Children

My stitches are out, I'm declared fit to swim again. That's good. Eager to do at least a little snorkeling while I'm here.

Some English guy was telling me what a bunch of thieves the Thais are, but I felt obliged to point out to him that the mechanic who rented me my bike was perfectly willing to trust me quite a lot. I needed my passport back because my visa's up tomorrow and I have to do the border run to Ranong. Without a passport in hand there's very little point in doing a visa run. The bike is probably worth 30,000 baht (37b/dollar) and he just said, ok. You bring tomorrow. I thought that was quite swell of him.

Not much else going on other than talking about leaving the island. I love my friends here, but it's time to go. I can always come back. For many, Pha Ngan is kind of that second home, their refuge from more challanging bits of travel to other places. My friends aren't the ones who've become spoiled and decadent here, like the obnoxious frenchman who Tj decked or the english guy bitching about the pack of thieves. To be faiur, I don't particularly trust Thais who I don't know either. I understand that I really do represent a walking dollar sign, and it takes time to see around that.

Something I wonder about is some of the children. There's a few I have in mind. The other morning around dawn as the Black Moon party was winding down a bit, I saw a middle-aged asian man and his very young son sitting off to the side. Perhaps they were the cleanup crew, I don't know. That little boy is forming his opinion of falangs from the decadent hedonism of the Moon parties. What the hell is that? Or even better, when someone asks him what he wants to do when he grows up,(resuming that that question gets asked to Southeast Asian peasant children, please) will he say, "a Falang!" They sure seem to have it good. Another is the five year old son of an acquaintance of mine. The little lad runs pretty wild here. His dad's a bit self-centered, and the boy's a bit badly behaved, even if spectacularly precocious and confident. Going for attention, it seems. And lives almost entirely in the company of adults. That would be a strange bringing-up. And the last is a kid who I see out at every party and club. I call him Little Man, because that's what he is. His voice hasn't even changed, but he dresses l;ike a gangster and he appears to be friends with every whore in Haad Rin. Whoa. John looks out for him a bit because he knows his dad. But still. Sure, he'll come out somehow, but what must your impression of normalcy be if that's your life! That's the theme uniting all of them: that to them, Pha Ngan is normal.