Malee Narak – Island Flower, Part Two

On a beautiful sunny morning Simon and Malee leave for Samui Island. In a bit more than one and a half hours the speedboat takes them over to Hat Bang Rak, a beach on the Northern coast of Samui. While Malee immediately sets off on a motorcycle taxi to meet one of her resort’s business partners at nearby Mae Nam beach, Simon catches a sawngthaew to his hotel at South Chaweng. He booked the place in advance, securing a significant discount through his company back home. It’s a nice place in a beautiful setting, with a mishmash of wooden bungalows snaking up the shallow slope from the beach to Chaweng’s beach road. Yet Simon is not entirely happy with it. It’s not unique in any way, too large to be intimate or feel secluded. Worst of all, it seems predominantly packed with package tour groups and elderly couples.

Simon cruises along Chaweng beach area on his rented Honda Dream and finds it irritatingly off-putting. There are construction sites everywhere, rows of shops and restaurants end-to-end on both sides of the road, Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, and else…!

At first Simon even finds it difficult finding the way to the waterfront, until he discovers that he has to boldly tramp into one of the narrow Sois right through the grounds of one of the beach resorts.

And then of course there are the crowds: Mundane tourists on family vacation, backpackers of all ages, intoxicated party people, heavily tattooed skinheads, beer-gutted rednecks, annoying touts, vocal vendors, “your best friend” tailors, bored massage girls, tarted up bar girls! It’s all there, mayhem concentrated on a few miles of sand and concrete hugging the north-eastern shore of the island. And this is still low season! Simon doesn’t dare to imagine what Samui must be like between January and May.

After spending a few hours getting his bearings on the Eastern part of the island, Simon picks Malee up at northern Mae Nam beach in the early evening. She suggests having dinner at the beach again, just like they did the previous night on Koh Tao.

Oh yes, Simon enjoys cruising the island’s crumbling roads with sexy Malee clinging onto him, dodging other motosais driven recklessly by Thais and foreign tourists alike, clusters of rubble, dirt, sand, coconuts, and of course Samui’s famously slippery gullies.

For minutes they are stuck behind a pick-up with blaring loudspeakers, advertising a Muay Thai fight this evening! It’s deafeningly annoying, but he doesn’t dare overtaking on the busy stretch of road they find themselves on! It perpetually goes: “Tonight tonight, start at 9pm, start at 9pm, see the real Muay Thai, see the real Muay Thai, super fight, you will never disappointed, book now, not later, not later, great fight great fight…!”After ten minutes of this Simon’s nerves are wrecked to a rabidly degree!

Finally they settle at Central Chaweng’s Ark Bar, right on the beach, comfortably stretching out on picnic mats and floor pillows. While the setting at the waterfront is quite nice, the ambience is only so so. Crowds are watching soccer on a big screen nearby, and loudspeakers are blaring out trance music. Not very sedate!

Always seizing a chance of testing his paltry Thai language capabilities, Simon beckons one of the non-smiling waitresses to place their order, but she only looks at him with a blank face. It’s only after Malee repeats Simon’s order and the waitress still doesn’t understand, they realize she doesn’t speak Thai at all. Simon feels relieved his Thai has not failed him after all and repeats their order in plain English! Fortunately this works!

“Waiters here not Thai!”, Malee explains knowledgeable. “Have many people here from Lao and Myanmar! Cheap work!”

Their pricey orders are greasy, bland, and generally underwhelming. On later days they enjoy larger amounts of spectacularly delicious food at local restaurants inland for a quarter of the money.

While at dinner Malee’s phone rings again. It rang several times while they were riding on the motorcycle, but she never cared to pick up. It’s here boyfriend calling. This time she talks to him.

“Hello Daaling! Yes! I have dinner now! Where? At beach! Yes! My friend with me! Where we go later? Go sleep daaling! No! Go sleep alone! Don’t worry!”

She laughs. It doesn’t sound very reassuring. And really, only minutes later, almost as if he had a presentiment, she pops the question.

“Simon, you want to sleep alone?”

“Does that mean you want to stay with me?”

“Why not? Can! You want?”

“Sure! That would be nice!”

Actually Simon hadn’t thought it likely she would stay overnight with him, at least not at the time when he agreed to visit her. He expected her to sleep in her resort’s staff quarters on Koh Tao where she shares a large room with two other girls. He also made a booking for single occupancy at his Samui bungalow, as she had told him she would have to stay in her own place on Samui also.

“You know, on Samui I must sleep alone because of boyfriend! He trust me! I stay with you my co-workers will talk talk! I don’t want!”

