Happy Belly on Play: Sleeping on The Beach

“Come and enjoy the experience of a lifetime, camping on the beach that was made famous by the film “The Beach” featuring Leonardo Di Caprio which was filmed in Maya Bay in 2000.”

That line caught my eye among the chaos of boards littered the path. No, I’m not a Leonardo fan, but I like camping. And I’ve never tried camping on the beach.

“A purpose-converted fishing trawler transports customers to Maya Bay after stopping at the Viking Cave and snorkelling and kayaking at Pileh Bay, Losama Bay or Shark Point. We arrive on ‘the beach’ at around 5pm just as the day tourists are leaving the island, and the island slowly but surely becomes deserted.”

My brain did some quick math and concluded that it was a good deal because it included the equivalent of a half-day snorkelling trip and one night’s accommodation. What finally sold me was the line that said “numbers are limited to 25 people only” and the usually streetwise me fell for it hook, line and sinker.

It was 1pm and we had arrived at Phi Phi Island, south of Thailand, only two hours earlier. We hadn’t booked a place in advance and it had taken us some effort to finally find a suitable room. But there I was press-ganging my long-suffering friend to check out of the guesthouse and sign up for this sleeping-on-the-beach caper which was set to leave at 3pm.

Imagine having the whole beach to ourselves, I tried convincing her. And see, it’s got flush toilets and electricity, so it can’t be too bad, I added.

At 3pm, we were waiting at the meeting point. By 4pm, there were 20 of us waiting. By 4.30pm, a big group of football jock and cheerleader types joined us, bringing the grand total to only 45 people, plus one baby.



When I saw the “purpose-built” boat, my heart sank even further. It didn’t matter that it had no seats, it was small – way too small for all of us. It could possibly accommodate 25 but squeezing 45 hulking Caucasian sizes into the limited space was worse than forcing sardines into a can.

We left the pier dangerously low in the water and headed to the Viking Cave which is famous for the bird’s nests that the Chinese like to eat. We literally stopped for two minutes and looked at the cave from afar in our coolie boat.

The converted fish trawler continued and finally anchored at Maya Bay. Huh, where’s the promised snorkelling at the gorgeous Pileh Bay and Losamah Bay? I was too disheartened to argue by then, especially since the guide said that we’d only have half an hour to kayak and snorkel before heading to the beach. Everyone started fighting over the two kayaks and 30 snorkels. At least I had my own gear.

There wasn’t enough sunlight by then so there wasn’t very much to see. Jumping into the water had been easy but getting back up was a different matter. There were no ladders. Instead we had to haul ourselves up using the tyre bumpers on the sides. As luck would have it, I slipped while pulling myself up and slammed my right side into the side of the boat. It swelled into a scary-looking bruise.

Injured and upset, I arrived at the beach with the sole aim of finding a way back to mainland. But it was too late – all the daytrippers had gone. I resigned myself to a night of exotic wildness and headed to the toilets for a shower. Oh, there are no showers? Never mind, I saw a hose outside. Ack, the water is salty!

Ever the optimist, I strode to the makeshift drinks stall, determined to buy water no matter how exorbitant it might be. They had Coca-Cola and a range of Thai liquor for sale. No water.

My hair was stringy, my skin was sticky and my side was hurting. I was quite ready to sit down and cry by then. But common sense prevailed and I remembered the bottle of mineral water we’d taken along. That one litre of freshwater would just have to be enough for drinking, general washing (which includes washing of hands for removal of contact lenses) and brushing teeth.

Things got better during dinner which was somewhat palatable, except for the loud house music that was blaring away and the constant acrid smell of cigarette smoke. The staff started handing out mini buckets, a signal that the party was starting. The first bucket – a mixer of Coke and a cheap Thai whiskey – was free.

Being somewhat boring people who don’t smoke, drink or party, we decided on an early night – find a spot away from the pounding bass so that we can hear the waves and admire the stars. We asked for our tent (which was promised) and were instead given a rattan mat, a sleeping bag and a foam block each.


It was amazing to lie on the open beach under the canopy of stars, lulled to sleep by a balmy sea breeze which, unfortunately, also blew sand onto us. I thought of zipping myself up in the sleeping bag to keep the sand at bay but the zip, of course, didn’t work so the sleeping bag was just like a big thin blanket.

Sleep was fitful with drunken revellers taking turns to pee in the sea and generally making a nuisance of themselves. So it wasn’t difficult to wake up to catch the sunrise, except that I was encrusted in sand – in my hair, my mouth, my ear, my nose.

You know how some people say the best is yet to be? The biggest surprise was waiting for me during my early morning visit to the toilet where I was confronted with the unwelcome reminder of womanhood. Nothing’s worse than being caught off guard, other than being caught off guard on an island with no 7-Eleven shops and having to make your own maxi pad.

