One morning

".....and then one morning you wake up and you've forgotten all those things that made you unhappy, sad or less than who you are, and you are surrounded by love light and happiness once again."

Parasite in the land of plenty

I have become a tour guide, for a few weeks. Unintentionally and kicking and screaming the whole way. Acosted by people from home in my new surroundings, people stomping demands of "you will make sure I have a good time" and "Its your job to make me have a good time." No plan, no interests, no guide book and nothing to contribute.

I give the speech I had not known resided inside me, about making your own happiness and finding your own way. As the words cross my lips I understand that I have crossed over. There is a difference in levels, and respect and actions between us that is huge. Well at least we are in Kho Phangan I think, where the Thais are used to the typical disrespectful white people banging around. Excessive weirdness and ignorance.

Many scooter rides with the ungrateful tourist strapped to the back seat into the day and night, prove to be wearing on my soul. A refusal to learn compiled with a huge sense of entitlement make me not miss my home country even in the slightest. The fact that I have to be in charge of this persons good time irritates me. I cant wait for the day she leaves.

After much negotiation and several stomping off fits, I manage to get a night to myself. I spend it at a compond high atop a hill dancing and smiling, watcing the moon rise. Round and full above me surrounded by hiding dancing people far from the Had Yai maddness. Safe, and full of life. Not thinking for a moment about her and her demands.

Watching the sun come up from the water as I float and drink the last of my beer. Wishing the clock would stop as the hour I have left ticks slowly away. One last hurray, and then a feverish gathering of things and a blurry morning ride to the dock. We set sail back south, away from the isle of parties and distracted people. Criminals hiding from the law and confused travelers. But still harboring an ugly 160 pound bag of shit with a grin and a bikini to the next island.

The sun is blinding on the boat, amazing, calming and comforting. The sound of the engine blaring sooths as I sip coffee with the guatar player from Job 2 Do on the deck.
She is yelling again. Into my bad ear and demanding something, Im begining to think that that slice of watermellon I injested at last nights party may have had more than just "love" infused into it. As the sunrise turns many new shades of life, and the yelling disapears into charlie brown trumpet noises.

She has disapeared again, thankfully. I cringe at the thought of when she might rear her ugly, demanding face again. All too soon, I discover as we disbark from the boat she is back to demanding things. Lost and ignorant and to impatient to wait and see. She stomps behind me to the bus, dropping clothing and papers from her badly packed duffle bag she has unimaginativly thrown over her lumpy sunburned shoulders. She is now the ugliest being on the planet at this moment I am sure.

I fall fast asleep on the bus, uninterested in conversations with her or about her she has given up I presume and leaves me to sleep. The bus carries us slowly, hour by hour closer to Railay. I gather my things from the underside of the bus, and make my way to the tuk tuk that will cary us to the dock, and the boat from the dock that will take us to my island. She is lucky. ..but shes oblivious in her world of entitlment she sees nothing. Pouting I watch her disfigured face a marr in the beauty around her on the boat ride in. I am smiling.

As the boat comes to a stop far from shore, low tide is a bitch. She clambors to get herself and her dragging duffel out of the boat. The boat man throws the bag to her and I watch in silence as karma makes my day. The bag knocks her off the slippery concrete walkway underwater and she falls into the murky low tide mangrove water. Computer bag submerging, heel gouging on the rocks. She squeels. I laugh a little inside.

So the journey contines.