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Published: August 9th 2007
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Street Food
Don't worry, Mom. We're washing it down with plenty of beer. The last night in Bangkok for The Three Musketeers. Samara flies home in the morning, and Leslie and Michael fly south. Knowing that we'll be getting away from the endless miles of shabby concrete and frenetic traffic, it's easier for us to relax and enjoy the nightly tourist riot on Khao San Road. We sit at a streetside cafe while a manic cutup serves us ice cream, and waves of trinket hawkers lap up to our table. Then we wander back to Rambuttri Lane, past bookstalls and fruitstands, custom tailors and open-air massage parlors, past nightclubs and cabstands, guest houses and currency exchanges. We stop at the Volkswagen bar for a farewell drink and a last chance to size up the passing parade of bouncers and backpackers, scruffmeisters and scene makers. Then we head to the hotel for a half a night of sleep before our dead of night cab ride to the airport. Bangkok is marvelously serene and relaxed at four a.m. You wish it could always be that way.
Suvarnabhumi Airport, though, is bustling even in the predawn. Samara checks in for her international flight, while Leslie and I grab a snack, a newspaper, and a couple of
chairs, and wait until we can check in to the 10:20 flight to Phuket. After we check in, we wait a couple hours for our plane, no, actually for a bus, which finally arrives to take us to our plane, which then flies for fifteen minutes before landing at the old, and largely disused, airport, where we take on a trickle of new passengers and wait for another hour. Leslie and I know much better than to try to figure any of this out.
Finally we take off again and fly to Phuket, where we take a crammed minibus to another minibus which takes us to the intercity bus station, where we get tickets for the 6:30 bus to Krabi. The 5:00 is already sold out. Luckily, there's a good Vietnamese restaurant down the street, and the Phuket bus station has an old-time charm. It's just a big open-air shed, bursting with life. The salt of the Thai earth--grandmas, sailors, schoolkids--and a sprinkling of farang like us. The station may be dingy, but the buses are sumptuous--gleaming, two-story affairs with dazzling murals on the sides and elegant doilies on the seat backs, well, except our bus, which is just
a plain old workhorse that looks like it was new when the station was.
But we fight our way aboard--there are some NBA-quality elbows among the bus-riding public--for the three-hour ride to Krabi. Well, actually it's more like four hours in the rain. (It rains most every day in the dry season.) And the Thai music videos the conductor shares with us make those four hours ooze like pus. All I know is, they give me plenty of time to think, Why in hell did I even come on this trip, what is the point of this endless, aimless rambling, grinding monotonous hours between sterile concourses and scummy rest stops?
As if to punctuate these thoughts, the conductor ambles up and says, Krabi? Yes, we say, just as we did when we first boarded. Oh, he says, and points to the back, indicating that we should have got off some miles back. He has the driver pull over, and we retrieve our luggage from the hold while the conductor points to a bus stand across the street, where he says a bus will soon be coming to take us back the other way. This instantly raises half a
dozen questions, but as we know--don't ask. As our old bus roars off into the rainy night in the direction of Trang, we trudge over to the bus shelter, along with two other couples who are in the same predicament.
And it is a predicament. The shelter is well-lit but utterly deserted, and the conductor's assurance of a bus coming the other way, or any way, at this hour seems questionable at best. (Did I mention that they drive on the left side of the road?) We set to looking for a taxi or a songtaaw, but it quickly becomes clear that this ain't that part of town. There's a cafe across the street, but creative transportation ideas are not on the menu. Finally, a couple of guys roll up in a pickup and offer to take us back through Krabi to Ao Nang, which is where we all want to go anyway, for 500 baht. So the six of us throw our wet bags into the pickup bed and climb in after them, and the next phase of our trip begins.
And what a phase it is. This is my kind of travel. The night air is
Khao Sarn Madness
Samara's last night in town. We're getting her all hyped up on ice cream and exhaust fumes. cool, and there isn't a music video in sight. There's still a bit of rain, but as I always say, whatever else happens in Thailand, you're not going to freeze to death. I manage to find a handhold between the edge of the pickup bed and the cab, and I am confident that in the event of an accident, this will either keep me from being thrown from the truck or get my fingers crushed. But the ride is comfortable, and soon we have left behind the glare of the city for the soft shadows of the countryside. A misty prism of dark roadbed recedes into the distance behind us as the swish of tires carries us forward down to the beach. We still don't know where we are going to spend the night, but I feel we have reached a welcoming part of the world. Sure enough we find a room in the first place we try--nothing fancy, but nothing costly, and the vibe is good. I'm glad to be here, and I sleep great.
In the morning, my first real look at Ao Nang confirms my impression that it's a good place to be. The huge cliff
Craziest Server Ever
And he sells ice cream and beer on Khao Sarn Road, ladies and gentlemen. rising just across the road barely registers with me. Likewise, the island-studded sea lapping the beach at the end of the block makes only a faint impression. What I really like about this town is that it's just one street, a jumble of shops, cafes, and guest houses, everything you need, and nothing you don't, all within walking distance. I decide that any tourist destination can assure itself of a good future by following one simple rule: no elevators. No matter how long the strip is, if it's low rise, it never feels overdeveloped.
As we stroll to breakfast, there's a quaint little parade coming down the street to mark the songkran festival. And already some of the bystanders are getting into the spirit--somebody shoots me with a water gun, someone else steps up and daubs my face with flouring paste. And on the way back from breakfast, someone slips up from behind and dumps a pail of water down my shirt. And that's how songkran works--you may think you are going to weave lightly through it with no more than an occasional spray, but you are kidding yourself; you are going to get drenched. If you can't
handle that, you need to stay indoors.
By noon, the street is in full riot; the only parade going on now is an endless (literally--they keep circling back around) stream of pickups with their beds full of revelers wielding water guns, bowls, and pumps and hoses. Most of the trucks carry a trash can filled with water to replenish their ammo; one truck has simply flooded the bedliner. And along the route there are plenty of battle stations where gangs of people gather around hoses and water drums. The people on the street aim at the people in the trucks, the people in the trucks fire back, sometimes two passing trucks assault each other, sometimes fights erupt between two street crews, or within one.
There is no order of battle; anyone can join or leave any gang at any time, or go solo, attacking anyone and everyone with anything that will hold water. Occasionally someone asks for a special dispensation, because they are well-dressed, or because they are trying to navigate an overcrowded motorcycle down a slippery crowded street, but no quarter is ever given. One of the nice things about the holiday is that it unites tourist
and native; absolutely everybody mixes it up freely with everybody else.
We didn't know anything about songkran until we stumbled into it, but we're glad we did. Leslie even manages by great surreptition to sneak in a couple of photos--carrying a camera is absolutely not a safe conduct badge. By midafternoon, I've been soaked enough, and I beat a retreat to our room. But the party roars on ever madder until evening, and as I've said before, whatever else happens in Thailand, you won't freeze to death.
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Kathy
non-member comment
Freakin' awesome songkran!
Add a few fireworks in there and that would be heaven to me!!