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My uncle Roger lived in Thailand with his Thai wife. He sent regular letters describing a very sedate peaceful life in a tropical paradise and sometimes there were pictures of him and his wife Nin. Roger had prematurely white hair and looked older than his 50-odd years. Nin was a short plump Thai lady who always seemed to be smiling. None of the family had actually met Roger in years and no-one had ever met his wife and Roger was beginning to leave heavy hints about how everyone was welcome to come visit them. For some reason he never contemplated them visiting us. The hints in his letters had gotten louder and louder and, in the spring, he had outright suggested that I spent a gap year before uni with him in Thailand! At first everyone had dismissed the idea, but the seed was sown and soon it was accepted that I could spend my summer holidays in Thailand visiting Roger! I just had to finance and arrange it.

The family’s disdain for Roger’s seedy life choices only became apparent to me after it was agreed that I would go. I hadn’t thought about it much before, but Nin was possibly a mail order bride? This was just becoming a thing in England and uncle Roger could have been an early adopter. My uncle Sam was over for a barbecue one spring evening and, after dad and he had had a few beers, started teasing us about how Roger was going to lead me astray. Mum was riled and I was scared that suddenly the trip was off.

What actually ended up happening was dad took me aside a few days later and tried to teach me the-facts-of-life. I was mortified, it not being a conversation any kid ever actually wants to have with parents. Dad seemed equally uncomfortable but he had promised mum he’d talk with me. I’m not sure what exactly he had promised mum – probably rallying along the lines of Nancy Regan’s just-say-no campaign – but dad took a more pragmatic approach and tried to scare me off ever touching a Thai girl with fear stories about the risks of sexually-transmitted-diseases and giving the impression that Thailand was full of hookers and girls wanting to find rich husbands. If he had meant to scare me he failed: he actually made me excited about the potential prospects ahead. With only the films Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now to guide my imagination I was looking forward to a very seedy baptism indeed!

And now it was June, 1997, and I was sitting on a plane on my way to Thailand for the adventure of a lifetime! I was so excited. A stewardess passed through the cabin and I beckoned her over to ask if we were nearly there yet.

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The oppressive heat and humidity hit us like a solid wall as we got off the plane in Phuket. We had to go down the steps and cross the apron to reach the shock of the cold air-conditioning of the small terminal building and it was one of the hardest short walks I’ve ever done. I felt dizzy by the time I reached the sanctuary and shelter of the building. The queue for passport control took forever but I got my first ever stamp and I examined it excitedly. By the time I got through my luggage was already lapping on the baggage carousel and I quickly headed through the exit to the arrivals lounge.

Here I saw uncle Roger and auntie Nin immediately. After much shaking of hands with uncle Roger and a chaste one-armed hug from auntie Nin I nervously fished around in my rucksack for Nin’s present that I had been entrusted to carry. It was a very elegant and expensive but also very dainty gold watch that my mum had selected as a present from the whole family. A belated wedding gift I guess. Nin became ecstatic, tears of joy running down her cheeks, and I got a mite tighter fonder second hug from her. She barely came up to my chest.

And then it was time to spill out of the terminal and into their little white Suzuki jeep parked outside. Mercifully there was a covered walkway out into the centre of the carpark which kept the sun at bay but the hot sticky air still pushed back at me as I threaded my way through the foot traffic out to the jeep. Luckily the jeep was a hard-top with air-conditioning and, after the very uncomfortable five minutes in a hot oven the temperature plummeted as we headed out into the afternoon traffic.

There was an incessant rumble as we drove because the roads were concreted in sections and there was a slight bump as you passed from one section to the next every two or three seconds. The road was swarming with mopeds and strange little open mopeds-with-side-cars called ‘tuk tuks’ and minivans. We seemed to be overtaking and undertaking in equal measure, zig-zagging between mopeds with whole families on and tuk tuk taxis. The roads were lined with shop fronts and house fronts with flat tin roofs and there were thick black rubber power-cables criss-crossing between buildings and pylons everywhere. People sat around everywhere and small children weaved along the roadside. There was just so many people! It was a shock to see that much humanity.

Uncle Roger veered off the high-road suddenly and took us down a smaller backstreet and around the back of the houses. As we came to a stop auntie Nin jumped out and opened some impressive white steel gates and the jeep pulled into a bare paved back yard. We had arrived.

Uncle Roger and auntie Nin – I’m going to start calling them Roger and Nin from now on to save on the typing – lived in one of the many combined-shop-and-home units along the roadside. Theirs was markedly better tiled than many of the neighbours and they had air conditioning. The shop part at the front was not actually a shop and instead furnished as a living room. To this day I’m unsure what Roger and Nin had for any kind of income but they seemed to live quite well. I never saw them work in a conventional sense. Roger and I sat down in the living room with the big shop show window looking out into the hustling bustling street, and Nin brought us out nice cold bottles of water and then disappeared. Roger looked me over expectantly and asked what I thought of it all. He grinned at my discomfort and unease at my sensory overload and said I’d be used to it in a few days. He let me rest a bit and so, as suddenly as I’d arrived, I was alone in a strange house in a strange land and I felt lonely. The flight had messed with my body-clock and I was actually quite tired so I slipped into a merciful sleep.

That evening I was poked awake by a giggling Nin. She talked with a charming broken English, missing lots of words but still very easy to understand and communicate with. “You wake now” she barked and giggled again. I got up and stretched. Then we headed out, the three of us, for an evening meal.

It was very dark out but there were lots of very yellow dull street-lights and lots of traffic. The air was still very warm but it was much more comfortable to be outside in the evenings. A tuk tuk pulled over in front of us and we ambled onto the bench in the big side-car. The tuk tuk took off again, straining under our weight, as Nin and Roger chatted amicably with the chauffeur in Thai. It seemed Roger could talk passable Thai. Nin linked her arm through mine, perhaps partly to make sure I didn’t fall off the end of the bench into the traffic, but mostly I think to make me feel part of the adventure. It was a cheerful group that got dropped off at a nearby restaurant just a minute or so later. We were so close to home we could have walked, but I quickly learned that it was the done thing to hail a passing tuk tuk for even the shortest of journeys. Roger led the way in and Nin followed behind me.

The restaurant was a large open-sided terrace with a big pitched roof spread over it. It was like a house without walls. We sat on comfortable low sofas with a low table between us. Roger and Nin took one side and I sat across from them. Roger was trying to explain how everything worked in Thailand, from the tuk tuks to the restaurants to the shops and markets I hadn’t seen yet. Coming from England where tipping was the exception even in cafés to a land where everything seemed negotiable but you were expected to tip and haggle at every turn seemed daunting.

