Wave Bye-Bye to Siam and Good Ol' Indochina

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Our life has been pretty crazy of late. Getting all our belongings packed into two small bags, selling what we can't take, shipping other things on to meet us in Kenya, saying goodbye to people, straightening out our Indian visas, etc, etc.

Mine and Chelly's last week in Thailand was fast-paced and hectic, but here's the rough sketch:


Thursday, 28th:

Basically my last lazy day. I spent it lounging and reading and working out briefly. I watched a dumb romantic comedy.

Then Chelly and Poni came home in the evening. We hurriedly showered and dressed (after Chelly gets off work, our actions are almost always done 'hurriedly') and got ready to go out.

The Sangthaew took us to Sriracha. We rushed over to the familiar Robinson shopping mall. A square-looking Thai dude with funny little glasses met us, and we were off to dinner with the Christians.

I learned that Chelly and her friend Christine (who also came from Kenya and was dong the Tiger taming job before Poni arrived; she's getting married in Germany this week) used to go to the local Catholic church quite often. There they made good friends with a sweet group of Thai Christians. Chelly hadn't seen them since I came around, but tonight they threw her a going away party. Thing is, I didn't learn most of these details until we were already part-way through the dinner.

It was Vietnamese food and it was delicious. Many tearful speeches were made. Gifts were given.

These people really love Chelly, and so do I. But who ever knows how to deal right with their feelings? Chelly kept the lights on late while packing and sorting her things. Frayed and exhausted, my kindred spirit and I got into some kind of stupid fight about something about our trip. This was all our mounting tension and apprehension flaring up, soon to be washed away in a flood of activity and excited energy.


Friday, 29th:

I didn't have a clue what day it was, but I spent my last Friday in Thailand finishing up work online. I had to find a host in Calcutta. I had a blog to finish with. I had loads of emails to send. And I still needed to find a shipper to get Chelly's bags moved to Kenya.

I got most of it done and poked my head out of the chaos to find I was already running late.

I took my last Sangthaew ride (though I didn't know it at the time). I got home and rushed upstairs... and I found that the girls were not there. We had a party scheduled with our friend Fachin, the Burma Boy, who lives down the hall and it looked like the ladies might miss it.

I waited. They still didn't show. So I figured I'd go find Fachin and see what he knew.

He shares the small apartment with two other guys, and they were all lounging half-dressed when I showed. I gathered that Chelly had made some arrangement with him to meet at 7:30. It was now 7:00.

I sat with the guys and had some beer, watching a VCD of a great Burmese classic rock group called Iron Cross. 7:30 rolled around and the girls weren't there.

I went down and bought some munchies and snack foods to go with the ever-growing pile of empty beer bottles we were building-up in the room. 8:00 and no women yet.

We popped a Thai movie in. It was called "Tom Yum Koong" and it was a martial arts pic about a guy from the Esaan region of Thailand (all former Laos and Cambodia territory) whose family's elephant-companions (traditionally kept as partners in farming and logging and even--I gather--child rearing) were captured by poachers. He followed the elephant's captors to Australia, got tangled up in politics and crime, and uncovered a Chinese-led ring capturing rare animals for ingredients in an exclusive high-class restaurant. Needless to say, there was much ass-kicking and the girls were still not in sight by 9:00.

They finally rolled in around 9:30, full of excuses. A room full of inebriated young men--and their politically-tinged fight movie--just didn't care anymore. The girls shared some of our Beer Chang and chile-fried eel and went off home to do some more packing and tidying.

I stayed for the rest of the film. The eel was really spicy, so I got slightly drunk trying to wash it away. The guy had an apotheosis when he found the bones of his family's elder elephant on display in the crime-lord's chamber. He battled a series of giants and rescued his own baby elephant. In the final shot, Esaan's toughguy and the Pachyderm toddler walk together through the streets of Sydney, full of pride and hope but gathering little attention.

Fachin put on a Scandinavian porno for his roomies and I went home to pass out early and solidly while the girls talked excitedly about the coming days.


Saturday, 30th:

Chelly got me early with a tickle attack and there was sadly no return from this horrible wakefulness. So I settled for staying awake and watching "The 40 Year Old Virgin" again.

