Siamese dream

Saturday, 13/10/2012 – 121 A.D.

“Shoot nothing but pictures. Kill nothing but time. Leave nothing but footprints.”

-          Anon (from a wall in a remote hill village)

13^th October today, we first arrived in New York on 13^th June…four months on the road, ladies and gentlemen! What to say about our travels so far, eh? How to sum it all up in one brief reader-friendly soundbite? Ummm…I guess I’ll just dump the big speech and get on with writing the bloody blog!

Up at 7.15 this morning – OUCH! Could have slept until my name changed to James Van Winkle. Today we’d be going on the all-day adventure-type package that Longtip signed us up for, although this time she would not be driving us to and from our destinations. At the breakfast table, when asked which option I wanted I wasn’t quite ready for eggs, so I panicked and said rice with chicken. Bad move. The meals these days tend to be either rice or noodle-based, so for example, if you have rice for lunch, you have noodles for dinner, and vice versa. By having rice for breakfast I was risking having it twice in one day! Or was I? It tasted fine, but for some reason the old tum-tum wasn’t quite in the mood to be filled. I ate what I could, but there was no time to wait until the appetite arrived as our chariot awaited.

The minibus collected us, driven by a man, with a woman in the front seat with a tour guide tag around her neck. She had me down on her piece of paper as “Jane Gray”. Bad start. We were the first people onto the minibus and Tim was quite happy that for once he wasn’t going on one of these day trips alone. At a hotel across town we picked up a Dutch couple, then went to another place where no one got on. When I asked the tour guide, she said they were sick, before switching to the next sentence, which went, “You will eat local food today, okay?" Erm, okay! But if I get sick as well then I’m going to sue! Hang on, what’s the name of the company? 'Amporn Tours'? Oh dear. The final pick up is two English girls from a place called the Paradise Hotel. Judging by the state of the car park, it should have been called the 'Paradise Lost Hotel'.

Time for the trip proper to start. Our guide turns around from the front seat and introduces herself as Smile, though I hear “sur-my”. The driver is called Mister Beer and throughout the day he will say nothing to any of the punters, just look annoyed as he copes with the treacherous country roads and ker-azy drivers, himself included – the guy thinks nothing of using a two lane road as three and overtaking into oncoming traffic. Smile runs through the day’s itinerary and tells us that the ride up into the hills will take about an hour. No one says much on the way. I battle the urge to nod off after that 7.15 start.

Once in the middle of nowhere we pull up next to a couple of wooden huts on stilts. There be elephants here, and we be going to ride them! Oh yeah, and we have to spend 20 baht on a bunch of manky bananas to feed them on, which we weren’t told about beforehand. I kick myself, wondering how many more hidden charges they will throw at us as the day goes on, but even this can’t dampen my excitement for riding a big thing with a trunk. As we stand on the platform and wait for our rides to arrive, we discover that the two English girls, Cat and Zoe, are doing eight months around the world (damn - even more than us!), but there are only on their fourth day. Four days versus four months? On our fourth day we were still in New York. Cat and Zoe will be finishing in America, and obviously we had plenty of advice and stories to tell them about our time there. The Dutch couple (sorry, cannot remember names!) are on a three week holiday to Thailand. As a sextet, we all get on very well.

The first elephant pulls up, with baby in tow. Cat and Zoe board this one – all of the elephants are designed for two people to sit at the back while the handler either walks alongside or sits on the head. Suddenly there is the sound of wild trumpeting from behind one of the huts. Here comes the angry matriarch and guess who’s riding this one? That’s right – Grayboys Incorporated. Smile tells us that granny elephant isn’t angry, merely shouting for the other baby to get its arse into gear and join the rest of them. Me and Our Kid climb on the seat on her back without too much trouble, and put the safety bar in place, the bag of bananas sitting between us. Suddenly a trunk comes up from out of nowhere and points our way. “Baaaaa-nana!” barks our handler. I pull one off the bunch and put it against the trunk, and elephant duly takes it and stuffs it into its mouth. Immediately the trunk is back and asking for another. “No!” handler yells (or it could have been “Na!”, “Nuh!”, or some variation) and, after contemplating just how high up we are, we’re off!

     

What does it feel like sitting on the back of an elephant? Pretty funky actually. The only thing I can compare it to is when I was 12 years old and rode a horse across Dartmoor on a school trip. Except that elephants cannot gallop. And it’s rather more bumpy, especially when going up steep muddy hills. Despite our fears of granny matriarch being a grumpy guts, she was absolutely fine, so long as we kept her fed on a steady supply of manky bananas.