So it was with great relief and joy that I left The Beach. And the greatest irony of it all – I have yet to see the movie.

Happy Belly on Shop: Conquering my Fear of Shopping Centers

Being the good adopted citizen that I am, I decided to play my part in helping Bangkok return to normalcy after the violence that wracked the city. So I went shopping.


Charred remains of my favourite old-school cinema

Last Saturday was the first weekend that shopping centres in the protest area were reopened after being shut for more than a month. It was also the first weekend that Bangkokians could come out to play after being cooped up for a week at home, held ransom by gunshots and explosions.


Crowds are returning to Siam Paragon

The government turned a road in the financial district into a walking street to help traders whose shop space was torched during the riots while shopping centres offered steep discounts to woo shoppers back.

Come out and shop, said the Finance Minister. That’s the most patriotic thing you can do for your country now.

And the city-dwellers responded and spilled out onto the streets in search of a good bargain. I ventured onto the walking street but was cowed by the heaving sweating crowds. So I decided to brave Siam Paragon instead, despite an innate phobia of glitzy malls here.

For some strange reason, I get really atrocious service at shopping centres in Bangkok. The sales staff either ignore me or are downright rude. In fact, I get so stressed that I try to avoid the malls altogether.

Why do I get such lousy service, I’d wailed to my Thai friend. Maybe because of the way you dress, she hazarded a guess. I looked down at my tatty shorts and fake pink Crocs. She has a point.



Service staff here seem to divide everyone into two categories – Speak No Thai and Speak Thai. The former always trumps the latter. The Speak Thai are further split into two categories – the Obviously Foreign and the Possibly Thai. The Obviously Foreign, especially the white-skinned variants, will always be up there with the Speak No Thai.

Now, the Possibly Thai are more complex with its own unspoken hierarchy. The Bangkok elites with their diamonds and coiffed hair are at the top of the pyramid. Provincial Thais and migrants from the poorer neighbouring countries are many rungs lower, with those from the hill tribes close behind. And the sales staff very quickly suss out your social standing from your accent and dressing.

So where do I stand in this food chain?

After almost six years in Bangkok, my Thai’s pretty decent. I speak it, read it, write it, heck, I even dream in it. Everyone just assumes I’m Thai. But, apparently, my accent can go either way – a hill tribe nomad or a rich brat who studied overseas. With my penchant for really casual wear and a complexion that’s a healthy brown instead of porcelain white, my fate is sealed.

While the solution to my shopping woes seems quite easy – just dress up when going out – I’ve probably gone too native to bother.

I came to Bangkok in July 2004 to work with slum kids as a volunteer, so I’ve never got into the whole expat scene. I studiously stayed away from other Singaporeans and mixed mainly with the Thais (except for my British flatmate and some other internationals whom I'd met during my M.A. in Thai Studies course).

I learnt to buy clothes at the local markets and from the roadside stalls to lessen the gap between the slum dwellers and me. Kitten heels got stuck in slum mud, so flip flops became de rigueur. No point wearing your best D&G shirt (not that I have one to begin with) to the slum, only to have the kids’ mucus or other body fluids smeared on it.

Although I’ve had paid employment for the last year now, I still tend to dress down over the weekends. Which probably explains why I’ve been mistaken for my flatmate’s Burmese maid when we were shopping for a water filter or a drinks seller when I was buying a blender.

Yet it was high time that I confronted my inordinate fears of shopping centres and a post-riot trip to Siam Paragon seemed the perfect antidote. Dressed in what was more beach wear than city chic, I was waiting for the fashion police to pounce as I stepped into the hallowed halls of consumerism.


Patriotic music played by a university symphony orchestra

I don't know if it was because of the patriotic music that has replaced the shopping centre muzak or that the sales staff were just thankful to have a job again but a new purse and a new pair of badminton shoes later, the whole shopping experience was not as bad as I had dreaded.

But of course by now, I’ve also figured out the perfect solution to get some semblance of service – just Speak No Thai. Maybe for my next outing to the malls, I could even pretend to Speak No English and just go on and on in Mandarin or Cantonese. Now that would be fun!

Rojak Timeout (Part Deux, by Happy Belly)

After the first Bangkok situation report by Happy Belly came out earlier this week, we received messages from quite a few concerned ESPL readers regarding her safety. Here is an update on her situation.

It was the phone that very rudely jolted me awake at 8.30 a.m. on Wednesday.

“The crackdown has begun. It looks bad. I’m flying home today. You should leave too,” said my Singaporean friend who also works in Bangkok.

“Huh, OK, let me think about it.”

