A Quick Trip Through Thailand
In the last 8 months we have been in and out of Thailand like a yoyo, the first time being back in October, when I flew from Nepal to meet Eddie who had flown home to see family and friends while I went to climb a mountain. And in all that time we haven’t gotten around to see that much, it’s been a place of mostly diving for us.
The first time back in November we almost immediately made our way down to Koh Tao after finding the travelers’ area of Bangkok (BKK), Khao San Road, a bit too much in your face. I guess it’s a younger hip scene there (I sound really old, eh?), the area is full of cheap beer, cheap accommodation (but skanky in the most part) and a lot of young Thai girls trying to be picked up by westerners. All a bit cringy to me and not at all a part of Thailand that I want to see or participate in.
However, in amongst the hair braiding and henna tattoo stalls that line the street you can get a few bargains on the shopping front, and we did venture down those roads occasionally just for that. Also if you really wanted to eat cheap, some of the best BKK satay was around here too, along with the cheap Pad Thai and pancake stalls for those who enjoy living on a budget so tiny that you can’t get to enjoy anything, let alone see anything of interest.
I might of touched on this point before, but to me there is absolutely no point in coming to Asia with a budget so miniscule stretched over the longest period of time allowable if all you can afford is a dirty old dorm in the back end of scumdom, eating one meal a day from the cheapest stall around, drinking water and reading books because it’s cheap, and not seeing anything because you can’t afford the entrance fee let alone the transport to get there. Maybe some people like this idea of being on a budget so tight that you can’t squeeze it through an athlete’s bum crack, but I can’t see the point. Either save up a little more before venturing out to this incredible area of the world with so much to see and do, or cut short the time so that you can experience what Asia has to offer. After all, you can sit at home and not do anything, why spend the cash on an air fare to do it here?
Anyway, I digress, and now I am off my little soapbox, back to Thailand. Our first experience of Thailand this time around wasn’t all that Thai either, but at least we did it in style. It was my birthday and we booked a few nights in the swanky Indra Regent Hotel with its five restaurants and open air roof pool on the fourth floor, fully equipped with poolside bar and waiters to serve you Long Island Ice Tea’s for as long as you wanted them to. So the first day there, (my birthday celebration day) we got drunk by the pool, what else?
After four days (it was meant to be three but we extended it…) of an A/C room overlooking the pool on the 13th floor, satellite TV and mini bar, this was when we moved house to the back end of Khao San, thus why (I’ll admit) that my view of travelers-ville may be a little jaded. We stayed at a little way away from the main drag, behind the Buddhist Temple on Phra Athit road which runs along the river and is a little quieter. There was a great little restaurant along the way that was always full of Thai’s, serving great Thai food and always had a guy singing live with a guitar. Thai’s love to sing along (thus the great need for Karaoke centres in Thailand), and it became our favorite atmospheric place to eat out in the evenings.
Mobile phones are chic in Thailand, and they are so cheap to run. Everywhere you look, you can be guaranteed to see someone on a mobile phone. This is one thing I noticed in this restaurant, nothing comes before mobiles, it is the new religion. The geezer with the guitar may be singing the most romantic love song (with the obligatory sing alongers) and 3 or 4 people will be chatting loudly over the music to their friends on the mobiles. I swear that one girl on one table was talking to another girl on the other side of the room.
The shopping centers are full of shops selling mobile phones, maybe a line of 7 or 8 all next to each other, all doing a rampant business. It’s like an essential part of life, I can imagine people giving mobile phones as christening presents, “Oh what a sweet little baby, has he/she got a mobile phone yet?” not, “Hasn’t he/she got cute fingers…” or “Doesn’t he/she look like the milkman…” Blah blah.
