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Published: February 20th 2008
I don’t read a lot of books.
I find that my time is constantly being eaten away by work, cleaning and the half an hour I dedicate to lying on my bed starring up at the ceiling trying not to fall asleep, immediately after I get home.
The thing about living on your own is you have to do everything. Everything.
I live in a big house which is old and seems to ooze fluff and dust from the walls. I have a large garden, which in a Japanese summer can grow at an alarming rate.
I have to wear different sports clothes to work everyday which have to be washed. In the summer, all your clothes are saturated in sweat and so require washing everyday. I have no restaurants of any description so I cook for myself everyday.
I also teach an adult language evening class a week, do 4 hours of kendo outside of work, an hour of Japanese study on another island, which I have to get to by bike and I often play sports after work with the students.
In short I don’t have any time to read…..however, I do like George Orwell. And after squeezing Burmese
Days last summer, I was set on traveling to see the set of this fantastic book.
A sudden snap decision to forgo Christmas visit to Britain opened the door to finally traveling Burma, however, the day after making the decision, I awoke from an evening snooze to the sights and sounds of rioting in some Asian city. It took me a while to figure out where it was, and when I did, I have to say I was disappointed, but no way in hell were you getting me into that madness.
When a great movie comes out at the cinema, everyone rushes to see it. If you miss the rush you suddenly find that everyone has seen it and that you have no-one left to see it with. And because of your fear of being Billy no-mates at the movies you decide that you will wait until it comes out on DVD.
That was basically the case with Thailand. It seemed part of the extra-curricular activities to travel to Thailand following secondary school and after going to University early, it seemed that by the time I had the time and money everyone had gone and I was
to lazy to travel there on my own.
Suddenly it seemed like the perfect place to go. I called up my friend Ethan and we settled it and 2 months later we were on the plane to Hong Kong.
To transfer on to Thailand that is.
A school term in Japan has no half term and the pace never seems to slow down until the last minute.
In my school days the last week of term usually consisted of playing games or watching videos, and after testing you pretty much stopped listening anyway.
We were all out until the last minute here and I don’t mind telling you I would have swam to get the first ferry out of here.
We landed in Bangkok the next day after once again taking the overnight orange ferry.
We were back in the heat. 34C. Bangkok. It was different to how I had expected it. We flew in over uniform fields that looks more like The US plains than the jungle terrain I had pictured of Thailand. Real taxis greeted us in abundance, too. Most favoring a bright pink color and speeds of about 140Kph! Nice!
Bangkok
baby!!
We lodged up in quite a swish hotel, which did us well for the next 2 days.
The final week of work in Japan is symbolized by restaurants being fully booked with Bounenkai, or ‘forget the year’ work parties and I had not been able to fight of the cold that I had had for the last month or so which re-erupted on arrival in the heat and beers of the infamous Khao san road. Ethan also managed somehow to contract a stomach bug and so the 2 of us mooched around the grand palace at an invalids pace.
It was however, beautiful and for all the gold seeming tackiness, it was worthy of the Grand title. The Thai’ s have something truly special there, and I am not sure if the massive postering and gold gateways that adorn every main road and shop front are a result of the coup last year, or a genuine affection for the king, but either way it makes for an incredibly unique and very, er… Thai experience.
Malaysia was a fantastic country and I loved every minute, but somehow the mish-mash of cultures created by the various occupations and
emigrations, leaves you a little confused. When in Thailand, you know you are in Thailand. And the culture is very distinct, beautiful and overall peaceful, due in part to Thailand’s religion and almost certainly to its occupation free history.
Thai’s love Thailand. And why not. The economy is one of the better in SE Asia, they have a great knig who play the sax is an accomplished photographer, they are the highest exporter of rice in the world, they have amazing food everywhere, they have beautiful beaches and jungle to match, and to top it all of they are just nice people.
A smile goes a long way and I was told that the Thai people were famous for their winning one, and I wasn’t disappointed.
They are great people, and that is usually the winner in any foreign experience. It was the same in Turkey, and has been the same in Japan. The people make the difference.
In fact we spent many a night out with the Thai’s drinking, partying, and listening to them joke in their amazingly good English.
Yup, for all intents and purposes, we went to relax in Thailand, and the Thai’s were
the best people to do it with.
It a shame we didn’t get more photos with all the people we met but we never took out the cameras in the evening for fear of the beer monkey nicking them.
Anyway, my point being that it was a very relaxed 2 weeks.
However, the day after arriving we discovered that due to an election, no alcohol was being sold in the whole country. Anywhere.
I mean anywhere.
