Life in Porn Bungalows

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  Koh Chang, Thailand
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Well, I left Samui on the evening ferry on route to Bangkok.  I had paid a few extra quid for a VIP bus and worth every penny it was too.  The government run VIP buses are like business class on wheels.  The seat recline right back and you get a hostess and little snack boxes etc.  Much more relaxing than those stupid minibus rip offs from tour agents.  After our free tea in a road side café (some rice, water and a selection of Thai dishes) I fell sound asleep till I got woken by the hostess as we entered Bangkok (still with St German playing in my ears as it had been for 8 hours!!) at 3.30am and Kim called me to tell they were in the midst of another night of giddiness in Kinky's bar in Kai Bae (the beach they were staying on in Koh Chang).  So I get thrown off at the Southern bus terminal in Bangkok and wander round for a bit trying to work out how the hell I get to the Eastern bus terminal (they have 3 different terminals in Bangkok servicing different parts of the country) at 3am...I eventually happen upon a friendly French couple who told me how to pronounce the name (Echeabra or something like that) in Thai so I wandered over and got into a taxi

Sunset over Bang Boa

.  Now, I always knew this was going to turn into a farce, some tired foreign bloke getting into a Thai taxi at that time wanting to go some places foreigners don't normally go, so it was no surprise at all to find myself doing laps off the Bangkok ring roads.  Eventually after much 'Echeabra Now' shouting we magically turned a corner and there it was.  Now compared to the Southern bus terminal which is a modern airport like place this was a bit of a dive.  However, there was a bus sitting waiting to set off to Trat  (jumping off point for ferry to Koh Chang), after much pigeon talking I established that this was a slow bus stopping all the way round Pattaya etc to Trat but it would get in at the same time as the 6am direct bus service so I decided to go for it (rather than get ripped off somehow in Echeabra).  I tell you, I might be from Scotland but that bus journey was one of the coldest 7 hours in my life, I guess the aircon has only on or off so inside the bus was 10oC and there is me in my nice combat shorts and Tokyo dragons T-shirt.  There was only one thing to do on such a quiet bus, I curled up into a ball and went to sleep with Novelle Vague in my ears.  About 3 hours later I get rudely awakened by the friendly little conductor shouting 'YOU YOU' in my ear.  I open my ears to see what the problem is only to see that the whole bus is now packed with commuters all standing while I am curled up across 2 seats...ooops...
 
The rest of the bus trip was fairly uneventful and we pulled into Trat at lunchtime

Pron..Ahhh

.  We then spent an hour loading up the tut tut truck this with families, rice etc.  We got halfway to the ferry port and then pulled over for 20 mins while some women passenger went and bought some chili's from the market.  At the ferry they manage to sell all the foreign foot passengers car tickets (still only 2 quid like) and somehow 2 different ticket people took both halves of my return ticket which took much walkie talkie business to rectify.  An hours wait and we got on the ferry (me now thoroughly engrossed in this novel Ronan gave me about Brian Cloughs time at Leeds), Matt and Kim came and met me at the other side (well after waiting at the wrong terminal for a bit) on their scooters.  Matt gave me a lift on his scooter which was interesting him being a big lad and me having my rucksack and the roads of Koh Chang being a bit like Swiss alpine affairs.  The little 100cc engine made it though and eventually we pulled into Porn Bungalows where Matt had booked me in!!
 
Porn Bungalows (see pics) was right next door to Matt, Kim, Phil and Angela's posh resort.  As the posh resort was full of Russian families fighting for breakfast and beach space the guys had actually been popping into Porn most evenings.  The bungalows here were quite basic but at 400 baht a night who was I to complain.  The place is run by the Porn brothers (of whom there are 3) and has been in their hands for years before all these resorts popped up

Sunset over Porn

.  It's a pretty cool gaff but you do get the feel that the staff are whacked out on something a lot of the time as they float around with not a care in the world.  There are a mixture of families, back packers, guys with their Thai birds and resident hippies (a couple of guys have been staying here for over 18 months now and seem to be set up with laptops etc in their bungalows!!).  We have made some good friends with the staff and are quite often sat with them once the kitchen closes at 10pm.  Some of the characters are:

Bang Porn:  Porn Number 2 brother, second in line to the Porn estate.  Top bloke, one of the calmest, most quietly spoken dudes you will ever meet.  Comes and sits with us every night, especially when Sue or another fit chick is around.  If aforementioned chick is Sue then he raids the barbeque every 30 mins to bring her little tit bits of food as they used to do to charm a bird back in the good ole days.  Bang sleeps where he ends up most nights, usually a hammock or deckchair by the bar but is always up bring and early to do the morning check-out, check-in malarkey.

