The Trouble with Tourism

I am trying to imagine that I live in a picturesque English village.  You know the type, chunky sandstone brick cottages, hanging baskets, quiet village green and local shops where everyone knows your name.   Around it is centuries of history, castles, monasteries, and forts.  All of this set in exquisite natural surroundings, rolling hills, green pastures, weeping willows, and slow meandering rivers full of trout.   Now I am trying to imagine that every year, in the 4 best months, when the sun shines, the flowers bloom and the temperatures are pleasant, that my idyll is overrun by blue skinned giants.

Along with their blue skinned, looming presence, they seem to have money, and lots of it.  They seem to think that it is pretend money rather than real money with the way they bandy it around.   Without a quibble they are happy to pay £100 a night to stay in a rudimentary room with no modcons and shout about how wonderfully cheap it is.  Shouting of course in a language that we villagers have had to learn to be able to communicate with them.  The only words of English they know are ‘Hillo’ and ‘Har rar yow?’.  During these months we watch them come and go, paying £50 for shoddy meals three times a day, and then they have the cheek to get all stuffy over an extra pound added to their bill, or try and barter a miserably low price on a piece of locally crafted ornament that took a person many hours of their life to complete. 

They walk down the streets naked, with no shame or care for the fact that we wear clothes, meeting in loud groups in front of our peaceful places.  At night they want seedy places to hang out, play their music loudly so that it disturbs the locals who have to go to school and work the following day.  And then they want vast quantities of cocaine, flagrantly snorting it up and down the streets, with the attitude that they can pay their way out of any trouble if need be.

It is thought perfectly alright by these strangers to take photos of us, patronisingly considered curiosities, without asking.  To scrunch their faces in disgust because our gutters are not as clean as theirs, our infrastructure isn’t as cohesive or developed.   And to pick each others arses in public, which is not considered a faux-pas where they come from.

I have to try and think like this.  To try and understand why we are often treated as cash cows rather than people in the places we visit.  So that I don’t put a taxi drivers head through the windscreen when he shouts at me that because I am rich, I should pay 25% more than the agreed price, and begins a war of attrition, to see whether my principles are greater than his desperation.  I wonder if I would do the same, seeing the big wealthy blue people, laden with gadgets I can only dream of owning, while I struggle to pay my children’s education fees, have never taken a holiday abroad, and only have 4 months to earn any decent money, before my lovely village is free from the blue beasts……. 

But then, as a blue giant, parading around with an expensive camera, a laptop, and the ability to pay 4 times more than the going rate for a shit meal, without a single hair of my eyebrows quivering, I wonder why it should be me that has to pay these extra costs.  Ok, so I am rich, relatively speaking.  And I am happy to pay tourist rates, which are grossly inflated when compared to local costs.  But why should I be held responsible for people being unable to afford school fees or to pay back the loans they have taken out on taxis/shops/bikes etc.  And why should I be given a guilt trip on my relative wealth, and be manipulated or blatantly lied to, when someone feels it is their right to extract more money from me.  If the prices are not enough to cover their costs, they should put them up, not shout and con the money from my pocket.  Is it not down to the government to make sure infrastructure and the economy is balanced so that people don’t feel so lacking.

For example:  We had been told of a beautiful place in the neighbouring valley where the Buddhist monastery held pujas in which the tourist could watch.  It seemed like an experience worth having.  As the puja was held at 6.30 am, it was necessary to catch a taxi.  There is a taxi organisation (cartel) operating within Leh, where prices are ‘fixed’, all offered in a little yellow booklet.  Fixed in this case, means still vaguely negotiable.  But they have to be arranged through a travel agent.  We agreed a price with a local agent, who called the taxi driver to (apparently) agree terms.  There was a lot of mirth, in Ladakhi, for the employees of the travel agency during that phone call, but we didn’t bother ourselves with it.  It wasn’t until we were dropped back at our guest house, after our visit to the monastery that the trouble started. 

