Love in a Hopeless Place - Koh Tao Chronicles Vol.14
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Whether intentionally or not, for many Koh Tao also becomes the island of "love". No, not a love free of quotation marks but a full fledged, "love" with many disclaimers. Like many things here in Thailand, "love" is open to misreadings and misguided interpretations and as with all things Thai, the rules that we follow ritualistically in the West are applied with a somewhat lackadaisical fluidity here. For some, the "love" they find here is a fleeting, foggy, alcohol soaked flash in the pan. For others it becomes something more or at least on the surface it appears to be something more. Over the past 5 months I've bared witness to "love"'s many incarnations here on Tao and have come out of it feeling slightly jaded, slightly frustrated and more that slightly angry. So my faithful readers, if you come to Tao and find yourself following the advice posted at the top of this page, make sure to take a pen and add a couple of strategic quotation marks in order to protect your heart, I've met far too many broken hearted women who haven't.
There are three distinct types of people on this island and for each of them "love" seems to take on a different meaning with it's own set of rules, regulations and unspoken truths. Unfortunately when these different groups mix, problems are inevitable. Local Thais and Burmese have one way of looking at things, local foreigners another and those flash in the pan backpackers and DMTs yet another. Everyone seems to be looking for love but they are often looking for very different incarnations of it.
Now, before I continue I need to put in a little disclaimer so that some of my more sensitive readers don't get their knickers in a twitch.
1) I am commenting only of the state of things as I see them. Is this biased and far from a full picture? Yes, but it is the world on the Rock as I see it.
2) Some of my comments may seem rather harsh and "unfeminist" ...truth be told, I don't really consider myself a feminist and when I see women acting in ways that show very little self-respect, I tend not to blame it on the patriarchy but instead blame it on them being, for lack of a better word, stupid and having no self-respect.
3) I'm not naming names, if you read this and think "shit that's me" be aware that unfortunately, many of these issues are island wide and you may not be the only one in a rather toxic situation. If you read this and think "Jesus that sounds like a horrible relationship" and 5 minutes later find yourself wondering if it was actually you I was talking about, might be time to reconsider your romantic choices.
4) I am not immune to Tao's relationship toxins. The only name I'm going to name in this post is my own because I got just as sucked in as the rest. - This has left me slightly jaded...this will undoubtedly flavour my writing.
5) There are indeed some wonderful, strong relationships on this island based in mutual respect and shared love for each other. Don't get me wrong, love is here and it can and does work. I know some amazing couples of all different incarnations, Foreigners, Thais, Burmese and every combination in between. It just seems the proportion of messed up shit here is high and I have spent a lot of time wondering why.
Many girls come to Koh Tao looking to enjoy a bit of diving, a bit of sunning and a bit of bucketing. Unfortunately, some also come here with the goal of hooking up with a local so that they can tick the "S.E Asian" box on their proverbial bedpost. More annoyingly, some come here with the goal of simply hooking up with as many of the locals and they can fit down their knickers during their allotted stay. These are the girls I despise endlessly. No, slutting around with every fireboy and bartender on the beach does not make you "cool" or "wordly" or "exotic"....and it most definitely doesn't make you special because, sorry honey, your string of 6-packed, tattooed locals have slept with hundreds of girls. Being good friends with a lot of the local fire boys I've bared witness to their nightly escapades and heard their stories afterwards. They mostly consider their nightly conquests disposable and just because they took you home tonight does not mean that they are even going to give you the time of day when you show up doe eyed and eager at the bar the next night. I'm not exaggerating when I say these guys have bedded hundreds of women. As unfeminist as this sounds, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that these boys treat their foreign- sex-tourist-one-night-stands as meat. If you serve yourself up on a platter that says "free drunken lay for anyone from Thailand or Burma who works in a bar or spins a fire poi" then you're setting yourself up to be passed around like the piece of meat you have decided you are. You've made your bed, now lie in it and don't come crying to me when the next day your "lover" has his tongue down some other girl's throat. My question is where the hell did these girls' self-respect go? I've seen it get so bad that one girl, after showing up to the bar only to find the prior night's conquest wooing another girl asked him if she would be lucky enough to enjoy his company this night to which he replied "not sure if I want to go home with you or her tonight".... and she waited around to find out if she was the "winner"!!! What the hell?? Who does that? Why would you even ask to go home with him in the first place if he's trying to take home another girl right in front of your eyes!