The other craze that’s sweeping BKK, and in fact I’ve noticed it all around Thailand actually, is the humble VW Beetle. In amongst the Toyota Corollas you will find a profusion of well looked after and sometimes customized V-Dubs, the good ol’ Beetle, with shiny chrome and big fat alloys to boot. These cars are in immaculate condition, and knowing what a sorry excuse for a scrap yard Beetle gets in the UK, it probably would be a good investment to start shipping these cars home… The Thais are seriously into personalizing everything they own; the array of covers and add-on accessories available for the mobile phone is astounding, but that aside, moto-scooters get fat chrome exhaust pipes added, fancy suspension rods and colourful spray jobs. The Beetle however seems to warrant the most money spent on it. Wide wheels, chrome everywhere, fantastic paint jobs, leather throughout with contrasting piping etc, and they really look pretty cool (if you’re into that kind of thing, Eddie’s not…)
One of the great things about BKK is the transportation system, from the local buses, which unlike anywhere else in the world I’ve been (including London), are easy to negotiate and understand, to the wonderful air-conditioned Sky Train that can zip you from Tesco’s at the South-Eastern Bus Terminal to the downtown red light district at Patpong in a matter of minutes, all the while traveling above the hub-bub and pollution of the city affording great views. The best way to travel in BKK though is by river boat. The bus on the river with connections with smaller boats that run around the back water canals rather like in Venice (a lot less picturesque, but about as smelly). Those long tail boats that I’ve described before in another country, run up and down the river showing tourists the sights whilst scaring the proverbial out of them, and we, sailing slowly and casually for a fraction of the price get to see the same the local transport way. This to me is a lot more preferable.
There are of course some great touristy things to do in BKK, the Grand Palace for example is a magnificent place completely covered with mosaic, and about a hundred thousand other tourists, which greatly detracts from the enjoyment. It’s that old whinge of mine that nobody seems to notice you’re trying to take a picture of your gorgeous wife in front of a particularly ugly Trojan Monster creature, and proceeds to walk in front and even ask my wifey to move so THEY could take a picture… I won’t continue with that story. But the sights are all in the guides, so I won’t bore you or I with my whitterings on about them.
The second time in BKK after Koh Tao, we met a lovely couple who we got very drunk with (it was her birthday), managed to annoy a whole floor at the Merry V guest house and lost the key to our room, we checked out the next day before being thrown out… So that was the end of Khao San area, we decided to move up town and on our arrival back from Myanmar (formally Burma, and a place I still haven’t got around to write about yet, but I will, I promise) to Sukhumvit.
Sukhumvit is a road that cuts through the central shopping area of BKK and became our favorite area where we stayed on all our following visits back to BKK. We stayed at a great place called the Golden Palace Hotel on Soi 1, which for a measly 560 Baht (which equates to around US$12, a bit out of the price range for the aforementioned budget traveler) we got a huge A/C room with a BATH (not a shower), hot water, satellite TV and a swimming pool on site. Not to the standard of the Indra Regent, but in a budget way. But still a great deal and a great place. From here we discovered the real BKK, where the Bangkokians go to drink, have fun, and generally socialize. Funnily enough it’s a lot like home; we found the local cinema complex which also housed a huge up-to-the-minute bowling alley which was always packed with Thai’s. This was away from the sad old western Khao San Road, where the only Thai’s you’ll see there want to sell you something or be your girlfriend or lady-boyfriend.
So we kept ourselves up-to-date with the film industry, kept being continually crap at bowling (why?) together with hitting other top social spots like the Hard Rock Caf�, and the beer festival which was conveniently being held outside the cinema/bowling complex, which made for a great evening of all three combined together and in walking (staggering) distance of Sukhumvit and thus home.
The beer festival was a great thing to get to see, it’s not like our piss ups at home in the UK, where the sole aim is to down as many concession priced beers as possible before regurgitating the lot in a brownie vomit projectile competition and starting all over again. No, it’s a little more civilized, it’s mainly a promotional thing, with Carlsberg, Singha and Heineken beers being presented as the main drinking beverages in Thailand. It’s a kind of open air restaurant atmosphere where seating areas are surrounded by food stalls selling all the yummy stuff you could want, while beer girls wander around trying to get you to drink more of their particular brand of beer. All this to the sound of the hired live band on stage in front of you. The knack is that the beer girls fill your glass to the top at every given opportunity, even if you’ve only taken a single gulp from the glass, thus emptying the jug that little bit faster and being there when it runs out to innocently ask in a sweet voice, “One more jug, sir?”
