The End

I write this last post with a very heavy head having been thoroughly Cavved last night. Our Goodbye and Don’t Come Back Night started with margaritas in Charlie Brown’s Mexican restaurant, followed by a bottle of Bacardi at the Saxophone Club followed by vodka shots at the Titanium Bar followed by a bottle of whisky at Mojo’s and, finally, because we really needed it, a can of Chang back home for supper. Somewhere along the line I think we also ate, but that wasn’t the point of the evening. All fascinating places. Saxophone had a live band consisting of three or four saxophonists, two trumpets, a trombone, bass guitar, keyboard, snare drums and a singer; all playing from music sheets. Titanium had an upstairs bar made out of blocks of ice: the bar was essentially a freezer room set at -4 degrees C with fans on full blast and barman decked out in three layers of clothing and a woolly hat. Mojo’s had a live rock band who had an excellent female vocalist and half naked dancers on the bar (I think I’d been there before). As I say, its 12 in the morning, I've just got out of bed, and my head hurts.

We are just packing our bags (read: Linda is packing our bags!) and preparing for a 20 hour journey back to dear old Totton. Our big, big thanks to all who joined in the spirit of this blog: to all the commenteers, the two Followers (the capital F backs me feel goddamned Messiahnistic!), and of course the Faithful Three who made sure I wasn’t writing into a vacuum. And, of course, Mike and Carolyn who trailblazed this entire Region and made things easy for us. I hope I’ve done all these wonderful places some justice.

Maybe we'll see you in the Robin Hood for Happy Hour oops, I mean Salmon Leap, sometime (although, if I understood it right, the Woodlands Caravanserai is about to embark for darkest Devon sometime soon?).

Au Revoir

Dave & Linda

Pub Street

A final word about Siem Reap’s famous Pub Street and its slightly demented brother, Pub Alley, especially since we’d spent so much down-time there. The place looks as if someone decided to compress a whole town’s worth of entertainment down to less that a 100 metre road and cram in as many restaurants, bars and ancillary entertainment as possible. Our evenings would usually see us at the Anchor What? Pub underneath the same rock speakers drinking $0.75 draft beer and $2 margaritas (although that was the most expensive place on the strip) and watching a veritable united nations go by:

• street kids rattling off their knowledge of England to get you to buy bootleg Angkor archaeology books (I managed to knock one down from $10 to $5 so he went hungry that night!);
• tuk tuk drivers offering to take you places (“I’m already here!”);
• limbless bands playing xylophones and zithers on behalf of the landmine victims appeal (I bought one of their albums for $10 -- there are an awful lot of limbless people on the streets of Cambodia: a constant reminder of their history);
• wiry magicians and acrobats frenetically throwing themselves about in front of disinterested café dwellers;
• self-conscious tourists dangling their white legs in backlit aquariums to get their feet nibbled by fish (there are a lot of these aquariums, as I’ve mentioned before, but the fish never seem too bothered about doing what they’re supposed to be doing);
• family run Cambodian restaurants selling locally-made curries, lok lak and amok dishes (as well as pizza restaurants, snake BBQs, crocodile burger shops, Indian restaurants and the usual tourist western menu junk);
• Internet cafes that cost $0.50 an hour but where the mouse has a mind of its own, the screen’s too dark, the keyboard’s had all its letters erased from years of use, or, in one memorable case, where the ‘g’ and ‘h’ keys didn’t work (which explains my bad spelling, Glen);
• prowling groups of minimally dressed western girls and bearded hippy blokes who look as if they stayed on after the Vietnam war.

Getting fairly drunk on our last night, we realised that this country had gotten well and truly under our skins. The people, despite or because of their history, at once appear friendly, inquisitive, innocent and full of fun. They are all desperate to learn English, (“Tourism better than war”, said one guide), and find us as exotic as we see them. During our last tour of the ruins we stopped for a cold drink. Besieged from all sides by women and children demanding we stop and buy their water/coconut/musical instrument, we sat down under a tent on some plastic chairs. Smart pre-teen girl plonks herself down beside me:
“Where you from?”, she demands.
“Where you think?”, I say tetchily, trying to work out from my guide book what temple I’m at.
“Germany!”
I sigh theatrically; “What language are you speaking to me?”
“Cambodian!” “No.” “English?” “Yes. So where am I from?” “England!” “Yes!”, I declare loudly, thinking that would be the end of it. Not a chance.
“How many children you have?”, she wants to know.
“None!”
She looks perplexed. This is common. The Cambodians cannot understand why people do not have, or even want, children. “Why not?”, she demands, trying to get at the root of the problem.
“Don’t like children. They loud! They talk too much”, making yakking hand signals, hoping she’d get the hint. “They cost too much money!”.
She frowns even more at this heresy and looks at Linda. “This your wife?”. By this time we have a huge audience, three or four more young kids are propping themselves chin high at our table and the older women have gathered around.
“No!”, I say loudly, “I never see this woman before in my life!”, and for good measure, point dramatically at Linda and shout, “Who are you woman, and why are you following me around?”.
John, our tuk tuk driver, finds this hilarious. Linda is telling me to behave. The older women are smiling knowingly, which I take to be good sign. This is good street theatre.
Smart kid frowns even more, if that were possible. “You very bad man!”, she concludes.
“Yup!”, I agree happily and offer to pay for the three Fantas for which the older women happily overcharge me. Street theatre costs, even if you are on centre stage.
We leave to photograph more ruins with the words “Goodbye bad man” calling distantly from the tent.

Sorry about the length of this post but it’s the best way I can think of describing the people of this country. As they say, you really had to be there . . .

Birdwatching

In memory of dear departed Andy, we decided to take a break from ruins and go ornithological. This time we paid for the full guided tour as we wanted to get a better feel for Cambodian life in this region, little knowing what we were signing ourselves up for. I've mentioned the Tonle Sap Lake in previous posts and that it is seasonally expanded during the wet season due to an unusual hydrologic "back up" system from the Mekong River. What was hitherto unapparent was the size of the swell: the surface area of the lake going from 2500 sq kms to 12,000 sq kms, a five-fold increase. That means that practically every bit of dry land we've seen will be under water in a few months time as this picture from the Wikipeadia shows. We've been told that the hundreds of shacks and houses we've seen on the river banks that are not already on six foot stilts are picked up wholesale and moved to higher ground, I gather by hauling them with big bamboo sticks. Everything else is nomadic by virtue of being "floating cities".