The waitress was gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous. I was quickly noticing that all the young girls were thin gorgeous things and all the middle aged ladies were plump ugly things just like Nin! I was kind of unsure how the pretty young things turned into plump ugly things but there didn’t seem to be any in-between states. I would search my whole holiday for a glimpse of the missing-link thirty-something Thai lady but never spotted one!

The food was hot. Roger had taken care of ordering and at first I thought he was trying to trick me, but with time I began to get used to it and came to accept that all Thai food is quite spicy. That first night I tried lots of different small dishes but mostly ate a very good massaman curry. Massaman curry is, on a Thai scale, mild. Its a kind of spicy soup stew mix with whole potatoes in. Its absolutely delicious.

Roger had ordered us tall big bottles of Singha beer, a very popular Thai brand, and we got quite drunk. Alcohol is quite expensive in Thailand, approaching English prices, and the food probably cost less than the beer. As Roger settled the bill I stole a glance at it and was surprised by how cheap everything was and it began to dawn on me just how far my spending money I had converted to Thai Baht in England was going to take me. We left a tip and left. A short tuk tuk ride brought three very sated people home for a nightcap and bed.

My bed was in a very western-feeling room. The whole house was kind of western furnished, but with tiled floors and glass tables. It was actually nice to have cool surfaces. No carpet anywhere. I kind of wonder how icky carpet would get in such a warm wet climate.

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I awoke awkwardly early, my body clock still way out of sync. My first full day started with a breakfast of sliced fruit and yoghurt in the tiny kitchenette in the house. It was clear that Nin rarely cooked at home, although there were some stocks of things in the cupboards.

As I said, I have no idea what Roger and Nin did for a living. Certainly when I was there they weren’t working. They set about entertaining me.

The first trip that first morning was to a large market. There was a sea of market stools spread out under a large rusting corrugated iron roof. Many pitches were just cloths spread out straight onto the ground with bowls and bustles of chilis and fruits and nuts packed on them. Other stalls were trestle tables stacked with t-shirts and shorts and belts and things. The market was bustling with natives and I was one of the few tourists. As Roger explained, June was early wet season and the market would be full of tourists during the dry season December through April. I had simply come at the wrong time of year? Roger shrugged it off, saying Thailand was paradise all year round and the tourists didn’t know what they were missing.

Roger told me to look over the stools and, if I saw anything I liked, I was to just make a good note of the stall and how it looked. Then I was to describe everything to Nin afterwards and she’d go back and buy it. Apparently if I tried to haggle, or if the market stall owners knew that Nin was with me, we’d get a less stellar deal. Everything was negotiable in Thailand.

That’s a lie. Straight after the market, where I had gotten a pile of t-shirts and shorts and a good pair of sunglasses and a straw hat, we went into a normal shop. Apparently in normal shops there is no haggling and the price on the shelf is the price you pay, always. I was actually comfortable with that concept, and comfortable with the shop’s air conditioning too, and was a bit reluctant to leave and head out back into the hustle and bustle of the high street.

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That afternoon Roger took me out to ‘see the town’. Nin came with us. I wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind but we were quickly in a part of town that was just one long interconnected chain of bars! Now this was what I had imagined uncle Sam had alluded to...

Go-go bars are bars full of scantily clad young ladies. Their asserts are on full display with nothing left to the imagination. As we passed along the street the girls would try and catch my eye. Nin had her arm linked through Rogers and I trailed behind, the siren of the blushing waving girls in the bars we passed making me stumble and become disorientated. I didn’t know which way to look. On every side I was being bombarded with eyefuls of beautiful young bodies available for hire.

We stopped at a normal bar; that’s to say a bar without girls. We were the only customers but the barman, an old white bloke with a strange accent I think was German, seemed to know Roger and Nin well and we sat at the bar chatting with him. Roger introduced me to Otto. Apparently Otto owned this bar and quite a few of those we had passed with the girls. Technically, apparently, a foreigner can’t actually own property in Thailand but Otto, predictably, had a Thai wife and her family held the deeds and Otto held the real control. If he was a local small-time mobster he was very nice about it.

Sitting down and getting comfortable I began to get excited at all the flesh so enticingly close by in the surrounding bars. There were very few ‘johns’ about and the girls were underutilized and scanning me regularly, hopefully, expectantly. I figured it was just a matter of time before I built up the courage to visit with one of them. It was a strange feeling, to have prostitution so on-display and straightforward and it was liberating to be so far from home. I had a feeling that Roger was fine with it and I just had to build up the courage to make this happen.

Another middle-aged Englishman drifted into the bar and I was introduced again. Soon this Englishman was chatting with Roger and Nin and I was left out, staring across the bamboo bar at the girls in the next bar across. Otto slipped around the bar and came sat beside me with a beer of his own.

“You know, the girls won’t come to this bar” he told me quietly. He started to explain how the system worked. I just had to go sit at one of the other bars and hostesses would hover around me until the conversation drifted around to what I wanted to do. I could be very direct. Once negotiated, I would pay the barman and then be led away to one of the rooms tucked off to the side. It was low season and a lot of girls had gone home to visit their family. But the girls who were left were desperate for business. “Very safe, very safe” he kept repeating, “Police leave us alone”.

When I didn’t make any move he whispered conspiratorially “You like boys? We have boys too! We even have boys who dress like girls...”.

Although everyone seemed so comfortable with buying sex – Roger even had Nin with him – I was feeling extremely awkward and nervous. Faint, even. But no matter how slowly I sipped my beer I was running out of beer. I looked down forlornly into my empty glass. “You want another beer?” Otto asked cheerfully. I nodded. “Sorry, barman not here!” he exclaimed, sweeping his arm out over the empty bar. Duh, the barman was sitting beside me. He didn’t show any sign of moving back around the bar. “Perhaps you try another bar?” he grinned broadly. I had been outsmarted. I got up and stretched and Otto stood beside me, one arm pressing hard on my shoulder as he spun me around and gave me a shove off back down the row of bars.

Walking alone along the the path between the bars made me a target. Every girl was staring at me, trying to entice me. I got half way along the path and I swear it was getting narrower, the girls much closer, all saying “hello” and “hi” and trying to get my attention. I felt the heat on my cheeks and the sweat running down my spine. I scanned the girls. Somehow their obvious availability was intimidating and off-putting; a shy nervous first-timer like myself was going to get eaten alive!

