…I climb up and sit on the throne. Looking down on the cave floor below, I can imagine the people who lived here a hundred thousand years ago. Jessy clambers up and sits beside me.
‘Your highness’ she greets me, with a sardonic smile.
‘Doctor.’
We kiss on the throne. It is intensely erotic…
I walk into Joy Bar about eleven on Thursday night. Zac and Bea are playing sea gypsy music, strumming rolling rythmns and crooning in Thai. I have no idea what the words mean, but if I had to guess I would say they have something to do with sailing, moon rises, and dark skinned taciturn women.
(Top photo: a garnished cave man.)
The barman, a man with long hair and a beard, hands me my beer and offers me a joint. I thank him and take a hit. There are maybe fifteen customers in the bar. There’s no walls at the front. It’s like a big veranda. There are heavy wooden tables made from logs, coloured lights, a pool table in the back and a small stage space with a PA.
Bea waves at me and I join him and Zac on stage for a few songs. I’ve been at the bar every night since I arrived in Krabi, and I’ve got to know Bea and Zac quite well. Bea likes to play american rock and blues. We play a couple of Johnny Cash songs and Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’. Heart of Gold is a nice one for blues harp.
Bea wraps up the set, and we take a break. I pack up my harps and get a beer.
There’s a girl sitting at a table with a group of Thai guys who look like pirates. She is slender, blonde and poised. I can’t help looking at her. She catches me staring at her, and I smile involuntarily.
I walk over and sit down next to her. She is speaking in fluent Thai with the pirates. The pirates look less than pleased to see me, but the girl gives me a sly smile.
‘Hi, I’m Emmanuel.’
‘Jessica.’
(Above: the river.)
Jessica is a travel writer and photographer. She has been living in Krabi nearly a year, teaching English. She’s twenty-four, but her secretive green eyes, and slow, considered way of speaking belie her youth.
We talk about our experiences wandering the planet, crossing borders and writing about it. She tells me she has recently gone pro. Sold her first travel writing piece for real money.
‘This calls for a celebration’ I tell her. ‘What’s your poison?’
‘Gin and tonic’ she smiles.
We get up to go to the bar, and realise with mutual surprise we are both giants. Jessica is only a couple of inches shorter than my six feet and four.
I get her a gin and tonic, and myself a beer. We sit at the bar drinking, swapping stories and moaning about being tall in Asia and always hitting our heads on things.
‘I was a little bit nervous to come and talk to you’ I tell Jessica. The guys you were sitting with looked like pirates.’
Jessica laughs.
‘No. They’re lovely guys. They grow weed out on the islands in the river.’
‘So… they are pirates.’
She rolls her eyes.
‘Don’t even talk to me about pirates. A couple of years ago I chartered a boat to go out to the islands near Phuket. I found a guy with a boat and we settled on a price to take me over for a few days and then come back. It’s like a two day trip to get out there. We anchored at the end of the first day. It was the open sea. He cracks a couple of beers, and right away he’s trying to get in my pants. It was crazy. I spent the whole night fighting him off. He wasn’t a very big guy, and I have long legs. I would just push him away with my feet. It was horrible. He kept drinking, and I was just sitting in the corner, staring at him. He finally says, OK, you sleep with me, or you pay me an extra ten thousand Baht. I told him I would swim back to shore if I had to. The night passed. I didn’t sleep at all. In the morning he gave up and took me to the island. It was frightening though. He wasn’t at all charming like Jack Sparrow.’
(Above: Krabi’s unique traffic lights.)
Jessica rolls an enourmous joint on the bar top.
‘I love Krabi’ she says.
‘It’s a special place’ I agree. ‘I mean what other city has giant bronze cave men for traffic lights?’
She laughs.
‘I’ve been here long enough now, I really feel like part of the community. And Joy Bar is the heart of it.’
I nod emphatically.
‘This venue is amazing. I’ve learnt so much playing with these guys over the last week or so. They play music with so much love.’
‘You know the government wants to shut this place down?’
‘I know. The first night I was here the guys told me about it. Do you think it will happen?’
‘I don’t know’ Jessica says. ‘I hope not.’
The barman calls for last drinks. It’s already two hours past the army curfew.
‘This is an excellent conversation’ I say. ‘Maybe we could continue it somewhere else?’
Jessica looks at me sideways, with a slow smile in the corner of her eye.
‘Well, we could go to my place and have a small joint.’
‘Sounds like a reasonable proposition’ I say.
(Below: Jessy’s motto. I concur.)
(Above: playing doctor.)
We walk out into the cool, two AM air. Jessy’s flat is right across the street from Joy Bar. It is only two small rooms, but it is comfortable, and the walls are decorated with her photographs.
‘Make yourself comfortable’ she tells me. ‘I have to tend my wounds.’
Jessy pulls a gauze bandage off her knee to reveal a raw looking tom-boy scab. I wince.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Scooter accident. I’ve been playing doctor for three weeks. I’m almost done now, though. It’s healing really well.’
I examine the wound. It is pink and sore looking, but clean.
‘Yeah. It looks like you’ve done a good job of it.’
We sit on the floor mat and she rolls another enormous spliff.
‘I thought you said we were going to have a small joint?’ I ask.
Jessy looks at the joint, at me and then back at the joint. She smiles.
‘I never was very good at rolling small joints.’
She hands it to me and I smoke. I lean close to her face, put my lips right against hers and exhale slowly. The smoke passes from my lungs to hers and I can feel tingling energy prickling around our faces.
I say ‘I think the normal practice is to administer the anaesthetic before surgery, doctor.’
Jessy smiles.
