Going to Koh Tao.

Koh Tao is a little island off the southeastern coast of Thailand, North West of its larger and noisier cousins Koh Pha-Ngang and Koh Samui. It has a population of 5000 or so, and it's only about 13 square miles. So my heart sinks as I get on the Catamaran at Koh Samui and find that every seat in the hideously over airconditioned downstairs seating area is not only packed, but packed with the type of half drunk overweight british sex tourist that I have so far managed to avoid contact with. I buy a bottle of water and then get the hell out and onto the deck. Where I find a great place to sit in the sun. The crowd is worrying me. Drunk american teenagers strut around with their tattoos, shouting at each other and playing drinking games. I read my book - I'm on those Steig Larsson books about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Which are perfect holiday reading and I can get lost for hours. 45 minutes later we arrive in Koh Pha-Ngang and a girl comes and joins me in my little corner. "Don't go downstairs," I warn her. "It's hell down there, and freezing." She looks at me as if I'm insane and says nothing. I go back to my book. Ten minutes pass and I decide I want a conversation and a beer. I ask her if she wants a beer, but she declines, and I head down to the lower deck of the boat to discover that there is virtually nobody there anymore. What the fuck? I come back up and announce to her "They've vanished! Last time I went down there it was packed to the gills, now there's nobody - no wonder you looked at me as if I was mad." She laughs. Apparently it's a full moon and they all got off to raise hell in Koh Pha-Ngang. I try to work out if i regret not doing the same now I know. We get talking - she's a yoga teacher by vocation and teaches kids for money. She wants to set up her own yoga studio and she is so peaceful and present that I think that it's a brilliant idea. By the end of the conversation I feel that I have made a friend - after all I've been craving company for some time, and hers is easy and intelligent. All too soon the ferry pulls in to Koh Tao and we say goodbye.

At the ferryport waits the usual chaos of howling taxi drivers. I wade through them and am relieved that there are only about ten of them. Quite suddenly peace happens. I walk down a street and nobody shouts anything to me. The streets are pretty basic here - open drainage on the sides of the road, a rash of shops and restaurants, and hundreds of dive outlets. This is the major industry on Koh Tao - scuba. It's unavoidable. Not wanting to get ripped off, I have made a decision before arriving about where I want to take my PADI scuba certification. I want to check out a place called Crystal Dive. Unfortunately, my distaste for the shouty people means that once again I have ended up lost. Knowing this place is small, all I really need is a map, or some helpful advice. I approach a man who - refreshingly - is sitting on a bench smoking with a sign saying TAXI, and not shouting at anyone. "Crystal Dive?" I ask. He tells me that I have to go to Sairee beach on the other side of the island, and that he will take me there for 300 Baht. I know this is a lie, and 300 baht is far too much, so I smile and wiggle my fingers - "I'll walk." "Which way you walk?" he taunts me. "You say you walk but you not know which way!" I shrug. Which turns out to be an excellent idea as about 30 seconds later I see a gigantic sign reading "Crystal Dive - this way." I look over my shoulder and indicate the sign. The taxi driver is laughing. I laugh too, shake my fist at him, and head over to check it out. It's awesome. I'll write it up in my next post.

Scuba dooba doo

My fingers are like prunes. I have just spent the whole day in a swimming pool that was more a mulch of snot, urine and dead insects. Yesterday was spent watching the PADI training videos, which are inexcusably awkwardly shot, and shockingly badly written. And peppered with jokes that I doubt I would find funny even if I was the mindless american idiot for which they are designed. I can't believe I spent so much of my life exposed to them. Especially when the last one did everything but ask us to just send our money to PADI in an envelope. "In order to share and continue your fun diving with friends experience, you can improve your happy friendly life by giving fun money to PADI." That's not a quote. The guy in the internet shop has switched all the lights off and is glaring at me. I'M IN THE SEA TOMORROW! Wooooo

Phooey to Samui

Samui is corrupt despite my optimism. Too many people shouting at you all the time everywhere. You have to get way out of the main drag before you can walk down a stretch of road without everyone expecting you to buy things from them. I stopped once, as they wore me down, and was surprised that they don't even haggle like they do in Bangkok.

