Saturday, February 03, 2007

A friend passes on

Phuket, Thailand is the emerald jewel of the Andaman Sea. The Island is a blend of the beautiful and bizarre, the surreal and sublime. "Half moon in a fallen sky, seven seas as time goes by....." Janis Joplin could have been writing about Phuket when she breathed life into these words in her famously inimitable manner. Every year I holiday in Phuket, and let the breath of the Andaman Sea sooth my weary soul.
The sheer sun-worshiping hedonism that sweats through the lush landscape of white sandy beaches and azure waters during the day gives way in the evening to buttock-slapping, beer-swilling debauchery and buccaneer carousing in the hundreds of Go-Go bars and beer-bars that characterize Patong. This is the place the dissolute and profligate Errol Flynn may have retired to if he had lived today.

One of the many things that endears me to this Island of Sirens is the many characters that can be found in Patong, from the old lady who sells chewing gum to earn a living by a couple of baht profit she makes on each packet, the old man who stands still like a statue demonstrating his dancing Coke bottles, or other pieces of trashy, animated toys that he sells at three times their cost. There are many such characters that make up the diverse panorama, that is Patong Beach.

Several years ago, I spotted another such character - an obese man dressed in shorts and singlet with a shaved head (looking like an old Marlon Brando as the insane and renegade Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now) who always carried three small size polystyrene containers with him everywhere he went. I wondered what they contained … body parts for human experimentation, or something more bizarre?

One evening whilst I was propping up my selected watering hole for that evening, he approached me and revealed the secret of the white boxes – pies and pasties. He told me, "I've travelled the world and Patong is the best place I've visited". He had settled down there and eked out his livelihood by selling his culinary delights. In addition to wandering the bars and selling pasties to inebriated tourists, he also sold pies to various bars that they could put on their menus.

He was a nice, unassuming kind of guy, who was always willing to stop and have a chat. He never seemed concerned if you bought pies from him or not. I heard that he also had a stash of little blue diamonds with him, that he would sell to people who needed this kind of chemical assistance to enjoy their night of passion.

A few years ago he was knocked off his moped by a drunken Thai, driving a car. Dave ended up with a broken arm and couldn’t make his pies anymore, and he lost all his contracts to supply the bars. Even during this time, he would wander the bars chatting to locals and tourists alike. He never seemed bitter about his mishap; it was just the kind of mischance that happens to people who live in Phuket.

Last year, he had a run in with a katoey, who attacked him with a rock, and fractured his skull. He recovered from this injury but suffered with blurred vision in one eye thereafter. Even this did not put him off his walkabouts and he carried on selling pies.

I learned last night that Dave has passed on, following a heart attack. He was a true gent, and I will miss my chats with him. I am sure he is selling pies to the angels in that giant Pearl of the Andaman in the sky.

1 Comments:

At 9:28 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. But I am sure that he would smile at the glowing tribute you have paid to him.

One thing that I have noticed in my travels is that it takes a certain type of person to pick up and live in another country half way around the world. And that kind of person always has the best stories to tell and becomes one of the "characters" in whatever local scene they choose to inhabit.

 

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