Once again, the ‘curse’ of my very Asian face strikes again: wherever I go with the S.O. around Thailand so far, people speak to me in Thai.

Whether it is the local road side stall, an eatery, a bookshop, tourist attraction or just walking along the street, the locals just assume I am Thai and begin speaking to me in Thai.

All that is fine except for one small detail: most of the Thai girls that we have observed next to a white man look like prostitutes.

How do we know? Most of them are young, possibly not older than 25 years old, as compared to the man whose age hover around the late 40s to early 60 region. They are usually dressed suggestively in short skirts, tight tops, have well-groomed hairstyles and faces, and they have no qualms about shouting out ‘hello’ to any white man, even if he is already with a girl by his side.

One incident stood out: when walking around Thong Sala in Koh Phangan on our first afternoon here, we passed by a stout white man with a grey beard making a deal with a Thai girl on the street, speaking with a volume that was sufficiently loud for people within a five metre radius to hear him clearly.

Thus, the S.O. and I have no doubt that when people see the two of us walking or zipping around on the motorbike, they think that he is a white man who got lucky with a Thai prostitute.

We both see the logic behind the thinking, especially when there are no distinguishable physical features for identifying Thai female, and most are quite dark or tanned.

It is just a slight inconvenience for us both, and an apparant embarassment to the person, who had assumed I am Thai, the moment I tell them I am not from Thailand.

Oh well, I have been Malaysian, Indonesian, Balinese and now Thai. I guess that adds a new spin to the cosmopolitan look of Singapore.

In comparison with Koh Tao, Koh Phangan is about two to three times larger yet still smaller in land area than Koh Samui.

The one-and-half hour journey from turtle island to party island was more turbulent than expected, contributed largely by rough seas and strong winds: yours truly expunged my breakfast twice; the S.O. felt a little sick after vacating his seat for my additional comfort; many travellers who had endured three-and-half-hours from Chumporn to Koh Tao were also sea sick, and more than two crew members threw in the towel as well.

You can say that we were more than happy about planting both feet on solid ground when we arrived in Phangan. However, the relief was soon overtaken by slight irritation when the ‘taxi’ (called pick-ups in Singapore but with the back converted to accommodate passengers) driver quoted us 100 baht (S$4.40 /US$2.85 /EUR2.20 ) for a 300 to 400 metre drive from the pier to our guesthouse.

We knew it was too expensive but we could not argue as we had made the mistake of boarding the taxi before bargaining, even though there was an apparent cartel where certain drivers only served certain parts of the island and each did not infringe on another’s ‘territory’. We also later found out that the ride should have cost us between only 30 to 50 baht (S$1.30-S$2.20 /US$0.85-US$1.40 /EUR0.60-EUR1.00) each.

However, we were exhausted from the journey so we paid up and were transported to Holiday Beach Resort. After a meal consisting of hot soup and a hot drink, we both crashed out for three hours on the bed.

The rest of the waking day was spent walking from Ban Tai, where our guesthouse is located, to the main commerce area of Phangan, Thong Sala. A slow stroll brought us there after 10 to 15 minutes. There were the usual shops selling a range of tourist souvenirs (i.e. t-shirts, sarongs, bikinis, snorkel masks, bags, caps etc.), cafes & eateries as well as tattoo & piercing parlours.

It was only the first of seven nights in Phangan for us, with the main highlight being the Full Moon Party on Haad Rin beach on the sixth night, which would be Saturday February 3. There was more time over the next few days for exploring the island.