"How much is this hat?"
"600 Baht" - (12 quid)
"600 Baht too much. 150 Baht better price." (Still too much, but it's hot, and I am haggling"
"No I say 600 Baht, 600 Baht is price. This hat very nice."
"This hat same as hat every other stall."
"600 Baht is price you put hat back go away."
"Ok."

Bought the same hat a mile down the road for 250. A fiver still way too much for a basic sun hat, but you know me and hats. I was mourning the one I left on the top of a lamp in my room in the Marriot.

I packed up my bag, finally said yes to a taxi, and went to the ferry. I got a boat to Koh Tau. Much quieter. Been walking around all morning and nobody has tried to sell me anything. A taxi driver asked me if I wanted a taxi. I said no thanks I am just looking. What you looking for? Coffee. Go down that road. Ok - korp khun crab. Crab.

You assert your gender identity at the end of sentences here in order to be polite. Women say Ka. Men say crab.

Ka is the wily hypnotic sinuous dangerous and charming snake in the jungle book. A crab is a nasty vicious grasping haphazard bully. Go figure.

No I don't want a Taxi

I flew into Koh Samui. Not initially my intention but faster and my per diems covered the difference between train and air so worth it probably.

Koh Samui was meant to be a staging post. I reckon I'll manage to keep it that way, but I missed the last ferry to Koh Tau so have to stay the night here.

I am terrible at being approached by people. I just say "No" and move on if someone says hello to me. Instinctively. And then my pride goes up, so I don't go back and say "I changed my mind." I just strike out. So the plane lands in Samui and my bag is one of the first on the belt, so I grab it and am utterly bombarded with smiling crazy touts. They try every single note in every single octave, often in one word. I am saying "no" "no" "no" and slowly pushing through the smiling crowd firmly heading for the exit sign. With no idea where the hell I am going. Whatsoever.

Outside the airport I see a robot shop. I have never seen a robot shop before. I covet the robots. I want them to do things for me. So out comes the camera. Oops. Not only am I a HUGE GIANT, but now I am a HUGE GIANT with a backpack, a collared shirt, a day bag and a CAMERA! All of the tourist alarms in a mile radius go off simultaneously, and ordinary citizens who moments before were sitting on the grass doing each others hair are suddenly exploring their vocal range as thoroughly as possible while enunciating the word "TAXI". And before I know it there are 4 enthusiastic people with motorcycles surrounding me, and the only reason I am not intimidated is that they are all grinning like maniacs and singing "Taxi" to me. One of them is boss eyed. Another has an eye patch. I want to take a photo of them but I know the flash will attract more and I might get crushed in the press. So I make stubborn "I am walking" gestures, and strike out firmly in the wrong direction. Once I go round the corner I hide behind a tree and break out the crap map from my Lonely Planet. I realise I've been stubbornly walking into the middle of nowhere. I turn round and ten minutes later sheepishly run the gauntlet in the other direction. Thankfully they have given me up for lost by now.

Koh Samui is clearly very used to tourists, but as always this still means that the bulk of the prosperity goes right to the centre. I am shocked at the poverty as I walk from the airport to the town. I have no idea how far it is from one to the other. Every third car honks at me and slows down and shouts "Taxi". By now I WANT to walk. But I have no idea how far it will be. I keep on, past tied up buffalo, and millions of dogs. Millions of dogs, but no cats. (Later this evening I will comment on this in a bar to an Irishman. He will nod wisely, and announce "It's cos they eat them. They eat the cats." )

I have found a negative hand gesture that seems to discourage taxi drivers and instinctively flash it every time I hear a honk behind me. I find myself wondering if there is some sort of repellent.

Then I round a corner and see this.


Now I know why I walked from the airport.

