Where in the World is Garry?

Paradise Lost - Koh Samui, Thailand, January 2006

Paradise Lost

For me what has changed on this trip so remarkably are the people. I should have been clued into this change on the flight from Bangkok but it didn't register. Since I was last here Koh Samui appears to have made it to the high street in the form of package holidays. It has become so much more accessible and with that accessibility a new dimension has been added to the island experience.

Of course we saw this coming; it was inevitable. There is no money in back packers. We are cheap and frugal; parsimonious to a fault. The real money is in families and old people and that's what Koh Samui has set its sights on; the Majorca or Orlando of the Orient. The prices for accommodation on the beach have soared in line with the spending power of the new generation of visitors seeking safe harbour on its shores.

I sit and watch from the shore which is the Irish Bar (Murphy's Tropical Paradise), nursing my incredibly expensive bottle of Strongbow, witnessing the unlikely confluence of the Rivers Chav, Crinkly and Bugaboo. This ethereal bore washes down the street leaving in its wake Sharons and Traceys, Nigels and Kevins, the Family Schmidt and Family Smith, Doris and Ruby the retired school teachers from Norwich and of course our intrepid travelers Stan and Beryl; all of whom look at each other in disbelief as if to say "What on earth are you doing here?!?!"

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