Smiles
April 4th, 2008, 18:09
About a month ago ...
... I started out on my 6:30am morning run (well, 4 times a week at least) here in Hua Hin, which starts out going south along Petchkasem Rd ~ parallel to the ocean ~ for about 4 kilometers, and then, after crossing the road, I go straight down any one of the little Sois that ends as up a gateway to the quite lovely sandy beach which stretches for a good 10 kilometers south of town. On the beach I do an abrupt turn left and run the hardened sand back into Hua Hin and home again.
It's a terrific time of the morning ... the sun rising up over the Gulf of Thailand ... the temperature cool and the breezy breeze coming in off the ocean. There are a few die hard runners (Thai & farang tourist) coming in either direction, and the earliest beach concessionaires are just lazily and in-no-hurry starting to put the chairs out and the umbrellas up. As you run by you can see the bags of fresh vegetables and meat and seafood and cases of Coke and beer just bought at the early day market in town, which will be used up a few hours later by the beach-sitters on the beach.
This particular day (back then) was a Good One. My body felt fit, my breathing was in cadence, and I had gotten to the 'endorphin' stage . . . the stage where (if you're lucky ~ it doesn't always happen) you feel like you could run forever.
Ahead of me the long arc of Hua Hin beach stretched out before me, and I was all alone. As I ran I peered down the beach and a long way down the shore line, where the last little surviving waves lap lovingly up onto the sand, I saw what looked like a large tree branch (this was what I first thought) stuck into the sand at an odd angle .... half in water, half out.
At that moment I had only a mild curiosity at the sight, so I just kept running towards it. From the distance I was away it appreared like a bit of a mirage ~ like that scene in 'Lawrence of Arabia' where the Arab-and-camel appear shimmering and obscure out of the hot air of the desert. But, closing in on the object, it grew into a leg and paws ... and a bit closer it became the bloated body of a drowned beach/soi dog.
It's face had been half eaten away already (by what? Who knows how long it had been in the ocean before washing up), it's other three legs stiff as bamboo stalks, and all it's hair missing. It was just me and this dead dog at that moment ... no other runners or walkers or gawkers. I stood and looked at it for 5 minutes or so ... it was mesmerizing in it's loneliness.
Not a sight one expects on a morning run in paradise.
The beach in Hua Hin is the town's bread and butter tourist-wise. The town and the Tourist Police know that and make a great deal of effort to keep the sand and ocean clean. For the most part they do a good job . . . but this poor dog had just arrived and lay undiscovered at the time.
The Tourist Police office was closed as I finished my run down the beach at the town entrance, but I assumed that they would soon learn of the dog's sad demise and do their best to take care of the situation and assure that the tourists wouldn't become overly traumatized at the sight.
And then, today at about 12 noon ....
.... I stepped onto the beach (once again. How many times?) at the town end and started a walk southward toward my favourite beach chairs (about a kilometer), and the pleasant company of my favourite beach chair owner, a handsome Thai man in his late 20's who I, if not already taken, would be quite happy to jump in a millisecond.
Suphot's father had been taken to hospital with breathing problems a few days before, so Pot had taken the car and gone home to Surin for a week to look after him. For once, I was alone on the beach, with my book, my farmer's hat, my ugly shorts, and my thoughts.
I walked slowly (revelling in my aloneness, enjoying the for-once relative coolness of the mid-afternoon) along the beach, catching side glances at Thai boys, fat farangs, Thai ladies cooking corn-on-the-cob, a couple of topless broads with tiny tits . . . the usual beach detritus and happenings.
Up aways along the beach just past the Sofitel Hotel there is a beach consession well-known ~ and quite notorious ~ for it's funky hiphop/Rastarfarian music it blares out of speakers all day, and the general weirdness of the manager and employees there. I approached it as usual and said hello to a couple of the guys there (I had sat nursing a beer there fairly often), but walked on. Just past the place I happened upon a group of Thai guys gathered down by the waters edge ... all talking animatedly and pointing into the surf.