After a few minutes bumping through the jungle, the handler jumps down and we notice that we’re hanging back behind the others. “You want ride there?” he asks me and points to where he was sitting. Sure, why not? How hard can it be? H-A-R-D, as it turned out! Sitting on the back of an elephant’s neck and staying upright while holding on to the top of its head is no mean feat! Plenty of times I felt like I was going to fall off, but handler seemed unperturbed, as if I was playing it up for the camera’s benefit. Nope!

I was actually quite glad that we got to  go on the matriarch, because the others weren’t allowed to get upfront on their elephants, maybe because they both had babies with them, or possibly they weren’t as cool, calm and collected as granny. However, after a few minutes I was happy to be able to turn around to Tim and say, “Your turn now?” How could he refuse! I wasn’t sure what I could smell…fear, or elephant dung. And because I’d had my turn, the poor lad was out there on a limb for ages until he finally declared it was time to get back in his seat – handler wasn’t bothered!

The trek was great fun (despite several stop-offs to buy extra bananas), but it was sizzling out there with nowhere to hide from the sun. On the way back the herd walked through some deep muddy puddles. Fortunately matriarch didn’t dip her trunk in and cover us with mud for a laugh (though it might have cooled us down), but baby had a bit of a roll around and threw some over Cat. And on the way back someone spotted a large crab scuttling across the floor. It did well to avoid being stomped on by giant feet, but then the handler jumped down to pick it up and take it with him back to camp. I asked him if he was going to eat it, but he just grunted, which could have meant, “Yes”, “no”, or “shut up, farang!” [farang = foreigner]

After dismounting and trying to get some feeling back into certain muscles, Smile rounded us up and got us in the back of the minibus. Fifteen minutes later we stopped at a remote village, supposedly populated by a hilltribe who at some point in recent memory emigrated from Myanmar to Thailand. The village women make various crafts that are typical to Myanmar, but upon close inspection from my uneducated eyes they looked to me just like the kind of goods we’ve seen all over Thailand. And, of course, we could buy some of them if we felt so inclined / guilty enough. I, of course, just wanted The Gents and was pointed behind a hut, shrugging off a small girl trying to flog me ankle bracelets for five baht. She came to me and tried again about another four times during the quarter of an hour we spent there. As for the Gents, well, this is what you get (look away now if you’re eating lunch)…

Leaving aside the pig that was oinking from behind the wall, or the door with a big space in the middle so that everyone walking past could see in, the idea is that you scoop up the water in the bowl and pour it down the “toilet” to help what you’ve done through the pipe, in the absence of an automatic flush. Sorry about this, but I need to record this moment so that next time I feel like moaning about the state of the B Block toilets back at the office I’ll instead give thanks for them!

After fending off the hustlers, Smile realised we weren’t going to buy anything today, so she led us out of the village via the bridge in the above shot. Suddenly there was a massive bang and everyone jumped (bar me, of course). Pesky little village boys had set off a firecracker. Was it their way of getting us back for not contributing to their local economy? Either way Smile was livid with them. She hurried us on towards our next activity – the trek through the jungle to the waterfall. This was pretty good, but it had nothing on the boggy difficulty of the Forest of Bowland back home. Every now and then Smile stopped to tell us some interesting facts about various plants or trees we saw along the way. What we didn’t see, but I would have loved to was a praying mantis – apparently they were all around us, making a deafening racket which sounded like a burglar alarm gone wrong.

[Up hill...]

[...over bridge...]

[...and down dale.]

We eventually came to Maewang waterfall, where swimming was optional, but I didn’t want to feel left out, so even I went in for a dip, despite not having proper swimshorts. By this point Smile was only giving instructions to those closest to her, rather than waiting around for everyone to catch up So, it was lucky I heard second hand to stick to the left side of the rocks, because the right side contains a whirlpool that may well pull you under. It’s easy to suddenly respect over-the-top health and safety precautions when you find yourself in a place where there ain’t any!  

The dip was okay, but coming up to our allocated 30 minutes it started to get a little chilly. It was still a bit chilly as I got back to my day bag and realised I’d neglected to bring a towel with me! Errr…what do they do in the foreign legion? March or die! No, that doesn’t help me. Oh well, just have to change my clothes and hope I dry off in the sun, once it finds its way through the trees. Not fancying the option of getting changed in the nearby “toilet” (neither for the princely sum of 5 baht or for free), I looked around for a covered spot on the hillside where I could change shorts. When I thought I’d found one, I turned around to see a fresh group of trekkers making their way into the waterfall. If one of them had looked twenty metres up the hillside they’d have seen more of James A. Gray than they’d ever wanted to!