I packed my bag all ready to go while watching Steve Carrell pretend to be a comically epic loser. My bag was full and the lewd jokes were still coming, so I decided to do some exercise.

Lunch was et' and we did some selling of excess stuff in the afternoon. I went for my last ride on the Siam Bicycle. But the big event was our farewell dinner with Nina the tour guide and her parents.

You may remember that Nina accompanied us to Pattaya on Christmas Eve. She was also a regular around the Tiger Zoo--though she didn't live there. This evening we were scheduled to join her and her folks for a big meal out.

Nina's parents are lovely and fun former residents of Esaan. They speak no English, but that wasn't a problem for Nina--or for Chelly, who'd spent a lot of time with them in the past couple of years.

We were treated to a great meal in a gorgeous restaurant close to town. Chelly and I were amazed and a little sad that we'd never found this place before. The setting was fantastic, the food was excellent, and the prices were reasonable. This was gourmet Thai food in style, something we'd been looking for for weeks and only just found as we were headed out.

After dinner we returned to Nina's home. Her parents gave us simple gifts of a kind of special cloth, used in Esaan as a robe, scarf, or head wrap. We said our goodbyes and went home for our nearly-sleepless Last Night in Sriracha.


Sunday, 31st:

First thing after sun-up and Chelly made sure I was awake to take care of business. Problem was, I had no business left to take care of.

She went for her very last meeting with the management of the Sriracha Tiger Zoo, scheduled to last only an hour or two. I worked out and showered and packed everything with finality and she was still in her meeting.

So, I bought some fruits from the zoo vendor (a sweet old lady who'd become my friend) and brought them to one of the restaurants downstairs from our room (another sweet lady who'd become my buddy and loved to cook up odd requests for me). The resultant concoction of apple-like fruits and pork and greens stir-fried and spread over rice was delicious and homey. A fitting Last Meal at this place.

But Chelly still wasn't back from her meeting.

I grabbed a book and sat down outside to watch tourists and read about the history of Burma (Fachin and his Iron Cross VCD had got me curious). I think I was doing this for close to two hours by the time Chelly finally emerged.

She was in a hurry. We had to sell some clothes, sell my bike, and give away loads of stuff. Then we had to cram everything that was left into her bags and call a Tuk-Tuk driver to take us away.

On the way out, I saw my friend Chaet. I'm not sure about the spelling, but I am sure that Chaet is a drunk. He shakily drives one of the official zoo shuttle busses back and forth to Pattaya each day, then retires to his girlfriend's restaurant (my friend and custom-cook of the morning) to suck down Sang Som whiskey long into the night. This time he was sober and working, and suprisingly denied a pinch when offered. I bought him a bottle anyway, had a pull for myself (maybe my first in a week) and gave him a big hug goodbye.

Then came more hugs and waves and handshakes as we said goodbye to the several other friends who were still around. And after that we jumped into our Tuk-Tuk and were away.

It was the last ride into Sriracha, and then the last bus ride to Bangkok.

We got to the hotel near Khao San Road feeling all kinds of crazy vibes about getting away and moving on. We met up with Poni and her German boyfriend Jurgen--who'd come in the night before--and her sister Agnes (in from Kenya). We checked into a great hotel room and immediately left it to go take care of our pressing Bangkok errands.

Chelly spent the next several hours getting a weave braided into her hair. I spent them in my own mad pursuits.

First, I would need to sell some books that we were finished with reading. In the process, I spent all the money from these sales on purchasing new books. I picked up Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (a scientific adventure), L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" (a science-fiction-cum-religion adventure), and a Thai Buddhist tract about peace on earth (a just plain religious adventure).

Then I went home to try and get some sleep before the big night. Finding that this was impossible in my excited state, I rolled downstairs to check my emails.

There was only one of any real significance. It came from my friend Sean Fay and it was an invitation (or assignment) to write a feature-length screenplay with him and to help him produce it when I return to Seattle. This was pretty exciting.

I instantly went out to make another tour of the myriad local used-book stores in search of the book he was proposing to adapt for our script. I searched high and low but just couldn't find a copy anywhere. Discouraged but anxious, I returned to try for more sleep.