As I got closer I saw, half on the sand half in the water, a dark (sunburned?) upstretched arm poking out of the shallow water ... not 'Lawrence ...' this time, but more like the last scene in 'Deliverence'. With a great gulp I walked closer and closer, and only then did I realize that it was a corpse . . . a full-on, bloated, rigour-mortised, adult Thai man dead as a doornail, lying stretched out in the surf directly in front of 50 staring farang beach-sitters.
Again, mesmerized, I approached to about 12 feet or so ... no nearer. Some of the blackened skin had been peeled off, but as far as I could see there had been no obvious feasting on this dish. So it could not of been in the water all that long (I assume). The face was frozen, not in an obvious pain, but certainly not peaceful either.
Soon two of the boys from the consession grabbed a leg each and hauled the body up onto the sand where it was safe from the surf washing it back into the sea. One of them then ran up to the food stand and grabbed a old blue towel which he brought down and draped it over the torso and head. The towel wasn't big enough, so the legs stuck out like they do in the morgue when the coroner pulls out the body tray. It was quite windy and they needed to put little piles of wet sand on the towel to hold it down.
Then they waited for the Tourist Police to arrive and take over.
I walked on a bit later ... remembering that dog.
Who could know the story of this body? Was it a fisherman who had too much to drink aboard ship the night before, and slipped off into the drink? Was it a hit from the local mafia just doing their business? A suicide?
Later, lying in my beach chair, I wondered what had happened down there only 5 or 10 minutes or so before I arrived on the scene.
Had the sight of a dead body washing up on the beach brought screams of horror from The Chairs?
Had a farang who just happened to be swimming in the ocean at the time accidently bumped up against the floating cadaver? (What fun!).
But what I know is this . . . when I did go swimming about 2 hours later (a kilometer away from the scene of the crime) I was much more observant to my surroundings out there in the wavy waves. Much more skittish about 'strange dark shadows' appearing anywhere near me in the crashing surf.
Cheers ...
... I started out on my 6:30am morning run (well, 4 times a week at least) here in Hua Hin, which starts out going south along Petchkasem Rd ~ parallel to the ocean ~ for about 4 kilometers, and then, after crossing the road, I go straight down any one of the little Sois that ends as up a gateway to the quite lovely sandy beach which stretches for a good 10 kilometers south of town. On the beach I do an abrupt turn left and run the hardened sand back into Hua Hin and home again.
It's a terrific time of the morning ... the sun rising up over the Gulf of Thailand ... the temperature cool and the breezy breeze coming in off the ocean. There are a few die hard runners (Thai & farang tourist) coming in either direction, and the earliest beach concessionaires are just lazily and in-no-hurry starting to put the chairs out and the umbrellas up. As you run by you can see the bags of fresh vegetables and meat and seafood and cases of Coke and beer just bought at the early day market in town, which will be used up a few hours later by the beach-sitters on the beach.
This particular day (back then) was a Good One. My body felt fit, my breathing was in cadence, and I had gotten to the 'endorphin' stage . . . the stage where (if you're lucky ~ it doesn't always happen) you feel like you could run forever.
Ahead of me the long arc of Hua Hin beach stretched out before me, and I was all alone. As I ran I peered down the beach and a long way down the shore line, where the last little surviving waves lap lovingly up onto the sand, I saw what looked like a large tree branch (this was what I first thought) stuck into the sand at an odd angle .... half in water, half out.
At that moment I had only a mild curiosity at the sight, so I just kept running towards it. From the distance I was away it appreared like a bit of a mirage ~ like that scene in 'Lawrence of Arabia' where the Arab-and-camel appear shimmering and obscure out of the hot air of the desert. But, closing in on the object, it grew into a leg and paws ... and a bit closer it became the bloated body of a drowned beach/soi dog.
