Fussy Monks & Circus Acts.

Monday morning at Heathrow airport seemed more like we were going back to work to a really enviable job, it felt good to be alive. The flight to Kuwait was near empty, we were given leg room seats by the emergency doors. Before it got dark only bright sunshine shone for us below and above the clouds. Throughout the flight I had my head firmly wedged between Russell Brands big hard-back Booky Wook, he had me in fits of crazy laughter for the whole nine hour journey, thus proving he had successfully written it himself.

An Arab child that sat to my left was having many mad coughing fits, I truly sympathised with his distress as my journey back to England was much the same nightmare. The great dane bark I mentioned previously hurt that much I couldn't recline in my seat and sleep as my lungs and upper back would start exploding if I did. Nor could I lean forward, as it was the dead of night and the seat in front had reclined back to its fullest position. This Arab child clearly had no idea that there are certain etiquettes that must be remembered when coughing in a public, air conditioned and very confined space, this would be to simply raise your hand to your mouth or use some kind of other barrier like a hankie or tissue. When the flight attendants gave the safety demonstrations they forgot to show him this hand over mouth procedure, neither had his mother advised him on such a courtesy, but she was managing 4 other kids and wearing a big black Burqa with only a slit at the eyes, a fantastic invention against viral spreading, I should have asked her if she had a spare one to sling over his face too. Between his coughing and sneezing fits he kept looking over at me, but not in a you look like a nice fun lady or in a please help me i'm dying here stare, it was more of a cursing squinted stare directed right at me every time I raucously laughed at a written word. His glances looked menacing, like early stages of a fatwa order, as my continuous laughter was clearly more disturbing than his irritating viral flying cough and I was only (obviously to him) spoiling his avid viewing of the in flight entertainment of Alberaque Square, which by the looks of it is the spit of our EastEnders.

Although on the surface all was fine with me but I did have a small adjustment to make myself. I was wearing reading glasses for the very first time, which I was forced into getting while back in England. Of late reading and laptop work gave me migraines and blurred after moments. My optician consoled me with a patronising pat on my right shoulder while he explained it was nothing to worry about, my eyes were simply loosing its elasticity and there were no serious problems with my retina, his final words of comfort were ' these things happen with age!' Great, a full head of white roots and now I have sagging eyeballs. It was weird getting used to wearing them, the words on the page were crystal clear but my far away vision seemed even blurrier than before with them on and with them off, so this made me read the entire Booky Wook in one go as it was great being able to see it so clearly and I was not getting a headache at all. I feel like my eyes are in training all over again, I need to focus in on this new kind of vision. When ever I heard another bout of coughing I looked up from the Booky Wook and I could make out the very clear vision of more bacteria being coughed up then sneezed in to the air conditioned atmosphere by the same little person who was not yet old enough to comprehend the idea of mutual compassion as his cursing looks directed towards me for just enjoying my read and laughing out loud continued, he coughed more and I laughed more, but I continued to feel sorry for him until mid afternoon tea, when he finally fell asleep. Maybe these Arabs don't laugh much, don't understand comedy and I was indirectly insulting his culture?
Note to self: Must not laugh in front of an Arab.

Kuwait airport was a blast....nine hours waiting in an Arab McDonald's smoking area, the smoking law has not changed here at all as everyone lit up and huddled around me and the tea was piss weak. When we arrived in Bangkok some 26 hours after we first boarded in London, it was then seven hours ahead of the United Kingdom. I wondered if Dr. Who and Billie Piper had the same problem as I do going a head of time in to the future. I find it harder getting into the forward time zones than the backward ones.

BANGKOK-KHAOSAN ROAD

It took us a whole week to adjust, so we didnt move from the busy Khaosan Road area within the Banglamphu district. I felt unusually tired as England really drained the life out of me. So much so that during my first week here my brain wouldn't function beyond remembering to breathing in and out, watching illegal films and sleeping. This street is similar to London's Portobello Road on market day, possibly more so during the 1977 Jubilee week celebrations. This street is alive and busy with a very high ratio of white males (mostly Europeans) aged between 16 to 90 years old all clinging on to very young damn fine looking native Thai ladies between the ages of 16 to 21, compared to the smaller ratio of the rest of us like the crusty hippie traveller types, American gap year students, young families from Shire kinds of places, religious nuts, proper religious respectful monks, the tattoo & piercings tribes, the Gay and Lesbian fraternities and the beautiful suitably fashionable wealthy elite and Stu and I.