It didn't come, though. When Chelly came back with her new hair, I was lying nude on the bed with a book, a pen, and some scribbled-over notepaper. I probably hatched some really brilliant ideas that evening, but now I was ready to forget them and sleep.

Oh wait, it's New Years...

Chelly dragged me up and made me shower. We dressed and fixed a budget for the evening and headed out to meet our friends.

The plan was to get some dinner and then go visit the Central World shopping plaza for a huge New Year's party. We joined Jurgen and Poni and Agnes at a little restaurant on the Khao San. The consensus at the table was to eat some excellent fish and chips. I deviated slightly and wolfed down a few fish burgers. Cocktails were ordered, drank. When it was all said and done, 11pm was behind us and there was no hope to make it to Central World for the countdown.

I showed everyone the gas station bar, which was pleasant for a drink, but nowhere to count down at. We opted instead to climb the stairs to a rooftop bar called Gazebo, which Chelly and Poni and I had gotten attached to on our last trip to Bangkok.

The red carpets were out and there was a cover charge at the door. Cool. We rushed up the stairs and onto the crowded roof just as the Thai bandleader was shouting, "Ten!"

"Nine!"
"Eight!"
"Seven!"
"Six!"
"Five!"
"Four!"
"Three!"
"Two!"
"One!"

Couples made wedding-kisses all around the room. Fireworks blasted and little kiddie-poppers filled the air with confetti. I held Chelly in my arms and lips well into the New Year. It was officially 2007, at least in this part of the world.

We ordered a Hookah, some cocktails, and some drinks and stayed there until the Police came to shut the place down. We didn't know what was going on, but there were blockades everywhere and old soliders leaning on their M16s asleep.

We tried a few more clubs but found none of them living up to their party-'til-dawn promises. And so we jumped onto a Tuk-Tuk.

The great all-night dance club where Chelly took me on the night we met would have to be open. In the past, we'd just told our drivers "all-night dance club" and they'd known where to go.

We found or Tuk-Tuk. We said, "all-night dance club". He said okay. "How much?" He told us 100 Baht. The four of us climbed in.

It was kind of a wild ride, like usual, but this guy wasn't taking us past anything familiar. In fact, he wasn't taking us anywhere. He circled around a few closed bars and clubs, never approaching the quiet warehouse district where our club was located. While all the other drivers on Khao San served as nightly shuttles to the place, this guy was left completely out of the loop. Probably because he was an asshole.

Eventually, he brought us to some row of lame gay bars that were still open and said, "here you go". I gave him the promised 100 Baht and he said, "300".

There's no way we were gonna get gouged for triple fare AND end up nowhere near our destination, even if we were all a bit tipsy. This was made clear to him. So the toothless clown pulled out a hammer.

A hammer. We were being held up on the side of a busy street by a troll-ish Thai driver with a carpenter's hammer in his hand. WTF?

I got pissed, really pissed. I was seeing red and I was all set to grab his hammer and start busting the headlights out on his Tuk-Tuk. But Jurgen played big brother, gave the guy half of what he was asking, and dragged me across the street.

Oh well, we were with Chelly and Poni, so we'd make the best of this. We went into one of the gay bars and ordered drinks. It seemed like a room full of clones, which is funny to me because that means that these guys must go there to pick up someone who can reasonably approximate what they look at in the mirror every day. Embodied narcissism.

It was late, we had to go. A regular taxi, a short walk, our gate, all came in a blur.

And we saw the Tuk-Tuk driver again. I'm actually a little hazy about our second encounter with the hammer-wielding driver. I know he was trying to bait us into something, and I know he had a couple of friends waiting around the corner to jump us (I could see them). I also know he was really scared of me anyway, because I managed to roar and chase him away like a scared kitty.

Now we were back at the hotel, sitting in a lobby crowded with drunk Europeans. We sat for a Heinekin, but there was this Argentian dude who wanted to sing to us and wouldn't leave Chelly alone. We retreated to bed and left Chelly's fancy, expensive sandals sitting in the lobby.