We had agreed the full taxi fare, with no waiting charges for 2 hours.  The taxi driver however insisted that we were to pay for waiting.  In my urgency for the toilet, I left Alex to deal with it.  He returned an hour later, clearly irked.  The taxi driver, not at that time realising Alex’s stubborn peculiarities had shouted at him expecting him to cough up, and throw the money at him in a resentful ‘you’re wasting my time’ gesture.  But Alex has time.  Plenty of time.  The taxi driver argued that he knew nothing of the agreement, pulling out the little yellow booklet, and telling Alex to claim the money back off the travel agents.   Alex refused.  So they went to the travel agency together, which was conveniently not open.  So he waited.  As did the taxi driver.  For an hour.  The taxi driver kept informing Alex that he, Alex, was rich, and as such should pay the waiting cost regardless of any agreement, because he, the taxi driver was poor.  Alex disagreed.  Finally the taxi driver called the agency, who at last told Alex not to worry about the extra costs.   They would cover it.  It was apparent, if not obviously to the novice traveller, that both the taxi driver and agency were in cahoots to extort an extra couple of hundred rupees out of us, thinking that we would rather pay than waste our time trying to pay the agreed amount.  This has happened with mind-bending frustration regularly through all of our travels. (Except for me in this instance, who had returned to bed for a little nap while Alex protected our vulnerable pockets.)

In Leh there has been a tourism gold rush.  Four years ago there were a few restaurants, guest houses and tour operators scattered about the town.  Now the streets are lined with them.  The locals, seeing the money the tourists bring in, saw opportunity.  Opportunity to escape the hardships of farm life, to make a quick buck.  The problem is almost every local saw this, and almost every local invested in this, taking out huge loans to buy whatever it is they needed to take advantage of the brief tourist season.   But there aren’t enough tourists to cover their costs.  Now many are struggling, having given up local ways of life.  Importing goods that they used to produce themselves.  And the responsibility is being put upon the tourist.  They should pay, they are rich.  No we shouldn’t pay.  So there isn’t enough gold to go round, but who really is to blame for that?  Those looking for a quick fix to their lives.  Perhaps if the energies placed in trying to extract a few extra rupees from the resentful visitor, they would be better placed trying to overcome the gross corruption of government who syphon off any of the monies that should be going towards education and infrastructure.      

Unfortunately, the local communities have been so keen to impress tourists that they have shifted their whole way of being.  Ladakh used to be a place of hard graft during the summer months where work in the fields took place, so that there was enough food for the cold winter months.  And then during the cold months there were festivals after festival, and it was party season for the locals.  Now the festivals are slowly being shifted to the summer, to amuse the tourists, and bring in extra revenue.  Traditional live of self-sufficiency is being abandoned in favour of cheaper, lower quality imported goods so people can chase the easy money around town, flogging pashminas and overly priced jeep tours around the attractive places.  On the plus side, apparently the Indian government is paying more attention to Ladakh, now the tourists are, and improving the roads.  Aside from that I am not sure tourism is bringing much more than avarice and frustration to the area.     

(This attitude, if not the particulars, in my opinion, is common place within India, and this blog post is not meant as a comment exclusive to Ladahk, but India as a whole.)

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Kathmandu - A Monkey's Tail www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

The electric whizz of a circular saw cuts metallically into my dreams.  Beneath that a hammer bangs a dull rhythm.  Cries of people on the street echo up to our room, shouting above the continuous bursts of beeping from vehicle horns.  I roll over onto my good ear, trying to muffle the sounds out, but I find no solace of sleep in the soft down of the pillow.  Alex ruffles behind me, tugging the sheet, my tolerance for disturbance terminated.  Peeking through my reluctant eyelids, I seek out the clock.  7.20 am.  Back in the land of perpetual noises.  Where the peace of spirituality that is sought by the disillusioned Westerner, is ironically absent in any audible sense.  After a resentful hour, trying to ignore the noise and escape back into the quiet of slumber, we relent.

‘Might as well get up.’  I say.

‘Yeah, I guess so.’  Alex replies.

‘Who’s turn for the cold shower?’

‘Yours.’

‘Of course.’

It takes until the end of my excruciatingly cold shower for the hot water to trickle through.  