Smile reappeared (goodness knows where she went, not for a dip) and marched us back up the hillside, lagging well behind at one point, which seemed strange considering how often she must climb that hill. Then Mother Nature remembered that this was monsoon season and the rains came down. I got my rain coat on in time, but it didn’t really do much good. And I needn’t have bothered putting on my dry pair of shorts because now both were soaked. I remembered Longtip’s words from yesterday saying that it would only last ten minutes, but it didn’t. It rained all the way back to the minibus, much to Mister Beer’s annoyance that a load of drenched people were coming to sit on his nice dry seats. It was like that feeling from school when you’d be out playing football on the field in the rain, then come inside for lessons and squelch into your seat. Y`all remember that feeling?

By the time we reached the village where we’d be eating the “local food”, the sun had made a cheeky reappearance and all wet things were laid out to dry. The cuisine actually wasn’t bad at all and, even though it was my second rice-based meal of the day, I had second helpings. It was a good moment to tell tales and share stories and, after telling the yarn of the great train delay from hitting a cow and getting a huge laugh, I realised that every cloud has a silver lining. It doesn’t matter what crappy things happen to me in the next couple of months, so long as I get a funny story to tell. And, if you’re listening, Fate, I do mean “funny”, not “harrowing”.

The final short drive of the day took us down by the river for what, for me, turned out to be even better than the elephant ride (but only just). We would be doing bamboo rafting and all valuables and shoes and socks had to be removed from our persons. Therefore no pictures of me on the raft exist (unless Zoe managed to get any with her waterproof camera), but just imagine us on the following, with me sitting majestically at the back:

The Dutch couple had their own raft and the remaining four took the other. I did not catch the name of our rower, but seeing as he was wearing an Ev*rton shirt, we’ll call him Leighton. Leighton loved the sound of his own voice and he was one cheeky little chappy, taking every opportunity he could to get us that little bit wetter. Often he’d pretend it was a sharper turn than usual and he’d lean to make it feel as if the raft was about to capsize, howling in mock terror. At one point he shouted, “Look! Little monkey in tree!” and pointed behind us. When we all turned around, he brought his pole down against the water to splash us yet again. By the third time he tried this trick, substituting “little monkey” for various other jungle creatures, we were wise to him and didn’t look back. Frustrated at having lost such easy victims, he turned his attention to a group of westerners waiting by the riverside for their own raft to be lowered into the water. As he splashed them mercilessly with his pole, the response from one guy was cutting: “Typical Ev*rton fan!”

Things got even more crazy when he gave Cat the pole and told her to stand up and steer the raft. To be fair, she made a good job of it, but the Dutch couple’s raft caught us up from behind, causing their 13 year old driver to splash me with his pole. It was hilarious when he tried again and fell in the river. To level things, Leighton sneakily pushed Zoe into the river (it wasn’t deep) and then, while Dutch guy was steering his raft, the tail end hit a rock and then he also overbalanced into the water. I felt my time was soon! And I wanted to have a go at steering, but wasn’t given the chance. Instead Leighton took back control and played a new game – spotting snakes innocently basking on the riverside and knocking them into the water with his pole. It actually became quite disconcerting to realise that there were lots of snakes swimming about at the water’s edge as our raft drifted past!

Who was it who said something along the lines of, “Nothing in life is as much fun as messing about on boats”? I forget, but after plenty more messing about on boats, we sailed up to dock at what was the worst harbour in the world…ever! And now it was Cat’s turn to get pushed into the river by Leighton. Fortunately he did think twice about doing it to me or Tim, though we took great care when we shook his hand. As ever, Smile and Mister Beer were waiting for us, but by this point I had no dry clothes left and had to make do by sitting on my raincoat for the whole journey back, a lot of which I slept through anyway. As people were dropped off, we said our goodbyes to our new friends, wondering if we would see them again.

That brings us to the evenings “entertainment”. Over lunch, the Dutch couple had told us of a cabaret show they went to the previous evening, a cabaret show featuring ladyboys. They said it was a real hoot and we should check it out. I’m not a big fan of cabaret, and as for ladyboys, well, let’s not even go there! But we’re back to the old when-in-Rome syndrome again, and when in Chiang Mai…either way, Cat and Zoe said they’d go, so we thought it would be nice to meet up with them.

