The Beach   T A B L E_T A L K Hot summers and spicy food! Meditate on the thrilling pleasures of Spain in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk   R E C E N T L Y Storming "The Beach" By Rolf Potts A backpacker in search of adventure in Thailand puts the moves on Leonardo DiCaprio (02/09/99) Looking for Abdelati By Tanya Shaffer An unexpected journey into the heart of a family in Casablanca (02/07/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (02/05/99) Dead ends in London By Laura Billings Jack the Ripper returns to life on a grisly but gripping tour (02/04/99) Korea's no-man's-land By Rolf Potts The DMZ is one of the planet's oddest tourist attractions, where visitors can pick up everything from propaganda to perfume (02/03/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		BACKSTAGE ON "THE BEACH" | PAGE 1, 2, - - - - - - - - - - Now that I've had time to think about it, I'd say the motivation behind my mission has a lot to do with a kind of traveler's angst. I know I'm not the only one who feels it. In his 1975 essay "The Loss of the Creature," Walker Percy attributes traveler's angst to the idea that our various destinations have been "appropriated by the symbolic complex which has already formed in the sightseer's mind." In other words, the angst originates not in watching fat, Speedo-wearing German men defile once-pristine beaches -- the angst comes from our own media-driven notions of how those beaches should be in the first place. We cannot hike the Himalayas without drawing comparisons to the IMAX film we saw last summer; we cannot taste wine on the Seine without recalling a funny scene from an old Meg Ryan movie; we cannot get lost in a South American jungle without thinking of the Gabriel García Márquez novel we read in college. It is the expectation itself that robs a bit of authenticity from the destinations we seek out. Even the unexpected comes with its own set of expectations: In Garland's novel, Richard interprets what he sees at his beach utopia through the language of the Vietnam War movies he saw as a teenager. Percy attempts to explain this phenomenon in his essay. "The highest point," he writes, "the term of the sightseer's satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-formed symbolic complex." The challenge this poses for the discerning traveler is that -- here at the cusp of the next millennium -- mass media has not only monopolized the symbolic complex of wonder and beauty, it has recently upped the ante by an extra 73 coconut palm trees. Thus, by storming "The Beach" at Phi Phi Leh, I hope to travel behind the curtain, to break out from the confines of the consumer experience by attempting to break into the creation of the consumer experience. In this way, I guess I could say that my mission is part of a greater struggle for individuality in the information age -- an attempt to live outside the realm of who I'm supposed to be. At least, that's what I would have told the Danes yesterday, had I had my wits about me. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Today I successfully managed to avoid the Danes entirely. After sneaking a shower at a poolside changing room in Ton Sai, I set off to find a boat that would take me to Phi Phi Leh. Since stealth is an important consideration in my mission, choosing the right boat was a painfully difficult process. Actually, choosing a boat wasn't really a choice at all, since my only realistic option was to hire out one of the longtail boats that transport people and goods among the islands. Considering that these boats cut through the water as gracefully as bulldozers (none of them have mufflers), my only real option was in finding a driver who sympathized with my cause and wouldn't try to cheat me. Just before dinner, I found a seemingly earnest boat driver who agreed to take me to Phi Phi Leh for 2,500 baht. We leave in a few hours. It is already well after dark, and I have stashed my backpack under one of the old fishing huts here at Lomudi. In addition to dry clothes, I have sealed my passport and a few traveler's checks into my plastic swimming bag. Andrew MacDonald's Italian leather screenplay binder, I'm afraid, was too heavy and will have to stay behind. I pace the shoreline, killing time before the arrival of the longtail boat. Tiny bits of phosphorescence glow, star-blue, at the edge of the waves, just as they do in the book. DAY SIX: Jan. 22 -- Storming "The Beach" at Phi Phi Leh, continued It occurs to me that I don't know the name of the small, sun-browned Thai man who sits astern from me in the darkness. I hate to write him off as a minor character -- "Boat Driver No. 1" -- so I have been thinking of him as "Jimmy." He just seems like someone who should be named Jimmy: trustworthy, average, unassuming. Even in the dark, he wears a wide-brimmed cloth cap. Neither of us has spoken since I waded out and climbed into the longtail back at Lomudi. Both of us know we are breaking the law -- that Phi Phi Leh is patrolled by police speedboats for the duration of the movie shoot. I am hoping that our drop-off site at Loh Samah Bay (instead of Maya Bay, where the film set is located) isn't patrolled very closely at 3:30 in the morning. Unlike most of the longtail operators I met in Ton Sai, Jimmy is a quiet, introspective man. When we were negotiating the trip yesterday afternoon, he nodded silently as I took out a dive-shop map of Phi Phi Leh and told him where I wanted to go. At first I thought he couldn't speak any English, but he cut me short when I tried to use my Thai phrase book on him. "Three in the morning, OK," he'd said. "I know Loh Saman Bay." I suspect he is working to support a wife and kids somewhere. 