totallygone

travel, at a tangent


Paradise. Well, not quite...

Samui sunriseTwo topics have featured regularly in the British press this January; firstly that of 21-year-old Katherine Horton's rape and murder on a Thai beach and, secondly, the annual array of articles advocating detoxing as a kick-start to the new year. By some weird coincidence - the type that often seems to choose me - I find myself staying just 200 yards from the exact spot where Katherine met her death, having come here for one of the most extreme detoxification treatments available- a seven-day combination of fasting and twice-daily colonic irrigation.

Everyone I meet seems just as surprised to be here, involved in this strange carry-on, as I am. There's a general air of mild hilarity underlying the cameraderie among the fasters; the only way to deal with walking around with a 15-litre bucket of coffee intended for a half-hour-long enema is to giggle as soon as you bump into someone. Beat them to it. Make sure they're laughing with you.

ASBO Samui
It's an almost absurd, and entirely self-absorbed way to spend seven days, especially in such an idyllic and mainly hedonisting setting. Most people come here, as did the unfortunate Katherine, to party, rather than fast. Everything here is much, much cheaper here than in Europe: accommodation, food, alcohol, car-and motorcycle-hire and, of course, sex.

Although various parts of Samui remain as serenely beautiful as they were say, ten or even twenty years ago, the sizeable mark made by the arrival en masse of tourists from the west can best be described as grubby, greasy and decidely unwholesome. What's most surprising is that the young girl's attackers turned out to be Thai - just about everyone who's been ASBO'd out of Blackpool, (and maybe a few remand prisoners from the Scrubs) seems to be here.


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