Thailand’s Forgotten Beach and Other Nonsensical Obsessions

december 14, 2008. the clock hit noon and i was already sweating bullets in some backwater village in southern thailand. the air felt like a sousaphone on your neck halfway through a funeral march. i checked my map app, which glitched every two seconds, and realized i’d chased every google satellite image of this spit of coastline like it was a real estate scam. turns out it’s just some guy’s rice fields with a motel made of scrap metal. whoops.

local lore says a million years ago, this area was a merchant route for smugglers shipping strings of betel nut. now? it’s sharks and suspicion. i tried to rent a boat, but the guy just shouted at me in thai and pointed at his dog. his dog had a collar with a tiny economist inside it. i’m not sure how.

i just checked and it’s… that kind of 26.52c heat. the kind that makes your eyelids heavy like overcooked noodles. locals call it the ‘thailand crease’-you know, like when your brain folds itself in on the humidity. i packed a sweater for this trip. still got it. maybe i’ll use it to wipe the sweat off my laptop later when i try to work as a digital nomad under a palm tree. spoiler: i didn’t.

neighborhood vibes here are wild. the guy who lives two doors down from me trades betel nut for laundry services. his dog follows me around like it’s waiting for me to slip and die in the rice paddy i occasionally got lost in. i told someone back in bali this was the perfect spot to ‘reconnect with nature,’ but bali had bubble tea. this place has… well. did you know you can haggle with banana slugs here? they’re terrifying but also lawbreakers? probably.

even the food’s performing. last night, i ate a chili crab that tasted like tarmac and possibility. the guy said it came from his aunt’s recipe, which sounds wholesome, but he also tried to sell me a fake joint of schnitzel for 800 baht. (protect the currency, my friend, protect it). tourists here are like walking snacks-if you demand authenticity, you’ll look like a fool. if you stop caring, you’ll get e-coli.

last thing before signing off: if you get bored, the nearest city that’s not utter highway hypnosis-phrom phong? no, that’s just a sign for a prison-is krabi. but I heard the road’s blocked. probably by a cow. or maybe that’s just me mistaking shadows for things that give a damn.