At 21:30 we were seated at our table in the open air bar, waiting for the lights to flash, the music to blare, and the show to start. It then clicked with me that our table was right at the front, by the steps up to the stage, and all other guests were to our rear. Oh please don’t say they get people to come up on stage with them because we’re in prime position! While I was still panicking, things got going. It was loud, proud, disco stuff with plenty of camp thrown in here and there. Songs like I will survive were given the mime treatment while backing dancers held their toothy grins fixed firmly forward. Essentially I found it akin to watching a load of drag queens on stage. At one point Cat leaned over to me and pointed out one of them, saying she (he?) looked extremely convincing, and she had a point. I believe that a “ladyboy” can be anyone from an effeminate man who wears make-up all the way to a post-op transsexual. Although they cannot legally change their sex, Thai society is more tolerant than most, mainly because Buddha recognised the third gender. I made the mistake of mouthing the “I love you baby” line from Andy Williams’ Can’t take my eyes of you, and got a bit of a reaction, but it was Tim who weathered most of the storm, sitting as he was in the closest seat to the stairs. Fortunately none of the acts dragged him up on stage with them, but one of them briefly tried to sit on his lap – damn the camera for failing me at that point! All in all, it was good value entertainment and a top way to end a top day. And some of the photos that actually came out…

But was it the end? No! Although it was for Cat and Zoe who had to catch an early flight to Phuket the next morning. Thai people like a bit of English Premiership football, but what they’re most passionate about is boxing…Thai boxing to be predictably precise. Chiang Mai has three Thai boxing arenas in town and we’d read that Loi Kroh Boxing Stadium opens its doors after 11 p.m. and you can see a few fights for free. So, come 23:01, we were there, doing the long walk down to ringside that is lined with highly dodgy bars where the type of entertainment on offer is even more blatant than the places where they play Connect 4. No sooner had we taken out seats at a table that was occupied by a snoozing pregnant cat, than a ropey-looking woman (ropey-looing, but definitely a woman!) had schmaltzed up beside me and was asking all kinds of questions, rubbing me in a clean but saucy manner, calling me “handsome man”, “funny man” and squeezing the back of my neck, which actually rather hurt. Eventually she got the message that I was only here for a beer and a bit of boxing and she schmaltzed off, but there was no end of girls coming up and saying they would be across the way in so-and-so bar and we could play a game of pool (no euphemism, they really mean a game of pool). In addition there were young children mingling with the seated punters, trying to sell holy flowers. They kept coming up to the dozing cat, stroking its head, then giving it a gleeful smack on the forehead, before affectionately stroking it again. A strange, seedy environment all round.

And what of the boxing? It was okay, but obvious that the best fights were over and these were the lesser quality battles to draw the evening to a close. And my shins hurt-by-proxy every time I saw the fighters kicking each other. After a while, the girls / hookers / drink-spikers started moving the seats away from ringside and back to the bars, so that me, Tim and pussycat were a tiny island in a surrounding sea of sleaze. Definitely time to drink up and go home, but happy to have enjoyed such a cracking day.

It’s been a hell of a four months, bring on the next two and then bring us back to Blighty, baby!

I wanna be sedated

Friday, 12/10/2012 – 120 A.D.

“You can’t get lost if you don’t care where you are!”

-          Shop front in Chiang Mai

08:45: We woke up at a decent hour today! Finally made it to Chiang Mai…

…and don’t worry, I’m not going to stick to the same format as yesterday, updating you at every minute when something occurred! Tarwan Court Hotel is down a side alley just outside of the old city of Chiang Mai. The old city is shaped like a square and surrounded by an old moat, bits of which date back to the late 13^th century. Chiang Mai has a population of 175,000 and is akin to the great smoke of Thailand’s north. It is an important centre both historically and economically, but it still has a small town feel and has its fair share of Western tourists, even at the end of the rainy season. See, I’ve been doing my homework…well what else was I supposed to do on a 16 hour train journey???

Tarwan Court has a fine-looking exterior, although the room is a bit below the standard that we’ve been used to, but, and in the voice of Derek Trotter, “What do you expect for six quid?” Exactly. A working internet would be nice, but I’ll leave my moaning about that for now. When we crash-landed early in the morning the only thing we could do was get our heads down and ignore the vague sounds of late night revellers returning home and shouting in the lobby. I normally like a chunky pillow, but this one was like a breeze block. Still being wired from the elongated train journey didn’t help, so I tossed and turned and ended up sleeping on my right side.

I don’t normally sleep on my right, not since America. Maybe it was the hot US climate, but I found that whenever I slept on my right I woke up unable to hear properly in my right ear, at least only temporarily. Give it a few minutes and it was fine. Not today though, I was still hearing very little out of my right ear even at breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, it was the best yet – the “American” version coincidentally consisting of a couple of fried eggs, couple of slices of toast and a couple of sausages (I don’t ask what they put in them). Felt great to be full.

