A Night Out

We took the long way back from the bar last night, seeing as I couldn't find the short way. The well lit deserted road wound through the mountainous landscape with the Andaman sea on our right. It felt like autumn was upon us with the smell of dry leaves in the cool air and a scattering of brown leaves on the road. As we approached partially cleared areas with large boulders I would slow trying to determine if they were worth coming back to and bring  the climbing shoes, after a moment I realized one of the smaller boulders in front of another was actually an elephant. The ride back took quite a bit longer then getting there and if it wasn't for the road signs I'm sure we would have had to call a friend for directions, however that wasn't the case. 

It was our first night seeing some a little of the bar scene in Phuket at night. We've walked through the bar district in Patong, but hadn't been around when things were really getting going. Jackie's co-workers were going out to celebrate Friday, which apparently doesn't come often enough in the week. Originally we were going to meet up at a place along Rawai beach, but we had a last minute change of venue and met a couple of the South African's at a 7/11 (a ton of the women who work with Jackie are South Africa, which seems strange to me) and headed to Nai Han, which is along the west coast. Not as familiar with roads and the massive curving ups and downs of the road as they wiggle along the mountains I struggled to keep up with the mopeds in front of us. Despite the dark and the roads we all eventually arrived at Nai Han.

Once parked we walked through a couple of normal tourist looking restaurants with clean tile floors and fish tanks. Then we arrived at Ska Bar. It felt like you were entering a bar in a pirates port, not a pirate port themed tourists bar, though it was a farang bar, but it actually felt like you were entering Libertalia in the 1600's. A rasta DJ was enclosed in a old wooden wheel house built right into the narrow lower deck of the bar. Stretching above the open air bar was an enormous banyan tree. It's trunk, visible on the second desk of the bar, was wrapped in hundreds of yards of fabric and ribbons. Hanging from it's outstretched branches were a dozen or so old crab trap lines and buoys. From each of these lines many nations flags, weathered and tattered, flew in the light ocean breeze. I couldn't put my finger on why, but the whole atmosphere created by the tree made me think of Peter Pan's Lost Boys. We settled in on some low plank benches around a rough table. Below us on the beach a small troupe of three or four fire performers were at work. Feeling a little antisocial I focused on the performers. The youngest of the fire spinners was a thin Thai boy who was maybe ten or twelve. H moved with the music spinning the fire staff faster and faster as the music picked up. Then it was between his legs, wobble, wobble, like an enormous fiery dick. The older performers took the "stag"and did more fire staff and fire poi. It was some of the best fire poi and staff I've ever seen and I'm not exactly new to the art.