THE LAST CAFÉ ON THE BEACH
At the day’s end, the beach is full of life. The warm waters of the Andaman Sea are rushing ashore. They move in to the receding tidal shoreline in running lines of foam. Fishermen are preparing their nets in the shallows, driving stakes in the wet sand before wading into the sea. A huge love heart is carved into the sand high on the beach. The clouds are changing colour. Despite the clouds blotting out the sunset, the colours begin to smudge the higher clouds. Some are already turning pink. Pink against an ebbing blue. Pastel blue. Hue of blue. There are so many people at the beach tonight, just walking together. Many, like me, stop to take photographs; make videos. Five young women, talk and walk and text on their phones; all five have long black hair. A woman in a red dress walks past me holding a little baby in a white dress. The mother stops near the love heart and points towards something out at sea, the toddler looks, the mother says something and then they carry on walking up the beach.
Longtail boats begin to return for the night. Most are growling in the water, churning foam and fumes, returning from Railay Beach. Most stop at the AoNang kiosk – there’s a long, concrete slope moving up off the sand back to the Beach Road. Once the passengers climb down from the wooden boats, one by one, and wade knee deep in the Andaman Sea, the boats slowly reverse, turn, and chug onwards to Nopporat Tharra Pier (tucked around the corner). Having said that, four longtail boats are anchored near the giant marlin statue on the beachfront. All four float, bump, nudge and bob as they move on the shifting tide. Every time I come here, to spend time here, I fall more and more in love with this place. I can’t explain why but I feel so happy here. Just a profound sense of being. I am so happy I came here this evening to write all this down, to preserve it forever in this notebook, etched in ink between feint, ruled lines. This is such a beautiful part of the world.
It will be dark soon. My thoughts turn to moving on, finding something to eat. I look along the beach and can see the lights on in the community of beach massage huts. With the day at an end, they all sit together, share food together, eat a meal together, talk, unwind, relax, giving thanks before going home. I can see TikTik’s hut – the first one – Number 1 Love the Sea (she was worried yesterday that the storms are going to make her roof collapse).
Here, down near the Monkey Trail, close to the small, Buddhist shrine at the end of the beach, everything is magic. The shrine is tall and white – surrounded by small, stone elephants – and houses a golden Buddha that has four faces (looking in different directions simultaneously). Coloured sashes adorn the base of the monument. There are two coconut trees that almost touch, that lean closer and closer to each other – the fingers reaching out of the palm leaves will touch one day soon. The evening is coming. The Last Café on the Beach switches on its magic lanterns. In an instant everything feels magic. Evening winds, warm winds, blow and the branches of these trees move. A mynah bird sings. Chunks of cloud, far out at sea, move across the sky. The light begins to fade. The ocean rushes ashore.
GREEN CURRY RESTAURANT
The restaurants prepare for evening service. Ning takes my order at the Green Curry Restaurant and goes off into the kitchen. White, paper napkins flutter in the warm, evening breeze. Occasional raindrops blow in offshore. Hungry feet walk along AoNang Beach Road. They weave between bodies of people who are shopping, who are selling, who are just looking. Colour and noise merge and move. Everything is alluring, enticing – so many colours, so many moving parts – nothing overwhelms. Glittered shop fronts, hidden alleyways, taxis waiting, tuktuks driving, tourists and locals everything is one. Deep house music sounds from one of the new bars, Tribe, offering something else from the intensity of Centrepoint and its warren of live bands. A tannoy car drives past advertising a Muay Thai fight tonight at Krabi Stadium at 9pm: it announces in Thai and English. It drives along the Beach Road, deafening the pavements, heading up towards the Mosque and Tesco Lotus at the top end of town.
Across the road, near the giant marlin statue, flickerings of lightning spark far out at sea. Pearl flashes colour the indigo darkness. People sit on the stone steps and watch one of the last longtail boats come ashore. It moves in from the darkness and anchors in the shallows. It has a small, round spotlight on its starboard side. The light it generates dances in the dark waters, bobbing near the surface of the ocean and just below. Dimly lit, across the horizon, the lime green lights of the deep sea trawlers can just barely be seen (but they are there – as are the immoveable outlines of Poda Island and those that surround). Last week, one night walking back to my room, I stood here with some people from New Zealand who were pointing into the waters. We all saw the sea sparkle in neon blues as the ocean crashed onto the sand. Glimmers and flickers; the phosphorous plankton bioluminescence alive in those dark, night-sky waters. Magic, magic moments at midnight. Rolling waves keep coming ashore. The breeze picks up again. White napkins flutter on the tables. My meal arrives.