In England we queue up for everything, here they form rows, rows of benches for massages, rows of table and chairs to eat and drink from, rows of shoes as you have to take them off every time you enter a building, rows of reclining chairs for great reflexology, rows of long tables for facials and mass waxing sessions for men and women, rows of mats for Thai massage and possibly praying as they are very religious people and we the traveller also turn into very respectful religious people too by cupping our hands and bowing to residents when they do something for us, which is nice. Street vendors have glass boxed bicycles that sell chopped up fresh fruits in plastic bags that costs pence to buy, along with fresh made Pad Thai and fried grubs, stick insects and crunchy cockroach looking creatures. I found sweetcorn on cobs, loose in bags, in small tubs and sweetcorn yoghurt sold in the Seven Eleven. This street is noisy all day long until about 2 am with many heaving bars and restaurants and the northern region trades women wearing traditional decorative hats all rubbing the backs of wooden frogs that makes that noise wild frogs make.

Ranees is a place with much charm and I stayed here 8 years ago. This was the place where I first heard the terrible news that English sporting personality Jill Dando had been murdered, it was one of those John Lennon shooting, Princess Diana crashing, Twin Towers 9-11 collapsing moments in time. I had my second out of body experience up in one of the top rooms here too, but that's a whole other story. Ranees does not function as a guest house any more but it still reigns as the best place to eat in town and it is one of very few places to have free wireless internet. Unfortunately so far Bangkok doesn't seem to have progressed much in this department as there is little free wireless available, Starbucks has this service but the coffee is as pricey as it is anywhere else in the world.

You can buy anything here, from fake ID cards to counterfeit designer clothing, loads of choice in English written paper back books and amazing up to the minute DVDs. We bought loads of DVDs from Khaosan and from MBK shopping centre which was counterfeit heaven, there is a man who sits in Khaosan with two laptops, using any mp3 player he can down load 25 albums for less than £4. I have never seen so many mobile phone and electrical outlets in one place. Every TV series ever made from the UK and USA and world wide films are all beautifully packaged then available to take away 30 minutes after purchasing, this gives the seller enough time to run into the back room to print up the labels and burn off the disks.

We watched the following: I am legend, V for vendetta, Resident Evil Extinction, Children of Men, Michael Moores 'Sicko' which was a fantastic film that made me feel good about our British NHS system, I clearly understood why its so abused by other visiting nationalities, 9 million pounds is spent accommodating non nationals....I read in The News of the World newspaper recently this quote ' Foriengers who refuse to say where they come from before treatment, make it difficult for health bosses to chase up payments after treatment how did these people become bosses in the first place, when they don't check the details first before any treatment is carried out at all?

I now have real compassion for Americans and their messed up private insurance fiasco that stemmed from the Nixon days. The Tony Benn interview was class. There was a definite theme running through all our viewing choices...world doom. The world doesn't look too bright though Hollywood's lenses right now. The TV here is rubbish, the film channels have a bar code or that transparent writing across the top stating what shop the DVD was bought from. The best channel do far is Aljazeera TV which is hosted by English news readers. David Frost hosts a great news show on this channel called 'Over the World'.

AYUTTHAYA

Sanskrit name means Invincible.