After dropping off some laundry with the hotel’s head honcho, I talked to the live-in tour-guide person, a woman by the name of Longtip  [SIC] who has her desk just outside our room. She wasn’t able to help with our internet problems, but it was difficult to hear what she was saying with my bunged-up ear over the building work that was taking place on the upper floors. Yeah, I’ve probably got some blockage in the ear and I’ll get some ear drops where I can, but I don’t fancy going to a Thai doctor to get it sorted if I can put up with sleeping on the left side of my face for the next two months, which I can.

There were two things we wanted to do in Chiang Mai – go to Tiger Kingdom and do some elephant trekking. Fortunately Longtip was on hand to get us the best deals on both. Well, she claimed they were the best deals! She immediately presented us with a full day package out in the wilds of the local area that involved elephant riding and various other things, including pick up from the hotel – SOLD! She also told us she could arrange a taxi for us to Tiger Kingdom and back for 200 baht (the price we told her we’d heard was the going rate) – SOLD! All we had to do was return at 2.00 p.m. and our chariot would await.

As you know (if you’ve read these scribblings for a while), our time in Thailand is squeezed by the 15 days our visa allows us, which subsequently meant we didn’t have much time in Chiang Mai. Therefore we left the hotel and headed down the main drag into the old city, i.e. the bit behind the wall and the moat (think Chester with fewer Welsh people nearby and no Alderley Edge, or whatever the swanky area is). We did everything south of the road running through the centre of the old town, taking in temples here and there. Tim said that he felt something quite profound in one of the inner sanctums, but he wasn’t able to clarify what it was. I hate to say it, but I’m getting a bit templed-out…it’s not enough for me just to see one in the centre of a city, now it needs to be an isolated monastery on the side of a mountain that has never been seen by Western eyes. Maybe it’s the whole shoes-off-shoes-on over and over that it getting to me! It would be a totally different story if I wore flip-flops…

If you can’t read the above sign next to me, it says, “Crying with the wise is better than laughing with the fool”. And yes, I am doing my best to laugh, rather than look in uncomfortable pain. This was a garden beside one of the larger temples that contained other classic lines, such as:

·         Merit making calculated to impress is not real merit.

·         Clean, clear, calm; these are characteristics of a noble person.

·         Everyone may be a fool, but nobody is a fool for ever.

·         Today is better than two tomorrows.

·         Every honest work is honourable work.

·         Constant dripping wears away the stone.

Y’all fancy contemplating those in your meditation chambers? Time was limited, so we headed back to the newer part of town, pausing at the following temple of doom:

Yep, they even have them over here, and the cashiers are just as slow. Plus my credit card wouldn’t work in their machine. It didn’t delay us for too long, but upon returning to the hotel we were pretty much off out again. Our driver to Animal Kingdom was none other than Longtip, our taxi was Longtip’s own car. Seemed she was doing a bit of moonlighting for 200 baht. In the front seat was a young lad called Winn [SIC] who she claimed was “her partner”, though something may have been lost in translation. He said he was an English language teacher in Bangkok, but he didn’t say much more.

We used the drive as an opportunity to ask about various things that have vexed us thus far, e.g. what’s the deal with the miniature temples that stand outside pretty much every house we see? Longtip explains that when you build a house you must also build somewhere for the spirit that occupies that land to live. Thailand is 95% Buddhist and it’s quite strange to be in a country where Christianity is virtually non-existent. No danger of the missionaries trying to convert us over here! I felt a bit stupid sitting in the back of the car and holding my finger against my ear lobe so that I could hear clearly – nope, normal hearing still hadn’t returned!

The drive is interrupted by a hard shower of rain. Longtip assures us it will last only ten minutes and it does. Tiger Kingdom is one of the premier attractions in Chiang Mai, along with “Flight of the Gibbon” which is essentially Thailand’s version of Go Ape (been there, done that!) The staff are dressed in the typical zookeepers’ fatigues and they all have a good knowledge of English, as you’d expect. The deal here is that you not only look at the tigers, you get in the cages with them. I’d heard rumours that they were drugged, hence docile enough for strangers to stroke, but a notice in the waiting area assured us this was not the case. It went on to say they had been around humans all their lives and were well-fed regularly, which is why they had no interest in wanting to eat humans. Right. And what do they do during the mating season? Is the place closed?

