There’s been a new face hanging around the restaurant for a few days. She is a tiny young girl of about twelve, who looks like a puff of wind would sweep her away. She has a beautiful face and smiles huge crinkly-eyed smiles whenever I pass her. Being used to the ebb and flow of people around here I don’t think to question who she is for several days. Until it becomes clear she’s sleeping here, at which point Crab explains she is Ooh and Bo’s daughter and she swam here from Burma.

“She what?” I ask, complete incredulity written across my face. Crab re-iterates, “yes she swam here”. Ooh and Bo couldn’t afford to pay the people traffickers who smuggle people over the border from Burma, so she went illegally in a boat with 14 other people. Crossing the foul straits between Ranong and Thailand, they were chased by the Burmese police, the boat overturned and she had to swim for it. Five people died. This little slip of a girl swam to Thailand, and then presumably with no money, certainly with no Thai language, managed to make her way across the country to the island.

A few weeks later, I am actually in Ranong, Burma, doing the annoying three-monthly visa crossing required on most long term visas. I arrive at the port having mini bussed across the country, spent hours on the ferry and finally arrived at the hell hole of a port. The place stinks. The smells of rotten fish, rancid sewage and gasoline hang in the air and choke everyone, along with the sweltering heat. On the dock, hundreds of boats are crammed along the edges of the water, packed in like starving kittens, bobbing at their mother’s teat.

When we clamber into the boat, the clean highway from Thailand cushions us on one side of the river, and on the other side the smoggy jungle hills of Burma, with all their secrets and their deathly struggles rise into the distance. I look down at the water, which is black, putrid, oily foulness. The stench is almost unbearable, and I have literally never seen water that looks like straight oil. It’s disconcerting.

In our wooden longtail boat we chug our way out into the wide water stream that divides the two countries. Belching gasoline, as we pick up speed the air clears a little bit. I cannot believe that this little girl was in this water. Cannot imagine her cheerful eyes and sweet smile racing under cover of darkness across this waterway with the Burmese police on her tail. I cannot begin to contemplate the fear as she lands in the filthy water, or the strength she must have had to swim across the miles of water, and haul herself oil coverd and exhausted from the obnoxious river.

I dread to imagine the life she has come from. Something in her demeanour, something in her eyes speaks to me that she is a victim. Unfortunately in a place like Burma, with no protection, no women’s rights, a war torn, bloody land, just a beautiful little slip of a girl making her way is unlikely not to have encountered hardships. I wonder what she has seen, what those intelligent gentle eyes have borne witness to. What she thinks behind that luminous smile. Of course she just gets on with it: is happy, smiles, enjoys being with her family, is glad to be alive, is glad of the moment she is living and the opportunity to enjoy it.

A few weeks later the girl gathers her things in a plastic bag and swinging it against her leg waves goodbye. She is off to another beach to work in a resort. I hope she is well treated, I hope they are good to her, that someone there will be protecting her, that she wont be abused, violated, exploited or hurt in anyway. She is perfectly happy as she gets on the bike to go, this is her chance, a shot at Thailand, a shot at a good life, work, food, some comfort. She is glad to take it and I pray with all my heart it works out for her as the bike speeds out of the village and up the dusty dirt road.

Related posts:

1. Joe and Egger get a photo from Burma
2. Joe and Egger’s Little Boy….

A few days ago I started running up the mountain. With it being so hot it’s difficult to find time that’s cool enough to run, so when it started pouring rain I threw on my shoes and headed off, confirming for the whole village that, yes, I am totally barking. My comeuppance was quick to appear, as predicted by all the Thai people who had shaken their heads at my folly, this morning I couldn’t get out of bed.

This is not an uncommon occurrence for me, being definitively NOT a morning person. But even my addled morning brain could detect this was something different, and a slightly extreme reaction to having inflicted one little mountain run on my poor  unfit body.

My back feels like it has collapsed, any strength or power I had there is gone completely and my legs and hips felt like they belong to the dingly dangly scarecrow, disconnected from my body’s centre and barely under its control. I drag myself through the morning washing of body parts, wrestling with t-shirts and scrubbing of faces before moving like a zombie to the car and going slowly through the motions necessary to get Clear Sky to school.

Only when I am at home again, and despite the mountain of stuff I’ve got to do today, know that I am only fit to fall back into bed, does it dawn on me that my bones are aching unaccountably all over. I remain prostrate in the bed for the rest of the day, adamant this can’t be Dengue Fever because I’m not hot, until Shrimp comes in, feels my head, and says actually I am on fire, burning up. At which point I begin to consider that this might well be Dengue.