It's face had been half eaten away already (by what? Who knows how long it had been in the ocean before washing up), it's other three legs stiff as bamboo stalks, and all it's hair missing. It was just me and this dead dog at that moment ... no other runners or walkers or gawkers. I stood and looked at it for 5 minutes or so ... it was mesmerizing in it's loneliness.
Not a sight one expects on a morning run in paradise.
The beach in Hua Hin is the town's bread and butter tourist-wise. The town and the Tourist Police know that and make a great deal of effort to keep the sand and ocean clean. For the most part they do a good job . . . but this poor dog had just arrived and lay undiscovered at the time.
The Tourist Police office was closed as I finished my run down the beach at the town entrance, but I assumed that they would soon learn of the dog's sad demise and do their best to take care of the situation and assure that the tourists wouldn't become overly traumatized at the sight.
And then, today at about 12 noon ....
.... I stepped onto the beach (once again. How many times?) at the town end and started a walk southward toward my favourite beach chairs (about a kilometer), and the pleasant company of my favourite beach chair owner, a handsome Thai man in his late 20's who I, if not already taken, would be quite happy to jump in a millisecond.
Suphot's father had been taken to hospital with breathing problems a few days before, so Pot had taken the car and gone home to Surin for a week to look after him. For once, I was alone on the beach, with my book, my farmer's hat, my ugly shorts, and my thoughts.
I walked slowly (revelling in my aloneness, enjoying the for-once relative coolness of the mid-afternoon) along the beach, catching side glances at Thai boys, fat farangs, Thai ladies cooking corn-on-the-cob, a couple of topless broads with tiny tits . . . the usual beach detritus and happenings.
Up aways along the beach just past the Sofitel Hotel there is a beach consession well-known ~ and quite notorious ~ for it's funky hiphop/Rastarfarian music it blares out of speakers all day, and the general weirdness of the manager and employees there. I approached it as usual and said hello to a couple of the guys there (I had sat nursing a beer there fairly often), but walked on. Just past the place I happened upon a group of Thai guys gathered down by the waters edge ... all talking animatedly and pointing into the surf.
As I got closer I saw, half on the sand half in the water, a dark (sunburned?) upstretched arm poking out of the shallow water ... not 'Lawrence ...' this time, but more like the last scene in 'Deliverence'. With a great gulp I walked closer and closer, and only then did I realize that it was a corpse . . . a full-on, bloated, rigour-mortised, adult Thai man dead as a doornail, lying stretched out in the surf directly in front of 50 staring farang beach-sitters.
Again, mesmerized, I approached to about 12 feet or so ... no nearer. Some of the blackened skin had been peeled off, but as far as I could see there had been no obvious feasting on this dish. So it could not of been in the water all that long (I assume). The face was frozen, not in an obvious pain, but certainly not peaceful either.
Soon two of the boys from the consession grabbed a leg each and hauled the body up onto the sand where it was safe from the surf washing it back into the sea. One of them then ran up to the food stand and grabbed a old blue towel which he brought down and draped it over the torso and head. The towel wasn't big enough, so the legs stuck out like they do in the morgue when the coroner pulls out the body tray. It was quite windy and they needed to put little piles of wet sand on the towel to hold it down.
Then they waited for the Tourist Police to arrive and take over.
I walked on a bit later ... remembering that dog.
Who could know the story of this body? Was it a fisherman who had too much to drink aboard ship the night before, and slipped off into the drink? Was it a hit from the local mafia just doing their business? A suicide?
Later, lying in my beach chair, I wondered what had happened down there only 5 or 10 minutes or so before I arrived on the scene.
Had the sight of a dead body washing up on the beach brought screams of horror from The Chairs?
Had a farang who just happened to be swimming in the ocean at the time accidently bumped up against the floating cadaver? (What fun!).
But what I know is this . . . when I did go swimming about 2 hours later (a kilometer away from the scene of the crime) I was much more observant to my surroundings out there in the wavy waves. Much more skittish about 'strange dark shadows' appearing anywhere near me in the crashing surf.
Cheers ...