Tiger Kingdom has four types of tigers – big, medium, small and smallest. There were various deals floating about and I opted to go for the big and small tigers, whereas Tim went for the big and smallest. Obviously big are full grown adults, whereas small are about 6 months and smallest are anything from two to four months old. Not sure about the medium ones…they’re probably at that bored teenager stage and best avoiding.

Once you’ve left the waiting area you have the options to get in with your tigers immediately or hang around for a bit and look at them from the other side of the cage. Straight away I could tell that these tigers were not drugged – far from it! The display of boisterous aggression from two big bastards in the pool got my little heart beating quite fast indeed! Maybe I should have gone for the smallest and left it at that? Also present was a male lion who we were told was called “Johnny Depp”…errr, because of his hair!

At the enclosure for the smallest tigers, Tim takes off his shoes and puts on the flip-flops provided, then familiarises himself with the rules, such as no sudden movements, no touching of the tiger’s heads, and not to let them lick you in case they catch an infection. After all our time on the road, chances are we’re carrying quite a few germs (but not those kind of germs!) Needless to say, Tim has lots of fun with the little `uns, even getting to use one of them as a pillow. And rest assured that the keepers are always close by, never leaving you alone with them.

Next I go in with the small tigers and have a blast. There are four of them in the enclosure, two girls and two boys, all siblings. They are extremely playful and constantly fighting with each other and rushing around. The keeper has to take them to one side and calm them down to get the required photos for the tourists. Things are going great until all four tigers pile onto each other and the mass of black and orange limbs spills out over the side of their playpen and crashes down around my legs. Then I realise that these playful little cuties have the potential to bite off the very legs they have fallen onto. I remain rooted to the spot until they chase each other off to the other side of the enclosure. Great fun!

Finally it’s time for the big ones! We both go in together and are told not to approach them face on, only from behind. Again there are four of them in the enclosure. The keepers have small sticks, which unfortunately they use, though it’s in the form of a gentle deterrent rather than to inflict any pain. Even so, to gently deter a 400 pound tiger, you need to do more than tickle it on the nose. Anyway, the usual way I make banter with the locals is to ask them if they like English football (they invariably do) and this time it was no exception, the only bad thing being they all liked M*n Un*ted. I’m sure it was just a joke and the first tiger we had our picture taken with was not actually called “Van Persie”! 

[See the fear in his eyes as Tim strokes his back!]

["Tee hee - I loved making those Grayboys feel uneasy!"]

There was a potentially scary time for Tim when he almost put his head against the electric fence, plus a nervous couple of moments when the tigers we were sitting by suddenly jumped up and ran over to give their mate / relative a playful swipe to the side of the face with a gigantic paw. It was strange find oneself become at ease with such large and majestic creatures, then suddenly realising that one haven’t been checking behind oneself for the past 30 minutes! But it all ended well and Tim got to cross another thing off his bucket list. Me? I don’t have a bucket list, I just had a great time.

Like good chauffeurs, Longtip and Winn were waiting for us when we came out. They hadn’t been anywhere, just hung around for the two or so hours while we were with the tigers – customer service, Thailand-style! After they dropped us off at Tawan Court we had a shower, shave and sh…indig, then took a walk to the Night Bazaar, essentially a nocturnal market with plenty of inexpensive places to eat. We tucked into the local delicacy of “cow soy” [probably SIC]. One thing I cannot get enough of is strolling around the various stalls with a full belly on a balmy warm night. During the day the climate here is just as harsh as the south, but once that sun sets it’s much more manageable.

For an after dinner drink we found ourselves on the outskirts of the Night Bazaar. Here the central courtyard is surrounded by lots of small bars, some so tiny they consist of barely a couple of stools. Some of the larger ones had pool tables and most of the tables had the game Connect 4 upon them. A bar for kids? Nope, I’d been briefed on this one – the story goes that when a certain type of bloke is looking for a certain type of lass, they often break the ice with a game of some sort, and Connect 4 is a favourite. So, you could say it’s Connect FOREPLAY – bwahahahar! Sorry, I’ll go now, and we went soon after, not having had any offers for a game from the girls in tight dresses and high heels that were hanging around. And, at some point before heading back to the hotel one last time today, my ear came around and I could hear properly again, but even with restored audio I still didn’t get any requests for Monopoly Thailand-style.   

 

Slow train coming

Thursday, 11/10/2012 – 119 A.D.

06:15: Alarm goes off. We both slept like crap, but you often do when you know you’ve got to be up at an ungodly hour.

07:01: We go to the second floor for breakfast. The lady who is normally on hand turns up five minutes later, all apologetic. She does us five slices of toast instead of the usual four, but I can only manage one. 