Other girls come here, hook up with a local and end up sticking around (but only until their visas run out) to be with them. Some of these boys are good guys who genuinely care for their foreign girls but I think in the back of their minds they know that sooner or later the girls are going to leave so they keep walls up. From the stories I've heard most of them have had their hearts broken pretty badly at one point or another. Usually when they were young and too naive to understand that not too many girls are actually going to stay here to be with them. I can imagine for them it's hard and after realizing that every girl they are ever going to develop feelings for is going to leave them they begin to give up and resort to satisfying their physical needs rather than their emotional needs. I guess you can't be hurt by a girl if you refuse to see them as anything more than a one night stand. It's quite sad actually. There are of course a few cases where the girl does end up staying for their man but due to financial reasons and visa restrictions they have to split their time between their home country and K.Tao. 6 months here and 6 there or 9 here 3 there etc. Far from perfect, some couples still manage to make this work. That being said I've also witnessed men carrying on full-on relationships with one girl while their "girlfriend" of many years is back home scrapping together her pennies to come back to her one "true love".
So many of these relationships, although in many cases faithful on both party's parts, are still ridiculously dysfunctional. I'm not sure if it's because these boys have "grown up" without parental boundaries (most come here in their teens, having left their families behind in Burma or in rural Thailand and work to send money home to their families) or because they have learned about love and relationships from their mentors who have become so jaded over the years after being left behind by their foreign girlfriends, but their idea of what a healthy relationship looks like is a bit askew. Now once again, I'm generalizing here and I know of couples who have made it work very well for years, if that is you I apologize, but I've been waist deep over the past 5 months in those who haven't. I have some absolutely lovely girlfriends who have lived here on and off for years who have gotten themselves entangled with local men who don't treat them with the respect they deserve. I know girls who are continuously abused both physically and emotionally by their boyfriends here. I've had calls from friends who have just been beaten, whose boyfriends have destroyed their belongings, have been threatened, demeaned, humiliated, intimidated, followed and stalked. I have seen girls covered in bruises and others whose self-esteem is so annihilated by endless emotional abuse that they no longer know who they are. It is heartbreaking to see beautiful, kind girls in their early 20s entangled in the most dire of situations. Perhaps it's their young age and the lack of experience that goes along with it but I have found myself on endless occasions reminding these girls that this type of behaviour is not normal. Your boyfriend should not hit you and he should not destroy your home or attempt to humiliate you in front of your peers and coworkers.Your boyfriend should not come home and tell you he wishes you were dead and he hates you. He should not call you a whore. Newsflash: This is not normal ladies. But, without a doubt they always return to their men. A few "I'm sorry"s and a few "I won't do it again"s later and they are back together, excuses and "explanations" flowing as fast as the nightly supply of Sangsoms and coke. It's a really sad cycle and I see if happening far too often here on the island.
These issues arent' just for the cross culturally inclined either. I've also seen it with foreign couples. The endless cycle of making up and breaking up. The teary phone calls late at night, the assertion that "this time is the it, the last straw I'm leaving" only to see them back together a day later.
I've tried to figure out what it is that makes this such a common occurrence here and I can come up with very few explanations. I think perhaps it's the close quarters. I often refer to K.Tao as a "pressure cooker" so much intense shit squashed into a very small space. Shit boils over constantly and unlike home, there is nowhere to run to. When you "break up" at home you just don't see the person anymore but because we all live and work within a 5 minutes of each other, frequent the same bars, eat at the same restaurants, ride our bikes on the same 2 streets in town (probably because we only have 2 streets!!). It is impossible to avoid each other and often I think couples just settle back in with each other because constantly being faced with the fact that you aren't together but still only 10 feet apart is too difficult to bear. The only options seems to be stick together or leave the island because it's only a matter of time before you see your former partner with one of K.Tao's many drunken tourists dead set of getting their teeth into a handsome/beautiful dive instructor or a sexy DM. Seeing your former flame on the arm of a beach slag (either male or female) is not easy to handle I'm sure.
As for me, well Myo was never even remotely abusive. He never said a bad word to or about me and he would never dream of hurting a girl. So in my case I was lucky. Did he treat me the way I deserved to be? Well, I think maybe not. But, like so many of the girls here, I found myself going back to him and putting up with things that I don't think I would have back home simply because my life here was completely entangled in him and, as I said before, there is no escape. You will see you ex endlessly on this island and it's hard to heal when you have to look at the thing that wounded you on a daily basis. I will openly admit that I am just as bad as many of these girls, desperately clinging to something that isn't right because I don't know how else to exist here. Luckily for me, I was never abused and I've got a definite and clear ticket out. I'm hoping that being in Bali will allow me time to heal and finally get over him.
I worry about my girlfriends here a lot and I think I will spend quite a bit of time in Bali wondering and worrying that they are ok. But in the end we all make our own choices and for many of them, the real repercussions of theirs have not yet sunk in. But they will and these girls are so young that they will have plenty of time to put themselves back together again. As for the boys, well, maybe they will sort themselves out as well. I would love to see some of my friends here make it really work with their partners. It would rekindle my faith in intercultural relationships and perhaps give me a little hope for my own future.