Bang was really upset when Sue was leaving with me but instead of being jealous like I thought he would he was actually happy that someone was leaving with her who could 'look after' her instead of him.  And look after he did; whenever we ventured out of Porn Bungalows he would turn up in his car stalking her...I thought it was a bit weird myself but Sue reckoned he was just being sweet.
 
Chon: Waiter and fire show man.  Has an extraordinary grasp of making things in English sound incredibly funny.  Just something like bucket, bucket, bucket, bucket, bucket  has everyone in stitches.  Got drunk one night and developed a bit of a comedy liking for me (as did Lim one night about a week later; very strange behavior), turned out he was just having a laugh (he has a nice 16 year old girlfriend called Melissa) but did get worried at one point:
Simon when you go B3( my room)?  You go B3 I follow you.
 
Simon is very handsome.
 
Simon where you go?  Toilet.  You need me show you the way?

On our second from last day Chon, Mellisa (his 16 yr old English girlfriend - a really sweet and mature girl) and a few others went out 'fishing' and 'caught' (from a market somewhere as they instead seemed to have gone to a neigbouring island and got drunk rather than fishing) a massive fish.  They cooked the fish on the bbq after the kitchen had closed and we all got to eat what seemed like a really traditional dish.  All sat around the table with forks (see pics in link to Koh Chang 2 albumn below).  Every part of the fish was eaten (with Chon getting both eyes).  I got served a special part by Dang that seemed to be a really traditional treat but we never really got to the bottom of what it was.  Felt a little slimy when eating.  This was definetly the best meal we had and it felt really good to be sitting with all the Thai people eating their food while other westerners took pictures of us all.
 
Monterey: Coolest dude in town.  Looks permanently stoned but isn't really.  Needs an English girl for love it seems but they keep running home after their holidays.

Dang:  Massage woman (proper massage not anything else), waitress & scooter rental boss.  One of the nicest people you will ever meet.  Has incredible insight into the psychology of everyone sat around our table every night.  Such as:
Simon, lucky in life but not luck in love.
 
Simon No Honey (she labels all my bills with No Honey rather than my name or room number as a result of the fact I am there every night with my mates and their wives).
 
Swiss Tony (the oracle):  Has been in Porn for 2.5 months and knows everything about everything.  Will happily talk at you for hours if you give him the time.  The only time I through him off guard was when he announced he was a geologist and I started quizzing him on his geology; he immediately switched back to stories of having a different Thai woman every night and Geneva as a place to live.  Every time you meet Tony (well Lon is his real name) he opens with:
I've just had a massage over there...with the old women...she gives the best massage on the island you know...she knows exactly where the energy spots are you know...
 
Sue: Essex psychologist girl with a twist.  Really friendly (has left Porn once to go to Koh Samet only to come back again with another group of people in toe).  Sue had to find the true meaning of Porn love but getting together with Bang in Porn love (mainly seems to consist of Bang coming and falling asleep on top of her at every available opportunity tho I'm led to believe there is more to it that that). Porn love quickly turned into Porn stalking tho, with Bang following her everywhere she went; even cruising Lonely Beach in his Bang Mobile looking for us at night!!  Sue has some of the best one liners ever:
My dad never gets up before 10 cocks in the morning (there are a lot of cockerels crowing in Porn in the mornings).
 
Bang?  Do you really have ten cocks?
 
He looks at you like you just shat on his kids.
 
I'm not a big fan of swimming unless I'm drowning.
 