07:25: We check out and the desk clerk calls us a taxi. It is pink. The driver has even more of a deathwish than normal, gleefully giving the finger to his fellow taxi drivers and giggling like he’s on helium.

07:40: Taxi drops us at the main train station. The journey cost a mere 53 baht – why did we ever bother with the time-consuming and just-as-costly public transport system?

08:00: While talking a stroll around the platforms, cheesy music blares out of the station speaker system. I figure it must be an advertising jingle. Suddenly I notice that everyone around me is standing still as I strut casually by, hands in pockets. Realising it’s actually the national anthem that’s playing, I duly stand still, though I don’t put my hand to my chest. As soon as the final trumpet has blared, everyone starts moving again.

08:20: Our train arrives at platform 10. Departure is scheduled for 08:30. We will be heading right across central Thailand to Chiang Mai in the far north of the country. It is a three carriage put-put train – no wonder it’s going to take us at least 12 hours to reach our destination! As we board, the station employee tells us to put our big bags on the racking above our seats, not on the shelves at the end of the carriage – well duh! As if I’m going to risk it being out of sight for a second!

08:21: Everybody scrambles to get to their seats and in my haste my day bag falls from my shoulder and slams against the little fold-out table, which for some reason is already folded-out. Now it is folded-out and the hinge is broken. I am able to fold it up against the seat in front, but will not be able to rest anything on it for the entire journey. Neither will anyone who sits in this seat after me.

08:30: Train actually leaves on time. I whoop internally at such a miracle.

08:35: Train stops between stations and stays motionless for 15 minutes. After such a lousy night’s sleep, I feel myself drifting off already…

08:40 – 10:00: I drift in and out of sleep as loud people get on at various Bangkok stations. For the first time in a long time I am cold and need my hooded top to use as a blanket.

10:00: Woken by attendant bringing round snack-type thing and coffee, which I have to hold high because of the bumps. Fortunately it is in a high stemmed brown beaker. The snack looks like a jam sponge and…something else. It’s not bad, although the unidentified thing tastes a bit banana-y. I obscenely pull my top back over me and try to go back to sleep.

10:07: I open one eye to see that someone further down the carriage has spilt their coffee everywhere. Had to happen at some point.

10:30: Train stops at a station and family with a screaming child get on and sit…right behind us! Par for the course with us, no? To be fair, child soon quietens down when father starts talking to it, but because he is Spanish his words are loud and constant, so we both reach for our iPods.

10:33: While noting down the above entry in my jotter, my pen runs out. It has lasted since day 1 of the trip and will be sadly missed.

10:39: Spot a huge gold Buddha statue. It’s as big as a three storey house.

10:46: First wonderings about when I’m going to go to the toilet. Dismissed as far too soon on the trip.

11:00 – 12:10: I keep sleeping despite the Chinese bloke in front of me who cannot sit still for a second. Every time I put my knees in one place, he fidgets and bangs the back of his chair against them. His son is no better, constantly launching back into his seat and causing Tim all kinds of problems. My buttocks are already starting to ache.

12:11: Lunch comes around courtesy of the trolley that you get on aeroplanes. It is some kind of curry concoction and dry rice and it does the job, though I leave the most squashed bits. Dessert is some kind of bright green thing. At first we think it is jelly, but there are kidney beans at the bottom, so best to leave it alone.

12:31: I take out the laptop and watch the first episode of series two of An Idiot Abroad, starring the infamous Karl Pilkington.

13:12: I read several chapters from my book, still uncertain as to why my bladder isn’t guiding me down to the far end of the carriage.

13:50: The Chinese kid and his dad get off at some out-of-the-way station. Hooray!

14:15: I watch an episode of The mighty boosh. An elderly Thai lady and her granddaughter now occupy the seats in front of us, but they are no trouble at all. Backside is really rather sore by this point and lots of seat wriggling is taking place.

14:55: We are given more snacks (essentially what we got mid-morning) and I consider yet another nap. How have I managed to go this long without needing the loo?

15:15: I watch another episode of An idiot abroad. Think that’s enough for one day. Gets a bit samey without a proper break between them.

16:00: The scenery starts to get a lot more dramatic. Up until now it had been pretty much flat wet fields all of the way, but now we have steep jungle hills. I listen to the entire version of The end by The Doors for extra dramatic effect.

16:17: I contemplate a great many things, such as what it takes to be successful in life, as well as what makes up the consistency of jam.

17:03: I finally go to the lavatory, even though I reckon I could have held out for longer if necessary. As train-bogs go, it’s not that bad, but just as I am starting, the train pulls into a station. Can the people at the station see my sprinkle splashing down onto the track? Maybe they’re just smiling because their train has finally arrived.