I keep walking as the sun sets around me. I am delighted by the colour in the sky and the breathtaking natural beauty that surrounds me at every turn. A woman with a toddler emerges from one of the shacks on my right and jumps on a motorbike. "Where you going?" she asks. "I don't know!" I reply. She points - "Go left at end, then go right at market - Chaweng!" "Thank you!" "You want lift?" I have a rucksack, a day bag, and am twice her size. She has a toddler behind her on her moped, and about half an inch of space. "No thank you! I like to walk!" "Ok bye!" Damn, the people here that don't want to sell you shit are awesome people. So now at least I know I'm on the right track. And suddenly I arrive in a metropolis. And still everyone is howling "Taxi" at me because I have a rucksack. And perhaps because I have been walking for a few hours and am sweating like a pig. I ask someone "Where is the beach?" and am pointed down a narrow alley. I chance it, and walk through dark empty streets full of dogs and chickens for ten minutes. Then suddenly there is white sand, and music, and a full moon hovering over a wide bay full of crystal water. And I realise how absolutely knackered I am. And I throw off my rucksack, and my drenched shirt, and leaving them behind me on the beach run to the water and throw some onto myself. A guy in a red shirt shouts "Beer?" at me. That's better than "Taxi." "YES!" I cry, loving the fact that I can reply positively. "YES! Give me beer!" And for less than a quid I am lying on the most perfect beach in the world under a full moon with an ice cold singha.

A few hours later and I have a room on the same stretch of beach and nobody lives here. It's silent. Because I walked into town, and all the taxis drop in the centre. So my accomodation is not only beautiful, but also cheaper than any of the central places, and pretty quiet. And it's only about 15 minutes walk from the centre of Samui which is tourist hell. But I'm off into it, as one thing I haven't done for ages is HAD A CONVERSATION with someone.

The work. Very brief.

It doesn't take long for culture shock to subside. Pretty much simultaneously with my jetlag, I just feel totally comfortable in this town. Which is an advantage as my 5 star living is coming to an end and it'll be a bit more scraggy from then. The one thing that really is amazing here is the food - everywhere makes good food, although I haven't tried the street food yet as I don't want to risk having to run off and chunder every five seconds while on set.

I've been lucky to work with people that really know this industry. In terms of movies I am still a baby, despite my first job being one. A bit too much of a gap in between, which I won't blame on my old agent... The crew and the two actors I have been working with are so professional and self contained and just get on with the job. Experience plays a key part, of course. But I can tell that this is going to be a great piece and I am so stoked to be involved with it. It is being made for love by experts. In a short time I have come to understand a great deal more about the craft of being an actor in film. I hope and trust that I have made the best I can of the work I have done for them so far, and look forward hugely to seeing the finished product when it emerges.

In my spare time I have managed to get my holiday hat on, so not feeling as isolated as I was earlier in the week. I am supposed to be booking a flight somewhere for when I finish. So I'd better get on with it.

Deathtrap Dungeon

When I was a kid I was a voracious and indiscriminate reader. My quest for information and imagination took me through many old classics, greek dramas and modern tales. I started with Cider with Rosie and never stopped. As I reader I was ferociously loyal. As a selector I was woefully inefficient. I liked Greek myth so I read them all. I liked Norse myth so I read them all. I liked Willard Price so I read them all, and still today find that I have irrational understandings of animal behaviour based on the disgraceful dramatic fictions that he made out of ordinary creatures. I also ran across "Choose your own adventure" books. I was discriminating enough to find them profoundly unsatisfying in terms of story and writing. But I enjoyed the pictures, and I particularly enjoyed the grisly endings. And I had access to some very extensive, and almost completely unoccupied and unused school libraries, where I could vanish for hours and nobody would even think to look for me. Over a few years I must have covered almost every "Choose your own adventure" book. But soon I found better alternatives.

Infinitely more satisfying were the "Lone Wolf" series of books by Gary Chalk and Joe Dever, where you play the last of the Kai lords - some form of Nordic fighting monk - as you try and reestablish your order of monks while being hunted by the Darklords of Helgedad. These had a coherent plotline running through many books. There was a combat system too, with charts and dice - very involved but it was pretty well designed and more pleasurable to commit properly to than many other fighting systems in these books.