And then I saw her. She was noticeable because she was the only girl not trying too hard to get my attention. She was even on the far side of a bar, apart from the other girls. She looked inexperienced and shy and beautiful and I felt my leap at the sight of her. Two out-of-place young scared people in a world surrounded by scarily overt sexual tension. Subconsciously drawn, I turned sharply and approached her bar.

As I got to the bar the other girls parted so I could slip onto a bar stool. There were about ten girls milling around me now, purring, trying to get me to appraise them. There were no other customers at all in this bar. The quiet girl stayed on the far side of the bar. I looked up across the bar at her and she saw me looking and cast her eyes down. I felt such pity.

The barman, who spoke excellent English, noticed my gaze. He went over to her and said something rough and she steeled herself and came around to my side. The other girls seemed to resent her somehow, them all being cheated out of a john and all. The girl slipped into a barstool beside me, becoming the only girl sitting down. “You want to buy Kohsoom a drink?” the barman asked expectantly and I nodded. To my horror I saw him popping a cork on a large chilled bottle of something bubbly and I suddenly had the sure knowledge that this was going to be an extremely expensive afternoon.

“Hi, I’m Steve” I said to her, offering my hand. “Hi Steve, I’m Kohsoom” she replied in good English. As soon as we held hands the other girls drifted back to facing the path again, leaving Kohsoom and I to drink and chat. Kohsoom didn’t let go of my hand. Almost immediately she had put my hand, palm down, onto her silky smooth thigh and pinned it in place with her near hand as she took a sip of her cocktail with the other.

The barman drifted away too, leaving Kohsoom and I to get down to business. It was weird but her shyness actually made me braver. It was obvious that she was just as for-sale as all the other girls but her demur made me see her almost as an equal and I tried to get her comfortable by talking to her. She kept asking questions about my life and where I came from and what I was going to study and everything. She kept diverting my questions back about her life and future. She seemed to come out of her shell a bit.

The barman came back and pointedly suggested I buy Kohsoom another drink. I guess its bad for business to occupy a girl without paying for the privilege. I accepted. Kohsoom confided that it was non-alcoholic and actually quite nice. She was talking quite quickly and quietly and nicely now and we joked about how seedy this place, Patong Beach, was.

Although we had only been talking for perhaps half an hour the bars were already getting more lively. I was no longer the only punter and the other girls were less openly trying to get some action from me. There were now a steady stream of johns strolling down the path between the bars and the girls reverted to trying to lure them instead. One of them, a talk ugly sun-burned tourist, came and sat on the stool beside me. Suddenly all the girls jostling to be around him were rubbing their back up against me. Kohsoom giggled and pointed out that there was much more space around the other side of the bar island, which was completely empty. We decamped and retreated and were now standing alone on the far side of the bar, looking across the ring of counter and out onto the street.

Kohsoom was standing very close to me now, her bikini-clad bust – all the girls were only wearing bikinis – brushing against my arm as we talked. She knew what she was doing. Soon one of her hands was stroking broadly up and down on the inside of my thigh as we talked innocently about the weather. Apparently it would start to rain any minute now; it rained every afternoon in Phuket this time of year. “Perhaps we should go somewhere drier?” I asked suavely. “I thought you’d never ask” she replied relieved, “I’m already wet!”

Our relationship taking a new turn, Kohsoom coached me in how to ask the barman to ‘release’ her from her bar job being a hostess. She even confided in me the going rates and explained how to haggle. That was for future reference, of course. She seemed okay with letting me pay normal rate despite my inexperience and her sure knowledge I would have naively paid her ridiculously high opening bid. Kohsoom deftly signalled to the barman, who had been attending to the other johns lined up on the other side of the bar island, and I paid for a full hour of ‘everything’, which was the top price tier. Even with the drinks, this wasn’t actually all that much. A quick bit of mental arithmetic intruded into my brain as I calculated that I could easily afford to visit Kohsoom daily.

Kohsoom linked her arm through mine and led me away. It was hard to reconcile the shy lady who had first caught my eye barely an hour earlier with this consummate courtesan leading me away from a go-go bar on Patong Beach. Behind the bars there were some huts, barely hovels, where the girls lived and slept and entertained their johns. Kohsoom led me to a second row of huts behind the first row, this row even more dilapidated and down-run. Perhaps Kohsoom was a second-tier prostitute?

The hut was actually very clean and tidy inside. It was just one room, with mats on the floor and walls and a mosquito net over the mattress that was laying directly on the floor. There was a small dim lamp on a small low beside cabinet. As we ducked in through the door it began to rain, lightly at first, but quickly a downpour. Kohsoom laughed and said I might have to stay for more than an hour. She shut the door behind her and, in one quick motion, removed her bikini top.

Of course I had appraised her body the moment I first saw her an hour ago. But somehow, now she was topless, I got caught up staring and drinking in her appearance all over again. She was short, like many Thai women, but slim and youthful looking. Her tight little tummy and slender arms and legs had not an ounce of fat on them. Her breasts were large, if not nearly the largest of the girls at the bar. They were quite pointy. I had a healthy urge to explore and caress them, these two firm gravity-defying pyramids of flesh. But it was really her face, her hesitant shy look, that had drawn me to her and somehow that look had past and now she was just as confident as the other girls. Somehow that was less attractive. I guess perhaps that’s the hard business face of a girl prepared to sell her body for money?

My shyness returning, Kohsoom moved seductively towards me, her hips swaying. She pushed down on and stepped out of her bikini bottoms as she walked, leaving them deposited in the middle of the mat of this tiny room. I suddenly bumped into the edge of the mattress, not conscious before that that I had been moving backwards as Kohsoom advanced on me. “Its okay,” Kohsoom purred, “I can tell its your first time with a girl”. She smiled a sweet smile that spread to her twinkling eyes and I felt a lot better. She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down onto the mattress. And then, slowly, she undressed me.

She surprised me when she gently nestled down beside me. I had been expecting her to just grab my hard cock and start pumping, or something. Instead she slipped onto the mattress beside me and cuddled. The warmth of her body against me was really comfortable. A finger tip gently caressed my chest as she looked into my eyes and studied me as I studied her. She was so beautiful again. Such perfect skin, such symmetrical face, such small dainty features, such deep warm eyes. Perhaps all girls look extremely beautiful when seen at such a close intimate distance? Kohsoom was gorgeous again. I wanted to kiss her. But somewhere, in the back of my head, a little voice was telling me that she had just sucked some other john’s dick. That wasn’t a thought that could be ignored. Kohsoom looked puzzled, as though she could tell that I had had a sudden change of heart. “Sorry” I smiled awkwardly, “I’m not used to this”.