The narrow streets outside are wet from the heavy monsoon rain that fell overnight.  The large calf-deep potholes are filled with muddy water.  Attempts have been made to fill some of the deeper ones in with bricks, gravel and sand bags.  The trishaws, scooters, white Suzuki-Maruti taxis, and pick-ups beep endlessly to alert all to their presence, inching their way past each other, cyclists, dogs and indifferent pedestrians.  Despite the rain the air is hot and thick, the water vapour carrying the grime of the streets, depositing a layer of the city onto our skin. 

‘Look!’  I say pointing up at the low skyline.

Above us are large knots of power lines, and above them the jumbled roofs of the buildings.  Four storey concrete cuboids that overbear the rickety tiled slopes of the traditional houses, with small, ornately carved windows, surrounded by crumbly brickwork, survivors of the 1934 earthquake.  A monkey sits on the apex of one of the roofs of the old houses, his head cocked, black tipped tail curled around him, staring at us.  The tring of a trishaw bell sounds close by. 

‘Watch out.’  Alex says, gently guiding me towards the side of the road as the trishaw pulls up next to him.   

Behind that is the impatient beep of a taxi. 

‘No thanks.’ 

I hear Alex say.  He repeats it with a gruff tone when the trishaw cyclist pesters him further into a tour of the city.

‘Maybe it’s Hanuman.’  I say.         

‘I don’t know why they just can’t take no for an answer.’  He says.

The monkey shows the redness of his sore looking posterior and bounds across the unimpeded roofs of the city. 

We continue walking down the road, Alex trailing behind; there is not enough room for us to walk side by side.  Entering into Thamel, the tourist ghetto of Kathmandu, the offerings of the small shops set into the buildings along the sides of the streets begin to target the tourist.  The butcher shops with sheep heads buzzing with flies sat on counters, the dingy, mould blackened rooms with low, worn, plywood tables, surrounded by stools, that serve as restaurants for the locals, and the shops that serve more as cupboards of clutter, containing great pots, heavy ladles and dented metal plates come to an abrupt end.  The fare being peddled, sometimes with aggression, other times with indifference, repeated randomly along the streets.  Fake Northface trekking gear, ‘antiques’, cheeky wooden carvings of mischievous looking sexual frolickers, beautifully coloured and intricate mandalas, book shops, alternative clothing, ethnic jewellery, khurkuri knives, restaurants, generic paintings depicting scenes of mountain ranges and peasants and felt slippers.  Each product has its own store.  All of it the same in like stores. 

Behind me I hear the increasing exasperation in Alex’s tone as he fends off trekking guides, bead sellers, weed sellers, taxis, rickshaws, shoe shiners, henna artists and city guides.

‘No thank you.’  ‘No thanks.’  ‘No.’  ‘Look, I said no.’  ‘Just no.’

Escaping the perpetual and physical bustle of the streets we duck into the Momostar for breakfast.  Similar to the many restaurants around.  Modest and dark, with rudimentary furniture that offers no comfort, and smiling, ‘Namaste’ greeting waiters. 

‘I mean does it look like I smoke weed?  I have been asked about 15 times just walking from the hotel.’  Alex asks.

‘Well, you are quite hairy.’  I reply      

At the door of the restaurant a grubby looking child sits leant up against the door frame.  His hair is matted, and his clothes torn and dirt damaged.  With fingers pinched to his thumbs he raises his hand to his mouth and mimes eating.  The expression on his face says please a thousand times over.  Our food arrives, a delicious steaming plate of momo’s, Tibetan style dumplings, and glasses of hot honey, ginger and lemon.  The pleading arch in the space between the boys eyebrows heightens, seeing our food.  Looking at the guttersnipe I shake my head at him, staring into the hunger in his eyes, that gnaws at my heart. 

‘It’s so hard to say no.’

Alex looks rounds at the boy who ups his imploring.

‘Not much of a life is it.’  He says.

A monkey drops down from the roof, swipes a squashed piece of fruit from the gutter and scampers off with a swish of a black tipped tail, back up the building out of sight.  The boy watches it.  He gets up, head low and slopes away in the hope of finding softer tourists.

