The Day the 1980s Died

There's several ways to get burned in Koh Phagnan.

First off, of course, there's the sun. The heat here gets brutal during the day and peaks late afternoon in the Florida style, leading to a nearly unshakable sweatyface. Then, there's the gas stations, served up in these Malatov Cocktail-style bottles that can both fill your motorbike and help defend your life in case of stray dog attack or the occasional bloody coup. Hot sauce is rampant on every street food stand, often only vaguely distinguishable by color, and dousing your falafel with a little extra flavor is a sometimes rewarding, sometimes disastrous game of Russian Roulette.


And if you're up for some late night heat, there's always the Jump-Rope-On-Fire game, which consists of two Thai dudes lighting a jump rope on fire and then daring drunk tourists to a semi-deadly game of double dutch. Here, two guys step up to the challenge...unsuccesfully.

All those things, we've taken in stride. We've taken the heat, and stayed in the kitchen. But nothing - NOTHING could have prepared us from the burn we recieved on an otherwise chilled-out night enjoying a few beers on the beach in Haad Rin.

The perpetrator?

Connect Four.

Here's the situation. You're sitting around with your boys, enjoying a few Singhas and a couple good laughs, when a sweet-looking 12 year old girl approaches you holding that classic game of wits you remember so fondly from your childhood. Dough-eyed and innocent, she offers you a challenge.

"Hey man, play a game?"

She lays down the stakes, and they're simple enough. 100 baht on the line. One game. Winner take all. And you figure, hey, I wasn't so bad at this game as a kid, and really - how good could she be? And you think, hey, she's just trying her luck to make a little scratch, I wouldn't feel that bad losing my money to her anyway.

So you accept the challenge. She makes the first move.

And it's over.

For the next two to five minutes she completely destroys you in a manner so cold, so surgical, it makes Ivan Drago's training sessions look like a heart-to-heart with Doctor Phil. During the game she doesn't smile, she doesn't blink, she simply seeks and destroys, always working four or five moves ahead, and in the end leaving you devoid of 100-baht and years of irreplacable dignity.

Above, Stubbs - after running to a computer room to look up Connect Four strategy ("you can beat them if you take the first move!"), puts up a valiant effort against another one of these half-pint hustlers. The game was longer, but the result was the same. The kid gave Stubbs a coral flower necklace as a respectful consellation prize, but it hangs now around his neck as the ever-present Albatross, the constant reminder that no matter if you go for the bottom, or go for the top, no matter how hard you go for it, you're not connecting four.