Neither the Tuk-Tuk driver, the Argentinian, or the sandals were ever seen by us again. I'm still a little enraged at the thought of that hammer and Chelly occassionally blurts out something about the European girls that stole her shoes. The Argentinian was quickly forgotten.


Monday, 1st:

We could call this one the "laziest day ever". After sleeping away most of it, we spent a few hours lying in bed reading and talking and trying to get back to sleep.

After that, we actually had our breakfast in bed.

We took turns venturing out briefly. Chelly called to wish her family a Happy New Year and most of them were still celebrating it. I tried calling home but couldn't get through, deciding instead to try and send some emails. And that's when I found out about the bombings.

It turns out that 7 bombs had actually been exploded in our vicinity the day before. Seven. Many Thai people were injured or killed, but I gather that they mostly hit foreigners. In fact, foreign revellers were hit in some of the same places we'd been or we'd planned on being.

The party at Central World Plaza which we barely missed? Bombed at midnight. The bars that all mysteriously closed early? Shut-down by military order. Unknown to us, we'd had many close calls.

So what did we today? We wandered the now-deserted Khao San Road (desertion being a very rare condition for this area). The typically bustling road was now blocked off by police and military. They still let the mobs of foreigners wander through, but shopkeepers that could have opened their stores opted to keep them closed for the holiday--and for safety.

We ate lunch and had some ice cream in the quiet. Enjoyed some random wanderings. We were probably out of bed for three whole hours. I was knackered.

After a long, well-deserved nap, we went out again to meet Poni and Jurgen for some dinner. I decided to take them all to the My House Guesthouse where we could enjoy some American movies and surly service.

The first movie was okay and we were settling into our seats. The second movie was Adam Sandler's "The Longest Yard" remake. We weren't going anywhere.

So that was our big activity for the day: we watched an Adam Sandler comedy until a little after midnight. No one's ever expected a New Years Day to be productive.

Time for bed.


Tuesday, 2nd:

We lingered in bed again, well into the day. But, we couldn't linger the whole day away because we had things to do.

First was to ship Chelly's things to Kenya. She'd been living at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo for close to three years, so there'd been a lot brought with her and a lot more accumulated over time. Now all of that stuff that wasn't sold or gifted to someone needed to be sent on.

We'd accidently discovered an appropriate (cheap) shipper the night before, so that was destination 1 for the day. Unlike many local businesses, they were open. In an uncharacteristic fashion, for Thailand, they even had a knowledgeable and helpful staffperson there. He got our stuff wieghed and boxed and helped us figure the rates and methods and paperwork, etc.

It took a while. In a meantime, I had a run-in with a fan. No, not a whirling-blade moving-air machine, a human being who enjoys my writing.

It was realy quite random. I was squatting outside, writing Chelly's father's address on a box in permanent marker while she spoke rapidly with him in Swahili over the phone and occassionally barked out numbers to me. That was when this red-haired American guy came up to me and said he'd read my blog.

It was cool, actually, really cool. We talked for awhile about how this guy was travelling and about how he'd recognized me and Chelly. OUr shipping task was taking long, though, and he had to get going. He's also keeping a blog, so as soon as he sends me the address we can get in touch again.

After the chores were done, we went for a little wander. Chelly got a facial treatment while I played video golf on her cell phone. And we ran into some friends.

The first person I recognized on the streets was a guy named Stuart, who I'd met in Koh Kong, Cambodia. He's a strange type, which explains why he'd been in Koh Kong in the first place. Here in Bangkok, we made a brief reacquaintance and he wet on his oddly head-bobbing way.

Then we ran into one of the German Ninas. This was the ethnically Indonesian Nina, who I'd met months before while she was travelling with a group of Frenchmen, and with whom I'd discussed International English. Now she was actually with her French boyfriend. The four of us made our introductions and had some awkward conversation on the sidewalk... then, just went on our ways.

We went back to our hotel then, in the evening. I watched some bad movies on the STAR channel and sewed flag-patches of Kenya, Tanzania, and Malaysia onto Chelly's backpack. It seems we've each only been to countries that the other has never been. If it hadn't been for Thailand, we'd never even have been in the same nation.