A short walk through the old city, from Thamel, is Durbar Square, Durbar meaning royal.  Leaving the testing touts of touristy Thamel, we wend our way through the old streets, the personality of the city revealing itself as we venture further into it.  Unstable, but beautiful old buildings, totter at the sides of the streets, made from wonky red brick and carefully detailed dark wood.  From the small shutters the occasional lone face can be seen watching the milieu below.  In between the elaborately carved pillars of the buildings, hawkers have set up shop.  Brightly coloured salwars and saris flutter in the breeze.  Second hand shoes, swing from string.  Lentils, beans and rice flow from folded down sacks.  Colourful assortments of vegetables, red chillies, green cucumbers, and yellow squash are piled into pyramids.  

Often the streets open into a crossroads, at the centre of which are shrines to Buddha, Shiva, or any other of the pantheon of Hindu deities.  Glances down alleys reveal hidden secrets, treasures of temples, plied with pigeons, tempted by the grains scattered by children.  Gold plated, wrought iron, guiled gompas in squares that exclude the constant chatter and hum of the streets they hide behind. 

We sit briefly in one of these squares, listening to the relative silence, smiling at the fraction of peace we have found.  But before too long we see the buckled figures of beggars, creeping from the shadows, dragging their frail forms towards us; healthy beasts of privilege.

‘Let’s go before we get mobbed.’  Alex says.

I nod, arming myself with a couple of 10 rupee notes to pass with a smile and a Namaste to the ones who manage to make it over before we stride back into the throng.      

At Durbar Square we sit upon one of the staggered stages of one of the many temples that fill it.  Many others have the same idea.  Across from us is the impressive nine stage Shiva temple, with depictions of carnal appetites carved into the struts that hold up the roof.  Many of the buildings in this large square that was home to the Nepalese royalty date back to the C16th. 

‘It’s nice to see architecture that isn’t influenced by the ancient Greeks.’  I say.

‘Yeah.  It’s beautiful.’  Alex says.  Then he laughs.  ‘Naughty little monkey.’

I look to see a monkey scamper using his two legs and one arm, glancing behind him as he runs.  In his other hand is a big fresh piece of cucumber.  Behind him is a man aiming a catapult at him.  The man shakes his head as the monkey moves out of shot, and goes back to tending his stall, hoping to better defend his wares from the quick thievery of the monkeys. 

‘It’s the same one as before.  Look, it has the same black tip on the end of his tail.’  I say.

‘He’s staring at us again.’ 

And he was.  Sat with limbs wrapped around a salacious wooden support, the monkey watched us as he nibbled on his procurement. 

Up the high steps of the temple stages, three grimy looking children clambered towards us.  Their spindly limbs levering their tiny bodies up and over the tall steps.  As they approached us the two smaller ones hid behind the older one, unsure as how to proceed.  The older child was only around 6 himself.  They smiled nervously at us revealing rotting stumps of teeth.  Dirt ground into the shallow creases of their supple skin.  Mud embedded under and around the nails of their hands and feet.

‘Two rupee Mr.’  The older one says.

The other two giggle and skip around behind him.

I shake my head and smile.

‘Sweet.  Sweet.  Give sweet.’

Again I shake my head, and poke my tongue out at them.  They giggle more.  The silliness of an adult is an unusual surprise.  For a while we exchange funny faces with each other, and then they bounce down the steps of the temple to find another to test their confidence on.

‘I think it might rain soon.’  Alex said looking at the dark cloud seeping across the sky.

For a couple of hours we wander back through the centuries, admiring the beautifully carved, but modest, palace of the old Nepalese royalty.  Climbing vast numbers of steep, uneven steps, we find vistas of the city spanning 360^o, lofty viewing rooms for the kings to survey their kingdom.  There are silent courtyards, where only the sound of the pigeons fluttering to the rafters to roost can be heard.  It is a palace of ascetic pleasure rather than the gaudy grandeur found in those found in Europe and Nepal’s more ostentatious Indian neighbours.           

We take a different route back towards the hotel.  The roads of the old city, a maze of similarly looking streets, where we are never quite sure if we have walked along it already or not.  In the distance I spot the monkey, watching, waiting.

‘It’s him again.’  I say.

‘Are you sure?  That seems unlikely.’  Alex replies.