2,500 baht -- about $70 -- is no small sum, but I have written it off as an inevitability. Edmund Hillary had to hire Sherpas; I had to hire Jimmy. Perhaps in an effort to accommodate me -- or, just as likely, in an effort to conceal me -- Jimmy has spread a rattan mat out on the ribbed wooden floor of the boat. Lying on the mat, clutching my plastic bag, all I can see is the bright wash of stars above me. Oddly, the thumping rattle of the outboard motor somehow makes the stars seem closer, like they are a glittering kind of music video that hovers just over the boat. My thoughts drift as the boat pushes through the water. I think about my first week in Thailand, when I was quick-dosing on an anti-malaria drug called Lariam. Mild psychosis is a side-effect of the drug, and -- sure enough -- on my second day of taking the pills I punched my fist through the door of my hotel room on Khao San Road. It was certainly one of the more violent acts of my adult life, and to this day I have trouble making sense of it. I don't know why I did it; all I remember was how I felt in the moments before security arrived to kick me out of the hotel. It was not a feeling of dread or shock, as one might expect, but rather a bemused, incongruent sense of wonder. Certainly Leonardo DiCaprio must feel the same way each morning when he wakes up and walks into a world that is staring at him. "What the hell," I remember thinking to myself, "has happened to me?" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - After about 20 minutes, Jimmy suddenly cuts the outboard motor. The silence leaves my ears ringing. I sit up on the mat uncertainly. "Are we there?" I whisper. The boat rocks as Jimmy crawls up to join me on the mat. He pushes his face right up in front of mine, and I see that he is holding his finger to his lips. He rests a hand on my shoulder and peers past the bow into the darkness. We sit this way for about 10 minutes. Strangely, I am not nearly as nervous as I was on the verandah of the Cape Panwha Resort Hotel. Swimming and hiking are tangible activities -- far more cut-and-dry than schmoozing and coaxing information. But swimming and hiking are not the only obstacles that remain: Jimmy curses softly and moves back to the stern of the longtail. Only then do I hear it -- the sound of an approaching speedboat. Before long, our wooden boat is awash in the beam of a spotlight. I try to hide myself under the rattan mat, but it's a useless gesture. Embarrassed more than anything, I lie awkwardly in the bottom of the longtail while Jimmy and someone on the speedboat yell back and forth in Thai. I absently note that the sealing oil on the hull boards has a pleasant, cedary scent. Surprisingly, Jimmy yells in his apologetic tone for only a couple of minutes before the speedboat cuts its spotlight and leaves. "OK," Jimmy says. "It's OK?" I say, looking out from my hiding place. "OK," Jimmy says. I crawl out and move to the stern next to Jimmy. He rests his hand on my shoulder. "OK?" he says for the third time. I give him the thumbs up; he starts up the outboard and turns our boat 180 degrees. It's a couple of beats before I realize that we are headed back for Phi Phi Don. "Isn't this where we just came from?" I ask, pointing my finger ahead into the darkness. "OK!" Jimmy says. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - It takes me a good five minutes before I can undo the knot on my plastic swim bag. I'm not particularly proud of what I'm about to do, but I feel like I've come too far to give up now. I crawl back over to Jimmy and I shove the traveler's checks underneath his nose. "Bak-sheesh," I say, gesturing back at where we last saw the speedboat. Actually, I'm not even sure if "bak-sheesh" is the correct word for "bribe" in this part of the world. I feel a little doltish as I say it, like I'm trying to speak Spanish by throwing out English phrases in a Speedy Gonzalez voice. Jimmy puts his hand on my shoulder in what I now take as a wizened parental gesture. He looks down sympathetically at my traveler's checks. "Boat man, OK," he says. "Eye-land man, maybe OK. Movie man: no. Movie man not OK." He gently pushes my checks away. "Yes! OK!" I say, still waving the traveler's checks, but he just shakes his head. The very trustworthiness that led me to hire Jimmy is now backfiring on me. Jimmy knows that, even if I manage to bribe my way past the various levels of Thai security on the island, a film crew with a $40 million budget will be less than impressed with my presence. Jimmy is simply trying to save me the money and stress of going through this whole ordeal. I'm at a loss to convince him how that very ordeal is exactly what I want to experience. Which Speedy Gonzalez catch phrases could make Jimmy grasp the pitch and moment that drive this enterprise? What can I say that will make Jimmy appreciate the intricate, shadowlike ironies of travel culture? How can Jimmy come to understand a moral world where it's somehow vital to avoid eating at McDonald's in Manila, virtuous to intentionally bypass the "Mona Lisa" while at the Louvre and noble to sleep in a ditch in Africa? How can I convince him that this "mission" is not merely another variation of the Hokey Pokey? My tongue is ineffectual in its pivots; Phi Phi Leh recedes in the darkness behind us. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We go through strange rituals to prove things to ourselves in life. As we near our trash-encrusted starting point, I insist that Jimmy cut the engine early, so I can jump out of the longtail and swim the last 200 meters back to the abandoned fishing village. Since simple epiphany doesn't screen well in the test markets, I will tell people that I swam those 200 meters with a defiant sense of triumph. I will tell them that each small step wading ashore was a giant leap for mankind. I will tell them that I walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and that I feared no evil -- for the Valley of the Shadow of Death will soon feature guided tours and a snack bar. SALON | Feb. 10, 1999 Rolf Potts is a frequent contributor to Salon Wanderlust. He is currently wandering around Asia, waiting to see if he can get a role as an extra in "The Beach." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here. _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________