The Jersey Shore of Thailand

One week of teaching under our belts and the ladies and I plopped down with the other teachers from the high school at the shack outside the school gates and we didn’t move till closing. The next day we were up early and standing on the side of the road with our bags flagging down cabs or vans to try and find a beach called Cha-am. We grabbed a taxi to the nearest civilized area where we met a policeman who just told us to sit. He made a van appear out of nowhere and ushered us on to it. An hour and a half later we were in what I’m going to say is the Thai equivalent to the Jersey Shore. Note: this statement is complete speculation as I’ve never been to Jersey and I’ve made it a personal goal to never see an episode of the reality series. We were told to expect a lot of looks because this area is more of a vacation hangout for the Thais from Bangkok and the surrounding providences and farangs don’t usually visit the area. What we weren’t told was that this is also a hotspot for the mafia and motorcycle gangs. At all hours of the night you could see and hear hundreds of motorcycles, crotch-rockets and scooters-on-steroids. They seemed to enjoy the one stretch of road that is worth seeing in Cha-am and of course that was the road all the hostels were on.

The mafia was a bit harder to spot but I like to think they were the groups of old guys shitfaced at noon sitting on the steps outside street vendors or 7/11s, yelling and making all kinds of ruckus. I swear they were even wearing bowler hats.

Strip of road across from the beach

The girls and I dropped our bags off at the first cheap hostel we found then walked across the street to the beach. We had been walking for about two minutes when we ran into other OEGers who we chatted with till I noticed the used Q-Tip I was sitting on. Looking around, the beach was filthy. Bottles, glass, bottle caps, trash of all kids was everywhere. We retreated to the pool at the hotel our OEG friends were staying at for the remainder of the afternoon.

We had a simple night. It’s the off season for Cha-am so the crazy Jersey town we were told would keep us up all night actually lulled us into a daze as the sun went down. We grabbed street food then plopped down at one of the beach tables to eat. We sat at the first table for all of five minutes before a woman who has never heard the term "toothbrush" came to stare us into giving her 100 baht so we could sit at the table. We got up and moved maybe 100 feet and were not disturbed for the rest of the evening.

When the sun was gone some of the Thai people sitting around us brought over some candles for our table. The sunset and the sound of the waves accented the magical image candlelight seems to always limn. All night long we commented on the reality of being on a beach in Thailand and how many more beach nights there are to come.

The overpass we were thrown under

Getting to Cha-am had gone a little too smoothly as far as traveling in Thailand goes. We made up for it on the trip back. First we did a nice loop of Cha-am's main road to find a van station to take us back to Samut Sahkon. When we finally found one he still had no idea where we wanted to go. Jenna and S were sitting up front and they pointed at a sign on the highway overpass that was the exit for Samut Sahkon. The driver got all excited, nodding and laughing, and decided to just pull over and dump us under the overpass. We hopped the guard railings and played a quick game of Frogger (points lost for the wicked bruise on my knee from not jumping high enough on guardrails) to get to the other side of the street. We practically jumped onto the first cab we saw. This cab was driven by the Thai dopple-ganger of Morgan Freeman. Mr. Freeman refused to shift out of first gear so we went about 15-20 mph down the highway while he turned up the radio. "Chopin! You know Chopin?" Oh yes, Morgan Freeman knew his classics. Jenna and I were in tears from trying to hide our laughter. H, who was sitting up front directing Mr. Freeman, could only shake her head at him while doing some kind of Thai sign language to get us home, the only form of communication us farang know. Never a dull moment when traveling in Thailand.