Long Beach

Monkey juice

The other side of paradise houses a boorish collection of holidaying Eurotrash on a long strip of beach, imaginatively titled "Long Beach". I shack up at the Moonlight Inn, the only hostel on this side of the island run by a man in a bikini top, sarong and long dangly earrings. I check in and ask where I should go for internet access:

"Look for a place called 'Ladyboys'. It's about 200m down the beach" she says helpfully.
I take a long hard sip of my milkshake. "I'm sorry, where?"
"At 'Ladyboys'. You can't miss it." 

I stumble the requisite 200m and just as I'm wondering whether I haven't stayed on the boat a little too long and ended up in Thailand (we are tantalisingly close to the border), I find myself in front of the internet cafe, with the name across the top of the shop reading: "LazyBhoys".

Long Beach is full of arguing couples, families, the elderly and the infirm. It is no place for the discerning solo traveller. I use all my best shark hunting skills to scour the beach for lone men, and scout two very well dressed gentlemen with impeccable haircuts in matching crisp linen shirts, at dinner. My heart leaps then dies away when I notice their wine glasses are touching.

Eventually, I run into Vicky and Ollie-short-for-Oliviyaah, two girls I met in Langkawi, but did not befriend for obvious reasons. We share a shisha and some of their industriously smuggled vodka before being joined by three vacationing brothers from Kualar Lumpar. There presence is rendered tolerable only by the two bottles of Smirnoff they bring to the table, and the provision of a second shisha pipe.


A snake!!!

For the rest of the evening, filthy tourists and Malays try to bump n grind against us as we dance on the sand (with some difficulty) to my old friend, Rhiannah, and a song whose lyrics I shall repeat verbatim: "I don't mean to be rude, but tonight I'm going to be fcuking you." I've been away from western culture for some time now, but have we dispensed with metaphor altogether in the modern pop song?


Shiny Drunk Jenny

Vicky and Ollie-short-for-Oliviyaah are of that most particular brand of traveller, the trust fund fueled Gap Yaaah Backpacker, slumming it up for the sheer shit of it, all limbs and hot pants and vest tops. Turublee well off and coming from the better Home Counties, these girls have lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little to distress or vex them. I went to university with most of them. These girls have never heard the word "no". They do not clean up after themselves and leave their emotional messes in your lap because someone else will take care of it. They have framed photographs of their ponies in their bedrooms. They will tell you they once knew someone who knew someone who touched a black person. Just becoming aware of their almost total power over men and exploiting it ruthlessly.

And yet, it is these careless, obnoxious Jocasters and Tillys and Ollies-short-for-Oliviyaah who shall inherit the earth. The future is theirs and we are hopelessly lost in their thrall, revolving unquestioningly in their orbit.


On our gap yaah