CAUGHT IN THE NET

While The Nerve's foreign correspondent Raoul reports direct from the bars on Soi Cowboy, Bangkok, Yours Truly the Art Director is tied up in Perth, doing a course in layout at The Newspaper. Lying back on a hotel bed at the SunMoon resort with fellow journalist Melinda Mayhem, i remark, "Now this is what i call layout."

It is a pity i am not on the Thai sojourn with fellow photographers Safari Bob, Das, and Raoul. But sometimes one's priorities must take priority. Like shooting, stealing, meditating, partying, and searching for Lost Animals.

BACK ON THE SOI

It's good to be back on the Soi. They say familiarity breeds contempt ... but not here.

The throaty rattle of the tuk-tuks, the sing-song chatter of Thai housemaids doing the laundry next door ... and the smells ... coconut cooking oil intermingled with stagnant water in the klong, incense burnt at shopfront shrines, wrapped up in a humid pall of exhaust fumes. A cacophony of noise, sights and smells that assault, nauseate and arouse in an instant ...

Like a drug, Bangkok overwhelms and seduces, its finely tuned madness offering insight, clarity and pleasure in a single hit. A hit that allows you to taste, but never leave fully satisfied ... and when it's over you start thinking about the next time. It's a beast that fucks with your head!

I used to hate "Hotel California" ... whining American West Coast pap I thought. Then, about a decade ago I stumbled into the Country Road bar on Soi Cowboy, seeking respite from the craziness outside and an opportunity to share a beer with Spud, not fight off the hordes of bar girls offering pleasures known and unknown along with demands for 'lady drinks'. About a dozen tables, mostly empty (the action has always been in the GoGo bars down the soi), some hosting middle-aged men steadied by clusters of beautiful petite Thai women, fully clothed...straw bales, a buffalo skull with redlight eyes, pool tables, a stage with musical instruments, no mirrored floors and poles and not a GoGo girl in sight. Then the band cranks up ... Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee"

... fuck me, where am I, what is this place? The band is made up of geriatrics belting out the same set they have done since the 60s when they were entertaining GIs on R&R from Vietnam. The Doors, Otis Redding...

... and then, just as Spud and I are drunkenly reliving the past fortnight's hedonistic madness ... "Hotel California" ...

"Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said we are all just prisoners here, of our own device
And in the masters chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just cant kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!"

Suddenly these words make sense, and looking at the other men in the bar I see it makes sense for them too. Bangkok IS Hotel California...

10 years on, and Country Road is still there, albeit slightly rearranged. Pun, the manager is long dead ... along with some of the band it seems ... new younger faces on some of the instruments ... but a couple of the geriatrics are still there, belting out the same songs

I take comfort in this. Safari Bob is arriving tonight, and I can feel the beast is twitching.

GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORAL

Ok. Coral. What's it all about? I go back to Coral Bay tomorrow to find out. I leave at dawn, to meet a group of locals who want to fight Alannah. She is the Planning Minister. "Alannah, as in spanner," as she puts it. I had a shouting match with her this week over my last story. Well, she was shouting, i was talking ... "It's not a LAND GRAB!" she said loudly, about the 2km exclusion zones she wants up the Ningaloo coast. "It's not their land! These are pastoral leases! Do you understand LEASE?!" It's also a bit more complicated than that. This coral issue seems more straightforward. The planning department are putting in a $7million boat launching facility at Paradise Beach. Stage One involves putting a whole pile of silt, sand and rubble into the water next to the coral reef. Stage Two involves taking it all out again. Uh, why not just go straight to Stage Two, and save a whole lot of coral?

The access road to Monck Head is being built even as we speak, and the dirt goes into the water on March 7. Grandmothers will be tying themselves to bulldozers, i hear. I don't think that this is good enough. I will be taking some heavy chain and padlocks to secure these grannies properly.

GIRLS WITH GUNS

Mickey T and Big Louie set off on a downwinder from the mangroves of Bush Bay, 35-40km on kites. They are extremists. I drive back with Heidi From Ag. It turns out Heidi From Ag is a shooter. Shortly after i arrived in the Gascoyne, i heard about a program to shoot feral goats in a flyover of the Kennedy Ranges. So i began to wangle my way onto this goat shooting tour. I need to photograph the shooters on the helicopter platform, i said. "Girls with big guns!" i said. "That's what we need!" i said. "Preferably wearing bikinis!" i said. We commence the long drive back. The kite sails are visible above the dunes over my left shoulder, billowing colourfully above the red dirt, as the extremists make their kitesurfing run back to the delta. "So you're the new photojournalist," says Heidi From Ag flatly. "You're the one who wanted to photograph me in my bikini." In a small town, irony, like fine wine, does not travel well.

SPACE TRAVEL IN CARNARVON

Well, i guess we nailed these pics for the Crusty Demons. Looks like good fun, don't it? I can't wait to hurtle into space off this freestyle motocross ramp on a Vincent Black Shadow. No animals were hurt and no Photoshopping was used in the making of these pics - this is just what Mr Fungi Furniss does for a living. He has a ride sponsorship with KTM motorcycles and is sponsored by clothing manufacturer Anything Evil. AE's catchphrase is "Have you done Anything Evil today?"

Judging by the text message i got from Mz Mayhem, Anything Evil should be sponsoring her. More on Mayhem's amateur video editing sideline later ...

CRUSTY DEMON OF DIRT

Jeremy "Fungi" Furniss is on a first-name basis with doctors and nurses at the Carnarvon Hospital. Mr Fungi will perform in Perth with the Crusty Demons of Dirt, a relatively insane group of motocross riders. If you've been near any extreme sports or gravity games, you may have seen these crazy dudes flying over your heads in a kind of zero-G freefall, more or less attached to their bike. Or sometimes just in a low orbit alongside it. So i'm driving down Speedway Road in Mickey T's 4WD, looking for Mr Fungi and his ramps. Suddenly, in the distance, a motorcycle and inverted rider fly high into the air, appearing magically above the horizon as if propelled by a rocket launcher. The ensemble then drops dramatically earthwards. A sure indication of a Crusty Demon. "Yeah, i've broken all the bones down my left side," says Mr Fungi. It's spitting rain and the wind is gusty, so he only does a few runs. One of which is pictured above. We agree to meet early in the morning to try again. Like, early early. "I'm not much good at getting out of bed in the morning," Mr Fungi admits. "I better have an extra cup of coffee to make sure I'm awake." I imagine being awake would have certain advantages in this line of work.