The Thai island of Ko Chang, 200 miles southeast of Bangkok, might just have some of the answers. It combines the luxury of Singapore Slings and air conditioning with that self-satisfaction of being somewhere that not many people know about yet — a bit like Notting Hill before Hugh Grant.
It’s Thailand’s second-biggest island, after Phuket, but — for the moment, at least — it receives a tiny fraction of the tourists. You can swim without the danger of getting mulched by a wetbike or deafened by a passing disco “pirate ship”.
We were staying at the Tropicana Resort & Spa, a group of bungalows that were luxurious inside but tropically rustic outside. Thick stands of native plants covered practically every inch of the grounds except the swimming pool. Many of the paths within the resort were walkways over streams teeming with fish, some of which looked suspiciously like piranha. A good way of cutting down on drunken guests, I imagined. But no, a waiter assured me, they were only carp.
That sounds like a quick conversation, but it took about half an hour, because the thing about being in a place that isn’t used to mass tourism is that the locals haven’t yet had a chance to adjust to the nonsense that visitors are likely to say to them. So the initial inquiry from an Englishman as to whether these carp were in fact a species of South American fish that the poor waiter had never heard of did not exactly hit home instantly. Then there was the whole stage of “Look, ha-ha, I’m joking about being scared that they’re going to eat me”, which was met by the young Thai with polite bewilderment and an obvious desire to be somewhere else. By the time we got on to the same basic wavelength and he explained that guests could buy bags of food with which to feed the fish, which was why gangs of them followed your progress along the walkways, we were both almost dead of sunstroke.
The hotel’s in-room information file was just as comprehension-challenged. Its medical advice section suggested that if one burnt oneself, “strong acid and alkalis can relieve the pain”. Presumably by replacing it with agony.
In the resort’s beachside restaurant, there was little danger of confusion, because the hotel has been open for a few years now, and the staff have heard the menu pronounced by every type of Western — and Asian — tongue. But the Tropicana is still at that stage in its development when dinner has to be accompanied by “sophisticated” music, which means either traditional Thai percussion — a bit like being trapped in a lift with a drunk xylophone player — or a Filipino with his Yamaha set to “hotel schmaltz”. At least the cheap restaurants usually have only a tinny radio, which I found much easier to ignore.
At the southern end of our beach, there were a couple of restaurants on stilts — large thatched platforms poking out over the water, from which you could sit and look down at the fish and crabs that hadn’t yet been netted and added to the menu.
Ko Chang, like the rest of Thailand, is very hot on hygiene, so there was no problem eating fresh seafood and drinking iced drinks even at such a primitive-looking place. But ordering could sometimes be difficult, because the gang of teenagers who ran the restaurant spoke only rudimentary English. This, of course, was nothing to be ashamed of: after 10 days, my Thai was limited to “hello”, “thank you” and “Chang” (a cheap brand of beer); and most of the diners were Thai, so English wasn’t essential for business.
The bilingual menu promised such baffling dishes as “scratched egg” and “smoked salmon serve with pickle crapper”. I eventually discovered that their basic fried rice with seafood, with an optional spicy sauce that I could dose myself, was a meal I never got tired of, and came in at about 75p.
()Strolling back the half-mile along the palm-fringed shoreline was a trip through the stages of a tropical island’s development. First, there was a place that is very popular with Thai visitors, the Magic Resort, an eclectic group of bungalows ranging from Margate beach huts to mini Swiss chalets, with (gasp) no pool and (even gasper) no “and Spa” in its name. Everything in the world of travel seems to be called something “and Spa” these days.
Just along from Magic was the swankiest place on the beach, but it had as much Thai charm (from the outside at least) as Brighton Marina.The biggest surprise came 100 yards further on — a stand of coconut palms harbouring a row of little cabins. And judging by the lack of bodyguards, it was not Brad and Angelina’s paparazzi-proof hideaway. Yes, unbelievably, there were still locals living on the beach.
Next down was a simple bamboo shelter with four mattresses — a little open-air massage hut, just like similar ones all along the beach. After all, the whole country ought to be called Thailand and Spa. But the ladies working here made no concessions to the wimpish western concept of the “relaxing massage”.