Alyshia: Sue's mate from home.  Tiny, smiley and buoyant (as described by Darren).  Really sweet girl one of life's true treasures.  Alyshia is second only to Sue in having a little troupe of Thai Porn men trailing around in her wake.  Summed up Swiss Tony perfectly:
You wouldn't wanna meet him in your last hour of life.
 
Anke: Dutch girl who could have been my perfect chick.  We spend a night dreaming of our future together but it was her last night and she had her boyfriend of 11 years waiting at home for her.
 
Darren: Southern, hard as nails, drinker (Chang for breakfast and Samsung for tea kinda guy), landscape gardener.  One of Sue's sign-ups from Koh Samet.  Nice bloke.  Darren's best move was going out on the lash at lunchtime with Sweeney.  Losing a few hours that he can't remember in White Sands, clearing out a few bars and waking up in the morning with a Mongolian bloke!!  The story behind this was that he had pulled some girl who came back to his bungalow.  She had then called her Mongolian mate to come pick her up and somehow he had passed out in the bungalow while she had disappeared (I have a funny feeling this would be something to do with a bottle of Samgsung that Darren would have had in his bungalow.  His best line was (upon arrival not really knowing any of us from Adam):
What's the whoring like round here then?
 
Sweeney: Arrived after 3 months in Koh Phagnan, no idea what he was doing there for 3 months but have a fair idea it would have been pretty messy. 

Sherri: Goby, tight with money, but nice brummy lass.  Tends to have an opinion about most things.  Poor lass was ill for ages with a stomach bug (which made her bloat up so all the Thai women kept asking her if she was with child) until doctor Bas sorted her out with miracle pills.  Sherri has never fancied a bloke in her life leading to much psycho analysis by the Sue-Alysha-Simon therapy gang.
 
Bas: Mad Dutch heart surgeon...Mad mainly because he has traveled all the way from Holland across land, stopping in such hot spots as Iran, Pakistan, Tibet...you name it he's been there.  Very hand to have on hand when you are as injury prone as myself, for sure he is.
  
The only bad thing about Porn is that it attracts every stray dog in Kai Bae as a result of the fact that all the posh hostels shoot dogs that get onto the beach outside their gaffs!!  However Bang Porn (Porn brother number 2) taught me just to say 'Hi, I'm Simon' in a very calm voice to the dogs when they run up looking like they are about to attack and they go all meek and timid.  Felt a bit like crocodile Dundee actually!!
 
Koh Chang is a gorgeous little island but some parts of it are too developed which is a shame and you could easily see it becoming another Samui or Phuket although the lack of an airport may prevent this (and the fact that the island rises straight up to 600m from sea level means there will never be an airport).  The best waterfalls I have ever swum in are here.  Matt, Kim and myself had a fantastic day touring waterfalls on scooters and diving in from 20 foot high outcrops etc (see pics).

The coolest Italian restaurant in the world resides in Koh Chang.  Maurizio the owner is the most laid back character in the world, so much so that he doesn't have half the ingredients for the pizza so you up just getting him to make with whatever he has, but they are the best pizzas I have ever tried which is saying something.  Matt tried to order a spag bol one night and he said 'I don't have.  I am a vegetarian and I never know what kind of meat to by'  Why the hell did he put it on his menu then!!!  The Italian (Fantasia) is next door to the most bizarre crocodile farm I have ever seen; there must be 30 or 40 crocs in a pond that is no bigger than my back garden.
 
Phil had already found a dive company by the time I got here and him and Matt had done a couple of fun dives.  They said the companies gear etc was good so me and Phil signed up to do our Advanced Open Water course here.  Dive Thailand (as they were called) must be the only dive company in the world able to do AOW in two half days!!  The pace and regard for detail was shocking.  It was all about getting the piece of paper and nothing to do with learning really (Bill the instructor didn't even really know how to work a compass!!).  This suited Phil as he had done most things previously and just needed the ticket but I wasn't too happy with the set up.  Anyway, I read my book and learnt most things I had to anyway.  We did a Deep Dive (30m), Navigation Dive, Nitrox Dive, Underwater Photography and a night dive. 

Photos here.