Aedes Aegypti Mosquito

And so it begins, the days of lying inert, pained, unable to move, unable to look at anything due to stabbing pain behind the eyes, so just staring at the wall. The doctor confirms I have dengue and runs blood checks to see how low my white blood cells are, if they drop below a certain level I could be in danger of developing Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever, which can be fatal.

I ride out the wave of the illness in bed, sweating it out, alternately hot and cold, cold and hot, bathed in sweat and shaking with chills. As the virus runs through my body I develop agonising head pain and swellings all over my skull, an insistent nagging pain like toothache, but consuming my entire head.

When I start to feel better I crawl out of bed and eat some dry crackers, everything tastes like metal and makes my stomach turn but I force down the food and water as best I can. After a couple more days the nausea leaves, although the head pain remains, debilitating and frustrating me from being able to concentrate or write.

What is more disturbing when the illness finally leaves, is that I find I have sunk into a lethargic depression, from which rousing myself is proving virtually impossible. I can get up and fake that I’m okay enough to get Clear Sky off to school, but that saps all of my energy and as soon as she’s gone I’m a teary heap, unable to tackle even the smallest of tasks. Apparently this is quite common with dengue, but it is so demoralising and frustrating to feel almost well, but puffed out and exhausted from just climbing up the stairs.

Apparently there has been an outbreak of Dengue, with 26,000 cases throughout the country and six deaths in the last week alone. Dengue is transmitted by a small daytime mosquito, one of the really pesky ones that it’s hard to swat. There are around 40 million cases of Dengue each year globally, and several hundred thousand Dengue hemorrhagic fever each year.  By the late 1990s, dengue was the most important mosquito-borne disease affecting humans after malaria, in Africa and Asia.

There is currently no vaccine or treatment for Dengue. It’s hard to imagine a disease being this common, and this devastating, in a western country without serious effort and funding being put into finding a cure, treatment, or some kind of adequate prevention.

Just saying.

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The front page of Thai Rath newspaper today. Not something you ever want to see in beautiful Thailand…..

Thanks @RichardBarrow for the incredible reportage, bangkok dangerous map, and up to the minute tweeting from the front line.

For incredible images of what’s happening right now in Bangkok please go to The Nation’s State

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I’ve spent the last two days in Bangkok with Golf sorting out her university.

Golf is one of the brightest kids I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. She is so switched on and diligent, more so than most of the adults I know. If you give Golf a task, despite the language barrier, she will understand it immediately and follow it to it’s conclusion meticulously and without exception.

Golf and Nong Mail

Over the past four years I have been astounded by her tenacity, her generosity, and her bravery, not just when she lost her toe, but in many other horrible situations that have been inflicted upon her. She is an incredible soul and a wonderful person, and I am honoured that she has come into my life and become part of my family.

As is typical of Golf, not wanting to bother anybody and with low expectations created by having been raised in a poor family, she had enrolled at a local university in the south near her hometown. She made this choice based on the fact that she has no money, and despite our promises to help her, could not conceive that someone like her could go to a good university. We talked about it and decided that we will make it happen by hook or by crook, and so she and I went up to the city and enrolled her in a very good university where she will get a good degree and excellent English language courses.

I didn’t want her choices to be based on money, so we will find a way to pay for everything and I am eternally grateful to the most generous of souls who will help us with her tuition fees this first term.

This amazing child is setting out on a path which has the potential to change her life, and have an impact on the situation of her whole family. I know that she will treat this opportunity as a gift from God, and work as hard as she possibly can to fulfil her potential.

I am so proud of her and I cannot wait to see how brightly her light will shine in the future.

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thanks Paula!!!!

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The Killing Fields ‘Choeung Ek’

A sobering walk through the brutal Khmer Rouge history of Phnom Penh.

More than thirty years since the end of the horrific Khmer regime, no trip to the remarkable city of Phnom Penh is complete without a visit to one of the most terrible testaments to human brutality on earth; the killing fields.

Lying over an hour away from Phnom Penh itself, a city contrasting gracious colonial architecture and horrific Khmer history, Choeung Ek is a must on every tourists’ to-do list.  And until it has been checked off most people can feel its brooding presence on their itinerary.  The harrowing site is the final resting place for some of the 200,000 people who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and comprises more than 120 mass graves containing their remains.