‘Maybe he likes us.’

‘Maybe he wants to rob us.  Is your bag zipped up?  They’re quick.  They’ll have your camera before you even notice.’

‘Let’s follow him.’

‘Do we have to?’

I walk towards the monkey, who shows me his raw bottom again and leaps forward, turning around occasionally to see if we are following.  He leads us down quiet streets, lined with tiny eateries, the proprietors either nattering to each other or asleep at one of their own tables.  The first patter of rain splats down onto the precarious cobbles. 

‘Come on Wendy, this is stupid.  Let’s get back to the hotel.  It is going to piss down soon.’ 

‘No wait.  Look, there he is.  At that doorway.’

The monkey slipped through a rusted metal door marking the outside territory of a small tenement.  The sign above it read ‘Langtang Children’s Home’.  I follow the monkey in.  Alex goes to sit in one of the little cafés.

‘I’ll wait for you.’  He says.  ‘I’ll trust your judgement and match it.’

‘I won’t be long.’ 

Inside the monkey is gone, and from the end of a long path I see two happy people waving at me.  A man with one of the most genuine smiles of love I have ever seen comes to the gate and welcomes me in.

‘Namaste.  Please.’  He says pointing towards the tenement block.  ‘How did you hear of us?’

‘I was just passing.’

The man leads me to the entrance where a woman with beauty radiating from her soul greets me.  At the door a child with obvious learning disabilities was wiggling out on his belly.  A girl came to the doorway, and the child giggled as the girl hoisted him back inside again with cheerful tut.  In the clean, carpeted room, were six wriggling children, all mentally disabled. 

‘We opened 7 years ago.’  The man, Jamak said.  ‘My wife and I took in 22 normal children from the rural villages that had either lost their families, or whose families were too poor to look after them.  We live here with them.  Come see the place, please.’

Jamak took me around the building and showed me the comfortable dorms where the children, along with his own daughter slept, the small dining room with low tables lined along the walls to maximise space, the kitchen, the computer room, which was home to a machine some fifteen years old, a small reading and TV room, and a basic room for the physiotherapy of the disabled children.  He explained that he has the help of a Dutch NGO to help him fund the running of the place.  There were pictures on the walls of the children when they first arrived, looking rigid, solemn, scared, and their evolution over the seven years to bright beaming children with a future.  Even after the children are required by law to leave, at 15, they are supported by Jamak and his family, to ensure their future remains certain. 

Jamak never stops smiling, it increases when he tells of something that warms him.  Like the progress of the disabled children he had started looking after.

‘I have no training in looking after disabled children.  But we have started to take in 6 during the days.  We hope that in a year we can take them full time, when we have learnt more.  Their families lock them in rooms during the day.  The parents have to work, and a disabled child is a burden.  When they first came here, they couldn’t eat on their own.  They couldn’t use their hands.  Now they can.’  Jamak beamed.

I almost cry I am so moved by the love and selflessness of the amazing man in front of me.  Before leaving I make a donation, doubling it to include Alex’s contribution.

‘I figure you can do more good with this than would come of it if I gave it to the street kids.’  I say.

Jamak smiles, its warmth penetrates and exposes the weak selfishness within me.  

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Shame www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

I just assumed he was a taxi driver.  The way he hurried into the place, shoulders rounded, a small plastic bag swinging off his wrist.  A girl with a backpack had followed him into the front patio of the guest house and was waiting, studying a map.  It was only when he left, minus the plastic bag, and then returned again, a few minutes later that our suspicions arose.

We were enjoying a port and stilton night.  A silly evening, serving as a little reminder of home after 9 months absence.  It had been planned while we were in Tioman, to give us something to look forward to in Kuala Lumpur.  Back at the Number 8 guest house.  Where, a month previously, Alex’s passport, credit cards and cash had been stolen from our room.  An audacious little thief had walked into our room one morning, while I lay asleep, and snatched it from the bedside table.  We were now in possession of a clear passport, and were just waiting for the new credit card to arrive.  Then we could finally move on, head towards the mountains, hide amongst the Himalayas.  But there was just a little more waiting to be done.