“Me neither” Kohsoom said quietly, almost to herself, as she skirted down and engulfed my throbbing cock.

The ecstasy was total. Within seconds my mind was blank, unable to focus on conscious things, as the extreme new sensations seeped from my crotch up through my body. My whole body began to tingle. Just a few seconds of attention was enough for my hair trigger: it was about to happen.

Kohsoom, her mouth clamped around the head of my dick, looked up questioningly at me. She grabbed my base and held it tightly, extremely tightly, and took her mouth off of my cock. She smiled a big grin and with laughing eyes said “You too fast! Sorry!” apologetically. Was she worried I would spend my, eh, _money_ too quickly?

Under her unrelenting tight grip my near-orgasm abated and and slowly calmed down. Then Kohsoom gently stroked and tugged on me, bringing gentle waves of euphoria over me but keeping my orgasm at bay. She seemed both amused and pleased.

“Do you ever play with yourself?” she queried thoughtfully. The question came out of the blue. Somehow, it wasn’t spoiling the mood. She seemed to genuinely want to know. I was embarrassed to answer, but I nodded reluctantly eventually. She smiled again. “Good” she said softly. Then, after a pause, she carried on “How many times can you come?”. Now that was an extremely technical question, and one I wasn’t quite sure of the answer to. I shrugged, wondering why she was asking. It wasn’t exactly romantic mood-setting lovey-dovey pillow talk. “I will let you finish in my mouth now” she explained authoritatively, “if you promise me to get hard again after.” She looked at me expectantly as though we were doing a deal. “Or we can just take it slow” she said more quietly as though that wasn’t her preferred option. I nodded. “Which?” she asked me to clarify. “I promise I’ll get hard at least three times” I replied in a strained voice in a sudden sweep of bravado. Kohsoom just giggled excitedly and beautiful small dimples teased the edges of her mouth as she did so.

Kohsoom knew what she was doing. Taking my cock in her mouth again, she was soon sucking on me as she pumped the base of my cock with one hand and tickled my balls with the other. And in no time at all I was shooting burning hot cum into her tight little mouth and she was swallowing it all. She never let go of my dick as she continued to suck and play on it, preventing it from going down as she looked me full on in the eyes.

Then she jumped up and stood over me, bending over to open the beside draw. Looking up I could see her large breasts and glistening pussy just up out of reach, swaying above me. I instinctively lifted my head from the pillow and kissed the nearest nipple and Kohsoom shrieked playfully and giggled some more.

Kohsoom returned back to my cock with a condom. I’m eternally relieved she did this because I wasn’t able to think straight and wouldn’t have asked her to use one. She slipped the condom over my cock which was still achingly hard. Slowly she lowered herself onto my cock, impaling herself. It was heaven. Again, strange new sensations emanated from my crotch and swept over my whole body as my eyes stared greedily at Kohsoom’s upright torso rising and falling on our joining. Then she sat down fully on me, sinking right down to the base, and started rocking her hips backwards and forwards. She put her hands down onto my chest to steady herself and crunched her eyes closed and panted sexily. Her eyes flickered open and she looked at me with intense longing before they snapped shut and her brow furrowed and she gasped and signed and shook.

Suddenly she was back to sawing up and down on me, her breasts swinging wildly to her rhythm, and I felt the familiar sensation building in my balls and surging up as I again orgasmed for her. This time my first ever time in a woman. I was no longer a virgin!

Kohsoom felt it and opened her eyes and locked them on me. She seemed pleased. She slowly lifted herself off of me. She pulled the condom off of me and tossed it straight into a small bin by the door like a basketball star. Then, without hesitation, she put her head down and licked and sucked all the cum off my dick again.

Soon I was getting hard again from her attention, and she cooed and giggled. “You are a man who keeps his promise!” she teased me playfully and holding out her hand with three fingers up. Then she got up, standing straddling me again, and reached for the beside cabinet draw. She wriggled to give her breasts some life and they swung pendulously above my face again. I think she was deliberately lower this time and I got the message, lifting my head to suckle on the nearest nipple. She took her time getting the second condom and let me play.

The second condom on, Kohsoom quickly sat back down on me. She smiled. “You had a good first time?” she asked inquisitively. I guess no man is ever going to say no to a question like that in a situation like this even if they had secretly not enjoyed it. I was still unable to speak properly and just nodded, my whole body glistening with sweat just like hers. “You want to try another hole?” she asked, almost excitedly. I wasn’t sure what she meant exactly, but she quickly demonstrated by getting up off me, releasing my cock so it slapped my strained tummy muscles with a smacking sound. And then, holding my glistening condom cock upright, Kohsoom slowly gently sat back down on me, pushing me up into her arse.

This was a completely new sensation. It felt much tighter, and even warmer, than her pussy. She moved downwards extremely slowly, taking me all in. Then she just sat there smiling, not moving. She looked at me appraisingly. “Give me your hand” she ordered me, but with a kind tone. I had had my hands resting gently on her hips and now I held one up for her. She took it in hers and held it against her pussy. Taking just one of my fingers, she started to explain and show me how to touch and finger her pussy. She guided me to her clit and taught me how to rub it and how to tease it and how to let it rest. Suddenly her enjoyment was important to me too. I was doubtless a hopelessly inexperienced lover but I was enthusiastic and did my best to follow her instruction. Slowly she had started rocking her hips again and the extreme sexuality of the moment was building into my third orgasm of the hour. She lent back slightly, moaning as I fingered her and touched her clit as one of her own hands snaked down between my legs to tug gently on my balls. And then I spent.

Kohsoom jumped off me again and quickly whipped the condom off and threw it into the bin. After she had cleaned me up again she snuggled back down beside me, letting my cock deflate. I was relieved I wasn’t in for a forth erection; despite a beautiful young girl wriggling against my side I stayed resolutely limp and rested. “Thanks, that was nice” she whispered quietly into my ear. Its what a john wants to hear, probably.

We slipped out when the rain stopped and, as I threaded my way between the bars, the girls ignored me. It must have been obvious that I was sated and used up. Roger and Nin were still sitting at Otto’s bar and, whilst they didn’t say anything, everyone smirked and grinned knowingly. We left shortly after that and as soon as we got home I had a through shower and collapsed exhausted on my bed until I was awoken that evening to go out for dinner.

That night I dreamt vivid exciting dreams reliving Kohsoom’s ministrations. I was in love.