Down by the Boogie Bar, just a few footsteps into Walking Street, Vijay at HongKong Tailor waits for me. My shirts are ready. Deposit already paid, final fittings already done, just alterations to do. Ready to collect tomorrow. Settle bill then. Open 10am until 11pm. The air is thicker here – indoor and undercover. Footsteps follow footsteps. The live band sings ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones and everything moves with people, colour and noise. Ceiling fans twist and turn. I stop at a shop selling clothes – I saw a t-shirt here yesterday. It was a red one, with a map of Thailand and all its provinces. Loved it and should have bought it there and then. But I buy it now. 200THB. As money changes hands, waiting for change, I watch a cat evade electrocution as it weaves between live cables tangled up from the floor to the neck of an ice-cream maker. Its eyes are blue and it looks up at me. And all around me, all I can see, is people, colour and noise. People moving, people browsing, people smiling.
LONGHORN BAR
One drink and we go home. That’s the idea; that’s the poster outside the Longhorn Bar as the Beach Road runs back down towards the ocean. The sky flashed again with lightning. It’s been flickering away since sunset, but now it’s moved in, closer to shore. The staff recognise me from the other night and seat me on the high, long, wooden table again, facing inwards, sharing space with a guy from Kodagu, India (on holiday) and two friends from Santiago, Chile (backpacking). The band is singing Amy Winehouse’s ‘Know I’m No Good’ (they invite customer requests when you order a beer here).
The warm wind continues to blow in off the Andaman Sea. The evening is beginning to bubble up with energy: people are walking past selling handmade items – messaged bracelets, glow sticks, small coloured shapes of wood that mimic the sounds of croaking frogs. Curious tourists walk down the RCA lane, people fade and morph into the neon noise and competition of colour between the shadows, a motorcycle pulls in off the road and begins to weave its way through the long legs and bar stools there, the band begin to sing ‘Highway to Hell.’ A street food stall pulls up at the kerb, firing up the coals for the evening: grilled satay sticks, chicken livers, papaya salads will soon perfume the air. Another flash of lightning illuminates and immediately energises everything.
My bottle of Singha arrives. It was brought by Phon, who I recognise from the other night. She asks me what I’m writing. I tell her it’s a story about AoNang and ask if she’d like to be in it. She looks at my notebook and says she can’t write English, can’t read English, never had money to go to school. As I pay for my beer she draws a smiley face on the bar receipt with her pen and writes something in Thai.
A group of Chinese tourists file in. There must be about a dozen. They are brought in to the middle of the bar; table and chairs are quickly arranged together to accommodate them. As they quietly sit down and patiently order drinks from the bar staff, a tray of blue shots, in plastic red glasses, is sent over to them. Each person receives one. Now the band sing the Beatles’ song, ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’ There’s a young guy seated at the bar inside, chatting to a girl who reads something on her phone. Their faces stained by the coloured lights from bright advertisements for Singha, Leo and Chang beers. Both look thoroughly bored and soon leave without speaking, their game of Connect 4 left unfinished. La la la la la la life goes on.
The lightning crackles again. This time overhead. A flash within your eyes. Then the thunder rumbled booms and vibrations into the ground. Chairs are being moved inside, not just here, but all the restaurants nearby, the massage shops opposite. Everyone is moving inside. Raindrops splat onto the floor. They land with an audible slap. Big drops of water – the size of an old English penny. We are told to come inside, off the high, long, wooden table, away from the danger of lightning – we were reluctant to give up our vantage point, but the bar staff were persistent and concerned for our safety.
Then water poured and the rain fell down. The noise reverberated inside the bar, muffling the band. From where we are now we look outside and can see only spray thrown into the air. Taxis and traffic try hard to drive, shining white headlights through the rain. People run to find shelter. This is when I wished I had a balcony overlooking AoNang – just to spend an evening watching storms move in off the sea. Just sitting there, smoking a cheroot, outside in the rain, feeling the spray of the downpour approach, tasting moisture in the air, feeling the thunder move in the soles of your feet.
Phon approaches and asks if I want another Singha. Sure, one more drink and then we go home.
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siesta del somewhere 