Even in the supermarkets and 7-eleven the shelves had been cleared and the red bull was selling out fast.
Strange. 2 days in one of the biggest party capitals of the world without a drop.
Fate can be cruel but after getting run down in the heat, it was probably for the best.
We did some sight seeing and then headed down by plane to Krabi, after finding out the bus tickets were sold out all over Bangkok as everyone traveled south for the full moon party on Christmas eve.
We spent Christmas eve in a deserted hostel, on the way to get to Ko Lanta for some chill time on Christmas Day.
We finally
made it to Ko Lanta and managed to score the best bungalow on the beach for a about 500baht night.
From there the pace slowed down and I spent the next 3 days eating masaman curries and drinking banana milkshakes in one of the little huts on the beach.
It was almost peaceful bliss except on the first night we met a pair of very annoying Americans who were teaching in Shanghai. I take that back, one of them was ok and the other was one of the most annoying girls I have ever met.
A few buckets of Thai whiskey and a pretty bad Thai blues band later, I apparently made my feelings quite clear to her.
Not feeling proud of myself the next day, but secretly relieved that we could awkwardly avoid them from now on, we spent a day falling asleep hung over on the beach. Nice.
However, the 2 had not got the message and after clearly trying to avoid this very large, loud mouthed textiles graduate, who had traveled, it seemed to teach English in China to get in by the backdoor to the fashion industry(?) as well as to throw deep
Bugalow paradies
Ko Lanta, Sea pearl bungalows.judgments on people she had just met, they were suddenly heading straight towards us and all of a sudden the peace was shattered again.
There was a brushing over of the night before and before I knew we were back with the hell beast.
To make it worse, their friends joined us who consisted of a gay Chinese guy from Beijing who couldn’t talk about anything other than sex, ladyboys and art house shock movies, and his friends who had come on a detox course and gave us detailed explanations about everything that had been in, and mostly, out of her body for the last week. All of which was photographed and recorded - herself!
We basically had to make a fake excuse to get away from these people and then ended up having to sneak around all night to avoid them, as they kept on inviting us to ‘hang out’ with them.
Now, I am as open as the next man to all sort of crazy stuff, but I will never understand people who invite themselves into situation like that.
And yes, you could say they were just being nice, but when I’m sitting on
the beach downing a banana milkshake and massaman curry, I’m not in the mood for a gang of new age, say what’s on you mind, I hate my body, chumps!
Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, after a couple of days relaxing on Ko Lanta, we set sail for the beautiful K Phi Phi island. Home to ‘The Beach’ movie and generally hailed as a paradise in the sun.
And of course on arriving there were a mass of tourists and internet cafes, irish pubs and other foreign eyesores, but overall the island was truly beautiful. And after all my time away from westerners it wasn’t such a bad thing to see them.
On the 2nd we got a boatman to drive us out with his Toyota car engine propelled, long tail boat, and went snorkeling, and it was pretty darn amazing, and certainly the first time I had seen so much sea life in such a beautiful setting.
Fish of all colors of the rainbow would swims up to pluck pieces of banana from your hand and crowd around your mask as if saying hello.
I even got some underwater snaps, which will probably be just a blur, but you never know.
Pi Pi beach
Loads of super tanned peeps. We circled around the famous Phi Phi Ley once and then returned back to climb to the top if a nearby mini mountain. It is a beautiful island. But I can’t thinking it is slightly doomed, and if not already, they soon.
The tsunami, apparently, had a bit of a cleansing effect on the natural scenery, but it has already returned to a building site of development, and on such a small and fragile island, which knows how long it can stay so beautiful. But I am just another hypocrite, who wanted to see it for myself.
Finally we took a sun soaked ferry packed with brown bodies back to the town of Krabi and traveled onto Ko Pan Nhgang on the Eastern side of the country in the Gulf of Thailand.
I am a big fan of boats and so we opted again for a night ferry which would put us in the early hours.
The boat was very old and resembled something from a Portsmouth museum, it was great, and about 100 of us were squeezed into this sweatbox for a nights cruising.
It was in the port, during the waiting time of departure, that I
made the fatal error of eating some shrimp without thinking, and these little guys would in the end rob me of my new year.
Curses.
This is the problem, with these 2 week adventures. If something goes wrong it can cut a very large amount of time from your allowance, and can kill things a bit. It is a reason why I have in recent days been thinking that although 2 weeks in Thailand is great, 2months is even better….
A large extensive trip is brewing on the horizon…
We got into KPN that morning to the sight slighty iffy looking clouds and many wasted peeps, stills going fomr the night before. We had entered the hearts lands of the party world and it wasn’t even new years yet.
