October 5, 2007
1
He might not like me writing this, but then, maybe, he would.
Mikkel - and see Thai Tales tags for further details - once helped to save my life here on Koh Samui, in a very literal sense.
Afterwards, he asked me to join him on the back of his moped and go take some time out on a beach on the south of the island, a place a schmuck like me would never have found.
We traverse maybe 15 kilometres, then take a sudden, dusty, bumpy left-hand turn onto a dirt path into the coconut grove. I'm terrified; he's full of direction.
We round one tree, and another; the sand begins to build before us; one more tree, and there are suddenly about ten or 12 dogs yapping and barking at our zooming legs, before finally we stop, at a forgotten little bamboo shack on the edge of an utterly bleak and deserted six mile-long beach, where the only thing that happens every day is the most perfect sunset in the world.
For about five people.
"Welcome," he says, "to the rock."
2
We sat and watched it many times.
Sheer beauty, and wonderment.
Truly awesome.
The shack, by the way, was owned by the coconut plantation owners, who MIkkel had known since he was 17 (he's now 36, like me).
Every time he'd gone back, he's seen them. There was even a slight romance on the cards with one of the granddaughters at one stage.
They were part of his extended family, and the rock was very much - if not the most - important part of Mikkel's relationship, and love, of this beautiful island.
At the base of the rock there is a natural, fairly shallow, cave, where a Buddhist monk lived for a few years for contemplation and enlightenment.
When he moved out, a young man called Mikkel moved in, for ten days, clearing his own young head of all manner of inner turmoil.
It did him the world of good, and thus each time he returned to Samui, he would make his own small pilgrimage to the rock, be it alone, with a girl, or with me. To say hi, hello, and thank you, and to look out onto a sunset that reduces grown men to gentle tears.
3
We drove, all of us, in a jeep, down there.
The dusty turn-off from the road was gone.
We were perpelexed, Mikkel especially.
There was a "development". Three bedroom, two bedroom houses.
So I found another way, through the jungle; parked at the end of the leaves and the beginning of the sand.
We stepped out.
Mikkel saw the old shack that had been there forever, surrounded by dogs, was no more.
Instead, stood an admittedly magnificent private property now owned by some twat who'll go there once every year. Fake waterfall, a pool.... and a ruination of this special man's most favourite place on earth.
And then came the tears.
A near-two decades of private, simple, reflective decadence and consumption, hours of self-imposed reflection and isolation, gone in the blink of a developer's eye.
I didn't know what to say to a friend I care for, so I didn't.
I just know this:
Chin up, my friend.