Apart from that, the area also has the best shopping complexes I’ve ever been to. If you don’t fancy dressing up as a “traveler” in all sorts of bright and weird clothes or the cheap copy clothes that fall apart after a few washes, these places sell clothes that fit, don’t go out of shape and will last, for a fraction of the cost back home. Normal people clothes, along with CD players, MD players, loads and loads and really loads of choice in the mobile phone area as well as proper designer stuff too. Eddie got a new pair of Gucci bins, together with a free eye test and all made in a couple of hours for about US$90. And she looks damn sexy in them too, that kind of intelligent office girl look, with power… Now she can actually see the film when we go to the flicks and not waste money on a blurry screen or have to sit so close you strain your neck from almost looking straight up!
So that’s our time in BKK, and our subsequent visits (six in total) back there followed the same pattern. BKK is the most central hub for travel in Thailand, the time we were to leave for Myanmar, and found that Eddie had mislaid her ticket so we couldn’t go for another week, we whipped down to Hua Hin for a few days, which I have to say is one of the saddest places I’ve been to so far these travels. Not only does it resemble a typical seaside town in the UK called Skegness (complete with donkey rides on the beach) with is windy gusts blowing sand into the faces of the “I’m on holiday so I am going to sit on the beach whatever!” brigade, and ice cream sellers doing a lousy trade because the ice cream is covered in sand that’s been blown off the beach. Quite a disappointment I can tell you.
But the worst part of this place is that it is full of sad ugly old men waving their cash about with young obviously bored Thai girls on their arms. Seriously, some could have been grand children such was the age difference. Along with that you get the old geezers with the underage boys, walking around as proud as punch of his young boy being at his beck and call. This is the sick and distasteful part of Thailand, but who’s to blame. The sick people who come and wave their tempting tourist dollar in the faces of those they desire? Or the Thai girls and boys that take the money so that their family may have a bit more income, or they themselves can live a life slightly higher than is undeserved? Am I painting a bias picture? Sorry, I don’t mean to.
Just outside of BKK, sort of North West by about three hours is the town of Kanchanaburi. This was one of my favorite places in Thailand last time I was here nine odd years ago, and it hadn’t changed that much, to my surprise. Kanchanaburi is a small sleepy town, made famous by the film Bridge over the River Kwai, where the bridge actually is (was), a new cast iron affair replaced the original years ago. The town has a sad but magical air about it, surrounded by well kept immaculate war cemeteries, where every stone bears a name, age, rank and country. I don’t think, looking back, I saw anyone over the age of 26. There are literally thousands of memorial stones in straight lines as if they where standing to attention on parade, even in death. Tour buses carrying relatives, loved ones, etc, pull up every day, and there were always a few people laying flowers or wreaths each time I passed the gates.
The actual original railway has since been pulled up bar a couple of tracks for the benefit of enthusiasts and interested tourists. For me, although the cave temples and lime waterfalls, Wats and boat trips are all ok, Hell Fire Pass and museum was the most interesting point of Kanchanaburi. Here it is estimated that 16,000 POW’s died building the death railway, as it has become known, and even more astoundingly around 90,000-100,000 labourers brought in from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia whose lives where considered expendable and replaceable. A middle aged Englishman guided us around the museum, filling us in on the details of what happened here in a very personal way. His father had died here, as a POW working on the death railway. He never knew him, as he was born after his father left for war. A short walk takes you to those last remaining tracks, still there commemorating the deaths of so many people.
Back in town, sitting in the restaurant overlooking the river, sipping a cold one, we were approached by a Thai guy who turned out to be a producer of a film they were shooting in town. He wanted extras to play American GI’s in a Thai film staring some Thai heart throb. Food and refreshments are free, and you get paid to boot. All in all sounded like a fun day out. We accepted, actually I accepted because they didn’t need women, Eddie came along for the ride anyway. So we were picked up next day and transported to a location that had been a bar but now was a seedy club with a boxing ring within. We (the other extras and I) were given a set of fatigues and a spot of brekky and we all waited patiently outside for our starring roles in this movie. As it turned out it was a lot of sitting around, a few people got to do a fair bit, but most of us spent the day chatting and stuff without any likelihood of a beer before we were deposited back in town. Anyway, the day was quite fun and a little ironic too, as most of the extra’s playing Americans GI boys turned out to be Israeli’s. In fact, the only true American citizen there was Jewish and originally from Italy… Hey ho, nothing like continuity eh?
