Life's a ...

The coin operated internet facilities at the Rayong Beach Condotel are one of the few nods to modernity/backpacker tourism on this stretch of beach. Shabby exterior but clean rooms and good aircon. Overstaffed but friendly, there is always time to chat to guests. The two ladies at reception are wearing jumpers, hats and scarves "because its winter". Everyone else is in beach wear. The manager tells me all his business plans. Not much happens here. Within two weeks I became a force in the local chicken grilling industry. 50Baht for a medium sized thigh? No way man. I'm a bulk buyer. 40Baht each, and I'll take two. Large ones. And sticky rice.

After Koh Samui, which has gone from charmingly disorganised collection of huts to an automated tourist-processing centre, I fled back to Bangkok and then east towards Cambodia, in search of somewhere without cheap London accents: "Garry! Guess where I am? Tarland!" or American school kids seeking adventure: "so like, we're like totally like IN Asia now. Oh my God. Is this safe?" - somewhat un-exotic, don't you think?

The few foreign visitors who do make it here, to the hidden east coast, despite the lack of signage and guidebook-space, are largely middle-aged European gentlemen here with their Thai wives. Typing in a search for "Thailand ..." in google here auto-suggests "Thailand Contested Divorce". Middle-aged European women are also well represented on the beach, although they seem to be overnighting in a secret location. Rooms here are simple, spotlessly clean, and large enough for a fully-grown elephant to turn around - and that's just on the balcony.

The beach varies with the tide, but can be wide enough to play proper football on. This usually happens during the evening, when the few Euro-Thai couples have finished watching the sunset and the red turns to purple then blue, and the wet bank of sand is slicked with all the colours of an oil spill. During the day, the middle-aged Northern European women, usually of robust proportions, are scattered in loose groups, sitting in deck chairs, engaged in Sudoku and romance novels. Several are busy working on deep beetroot-red tans, and look like leathery red-indians.

The occasional Thai visitors sit in the empty deckchair restaurants for some hours and leave. Others pull up in coaches at a hotel, put some giant speakers on loud-until-it-vibrates-mode, and proceed to jiggle and twist, as in a voodoo trace, to music which can only be truthfully described as an ongoing traffic accident. Accompanied by cymbals.

I quickly made friends with the dogs. I eat grilled chicken-on-a-stick and usually find a pair of sad eyes sitting up next to me, begging. Thai dogs spend most of the day doing an impression of being dead, lying flat on one side, as if suddenly keeled-over. The first-time visitor to Thailand wonders why so many dogs have been killed in the shade of parked cars.

One of the mutts is clearly mentally unstable. He alternately behaves like a cat wanting food and then like an untamed wolf. Occasionally, without warning, he runs off to dig up an imaginary crab out of the sand. Some say he may have rabies. I say that just gives him more personality.

There is also an elephant, Bang Bang, who is old and tired and blind in one eye, who walks up and down the strip. I buy a bag of pineapple cores from her handler ($0.80), and hold them out, one by one, hoping, as she towers over me, that she doesn't want to sneeze. She is bored - the pineapple stalks are like tic tacs to a human. At least she gets to walk around.

The only person who is in any kind of a hurry is a local chap bouncing along in small steps, under the weight of several hundred inflatable aquatic recreational products, turtles, dinosaurs and dolphins, crammed onto a long stick. I have never seen anyone buy an inflatable dolphin from him.

But most people seem happy to operate on a more lethargic basis. One slow-motion calendar for me has been the laundry-cycle. Today, for instance, is laundry-day, and I'm wearing a $2 pair of neon beach shorts (floral design), and a rolled-up long sleeve blue office shirt, complemented by flip-flops. So I know that quite a while has passed since my last laundry day.

However, a more regular system is that of the tides, which you only notice after several days of studious loafing. When the tide is retreating I can go for a run on the damp, solid sand. I run to the end of the beach - where there is a pier - after which you can see miles more beach. With a falling tide, a recycling-bin of debris is distributed evenly along the sand. Super-length starfish fronds, lightbulbs, toothpaste tubes (why so many toothpaste tubes?), broken glass (adds another dimension to the running thing), and one fish with coral-like spines. Crabs sprint across in front of you. Fishermen say hello. But there are so few people that I can walk back along the curved double-stitch of my footprints and scarcely find another set of human prints.

Perhaps its impossible to find rustic beach huts with simple local food nowadays, but this is surely the next best thing.