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The next afternoon I returned alone to Patong Beach and headed straight back into the same street of go-go bars. I had been in Thailand for only 48 hours now and I was already comfortable hailing tuk tuks and walking into go-go bars. I had grown up and found my feet very very quickly.

Of course there was just one hostess on my mind that day: Kohsoom. And of course I was setting myself up for a big disappointment: as soon as I reached her bar I saw that she was standing beside another john! The man, a particularly ugly old man, was pawing and squeezing her breasts as they talked. Kohsoom must have felt my angry gaze because she looked up at me and quickly shock her head and turned her attention back to the podgy man perched on his chair lewdly lost in her cleavage.

The barman came over and welcomed me back like he recognised me. He then looked across to check on Kohsoom and said she was busy, and asked if I would wait an hour. He then looked again and smirked and said perhaps I only needed to wait half an hour. And then he gestured at the girls standing around me and wondered if I might find other company agreeable.

At first I was angry at Kohsoom, but that quickly became anger at myself, anger at my stupidity. Obviously Kohsoom was a working girl. Obviously she had just as many customers as the other girls. I saw her leading her john away towards her hut.

A girl beside me tried to get my attention by asking if I saw anything I liked as she thrust her ample blossom in my direction. I felt a tingling of arousal in my balls as I looked around wildly, angrily at the ring of girls surrounding me. They all looked so alike. I grabbed the wrist of the girl nearest me and growled “you can stay” and so she stayed as the others dissipated. My new girl looked at me thoughtfully “You really like Kohsoom?” she asked. And before I could answer, or even think of an answer, she said “You really like me too. I really like you good.” and my anger was replaced with a distancing coldness as I turned off my emotions and focused on the business transaction of exchanging money for sex.

The girl, whose name I never asked, was excellent at blowjobs. She blew me twice in her little hut on the front row and I left sated and happy. But I wasn’t really content. She had taught me how fake the emotions I thought Kohsoom had shown me, had reciprocated, were. I went back to the house a resigned and broken heart, arriving long before it even started raining.

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I had only been in Thailand three days and I had already paid to lose my virginity. The euphoria of the hour with Kohsoom was overwhelming and beating out the nagging dirty feeling but I wasn’t quite ready to return to the go-go bars for more. I felt a bit lonely and isolated and wanted to find and do something else. Roger and Nin were already letting me do my own thing and I basically had the daytimes to myself. They would make polite conversation at breakfast and dinner but let me explore alone during the day. And, on the third day, that exploration had to be something new; no more go-go bars for me.

I had a tourist streetmap that Nin and I had picked up from a desk at the restaurant the night before which I studied. Nin told me that all the hotel foyers would have stacks of brochures and fliers for tourist activities like scuba diving courses and elephant rides. So I decided to go explore the tourist beachfront and hotels and find some tourist information.

The tuk tuk ride wasn’t much further than the go-go bars; the bars were strategically close to the beachfront and soon I was standing alone on the baking hot beach.

The sand was too hot to stand on barefoot and I didn’t want sand in my sandals so I kept to the paved promenade. There were lots of bone-white tower-block resort-type hotels with pools and staggered balconies and neat regimented deckchairs in front of them and some deserted discotheques and bars nestling between them. Because it was mid-day and because it was off-season there weren’t that many tourists around but there were a smattering of pensioners and even a few families with small children. What I couldn’t see were many people my age.

As I got to the very far end of the promenade I came to a beach bar that felt different. It was called the Bamboo Bar and Bed, and, true to its name, it was made from bamboo with a thatch of reeds. It seemed dwarfed by the big concrete hotels beside it, pushed into the corner against the rocky promontory where the beach ended. Here, though, there were a handful of people my age lounging in the bar area!

I approached quietly, apprehensively, feeling as though I was intruding. But the wizened old Thai man behind the bar looked up happily and asked me what I would like to drink. I asked for a Singha and tried to sound confident; I knew the legal age for drinking in Thailand was twenty and I didn’t feel so sure of myself without Nin and Roger to protect me. He served me but there was a twinkle in his eye like we were sharing a secret. Perhaps I was paranoid. I took the glass and sipped it quickly to claim it.

The barman, Aat, was the owner of the Bamboo Bar and Bed and, like small business owners the world over, took customer service seriously. He quickly got me included in the conversation with the other patrons who were all backpackers.

There were five backpackers at the bar. A stunningly stacked Aussie girl, Natalie, and a tall blonde Dutch boy, Lucas, had met just a week before in Bali and were heading north, hoping to reach journey’s end in Bangkok in a few weeks. They had met at a hostel and fell in love and left their friends remaining in Bali so they could travel a while together. They were a sweet young couple. Sometimes you meet people who you instantly like, and those two were like that for me.

Jason, Damien and Linda, on the other hand, were three English backpackers who were on their second summer of backpacking; the previous year they had travelled through Greece together and now they were tackling Thailand and they oozed experience. I couldn’t quite work out who was sleeping with whom in that little group. Linda, the most talkative of the three, was describing a beach just a few hours north that they had been to before reaching Phuket. Natalie and Lucas were making excited notes in their Lonely Planet book. Aat, who knew the trails, was giving tips on which hostels to stay at and how to best travel north. I was very envious.

The Bamboo Bar and Bed was a regular rest stop for backpackers exploring Thailand. It offered cheap and basic accommodation and a nice communal dining atmosphere. I was getting hungry and, when others spoke about eating, I decided to try and invite myself to join them. There weren’t any menus in a conventional sense but rather Aat listed the two or three options available that day. When the others all choose green curry I went along with them and ordered the same. Aat went off to rouse the cook.

You could just see the kitchen area off behind the bar as the bamboo and rush screens did not complete hide it. I noticed there was chicken-wire instead of a roof, which I later learned was to keep the monkeys out. A petite little girl busied herself making our green curry. Soon the sweet spicy aroma washed over the bar and made everyone’s tummies rumble.

We sat down on benches at a long table and, the bar now being empty, Aat joined us and sat at the head. Natalie was sitting opposite me and had her arms crossed, elbows on table, with her ample bosom flopping and flowing out over them. She simply looked like she was trying to take the weight off her back but it was extremely distracting and I didn’t know where to put my eyes!

The girl from the kitchen brought through a large cauldron of green curry and some bowls of steaming hot rice and these were passed along the table and we all helped ourselves. The food was absolutely fantastic; the best, and most authentic, curry I had yet had. Then Aat looked around to scan for other potential customers approaching; when satisfied that we were alone he said something to the cooking girl and she sat down with us at the foot of the long table between Natalie and I. The old man Aat was holding court over us young explorers. It wasn’t such a long table that we couldn’t all talk together.

