Myanmar

Words from Myanmar

5th January 2018

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a razor.. I mean the edge of that dvd..

Marlow and others,

It’s been a long time since my last travel blog email. Apologies to those of you who received panic voicemails from me Christmas Day. I want to write to you all now about ‘the horror’. I’m still experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.
I advise you not to read this email alone but with some people close by – in case you faint, or vomit, or have a seizure reading my… revelation.

OK…
I spent a week before Christmas on a very quiet jungle beach island called Koh Jum off the coast of Thailand. It was a lovely island but a little commercialised. I decided to get a speedboat taxi to Koh Phi Phi, 20km away, for a few days as it brought back great memories from 2001 and 2008. 2001 and 2008 beach highlights were on islands Koh Phi Phi and Koh Samet in Thailand and the Perhentian islands off Malaysia. We stayed in beach huts or stilted wooden bungalows owned by the locals. I remember second hand books for sale everywhere. Who would have guessed you go backpacking and totally fall in love with literature. There was very little to do on these tranquil islands, all you did was read, eat, make love, sleep, swim, eat, read, hike a little, swim, read, eat, sleep. The beach huts were around $5 a night and food/drink $8 a day – our budget $100 a week. I cherished those backpacking days, being a romantic – the highlight was stumbling across and reading great books by Joseph Conrad, Milan Kundera, J.G. Ballard, Robert M. Pirsig, Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac, F Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce! (I just love how I travelled 10,000km to discover and appreciate a writer from my own country).

So this Christmas I wanted to revisit the local villages, the quiet idyllic beaches, live in a beach hut and discover more great writing..

But…Big mistake.

Nostalgia is a weakness.

Christmas morning on the speedboat to Koh Phi Phi was the beginning of this horror story. As we approached the island – I noticed an ominous sign in the distance, I couldn’t see it clearly, but it prompted me to tell the speedboat driver to turn around, but I didn’t. As the boat approached it appeared to be a garish yellow arc.. an obscure forewarning constructed by islanders to deter visitors?..like Lord Of The Flies… But I felt adventurous like Sinbad the Sailor! When we got closer I realised it was actually two vivid yellow arcs…. making the letter ‘M’..ehm….then the small letter c…what the f…??

…. NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A McDonalds at the end of the jetty on Koh Phi Phi island??..on a national park island!!

I tripped stepping off the boat and staggered, bewildered, around the little island for few hours like someone coming home finding their village bombarded, burnt down.

It’s probably best you play Adagio for Strings now while you read on (btw I haven’t got the true horrific event yet..)

But I’m not kidding: most of the palm trees were gone, the villages were gone, all beach huts gone, the local fishermen gone, the family’s who had little huts for backpackers were gone, ALL second hand book stalls were gone and replaced by..

Western hotel resorts with swimming pools. And where there was no hotel – there were construction workers building another fucking hotel. And it was all sickeningly overpopulated with thousands of tourists. Thousands. Everyone on this island may as well have been on a cruise ship. All the cafes and restaurants, before had one laminate page menu with amazing local Thai food, now had 25 page menus with burgers and pizza and steak and milkshakes and a wine list…(a fucking wine list on Phi Phi?) and lattes and shit Thai food. For western prices! A hotel resort receptionist smirked at me when I asked what’s their cheapest room and I laughed back when he told me the price.

No backpackers were reading books but everyone around me on their Instagram. A couple sat beside me during breakfast and never said a word to each other. You’d think they had a terrible argument but no, they were hypnotised by their instagram or should I say Instagerm.
An epidemic of instagerm ravished this island.
A mild depression came over me. If Alex Garland were to write a sequel to the novel/film ‘The Beach’ he’d now draw inspiration from writer J.G. Ballard (dystopian modernity) and filmmaker Michael Haneke (estrangement in modern society) and hire an actor like me, not Leo DiCap.

I checked into a hostel that Christmas evening where I witnessed the true horror…oh the horror!! That evening in the hostel I wondered down to the social common room in the basement wondering what that saccharine music was. As I entered the room: I heard a posh English accent, kind of like Hugh Grant’s voice, this voice was talking about arrivals at Heathrow airport…. and then I saw it.. the majority of the hostel dwellers were lying on beanbags and sofas… and… …OH GOD!! NO!….they were all looking at…
on a large plasma tv…
the 2003 film…
Love Actually…

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

(deep inhale)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

All I remember was waking up in this hostel common tv room; all hostel folk were around me, fanning me, asking me if I was ok. I was kind of shaking and convulsing. A doctor was there also. He gave me some diazepam. Once I sat up, everyone said it’s best I lay on a beanbag.. and then they resumed…
Love Actually..