The main scene was a fight scene and we were all involved. We had to shout encouragement, boo and hiss, wave our arms around furiously and generally have a bit of fun. These Thai films are generally filmed as farces, and are semi-comedies, what with over exaggerated fighting and gestures it was all a bit of a laugh. I don’t think the directors or crew realized that of the 30 odd extra’s, half of them had been shouting in Yiddish and there wasn’t an American accent among us apart from one (which got drowned out no doubt).
Eddie turned up after lunch having found a friend in a girl that also was bored with her boyfriend being on set and gone off, bringing back a crateful of beer. Good girl, so in the afternoon we all had a cool sup in the afternoon heat, which the producer wasn’t happy about. He kept on strutting around saying “Don’t drink too much, will you,” in a slightly worried voice. Thai’s generally don’t drink much, and so get drunk quite easily. Here, he was talking to a bunch of travelers well heeled in the art of drinking an afternoon away without adverse affect. Apart from the Israeli guys, who don’t drink; just smoke the ganger, good job there wasn’t any of that around…
However, there has to be an exception to the rule, and one Welsh boy (and the Welsh are known for their drinking) got a little over eager with the downing of beer and cocked up a couple of scenes by shouting when it was a silent take. Everybody feeling right prats waving their arms around and acting as if they were shouting, without making any noise. He then laughs so hard about his mistakes he falls off the stall and is escorted outside and off the set without pay. Apparently he started walking the wrong way back, and they decided they had better get him a taxi…
We all got paid, and I managed to cadge a couple more thousand for a beer night with the guys and gals from the producer, and when he asked if we could all come back tomorrow because they needed to shoot a bit more, the most of us blew him off because the day wasn’t that much fun and the money not that good. This last time we were in BKK and went to the flicks, we saw the film I had been in advertised as an upcoming attraction, however I wasn’t in the trailer, and probably ended up on the cutting room floor anyway. Unfortunately we never got to see the film as we left before it came out. Not that we would have understood any of it anyway, being in Thai, but it would have been fun to see myself on the silver screen, eh?
North Thailand was our entry point from Laos; we crossed the border out of Laos much as we had entered, by boat, across a river. Now we are in Laos, now we’re not… To tell you the truth after our grueling few days up in the hills of Laos, seeking hill tribes, we were getting a bit tired of the moving around and wanted to settle for a while. We made our way from Chiang Khong to Chiang Rai, skirting Chiang Saen and bypassing Chiang Kham. We didn’t go anywhere near Chiang Dao, and next stop after Chiang Rai, will be Chiang Mai, where Wat Chiang Man is… (Chiang?)
Chiang Mai and Rai are the northern tourist centres, Mai being like a little BKK. We arrived back in Thailand at the beginning of Songkran, the celebration of the Lunar New Year. We saw evidence of this celebration in Laos, but nothing to the full on, in the face celebrations here, literally. Songkran is all about water, and chucking it, throwing it, squirting it, whatever takes your fancy over someone else! Chiang Rai was peaceful, and we spent a couple of days chilling out, seeing the sights and having pleasant meals and cold beers, occasionally someone squirted a water pistol at us and we laughed, sometimes a cup of water and we laughed at that too. On arrival in Chiang Mai, sitting in the back of a covered pick up, we got gallon buckets of water thrown into the sitting area on every corner. RIGHT, this means war…
Not really the right attitude to the festival, but one that was the most fun and taken on by most people. The first thing to do is to find yourself a weapon, this isn’t hard as in true style, all the local entrepreneurs have set up stalls selling buckets and huge squirt guns like bicycle pumps except a lot bigger. So two buckets later and two large capacity squirt guns later (minus a few baht as well) we set off to find water. Luckily Chiang Mai used to be a fortified town, and around the old town there be a moat…
Let me set the scene:
It looks like the majority of the local population is out on the streets, all armed with what I will call HCSG’s (High Capacity Squirt Guns) together with a large proportion of Thailand’s traveler community. If you were out of your hotel a minute, you were soaked, I mean from head to toe. No one likes someone who’s dry, and you become prime target for at least two or three minutes of serious soaking. Everybody is smiling, laughing and getting drunk. Every few yards there is someone selling cold beers, buckets and HCSG’s, there is a great carnival atmosphere here and the air is charged and it’s great fun!!!