Aat was lamenting that he would be closing the bar for a couple of weeks, taking the opportunity afforded by the low season to go inland and visit family. Apparently there was another good but less-spectacularly-situated hostel nearer the town centre where the trickle of passing wet-season backpackers could stay. As the threesome were heading south and as Natalie and Lucas were heading north Aat wanted them to pass this information on to any backpackers they passed heading for Phuket.

Aat looked up at the girl on the end beside me thoughtfully. “Pakpao, have you thought what you might do?” he asked her kindly in English, as though it had just occurred to him that he had some responsibility for his employee.

The girl glanced rapidly around as though put on the spot. She shook her head.

Natalie cottoned on to the fact that the cook, Pakpao, understood some English and started to ask her for her recipe and Pakpao, who it turned out spoke very good English, started explaining enthusiastically.

After lunch the backpackers got up and drifted back into the bar area. The girl looked at me awkwardly amused as I made the faux pas of gathering the dishes. I wasn’t keen to leave and none of the backpackers actually seemed to want to go exploring Phuket. I was beginning to get the impression that backpacking involved moving from one hostel to the next and not seeing or doing anything in-between. It was as much a social exploration as a location one. But it was a very hot and humid afternoon and perhaps everyone was waiting for the evening.

Now the girl, Pakpao, was standing with Natalie in the bar. Conversation had moved on to all kinds of topics and Pakpao had started asking everyone about their onward journeys. Mostly she was asking Linda the sensible questions about accommodation at the beach to the north that Natalie and Lucas weren’t thinking to ask.

Natalie, as I’ve hinted, was a stunner. She was quite tall, quite tanned, quite skinny and with ridiculously oversized breasts and a beautiful smile. Her breasts were like two large melons attached to her thin frame by far less skin than ought be necessary. They didn’t sag. She was legs up to her armpits and tits the rest of the way. She was gorgeous. Linda was also pretty, although not so tall and no so busty and also slightly burned. But its funny that, assuming the girls were taken, I wasn’t thinking about them in potential-partner terms.

Linda wasn’t letting Jason and Damien get a word in edgewise so the two boys drifted to my end of the bar and started asking me about my trip. They were surprised I wasn’t a backpacker myself. I told them a bit about my background and about how I was basically just going to hang around in Thailand for three more weeks with no solid plans. They suggested I go backpacking. I liked that idea.

We were drinking a lot and, mindful that I was listening to them all moan about the price of trains and buses, and mindful that my spending money didn’t have to get me to Bangkok or Bali and back, I started buying everyone drinks. I began to feel like part of the crowd. Backpacking was something I was now determined to do.

Aat, artfully keeping everyone involved in the conversations, now he filled a lull by asking me what my plans were. He could perhaps tell where my mind was going with all the powerful suggestions floating around. I announced that I planned to backpack and the news was greeted with cheers and toasts.

Aat started talking seriously about how I shouldn’t backpack alone. Picking up on this, Linda tried to invite me to join her party heading south, but I detected the slightest trace of unease to the idea from Jason and Damien and was careful not to commit to that. I was no wiser as to who was sleeping with whom in that threesome, but Linda was beginning to hold my gaze each time I glanced in her direction and I think the boys were getting a bit wound up. Lucas also invited me to join Natalie and him heading north to find the mystery beach but again, although the invitation seemed genuine, it felt like I was going to be gooseberry so I was non-committal. And then Aat solved everything by suggesting that Pakpao accompany me north as a guide. This would neatly solve her dilemma while Aat had the bar closed. I suspected Aat had been secretly interviewing each of us to determine which group to send Pakpao off with, and somehow I had won. My backpacking adventure was on!

The rain came and we stayed in at the Bamboo Bar and Bed. The rain stopped and we remained. Pakpao cooked a red curry for supper and we ate it together again. Petite little Pakpao joined us as the table and started listing the equipment I needed to buy; I didn’t even have a rucksack. It was decided we would meet the very next day to go shopping together. That seemed to be part of being a tour guide duty.

Everyone was beginning to feel extremely inebriated yet the night was still young. Aat lit a bonfire in a fire pit on the beach and we sat around it on mats and cushions and tried to sing hippy songs as he strummed an old acoustic guitar. A few tourists headed over and tried to join in.

It wasn’t until I got home late at night by tuk tuk that I realised guiltily that I had promised and planned a lot without talking to Roger and Nin first.

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I explained myself to Roger and Nin at breakfast. They didn’t seem worried that I hadn’t come home for dinner the night before and they didn’t seem worried that I planned to leave them and go backpack northwards. They brushed away my apologies. They actually seemed excited for me. Relieved, I headed off to the Bamboo Bar and Bed to meet up with the others.

Aat was leaning on the empty bar counter and the others were all eating pancakes for breakfast when I arrived. The backpackers all looked the worst for weather; they all looked as hung over as I felt.

Pakpao seemed alert and excited. Aat told Natalie, Lucas and I that we were in good hands. Apparently, Pakpao had helped other inexperienced backpackers make it to the next hostel before.

Natalie suggested a morning swim and Lucas, Linda and Pakpao joined her. I admired the girls running down and splashing in the surf in their bikinis. Natalie had her dark brown hair in a single long plait that went up and around her head, framing her face with its bright blue eyes and gentle brush of freckles. Her skin was tanned like leather and her spherical breasts seemed almost over-large on her skinny frame. Linda was rather redder, less used to the sun, with lighter brown hair down to her shoulders and a respectable bust on a heavier frame. Pakpao was small and lithe with not a bit of fat anywhere on her little brown body; she was wearing a very sporty-cut bikini and swimming shorts that gave her an athletic appeal. You could clearly see her nipples pushing against the fabric as her little breasts were squashed and held firm by the tight top.

It was such a study in contrasts. As Natalie walked her big breasts jumped and jiggled, her top unable to restrain them. It was inconceivable that she could safely run. Linda looked like the girl next door on holiday and, if not beside Natalie, would have been quite okay to rest the eyes upon. And then little chocolate Pakpao, definitely a woman and not a girl, was so short she made the white girls look like giant amazons.

As soon as the girls and Lucas had jogged down to the water’s edge Jason and Damien came over and leaned in conspiratorially close to me. It didn’t take all of five seconds to find out what was on their mind; they were wondering how exactly the go-go bars worked. They knew what they sold but not how to buy. I admitted that I knew, claiming it was second-hand knowledge of course, and gave them a crash-course in the procedure and prices. They actually checked their wallets and considered their options before leaving in the direction of the bars.