In our absence the guest house owner had installed security cameras, and caught three people trying the door knobs of rooms, looking for an opportunity.  Two were guests of the hotel, one had been staying while we were last here, the likely culprit, the other a taxi driver.

There was an uncomfortable look about the man walking back in.  A shadow cast across his demeanour.  Quick moving eyes and a tight unwilling smile.  Alex and I exchanged a look, suspicious and concerned.  He walked in after the man.  A few moments later he was back.

‘He’s just wandering around upstairs.’  Alex said.

‘That’s weird.  There’s something weird about him.’  I said.

‘I checked our room.  It’s definitely locked.’         

‘Did you say anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘What would I say?’

I shook my head at Alex, and went in to look for the man myself.  I couldn’t find him.  As I sat back down again outside, with a view into the reception area, he reappeared.  He wandered out of a side door, made a cursory look at a notice about the wifi password on the reception desk, glanced around, and exited out the back.  I got up again.  The fortification of port ensuring this thief would not be getting away with it.  The girl from reception was watching him, eyes narrowed.

‘Is he staying here?’  I asked her.

She nodded.  ‘I don’t like him.  He come with only plastic bag. No luggage.’

We followed him out the back.  He was sneaking around the back rooms.  When he saw us he straightened himself.

‘What are you doing?’  I challenged.

He walked towards us, his eyes unable to make a connection with mine.

‘I was looking for a chair.  There isn’t one in my room.’

‘A chair?’

He nodded.

‘What room are you staying in?  And under what name?’

‘805.’  He gave a name I couldn’t understand, but I asked the receptionist to check.  She confirmed it.

‘Sorry.’  I said.  ‘There have just been a few robberies.  You seemed to be wandering around, I made an assumption.  My name is Wendy.’  I held out my hand.

‘Xali.’  He said shaking my hand. 

We walked outside together.  I sat with Alex and he walked to where the rooms at the front were.

‘Something’s not right with him.  I just accused him of being a thief, and he still shook my hand.  He didn’t seem upset.  It’s weird.’  I said.

‘You can’t just accuse people of being thieves Wendy.’

‘You thought he was odd too.  Otherwise why did you follow him in.  I bet he tries those doors in a minute, when he thinks no one is looking.’

Xali called me over to him.  I ignored him.  I didn’t want to listen to him try and justify himself, to attempt to make a friend of me.  He walked inside and sat on the sofas in reception.  The owner approached him.  Shortly Xali left with his plastic bag, head low, ostracised, no longer welcome.  I followed him.     

‘So where you going now?  Try the doors of some other hotel rooms?’  I asked.

Xali stopped and leant up against a wall.  He shook his head.  Middle aged, Asian, defeated.  Intense sadness sat heavily in his eyes.  I saw shame gnawing at his soul.  The hostility I felt towards him waned, leaving just a pretence of it.

‘Will you help me Wendy?  I need help.  Please help.’

‘What?’ 

‘I have 3000 ringits (£600).  I need you to tie me to a chair.’

‘What the fuck.  Are you being serious?’

Xali nodded                                                                           

‘I need to you to tie me to a chair, only for an hour.’ 

There was a long pause.  He turned his face away from mine.  His shoulders rounded more, enfeebling him further. 

‘I’m a heroin addict.  I want to stop.  I get violent.  I’ll pay you.  Please don’t tell the man you are with.’

‘I can’t see any track marks on your arms.’

‘I smoke.  I am a respectable man. My wife and family don’t know.  In Singapore I have my own business.  Please, I need you to tie me to a chair.’

His sorrow was tangible, oppressive. 

‘I have come here for 2 nights, to get clean.’  He continued.

‘What’s in your bag?’  I asked.

Xali opened his plastic bag.  Inside was a thick coil of tough plastic rope.

‘You really were looking for a chair.’

Xali nodded.

‘Why are you telling me?’ I asked.

‘You seem open.  I like the way you talk.’  He replied.

I went and bought a couple of beers from the Chinese shop across the road, and sat on the curb with Xali as he told me his story.