We chose a tour from Taraboat but, alas, not with any prior intelligence. Our guide was keen and friendly and spoke passable Enlish, enough to make a few jokes with on the long water crossings. We had to set the alarm at 0500 hrs again, something I was never especially good at even when I was working shifts!!! Taken by taxi from the hotel, we started with a moderately-sized boat to cross the lake from the nearest floating town to Siem Reap (Chong Khneas). Directly north west from Chon Khneas is the floating town of Prek Toal, where we changed to a smaller boat. That took us to the great bamboo "shield wall" in the sea surrounding the 31,000 hectares of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve (read: bird sanctuary) where the guide and captain had to manually open the barrier in order to steam further up the coast for a few kilometers. Now much of this was subject to trial and error because of the nature of the geography: it changed in structure so much that even the locals got lost. Add to that the need to circumvent kilometer-long bamboo fish traps that drove the fish trying to escape the dwindling water level to convenient "catchpoints", it took quite a few hours to actually get to the inlet where our destination lay. Another hour up the inlet and we swapped to a still smaller boat (I wondered why we were towing a tiny paddle boat complete with a quiet man sat cross legged in a straw hat). From there he steered us both up a narrow stream where, admittedly, we saw hundreds of storks, cormorants, Greater and Lesser Adjutants, blue tailed bee eaters, pelicans and other birds that I am not at liberty to name, sweeping off the nearby tree tops at the sound of our chugging engines. After a while, he turned off the engines and commenced paddling for another hour to where the water stpopped. That's when it got interesting. We later discovered that the water level had dropped even more than the locals expected: the boat was supposed to take us to the landing platform on the tree house. Linda elected to stay on the boat. I had to take off my shoes and roll my trousers up. The last 50 metres to the tree house involved an extremely squelchy, knee deep, perilously sucky, step-by-step walk through the swamp. And if I thought that was bad, my feet were so covered in slimy grey mud, they couldn't grip the smooth bamboo ladder that was supposed to take me another 30 vertical metres up onto the platform of the tree house. I made it, lungs panting like the aforementioned arthritic steam engine, shaking from fear (not good with heights when my feet don't work), and sweating so much every article of clothing was plastered to me like a second, sticky skin. I'd like to say it was worth it, but all the birds (and there were thousands) were on the tops of trees hundreds of metres away.

Still, the company employees thought it was funny, and they did treat us to cold beer and one of the best Cambodian meals we'd had up 'til then (I'll charitably forebear from mentioning that it was already included in the hefty price of the trip). It's difficult to get mad at Cambodians although I would like a face-to-face word with the Aussie who owns Taraboat (he claimed I was "breaking up" when I spoke to him on my guide's mobile from the tree house -- yeah, right!). Still, worthy of a blog entry, if nothing else, and Linda thought it was a great day (but, then, she had the sense to stay in the boat!).

Tomb Raiders

The real reason why we have ended our sojourn at Siem Reap is, of course, to enjoy the wonders of the Angkor Archeological Park not, as you may be forgiven for believing, Pub Street. We decided to keep Mr John on as our private tuk tuk driver, partly because he seemed a nice chap and spoke good English (self taught, as it turnes out), and partly because he only charged $15 a day. Day 1 saw us set the alarm for 0530 hrs, John patiently waiting for us after a hastily swallowed breakfast of eggs benedict and orange juice. Our first visit just after sunrise was Angkor Thom; built 900 years ago by Angkor's greatest king, Jayavarman VII, and covering an area of 10 sq km. Passing through the impressive South Gate, the orange rays of the rising sun through the trees revealed the Bayon, a collection of 54 gothic towers decorated with 216 coldly smiling, enormous faces of the great king himself (not a narcissistic god-king, then). The whole area is in a delicate state of reconstruction having been hidden from the rest of the world in dense Cambodian jungle for many centuries. Another few hours tracing the wonders of the Baphuon, the Terrace of Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King saw us very, very sweaty with sore legs and a growing realisation that we'd forgotten where we'd left our faithful tuk tuk driver. It didn't help that there were around twenty thousand more people standing around by lunch time.

Anyway, having found him asleep in the back of his machine, we journeyed on past older individual temple sites to Ta Prohm, a site made famous by Angelina Joli in Tomb Raider (although as I remember it, one doesn't pay too much attention to the scenery when she is wearing tight "adventure suits"). This site is distinctive in that the jungle really has the upper hand. You can see from the picture that it is really difficullt to separate the vegetable from the mineral. Loads of pictures, of course, although I fail to see why, with all this ancient splendor, tourists insist of prancing, mincing and posing in front of the temples so their spouses can take endless pictures of them standing in the bloody way!

Day 2 saw an afternoon start to see the famous Angkor Wat, believed to be the largest religious structure in the world. The Wat is surrounded by a huge moat, a rectangle around a mile long each side. The western entrance is a dramatically wide causeway leading to an outer wall, followed by another causeway leading to the temple proper. There are three levels to the temple, the second and third storeys marked by symbolic lotus bud towers. Rising 31m above the third level and 55m above the ground is the central tower (see picture) inside which you can climb up some steep steps and walk around. If you are into photography, this place is staggering at sunset when all the stones are cast with an orange hue and the bas-relief carvings are emphasised with shadow. Come anywhere near our house this spring and I'll bore the pants off you with my slide shows!!

The end of the day saw me climb the mountain with the same twenty thousand other people who had been following me around for the last two days to the temple of Phnom Bakheng. This site turns into a bit of a circus as it is famous for sunsets over the jungle: people climb the narrow (about an inch) but steep (about 8 inches) stone steps, worn smooth by the passing of many a sandle, to the top of the temple, set up their cameras and tripods to snap away at the sunset, and then all try and get down at once before the light disappears and everything turns black. I used some intelligence for a change and escaped down the mountain track while hords of people were still coming up. Linda sat with John during this time learning about his life (he has four childrn and runs a small farm 3 klicks outside town; his father was a teacher and was murdred by the Khmer Rouge - a common tale when you talk to the locals). A few beers later at Pub street and we were sound asleep for about the next 10 hours.

Siem Reap

Staying with Cambodia's grisly history for one more moment, I saw a poem published at S21 called The New Regime by Sarith Pou and have since found it on the net. You can access it here if you are interested. It pretty much sums up Pol Pot's fucked up ideology better than I can in this prose. Now, enough of that. Onward!

It was at this juncture that LampenHols left the hectic bosom of the CavTours organisation , the eponymous Cavs having flown back to Bangkok. So yesterday, it was up at 0500 hours, a quick last breakfast at Raffles, and a taxi to the Siem Reap boat. We booked a couple of seats a few days' back for $35 a head; the whole trip expecting to take around 5 hours. The Siem Reap Express duly left, motoring up the Tonle Sap river at around 7:30 in the morning, most travellers leaving their seats to climb over the boat to get a better view (and not much in the way of elf 'n safety rails between us and the murky brown waters). Passing the trappings of civilization, the riverside was dotted with shacks and homes on extremely long stilts giving us a clue to how far the river swells during rainy season when the mighty Mekong floods back into the Tonle Sap. The boat trip itself was glorious: stilted shacks giving way to jungle and occasional villages; cooperative fishermen in wide brimmed straw hats and black pyjamas hauling nets; the chug chug chugging of simple generators pumping water into blue hoses that snaked up the river bank into the jungle; little children waving furiously from the bank or their parents' boats (and me goofily waving back); iridescent blue kingfishers skirting the waters' surface (yes, plenty of ornithological examples here - just not sure what species); floating towns made out of rafts and empty oil drums. Eventually, the river widens out into the Tonle Sap lake; more of an inland sea that dominates the geographical center of Cambodia.

Our destination was the north eastern corner of the lake. We had paid a man in PP $5 to be picked up at the boat disembarkation point but didn't hold out much hope, especially since we realised he'd put yesterday's date on the receipt. However, there he was, with LAMPEN held up on a bit of card. Mr John took us to our hotel, the Sokha, a five star monster (there goes the rest of the business company profits!) in the centre of town. By the time we'd settled in it was time for tea. Siem Reap has a very appropriately named street called Pub Street that sells beer at a permanent happy hour at $0.50 a half pint. We drank at the Angkor What? Pub, the first pub ever to be build in the area and ate at a Cambodian BBQ. This place sold raw meat and vegetables that you could cook on your own dome-shaped bbq with a moat around it to make soup. Typical meat you could buy included snake, frog, goat, crocodile, as well as exotic stuff like beef and chicken. I cooked and ate, for the first time ever, snake and can categorically say that it doesn't taste like chicken!  Linda declined to participate. Then I knocked a pint of beer all over my trousers and shirt so Linda decided it was time to tuk tuk home. I like this place!