Then there were J.H.Brennan's Grail Quest books. A light hearted look at Arthurian myth, with in-jokes about King Pellinore's Questing Beast and Merlin and Excalibur and most other aspects of that world. I remember these as being the most enjoyable to read of that kind of book. The Poetic Fiend was a source of great joy to me. And unlike all the other books that take things so seriously, these books were written to be amusing. One choice I remember very clearly from the third book in the series was: "Rescue the carrot (Turn to page xxx) : Don't rescue the carrot (Turn to page xxx) : Play your xylophone (Turn to page xxx)." Like most of the gags in Tristram Shandy, this choice is more amusing in the context of the books that were current at the time of publication than it is in isolation. They were not particularly popular, probably owing to the nature of most kids who are attracted to fantasy worlds. I remember them as a humourless lot, taking their fantasy very seriously, and painstakingly correcting people who had made some error of lore - "I think you'll find that it is in fact a HOBgoblin to which you are referring and not, in fact a goblin - the creatures are very different you see uh huh huh huh *cough* " Like any other branch of specialist knowledge, the people steeped in it determine the market for it. It was a surprise when Terry Pratchett broke through so massively to the mainstream with his fantasy satire. With Brennan the tone wasn't quite right. But for these kids, the Fighting Fantasy franchise was allowable. I could read it and only occasionally be mocked by some dork who wanted to tell me that what I was referring to as a dark elf is technically in fact a Drow elf etc etc blahblahblah because in the end the bible for these people always falls either to Gygax or Tolkein. Although I imagine these days warcraft plays a part.

Fighting Fantasy was everywhere when I was at school. Despite a woefully inadequate fighting system, which can be summed up roughly as: Roll a six sided dice and add 6. This is your skill total. If you rolled anything less than a 5, waste a few hours of your life, then start again. This is assuming that nobody ever cheats at these games of course. The books were mostly the creation of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, and they ran and ran and ran. Sometimes they were brilliant - City of Thieves, Deathtrap Dungeon, Appointment with FEAR... Sometimes they were pretty mediocre - Citadel of Chaos, Starship Traveller... But they always had great pictures and plenty of grizzly endings for people that made the wrong choices. Although the right choices were often totally arbitrary and dependent on luck rather than logic. But why, you might ask, are you writing about these books when you're in Thailand?

Well. First of all it's raining. And when I say rain, I mean I am being drooled on by a million gigantic basset hounds in the sky, while someone drags a net full of rocks over the roof and all the little fairies pump water into my shoes with syringes. And secondly I am staying in the district of Sukhumvit, and it has been bugging me. All of this post has been from memory. It's amazing what sticks in your head from a childhood of voracious misguided reading. Although I have probably made all sorts of mistakes of lore. But every time I see the word Sukhumvit, little alarm bells go off in my head.

Fighting Fantasy book 6: Deathtrap Dungeon. Blue spine. Welcome to the distant city of Fang. Fang is a stinking, semi lawless metropolis - a port and a shanty. It is ruled over by the tyrannous Baron Sukumvit, and he builds a Dungeon full of terrible traps, and uses it as a form of twisted challenge - basically "If you can get through this without dying I'll give you a stack of money". One can only imagine that he had somewhere he could stand and watch as people got killed by his cunning traps. And I have just realised what provided the inspiration for the name.

So there you go. I have just wasted a good few minutes of your life in a random, badly structured journey through the inside of my hypothalamus. But this can't be as frustrating as having to repeatedly go back to the beginning of a poorly written book, that's uncomfortable to read as you have to constantly make notes and roll dice.

Sounds like the rain has stopped. Shall I : Go and eat some street food at the risk of making myself sick for filming tomorrow? : Go back to my hotel and have Roast Beef? : Play my xylophone?

Five Star hotels vs Hostels

I am seriously considering moving into a hostel tonight - certainly tomorrow. Five star hotels are all very well if you want to have luxurious sex and room service champagne but they suck balls if you're in a country where you know nobody. I didn't even meet anyone on the plane over as I was in glorious luxurious isolation in the business lounge. But now I think I am about ready to go stay in a shitty hostel and meet some people and get drunk and have a laugh and SPEAK to someone since I am going a little stircrazy with all this bowing and monosyllabic politeness and saying "crab" at the end of every sentence to be polite. And HEY if I meet someone hot we can ditch the hostel and go have luxurious sex and room service champagne and I can put a new spin on the ball sucking aspect.

Bangkok Marriot

Despite the automatically reclining seats and the pampering I still feel like I've been through the wringer as I gaze out of the window of business class on Thai Airways. and catch my first glimpse of Bangkok. Dawn is just breaking, but for now it's still dark and peppered with streetlamps and the lights of the early risers. In the middle of town something is burning, belching vast stacks of black flame into the air. I can see no flashing lights on the ground around it. From up here, the view is clear and the sky is cloudless. As we make our final approach, and dip in over a packed road towards the runway we pass through an unmistakable wall of sweat. This fug is clinging to the ground citywide, and I imagine it will be my constant companion. Along with the noise.

