Koh PhaNgan Island - Tina the Pimp
Well it was a choice between Railay Beach climbing for Christmas or Koh PhaNgan to visit my mad Thai friends on the island, so Koh PhaNgan it was - very lucky cos Railay beach was washed away in the Tsunami!!! So after I managed to escape from some looney I'd picked up on the journey, I arrived back at the beautiful tropical island in time for the most amazng red sunset over the quite beach. Stayed at my friends' lovely Thai style, dark wood, open veranda house/bar Won Chaai - Ron and Chows place.
What a bizzarre week it turned out to be. They were just opening a new bar/whore house in the red light district...'Golden Mile', so I spent some time helping them out with the opening. I do like the pace of work here, you get up when you want, then do an hour or 2 of work if you feel like it, have a sleep in the hammock for a while then go into town to pick up a few bits for dinner, then work an hour or so if you feel like it, then rest in the afternoon watching the sea, dinner in the evening, whoever feels like it, cooks, and as we were living in a bar we just stayed there in the evening with the locals coming over to join us for a drink, chilled out on the veranda in hammocks in the dim light watching the stars and moon reflecting on the sea...and that was considered a good days work!
Anyway this time we had had a delivery of a whole new bunch of prostitutes and ladyboys who were also living there waiting for the opening of the new bar. So it was a real fun place to be and they cooked me the most delicious food. Ron would drive us to town to buy food, all of us 'girlies' piled up in the back of a pick up truck and every time we drove passed a white man they would all start shouting....the only 2 English sentences they knew....'hello sexy man....I come home with you!!?? It was quite mad.
And then full moon party, 26th December....we all went to the party.....all dolled up in the back of the truck......the whole beach was full of 10 000 desperate white men on the pull! Quite sad to see really! And these girls were up for anything! Mad. I think I was the only person on that beach, in fact on the whole island, who was not drinking, smoking and taking drugs! Everyone on this whole island seems to be permanently mushroomed out!! But I still had fun - danced the night away with all my girlies!
So opening night for the new bar, 28th December. I nearly lost my voice standing outside shouting at all the passing customers to come in for a drink in English and Thai, then when they were in, I'd chat to the the slimey old men for a while and then if they wanted, sell them a prostitute! Tina the pimp.....and a fine job I did too, 4 girls on the first night - that's a bar fine of 1200 Baht! Even I got a few offers......fortunately I wasn't for sale!!!!
Think this can go down on my CV!
Chaiya - Tina the Nun
So next day was off to Chaiya on the mainland, to live the nun's life in a Buddhist monastary in the middle of a forest for my 10 day silent meditation course! 'What-a-load-of-bologny' (favourite saying of one of the old Buddhist nuns, in a Thai accent of course) this turned out to be!
Things i liked about the retreat :-
1. A soak/swim in the gorgeous natural hot springs twice a day.
2. Not having to bother to make crappy conversation with half the dimwits there.
3. The beatiful sunrises and sunsets.
4. The amazingly huge insects - like you could never imagine.
5. Hot chocolate in the evening, our only luxury, except for those nights they decided to torture us with hot soya milk instead!
6. Erika my beautiful lesbian friend, who I only got to know on the last day when we could talk again.
7. Loving kindness meditation although we only had 15mins of this!
8. The dry humoured cynical English monk who hated everything especially trumpet players and people who practiced loving kindness!.....made me laugh til i wet myself, only had 3 sessions of him though.
9. Not allowed to kill any insects so we made little highways for the ants crossing our paths. Unfortunately this also included not being allowed to kill any mosquitoes!!
Things i didn't like about the retreat :-
1. sleeping on hard concrete beds with a wooden pillow and no matress!! in a room that looked like a prison cell.
2. getting up at 4am!!!! Everyday!!!
3. Aching legs and back from meditating cross legged on the floor in the middle of the hall from 4.30am to 9pm
4. Only 2 crappy meals a day....at 8.00am horrible rice porrige, then half cooked rice and horrible fried vegetables at 12.30pm. No other food allowed at any time of the day, (except that i'd sneaked in my big bottle of marmite and had a spoon of that everyday...for medicinal purposes only of course...to keep the mosquitoes away!)
5. The meditation instructions...it would help if the abbot could speak English better...or if I could speak Thai even, didn't know what I was supposed to be meditating on most of the time! Apparently the whole 10 days we were just supposed to be watching our breath, in and out.
6. Not allowed to think about the past or the future but stay in the present the whole time...not getting attached to anything, not thinking about sex, or any other sensual pleasures, have no ego, not be lazy, have no doubt, etc etc. The monks have antedotes for thoughts like these - whenever a thought of anger creeps up, they immediately perform a loving kindness meditation; when they get thoughts of attachment to material possessions, they meditate on impermanance and how things come and go and that the happiness obtained from material things is short lasting and will only lead to eventual 'Dukkha' (unhappiness); when they get thoughts of sexual pleasure, they meditate on corpses! They actually have books on corpse meditation and its part of the monks training to be taken to see many corpses so that they can meditate on them and use this to rid the sexual feelings.
7. Not being able to concentrate on more than 3 in and out breaths before i got really bored and starting fantacising about what a great job I had done on the summer camp...ego...ego...ego, and how the young monk who took us for chanting was quite fanciable - corpse meditation would have come in useful here!!
8. Walking meditation...walking at about 0.0000001m/h watching every movement for an hour at a time - what the hell was that all about???
9. Having to do my chores, sweeping and cleaning the manky footbaths when i could have been spending extra time in the hot springs!
10. No showers, just a well in the middle of the courtyard, where you scoop water out and pour it over yourself while fully covered - no nakedness allowed!!!
11. No toilet paper....only hands and water.
12. Being mindful all the time - this meant doing everything really slowly and quietly so even chewing your food became embarrassingly noisy and i had to stop using my electric toothbrush or the whole monastry would get disturbed.
13. Insects in the food
14. Even on the 11th day we had to get up at 4am and meditate!
15. The Thai sense of humour...they laugh at death, and make fun of the people that had died in the Tsunami??? Very strange for westerners...takes a bit of getting used to, but i guess its like anything else in life...life goes on and if you don't laugh, you'll cry so you might as well laugh??!!
16. Hairy legs and armpits!
