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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Thailand: Beach Bums of Thailand

A tourist being approached by a salesman on Lamai Beach
You can't walk on Lamai Beach without being sold something, but at least this guy is only selling towels...

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to Ko Samui, but for different reasons to most of the beer-swilling lobsters around me. I enjoyed it because it reminded me exactly what it is that I don't like about the traditional two-week beach holiday, with its incessant drinking, sitting on the beach, eating steak and chips, and inevitable sunburn in the attempt to get a tan in time for the flight home. Ever since a holiday from hell in Gran Canaria, I've been incredibly wary of beach resorts, but both Charlie and I looked at Ko Samui in utter horror, and revelled in it.

The Carlsberg logo in Thai
It might be in a different alphabet, but in Ko Samui the language of Carlsberg is most definitely universal

1 A young man approached me on my first day on the beach, introducing himself as an Indian mystic from Kashmir who read palms. I told him I didn't want to know about it, but he insisted on taking my palm and jotting down some details anyway; then when he came to the inevitable bit where he asked me to put some money in his hand to get my fortune, I told him I'd already made my fortune, but it was back at the hotel and he wasn't getting any of it. He got the message and left. The next day, he came back, and failing to recognise me, he started with the same spiel. This time I interrupted him and told him I didn't want my fortune told, and that I still didn't have any money on me, and he looked rather hurt and said, 'But I haven't asked you for money. I tell you what, I will tell you the first name of your mother, and if I am right, you can pay me, and if not, you don't have to.' I told him I already knew the first name of my mother, and I didn't need to pay someone to remind me. Faced with such irrefutable logic, his brow wrinkled and, before long, he'd wandered off down the beach, a mystified mystic. He never bothered me again.