He was 50, and owned a plastic mouldings company.  Sixteen months ago, he met some clients who he wanted to win business from.  He did what they did, to fit in with them, to win the contract.  They smoked heroin.  He couldn’t stop after the deal was completed.  So far he had managed to hide it from his wife and family, but the addiction was demanding more from him.  It was his plan to come to Kuala Lumpur for the weekend and find someone, female, not Chinese, to tie him to a chair, for the couple of hours the come-down ravaged him worst. 

On his forearms were inch long, wide cuts, healing badly.  Wounds from his last attempt to restrain himself, as he had struggled to work himself free.  He pressed me to tie him to the chair.  I wanted to help.  But Alex’s voice in my head chastised me, ‘What if he dies Wendy, that’s a manslaughter charge.  Don’t be an idiot.  You can’t tie strange men to chairs in cheap hotel rooms.’

His shame, that I had mistaken for the shady behaviour of a thief, was painful to watch.  But there was nothing I could do to help.  I told him I was sorry, and left him on the curb, staring into the gutter. 

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The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

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Dunkin' Drunk'un www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

‘She looks like trouble.’  Alex said.

I knew exactly who he was talking about.  The girl with the thin red belt.  She was undulating provocatively against a young dopey eyed man in a union jack t-shirt.  The undivided, evening’s attention.  

We had ring side seats.  Two buckling plastic chairs at the dive shop’s outside bar.  Around 40 Singaporean university students had gathered, at the invitation of Mike, Owen’s younger brother.  Owen being the owner of the dive shop, who had gone to a dive exhibition on the mainland.  It was meant to have a Hawaiian theme.  However, only Lisa and Sven, the bar managers, had bothered.  Flower lays, palm frond grass skirts, and coconut bras. The guests weren’t there for the theme.  They were there to get completely hammered and release the silly humping monkeys hiding inside them.  Things had gotten exuberant with a surprising rapidity.  Andy and Susanne had said it would.

We had been sat with Andy and Susanne earlier in the evening. The tension between them restrained, but palpable.  They are two of the dive instructors.  For two years they had been ‘living the dream’ together.  Picking up dive jobs around South East Asia.  

‘Just you wait.  Give it 15 minutes and they are going to be a mess.’ Susanne said in a soft German accent.

‘Yup, it doesn’t look it now, but 15 minutes, 20 at most.’  Andy agreed.

The mood amongst the party seemed subdued.  People were talking politely to each other.  The BBQ food was being shared out in an orderly manner.  No one was dancing.  Drinks were being sipped.  

Four tall blondish girls arrived, and positioned themselves in the middle of the party.  Incongruous amongst the Asians.  

‘Who are they?  They’re dressed like they have just finished a hard days data entry, rather than relaxed holiday-ers on a tropical island.’  I said.

Black pumps, thin tight knit cardigans, low sensible ponytails.

‘They’re some on my students.’  Susanne replied.  ‘Doctors from Germany.’

Around 15 minutes later, there were squeals from the bar as the tequila hit it, and the first casualty of the evening slumped in one of the plastic chairs.  

‘Right I’m off.’  Susanne said.  ‘You coming?’

Andy nodded reluctantly. 

Screeches, squeals, laughter and bullying encouragement hit high above the music.  Red Belt and her friends were at the bar, on the tequila shots.  One, two, three.  Union Jack had followed her.  She used his nerdy safety to dance with raunchy abandon at him, as others cheered on.  One of the locals, in a white t-shirt stretched over a middle aged bulge, was taking advantage of the revelry.  He bumped his way into the group of friends, and flapped himself aggressively towards the girl.

‘You know he is just trying to brush his dick against her arse.’  Alex said.

‘Yeah, there’s always a few around.  See a girl dancing and think they’re game for a salacious groping.  The pestilence of the dance floor.’  I replied.

The party was undoubtedly underway.  The boys were peeling off their t-shirts flinging them, like strippers, into the dance floor.  Another early casualty, two slumped victims of the free bar.  They were being used as props in which to pile beer cans, as unknowing participants in simulated sexual orgies, or the unfortunate at the bottom of a multiple person bundle.  Someone was being sick off the edge onto the beach below.  Girls were dancing, to rapturous applause, on the bar.  The grotesque abandon of alcohol.         