As so we return to the words of wisdom with which this post opened,
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As for me, I have actually ticked every box on the list. I quit my job, bought a ticket to Tao, got a tan, fell in love and have no intentions of returning to Canada. I'm beginning to think it's time wipe the slate clean and start ticking anew. I've quit my job here at Big Blue, I've bought a ticket to Bali, I'm sure my tan will get even better and I still have no intentions for returning to Canada...maybe I should have no intentions of returning to Tao?? (we all know that will never happen!!)...so now....there's only one final box left to tick....
Cheers from Heartbreak Hotel
J
There are three distinct types of people on this island and for each of them "love" seems to take on a different meaning with it's own set of rules, regulations and unspoken truths. Unfortunately when these different groups mix, problems are inevitable. Local Thais and Burmese have one way of looking at things, local foreigners another and those flash in the pan backpackers and DMTs yet another. Everyone seems to be looking for love but they are often looking for very different incarnations of it.
Now, before I continue I need to put in a little disclaimer so that some of my more sensitive readers don't get their knickers in a twitch.
1) I am commenting only of the state of things as I see them. Is this biased and far from a full picture? Yes, but it is the world on the Rock as I see it.
2) Some of my comments may seem rather harsh and "unfeminist" ...truth be told, I don't really consider myself a feminist and when I see women acting in ways that show very little self-respect, I tend not to blame it on the patriarchy but instead blame it on them being, for lack of a better word, stupid and having no self-respect.
3) I'm not naming names, if you read this and think "shit that's me" be aware that unfortunately, many of these issues are island wide and you may not be the only one in a rather toxic situation. If you read this and think "Jesus that sounds like a horrible relationship" and 5 minutes later find yourself wondering if it was actually you I was talking about, might be time to reconsider your romantic choices.
4) I am not immune to Tao's relationship toxins. The only name I'm going to name in this post is my own because I got just as sucked in as the rest. - This has left me slightly jaded...this will undoubtedly flavour my writing.
5) There are indeed some wonderful, strong relationships on this island based in mutual respect and shared love for each other. Don't get me wrong, love is here and it can and does work. I know some amazing couples of all different incarnations, Foreigners, Thais, Burmese and every combination in between. It just seems the proportion of messed up shit here is high and I have spent a lot of time wondering why.
Many girls come to Koh Tao looking to enjoy a bit of diving, a bit of sunning and a bit of bucketing. Unfortunately, some also come here with the goal of hooking up with a local so that they can tick the "S.E Asian" box on their proverbial bedpost. More annoyingly, some come here with the goal of simply hooking up with as many of the locals and they can fit down their knickers during their allotted stay. These are the girls I despise endlessly. No, slutting around with every fireboy and bartender on the beach does not make you "cool" or "wordly" or "exotic"....and it most definitely doesn't make you special because, sorry honey, your string of 6-packed, tattooed locals have slept with hundreds of girls. Being good friends with a lot of the local fire boys I've bared witness to their nightly escapades and heard their stories afterwards. They mostly consider their nightly conquests disposable and just because they took you home tonight does not mean that they are even going to give you the time of day when you show up doe eyed and eager at the bar the next night. I'm not exaggerating when I say these guys have bedded hundreds of women. As unfeminist as this sounds, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that these boys treat their foreign- sex-tourist-one-night-stands as meat. If you serve yourself up on a platter that says "free drunken lay for anyone from Thailand or Burma who works in a bar or spins a fire poi" then you're setting yourself up to be passed around like the piece of meat you have decided you are. You've made your bed, now lie in it and don't come crying to me when the next day your "lover" has his tongue down some other girl's throat. My question is where the hell did these girls' self-respect go? I've seen it get so bad that one girl, after showing up to the bar only to find the prior night's conquest wooing another girl asked him if she would be lucky enough to enjoy his company this night to which he replied "not sure if I want to go home with you or her tonight".... and she waited around to find out if she was the "winner"!!! What the hell?? Who does that? Why would you even ask to go home with him in the first place if he's trying to take home another girl right in front of your eyes!
Other girls come here, hook up with a local and end up sticking around (but only until their visas run out) to be with them. Some of these boys are good guys who genuinely care for their foreign girls but I think in the back of their minds they know that sooner or later the girls are going to leave so they keep walls up. From the stories I've heard most of them have had their hearts broken pretty badly at one point or another. Usually when they were young and too naive to understand that not too many girls are actually going to stay here to be with them. I can imagine for them it's hard and after realizing that every girl they are ever going to develop feelings for is going to leave them they begin to give up and resort to satisfying their physical needs rather than their emotional needs. I guess you can't be hurt by a girl if you refuse to see them as anything more than a one night stand. It's quite sad actually. There are of course a few cases where the girl does end up staying for their man but due to financial reasons and visa restrictions they have to split their time between their home country and K.Tao. 6 months here and 6 there or 9 here 3 there etc. Far from perfect, some couples still manage to make this work. That being said I've also witnessed men carrying on full-on relationships with one girl while their "girlfriend" of many years is back home scrapping together her pennies to come back to her one "true love".