Tuol Sleng

Somewhat of a culture day, today, in two very, very different parts. Another early start this morning after another tyical CavTours food and drink extravaganza along the Tonle Sap River the night before. The first tour was to the Royal Palace. First established in 1866 and developed to its present size by 1920, the site serves as the residence for the king and main cultural symbol for the kingdom. Well manicured grounds surround royal buildings such as the one pictured. It is also the site for the Silver Pagoda, so named for its silver tiled floor (although the uncarpeted bit we saw was looking a bit frayed). It also serves as a museum for priceless Buddist and historical objects and Linda assures me that her book tells her that it is öne of the thousand places you must see before you die. For me, one of the surprisingly pleasant things about the place was the little toothless old man and his two sons who played on a wooden xylophone, musical bells and drum respectively near the exit. They generated such an engaging rhythm I could have sat there all morning. We all met up at the Foregn Correspndents Club, another place on Linda's list, for fruit juices at lunch time.

My afternoon trip was a totally different affair. Linda would not go with me. Having experienced all the pleasurable aspects that Cambodia had to offer thus far it was time to bite the bullet and engage with the more unsavoury side of its recent history. Tuol Sleng is Phnom Penh's Genocide Museum. It is located on the actual site of Security Office 21 (S21) of the former "Democratic Kampuchea"; created by Pol Pot for the systematic interrogation, torture and murder of its citizens. The place itself used to be a high school but the Khmer Rouge turned the four, three-storey concrete Blocks into cells and torture chambers. Visitors can visit the cells, see the rusty metal beds and the shackles and devices that held the prisoners, see the barbed wire that surrounded the outside of the Blocks to stop would-be suicides, and look at the grainy enlarged black and white photos of all the people who were about to be killed. It hit me hard as I was walking past wall after wall of these doomed "mug shots" when I realised I was looking at pictures of little asian children. Steve: you remember the impact of the Jersey underground war museum all those years ago? This is worse. I've been wandering the streets for an hour prior to finding this internet cafe: I do not and cannot understand this! I was considering visiting one of the more infamous "killíng fields" about 15 klicks outside PP but I can't face any more. The human species in the 20th century has a lot to answer for.

Sorry about the lack of humour in this post. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow as our adventures take us away from PP to Siem Reap.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Greetings, dear readers. Today finds us in the capital of Cambodia. Just yesterday we were in the capital of Malaysia, having regretfully left the unexpected oasis that was Langkawi. Being a Muslim country, I have to report that Kuala Lumpur is nothing like Phnom Penh or, for that matter, Luang Prabang or Bangkok. OK, we were only there for one night, this being a CavTours Whistle-stop One-Off Tick-the-Box Special, so these are very much first impressions. KL itself is an hour's ride by bus from its international budget flight airport (think Gatwick as opposed to Heathrow), the city is very well developed, the skyline dominated by the twin towers of the Petronas skyscrapers and the nearby observation tower, every bike rider wears crash helmets (unlike the straw hats in Hanoi, for example), and the bars are all concentrated in one or two streets. Being Muslim, alcohol is discouraged so prices are around 5 or 6 quid a pint at least (so not a place I'd recommend if you make it this far, Steve). I had one scary moment: the bus discharge was a chaotic affair; eveyone burrowing into the bus's hold themselves to grab their bags, tripping over each other in a hurry to grab the waiting taxis to their hotels. I grabbed what I thought was ours and chucked them into the taxi boot and, just as the driver slammed the boot shut, caught a glimps of mine and had the passing panicky thought, "that isn't my bag!". I'm glad I had the presence of mind to make him open the boot: it wasn't! So an even panickier few moments later had me running back to the bus to see if I could swap it for the proper one. One late and expensive night later saw us on the return bus (bag under seat this time!) and the outward flight to Cambodia. One more capital city ticked off.

Now Phnom Penh: a completely different kettle of mussels! Situated at the confluence of the mighty Mekong River (remember her? - Just down the current from Luang Prabang in Laos) and the Tonle Sap River. This city is more like Bangkok in spirit but carries a far more diverse and worrisome history on its shoulders. Its actually not that big a city and reasonably easy to navigate (having a river on one side helps). It is packed with side streets, bars, restaurants, wats, palaces, shops and markets and just walking down the crowded streets is an experience. I've lost count how many photographs I took this morning of every-day street life and lost count of how many times someone has shouted "tuk tuk?"at me. I love cities like this: just keep one hand on your purse, one eye on the traffic and one eye on the road and you should survive the day intact. It is quite apparent that this is a city, and a country, that is emerging from some of the bloodiest civil wars in the late 20th century and feeling its way around a place on the world stage, certainly as far is tourism is concerned. We have taken the safe option of staying in a five star hotel (courtesy of the wife's business - I couldn't afford this on my pension; sob sob!), the Raffles Le Royal Hotel. Ultra, ultra colonial swank, but I couldn't help but laugh to myself as our feet echoed off the stark black and white tiles of the hotel corridoor past the cream coloured heavy wooden apartment doors: the place reminded me of a lunatic asylum. "Its time for your electroshock treatment, Mr Lampen". I asked Mike what time the nurse was going to visit our room but he said I'd have to pay extra for that! Happy hour in the Elephant Bar was accompanied by a man on a piano, a half-yard of Tiger beer, and fellow guests who look as if they'd stepped out of a period in Indian history. Still, it was a lot cheaper than kuala Lumpur.

Vegetative states

I think I'm metamaphosing into a sea cucumber. We have been here for a mere three nights and two full days. The glint of a cable car on top of yonder moutain calls me to investigate but. can't. seem. to. be. able. to. get. off. my. sunbed.

The ever-tranquil sea, rich Malaysian food, resonably cheap beer (well, cheaper than the airport), friendly staff is a magnet to my poor tired traveller's soul. I did manage to walk to the nearby village to check out the local flavour but inevitably was drawn back to the sea. Even the "Beware of the Jellyfish" didn't put me off assumng a semi-permanent vegetative state on a sunbed: every Garden has its Serpent. (Although Carloyn reported seeing a discarded man's swimming costume, an empty wallet, and a broken mobile phone at the water's edge this morning when she went for her morning run so I don't know how big said jellyfish actually grow here.) We did manage to move on to the next bay last evening but that just drew us to another hippy beach bar where the locals smoked funny cigarettes and played Cold Play albums over and over again while the sun set.

Another day, another currency. Having been used to Baht, we had been assuming the local currency is the Dingbaht (ho ho) but its actually the Ringgit. After Baht, Dong, Kip and Rial, not to mention Sterling and Dollar, my poor tired brain is having trouble knowing what I'm paying for anything any more. We have had some good evening meals; the first at a local Malay restaurant (plenty of fish and squid), the second at a lovely garden restuarant called Sheelas (a real "home cooking"-type affair with plenty of different spices), and the last at an Indian restaurant (tasted like nothing we eat in England). Spookily, every meal (including alcohol) seems to work out to ten pounds a head.

The four of us are looking very pink now so its probably just as well we are waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport. Tonight we spend in Kuala Lumpur. Tomorrow we go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia,  for a few days. Not sure why but when I find out I shall post accordingly.