The sheer scale of the genocide that occurred here sets it apart from any other experience:  the horrors that happened here demand an awed respect, and there are very few places on earth where one can take a walk through the evidence of such a brutal bloody history.

During the period from 1975 to 1978 the Khmer Rouge executed more than 16,000 people at this, one of the largest burial grounds in Asia. That the carnage was so recent is hammered home by the rawness of the site, where visitors can still see bones in open graves, remnants of prisoners’ clothing and an eerie Buddhist monument filled with 5,000 skulls.

According to their policies, the Khmer Rouge systematically tortured and murdered men, women and children for a variety of crimes ranging from being university educated, to wearing glasses. Anyone who didn’t fit the template of Khmer culture, who was different in any way, was killed for their alleged crimes.

There is no escaping what happened here, and this is certainly no happy-go-lucky day trip, but it is a profound glimpse into the history of the Cambodian people and what they have endured. Taking the hot dusty journey out from the city, where fancy restaurants nowadays rub shoulders with high end hotels, visitors will see elements of simple Cambodian life and countryside. This makes arrival at the mass grave an even more sobering experience after seeing the families and descendents of those upon whom these atrocities were committed.

Choeung Ek is also, of course, an important source of income for locals in the area. The economy the site generates is evident from the outset, as ragged local children beg for change from the tourists who take their photos. Guides earning their living at the site are very often former prisoners of the Khmer regime, or survivors of the genocide.  Often their firsthand descriptions of the murder of their entire families are some of the most powerful vocal histories most visitors will encounter in their lives.

Everywhere in Cambodia, the legacy of Pol Pot’s evil regime can be seen in those missing limbs, or hideously disfigured by landmines, but the killing fields are one of the few opportunities to understand the scale of the loss of life, and to pay respect to the incredible sacrifice of a generation of Cambodian people.

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The Full Moon Party is legendary around the world as one of the most hedonistic parties on the planet. I get asked the same questions repeatedly about attending the full moon party and how to survive the madness, so I’ve put together some advice (most of it’s just common sense) for those that are thinking of taking a walk on the wild side. Photos are kindly provided by my friend Aishlin.

I’ll also soon be posting a story about the Full Moon Party twenty years ago compared to today, with some great old photos provided by my friend Ross.

1. Don’t take Anything you’re not Prepared to Lose

This applies to everyone – I hear so often “I’m not going to get trashed, I won’t lose my stuff”. You’re going to a giant party, with buckets of Thai whisky, you never know what’s going to happen. So just don’t take anything you’re not prepared to part with.

Even if you are a sensible head and don’t get wasted, pickpockets can be rife, and if you’re a young man with a few drinks inside you beautiful lady-boy pickpockets are particularly rife. I can pretty much guarantee that all those people comatose in the sand, stripped from head to foot of all their worldly possessions, didn’t intend that to happen. But it did.

Particularly don’t take your passport, your fancy phone, your ipod, your laptop, digital camera or in fact ANYTHING worth more than $10. I always advise people to just take a disposable camera, I’ve had people who’ve not only been relieved of their cameras but droped them in the sand, down the toilet and in buckets of Whisky.

2. Take Money in Two Different Hiding Spots

Take some money, again not a huge amount, and put it in two different points on your body. I don’t advise taking a credit card back up unless you’re prepared to lose it. You probably need to bring about 5,000 baht to cover any eventuality, but you can have a good party and get home again on 1,500 baht.

Drinks are cheap: a bucket of Thai whisky with mixers and red  bull (for party power) will set you back about 250 Baht or 7 USD. Mind the buckets, Sangsom, is particularly potent, you have no idea how much you’re drinking, and it does funny things to some people (see folk comatose in sand above). And PS. Don’t ever put a drink down, ladies especially, and don’t ever share a bucket from a stranger.

If you’re a real grown up and buckets aren’t for you,  I’d advise setting up camp at the furthest left hand side of the beach ( at Paradise – the original home of the Full Moon Party). You can sit at the low tables there and spectate, while quietly drinking BYOB of wine, or proper mixed drinks from the bar.

3. Take Contact Information

Know where you’re staying, bring the phone number. If you’re planning to get wasted write it on a body part. Know the name of where you’re staying and write that on a body part too. I can’t tell you the number of people stumbling around Haad Rin the next morning who literally don’t know, or are to drunk to pronounce where they’re staying.

Have a friend who is not going to the party who you can contact in an emergency, such as getting arrested. Preferably someone staying at your guest house so they can access your room or safe to get your passport and credit cards should the need arise. Also if you’re going alone, let someone know and be aware to check you return safely.