18:28: Train stops moving. It’s pitch black outside so we can’t see why, although I doubt daylight would help us any more. We could be in the middle of a big tunnel, it is impossible to see any details out there. The last Thai train we got arrived three hours late. Oh crap.

18:48: Moving again. Surprisingly there was no explanation for the delay.                 

19:30: With an hour to go (in theory), I visit the lavatory again.

19:45: Some confusion when we stop at a reasonably large station called Mia Chang. No, that’s not Chiang Mai – as if the train would arrive early!

20:00: Another standstill. I forget how long it lasts.

20:35: People were packing up their bags as if about to alight, but we pull into a tiny station that is definitely not Chiang Mai.

21:30: Getting a bit fed-up now. Have my third visit to the lavatory in the hope that train will arrive at destination while I am using facilities. It doesn’t.

21:45: There is a loud bang, like we hit something or something has blown. The train judders, several people gasp, but we keep moving.

21:47: Train draws to a stop. Oh dear. People get up to investigate, mostly foreigners, but they learn nothing, which isn’t surprising.

22:00: Train starts moving slowly backwards. Already 90 minutes late, this is turning into a nightmare. Why are these railways such a joke? Why can’t they get it right any time?

22:10: Still going backwards we contemplate that we may be returning to the last small station we passed to all be thrown off because the train is knackered. Having to clear the line for an express train coming the other way would be too good to be true.

22:12: We stop going backwards.

22:13: Engines rev, but we go nowhere.

22:14: Driver / mechanic / jester walks down the carriage and I feel like shaking him hard and shouting for an explanation.

22:15: Engines rev again, but still we go nowhere. I am calling for the chief of Thai Railways' head on a plate. Tim is eating his ham and mayonnaise bun.

22:21: Engines rev a third time…nothing. I am too p*ssed off to take photos.

22:23: Official-looking guy in red shirt comes and explains to Thai grandma what happened. We have to go off his body language, but it doesn’t look good. As he explains further down the carriage to someone else, we’re sure we hear the word “cow”.

22:25: Fourth engine rev…fails. Bang goes my plan for some nice grub and a beer tonight. Lucky we only paid £6 each for the hotel we’re staying in. Double lucky that they have a 24 hour check-in desk.  

22:28: Old English guy walks through the carriage and tells us that apparently we have hit a cow, but they can’t yet ascertain if the train is partly derailed. My brain is partly derailed, my emotions about to fly completely off the track.

22:29: Engines rev yet again. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

22:31: Suddenly we move gently forwards…then backwards again. Are you still with it at this point, dear readers??? If we keep going backwards any further we’re going to hit the cow a second time!

22:40: Completely giving up on the chance of an evening meal, I eat peanuts.

22:55: We have travelled backwards slowly and now reached the last little station we trundled through. Possibly they will have some specialised equipment here with which they can fix whatever is wrong? No one is sure whether to get off or wait for the order.

22:57: Engines rev and I have a mild hallucination that the train is going forward. Tim assures me it is not moving at all.

23:00: We start playing cards to keep sane.

23:11: I get out to have a look at what is going on. The crew are using some kind of jack and chain combination on the front carriage. That’s about as much as I work out. I decide it’s not very respectful to take pictures with flash while they’re unkackering what is knackered. Even the monk leaves his seat for a gander.

23:15: Cards resumes.

23:21: Looks like some people are coming back onto the train, but they don’t seem relieved.

23:25: There is a shout of, “All aboard!” Are we back on a platform in Edwardian England??? Nevertheless, this is extremely promising and more people return to their seats.

23:31: WE ARE MOVING!!! And forward at that! Goodness knows how long we still have to go to get to Chiang Mai, but at least we’re making progress. And, seeing as we have just passed the three hour late mark, it’s a new record. What really takes the Mickey is that we seriously considered the bus as an alternative way of getting to Chiang Mai!

12:20: Train finally arrives at Chiang Mai, nearly four freaking hours late! We go straight to a tuk-tuk and ignore his offer of 200 baht to our hotel. Second offer we get is from an old woman who suggests 100 – we do the deal for 80, then realise we may not have any change, and she certainly won’t. Sod it – she gets 100 just for getting us to the hotel.

12:50: After checking in, Tim goes straight to sleep. I stay up to try and post a brief blog, but the internet isn’t working. Should go to sleep, but am still wired from the journey. After 16 hours of sitting on the same train, I have just four little words to describe the events of today, and that is, forgive my French, “a load of bollocks”.