Langkawi, Malaysia

And Lo! A two hour flight from Bangkok and we are in Kuala Lumpur. One hour's flying later and we are on a tropical island north and west of KL and about a one hour speed boat ride from the Thailand border. The island of Langkawi (which I understand to mean something about eagles); at the Franjipani resort. Interesting as we transited through KL, it was clear that we were in a different country to those we'd travelled in this region previously. For one it was the headscarf dress worn by all the women, for the other it was a total absence of alcohol in the KL's oldest International airport. Well, not quite: we did find six cans of Tiger hidden away in the domestic departure lounge (we will find a way!)  - bought them all for 16 quid!!!!. A quick pick up at the airport found us at the resort beach bar, gin and tonic in hand, watching the sun set in a variety of orange and red hues over placid pale blue waters. First impressions: the people are very friendly here, helpful and smiling but not quite in the I-want-your-money way the Bangkok Thais can be. The resort in clean, air conditioned, eco-conscious, with numerous swimming pools, a restaurant and bar overlooking an extremely calm ocean. First day consisted of just sitting or walking by the beach, so I have absolutely nothing else to tell you. Au revoir.

Linda writes . . . . (1)

Hello from the up-to-now silent partner

Just because I haven’t written anything yet doesn’t mean that :
a) I’m buried under the patio back in Pembroke Close ; or
b) I’m still sitting on the loo somewhere

I always just prefer to do the holiday than write about it !

It’s been ab fab up to now - the first part - and we’re about to embark on the second stage which should be good. There have been a few moments which I’m going to share :

Taking off from Heathrow - yes, I know that was a long time ago, but it was like going back through time for me (you’ll understand this one, Karen !) to thirty odd years ago when I used to fly home from Montreal for Christmas. I had a window seat when we left Heathrow and I was absolutely staggered when I saw that they were de-icing the plane before we took off. That was always standard practice in Montreal because of the constant sub-zero temperatures, but I’ve never seen it happen in England.

Airlines - just for once praise for two of them. Etihad were really comfortable with friendly staff (that’s the airline that got us to Bangkok) and Bangkok Airways (flights to and from Laos) were great - emergency exit seats on the way out and half empty plane on the way back, so we each had a two to ourselves - outstanding !!

Mooch with Dave - he didn’t tell the whole story. He’s right in that I thought the Khaosan Road was awful, but what he didn’t mention was the other road - Rambuttri - which I thought was really nice. It was a sort of pedestrianised paved area with lots of little bars and restaurants, also loads of second-hand book shops, quite narrow, really pleasant to sit in and watch the world go by with a cold beer in your hand.

Laos - definitely should be on everyone’s list - at least Luang Prabang was the only place we went to but it was great. Imagine Asian with a touch of French - bizarre at times but soooo nice.

L x

Various words

Slightly less lounge lizard, slightly more alcohol-related reptile by the end of this week. Wednesday: went out on a pub crawl with Linda down Soi 11. Ended up at a new Mexican drinking Margaritas, nibbling tacos and listening to outstanding classic 70’s rock from the restaurant speakers. Got home around midnight. Crept around the house so as not to wake up mine hosts. Thursday: went on a pub crawl with Mike up one side of Soi 4 and back down the other. (The bastard made me take one of those taxi motor bikes that I moaned about last post up to Sukhumvit - hairy!) Got home around midnight. Crept around the house so as not to wake up wives (FAILED btw - lots of complaints the next day of crashing doors, clattering in the kitchen, half eaten sandwiches and copious volumes of snoring!!!). Friday: we all met up with Mike for drinks and a meal at Monsoon and dragged him to see Avatar on the IMAX (waste of time - he slept through half of it and said it was “cowboys and Indians in space”; got no soul, that boy!). Have to say, the resolution and detail in Avatar on 3D IMAX is AWESOME! Got home around midnight. Crept around the house so as not to wake up young James.

As a pattern was emerging here I decided to skip Mike’s invitation to a Burns Night extravaganza. Lots of reasons in the end amongst which playing the pseudo-Scottish sport of Kipper Tossing (yes, that was not a misprint) in the restaurant car park is not on my top 5 list of Sporting Events I Must Attend Before Dying. Mike was OK about it: “Hamish was going to take the piss out of the Sassenach anyway”. Took Linda back down to the Khao San Road which she didn’t really appreciate (“Its tacky!” Well, yes. I didn’t bring you here to enjoy yourself just to experience how the other half lived). We shared a jug of Singha at Pier 13 and watched the boats go by at sunset, which was a better idea, and had an early night.

We fly out to Malaysia tomorrow so a final word on, well, words. I wish I’d thought of this before but the following are some odd things I have seen in Bangkok on my travels.

The first is a poster that appears all over Sukhumvit: BNE was here. Once you see it, these signs are all over the place. I thought Google would supply the answer but it would appear to be a world wide mystery. For an example of the discussions visit here. Seen any in Totton?

This appears on the menu in Monsoon: Spiced braised with taro-goat cheese mash, mojo tomatoes & smoked chilli jus. Spiced braised is OK but what do card-reading, fortune telling bovidae and spiritually-enhanced vegetables have to do with it? And what in the universe is a “chilli jus”?

And finally, this hand written notice appears in the apartment foyer next to the lifts: If you are looking for your beetle please call me. It has stayed in our home since 18th January. Apartment 12A. No missing cat or dog in Bangkok; beetle. Carolyn explains that this part of Sukhumvit is populated by Japanese expats and it would appear that they breed fighting beetles for indoor sport. One can only imagine the size and ferocity of the missing animal and what happened to the family pets in apartment 12A . . .

That’s it. We fly at dawn!

Interlude II

Not much to write between the big adventures so the following thoughts are more for my personal log than storytelling purposes:

• Apartment swimming pools. This, basically, is where I’ve spent my time since we got back from Laos. Stupid not to, really: its basically your own personal swimming pool as no one else uses it until the weekends. Its also got a gym, but let’s not go there. Cue arthritic steam engine.
• Lumpini Park. Just been there this morning for a gentle stroll while Mrs C, Mrs L and one of the neighbours (or, the Coven, as I fondly regard them) went shopping (*shudder*). Took about 20 pictures of the local flora and fauna to make into a mini slide show later. A quiet oasis amongst the urban chaos.
• Elephants. Or, rather, the lack of them in Bangkok, and their yellow, cylindrical, fibrous, malodorous poo. I think someone in authority got fed up with their handlers in the end. Having seen how much they have to eat in the wild to reduce the tonnage of vegetable matter required to generate said cylinders, you could be forgiven for thinking that surviving on a handful of tourist-paid-for bananas per hour was a bit cruel. Still, they undoubtedly added a bit of the exotic to the Sukhumvit street scene.
• Motor bikes. Now, if only the powers that be could slap a similar injunction on the pavement-riding taxi bikes, the simple act of walking down the street could involve less survival concentration and more looking around.
• Pavement digging. Or it would if not for the Thai national pastime of laying down perfectly good tiled pavements and then digging them up again in a month’s time. I’ve lost track of how many stretches of Soi 39 have been jack hammered to impassable piles of rubble in the last 14 months. It makes the almost permanent coning of the Redbridge Flyover seem like an Act Of Reason.
• Paragon. (The Monster Mall at Siam not a model of excellence.) The one that is fully capable of hiding an entire IMAX cinema and the largest aquarium in south east Asia (according to Wiki). The one wth the big glass doors to the outside world guraded by guards in resplendent uniforms that wouldn't look out of place in a banana state military. "Check your AK-47 at the desk, sir" "Do you need a Spirit Guide?" These places remind me of that wonderful line from Hotel California - "You can check out any time you like but you can never leave". Well, I stupidly went back looking for a book shop and wasted two hours of my life trying to get the hell out. Huge vid-screens jabber at you from the walls and ceiling reminiscent of the opening scenes in Blade Runner. In the absence of other customers, the wide, shiny corridors connecting the massive indoor shopping warehouses and an infinity of criss-crossing escalators look like post-apocalyptic zombie zones. I had to run for the exit in the end before the urban mutants got me! Never found the book shop.