‘Look, Andy’s back.’  I said spying him looking a little lost in the fray.

‘That’s unusual.  Things must be bad.’  Alex replied.

We looked at each other, wise and knowing, eyebrows raised.

Red Belt lurched off the dance floor, eyes swimming, belly held.  Union Jack followed her, steading her as she stumbled.  They made their way over to a group sat by one of the beach huts opposite the bar.  Sam and Daniel’s hut, another dive instructor couple.  Alex laughed.

‘Oh no, she isn’t.  Is that her?’  I said.

‘Yup, she’s vomiting all over Sam and Daniel’s front step.’

Sam, stern, marched over to the vomiting girl.  She marched back into her hut.  A moment later she returned with a bucket of water to slosh the sick away.  Red Belt vomited again.  Sam went and got another bucket of water.

The dance floor was expanding, we were in danger of being danced on.  We went to sit with Andy, Daniel and a few others watching the quickening pace of alcohol intolerant youths, descend into drunken difficulty.

‘I reckon they’ll all be in bed by one.’  Alex said.

‘What’s the time now?’  I asked.

’11.15’  Daniel replied.

‘Midnight.  They’ll all be in bed by midnight.’  Andy counter-offered.

Andy looked resigned.  Empty.  The ending of his relationship with Susanne creating an emotional vacuum.   He tried to fill it by talking of a fleeting love for a girl moving with seductive confidence on the dance floor.    

  

There was a splash.  A scream.  A panic.  Coming from the teaching pool.  Daniel darted, Andy and a few others that worked there followed.  A ruckus, a call for a doctor, loud tears, bustle, commotion.  Daniel came back and threw his wet phone across the table.

‘What happen?’  Someone asked.

‘Fucking idiot pushed me into the pool while I was trying to help.’  

He walked into the dive shop.  An angry crash and smash. The music from the bar stopped, the revellers thinned out.  One of the cardigan wearing German’s ran towards the ruction.  As fraught people hurried in and out of where we were sitting, snippets of panicked, quick, serious sentences stitched the situation together for us.

‘CPR.’

‘Can’t swim.’

‘Thought she needed refreshing.’

‘Went down twice.’

‘Mike dragged her up by the hair.’

‘Drowned.’

It was Red Belt.  Someone had thrown her into the pool.  She had sunk rather than swum. No one did anything until Mike ran over and threw himself in.  He dropped her the first time he tried to bring her to the surface.  Daniel was first there to help.  Someone pushed him into the pool, for a joke.  Phil, a rescue dive student happily recounted his new knowledge on secondary drowning to us, as the fracas moved in and out of our sphere.

Red Belt was carried through a few moments later, dripping, limp, hyperventilating.  Lucky for her, and her foolish assailant, 3 first aid trained dive instructors and 4 German doctors were drinking in the bar that night. She was bundled into the dive shop, followed by a mattress, sheets and calls for water.  

‘Rusty, make sure no one goes in there.  No one.’  Andy said reappearing.

Rusty, the pestilence of the dance floor, stood guard at the door, menacing anyone who went close.  From pervy pest to proud protector.  No one got past Rusty.

We went to the bar, to distance ourselves from the distress.  Andy joined us.  No longer empty.  Filled with solemn perspective.

‘She was almost gone.  Almost.’  He said.

Phil put in a music request for ‘Do not resuscitate’.

We asked Andy who had thrown her into the pool.  He pointed at a nervous looking boy in blue shorts.  Blue Shorts walked towards us.  I spoke audibly about the stupidity of throwing vomiting girls into deep swimming pools.  What idiot would do something like that?  Blue Shorts asked if the cigarettes on the bar were ours.  No.  Andy asked him if he knew who had thrown Red Belt into the pool.  Blue Shorts shook his head and shuffled away without a cigarette. 

Someone else was sick on Sam and Daniel’s front step.  We watched as the remaining unconscious boy in the plastic chair was carried away by six of his friends.  Union Jack had long gone.

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‘Put a pillow under his back to wedge him on his side in bed.’  Andy called after them.  And then to us.  ‘I don’t want him to drown in his own vomit.’