Stealing Asia

by David Clarkson

  ‘How far to the station?’ I asked.

  ‘Not far,’ he assured me.

  At exactly five o’clock we pulled up onto a street corner. I could not see any buses. I waited for the policeman to let me out, but he remained in his seat.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘No. No,’ he replied. ‘Is good.’

  After a minute or so he finally got out of the car and walked around to open the back door, but not to let me out. Another Thai man, this one in civilian dress, placed three carrier bags filled with groceries onto the back seat before getting into the front with the policeman.

  ‘This my brother,’ said the policeman.

  The second man smiled and I suspected that he did not share in his sibling’s command of the English language. The policeman started the engine and we pulled back onto the road. It was quarter past five when we finally arrived at the bus station. There were two coaches parked up. One was clearly out of service as it was being worked on by a mechanic and the other one was just starting to pull out of the depot. The policeman accelerated past it and swung his car around to block its path. As he did so, I was showered with groceries.

  The policeman and I then got out of the car and he spoke briefly with the driver of the bus he had just stopped. After a few moments he got back in his car and reversed out of the bus’s way. I expected the driver to open up the luggage compartment for me. Instead, once the road was clear, he climbed into his coach and pulled out leaving me stranded by the roadside. The policeman parked up before coming over to join me.

  ‘That was lucky,’ he said. ‘For moment, I thought we miss bus.’

  ‘We did miss the bus.’ I told him.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘That your bus.’

  He pointed to the second coach. The mechanic was still fiddling with the engine. Random machine parts were strewn across the ground and whilst I watched, this pile only got bigger.

  ‘What now?’ I asked the policeman.

  ‘Now we get ticket,’ he replied. ‘Wait here.’

  A row of tables placed on the roadside constituted as the ticket office. Representatives from several companies had set up shop and ordinarily I would have expected them to all try to compete against one another for every potential customer. Seeing the policeman, they were content to accept his choice of whom he did business with. One of them wrote out a ticket and the policeman brought it over to me.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said.

  I took the slip of paper from him. This time it was written in English, but the price remained the same as my original bogus ticket. The destination had merely been reversed; it was for Hat Yai.

  ‘Not Hat Yai!’ I shouted, storming over towards the vendor as I did so. ‘Samui – I want to go to Koh Samui.’

  The man was clearly shocked by my outburst and looked to the policeman, who shook his head as if to show that he was disappointed by my attitude. It would not have surprised me if I was arrested to teach me another lesson. Fortunately, he had decided that I had received enough of an education for one day. My ticket was exchanged for one with the correct destination and I was finally able to board my fully air conditioned coach. The mechanic got the engine working a little before six and then I was finally on my way. As night fell, I reclined back in my seat and allowed my mind to take a well earned trip into oblivion.

  ***

  I had no idea how long I had slept. The bus was now still and the windows revealed only the empty darkness beyond. None of the other passengers stirred as they remained unmoving with their veiled heads bowed toward the floor.

  ‘Is this the ferry port?’ I asked the lady next to me.

  She did not respond. I was not even sure if I had spoken aloud as I had not felt my lips move. In fact, my whole body felt numb as I began to float up out of my seat and over the heads of the passengers. It did not feel like I had any control over my movement as I struggled to break free of the invisible current that carried me.

  ‘This is not my stop,’ I protested, but again the words went unheard outside of my own inner comprehension.

  The bus had been parked alongside a vast and empty field, which I soon found myself to be standing in the middle of. I do not know how I had drifted so far from the vehicle and my immediate desire was to return to it. I attempted to walk back, but the bus got smaller and smaller as it slowly shrunk away from me. Bizarrely, I could see that the vehicle remained stationary and it was I that was moving further away despite walking towards it.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way.’

  The voice was distant, yet close. It was comforting, but resonated with danger.

  ‘Asia?’

  There was a momentary silence as I waited for the wind to carry my words to her.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ she repeated.

  I turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and walked into a thick mist that was rising from the ground like dry ice.

  ‘Asia, where are you?’

  The fog was thickening around me, creating a narrow tunnel, which gave me the sensation of being pushed down it. I no longer felt like I was doing the pursuing. It was as if somebody was behind me, herding me along.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked.

  In response, the fog seemed to close in on me more quickly. Not wanting to lose myself completely to the haze, I started to run faster and faster. I had no idea to which direction the bus lay, but it mattered not as I had already abandoned any hope of returning to it. All I wanted was to free myself of the growing mist.

  ‘Over here,’ I heard Asia say.

  I turned to face the direction from which the voice had come and found myself approaching a border checkpoint not unlike the one that I had narrowly avoided crossing in Sungai Kolok. It was manned by the same man who had sold me the bogus ticket in Hat Yai.

  ‘Passport,’ he requested as he held out his hands.

  I patted my pockets, but they were all empty.

  ‘Passport,’ the man repeated, more urgently this time.