Enough for one post, methinks. Got a couple of exploratory-cum-drinky-adventure days coming up (maybe -- things are always subject to change on CavTours).

Adios Laos

Back in Bangkok, and doesn’t it look a bit seedy now after the colonial style of Luang Prabang! This CavTours (LampenHols Subdivision) mini-break consisted of four nights in the Jade Hotel, a very reasonably priced, modern hotel just 15 minutes from the town centre (less if you cut across the Laotian Mall in the adjoining field (think bunch of trading tents strung together). You did have to put up with the early morning clatter and jabber from the family who ran the next door Laundromat (think Chinese laundry with lots of washing lines out back next to the vegetable plot). And the local teenagers’ bar the other side (that we crashed the other night - boy were we looked at!) plays its music loud until well past my bed time (around 9 o’clock these days). Still, the staff were very friendly and fell over themselves to help us.

That left us with three whole days to play with. For the record (and my failing memory):

Day 1: Elephant ride and jungle “trek” (Ha! Our knees are still knackered after that).

Day 2: Tour of LP. We inspected every bar and restaurant up the Mekong side, then every bar and restaurant down the Khan side, and then for good measure, every bar and restaurant down the centre main street. See, easy town to navigate: can’t get lost! Oh yes, for the culturally minded, we also visited all the ancient Wats and temples we came across and took lots of interesting photos to bore other people with if they dare drop by the house this year. To celebrate our success, we decided to pub crawl all the happy hours we’d found. Which was a stupid idea really as any homespun café on the river would get you a pint of 5% BeerLao for 10,000 Laos kip which, according to the internet, (and you’ll appreciate this guys!) equals exactly 73p. However, as wine is so expensive in Thailand the girls decided to see what other bargains they could find . . .

Day 3: Visit the temple at Phu Si on the only hill in the centre of town. We left this ‘til last as it involved climbing 238 sodding steps. By the time I was half way I was breathing like an arthritic steam engine but the view at the top was worth it. After that it was chill out day; reading a book by the Mekong River while the sun sets over the distant mountains is good for the soul, I’ve discovered.

All in all, I’d recommend this as a definite stopover if any of you are thinking of exploring this part of the world. I wish we’d planned for a week in hindsight. The flights aren’t cheap but the hotel was. It would be no trouble to use LP as a base camp and take a couple of overnight tours to other parts of Northern Laos or down the Mekong on a boat. Handling currency is a bit weird; basically they take kip for the small stuff like food and drink, Thai Baht for the medium stuff like shopping and trips, and US$ for the heavy stuff like visas and hotel costs so you have to juggle three or four conversions to GB£ if you really want to know what your paying for. There’s plenty more to recount about the place but this post is getting overlong again and wouldn’t want to trigger another wave of narcolepsy across the UK. Suffice to say, we were surprisingly sad to be leaving.

Luang Prabang, Laos

Laos: completely landlocked country surrounded by every other country in the regions. There are borders to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, even China. Its the size of Great Britain with a tenth of the population: none of them Polish I think. However, ethnographers have calculated a minimum of 94 ethnic groups within its borders so there must be a lot of diversity. The culture has a philosophy of not getting worked up about the present: karma will sort everything out for the future. Religious prozelytising is illegal, so no Jehovas Witnesses. Buddhism is everywhere, the people are peaceful and softly spoken, and everything is dirt cheap. I'm already warming to this place.

We flew into Luang Prabang; what used to be the capital of the country before it moved south to Vientiane. It is a peninsular-shaped town situated on the confluence of two rivers: the Mekong (12th largest river in the world) and the Khan. As a World Heritage site it has been developed to a thriving tourist centre (well, at least relative to ten years back). It has a charm difficult to describe. For Linda and I, the French colonial architecture and open street bars and restaurants reminds us of Key West in Florida with a serious Oriental twist. It has nothing like the hysteria of Bangkok, or even the street chaos of last year's Hanoi. Its lively enough in the evening with a enormous street market taking up the mile between our hotel and the bars (I've already bought a pair of warm fluffy slippers for the English sub zero winter). Our first night saw us in the outside bar of L'Elephant restaurant with BeerLao and skewers of meat and vegetables. As the sun dimmed we could hear the chanting of the monks at prayer at the wat just opposite where we were sat. Walking over to peek in the door at the top of the steps, I could see the large golden Buddha looming over the kneeling preists in the flickering lamp light. It truly brought a tingle to the spine.

The next day was an early start (*groan*). A bus took us 15 klicks outside the town where we were met by a small herd of elephants at a preservation camp. Then, a mercifully quick long-tailed boat ride up the Khan (those wooden benches are murder on my bony ancient bum!) surrendered us to what was briefly described as a "trek" by the town travel agent. Ha! An hour and a bit saw us climbing over giant tree roots and crossing swamps as we were led up the trail next to a system of streams and waterfalls to the top of a mountain (OK, hill). The Superfit One was as happy as larry while Linda and I had to stop to wipe the sweat from our eyes and contemplate knee surgery when (IF) we ever saw civilisation again. It was all worth it. At the top we were met by our personal elephants (whose names I can't remember but we have full biographies if you are interested) who carried us back to the river and their Elephant Camp. A great, if continually swaying, view of the mountain Laotian jungle on the way down followed by a cold beer at the Camp restaurant.

After a much needed shower and a cerimonial burning-of-the-clothes it was time for traditional Laos food. Three pints of BeerLoa, a Lao pork curry and some river weed (think Japanese seaweed but flat tablets of it baked in garlic -- much better than it sounds) came to around six quid. I definitely am getting to love this place!

Interlude

Leaving Linda near a convenient loo (she is OK now, btw), Carolyn and I went back to the travel agent and successfully booked our flights to Luang Prabang, Laos, leaving tomorrow morning (Thursday) and coming back hopefully hale and hearty on Monday. Don’t know what to expect, except that the city used to be the old capital and there’s a serious French/Asian feel to the place. We spent the rest of the day in t’Internet looking for a place to stay. I have chosen the Jade hotel because its cheap and offsets the cost of the flights (around £220 each return). And because the place Carolyn wanted was full, so god knows what it’ll be like. More to follow soon if I can find an Internet café in Luang Prabang.


Not much to report after Sunday’s escapades. The weather has improved for good it seems so we’ve been sitting round the apartment pool, sweating into our holiday reads and planning where the next meals are coming from. I gather things have improved a bit back at Blighty; temperatures now slightly above zero? I hope our poor little house hasn’t fallen in under the weight of the snow while we’ve been gone (it didn’t behave itself very well in similar conditions last year!). Some of your weather stories are quite frightening, including the one about temperatures in Florida being at zero; its virtually on the equator ferchrissake! Hope everyone is well and warm.

We did sit back to watch Carolyn practice her kick boxing with her trainer at the pool gym the other day. I may have mentioned that she is getting scarier in her old age; you should have seen her kicking her trainer, an American and experienced kick boxing professional (we sat through a video of some of his fights in Philadelphia -- lots of blood and violence). Quite apart from the loudness of bare feet striking pads, watching her repeatedly kicking him in the head from a standing start is bringing on a serious case of Respect. We decided to ask her to join us in Laos while Mike is away to act as a bodyguard (and I‘ve since been a lot nicer to her than I normally am).

