On the Road to Jaffna

My idea of hell starts and ends with being seated on the plane between two humourless German men in their twenties who are very, um, affectionate towards each other; bat for the other team, shall we say.

They were (I'm not making this up) Hans and Frans and we were on a short flight from Phuket to Songkhla, the jumping off point to Ko Samui and on to Ko Phangan where the fabled monthly Full Moon Rave Party was just 12 hours away.

And, no, I'm not a raver. I'm a writer covering a modern social phenomenon which is drawing ever-larger international crowds to this drug-and-alcohol-infused dance-o-rama. It's rumoured that rich party-kids charter planes to take them around the world, following their favourite DJs.

Whatever.

Hans and Frans are keen to tell me, as their captured audience, that they have travelled 'vorldvide' to dance to their favourite DJs. Hans, the more outgoing of the two, is the first to corner me. It's clear to me right away that he wants to talk about himself, which he does with a grin that doesn't match his abject humourlessness.

"Hey man!" he shouts with his headphones still on turbo, startling the nearest 20 or so passengers, "what's your name?"

"Erik." I bury my face in newspaper.

"Alex! Cool! You like trance music? Ve luuurrve to dancing! Right Frans?" Frans looks bleary-eyed from too much partying and has to struggle to show his enthusiasm. "Ya, das ist gut. Ve are loving the Fool Moon Party," and almost instantly has a nap-attack.

The next hour is unbearable. Hans rattattatts off pointless biodata, risqué anecdotes of how he met Frans, and generally offers his amazingly uninformed take on his experiences in Asia; views that would have to feast on steroids just to become passably interesting.

He's especially astonished at how many Chinese he has come across. By this time, I have exhausted every verbal cue that I'm not interested in talking to him, like saying, "Shut up. No, really, shut up!"; feigning sleep, drool and all; putting ear-plugs and eye-mask on - everything.

Now I just can't take it any more. I turn to him and explain, straight-faced, "Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world is Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think it's Colin."

You could have heard a very large pin drop (the plane was noisy). His eyes narrowed suspiciously, his lips grew thin as he leaned away from me in disbelief. He looked past me to Frans for a bit of help, but Frans was comatose, making strange gurgling noises.

Hans, because he's German, has no sense of humour. This social deficiency is really not his fault. In any case, they make up for it with other talents like sunburning easily and having a cuisine which doubles as cement.

After a moment, he leaned forward slowly, nodding and snickering cautiously. "You are choking! Dis is da funny choke, right? I am getting it. Verrry good!"

This close encounter with the unfathomable had exhausted him, and I was exhausted from fending off someone with the IQ of a breathmint. Mercifully, we were about to land, but, alas, this was to be only the beginning of our adventure.