After the two of us walking up and down the moat, pulling buckets out full of water and squirting every body that took our fancy and getting soaked along with the rest of Chiang Mai, we took up post at what was to become our local haunt for the festival. Outside a beer bar that had two dustbins full of water and full of ice… This soon turned out to be the norm, as soon as it was realized that ice could be sold, there were people selling ice off the back of pick up trucks. So now everybody is being soaked with freezing cold water, even Tuk-Tuk’s are hiring themselves out by the hour, fully equipped with a large bucket of ice water onboard. Pickups had whole groups with two or three dustbins full on the back giving mass annihilation to anyone they fancied, and we were with a bunch of other travelers and bar girls all getting pissed up and having a real wet time.
Little battles against rival bars started with ambushes and full on attacks, anybody who was in the back of a taxi pick up got a full soaking as well as anybody hapless enough to have left a window open albeit only a crack. These where our favorites, the posher the car the better and every time we scored an “in car” soaking cheers went up and congratulations all round, especially to the spotter. What kids we are! It was damn hot then, we were coming up to the monsoon season in a month and this is the hottest time of the year. It was great to be cooled down having fun while helping everybody else cool down too. And so it went on, hunting, ambushing, withdrawing and attacking. The days were filled with screaming girls and laughter all around. This is truly a great festival, only in Asia.
This was the only thing to do for the three days that was the Songkran festival, because if you didn’t join in and tried to do anything else, you still got wet through, and it’s not half the fun getting sodden without retaliating. Other than that it was laze by the pool or sup a cool beer on the terrace of our hotel. Yes, another budget hotel with a beer terrace and a pool, it was boiling, what can I say, you either go out and cool down in the Songkran festivities or you coolly cough up US$8 for an en-suite with air con and a pool. Not sweat it out in a cheap hostel dorm in the back end of beyond (soapbox). Our last day at Chiang Mai was the day after the festivities, the only day we could hire a bike and go out sight seeing and take an evening cruise on the river. A pleasant end to a fierce and fun time at Songkran.
Thai night trains are the best ever. They are comfortable, clean, reasonably cheap when taking into account you are paying for a night’s accommodation and, top of the list, they are air con (if you pay the premium). That is why we couldn’t get a ticket for love nor money for ages after the festival. It really did seem that half of Thailand had converged upon Chiang Mai for the festival, and all had reserved tickets out again! So we flew, back down to BKK for a few days at our favorite hotel before heading south to the beaches and some serious diving!
We missed out a lot of Thailand and concentrated on diving, partly because we were tiring of the traveling aspect a bit, but also because diving was a mean to an end. Neither of us had ever dived before Thailand, and nor we can’t get enough of it. Work is available almost anywhere in the world for dive instructors, (as long as there are dive sites there, of course) and as our goal is principally to set up home somewhere else out of the rat race and in something we love, the certification path is something we want to follow. We have a formulation of a fantastic business plan which needs work but has incredible potential. I can’t talk about it now, just in case it gets ripped off, but eventually it will come out (I hope).
The next part of Thailand I am going to completely devote to diving and the places we dove, from Koh Tao on the East coast peninsula to Koh Chang up in the north of the Gulf, Krabi on the West coast peninsula and a liveaboard from Phuket up to the Similan and Surin National Marine parks in the Andaman Sea, where we have been so lucky in our dive experiences, swimming in the most amazing surroundings with the most amazing aquatic life.