Everything talks. And if it doesn't talk it clangs, whistles, boils, squeals, farts or plays soothing music to you. Once I locate my escort, I am taken out to wait for the car. We are on an upper level, but below I can hear someone desperately - frantically - blowing a whistle. Again and again, as if a party of ten year olds had never seen whistles before. My escort doesn't bat an eyelid. She is called Ratt, and seems delightful. But we don't have a language in common, and I have no whistle. A man drives slowly past in a small red tow truck. He has a megaphone, and speaks into it constantly in a monotone. He is not repeating himself. I think he might be telling us what he can see. Very loudly. But he has to compete with the whistling and the farting horns of the cars as they pick up and drop off and pick up and drop off. And my car arrives. The whole side of it opens up revealing reclining sofas. I bundle my bags in and we are off. Bullet straight and bullet fast through toll roads, always the fastest thing on the road irrespective of corners and lane selections. I catch a glimpse of storks at the roadside. Are these the carrion birds over here?

Billboards are mostly without images, and in Thai. I see that Tesco has already arrived here in force, as some of the biggest are for their stores or their credit cards. One billboard has english text - a picture of a glass building and the words "Sense of London Condo". 'Who the hell would want that?' I laugh to myself as we shoot past it and squeal into a toll point. And from there into the Marriot Executive Apartments, where I am staying. Pretty damn nice too. Ratt gives me a welcome pack and I dare to think that finally I am going to find out what I am supposed to be doing in this movie.

Up in my room I dump my stuff on the armchair by the washing machine, and gleefully throw my clothes off and jump in the vast, tiled walk-in shower. Having washed away the plane I dive into my welcome pack. Nothing. No shooting schedule. No script. No idea of when I might be needed. No wardrobe fitting. I want to talk to someone about whether or not to lose the beard. If it's no use to them I am getting mightily fed up of it. But nope. Still no clues beyond a character name as to why these people have flown me halfway around the world. Still, ours not to reason why. I call the production assistant, hesitantly make inquiries - "Is there a script? Am I needed?" "I don't know." "Ok - well I am going to go for a walk then." "Good."

And then the alienation hits home. In South America, a lifelong nodding acquaintance with Spanish gets me by. Europe is always manageable. But this is totally alien. The language works differently. I cannot even begin to decipher the labels on things, I don't know how to say please or thank you or water or hello. Thankfully everybody is always smiling. Smile and bow seems to work as a starting tactic. And speak very very quietly in English while smiling, bowing and using sign language. Before long I take refuge in a mall. Downstairs, insane birds howl from wicker cages in perfect discord to the piped sounds of frogs and crickets. The shop staff all have madness in their eyes behind the smiles. I find an internet cafe and write all this down so I can process the total weirdness of this place, combined with the frustration of NOT KNOWING WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING OR WHEN I AM DOING IT.

And now I can get a cup of coffee and go back out into the midday sun with the mad dogs.

Reactivate!!

I forgot about this. But since I'm off to Thailand tomorrow for a while I thought it would be as good a time as any to start keeping people up to date. And this is a better way than sending those interminable travel emails.

It's really strange working in a movie that has such a huge amount of secrecy attached to it. I have no desire to break the NDA accidentally by blog, so I might be so hideously vague when I get to Thailand that it's pointless reading this anyhow. At the moment I have absolutely no idea what I am supposed to be doing. I know the name of my character, and I know how much I am being paid. I don't know what my character does, even. Last night I dreamt I was on a boat with the director and he told me I had to jump into a river full of hippos and wrestle them. When I expressed that I was concerned, hippos having a reputation for being vicious little buggers, he eased my concerns by informing me that they were really rhinos, but they'd been made up to look like hippos...

When I get there i'll probably be behind a desk in a dinner jacket being posh at someone. So perhaps it's pleasant to be loosely panicking about hippofighting and nudity in the meantime. Tomorrow is going to be a long day and my sleep patterns are going to get shafted by the flight. And then I'll arrive in Bangkok and have to stay up for a whole day of wardrobe fittings and whatnot while trying to cram a load of lines into my head. Gogo gadget adrenaline.