Now I was alone with Aat. He didn’t ask what we had been whispering about but I still felt embarrassed and awkward. I went back to watching the others splash and play on the beach and tried not to stare at Natalie’s enormous knockers.

When the swimmers returned Pakpao told me to put swimming trunks on my shopping list. Linda looked around for the boys but I told her they had gone to explore the town. She offered to tag along with Pakpao and I while I got equipped for my first ever backpacking trek and we gladly accepted.

Walking into town between Pakpao and Linda was a fun teenage experience all in itself. Pakpao was dressed in a tight t-shirt and jeans and a baseball cap. Linda was still wearing her blue bikini with a colourful shawl tied around her waist. She didn’t seem to think she was under-dressed. We were soon joining a trickling stream of tourists weaving through alleys of market stalls with sellers shouting out at us “Very good price! Very good price!”.

Pakpao led us from stall to stall, knowing which stalls where we should visit. Linda had lots of opinions on which rucksack I should buy, but I secretly looked to Pakpao to point out the one I should actually purchase and then it was just a case of getting Linda to complement it so she could think it her choice. Linda was an aggressive haggler and the stallholders seemed offended at first by her low bids but soon accepted a bid under half what they had opened with. Once we had a rucksack and some simple t-shirts and a mosquito net we went into a normal chemists to buy my own supply of suntan lotions and insect repellent and first aid kit. Then we headed back out to find a torch and the last of the supplies. All in all, my rucksack was tiny and light compared to those trekking the whole length of the country.

We returned to the Bamboo Bar and Bed with my new kit and everyone there looked it over and offered opinions. Josh and Damien had returned and looked like they were waiting for a chance to tell me how their mission had gone. It was hard to judge from their suppressed excitement whether they had succeeded or not.

Natalie helped Pakpao in the kitchen making lunch. Natalie had insisted on helping and Pakpao didn’t seem to mind; it was as though Pakpao was part of our gang now and not a servant.

That realisation made me aware that we hadn’t discussed fees with Pakpao. How much would she want for being our tour-guide? I kind of felt it was my responsibility to pay for her as Natalie and Lucas were on a tight budget and it was really me she was helping most. I wondered if I had to pay Aat to ‘release’ her like a girl in a go-go bar, but that seemed ridiculous; it was hard to judge the relationship between Aat and Pakpao but it seemed Aat felt almost fatherly towards her although I didn’t think they were related or else Pakpao would surely be accompanying him on his trip to see his family? I resolved to ask Aat how much I should pay Pakpao, and I was pleasantly surprised at his answer; it seemed having a backpacking guide was about as expensive per day as eating out at the kind of restaurant that Roger and Nin took me to. I decided not to bother asking Natalie and Lucas to contribute.

After lunch Aat suggested that we head north and gave us the address of the next hostel we should head to. Natalie and Lucas went to gather their stuff and Aat slipped away to arrange a bus. Jason and Damien nudged me into a far sofa as far away as from Linda who was obliviously watching the surf; then, in excited whispers, they described their predictable escapades in the go-go bars of Patong Beach that morning. It was weird how unaffected and unenvious I was; my own exploits seemed so long ago and my mind was too full of the impending adventure to dwell on Kohsoom’s delights or the tales of others.

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The ‘bus’ that Aat arranged was actually an old pick-up truck with bench seating squashed under a canvas roof in the flat bed back. The cab was adorned with a crazy collection of chrome badges and ornaments but the back was business-like and uncushioned. The rucksacks went in first – Pakpao had a small bag of her own – and then we climbed aboard, Natalie and Lucas on one side and Pakpao and I on the other with us boys on the end, gripping onto the scaffold frame for dear life.

We swung by Roger’s house on the way and I ran in to tell them that I was leaving already and apologise again. They looked the van over and talked to Pakpao and the driver and the driver’s apprentice who was sitting up front. Then Roger pulled me aside and thrust a wad of Baht banknotes into my hand. I didn’t want to count them in front of the others but I could tell it was nearly as much as I already had on me. I felt a bit loaded down and vulnerable carrying so much cash.

And then we were off, driving up the coast road for about an hour to reach the first stop. Travelling in an exposed wagon with the searing heat of the sun straight onto my right thigh was very uncomfortable and I was relieved when we arrived at our destination, which was a lone beach bar on a small sandy cove sounded by mangrove swamp. We were already in the jungle!

Pakpao helped me pay the driver and had saucer-sized eyes when she saw in my wallet. I felt super embarrassed at my wealth, which in western terms wasn’t actually that much. It might actually be borderline ‘much’ for a teenager but it was surely only a casual spending money amount to a grown-up.

Pakpao then led us down a few hundred yards of sandy track from the road to the bar.

The beach bar was deserted and Pakpao had to shout loudly to rouse the owner from a nearby hut hidden behind some rushes. A small old man and his wife and a small child all came into view to see what was happening. The man seemed to recognise Pakpao and soon they were chatting amicably. The man left to start a diesel generator to power the lights and beer chiller and the rest of us gathered at the bar and Pakpao pointed out the guest rooms spread out among the mangroves, linked by slender plank walkways. Apart from the hum of the generator this felt like a Robinson Crusoe paradise on a desert island.

Pakpao led us to show us the rooms. Each was a detached wicker hut with a mattress on a mat floor. There was a single naked electric light hanging from a cable from the apex and a mosquito net and no other furnishings. Pakpao made a point of checking each bed ‘for surprises’. No scorpions were found. The first bedroom was for Natalie and Lucas; Pakpao asked unsure if they wanted to share but they both reddened and consented hurriedly. Then the next was my room. Natalie asked Pakpao where she was sleeping, and Pakpao replied “There is a shack for staff”. Natalie stood back, shocked and hurt. I too was hit by guilt. Natalie immediately looked at me as though imploring me to say something. “Pakpao, you are not just staff, you are also our friend now. You can have a room like ours. You are one of us. Its included, my treat”. Natalie looked like she could hug me. Pakpao looked embarrassed but pleased. Lucas looked like he wasn’t following along too closely; doubtless his mind was thinking about sharing a single mattress with Natalie. I wondered what the sleeping arrangements had been back at the Bamboo Bar and Bed.

