New Year's Eve Update: Drunken Finnish Boy Declares Maybe He Likes Guys. Calamity Ensues.

New Year's Eve at our guest house, Respected Older Sister put on quite a meal. I promise pictures, as soon as I can find an internet cafe with a card reader. There was fried mackerel, laap, pad prik king, snapper braised in coconut milk and red curry paste, and more than I can remember, because there were also buckets of booze provided as a New Year's Eve treat. While Respected Older Sister is a hilarious force at this guest house, the yang to her yin is a man that we will call Fake Hippie. FH is maybe the owner, maybe ROS's husband (or brother)- who can know? I certainly couldn't figure it out. FH has long flowing hair, loves pot, and wants everyone to "be happy!" Forced merriment is a concept that simply doesn't work; it's like willing someone to love you. It is doomed to fail. Unless you ply your subject with intoxicants, which is what FH did.

There were eight or nine Thai hipsters that were staying at the guest house, two weird Dutch guys, a Russian couple (his name was Vladimir. No, really. He didn't seem that excited that my bicycle was also named Vladimir), a dude of indeterminable origin, as he never deigned to talk to us, and the three Finnish boys. I say boys because their mom must have had to pry the Nintendo controllers from their hands to send them on this trip. The Finns have unpronounceable, unremembered names, so we will call them Ulrich, Helmat, and Paco. Helmat and Paco were brothers, and Ulrich lived across the street from them in Finland, and they had been friends since kindergarten. Ulrich told us this joke: "Poles drink water. Russians drink vodka. Finns drink vodka like water." And so they did, except it was Thai whiskey mixed with Red Bull.

After dinner, almost everyone walked down to the beach for star-lit dancing and really bad techno, followed by fireworks. On the way, Helmat asks me if I have a girlfriend and I said no, I'm gay, that's my boyfriend, blah blah blah. That's when Helmat says "I think I might be gay too. I mean, I have a girlfriend now, but when I watch porn I usually watch gay porn." I don't really know what I'm supposed to say to that, so I just say "Uhhhhhhhh, maybe you should have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, then?". He says, with out obvious irony, "I'll think about that."

At this point, the Finns are getting drunk enough that they keep getting lost on the beach, in sight of each other, so Josh and I decide to go down the beach and do some good old proper nightswimming. So while the fireworks went off, I was floating in the South China Sea, thinking that maybe I am the luckiest person alive. The next morning, we wake up to find out that Helmat and Paco had gotten in a fist-fight over his revelation that he maybe likes guys when he is drunk, and their friend Ulrich had to pry them apart. Moral of the story: swimming at night is less dangerous than being Finnish. K Thanx Bai!