While I was sewing, the girls and Jurgen went out for food and shopping and that type of thing. I enjoyed a really terrible B-movie called "The Librarian", about an Indiana Jones type working alongside wizards and hot, foreign adventure-chicks to rescue some hokey artifacts from the Temple of Solomon.

I also managed to meet a few other Americans, which is relatively rare out here. There were four of them--all of Asian extraction, all from different parts of the U.S.--here to visit homelands and see famous sites and party, as much as they could do in about three weeks. I gave them my tips on moving quickly through Cambodia and then we parted ways.

This was mine and Chelly's last night proper in Thailand. We needed to party. We started with cheap beers at the Immortal bar, which by now had become a regular haunt of mine. We actually heard a heavy metal song or two this time, but no more than two. I took a picture to help me remember the joint, had some happy-hour beers, and got out as quickly as possible.

We walked the streets then, searching for somewhere fun. After trying a few new bars and a few familiar ones, we plumb gave-up. It was whiskey bottle in the streets time.

Giving the night time to get itself going, Jurgen and I shared a bottle and the girls ate falafel. We watched gangs of stray cats fight and scavenge. It was a blast.

Eventually we noticed that a bar called Gulliver's ("a traveller's bar") was getting pretty packed. We went in and had some drinks and danced a little. A very little--the dance floor was filled with pool tables. I met two Aussies and we talked energetically and ramblingly about punk rock and Oi and all the other stuff that goes on around that kind of music.

I'm not sure how I got home, but one thing is certain: I got home. And the next day Chelly made up all kinds of phony stories about the things I'd done in the night. In truth, I'd done nothing but walk home and go peaceably to bed.


Wednesday, 3rd (and some of the 4th):

But it was a good thing she brought me home early, for we were up at 6:30am the next day.

It was our final day in Thailand, and--somehow--it turned out to be our first opportunity to gather our visas from the Indian embassy. They'd taken our fees and paperwork almost two weeks before, but given us the 3rd as the only day available to pick them up before we left.

It was 6:30, though. 6:30! I rolled onto the floor with a pillow and continued to sleep on the cool, loving tiles.

Chelly snoozed briefly as well, but by 7:30 she was shaking me. We needed showers and dressing and then we needed to hit the embassy between 9 and 12 noon, as per our instructions.

We also needed breakfast, of course, but this brought problems. You see, Chelly had some other errands scheduled for the day. She had to pick up some decent closed-shoes for travelling. She also had to exchange a pair of too-small swim trunks for ones that fit her. Anyway, while we were at breakfast, she misplaced and forgot the shorts.

We took a taxi to the Indian Embasy and got there right on time. Then, realizing that the shorts hadn't come with us, we took another taxi back to the restaurant and then back to the embassy again. This is Bangkok, the distraction had taken us hours.

It was 10:30 or closer to 11:00 when we got to the embassy for reals. I walked up the friendly security guard and he waved a metal detector around me. It beeped at the Tiger Balm--a kind of Thai anti-itch cream--container in my right pocket.

"Oh, it's just Tiger Balm." I said.

Of course, he only heard the "Balm" part, which sounds a lot like "Bomb". No, it sounds exactly like, "Bomb".

"Bomb?"

"No, no, Tiger Balm, not a bomb, Tiger, uh... here." I produced the cream in it's innocuous little jar and he chilled out. Duh, Nic, bad time to be mentioning bombs in Bangkok.

We went in then, but it wasn't the first time for the day. We were actually made to leave and return again four times during that day. We went to the embassy first at 11:00, then again at 12:00, again at 1:00, and finally at 3:30. In between, we ran errands.

Bangkok is home to several shopping centers the size of small cities. At any given time, there are more people in the Prathu Nam sprawl of markets than live in and around Sedro-Woolley, the town I grew up in. In fact, there are probably more people there than in my whole county.

We did Prathu Nam in the afternoon, looking for a pair of shoes. It was insane and no other word applies. A maze of cheap knock-off goods and noisy hawkers. Dumb-founded foreigners wandered the aisles and alleys--some had probably been lost there for days.

