Sometimes you want to disappear. From being connected, 24-hour news cycles, e-mail, cell phones, television, the Internet and the hundred other things that scream for attention. And the messages they bring each day turn your stomach. Factories closing. Layoffs. Pensions wiped out. Banks failing. Foreclosures. Whole industries dying. Markets in free-fall. Countries on the verge of collapse. Scandals. Unrest. Wars. Uncertainty. Fear. Plug in and there's a new reason to wonder what's happening to the world. But you can't help but look, like a reality television show gone horribly wrong.
But then you're in a bar on a tiny island in the Andaman Sea as the Rolling Stones play in the background, surrounded by a gang of people who look as if they're on the lam. A bonfire on the beach throws shadows around palm trees and through the heavy night air. The rest of the world seems a hazy, distant memory.
Ko Jum, off southern Thailand, feels as if it sits on the edge of civilization. No electricity or paved roads. A couple of ramshackle bungalow operations front the long beach locals ride scooters down. The only traffic there are thousands of scampering crabs. Acres of rubber trees and coconut groves. A combination bar and tattoo parlor. Even the ferry from tourist-jammed Ko Lanta doesn't stop here, relying on longtail boats to meet it at sea.
A battered and torn sign that used to read "Happy New Year's" hangs over the entrance to the open-air joint. Gold garland and red fabric is wound around varnished coconut wood posts. Shells strung through fishing line dangle from beams. Piles of old books to borrow are in the corner. In the corner is a faded, gilt-framed portrait of Thailand's King Buhmibol. A couple of dim electric lights, powered by a distant generator, barely light all this and the plates of seafood curry and fried rice that emerge from the kitchen.
The motley crew at Bo Dang have disappeared. One has stayed in bungalows here for eight years. Another wears a skirt to his ankles and bleach-blond hair to his shoulders. A third has dreadlocks that fall to the small of his back. Three men in a corner talk in low voices, switching between three different languages. This is a melting pot: Thais, Germans, Aussies, Kiwis, French, Brits, Americans. Most of them are scraggly, deeply-tanned and stoned. And skirts are everywhere, just not on any women.
Everyone drinks cans of Archa beer, fished from a huge ice-filled cooler next door. The beer is cold, fizzy and has little flavor. Perfect for the stifling air that leaves you dripping wet at 8 p.m.
A shriek interupts the Stones. Then a slender girl sprints through the joint and into the kitchen. The three others at her table on the sand front of Bo Dang jump on top of it. There's a snake.
The girl doesn't come out of the kitchen. She's hyperventilating, flapping her hands wildly in front of her face. The cook, a smiling, rotund Thai women doesn't know what to do. A man shakes his head, retrieves a shovel and goes in hunt of the snake. A half-hour later, the girl's boyfriend coaxes her out of the kitchen. Everyone has long forgotten the scene and returned to building small mountains of empty beer cans on the tables, jabbering and staring into the inky night.
Nothing intrudes here. No one is connected. Then one of the skirted men walks to the stereo and fiddles with it. For a moment waves crashing on the shore are the only sound. Then Richard Marx blares "Right Here Waiting." No one blinks. The hardcore, leave-the-world behind vibe has been turned on its head. The song is hideous and the moment perfect, as the real world seems impossibly far away.
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