (though on a lesser scale than Bangkok) and loads of amusing tourists.

Idyllic, Phuket is not, and I have chosen a house on a hillside overlooking a beach that is somewhat at a distance from Patong Beach, the main magnet for blubbery Europeans in thong swimwear, screaming children, roaring jet-skis, and poorly concealed prostitution. I'll be two beaches south, on Kata Beach. It's a bit quieter, with a few lesser-developed beaches a bit further south, yet only 15 minutes from the Patong Starbuck's where I can sit outside and watch the freak parade on Beach Road while in the distance, large tourists get hefted into the air on parachutes and dragged around the bay by speedboats, a surreal sight for which words fail me.

While some might say Phuket is a questionable destination given its new found propensity to dunk itself in the occasional giant wave, I am taking an optimistic view. A drop in tourism is certainly unfortunate for the residents who have depended on it for the past ten years. However, before that, they were doing fine as farmers and fishermen, and the island's natural resources could do with a break from the foreign hoards. They say the beaches, forests and coral reefs have never looked so clean. On top of that, property prices have taken a dip, a fact of which I am taking full advantage.

While I'll initially be staying in a rental place in Kata Beach, I am arranging to buy a house on a hill in the centre of the island overlooking the main reservoir and dam. So far, the place is just a bit of concrete foundation stapled to the hillside, but by late 2006, it will be a large, two-bedroom home with garden, across from a clubhouse with a gym and a pool. I've not used a gym since I was forced to by the US public school system, but my stint over the past year, staying at upmarket hotels and writing about them, has made me a swimming pool addict. Not that I need a swimming pool near my house, since there's a big salty one just ten minutes away, but the Andaman Sea has a tendency to suck unwary people to a watery grave during the monsoon season.

For the moment, I am suffering one more month in Bangkok. Not exactly suffering actually. Since I know it's my last month, I'm touring around the place, enjoying a few of my favourite activities for the last time: playing pool at the bar with the DJ who loves AC/DC, shopping for cheap stuff at MBK, walking through the freak scene on Sukhumvit Road, trading used books on Khao San Road and visiting the humble little temple there, and eating the only halfway decent Japanese ramen in town at a restaurant in Bumrungrad Hospital.

Next week I'm off to Cambodia. I've got to renew my visa, which requires leaving the country, and I've got a bit of research to do for the book I am now writing. Next installment will no doubt be about whatever happens to me in the city of Phnom Penh. After that, it's time to hit the waves in Phuket.

Phuket Petting Zoo

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.