Sad When You Can Smell Your Feet in a Fishing Village | Thong Sala, Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand

After a slightly more sedate trip back from Hat Rin we found ourselves killing time in Thong Sala, which let me tell you is about as exciting as picking excess skin from your big toe. A task I was now applying my excess energy to with a great deal of devotion. It's sad when you can smell your feet in a fishing village.

Thong Sala is a typical mid point for travellers. A broad, dusty street lined with Internet cafes, restaurants with latticed bamboo walls, rickety chairs and toilets used within an inch of their grimy existence. Ticket agents, sarong sellers, postcard and knick knack shops. A fair place to kill a couple of hours but no attraction in its own right.

Ko Pha Ngans' legendary full moon parties attract the full gamut of travelly types to Thong Sala, at least in the interim. Star gazing, drop out hippies, dreadlocked jugglers, short haired, well dressed ravers, tribal art clad skinheads, tofu munching new agers, beach sleepers, pill poppers, trip takers, they're all here, looking for their own personal nirvana. Either that, or to get out of their tree for a week. You could tell apart those who'd just stepped off the ferry from those who were waiting to head back to the mainland. Those departing looked defeated in a strangely serene way. Like livestock that had been tickled to the point of exhaustion. Quite a few milled about me now.

After dodging a foothill of backpacks that all but blocked the entrance I took a seat in a dirt floored café. On offer was the usual selection of Thai dishes and badly spelt European fayre. It was too hot to tackle a green curry, and if I saw another tuna baguette or cheese omelette I'd have to stab the cook. I opted for a packet of crisps, but spat out the first mouthful in disgust.

Which brings me to a bit of a sore point. In Australia, the manufacturers of baked potato products share the same unwritten standard for colour coding their packaging. Salt and vinegar, employs a shade of deep, salmon pink, chicken, a granny smith green, lightly salted, an incestuous royal blue and so on. It allows the lazy consumer to base his or her choice of flavour solely on the colour of the packet. It requires no reading, very little thought and in general works extremely well. So what the fuck is the idea of overweight squid and baby bamboo shoot flavour arriving in a packet, that in my experience, was reserved solely for salt and vinegar flavoured snacks. Anyway, I stray.

I thought I'd give the crisps a second chance. Bad move in retrospect as I choked on a small plastic covered, cardboard collectors card that I mistakenly took for an extremely vibrant coloured crisp.

It was then that a familiar, sweat saturated head blocked the sun. It was Munz, a vast, overweight Dane with a cranium the size of Luxembourg, and a snuff habit that defied scope. He weighed twenty stone if he weighed an ounce. I had first met Munz and his head in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia a month earlier. A likeable bloke who was up for anything. He'd just spent the last six days trying just that, and like me was waiting for the next ferry back to Surat Thani.

As I dislodged the card from my oesophagus, regained composure and the ability to speak, Munz tried his hardest to look me in the eye. A huge effort considering the obvious state he'd spent the last week in. 'You gotta take better care of yourself man'
'Thanks for the advice, Captain Neptune'

With that he waddled off to a piece of shade, took a chunk of snuff from a pouch in his bumbag and lay back on his backpack, looking more than content with his lot in life.

A huge pier to the south was the gateway back to Surat Thani and the Thai mainland. Back to the normality of life without sand. The second stop on a twenty two hour journey to Bangkok. Time passed slowly, as the heat drained what little enthusiasm I had when I awoke. I toyed with writing a postcard, briefly considered checking my emails, but decided on doing fuck all till the ferry arrived.

Budget Accommodation in Thailand
Hotels in Thailand