So many of these relationships, although in many cases faithful on both party's parts, are still ridiculously dysfunctional. I'm not sure if it's because these boys have "grown up" without parental boundaries (most come here in their teens, having left their families behind in Burma or in rural Thailand and work to send money home to their families) or because they have learned about love and relationships from their mentors who have become so jaded over the years after being left behind by their foreign girlfriends, but their idea of what a healthy relationship looks like is a bit askew. Now once again, I'm generalizing here and I know of couples who have made it work very well for years, if that is you I apologize, but I've been waist deep over the past 5 months in those who haven't. I have some absolutely lovely girlfriends who have lived here on and off for years who have gotten themselves entangled with local men who don't treat them with the respect they deserve. I know girls who are continuously abused both physically and emotionally by their boyfriends here. I've had calls from friends who have just been beaten, whose boyfriends have destroyed their belongings, have been threatened, demeaned, humiliated, intimidated, followed and stalked. I have seen girls covered in bruises and others whose self-esteem is so annihilated by endless emotional abuse that they no longer know who they are. It is heartbreaking to see beautiful, kind girls in their early 20s entangled in the most dire of situations. Perhaps it's their young age and the lack of experience that goes along with it but I have found myself on endless occasions reminding these girls that this type of behaviour is not normal. Your boyfriend should not hit you and he should not destroy your home or attempt to humiliate you in front of your peers and coworkers.Your boyfriend should not come home and tell you he wishes you were dead and he hates you. He should not call you a whore. Newsflash: This is not normal ladies. But, without a doubt they always return to their men. A few "I'm sorry"s and a few "I won't do it again"s later and they are back together, excuses and "explanations" flowing as fast as the nightly supply of Sangsoms and coke. It's a really sad cycle and I see if happening far too often here on the island.
These issues arent' just for the cross culturally inclined either. I've also seen it with foreign couples. The endless cycle of making up and breaking up. The teary phone calls late at night, the assertion that "this time is the it, the last straw I'm leaving" only to see them back together a day later.
I've tried to figure out what it is that makes this such a common occurrence here and I can come up with very few explanations. I think perhaps it's the close quarters. I often refer to K.Tao as a "pressure cooker" so much intense shit squashed into a very small space. Shit boils over constantly and unlike home, there is nowhere to run to. When you "break up" at home you just don't see the person anymore but because we all live and work within a 5 minutes of each other, frequent the same bars, eat at the same restaurants, ride our bikes on the same 2 streets in town (probably because we only have 2 streets!!). It is impossible to avoid each other and often I think couples just settle back in with each other because constantly being faced with the fact that you aren't together but still only 10 feet apart is too difficult to bear. The only options seems to be stick together or leave the island because it's only a matter of time before you see your former partner with one of K.Tao's many drunken tourists dead set of getting their teeth into a handsome/beautiful dive instructor or a sexy DM. Seeing your former flame on the arm of a beach slag (either male or female) is not easy to handle I'm sure.
As for me, well Myo was never even remotely abusive. He never said a bad word to or about me and he would never dream of hurting a girl. So in my case I was lucky. Did he treat me the way I deserved to be? Well, I think maybe not. But, like so many of the girls here, I found myself going back to him and putting up with things that I don't think I would have back home simply because my life here was completely entangled in him and, as I said before, there is no escape. You will see you ex endlessly on this island and it's hard to heal when you have to look at the thing that wounded you on a daily basis. I will openly admit that I am just as bad as many of these girls, desperately clinging to something that isn't right because I don't know how else to exist here. Luckily for me, I was never abused and I've got a definite and clear ticket out. I'm hoping that being in Bali will allow me time to heal and finally get over him.
I worry about my girlfriends here a lot and I think I will spend quite a bit of time in Bali wondering and worrying that they are ok. But in the end we all make our own choices and for many of them, the real repercussions of theirs have not yet sunk in. But they will and these girls are so young that they will have plenty of time to put themselves back together again. As for the boys, well, maybe they will sort themselves out as well. I would love to see some of my friends here make it really work with their partners. It would rekindle my faith in intercultural relationships and perhaps give me a little hope for my own future.
As so we return to the words of wisdom with which this post opened,
As for me, I have actually ticked every box on the list. I quit my job, bought a ticket to Tao, got a tan, fell in love and have no intentions of returning to Canada. I'm beginning to think it's time wipe the slate clean and start ticking anew. I've quit my job here at Big Blue, I've bought a ticket to Bali, I'm sure my tan will get even better and I still have no intentions for returning to Canada...maybe I should have no intentions of returning to Tao?? (we all know that will never happen!!)...so now....there's only one final box left to tick....
Cheers from Heartbreak Hotel
J
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