The diving was pretty crap to be honest.  We didn't see anything exciting, visibility was often poor and the currents were terrible (compounded by the fact that I had the crapiest fins known to man kind).  On the deep dive the visibility got really bad after 20m due to trawlers working up stream and it was pretty scary.  When we got up to our decompression stop at 5m my buoyancy just went haywire and I was wanting to shoot to the surface despite having dumped all the air from my waistcoat thing.  Some of this buoyancy but the effect was compounded by the upwards surging currents.  Bill gave me more weights but they fell from my pocket as he didn't put them in right!!  Anyway, got it under control by grasping some rocks and Bill and we got up all OK.  The night dive was spooky. Again, we didn't see as much as I thought we would due to poor visibility but it was quite an experience as find it very hard to get your bearings with only torch light.  Dive Thailand must also be the only 5 star PADI centre in the world to take you night diving in a boat with no lights for kitting up!!  Anyway, we got back safe and well and got our qualification.  I was going to do some more diving here but the quality is just not up to it.

Kim, Matt and myself went out on a speedboat trip for snorkeling action but that wasn't any better than the diving.  Lots of dead coral reefs etc.  The speedboat was fun though and Kim got to feed the monkeys!!  We could have watched the monkeys for hours; they had everything; babies, head of the troupe shagging the monkey chicks and kicking crap out the smaller blokes etc.
 
I eventually found someone to accompany me on my quest to hike across the island through the jungle in Bas.  We got up at 7.30 (very early for a Porn day) and were on the trail by 8.30ish.  Straight away we got told by some Thai guide that we needed special passes to hike here (unless you take a guide of course...) but we ignored him.  He then made an attempt to draw us a map (we could find a decent map of this hike at all, just dotted lines on maps and everyone you ask of course just tries to sell you a guides trek.  The map we did find somehow ended up in Sue's bag on the day of our trek!!), give us all his water and ask if we had a mobile phone...none of which really bodes well.  Anyway, the trail was pretty good for the 1st 4 hours or so and we hiked over the mountain and should have been drifting easily downhill towards the coast when the trail just suddenly ended.  We searched around for 45 minutes or so but it was just dense jungle that couldn't be managed without a machete (or helicopter).  Another Thai mystery so we headed back to the waterfalls and met the rest of the Porn crew for some swimming and fooling around (I didn't tell them that Phil and Ang hadn't gone into the same waterfalls a few days before because there was a water snake swimming around; that would have spoiled all the girls fun...).

One evening we met this drunken English bird down at Lonely Beach.  She was getting a tattoo which was supposed to say 'A gay dog saved my life'.  Well this was already sounding daft;' apparently the rationale behind it was that she had been followed back to her bungalow by some Israeli guy who was trying to get into her bungalow but a dog called Gay chased him away.  So she asked her Thai mate to write down A gay dog saved my life and wanders into the tattoo shop to get the deed done.  Anyway, so she gets this tattooed onto the back of her wrist (where it can never be hidden) and the decides to ask the tattooist what it means (a bit late but she was wandering round being loud, annoying and with bucket) and he replies 'A dog chased me and stole my backpack'!!  Brilliant, her grand kids will love that one!!  This was down at Lonely Beach the next beach along the coast which is a bit more of a trendy backpacker hangout with some kind of party going on every night.  The best party is on a Wednesday or Saturday at the Treehouse, which is a big wooden platform built out over the sea.  Its good to go once but it is the same crowd with drunk English chicks being chased around by Thai or Israeli blokes.

Did anyone know that the biggest accidental killer in Asia is not motorbike accidents as one would expect but is in fact falling coconuts!!  I have seen them come down when the slightest little bit of wind comes up and I can see why.  That would be a shit way to go I have to say!!

Kiwi and Dutch girls are the way forward I have decided so that will have to become the mission of Simon from now on.  We met 2 twins who live in London and me and a Scottish lad called Davie had a top night with them.  Swimming in the sea at 3am etc.

It was very hard indeed to get myself away from Porn.  Everyday for 10 days I was leaving the next morning but then things just sort of dragged on again so I stayed.  I think I knew my time at Porn was nearly over when Bang offered me a job...never really worked out what the job was.


Koh Chang photos - Album 1

Koh Chang photos - Album 1

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