I was still groggy from sleeping at 2 a.m. after my movie marathon the previous night. Struggling to open my eyes, I reached for my home to check the latest Twitter updates. (By the way, Twitter is the best thing ever for crisis situations. TV and radio are slow, and in Thailand, censored too.)

The picture didn’t look good but it didn’t warrant fleeing. Yet.

Two hours later, while I was sitting down to a breakfast of bad news and a ham-and-cheese sandwich, my Aussie neighbour came to say that they were starting to burn tyres in a street near our apartment.

I lost my appetite.

TV news further confirmed that the protesters might spill inwards from the main road. Plus, a stage had been set up near my place where some 1,500 renegade protesters were gathered. And if the troops bulldozed that place, there were only that many streets that they could spill into, one of which would be mine.

Stay or leave – it was a very difficult decision. I’d never liked running away from anything. But the thought of being totally sealed in by an angry mob was equally choking. I could have stayed at a hotel where some of my colleagues were staying but I wasn’t entirely confident that that stretch would be spared.

So I up and left on a one-way ticket to Singapore. As the hard-to-find taxi drove to the airport, my heart sank as I passed the scenes of destruction all around me. The Land of Smiles is irrevocably scarred. I got to the airport by 1.30 p.m., having swung by the bank to take out some cash just five minutes before it closed.

As I waited for the next five hours at the departure gate, it was with both horror and relief as I followed the nightmare unfolding on Twitter. Shopping centres were on fire and my favourite cinemas had collapsed. Electricity and phone signals were both cut. It was a city run amok.

It was only when I came back to Singapore that I realised how living on the edge of violence had taken its strange toll on me. When there was thunder last night, I woke up with a start thinking it was an explosion. Or when the helicopters flew past in the morning, I felt the familiar fear grip my heart that the troops were coming.

No one knows when this will end but I need to go back soon. My two hamsters need me.

Rojak Timeout (by Happy Belly)

Just like the spicy rojak salad dish, the postings here are about anything and everything under the sun. They're meant to make you a keen, lean, lovin' Internet machine as you wait for the next story to be posted by our authors.

Today's Rojak Timeout is by Happy Belly in Thailand.


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Happy Belly says:

My neighbourhood the battle zone

For the first time in my six years in Bangkok, I went to the supermarket on Sunday morning to seriously stock up my fridge. Not my usual flippant two tubes of Pringles and one pack of Kit Kat but proper rice and canned food.





When I got to Tops, it seemed that the entire neighbourhood had the same idea – and had emptied the shelves. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Not during the coup, not during other mass protests.

I’d left the stocking up a bit late and there was no fresh food to be had. No pork, no chicken, no beef, except for some $60 airflown Aussie beef that no one had touched. Even the remaining veggies looked sad and stringy. I had to scramble for whatever was left because it certainly felt as though locusts had descended on the supermarket.



The expatriates were loading their shopping carts with frozen pizzas, pasta sauces, canned tuna, wine, milk and bread. The locals on the other hand were going for instant noodles, canned sardines and soft drinks. At least there wasn’t going to be a fight there. What else do people buy in a crisis? Toilet paper and sanitary napkins were apparently top picks.

No one – I suspect not even the government – had expected the situation to end up in such a protracted state of violence across the city. The clashes that began on Thursday night had killed 33 and injured 239 across Bangkok by Sunday night.



Many of those killed were innocent civilians. A taxi driver who dropped off a passenger got shot in his lung. A charity medic got killed while trying to help an injured protester. A singer and his friend were on the balcony of his 27th floor apartment. Both got shot, one died.



My apartment is just three short streets away from one of the deadliest flash points between troops and protesters. On Saturday, I had felt safe enough to go for a walk and ambled down the alleys that led to the disputed road (see photos) but by Sunday I wasn’t going anywhere near there.

The road which I take to go to work is now a battlefield between the troops (with their rifles and live ammunition) and the protesters (with their mini Molotov cocktails and firecrackers). The spot where the first fatality fell is a few steps from my favourite roast duck shop. The street where I take a motorcycle taxi from went up in flames.



There’s no immediate end in sight, despite the government’s repeated assurance that they have everything under control. The violence is escalating and spreading to more spots in the city and neighbouring provinces. The protesters are willing to negotiate but the government says it’s gone beyond the point of negotiation.



Violence begets violence. And the people who suffer are the residents in the hot zones where smoke plumes, gunshots and explosions reign. There are many who have no access to food because stepping out of their apartment means walking straight into the live firing range.

As for me, I’m going to hole up in my apartment – not that I have a choice since I’m effectively sealed in with all the roadblocks around – eat up all the food in my fridge and hope that the supermarket restock the shelves soon.