My prerogative

This place ain't so bad at all. Nice beach, tons of cheap shopping, plenty of restaurants and night spots to check out. I think I'll try to rent a scooter and venture out around the island tomorrow, and maybe later in the week go on a day trip to Phi Phi Island, where Leo filmed The Beach.

Then again, I may just be a lazy bum and do none of that. It's my prerogative, after all, seeing as how it's my vacation and I write all the rules.

Last night I checked out a few local spots and a couple of cabaret shows. They weren't nearly as raunchy as the one I saw in Bangkok the other night -- praise the lord! -- and were, instead, a bit more laughable than anything. As has been a common sight on my previous trip to Thailand (Koh Samui), the attempts to lip synch while dealing with a marginal command of the English language made some of the numbers hilarious. In particular, the drag queen doing her rendition of a Celine ditty was enough to turn anyone off Ms. Dion. Sorry, let me clarify: anyone who isn't already turned off by Ms. Dion.

For some reason, I tend to attract Thai guys. Having said that, however, I think any white guy who looks like he may have money tends to attract Thai guys. But last night I couldn't help noticing a tall white guy who kept looking at me. Now, when a guy is cruising me, I can tend to be a bit clueless most of the time on occasion. This guy, however, couldn't have been more freakin' obvious.

I wasn't remotely interested, so it took all of my considerable skill to avoid his constant glares and ever-obvious attempts to cross paths with me. In fact, it eventually became a bit of a game for me to steer clear of Tall Guy over the course of a couple of hours. But by evening's end, I was able to give myself an internal high-five at the fact that I managed to elude him and make my way safely back home alone.

So today dawns and I make my way to the beach. Ploppin' my big ol' body on a beach chair, who do I see two chairs away? Damn, it's Tall Guy. Still, I figured I was up to the task of avoidance yet again, and managed to keep to myself for a couple of hours until he blatantly walked up to me and started asking questions on the premise of how long I've had my tatoo, did it hurt, etc.

"Fine," I thought, "I'll be polite and talk to him." And I did the gentlemanly thing, conducting polite conversation with Tall Guy, who happened to be from Germany. I even let him introduce his friends to me and continued talking with them all. We talked politics, we talked about some changes the German government is making to the German language, we talked about different holiday hotspots, we talked about Americans, we talked about Vancouver. We talked about a lot of things, but at no time did I ever give him any indication that I was interested in him in any way. So, of course, it came as somewhat of a surprise when he started hittin' on me in a big bad way. Dumb-ass German guy.

So there's me doing my best avoid-eye-contact-at-any-and-all-costs routine. I'm moving away from him physically and making every kind of effort to remove myself emotionally from our conversation. And still, he persists. Dumb-ass German guy.

Jeepers, why can't people pick up on visual cues? I'm literally doing everything I can to give him the news without being rude. Finally, however, I had to make it clear that I wasn't interested in anything except conversation. He didn't take it that well. Dumb-ass German guy.