Recently I hauled my weary old carcass back to Thailand, where I’m currently living on Ko Tao, an island off the Southeast coast. I went there for one reason and one reason only, to become a Dive Master.  This is, in simple terms, a level of Scuba diver in which you are qualified to take out paying customers into the ocean, swim about a bit and look at pretty fishies. Bringing them back is also recommended, as no one wants a remake of that God-awful film ‘Open Water’, never mind a live version.

The training involved in this can be a little tough at times. Apart from having to go back to ‘school’, learning the likes of physics, physiology and a few other sleep-inducing topics, I am also a kind of slave to the dive school in which I train, paying them a reasonable sum of money to do all the shitty jobs the instructors choose not to do. Think carrying heavy boxes of equipment to the boats, cleaning the stuff after the dives, prepping the boats at the crack of dawn, and squeezing fat girls into wetsuits far too small because they insist they’re a size ten.

Fortunately there are a few of us paying for this privilege, so we share the shitty jobs out amongst us, lightening the load a little, and rotate our mornings and afternoon dives so we can commit heavily to another important part of the DM training – socialising. Now, as I’m sure you can imagine, this involves going out on the piss with each other and talking to girls in bikinis. Ouch.

Now, the story I want to relate to you happened during one of our evening socials when myself, a young French DMT called Geoffrey, and a petite English DMT called Emma, snuck away from the party for a bite to eat in one of the many delightful Thai restaurants that dot the Sairee Beach area. Geoffrey is 25 years old, white, tanned, heavily tattooed and dreadlocked, and a cool guy, enjoys a laugh and never seems to get angry. Emma is his girlfriend of 3 years, a little older than him, also heavily tattooed (but now dread-less), vegetarian, peace loving, and enjoys yoga. They don’t kill animals at all, not even mosquitoes when they’re feasting on their blood. They encourage them to leave, fuck knows how, whispering mantras or something I guess.

They’re a great couple, and on this particular evening we had enjoyed a few Chang beers with our dinner and were about to pay the bill when we noticed the two fish tanks in the corner of the room. As any true diver and fish lover would, we went over to investigate our aquatic chums, and discovered two truly ugly yet utterly amazing specimens meandering about their tanks. The one on the top tank looked like it had way too much Botox in its forehead, which jutted out in a wonderfully angled Star Trek-like shape, was a reddish colour, had big stupid goggle eyes like pool balls on a velvet curtain, and was about the size of my shoe. I think it was drowning, as it was gasping its cake-hole all over the tank. The lips were like a couple of marrows suspended around an eerie black hole, and despite their gruesomeness, looked strangely inviting.  The one in the tank below was a similar breed, but more purple coloured and a little more evil looking.  Looks were not too deceiving.

The reason for the capture and imprisonment of these fishy fiends was, apparently, as a blessing of good luck upon the restaurant, and as they bloomed in their glass guesthouses, thus the restaurant would flourish accordingly. A lovely, typically Thai gesture I thought, and certainly a lot better than some of the other strange customs I’ve encountered whilst in this amazing country (walking around town with a coin in your ear, wearing a wife beater rolled up to your nipples and a mass of Buddha amulets round your neck is my all-time favourite, incidentally).

Laughing a little at these unfortunate oceanic beasts, we noticed that when we moved our fingers around the glass, they would follow them, making their grotesque gasping gesture with their stupid looking gobs. What hilarity. This kept us entertained for a good few minutes as we joked with the group of Westerners (farang, as we’re called here) on the table next to the tanks about which of these two monsters they’d ordered for dinner, and shared other funny-when-drunk-but-not-so-funny-when-sober type quips with them. It was about this time when Emma, or ‘The Beast’ as she’s often known (Geoff’s pet name for her, which slipped out one night much to their regret), decided to get a little more inquisitive. She reached into the top of the tank, and started gently stirring the surface of the water, delighting the dumb creature beneath, which, again, followed it like a dog following a sausage. Ahhh, we thought.

 Then came the scream.

As it happens, this luck-bearing fish actually packed a fairly hefty assembly of teeth in its slobbering chops, and had decided to latch on to poor Emma’s digit as hard as it could. Of course, the natural reaction in this situation is to pull your hand away, and as we turned we were fortunate enough to see a terror stricken Emma whipping her hand out the tank as quick as possible, unfortunately with the fish (which was about the size of Emma’s forearm) still attached, which then flew across the room, bounced on the adjacent table twice and fell beneath the other diner’s feet, lying in a pile of dirt. Not the ideal location for a fish of such mysterious powers.

And how we laughed. The shock of the situation was still sinking in I guess, as we should have been more respectful to our stricken sea fish, but the Thai staff who were now leaping to their feet, screaming and hurtling towards the table made it an even more wondrous comedy moment, the other group of farangs were also pissing themselves as an industrious worker scooped up the fish from under them and plopped it back into its abode, then turned to face us.

Poor Emma, obviously a bit stunned by the events (it can only happen to a veggie eh?), was looking at her bitten finger, aghast at why the idiot had decided to make its break for freedom in this manner. Did it hope to get flung all the way back to the ocean? Who’s to say? All we did know was that this was not a good thing for the continuing success of the restaurant, judging by the looks of pure hatred we were receiving from the now fully assembled employees. Trying to apologise for cursing their eatery into eternity while paying our bill as swiftly as humanly possible, absolutely unable to hold back the laughs, bowing, edging towards the exit, I looked back towards the fish tank to see the owner, a woman in her forties, on her knees caressing the glass as if to soothe the brutal finger slayer, whispering what I assume to be prayers to the God of big stupid ugly fishies, and then I saw the fish itself, looking very pleased with itself indeed, for it had tasted freedom, if for only a minute or so.

 If only it wasn’t swimming upside down...