"Yeah" - the Meg Mathews column"

The weather wasn't quite so good during the second week in Phuket, so Noel and I decided to go shopping and ended up in a fantastic supermarket called Super Cheap, where jeans were £2.50 a pair. The rain was relentless, so that night we ended up drinking with some local boys from Camden, of all places, listening to a Euro version of "Some Might Say".

The following morning we went off to a temple to buy an antique buddha. While there, we were soaked with holy water by a monk called Pad - he asked first - who had a lovely aura. It was really moving the way the temple was surrounded by stray cats and dogs; people drop their unwanted animals there, knowing they will be well looked after by the monks. It's a sort of Battersea Dog's Home of the Far East. We went to dinner that night at a restaurant called Eric's, and bumped into Henry Dent-Brocklehurst and his wife, Lili, who had fallen in love with a white kitten that lives there. I think she was trying to kidnap it.

I spent the whole of the next day working on my tan and listening to Mercury Rev on the headphones. That evening, a gang of about ten of us descended on Patong, where we drank long island iced tea and went to a lady-boy show - the choreography was terrible but we had a great laugh. We then went onto two nightclubs, Banana and Safari, and ended up eating noodles and drinking beer on the side of the road at five in the morning, and were eventually carried home in a tuk-tuk, a sort of hairdryer on wheels.

The next morning, we went to see the elephants - a touristy thing to do, I know, but I was curious. They are working elephants and people depend upon them for their livelihood, but I still had my doubts. I fed a baby elephant with a bunch of bananas, and he carefully peeled them one by one with his little trunk. I felt my heart was going to break. Noel dragged me away in case I tried to adopt one.

The next day we left for Bangkok and made our connection to Tokyo, where I'm doing a shot for i-D magazine. Noel has come along to go shopping for trainers - he is particularly looking for old-school Adidas ones. We met up with Alan McGee of Creation Records for sashimi teuna and sake, and are now looking at the view from out hotel - it's like a scene straight out of Blade Runner. After all that yoga in Thailand, I could play the Darryl Hannah role, no problem.

• The Times & Sunday Times News Articles - index

c 1998 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

This page hosted byGet your ownFree Home Page