We sheltered in the bar while it rained and then we walked in the surf as the sun went down. Natalie and Lucas held hands and Pakpao and I walked behind them, giving them a respectable distance. Pakpao thanked me shyly for the room; it seemed a big deal to her. I tried to shrug it off. I stopped to pick up some perfect seashells and Pakpao started helping, pointing out better ones until I had a handful to bring home. The beach wasn’t very long and we soon had to turn around and make our way back to the bar end.

Dinner that night was another curry. I had had curry for lunch and dinner every day since I’d arrived in Thailand and I was really enjoying it. This curry was the spiciest yet, but it seemed my tolerance was building. Lucas looked a little uncomfortable but the Singha beers were chilled now and he soldiered on. It was only when we finished that Pakpao laughingly reminded him that “if it burns on the way down, it burns on the way out...” and he looked hopelessly panicked. Perhaps Natalie was going to have second thoughts about the sleeping arrangements.

After the sunset we sat in the bar lit only by some fairy lights and the glow of the backlit beer cabinet. Natalie and Lucas were getting drunk and, for the first time that I had seen, Pakpao joined us in drinking. There was a radio playing and we tried to sing along to the classic western rock songs that played. Although it wasn’t very late if felt like it had been a very long day and we were quite tired. Natalie got up and tugged up Lucas and led him on one last moonlit stroll along the beach. Pakpao and I sniggered and watched them until the darkness beyond the glow of the fairy lights swallowed them.

“Are you related to Aat?” I asked. Pakpao laughed and began to tell me her condensed life story.

Pakpao had grown up a little to the south, near the border with Malaysia. Her favourite school subject was English and she had wanted to go to university to become an English teacher. But her family couldn’t afford that and there was a lot of unrest in the south so last year she had moved north to Phuket where her language skills could help her get a job. She considered herself lucky to find Aat who was a good kind man and a good kind boss and who paid her better than being a receptionist at one of the hotels would. She liked the Bamboo Bar and Bed and she liked her job. She didn’t elaborate on the situation in the south and at home but she seemed relieved to be travelling with us rather than taking the opportunity to go back and visit her parents. We chinked our beers “Onwards to new adventure!”. I couldn’t stop looking at her and she couldn’t stop looking at me.

“Look at these two little love birds” Natalie cooed as they approached. We hadn’t heard them return. Pakpao looked down shyly at her beer and I looked up and around to locate the returning couple. “Look at you two! Get a room!” Natalie giggled as she plopped herself back down on the cushions across from us. “Steve’s already got me a room” Pakpao reminded us happily and we all laughed. The silliest little things seemed funny in that light happy mood under the fairy lights with the cacophony of insects all around us. Natalie told us that the swamp was alive with the flickers of fire flies, and I wanted to suggest that I show them to Pakpao but I didn’t dare. Soon we finished our beers and headed to bed.

The next morning I awoke quite early as light streamed through the thin wicker walls. I went down to the bar to find the wife preparing breakfast. I sat at the bar and watched some fishing boats – called ‘long tailed boats’ because they are powered by old car engines driving a propeller on a long straight shaft sticking out the back – pass across the mouth of the bay.

The husband didn’t speak much English but the wife, whose name was Daw, spoke it better and joined in our discussion about where the next stop would be and how to get there. She offered to send her husband to fetch a ‘bus’, or to ask her brother to take us in a long-tailed boat. It was clear, immediately, that the long-tailed boat was new and exciting for us. None of us, not even Pakpao, had travelled in a long-tailed boat before! This was relayed to the husband and he headed off after breakfast to arrange it.

We spent the morning laying on the beach working on our tans. Pakpao was careful to ensure we weren’t laying underneath coconut palms, as a coconut falling on the head would be fatal. Apparently it was a major cause of tourist death! The coconut palm grows at the high tide mark where the nut – not, technically, a nut – has washed ashore. The palm grows hanging out over the beach so the falling coconuts will be swept out to sea by the tide, to be transported to another beach in another land. We gathered four coconuts and took them back to the bar where Daw sliced the top off with a machete and poked a straw in and handed them out as drinks. It was a strange runny taste but it was very refreshing. The strangest thing was that they didn’t look like coconuts; the hairy brown husk we are used to seeing is actually inside a thick heavy outer husk that is smooth and green. They weighed several pounds each and it was easy to imagine how being brained by one would kill you.

Daw offered proper Thai massages and Natalie went first. We sat around watching as Daw massaged and kneaded her back as she looked out at the perfect sandy cove and open sea in front of her. It was strange but after seeing so much skin and body the last few days we weren’t really needing to check each other out any more. Lucas and I and eventually even Pakpao had a massage. Although it kind of hurt a bit when Daw did it, afterwards it felt fantastic.

Lunch was another delicious massaman curry and then, early afternoon, a long-tailed boat with a large canvas sun-shade nosed into the bay to collect us and take us to the next beach bar stop before the rain came. I settled the bill and, after a quick bit of arithmetic working out the exchange rate to pounds sterling, I tacked on a large tip because I felt undercharged. It was even cheaper in the countryside than in Phuket.

The boat ride was fantastic. There were no benches to sit on but we squatted down along the sides of the shallow hull and looked across the boat and out the other side. Natalie and Lucas sat opposite Pakpao and I and they had the view of the land. Lucas seemed mostly lost in Natalie’s plunging cleavage and I tried not to look her way for fear of being sucked into the same trap. I mostly pondered Pakpao who was sitting really quite close considering how much space we had in the boat.

The next stop was another beach bar just like the Bamboo Bar and Bed. This was a beach and town called Khao Lak and there were a couple of hotels here but it was nowhere near as developed as Phuket. The beach was much nicer and stretched to the north for over ten miles, whereupon it continued but by another name. It was just endless.

We were not the only backpackers at The Monkey House. Another couple of groups were there and we joined them at the bar as it started to rain. One couple, I forget their names, were from Austria; they were polite but distant and beyond introductions they were too absorbed in each other to mingle with fellow travellers; that was understandable as this was their honeymoon and they were revisiting the beaches and hostels where they had met as backpackers years before. The other group was three girls from Denmark who were eighteen, drop dead gorgeous and ready to party. Having checked in we went to sit around in the bar while it rained. Pakpao brought us over some drinks and the Danish girls, mistaking her for a waitress, tried to order! Natalie seemed to feel the faux pas keenly and again looked at me to set things straight. Pakpao was actually meaning to go get them some drinks and we had to call her back. The Danes didn’t really understand that Pakpao wasn’t staff and Natalie trying to explain to them that she was a tour guide didn’t clear things up. I really wanted to explain to them that Pakpao was a friend whom we were helping spend time with us by sponsoring her trip, but it seemed awkward to explain to myself in my own he