Not much else to report. Off for another cheap beer and Thai meal later and then another early night.

Bangkok on a Sunday afternoon (Part II)

I didn’t quite make it home at that point. I still had jobs to do: get Linda some Immodium, find a specific travel agent, replenish the family’s beer stock (somebody had been drinking it!). First thing first. Find this damned travel agent. Our favourite Tranny Travel (so called because all the employees seem to be at various phases of gender transition) at the top of Soi 39 had gone bust (*koff*) while we were away. The Embassy recommended Reunion Travel on Soi 23 but although I’d walked the entire length the other day and braved the invites to attend around a thousand massage parlours, I couldn’t find it. Lois, at the Embassy, said it was next to the Snow White Dry Cleaning shop but in an avenue off the Soi itself. So, hot and very sweaty, in my cut off T-shirt, backpack and limp, I got off the Skytrain at Asok and made my way back down 23. Found the sign for the dry cleaning shop, but just as I made my way down the alleyway I was accosted by a screaming women who must have all of 80 years. “You get out! This my home!” Sigh! Howcum I get all the best offers from women? I sidestepped her, and the equally geriatric husband who had appeared to give chase, and carried on until I found the travel agent. Shut on a Sunday night, of course. I had been pursued. “You go away! This my home!” I pointed to the travel agent, “This is not your home, you barking mad woman! This travel agent!” “Yes”, she reluctantly admitted, “but it shut now. You go away now?” “Yeah!”, I growled in my most menacing tone, “but I’ll be back”, I added inspirationally.

On the way back up Soi 23 I worked out what her problem was. Only a few blocks away was the infamous Soi Cowboy. Reflecting on my appearance, she probably had enough experience of sweaty fat backpacked farangs drunkenly moseying down her turf looking for girly bars. Hmm. This gave me an idea. I was in need of a cold beer and had never been to Cowboy sober, if indeed I’d been there at all the other night. Why not be hung for a sheep rather than a travel agent. Plucking up courage I ventured down the side street and pushed back the curtains of a bar at random, noting in passing the letters “SKOOLGIRL” on the wall. At this time of the evening, it was clear that I was the only customer, and certainly the only male there. They let me buy a beer, at least, before springing the trap. I was introduced to another small thing (remember: head barely reaching chest) with a smile like the sun finally appearing above the Alaskan mountains and big soulful eyes you could drown in. I won’t described how she was dressed: male readers’ imaginations will have already kicked into overdrive and females readers will have switched off in disgust anyway. There followed a lengthy discussion that involved a proposition, a hotel’s name, an amount of money, and a description of her sick children: most of which I could not understand (remember: they speak in vowels very loudly!!!). Bloody hell! I was only an inch into my bottle of beer and there I was in a fight or flight situation. I manfully prevaricated for the rest of my beer until it was clear that I was in a GO:NO GO situation, as the military say.

I went. Lived to fight another day. Ran away. Discrete rather than valorous. Eek eek -- pass the cheese. Sober and shaken. I am sure you can add your own comments (no prize for the most inventive). I made my way to the familiar grounds of the Robin Hood, sank a few pints, picked up the Immodium and the beer for the family fridge, and limped home. Where I was promptly bollocked for coming home late and drunk! I didn’t think it was a great idea to describe all my adventures at the time so I went to bed in double disgrace.

Bangkok on a Sunday Afternoon (Part I)

I find myself on my own. Linda’s got the squits after yesterday’s cheap lunch (a seafood and dairy combo - garlic prawns & ice cream: always works for me!). Carolyn has to go to the airport. Mike has to go away to Chiang Mai on business. Free! Hurrah! I’ve decided to strike out and see some of the city, so those of you with narcoleptic tendencies should prepare a pillow over the keyboard or something. Today’s target is Banglampoo because it is supposed to be the backpackers paradise. Onward then!

I want to walk this. Fed up with taxis in clogged-up Bangkok streets. Skytrain to Ratchathewi station. Head west around midday. Stomp down various shanty style roads. They hate pavements, the Thais. Covered in concrete plant pots, street eateries, motorbikes, bits of motorbikes, tables, chairs, anything that stops you walking on them. Walk in road. Dodge tuk tuks and motorbikes. Emerge into a covered concrete warehouse. Smell of fish and the sound of people washing down tables. Must’ve been a fish market earlier. Cross an expressway; no traffic lights; just bloody well walk and hope. Another labyrinthine system of stalls and markets; this time clothing and bamboo. See man sharpening a 6 ft bamboo spear (perhaps to catch one of Steve’s baby-eating snakes). Stop. Big Klong (Phadong Krung Kasem canal, according to map). Find concrete bridge completely covered with women selling loads of green oval vegetables. Make way through, avoid motorbike coming other way (Christ, they’re everywhere!). More subterranean markets. End of street in sight! Lots of rubbish and gravel hill. Christ! Railway lines. (NB: no level crossing, fences, notices, barbed wire, or anything -- obviously the Thais are considered adult enough to look both ways before crossing multiple tracks without the aid of a nanny state!). Back down under tarpaulins of another shanty market. Boring concrete streets now. Walk down wholesale timber outlet street. Emerge into massive square and five lane highway. Giant pictures of the King everywere. Work out signal crossing protocols (and find out pretty quickly that tuk tuks and motorbikes ignore all rules as usual). Identify a key building on map. Aha! Go north. Keep going north. Splosh! Hmm. Must be Chao Phraya River. Ta Da! - reached destination.

By this time I realised I’d worn a whole in my big toe and it was leaking into my sandals. I only mention this distasteful event for two reasons.

1) When I stopped for some well deserved breakfast/lunch/tea and was busy wrapping some complementary table tissue around the offending limb, one of the local tradespersons came up offering me what looked like a shiny, stainless steel, do-it-yourself, surgery kit in a nice compact zipped up carrying case. When I patiently explained that the big toe was survivable without amputation, she looked at me oddly and moved on. On reflection, it may just have been a funky 21st century manicure kit.

2) Shuffling onward, the first shop I saw was one of the new fishy foot spas; you know, a place where you dangle your feet in a pool of carnivorous piranhas that eat all the dead skin off your feet. Now I don’t know about you but I’m not entirely sure that said fish have been on the full training course. If, as in my case, you’ve already done a fair job of taking the first few layers of epidermis off, where do they stop? I’m not a prude (well, OK, I probably am), but I’m not putting my naked metacarpals on display for anyone.

About Banglampoo? Well, yes, the most famous street is the Khao San Road. This is where backpackers of every size, race, colour, creed, age, gender, tattoo design and moral outlook comes to buy stuff. To be honest, it’s a bit overblown. By far the better street is the twisty one that links into it called Rambutri, which has at least got some decent bars and restaurants. At the end of the day I was too knackered to explore any more so found myself at the pier for an incredibly cheap trip back to the Skytrain via the Chao Phraya River express taxi, the sun setting behind me across the river.

Part II tomorrow.

Bangkok on a Saturday afternoon

Okay, I lied. The rain stopped and we all went down to Soi 11 to the Tapas Restaurant (yes, Ginge, I would eat all sorts of food in all sorts of countries -- I fully intend to eat my way around planet Earth without even leaving Bangkok at these prices, something I couldn’t afford to do at home). Excellent spread of grub although the gouty twinge in my knee the next day indicated I concentrated too much on the spicy meatballs.