Foolishly Simon took her words at face value. However, he’s not worried about it now. They will sneak around reception at his hotel, and anyway even if they get sighted, his room is the same price for single and double occupancy. Upon checking-in Simon even received a breakfast coupon for two for the duration of his stay. Their luck!

So they take off back to his hotel, and indeed manage to sneak around front desk unnoticed. Even at this time Simon isn’t fostering any naughty plans about their night together. No doubt he’s tempted to revisit last year’s sensual experiences, but if she doesn’t make a move he will not seduce her. He realizes this will be hard, but he respects her being in a relationship now and is determined not to interfere with it for quite a number of reasons.

As she has left all her stuff at her resort’s Samui office, Simon hands Malee one of his shirts to use as a pyjama. With a coy smile she disappears into the bathroom, only to re-emerge twenty minutes later wearing it. Malee’s quite tall, so the shirt barely touches her thighs, partly revealing a sexy black slip underneath. The top few buttons are unbuttoned and she has obviously removed her bra. From his bed he can even spot the unique beauty spot on her left upper chest he had become so intimately familiar with not so very long ago.

Walking to the mirror, she removes the towel she had wrapped around her wet hair. Waterdrops land on her chest and make the shirt stick to her body in some surprisingly well placed spots. Simon is not taking his eyes off her, literally devouring her with them, and she must know it without even meeting his eyes. She’s definitely got his attention now, the blood in his veins stirred up to a hurricane.

“Soooo velly velly tired”, she yawns, turning around to him, and finally slides on the bed and under the blanket!

Simon’s teeth are audibly grinding now, but he resists touching her. She moves closer, her back facing him. He can feel the incredibly smooth and soft skin of her legs rubbing against his. God does she smell good! With her left hand she grabs his arm and moves it around her, so that Simon is embracing her. His head is spinning with paralytic indecision.

“Good night!”, she says.

She’s asleep within seconds…

Next morning they wake early but lazily stay in bed another hour, lying close to each other, cuddled up in each other’s arms, just like they had spent most of the night sleeping. Simon still can’t believe he found the strength to not just rip that shirt of his of her body and consume her last night.

Oh, how Simon enjoys lying close to her. Detailed memories of their time in Chiang Mai are surfacing that he already thought forgotten. Only this time, for reasons he’s not entirely conscious of, he doesn’t feel as vulnerable to getting romantically involved with her as he did back then. The delicious girl he’s held in his arms for hours now is still Malee, but he can’t help the subtle feeling something about her has changed. He has yet to find out what and why…

Simon takes her to the beachside terrace for buffet breakfast, confidently handing over his breakfast coupon for two to one of the waiters. What’s on offer is reasonable, but he thinks for the money he’s paying he has certainly seen better, but that’s Samui. What’s more irritating than the selection of food on offer are the people around them, the ubiquitous package holiday crowd, the sort of people who walk up to the buffet filming each other with their video cams. That alone wouldn’t bother him much, but it’s these very people more or less discretely eyeing him and his curvy Thai companion that does. He’s familiar with these kinds of stares, has already learned telling apart the curious glances from the sneering to outright disapproving ones. Probably he should have already learned just ignoring them too, but unfortunately he has never quite managed doing so. Bigoted fools, guests in Thailand, Malee’s homeland, not coming to grips with a Thai girl and a Western guy in their midst, innocently enjoying breakfast. It’s quite bizarre.

They leave the breakfast area full yet irritated. Walking through the gardens back to his bungalow, Simon notices that Malee is seriously miffed.

“What is it? I can see you are angry at something! What’s wrong?”

“The waitress, she very rude!”, she bursts out. “She say bad things to me! I don’t understand!”

Malee explains how one waitress had addressed her impolitely and questioned her presence at breakfast. Simon didn’t notice, busy descending on the buffet at that time. It takes Simon some effort to cool her down again. He tells her to next time tell him immediately if something like this happens again. Fortunately it doesn’t.

Malee returns to work, leaving the entire day for Simon to explore the island. Simon is quite pleased with this prospect. He has enjoyed Malee’s company, but has also been craving for some freedom and solitude already. Armed with his guidebook, the official Samui Guide Map, and Pothole Research’s delightful Samui trip report, he speeds off on his motorcycle, dead set on exploring the island.

Quickly scooting along awakening Chaweng Beach Road, dodging some packs of what looks like already – or still – drunk British soccer hooligans and overtaking a few chubby tourist women, dangerously balancing toddlers on their arms while steering their overloaded motosais single-handedly down the road, obviously in an attempt to copy locally proven practices. Finally he leaves the epitome of insanity behind him.