‘Doctor, eh? You know, my family name is Dick, so I guess that would make me Doctor Dick.’ She pouts and raises an eyebrow lasciviously.
‘Ouch’ I say. ‘Very porn-star.’
I kiss her neck. The softness of her pale skin. She inhales sharply and her long neck curves away from my lips. Her hands guide my face to hers. We kiss deeply and slowly.
A gecko chirps and scuttles across the wall.
Jessica’s green eyes study my face as I gently remove her clothing. The white skin on her shoulders is delicately accented by tiny freckles.
She caresses my chest with her long fingers and combs them through my hair. Her nails are perfectly painted with pale green polish.
I pick her up and carry her to the bed in the corner.
(Above: The picture in the background isn’t one of Jessy’s. It’s a classic 80’s pinup that came with the flat.)
(Below: the street vendors get up early in Krabi.)
At four AM we get dressed and walk into town. The city is already bustling. Street food vendors are setting up, lighting their grills and chopping meat.
The morning market is a cornucopia. There are stalls selling live crabs, whole fish, chickens, pork, melons, beans, a million different green vegetables, spices, noodles, tofu, rabbit, mango, lychees, bananas.
We eat noodles and corn fritters at a stainless steel table in the midst of the noisy market chaos. We are both tired, but still buzzing.
(Above: the Krabi river front. Jessy on the left. On the right, Blue Juice, my residence in Krabi.)
Jessy calls me on Saturday morning.
‘Let’s go on an adventure.’
‘Allright. What shall we do, doc’?’
‘What about we climb the mountain?’
‘Hmm. Sounds pretty energetic. I was up until two again this morning playing music with Zac and the boys. Maybe something medium intrepid.’
‘The cave’ she says.
‘The cave?’ I ask.
‘It’s pretty cool. It’s in the bottom of the mountain, so minimal climbing is involved. We can take a boat up the river, explore the cave, and be back for lunch.’
‘I like the bit about lunch’ I say. I’m in.
(Above: heading up the river.)
We go down to the river. Zac is loafing on the pier with the boat guys, smoking and playing guitar. We say sawat dee, and set about haggling with the boat guys.
The boat guys tell us six hundred Baht to take us to the cave. We say three. Zac explains that four hundred is a fair price and we close the deal.
‘Zac knows everyone in town doesn’t he?’ I ask Jessy.
‘Yeah, all the boat guys are his cousins.’
‘Do you think Zac is a pirate?’
‘Perhaps’ she says doubtfully. ‘He does own a parrot…’
We go up river about five kilometres, and Zac’s cousin moors the boat at a small dilapidated pier. Looming over the water, on this bend in the river, is a massive limestone cliff. We follow a path through the mangrove, and come into a shady clearing at the foot of the cliff. There is a narrow ladder leaning against the cliff face. The top of the ladder disappears into a dark tunnel. I get out my head torch and climb the ladder.
‘Can you see anything, Mr boy scout?’ Jessy laughs.
‘Not yet.’
I pull myself up into the tunnel. It tapers quickly. I squeeze through the narrow opening at the end and find myself in a stone cathedral. Stalagmites and stalactites loom from the ceiling and floor. Fantastic, rolling, grotesque shapes, like melted candle wax. The cave is huge. Jessy clambers out of the tunnel and we walk out into the centre of the cavern.
All the light in the cave comes from a perfectly round skylight, ringed by jungle ferns. There is a rope ladder ascending the cave wall. I climb up and peer over the lip of the skylight. The hillside falls away below, almost vertically, to a green, sweeping valley. The jungle looks impenetrable and silent.
(Above: the cave.)
(Below: the skylight.)
Down in the cave’s darkest corner there are three macabre tableau.
A group of statue cave men and women squat in the dust, wielding primitive tools. Some wag has put a cigarette between the fingers of one of the cave women.
In another corner three Japanese soldiers in WW2 uniform stand in perpetual puzzlement studying a map. Their features look decidedly simian. I have a hunch the sculptor used left over cave man heads and just stuck hats on them.
In the dust beside the cave’s entrance, a human skeleton is laid out, half buried – a fossil like a disinterred grave. Devout buddhists have garnished the bones with flowers and coins for good fortune.
(Above: perpetually puzzled Japanese.)
(Below: Jessy under the skylight.)
At the highest, furthest end of the cave there is a natural platform of rock, like a massive throne dais. Above the throne the stalagmites hang down like the teeth of a gaping mouth. On either side, colossal rocks jut out like two gargantuan fists.
I climb up and sit on the throne. Looking down on the cave floor below, I can imagine the people who lived here a hundred thousand years ago. I can almost see them. The voices of the men who sat on this throne would have bellowed out across the cavern. No one could design a more perfect throne room. Jessy clambers up and sits beside me.
‘Your highness’ she greets me, with a sardonic smile.
‘Doctor.’
We kiss on the throne. It is intensely erotic.
‘This is a naturally occurring castle, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Comfortable, cool, dry. Plenty of fresh water. Easy to defend. I could live here.
‘They found lots of skeletons here’ she replies. ‘People lived in these caves for millennia.’
‘Is that why the traffic lights in town are held by giant cave men statues?’ I ask.
‘Could be’ she replies. ‘I’ve met the artist who made all the sculptures in Krabi. He’s pretty eccentric, so who knows.’
(Above: the doctor enthroned.)
I get out my harps and play the blues. The sound of the harmonica echoes and reverberates sweetly in the lime stone amphitheatre. I wonder what the cave men would have made of that sound?
(Below: a river boat dwarfed by the cliff.)
>> More stories about my adventures in Thailand.
>> Like Raw Safari on Facebook.