4. Do Not Get on a Moped for any Reason

There are more casualties on Full Moon Night than on any other night. Every year people die. The road to Haad Rin is totally lethal on a bike on party night. Not only is it winding, steep and with a sheer cliff face, its traversed by a massive number of people who should not be operating any kind of vehicle. There are also stories of robberies along that road, with people being pulled from the back of bikes.

The best way to get to the party is by speedboat from one of  the other beaches. Pretty much everywhere runs boats on the night. If the weather is bad and the boats can’t go then take a taxi, preferably a 4 wheel drive, especially if you’re coming from the more remote beaches like Haad Salad, Than Sadet or Thong Nai Pan.

If you try and get a taxi back in the morning, there will be plenty of choice, but you might have to wait a while for it to fill up and it might be a bit overpriced. The best option is to take the speedboats back while it’s still dark!

5. Have Fun!

Despite all the dire warnings and dangerous things that can happen, the Full Moon Party is still on of the most amazing experiences on earth. If you’re sensible about transport, mind the buckets, and go with a good attitude you will likely have one of the best nights of your life. Even for non-party-heads the people watching opportunities are unlimited, the spectacle is a sight to be seen, and the fire dancing is amazing. Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, you should probably check it out once in your life.

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Today is a day of wonderful people beginning their journeys.

My cousin is flying from London to take over as head chef, and help me open our new cafe venture. In what couldn’t be a starker contrast, Joe and Egger’s oldest son sets off today to join us from Burma.

Joe just got the call to say everything is confirmed, the people traffickers are paid, and he should be crossing the border, crammed in the back of an illegal van, to make his way across Thailand to us.

Wishing them both God’s speed.

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Some of you might know I write for travel magazine Unearthing Asia, a great online magazine all about the delights of Southeast Asia. I’m really pleased to let you all know that the first print edition, featuring an article by yours truly, is now out.  For those of you in Asia you can grab it at a newstand now,  or click here to browse it online.

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Today is kids day.  All the kids in Thailand are puffed-up-proud of themselves on this; their own shiny day.

Mail, Pha Ngan and Mai come around, a raggle taggle procession of differently sized stompy feet. Proud in their proper baseball shoes, rather than customary dirty barefoot. Raucous on this the day no grown up can tell them no.

They each clutch a prize from the festivities in the main town, Pha ngan a cheap wind up car, Mai a ruler and pencil and Mail an already grubby doll.  That they feel special, important and feted is written loud on their faces and warms my heart to see.

Pha Ngan, this troubled boy, on the brink of almost certainly delinquent teenage years, who runs and steals, is chased and beaten and neglected in equal measure. Who has the most infinite tenderness and sweetness with Clear Sky that is truly beautiful to behold.  I know his path is set for trouble, his lack of love and care has written it so, and the trouble path is oh-so-dangerous for boys in this oh-so-wild of places.

I pray that somewhere in himself he has courage and drags up his strength in the face of adversity and clings onto his sweetness through it all, to find the love of a kind woman, and the comfort of a loving family.

Mai my little intrepid boy-man, the cutie pie who will melt a million hearts, whom tourists want to grab and hug at every opportunity, who loves baked beans. Who is a sensitive soul and cries easily in the face of other boys’ cruelty as he learns in his five-year-old world what it takes to be a man.

And E mail, my beautiful bouncing butterball baby girl.  A little sunbeam, who makes us roar with laughter and brings brightness to even the shabbiness of happenings.  Whose valiant heart is always happy, despite the persistent sickness that plagues her, the chronic asthma and the ongoing hospitalizations.  With her grubby little legs, permanently dripping nose, and wild unkempt hair she powers through life with enthusiasm that knows no bounds.

Nong mail, kids day

Undaunted she throws herself at everyone she meets with the same open heart, asking only love in return.  When I first met her she was a tiny, fat little thing, rolls of chubbiness, perfect cherub mouth and wide wondering eyes.  Unfortunately she was also scared of farang and would scream her head off if I even looked at her.

The first time she let me take her out to the beach I fell in love, and knew that we would have a special relationship this little ball of merriment and I.  When she took her first steps it was into my hands, and I thought I would burst with excitement and pride as she tottered towards me, arms aloft, trusting entirely.  What big responsibility to witness her evolution from that squidgy powdered baby ball to this fabulous gorgeous girl who stands before me, or rather runs, jumps, kicks, and dances, before me.

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