  The Thai people have the broadest, most welcoming smiles in the world, but when they are not smiling their features are stern and unreadable. I had no idea if his next move would be to chastise or to hug me. There were no people waiting behind me, but I still felt like I had to act with urgency.

  ‘I seem to have mislaid it,’ I said, hoping to buy myself more time. ‘It must be in my bag, but I don’t have it with me.’

  He bent down behind his desk and pulled out a rucksack; my rucksack.

  ‘Here bag,’ he urged.

  I opened it up and the first thing that I found inside was a passport. It was just not my passport. The picture seemed hazy and I was not able to focus on it. The same could also be said for the name embossed within. Just when I thought that I could decipher who the document belonged to, the letters would dance around on the page, confusing and confounding me. With each viewing it was different. I looked further into the bag and found that it was filled with more of these mysterious passports. Glancing through them, I had the same difficulty deciphering the names and photographs. If mine was amongst the pile, I could no more distinguish it from the others. It was like being in a library where all of the books had no covers.

  ‘Passport,’ the man requested once more.

  This time he attempted to take one of the inexplicable documents from me.

  ‘These are not mine,’ I told him.

  He brushed my protest aside with a sharp wave of his hand.

  ‘It no matter. Give passport now.’

  I handed over the first one that came to hand and he gratefully took it from me. He then flicked through it only briefly before typing something on a keyboard in front of him. There was no computer monitor to go with the device.

  ‘Is that okay?’ I asked. ‘Am I free to enter?’

  ‘Yes, yes – enter.’

  I passed through the gate, which led on to the deck of a large ship. At first I needed to do a double take as I had not noticed crossing
over water, but I was definitely now on the deck of a large passenger ferry. The checkpoint and the man were no longer behind me and had been replaced by the bridge of the vessel. I carried on walking into a cabin and upon doing so the door slammed behind me. I quickly spun around to find myself confronted with iron bars. The cell started to shrink around me and I screamed to be let out. I could feel my anxiety levels rising towards panic and as they did so, the floor beneath me began to vibrate and my screams were drowned out by the bellow of a foghorn.

  And then I was back on the bus.

  Many of the passengers around me were rousing from their slumber, whilst others gathered their belongings. There was not a headscarf in sight. Like me; everyone on board was a tourist or a backpacker. I assumed that many of them had gotten on the bus whilst I had slept; most probably at Hat Yai. Through the window, I could make out the silhouette of an approaching ship, its foghorn cutting through the dead of night like a wrecking ball. I had slept all the way to the small port town of Donsak, where I was to finally make the crossing to Samui and then on to Koh Pha Ngan.

  Chapter 4

  The port at Koh Samui was packed to capacity as the ferry docked shortly after sunrise. The welcoming committee was composed solely of hungry taxi drivers with one eye on their fare and the other on a healthy commission from whichever guesthouse that they chose to boost the population of. Rather than ask them to recommend a place to stay, it would be simpler to cut through the pretence and just ask who was paying their wages.

  I shrugged off their advances and pushed my way out of the crowd to try and find a less competitive form of transport. Another traveller noticed my apprehension around the taxis and he directed me toward the closest thing that the island had to a public bus service, which was a network of small open backed jeeps that the locals called sawngthaews. A few other backpackers had the same idea and along with the helpful stranger, I joined them on the back.

  The seating on the vehicle consisted of two wooden planks running parallel along the sides. No seatbelts were provided and the only thing to hold onto was an overhead guard rail. As the driver accelerated sharply, I was soon forced into putting the rail to use. Luckily, the road ahead was straight, lessening the odds of my being prematurely dropped off on the dusty jungle trail.

  ‘You are going to Ko Pha Ngan - yes?’ asked the man who had helped me.

  He had dark skin and his accent, though slight, was recognisably Spanish.

  ‘Maybe, if we survive this drive,’ I joked.

  He offered me his hand.

  ‘I am Esteban Cruz.’

  His grip was firm, but reassuringly, not aggressively so.

  ‘Benjamin Travis, but you can just call me Ben.’

  ‘Ben it is then. So tell me, Ben, are you going to the full moon party tonight, by any chance?’

  ‘Me and about twenty thousand others. I’m hoping to meet a girl there.’

  ‘After a few drinks, every guy will be looking for a girl, I think. You may have competition.’

  I moved my hands, but had to quickly return them to the handrail as the driver took a ninety degree turn without even dropping a gear. The road was unsealed and I decided it best not to let go again.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for one girl in particular. We spent some time together in Malaysia and I’m hoping that we can pick up where we left off.’

  I used my free hand to take out my digital camera. I showed Esteban a photograph of Asia that I had taken shortly before she left for the airport. He seemed impressed. The way that Asia looked, this reaction was only to be expected.

  ‘She is a beautiful girl; does she know that you are coming to meet her?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I’ve not known her long, but it was her idea for us to meet up.’

  ‘How long have you known this girl?’

  The tone in his voice had changed ever so slightly. He did not sound suspicious or patronising, but I got the feeling that he seemed more interested than appropriate for casual small talk between strangers. The answer to his question was just a few days, but I saw no harm in telling a white lie.