After spending months visiting old ruins and trying to understand the many customs, rituals and religions in the Mayan and Inca Americas, I now find myself in search of temples, pagodas, Wats, Buddhism, meditations, yoga's and Zen. The old ancient first capital of Thailand is called Ayutthaya, this is found 80 km north of Bangkok and it was already getting too hot in January to walk around comfortably. Our guide for the day looked as if he had just stepped out from the Ming dynasty, he had many strands of very long white hair growth which spouted from the big black mole on his lower cheek, the whiskers wafted in the air around his shoulder, this became a mediation in itself to avoid being rude by not staring at it. It was a great day out as we waltzed around this graveyard for temples. It was founded in 1351 by U Thong who later became Rama hero of the Ramayana epic ruler of the arts. In 1685 it had a thriving population of over one million people, this was double that of London at the time, but half that in per square footage of London at that time too as it spread over a land mass of only 4 km, this small area was protected by a 12 km high wall. It grew over the years to be the nation of Siam.

History claims that the English were just one of forty nationalities who settled here at this time, all of these countries were allowed to settle outside this walls perimeters but they had to provide something of value to the community as a whole. It is documented that he Japanese brought their finest Samurai to act as security and body guards to the Ayutthaya dignitaries, the Indians provided great restaurants, the Chinese provided acupuncture and medicine centres in every district, the Germans efficiently ran the banks and businesses, the Dutch cultivated all the pretty flowers and (medicinal) green wacky fun stuff so people could just bloody relax, the English factory workers and labourers that repatriated there could not work because the unions claimed it was the 'wrong kind of heat' for their workers and so asked if they could be put on benefits until the weather cooled down a bit, the Ayutthaya's were sick of all this winging and called in the Polish and Czech nations at half the costs to get the job done on time and within budget. This left the English to moan that there was no hope for them what with all these immigrants they just freely let in to this golden capital of Siam, who swamped their ghettos and stole all their houses and jobs. Ayutthaya had many small ghetto districts that housed all these nations in clusters. Very much like the Indians who live in Wembley England, the Somalians who live in Neasden England, the Irish who live in Kilburn England, the new age hippies and fathers who are happy to walk behind a baby stroller who live in Stoke Newington England, the Turks who live in Green Lanes next to Stoke Newington England. But it all came to an abrupt end on 1767 when neighbouring Burma who were the silent ones at the time and the ones to watch out for as they stormed in tearing down the high wall and captured all the above, taking thousands as prisoners back to Burma to prison camps. This place was then burnt and left for the jungle to claim it until modern man and tour operators saw potential. So the Ayutthaya people originally had high hopes calling it Invincible!

We visited the second largest reclining Buddha where we stuck gold leaf on it and said a prayer. We also witnessed performing elephants rocking from side to side in semi madness, desperate to run free from men in clown uniforms wielding very sharp sticks that they beat them with. The holidaying family unit would ride these show animals up and down the main road like royalty back in the days of the Raj and much fun was had by small children as the elephants that weigh a small ton rose up on their back legs while some idiot balanced on his forehead and fed him a banana.

Once back in Bangkok we decided to move on, I needed to give the hard back Booky Wook away to someone, but no one would take it, so I tried to sell it to the hundreds of second hand book stores here but this didn't happen either as you can only re-sell paper backs as they don't weigh much to the intrepid traveller, apart from Lord of the Rings Trilogy and various Si Fi mega books that people often use as low level seating in airports, they seem to be happy to carry these kind of books around with them, which right that minute I didn't understand at all. So I tried to give it away as an offering to a shoeless monk for which Bangkok has many. They walk around during the early mornings with a big metal bowl, the kind people of Bangkok are seen to donate anything from rice, money, candles and cakes! I bowed before the stunned looking monk and handed the book over, the monk curiously took hold of one end while I pushed the other towards him in a giving 'please just take it' manner, but he blocked the pass and looked semi embarrassed with accepting my generous offer. Maybe the Hare Krishna within Russell Brand has at some point offended the Buddhist monk community without me knowing, maybe the monk doesn't like the picture of him on the front, or maybe its just too damn heavy to carry, as it was now getting very hot and humid and he may have lived miles out of town. It is also written in foreign English, this monk didn't speak English, so how was he going to read it, or sell it on if he was not up to speed with who Russell Brand actually is. I couldn't even sell it on either...so he handed it me back. I could not bare to abandon it, it became my friend so I took it with me to our next destination.

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