Christmas Day 2017 – The Horror – after witnessing this beautiful island destroyed by mass commercialism and oversaturated tourism – I am now lying on a beanbag watching the worst film ever made in the history of cinema.
I am truly living a nightmare.
I felt now like a p.o.w. It took me 30 minutes to stealthy slither away without anyone noticing. I slithered back upstairs, wishing I had a cyanide pill ready to crack in my mouth if they caught me and dragged me back to Love Actually. The receptionist spotted me crawling by reception. Shaking, I whispered, I pleaded to her to let me go. Show me mercy.. and she did.
Once outside I ran as fast as I could, screaming my lungs out, down the street, tourists staring at me, until I found the local police station and explained to them that someone smuggled a dvd of Love Actually into the country!!! Someone must have smuggled the dvd up their arse!!!. I mimicked dvd up arse. 4 police came down to the hostel, abruptly stopped the film, analysed the dvd, then told me ‘no drugs’ and the film resumed. The police actually stayed for a short while and watched the film! They were in on it! Fucking corrupt police were complicit in this horrendous event.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

All I remember was running for my life again. I don’t know how I escaped this time. I was now starting to feel psychotic like in The Deer Hunter, not trusting anyone in this town. I crawled down into a road sewer full of shit and rats all around me. I stayed still for a good hour to be 100% sure no one followed me – who’d drag me back to Love Actually. Then I called the Irish embassy emergency number from my mobile to please get me out of Thailand, my dilated eyes peering out from the street drain. I must have been very incoherent overcome with emotion by this stage because the calm Irish girl in the embassy kept asking me “have you been kidnapped..? “Are your possessions gone..?” I was hysterically sobbing saying “it’s worse.. it’s worse.. they’re showing Love Actually”.. and then she said..
“I luuve dat film..!” .

OK…a little exaggerated but..
I swear the hostel was playing Love Actually on Christmas day to all backpackers, with the instagerm virus, on a commercially destroyed island.

The hostel manager on Koh Phi Phi actually told me – all the locals sold all their land to investors, the locals moved to the mainland, and the investors came in and built western holiday resorts with herds of tourists from Western Europe, China, Russia, Argentina! And Brazil! (Why the fuck would you fly 16,000km from beautiful beaches of Brazil to this?)

So this is what they call the homogenisation of mass tourism.
NIN’s song ‘Every Day is Exactly the Same’ is in my head.
Like airports. Everywhere will look exactly the same, sell the same perfume fragrances, the same lattes, the same sun cream, the same food..sterile, bland, soulless.
And it’s going to get worse.

The next day: I got the fuck out!! I not only left the hostel, I left the island. I left the country!!! I went straight to the nearest airport (Phuket. yeah – also sells Chanel perfumes and Starbucks), went up to Air Asia ticket desk (thank God for low cost airlines) and said “Put me on the next flight to Yangon”. I’ve always wanted to walk in to an airport and say “put me on your next flight out”.

And I was actually depressed. I kid you not I started to feel flu / fever symptoms.

I always think when traveling – it’s great to go somewhere where minority are tourists and majority are locals. And even stay with the locals. But there are places in the world where it’s the opposite. One of the reasons why I think London and Paris are so impersonal. Nobody lives in the centre of London – it’s only tourists in hotels, millionaires and the Queen.

On Phi Phi a loneliness hit me there. My mental health was tested on the same island where my mental health was alleviated 10 years before by a peaceful vibe, sociable backpackers and literature. (btw I kept all those second hand books to re-read sometimes – and find on the book’s inside covers old phone numbers, emails and lovely notes from backpackers I met).

Anyway..
6 hours later, 26th December 2017- I’m in Yangon Myanmar!
The moment I arrived and walked the streets of Yangon I felt alive again. Yangon is rough, filthy, rats, stray cats, stray dogs, downtown Yangon food stalls spill from sidewalks onto the roads, everyone sits outside on stools eating and talking!!. Because I only had a week in Yangon – I was kind of scared eating the street food. The last time I had street food was in Mexico City with Ingrid, her sister and friends. And I ended up bedridden in their house for a week.

Also Yangon has an amazing colonial district. All the buildings there haven’t been touched since the 1920’s and I think they’re going to try to keep them that way. Also in this colonial district I discovered so many second hand bookstalls. I couldn’t believe it!

I mentioned the couple I sat beside in Phi Phi addicted to their instagerm not saying a word to each other…
On the large pedestrian foot bridges in Yangon during the evenings I came across young couples sitting on the steps holding hands, head resting on partner’s shoulder. Two lovers on a bridge, overlooking the hustle and noise of the streets below. This, for some reason, really moved me. I wanted to go up and say: “you’ve made my day”. And as I’d walk away – they’d wonder why I said that.

Met and hung out with English, Hong Kong, Singaporean and Swedish backpackers in the hostel. We strolled the city. The pagodas fascinated me. But only a week there. Myanmar is definitely another visit. The archipelago islands in the south must be like Thailand 30 years ago.

But I fear the days of cheap spontaneous backpacking in SE Asia are dying.. it’s being invaded by the bourgeoisie who want their shopping malls, their all inclusive resorts with fast WiFi, air con, swimming pools, pizza, wine menus, soy lattes with organic sugar free caramel on top and .. Richard Curtis films…

Kurtz

More writing
Words from Mexico (March 2021)
Words from Iran (January 2020)
Click for Words from Myanmar (January 2018)
Click for Words from Russia (July 2013)
Click for Words from Mongolia (August 2013)
Click for Words from China (August 2013)W