I won’t bore you witht eh details of Hat Rin the main town of the Full moon parties of KPN but lest to say it is jus that a party town, and a cross between Thailand, Benidorm and a splash of what looked like Jerusulum, fomr all the Isreali shops and stands selling Thai rum buckets, named ‘Bethlehems buckets’ and the like.
We managed to catcha boat
driver and pay him to take us round the bay to the next and much more quiet and picturesque sight of Hay Yuan where we very luckily mange dto score one of the last bungalows on the island, as people flooded in for the New Year. The world is small and even on my little island in the middle of the inland sea of Japan, one can bump into a fromer resident of Golder Green ( the words, surprised don’t even come close), so I suppose it is not that unreasonable to assumethat one might bump into a fellow Sussex educated mate in Had Yuan on the table next to us. However, I was still surprised to be sitting next to jess of Brighton, Jamie Mac crew fame and her friend Hannah, and was looking forward to a waltz down memory lane htat evening to the tune of 7 beacjed soundsystems, and washed down with some of Jesus7s favourites, but as is oftent he case - the gods had another, not quite so exciting, night in stall for me.
In this case it was the god of guts, and mine began playing up by around 3 that afternoon.
A cool sweat broke on my brow, and I had sudden flashbacks to days of praying to the porclain gods. It had not been long but I thought I should double check the food I had eaten the night before, just for kicks, and so began to pray to that toilet like a man on death row. It was so fun, I decioded that I would forgoe a 30,000 strong beach party and adventures in buckets, for a night of sweating in bed to classics such as, “HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA….GGGHHHH”, and “WWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH…….ARGGGH”, and everyones favourite oldie “EEEEEEEEEEEEIIAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUCCHH……HHHHWWWWWWWWWWWOAAARGGG……HUKHUKUK”.
Yes indeed, it was a night to forget, but on the plus side, I learned how to tell the difference between, Almond Yellow and Mossy Yellow.
The rest of the time was spent in a bit of a days and as a storm clouded the sky for the next 3 days, I took it as an excuse to relax, read my fascinating book and prepare for the journey home. Ethan on the other hand decided top head for Hat Rin to book tickets for the bus back to Bangkok , and as all the boats were stopped, decided to walk through the jungle,
thus disappearing for a day.
When he reappeared, it turned out he had tumbled into a small valley, possibly as yet undiscovered, where dinosaurs had managed somehow to survive, until the present day.
Howeverm he managed to struggle on to Hat Rin and score the bus tickets home, so we were due to leave the next day.
Come morning the seas were still lookgin very rough, and considering the very rock star boat man who we had spent the night with had sadi it was far to dangerous to travel the night before, were slighty concerned that we may be missing our ferry that morning.
After partying it up the night before, the last thing that we wanted was a boat ride round the rocky bay of Gulf of Thailand. And when I say boat I mean another piece of fiberglass with a car engine strapped to it.
However, the doubtlessly fearless boat man said we were good to go and 10 of us squeezed into he boat ready for a soaking and intense ride.
The inland sea of Japan doesn’t have waves. It is an inland sea. It is calm al year round and even in
typhoon season the waves just seem to retreat.
When we pushed off from the beach, we were instantly greeted with a massive unavoidable wave that we had to simply hit head on and hope for the best.
The sea is not our friends. I love the sea, but he reality is the sea doesn’t love me, and the smile was wiped off my faced as we hit this wave head on in a 10 man fiberglass box, flying up into the air and throwing me about afoot in the air. For a split second it felt as if the boat was vertical and certainly for a few seconds, we all tasted death for a moment.
Until we came crashing back down with a thud, cracking my ankle on the cold plastic., an injuring that has lasted me almost 2 months and a lot of uncomforted. The sense of terror was so great for a moment that it caused to Europeans behind us to scream, and burst into tears - followed by a sudden by a chorus of singing a song in what sounded like German, to power them threw the fear, which sounded like the type of song ones
Wat wat!!
I cant remember what it was called but they all began with wat. learns at girl
We arrived back on land, and we thanked the boatman who had seen us threw., and had a quick chance to meet my friend Jamie before getting another bus to another boat.
We set off back on a similarly rough 2 hour boat journey to the mainland and I was amazed I managed not to throw up.
I will cut the story short as I have another boat to catch from my island to go to a Japanese lesson, and want to publish this blog, but in closing it was a fantastic 2 weeks and I was charmed by the Thais and the beauty of their land!
Laterz potatoez
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