Warning: My matrix filters let through sweary words.

"I was trying so hard to please myself I was turning into somebody else." Out of the Blue (Into the Fire) - The The.

The minibus driver threw his vehicle around the roads as if it were an unbreakable child's toy with plastic figures inside it. He obviously wanted to get back home in time for lunch, but at this rate we would be the ones who would end up as lunch - for worms. I can't say I was too worried though, I'd seen far more frenetic driving in India. The gasps and the screams of the other passengers were entertaining in their own right.

We were travelling from Surat Thani Airport to Don Sak Peer where the ferry to Koh Samui departed from the mainland. I had booked the flight from Bangkok as it was the only route available at the last minute.

As we neared the peer, a number of angular limestone mountains poked their ragged faces from beneath the earth like trolls; their hair, dense foliage which clung on at every precipice; their features, sun-bleached rock and shadow.

On the ferry to Koh Samui, I watched billowing cumulous clouds skate across the pearl flecked sky. An old lady approached me angling to find passengers to cart around in a minibus to hotels on the island. It could all have been a scam but it wasn't.

Approaching the island

The roads around the island weren't in the best of repair, but it's amazing to think that there were no roads here at all 25 years ago, the island being uninhabited at that time. Now there was infrastructure, but it was all a bit weary.

I fell asleep on the bus and as it came to a juddering halt, I jumped out still half asleep. Unfortunately it was the wrong stop. I was a mile from my hotel and had to march over a large, wooded hill, dodging bikes of all descriptions as they hurtled around the winding bends of the road.

I dropped off my backpack at the hotel and went for a walk. I was in the Lamai Beach area and it was mid afternoon. There seemed like a lot of bars around but not too many punters - probably still recovering from the night before based on the reputation this place had.

I found something to eat, a Tofu curry from a place advertising Vegetarian specials. The curry had a long thin spiral of hard aluminium in it - as if cut from a tin can. When I showed it to the waiter he just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing I can do about it."

I made my way to the Shamrock, an Irish bar in the centre of town. There I got chatting to a madman who I shall call Luke.

Luke was in his mid-thirties and ran his own business which was very hands off, so he spent much of his time travelling the world living like a playboy. We had a good conversation about our travels, and he also revealed he had a few problems with people not liking him as he felt was far too practical and not very empathetic.

We downed more beers, chatted about football and music, and then started getting really drunk. He began talking about all of the many prostitutes he'd had and how it had clouded his judgement of women.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"You can get anything you want here from P4P to GFE."

"Eh?"

"Pay for play and the girl friend experience. I do it so often now that I can't be bothered with women back home. Come, I'll show you."

We started walking around town and found some "bar beers". These are open air bars grouped in little clusters worked by bar girls who either sit around playing games like Connect 4 or dancing on the tables.

We drank more beers and chatted with the girls, then he pulled me away down the end of the High Street. Here was a massage shop with a collection of girls waiting for punters outside. He grabbed a girl and pulled her inside motioning me to do the same. The other girls tried to pull me in but I sat that one out at a bar across the street. He came out ten minutes later with a big grin on his face.

"Let's go clubbing."

We headed down to the Subterranean Club but it was mostly empty and not too entertaining. Next we headed to more bar beers. By this stage I was completely rat arsed, and must be honest that I found the whole thing to be a bit dangerous and quite exciting. Here I was, living it up in a town full of gorgeous and available women who all seemed keen on me. But as Marty Pellow once sang, I was living in a world of make believe.

We went to the Fusion Club but as we arrived Luke decided to call it a night - he had an early flight to catch the next morning. We said our farewells and I started to walk back to my hotel. Just as I reached it, a girl was emerging from the hotel reception and we exchanged glances. She was one of those girls I find immediately attractive for some reason (although the reason on this occasion could well have been twelve pints of lager). I started chatting to her and asked if she fancied a drink. We headed back to the club and got some more drinks in. Her name was Lek, she was 34 and Koh Samui was her home. We chatted some more and started to get on really well, and as the neon turned to fuzzy velvet and people started to duplicate before my eyes, I thought we had pulled each other. However, as the evening unravelled and my drinking spun out of control, I found out to my cost that I hadn't pulled Lek at all.

After a long, long lie in the next day, I got a phone call from my mate JJ. He and his better half Debbie were in town and we were going to investigate a few watering holes together. You may remember I met these two rapscallions back in Paris. Personally I think they are stalking me around the world and I shall do as much as I can to encourage this further. The first night was an easy stroll down to the Shamrock with JJ and I knocking a few back to the sound of a Filipino cover band thrashing out sometimes tuneful, sometimes painful songs, whilst Debbie had an early night as she is a girl.

JJ and Debbie

When JJ hit the skids too, I went back to Fusion bar. Again I have to admit that the whole thing was tantalising even though it was like looking at an alien landscape. I could see how people could get lost in this lifestyle. The Thai attitude to sex is liberal and natural, unhindered by the thousands of years of repression built into Christianity by St. Augustine in the fourth century.

There was a tap on my shoulder and there was Lek. She seemed a different person from the carefree girl I met the night before. She was clingy and manipulative, claiming a stake on me and directing my every move - especially who I kept company with. In fact, the only person she "allowed" me to speak with was her friend - a Kathoey (ladyboy) with flapping great hands.