Greener pastures await, or so he hopes, as what he has seen of Samui so far has only led him to the belief the Thais do really have a knack for ravaging island paradise. Yet he has to search for quite a long time to find what he has been looking for. He torments his motosai up and down the steepest dirt tracks in the islands interior, explores unpromising back roads leading to the muddy beaches of the Southern coast, takes in the views of cell phone towers poking out of the landscape from palm tree covered hills, before he finally makes it to the peaceful beaches of the West coast, scenery-wise for him the most beautiful and scenic spots on the entire island.

Just as Simon settles down and catches a breath, enjoying the fresh sea breeze and taking in the sound of the waves, the ring of his cell phone breaks the enjoyable silence. It’s Malee.

“Hello! I finish work already! We meet now?”

“Mai daai! I’m far far away on the other side of the island! I need time to go back!”

“Other side of the island where?”

“Ao Taling Ngam! South of Nathon! That’s where I am! I’ll be back at Chaweng before dark! I meet you then!”

“You lie! You with other girl!”

Simon can tell by the sound of her voice she’s not teasing him. Before he can say anything she hangs up. This episode has somewhat spoiled his enjoyment of this beautiful and long sought after spot on the island now.

He has already learned that spending time with Malee can be quite irritating at times, but he has never really let her spoil his holiday mood. Tall and curvy Malee can make quite a sophisticated impression! Yet often when she opens her mouth it’s like a balloon spouting hot air! She’s extremely proficient at saying one thing but doing the opposite moments later – that is if she hasn’t forgotten about it until then. And it also appears she’s incapable of walking and talking at the same time! Whenever she opens her mouth to say something, her walking gets excruciatingly slow, or she stops in her tracks altogether! Jealousy is new though. Simon hadn’t seen that from her so far, and didn’t really expect it from her either, given the fact that she was the one with a partner in her life and not him. Still Simon doesn’t feel surprised about her reaction. He simply chooses to ignore it.

Approaching Chaweng via some back roads a mob of nasty hookers hunting in packs chase him on their motorcycle almost the entire way back to his resort, quite crudely trying to endear themselves to him. He shakes them off. Arriving back to his resort dirty and sweaty from a long day of touring what seemed to him like every last corner of the island short after nightfall, Malee already waits for him at on the patio of his bungalow. She looks blasé, but Simon knows this doesn’t mean a thing.

He casually tells her about his discoveries of today and what plans he’s already fostering for the days to come. She listens but doesn’t show much interest.

“Why foreigner make plan for everything?” she then asks “My boyfriend just like that! Make me crazy!”

Simon chuckles under his breath.

He showers and then takes her out for dinner, avoiding the touristy fare on the beaches. She talks to her boyfriend on her cell phone while sitting side-saddle on the back of his motosai, reciting the same phrases over and over again like a mantra for minutes:

“No, he just a friend! Don’t worry! Trust me!”

Simon takes her to a nice little roadside restaurant that drew his attention while cruising the island during daylight hours. As expected, food is plentiful and satisfying.

“You know, my boyfriend, he never eat at place like this! He say is not clean! He tell me not to eat here! I tell him I’m Thai so I can! I don’t understand! He never share food with me! Always want own plate for him alone! Always complain about me eating too slowly! He always angry for that!

Simon listens sympathetically while casually checking his cell phone for a text message from his Bangkok based friend. Malee flashes an angrily jealous glance at him that doesn’t go unnoticed. He later notices she does so every time he only ever does as much as touch his phone in front of her.

“You have another girl here! I know!” she sulks and whines.

In his eyes her behavior is getting silly, but yet he ignores it. The good times still prevail.

Malee says she feels sleepy again, so they head back to the resort. Her staying over at his place again for the night is not even subject of discussion anymore. Taking a detour via a short stretch of beach on their way back a couple of souvenir hawkers cross their path, ominously whispering: “Marijuana? Marijuana?” Samui really has it all.

Despite Malee having brought some of her stuff over to his place, she still prefers to put on Simon’s shirt for the night. Remembering last night’s sight he doesn’t have any objections.

And this time he can’t hold back anymore. She slowly but surely takes the initiative, first only innocently cuddling close to him like she did the night before, but soon sliding her slender fingers up and down his chest and below, sniff kissing his shoulder and arms, caressing his skin.

Simon reciprocates, hesitatingly at first, but soon more boldly. That’s when she starts kissing him slightly on his cheek, moving closer to his lips, and finally locking her own moist lips on his. Her warm body presses against his, and as her touches become more intense and agitated her shirt quickly comes off.

Stickman's thoughts:

Stick is about to die from exhaustion so no comments today – sorry.