It is Saturday afternoon and it was decided to have a family outing to the cinema. The 3D Imax at the Siam Paragon mall was showing a quaint pastoral movie whose plot could be summed up as “Boy meets Smurf; Boy Loses Smurf; Boy Finds Smurf Again”. Or, if your prefer a more visual description, think Lord of the Rings with helicopter gunships. In fact, we had high hopes for a 3D version of Dances With Smurfs (sorry, Avatar) on a screen 50 feet high but first we had to find it in an enormous mall that makes Southampton’s West Quay look like a 1980’s Pakistani corner shop. We rose through an infinity of criss-crossing glass moving stairways that would have even a Hogwart’s veteran confused. The PA system continually screamed out incomprehensible messages (“babblebabblebabble KAAAA; babblebabblebabble KAAAA; babblebabblebabble KAAAA”) presumably exhorting us to by vacuum cleaners at 5% discount (not that any sane person could find the right store in this chaos). The girls queued up for tickets for the 2 o’clock show; the boys sat on a sofa watching the world reel by. An hour later they returned: no seats for the 2 o’clock, no seats for the 5 o’clock . . . Did we want seats for the 2340 hours showing? Now, on reflection we should have anticipated this because a) there was only one or two Imax cinemas in a city of 20 million fun loving people, b) it was a Saturday afternoon, and c) it was Kids Day in Bangkok. I’m still not sure what that meant but it definitely required everyone to produce one or more children plus push chairs, dress up in giant teddy bear costumes, and jam up every means of transport imaginable. Nerves jangling (“babblebabblebabble KAAA”), at least for those of us of a particular gender and age (like: male and over 50), we finally escaped this evilTardis and went to find a cheap Thai street café for lunch. A litre of beer and excellent crispy sea bass and spring roll meal for just over a pound later, we felt much better. Well, some of us did; some of us missed the 50 foot Smurfs.

Bangkok by night

Last night I went out drinking. “Quelle surprise”, I hear you say. It started out innocently enough. We were due to meet the family for a Mexican dinner so we stopped off at the Robin Hood for happy hour. Still too early for our rendezvous we dropped in at one of the new “beach bars” that have seemed to have sprung up on Sukhumvit. Well, beach bar is probably a very inappropriate term to what is effectively a shop front with optics and a beer barrel and more bar girls than customers and three table and chairs sat on the pavement of what I mentally dub Concrete ‘n Cars Street. Still, the Bali makes a bit more of an effort with tables inside and the walls all decked out in bamboo. And the beer’s cheap.

Anyway, the Mexican meal was fun with all drinks on a three-for-two offer until seven (the girls happily tucking into three-for-two margaritas before the deadline). It all started to go wrong when Mike decided that it was too early and invited me to join him at his local, affection ally known as “the Rugby Club”. It definitely went wrong a couple of hours later when we decided to pub crawl it home . . .

I have vague memories of events after that. I dimly remember a bar where the rock band did a passable rendition of Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers while girls in fishnet stockings danced precariously on the bar and on tiny platforms surrounding the pillars holding the roof up. A bid redundant, I thought, as the lead singer was gorgeous (but then I’ve always had a thing for female rock stars). Much later, and many bars on, I recall a tiny thing (her head just about reached my chest) loudly declaring that she wanted to have my babies. At least, that’s what I think she said. I’ve noticed that Thai girls have a tendency to speak in vowels, especially when they shout: “EYE WAAAAN OOOR AAY-IES!”. Thinking about it, she probably said she wanted me to buy her a Baileys. It took me the best part of an hour to explain that I was very old, English, quite drunk, broke and therefore in no fit state to participate in either option. She eventually left in search of a more worthy contributor to the local gene pool. Or a drink. Or whatever. It was at this point, I think, that my host decided I’d had far to much exoticism (yes, I’ve spelt that right) for a boy of my age and poured me into a taxi.

Back home I have been reliably informed that I woke up Long Suffering Linda at around 4 in the morning, babbled for around an hour, demanded Anadin to forestall the inevitable hangover, and promptly snored the house down until someone woke me up at 11 by hoovering the corridor outside. Still staggering, I made my way up to the food court at Sukhumvit for a duck, rice and broth breakfast for the princely sum of one pound sterling. Munching mindlessly away, I contemplated that the cost of the breakfast probably represented one hundredth of the cost of last night.

Its raining again. I’m not going out tonight.

Bad Weather

A few nights back we bumped into an English couple during happy hour at the Robin Hood (think Salmon Leap where a pint of Tiger sells for just over a pound between 4 and 7). They had been following Sky News and regaled us with the appalling weather conditions “back home”. Now, at this point, we would have sorrowfully shook our heads in mock sympathy and turned the conversation to how wonderfully warm Bangkok is this time of year in the gloating tones that ex-pats always adopt in such circumstances. Except that the weather is pretty weird over here, too. For the previous few days the atmosphere has been so thick that your t-shirt clings like a soggy second skin within minutes of leaving the sanctuary of the air conditioning. This culminated in the night before last in an outstanding thunderstorm leaving the roads surrounding the apartment block knee deep in water and brought the Bangkok traffic to a standstill (not that the Bangkok traffic needs that sort of excuse during rush hour). Wading through it to get to the bar is an unpleasant affair as the water is not entirely liquid, if you get my drift. The locals say that this particular storm beats any of the rain they usually get in the summer months. So, having declared “Sod the Planet!” in the earlier post I now have to reconsider my personal responsibility for my gratuitous carbon footprint. Sorry Thailand. Sorry England. Sorry Canada. Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa.

Outstaying Our Welcome

This morning we were up early and took a taxi/sky train ride to the Bangkok Police Immigration Centre to visit a family of Sri Lankan Tamil detainees behind two walls of cage mesh who had the misfortune of outstaying their welcome in Thailand . . .

. . . Hmm, maybe I should explain this lest ye get the impression that this was new kind of new pervo alternative Bangkok-style petting zoo experience (I certainly wondered at first!). Carolyn has some friends who belong to the Bangkok Refugee Centre, a charity organisation mainly who try to look after immigrants who are seeking asylum. It would appear that, while the UN accepts the principles of asylum seeking, the Thai government doesn’t. And said Thai government seriously wants to discourage people staying on in the country after their visa has run out. Or even coming into the country without a visa in the first place. It didn’t help last October that the Centre’s own Sri Lankan translator was deemed to be in breach of said regulations, as was her entire family, as was another 45 Tamils. To make matters worse for them, this translator’s brother had been banged up two years before but no one had dared visit him because they knew they’d be arrested too.

Glad that’s cleared up. That leaves the question: why the hell were we there? That took Carolyn even longer to explain. First we had to go to a nearby market and buy fruit and shampoo and stuff. Then we had to get our passports copied in a nearby shop. Then we had to go to the police building and fill in a form, each of us asking to visit an individual whose name I could neither spell nor pronounce. “Where you from?”, asked the guard. “Embassy!”, I replied (taking my cue from Carolyn -- seemed to be the best answer to any question the police asked). We gave them copies of our passports and in return we got a torn off slip of paper allowing us to visit their detainee. Then we had to wait an hour in a nearby café and come back.

Hmm . . . Better make this long story short(er). Eventually, we joined a line of other (more legitimate) visitors, surrendered our passports and valuables, got searched (the women complained of “having their cracks inspected”), surrendered our bags of fruit and shampoo for inspection, and finally joined a throng of people at a 6x60 ft mesh grill all shouting all at once to a mixture of Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Cambodian and occasional Western detainees who were clinging to a similar grill a few foot away.

