ignore if you’ve been, my review of the place:
I headed for Bar Paradise. It was a place people talked about. I’d been in a stoned torpor for weeks drifting the streets…I figured I’d at least make it there.
I passed a bridge over a river, then a durian garden with blue butterflies fluttering about in it, and bees. Wet rice fields stretched out, framed by the jungle hills. I got to the foot of a slope and saw Bar Paradise perched at the top of it – it was a rickety old wooden structure that opened out on three sides, offering views of the fields and the water buffalo grazing in them. I got to the top of the slope and walked into the bar.
“Happy shake?” the barman asked, before I’d even gotten to the counter. He had a chunky head, dark pitted complexion, with eyes that shot through.
“No thanks, a large Leo, please.”
He brought me the Leo. I paid for it, sat down with it on a ripped sofa. The beasts were in the fields below, tails flicking, godly in their contentment. They had long curved horns.
The bar was empty, save for 4 western girls – young women in their early 20s – hanging out by the opposite wall. One was lying in a hammock while the others lay sprawled out on beanbags. They were blonds and brunettes in skirts and leggings, t-shirts, earrings, hairbands, necklaces, beads. They spoke in hushed voices, giggling. Some of the words floated over: they were talking about how good they felt, how weird they felt, all the while giggling. It didn’t take a genius to guess they were probably tripping on shakes. None of them were drinking alcohol. They had bottled water and fruit smoothies. I looked at my Leo with careful love, rubbed a patch of condensation off it and fed it to the mouth.
A pool table stood in the corner. I walked over to it, played myself at 8-ball. Potted a few balls. Me beating me.
Dogs by Pink Floyd came out of the bar speakers through one of the girls’ phones.
The barman had gotten comfy on another sofa. He was smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Behind him, the horizontal women giggled like lazy angels.
George Harrison, My Sweet Lord came on; then, Walking on the Moon. The tracks floated through, drifted down off the ridge into the palm trees, over the rice fields..
Bill Withers Ain’t no Sunshine came on,
“I don’t like this one!” one of the women shouted to giggles. She had a bob and spoke English although she sounded French. A blonde lifted herself off her beanbag and switched to the next track.
What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong.
the sentences continued to come though over the music,
“These shakes are amaazzzzing,”
“This is literally the best I have ever felt,”
A mosquito flew around my ankle. I brushed it away, then LINE’d some photos I’d taken of Pai, to clients, friends, family.. I didn’t know if any of them really liked that…whether they thought, ‘Thanks for reminding me you’re in paradise whilst I’m sitting in my shoebox in the city.’
Two young English fellas bounced in. One had a white t-shirt on with long blond volume-y hair down to his shoulders, the other one wore a Bermuda shirt and looked like Harry Styles. They’d been traveling around Asia they told me. They’d been staying with an uncle in KL.
They had a game of pool.
They perked the interest of the giggling girls, who moved in. The leader, a leggy pretty brunette with a London accent, started snapping questions,
“Do you mind if we interrogate you? We’ve come to interrogate you,”
Giggles all round.
“Where are you guys from?”
“And what are your names?
Actually I don’t want to know your names,”
More giggles.