  ‘A few weeks, but you know how it is when you’re away from home. Travel years pass like dog years.’

  He nodded.

  ‘How did the two of you meet?’

  Again, the question seemed a little off somehow, but I was still carrying residual paranoia from the nightmare trip I had endured getting this far and decided not to read too much into it.

  ‘She was walking back to her guesthouse alone one night when some guy jumped her. I was in the wrong place at the right time and managed to fend off the attacker. Afterwards, she was adamant that I was her protector and it kind of snowballed from there.’

  The story worked much better when I left out the part about the hit and run. I went on to tell him about my unexpected detour. He did not seem alarmed or surprised by the way in which I had been scammed and I wondered if maybe I had blown it all up a bit in my head. Esteban was remarkably adept at extracting information. I felt like I could have told him anything.

  Whilst we talked, the sawngthaew slowed down to pick up a couple more passengers. They were both locals and did not ask any of the backpackers to move up to create space for them; they just clambered onto the back and remained standing whilst holding onto the railings. They possessed a reckless ease, which left only centrifugal momentum to keep them from plunging to their deaths. I was not entirely sure that the laws of physics were on their side.

  ‘Do you have a place to stay on the island or are you relying on this girl of yours?’ asked Esteban.

  ‘Probably just the girl,’ I replied. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I am not too concerned about finding a bed. When you party until dawn it is not necessary.’

  We were dropped at the base of the most rickety pier I had ever seen. It looked like the last surviving remnant of a typhoon. Many of the boards were missing, but I got the impression that they had never been there to begin with. It shook with the weight of a hundred fully laden backpackers and I feared that it would give way when it was my turn to walk the plank. I am usually fine with heights, but always wary around water.

  ‘Relax,’ urged Esteban. ‘It’s structurally sound or we wouldn’t be on it. If you’re really worried, just try and step on the nails, because they’ll be the strongest points.’

  I followed his advice, but it did not make it any easier. Due to the large gaps in the boardwalk, I had no choice but to stare down directly into what could have been a potential burial at sea. Sure, I could swim, but the sixty litre bag I bore on my back might as well have been a concrete overcoat.

  ‘Just keep thinking of this girl of yours,’ said Esteban. ‘There are only half a dozen more boards to go and you’re there.’

  The pier led onto a small metal platform, which the boat crew had used to bridge the gap to the vessel. Seeing this as safer, more solid ground, I was eager to get onto it and my last stride off of the wooden gangway was more of a leap. I came crashing down hard onto the metal bridge and my weight was enough to dislodge it from its unstable mooring, causing it to give way under my feet.

  I heard the platform make a splash as it hit the water below, but I was still suspended in midair, my legs flailing hopelessly on the wind. Instinctively, when I had begun to fall, I had grabbed onto the straps of my backpack just to hold onto something. With the bag attached this should have been a futile gesture, but I soon felt the pull of the straps as I was being winched upwards, back onto the pier.

  ‘You could try and be a little more co-operative,’ said a strained voice from just above me. ‘After all, I am in the process of saving your life.’

  I craned my head and saw Esteban standing over me with the balled fist of his right hand clutching the top of my bag and his left hand clamped firmly onto a supporting pole of the flimsy pier. I immediately reached out for whatever I could to ease his burden. Luckily, there were plenty of other travellers there who so
on grabbed onto me and helped hoist me back to safety. The Thai boat crew had been more concerned about retrieving their boarding platform and did not join in with the rescue effort.

  ‘You must think that I am a complete fool,’ I said to Esteban.

  I received pats on the back from other amused travellers, but he was not smiling.

  ‘Do not beat yourself up,’ he replied. ‘It is unlikely that you are the first person who has lost his footing here; look.’

  He pointed over the gap between the boat and the pier to where the crew were hoisting up the metal platform using a rope, which had been attached for such an eventuality. None of them looked particularly surprised or worried about what had just happened.

  ‘Thanks, all the same,’ I said. ‘You just saved my life.’

  This time he did smile.

  ‘Think nothing of it, my friend. You already told me how you saved the life of this girl of yours, so you have no reason to feel indebted to me. Think of it as a karmic pay off.’

  ‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ I began, but then stopped myself.

  The crew soon had the platform back in position and they walked across the bridge several times themselves to prove to the nervous travellers that it was now properly secured into position. This time I crossed without incident.

  Once we were safely on the boat and seated, an attendant walked down the aisle dispensing maps of the island. Our arrival point was a stone’s throw from Hat Rin where the full moon party would be. When we got there, the pier was just as crowded with taxi drivers fighting for custom as its counterpart on the first island, so Esteban and I decided to bypass the initial melee and stuck around the port to grab some lunch.

  I was feeling a little anxious now that my journey was almost complete and needed some food to settle my stomach. Whether the nerves had been brought on by the thought of seeing Asia again or the worry that I may not find her at all, I could not tell. Having Esteban around did at least make things easier.