Moonin' Round Asia: Outwitted By 6 Year Olds, Consistently

Ko Samui is an expensive island. There’s no two ways about that, and due to this we won’t be able to stay here for very long. Knowing this, we decided to have a day where we wouldn’t be counting pennies – really just a day to enjoy ourselves and have some fun. We started Monday around 1:00pm after missing the breakfast provided by our hotel. We instead opted for Mexican food at Coyote. I know what you’re thinking… Mexican food in Thailand? Surprisingly though, the food wasn’t terrible. After plowing through a couple of plates of slop, Molly began her search for a proper Spa while I walked the beach in search of our hotel’s pool. After a thorough whooping of Molly in a heated game of one-on-one Marco Polo, we came back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner.

We decided to dine at a nice place on the beach and took a quick lap to find a place that served fresh seafood barbeque. We found a cool little place with lounge chairs for table chairs and were just in time for happy hour. After a couple of whiskey sours, it became glaringly obvious that not only were we there to eat, but we had also become the target of countless beach peddlers. There were people selling light up necklaces and laser pointers, makeshift hot air balloons, pictures with giant iguanas and baggies of weed. Our first attack was from the guys with the giant iguanas. These guys are completely relentless. They would walk over, put the lizard eye-to-eye with you and then just put this monster right on ya. The first time I was approached, I was able to fight them off with an array of “NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!” The second time, I wasn’t so lucky as this lizard monger just threw him right on my shoulder. The lizard seemed to stare me in the eyes while saying, “That’s 100 baht, schmuck.” I told the monger that I hated reptiles and to please get him off. This was enough to do the trick but the lizard gave me the look of “I’ll forgive, but I just won’t forget.” I think he wished he had peed on me.

Shortly after the walk by lizarding, the onslaught of children began. These little bastards weren’t selling a product or service, rather humiliation. There were roughly 30 of them roaming around with Connect 4 boards ridiculing people into attempting to take them on in what seems to be a very easy game. Unfortunately, these tiny wizards are trained killing machines on the Connect 4 board. I’m not sure it’s possible to beat them. If you do win, I’m certain that it’s only to give you enough hope to agree to play them a few more times. In order to challenge a C4 Tiny Wizard, you had to bet 100 baht.

The first girl that approached me was no older than 10. Before she even started her spiel I replied, “No thank you.” While this dismissal may seem somewhat harsh, as a male roaming the streets of Ko Samui, you are CONSTANTLY bombarded by guys standing outside custom tailor shops who are trying to sell you suits. It’s the most obnoxious thing of all time. It all starts out the same way too, “Hey boss, where are you from? Australia?” I initially tried to be nice, thank them for thinking of me and excuse myself. However, when there are 3 suit shops on one block, you can imagine that this is quite a time consuming process. If I were trying to get somewhere 15 blocks away, I’d need 2 days to get there. But, I digress… After the first dismissal, this tiny person demanded I play her and sat down in front of me and set the board up. Again, I proclaimed, “No thank you.” She was clearly insulted and angered by this as she stood up, walked over to me, pulled my ear lobe and said, “I don’t like you” before walking away. I’ll be damned if I let this go down without any rebuttal, but the only thing I could come up with was, “I don’t like YOU!” She walked away and found another drunk challenger a few tables away. We made eyes back and forth a few times and I think I saw her mouth the word “Bitch” at me once, but I let it go, trying to be the bigger person.

After a few more drinks my nerve had grown and I told Molly, “Look, pictures of you playing a 9 year old in Connect 4 will be great for the blog. You’re clearly smarter than I, so I think you should play a C4 Wizard in a battle of wits.” She agreed and found the least assuming child she could, a 7 year old boy with a rapist’s wit. She gave a good fight, but was beaten in about 8 turns. I paid the little monster his 100 baht while he took what appeared to be a very important cell phone call. Apparently, the person on the other end of the phone didn’t realize he was at work.

Angered by this beating, I decided I’d take on the next challenger that walked by. It was a 6 year old girl whose name I didn’t care to know. She was a fierce negotiator though and I was awed by her negotiation tactics. I asked her how much we were betting and she told me “100 baht.” I told her there was absolutely no way I was going to bet 100 baht, that I was color blind and this was a no-win situation for me. She cared not for handicaps and demanded a 100 baht bet. I declined and said, “20 baht or nothing.” She countered with 150 baht, which totally caught me off guard (I thought when 2 parties start negotiating, you meet somewhere in the middle of the opening bids). This went back and forth for about 40 seconds. In this time she tried to sell me on a price higher than she originally asked, then tried to sell me a multi-game package and then resorted to ridicule before I finally told her, “Look, it’s 20 baht or you’re going to have to just find another sucker!” She finally buckled and the match was underway. I didn’t even make it as far as Molly before she beat me, held out her hand for the cash, stuck her tongue out at me and walked away. Fuming, I yelled at her, “Go home and get some rest you little monster!”

For the sake of your entertainment, and because I’d had about 5 whiskey sours, I then agreed to hold one of the giant iguanas, but not for the 100 baht that the dragonmaster requester, for 20 baht and Molly would take a digital picture of the beast and I rather than the Polaroid they were offering. The dragonmaster was not pleased at all, but Molly held her ground in negotiations while this beast and I just stared at one another. As soon as Molly took the picture I whimpered, “ok, get it off, get it off!”

We decided we’d had enough of giving our money away and headed back towards the town to meet a few friends we’d made at the Black Moon Party the week before on Ko Phangan. We caught up with them at a dive bar next to the Green Mango, an enormous club. There were a group of Lady Boys standing right outside this joint and Molly demanded I take a picture with them. Having lost all shreds of dignity to a 6 year old, I figured I may as well. I wish they had done a better job of keeping their hands to themselves, but I managed to pull away before they had the opportunity to turn inappropriate touching into full scale sexual assault.

We had a few buckets, did a lot of dancing and then headed over to the Green Mango where the party continued. At this point, we’d been overserved once again and the night was clearly drawing to a close. As one last parting gift, on the way to the bathroom, a nice and clearly sober young man decided to move a very heavy table and accidentally dropped it right on the bridge of my foot, which slid down and annihilated my ring toe. Fortunately, with all of the drinks I’d had, it didn’t hurt all that much and as soon as I realized it wasn’t bleeding, I completely forgot about it.

Molly started to feel less than 100% at this point and we excused ourselves from our group, said our farewells and headed towards home. We stopped at 711 to get a couple of huge bottles of water, where Molly ended up depositing another small pile of vomit, and went home for the night.

This morning, I woke up and realized that my toe looks very much to be broken. Have a look at the gnarly picture below. I’m praying it’ll heal in a few days because we have lots of traveling to do. Molly also has a couple of mysterious black and blue marks on her legs, but is all-in-all in pretty good shape. She was, however, unlucky enough to come down with a mean ear infection that she got antibiotics for today.

We’re out of here tomorrow, Wednesday, on our way to Krabi and Railay Beach on the Andaman Coast (west coast) of Thailand. I’m going to desperately search for a hotel with wi-fi in the rooms, but to this point, that hasn’t been easy.

More adventures to come soon, but for tonight, we need to just take it easy and watch some tv and prepare for tomorrow’s 7 hour trek.