Why? You may well ask. It appears that by having visitors like us (well not exactly like us as we were a bit bogus) was the only way families could get together albeit for a single hour. When they are arrested, the women and children are separated permanently from their fathers and brothers. What the Centre plans to do is identify all the family names from their refugee lists and get “visitors” to visit them all on the same day so they can come to the same common area. (The food and shampoo we bring is an added bonus.) It transpires that many of these families have been banged up for years mainly because they have no other country to go to (and if you believe they are genuine refugees then that would be so) and the UN is incredibly slow to find countries that will take them. The Thais have got themselves in a bit of a pickle over this in some ways. Having arrested them, they are now responsible for them for ever; food medical and other humanitarian issues notwithstanding. As it stands, I’ve heard stories from the charities that suggest that so many people of each gender are banged up is what used to be police administrative office space (with cages built in) that there isn’t enough room for them all to sleep on the floor at the same time so they have to sleep in shifts. Other stories include that food is pumpkin soup three times a day, seven days a week, etc. The ironic thing is, as many of the charity workers have been to the proper Thai prisons they can confirm that conditions at the detention camp are actually worse than at the prison. The moral of the story is: if you are going to get arrested over here make sure its for a decent offence rather than the heinous crime of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Still, its put me right off outstaying my welcome in Thailand. (Hmm, perhaps that’s why our hosts took us there in the first place!)

Next on our holidays: the local leper colony.

Gratuitous carbon footprints

And Lo! Having “gratuitously enlarged our carbon footprint” (although I suspect our share of the total carbon cost of the flight has only been equal to the running of two family sized people movers for a week or the landfill-produced methane from the Christmas rubbish from an average western family of four) we find ourselves in another part of the world thinking “How did I get here?”(as Talking Heads say on their first single). And now that we are here, I say Sod the Planet! Lets burn all the fuel now and let somebody else’s grandkids sort it out! And, yes, I want soft 3-ply toilet paper, not that short-fibred recycled crap! And the New Scientist says that a six-cups-of coffee habit each day for a year is the equivalent in carbon pollution of a flight from London to Rome. Bring it on, I say! I need my coffee fix! However, since it is now official, according to the cognoscenti who contribute to the comments, that Santa Clause is the product of the Evil Empire -- don’t mention CC by name; we don’t want to get sued -- I still draw the line at neon reindeer.

So “how did I get here“? Etihad, for one. Not only one of the cheapest airlines for this route but both flights in and out of Abu Dhabi had one of the best in-flight screen systems I’ve seen. Just a pity that there’s always a prat in the seat in front of you who pushes his seat back as soon as the plane takes off to cut off your air supply. Much swearing and causing of loud ruckus ensues to ensure that the idiot goes upright and is too embarrassed to tilt it back again. Ho ho. And I have it on good authority that all Etihad flights run on organically grown molasses which breaks down after combustion into harmless water vapour; so there, Ginge!

Having left Totton at 1600 on the 3rd we were picked up by mine host at Bangkok airport at 1900 on the 4th with no sleep in the interim 24 hours. I would have thought that going to bed last night at a sensible time after a couple of Singhas would have set the internal clock back to normal but it was not to be. My body clock decided that it was still 7 hours behind so I stayed awake until 5 in the morning to finally wake up at midday today (the 5th). So here I am at 3 in the afternoon on the 5th writing complete drivel on the internet because I still haven’t actually left the house yet and have nothing else to report. Methinks Linda and I will mooch around Sukhumvit Road in a minute and look for a bar with a reasonable happy hour, followed by a slap-up Thai curry to celebrate our arrival, followed by another happy hour, probably, as I doubt having an early night will do us much good.

Tomorrow we might actually do something!

waiting . . .waiting . . . waiting . . .

I am reliably informed it is Monday 28th December (I have long since lost any concept of time). We fly out on January 3rd. So here we are stuck in the interminable week between the Dreadful Christmas and the equally Dreaded New Year. Not that I have any respect for the whole month of December anyway, as anyone who knows me will happily confirm. It turns friends and neighbours – nay! half the bloody planet – into insane people. Take one example: all through the year the television has been exhorting us to turn off our hi-fi and tv standby lights because it uses a trickle of electricity and because we need to monitor our carbon footprint to save the planet for our grandchildren and because, and I know this must come as a shock to many, we are in a very bad Recession. So what happens throughout the month of December? One walks out of one’s house to be greeted with glittering neon insanity! Flashing Santa Clauses and cartoon reindeer on otherwise humble brick dwellings radiate their nonsense into the depths of intra-solar space, no doubt to be puzzled over by bewildered crystal life forms on Ganymede or newly resurrected Xmas Time Lords. A friend told me recently that the red and white logo of the commercial pagan god Santa Clause was actually a creation of Coke Cola in the ‘50s. Haven’t checked that out yet. Bet it’s true!


So now I am bored and fed up. Almost a week to go. I’ve chosen, packed, re-chosen and re-packed my sci-fi books to read on a beach (“There will be a beach!”, he cries) a half dozen times. Those nice people at blogspot have allowed me to decorate this year's blog with my own pictures I took from our last tour. So I've had a play with that (scroll down if you can't see 'em). (Memo to Self: must meet up with the nice lady I met at last year’s Boxing Day party in Bangkok – she told me how to develop digital pictures using decent software; just for a change I’m quite pleased with the results.) What to do next? Go to the pub!

*sigh* now its Tuesday the 29th. I am still boredboredbored. Now only less than a week before we face the evils of 21st century life: travel in a country that cannot handle an overnight drop in temperature; insane Nigerians who want to set themselves alight in religious flames; cabin crews and their trade unions who hate their customers; political party activists dressed in yellow who feel the need to occupy any major airport hubs for weeks at a time; airport bureaucracies who apply the “one size fits all” solution to terrorism; the misery of travellers who wait for hours to filter their simple cabin baggage through dubious security checkpoints; dreary Arab State airports who forbid alcoholic atheists from enjoying the stopover; hellishly cramped air journeys that the pilots of old Mercury spaceflights would find spookily familiar; and finally, yes, finally, having to queue in line at the end of another eternal flight a mere half way around the globe to wait in a long, long line for ANOTHER BLOODY CIVIL SERVANT to check a passport the details of which could be electronically verified for all time and backed up with a bit of 50 year old DNA which I would cheerfully slice from my own scrotum!!! Forget what the mystics say: it is definitely not the journey that counts in life, it’s the getting there.

*sigh* only another 5 days to go. I need a holiday . . . .

And here we go again . . .

Greetings, Dear Reader. Here we are again on another adventure.

To kick off, I have to admit that this “postcard” concept is a bit of a deception. Oh, I’ve never liked writing the paper versions, of course. After half a century of abuse, my poor old writing hand (*koff*) is incapable of holding a pen long enough to make a few lines of badly contrived “wish-you-were-here’s” legible. And, inevitably, we’ve been back in the country weeks before the damned things arrive. Far easier to pound two-fingered at a keyboard at a rate that exactly matches my run-down, alcohol-sodden, glacial thought processes. It’s done, sent, and received at the speed of light.

No. The real reason I have to admit a deception is pure ego gratification. The fact that even one person admits to reading this doggerel makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. And the fact that anyone even bothers to write comments – even if it is only “Gerroff! You’re using up valuable bandwidth!” – is enough to get me rushing out to the nearest internet café in the morning to read them.

And, of course, there is another reason: it gets me out of bed in the mornings. Always a temptation to sleep in, mosey on down to the apartment pool, read a half dozen sci-fi books, go for a beer, go to bed (repeat, rinse, etc.), this will force me to actually do something interesting (but preferably not lethal) every other day.

So, thank you for your patience and patronage. I will endeavour to keep it all varied, upbeat and suitably exotic.