Here’s to you, Nancy Reagan

One of the many pleasures of Pai is to make one’s way to a waterfall. There are at least four easily reachable on a motorbike. Got that? On a motorbike. A vehicle which I now claim as my minion. Anyway, the general concept is pretty simple: buzz to a waterfall, sit down, enjoy the view, and ingest a hefty dose of the good old ambient negative ions. Leave feeling refreshed of body and spirit. Easy. The only complication to the Pai waterfall pleasure scheme, apart from getting lost, is posed by the men of short stature who LEAP out of the bushes, both on the road to the waterfalls and at the waterfalls themselves, with marijuana and opium to sell. I tells you, the first time, I almost jumped out of me skin. I’m in the honeymoon period with my little two wheeler, Shirley, and the last thing I want right now is trouble, the kind of trouble that begins with some reasonably innocent sampling of the local specialties and some wayward cruising through the hills and ends with a ker-rash, a splatter of blood (mine), a tangle of metal (Shirl’s), a broken limb or three (mine) and who knows what else. So let it be known that I’ve said no to drugs in Thailand. Repeatedly. Put that in your pipes, and smoke it, kiddlywinks. Actually, it’s not just my fear of totalling my bike and myself which has made me shake my head regretfully at the leaping gentlemen. My good friend Sam very wisely put the fear of God in me when he told me that there are more undercover cops in Thailand than there are in uniform. Wherever I’ve been, I’ve heard tales of dumb farang getting busted for buying or using drugs in Thailand such that I suspect that at least one of the so-called hill-tribesmen who popped out of the bushes was just itching to turn me into the next high profile Australian drug moll. The very thought of the rogue’s gallery that I would join were this the case is enough to make me stick to herbal tea and tonic water for the rest of my life. What a tawdry comeuppance joining this parade would be: La Schappelle, deserving of compassion for being terribly unlucky or terribly stupid; Michelle Lee, living proof that pretty girls do get an easier run; Renae Lawrence, tough, tough enough to take Schappelle under her wing in prison and then…. moi? Surely not! Please agree that I just would not fit in. Heavens, if I were ever to be typecast as the clever, slightly awkward one who, out of everyone here, should have known better, this would be the time, and it would last forever. I cannot imagine that the depths of opiate dependency could produce a greater iniquity.

I realise that I’m hexing myself in writing this. If someone should mistake me for a mule (unthinkable) and shove some forbidden substances into my laptop case and thereby set in train some hideous travesty of both Thai and cosmic justice, please bring this post to the attention of my lawyers. Tell the media hordes that I’ll only talk to Red Kerry. Alone. Oh yes, and in the event of such misadventure, you will each be permitted three milliseconds of sadly resigned retrospective laughter at the bitter irony of this post and not a squitter more.