Then, after finally receiving our visas in the late afternoon, we went to the Siam Paragon complex for dinner. This was absolutely the opposite of Prathu Nam in many respects. Rather than selling imitation t-shirts and plastic shoes, Siam Paragon has boutique stores for Armani and Versace and hundreds of other designer products that I'd never even seen before in real life.

The place is high-tech beyond rationality. It's a monstrous triplicate of tremendous shopping buildings, with digital maps and yawning, spacious floors with the height of great cathedrals. Futuristic music blasts through the place and schoolkids live there like it's home. I was utterly out of my element.

And this is the place that Chelly dragged me around for hours, up and down stairs and escalators and across miles of floors and shops and fancy accoutrements, until finally we settled in for some Indian food. This was the last of many epic quests for Indian cuisine that we would have to make--soon enough, we'd be in India.

A nap was definitely in order for the evening, and after that, some detective work.

I had a friend coming into the Bangkok airport about 6 hours before our departure. His name is Max Renneberg, and I hadn't seen him in 12 years, not since he was a German exchange-student living with my family as I was just entering 7th grade.

We'd chatted here and there over email, especially often in the last couple months. I knew about his arrival, and we'd even hatched a half-assed scheme to meet up. Problem was, both of us had gotten lazy or forgetful over the last week and we'd never cemented plans. Now he was already on the plane and it was too late to get it together.

So I turned to Google. I managed to find his origin city (Hong Kong) and his precise time of arrival (midnight). This gave me a list of four possible flights he could be on. I recorded the numbers, made a couple of hand-drawn signs (carelessly mis-spelling his name "Renneburg"), and we were off to the airport.

The mission went well, I'm proud to say. We split into two groups to wait at the two international gates where midnight arrivals from Hong Kong would be coming in. It was a long wait (roughly one hour), but Max came in at my gate and recognized me before he even read the sign.

On first seeing Max after so long, I thought he had grown up to be homosexual. As it happens, he and his well-dressed and effeminate male companion Thomas were just East German.

Max and Thomas quickly made the acquanitance of Chelly and Poni and their countryman Jurgen. I then took them all across the street to the Suvarnabhumi Novotel, hoping to tie up more loose strings. This was the hotel where my friend and host Sayan--of more than two months prior--had worked.

The hotel provided a free shuttle and a Novotel employee watched our bags while we ate at the restaurant. Dissapointingly, Sayan wouldn't start his shift until 6am, so we missed him. We did, however, get a great midnight snack and an excellent opportunity for me and Max to catch up.

Max actually managed to turn out exactly how I'd expected him to. He'd studied a lot and done a lot of travelling, eventually completing a law degree. Finding law an unsatisfying field, he then enrolled in a prestigious MBA program in Germany, with which he is still engaged.

But I guess I didn't really turn out how Max had expected. He was really surprised, even, to hear the stories of all those other Sedro-Woolley kids he'd met 12 years back. In all my encounters with Western Europeans, I'm learning the extreme differences between their societies and ours. It seems most of them don't realize just how hard it is to succeed (or even to survive) in the American system. Everyone Max asked about had grown up to exhibit some wasted talent. He was also amazed to hear about the town's record teen-pregnancy rates and about the economic changes that had doomed so much local habitat and local businesses. I wonder, what do German business schools have to say about these kind of things?

Yawning slowly overtook the rest of the group, so Max and I eventually split up our grand discussion. He and his friend were off to meet Thomas's Thai girlfriend in Bangkok (referred to by Thomas as "a dictionary with long black hair"). The rest of us were headed back to the airport to check-in and say goodbye.

It was an excited but sad set of goodbyes. Jurgen and I had only just met, so we were looking forward to future encounters. But Chelly and I had been roommates with Poni for two months, and we were gonna miss her.

We took pictures and had big hugs and shared our sentiments, then Chelly and I paid our departure tax and were ushered through the gate and off to our flight.

We shared the plane with a collection of interesting characters: Indians in handcuffs being deported for overstaying their visas, crazy brain-fried Spaniards singing and dancing, and plenty of people with smelly breath and difficult accents.

The stage was being set for another amazing adventure.

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Comments

[Aaron Brown]

ah, falafel in thailand huh? cool. I make it sometimes. Enjoying the blog as usual, though a couple months behind.