Quite a few of the girls working the bars up and down Thailand like to keep a few foreign boyfriends on the boil, as they can be a good source of income even when they are back home. Lek was older than most bar girls, and although she was pretty and engaging, she probably wanted to retire soon. She was looking for a foreign sponsor and it seemed I fitted the bill. Although I was drunk, I hate being cosseted and so started to make my way back to the hotel. Lek followed me and I explained several times that, like Greta Garbo, I wanted to be alone. Finally, at my hotel door she got the hint and left. That was the last I saw her, but she would continue to phone and text me until I left Thailand and ditched my Thai sim.

I woke late the next day and idled, reading on the bed until my friends were ready to go out. Again we had an easy stroll down to the Shamrock with Debbie and I knocking a few back to the sound of the same Filipino cover band, whilst JJ had an early night as he is a girl. We walked down to a beach bar and chatted idly to the relaxing sound of the surf.

Lamai Beach, Koh Samui

And so it was New Year's Eve. Not the New Year celebrated in most Buddhist countries (it was actually the year 2553 in Thailand), but the Gregorian New Year of 2010. JJ, Debbie and I convened at lunch time and had a nice meal in one of the beach side restaurants. The beer was flowing freely, the talk was easy and hours disappeared in the haze of good times. We wandered into town late afternoon for more food and as night descended we found ourselves back on the beach, lounging on comfortable chairs. As midnight approached, Chinese Lanterns rose into the sky in steady streams from various points on the beach. More and more rose majestically, casting orange glows across the night sky until thousands arced their way over the island, outshining the stars.

Then the fireworks began. Rockets sped into the sky and burst a hundred glowing embers of all colours, aerial shells exploded furiously as if emulating the lifetime of the universe in the blink of an eye, pin wheeling detonations illuminated smiles and gasps while runaway Catherine wheels somersaulted along the beach. Cracks, pops and fizzles burst here and there to the smell of gunpowder and sea. It was violent and it was beautiful.

We drank some more and partied through the night. I was so pleased and comforted to be able to spend New Year with good friends. We walked back to town, but after JJ and Debbie retired I found myself back in the Fusion Club, attracted by the danger, by the unknown, by the sheer audacity of it all.

Fade to black...

I awoke in bed the next morning with a stranger lying next to me. She smiled and started chatting to me in Thai. I must have looked very rough, because she gave me a hug. I felt rough. I felt like a Zombie had eaten my brain and replaced it with a stack of nails which were now slowly making their way into the remainder of my skull.

I stared bleary eyed at the girl next to me, then hugged her back. I hugged her hard, spinning from the torment of a brutalised liver. I clung onto her for dear life as if I was about to fall off the edge of the world. We hugged each other and our movements were reassuring and tender, never sexual.

Her name was Lulu, she was 31 and she was from Udon Thani. She loved sad Thai ballads and spoke little English. Apparently, through sign language and a mixture of Thai and English I found out I had picked her up in the club the night before. I remembered none of this. I don't know what I'd promised her, but I paid her later in the day anyway just for clinging onto her like a frightened child for five hours and she looked at me rather strangely, smiling her quirky smile and clucking away to herself in Thai.

I hadn't come to Thailand to be a sex Tourist. I didn't want to end up like Luke; buying love and hating myself for it. My period of alcohol abstinence in India had lowered my tolerance, and the availability of cheap booze was obviously getting me so drunk that my base instincts were taking over. It just goes to show that when alcohol strips away our self image, with all of the associated assumptions and pretentions, there are some very basic driving forces at the core of us all.

I never ate at all that day.

Strange Koh Samui road sign that summed up my New Year’s day

The next day I bade farewell to JJ and Debbie who were off to another local Island. We went for lunch and I butchered some songs at a karaoke bar. It had been great seeing them - they were a link to my past - to what seemed like a different person in a far off age. In their presence they had kept me relatively sane, but I had changed in the last few months and was still changing; some strange metamorphosis brought about by new experiences, ever changing vistas and too much introspection.

Now it was time for me to move on too, find someplace where I was anonymous and free, but also out of temptations way.

For a while in Koh Samui I thought I would enjoy being someone who hasn't a care in the world, where no rules applied and where there was no such thing as responsibility - even to myself. I had been so intent on having a good time that I had lost myself in a place where nobody knew me. In a way, that is what my whole journey is about: to deconstruct all the familiar parts of my identity just to see what surfaces, to test myself, to gain new ground, to find different angles in a complex hall of mirrors. It's not always going to be successful as doing this relaxes your standard levels of self control.

The night before I left town I was sitting in a bar feeling bored and friendless when Lulu spotted me and approached, smiling. We gave each other a hug and sat together holding hands, content in each other's company. It was all rather sweet. Sometimes the loneliness of solo travel, or of a job that brings intimacy without emotion can lead you to miss the essentials of existence. The simple touch of another person, feeling their warmth, finding comfort in their presence without any obligation to be anyone but yourself. These are the things that make life worth living.

And in those warm moments in a ragged roadside bar in Koh Samui, watching the stars wink at each other across a black velvet void and listening to Lulu sigh, I found myself again, if only for a short time.

This blog post was written under the influence of Miles Davis and covers the period 28th December 2009 - 4th January 2010.