2013 Thailand – Bangkok
25th November 2013
Much as we loved travel, we were beginning to struggle with all the airport chaos of recent years which was why we were so delighted when it took only 15 minutes to get through check-in and security. After a coffee and a stroll around duty-free, we were ready for the 20-mile walk to the departure gate.
We were flying with the excellent Emirates Airlines and I had managed to book the twin seats at the back of the plane which were well worth the extra cost. The seats were comfortable and reclined a long way back but best of all was the in-flight entertainment which kept getting better and better. I remembered the days when a few TV screens were scattered along the aircraft and you had to pay to borrow headsets made of two hollow tubes. There would only be one or two films showing on a long flight and if you happened to be asleep when they came on it was tough luck. On our flight there were large screens in the backs of the seats and countless TV programs and films to watch, just like a home video system with programs on demand. The six-hour flight to Dubai went quickly and after a two-hour stopover, we continued for another six hours to Bangkok. The bubble burst at passport control where we had to queue for an hour which was not due to the volume of arrivals but to the lack of staff.
During the journey to our hotel, we had fun trying to decipher what our taxi driver was saying. His English wasn’t too bad but he was unable to pronounce some letters. It felt like we were in a game show where we were given sentences with letters missing and had to guess what was being said. When approaching our hotel he wanted to show us a good restaurant and his directions were, “To get to restaurant you tun light by liver and follow load walking to end of the stleet.”
It was around 8 pm when we arrived at our hotel so after an excellent pad thai we went back to our room There was a seven-hour time difference so I was dreading waking up in the middle of the night but to my surprise, we both woke up at 9.50 am and missed breakfast.
Coming from Mlini, a tiny village in Croatia where the recent arrival of two ducks constituted a significant increase in the local population, Bangkok came as quite a culture shock. I popped out to get some mobile phone SIM cards and was overtaken by four motorcycles riding at normal speed on the pavement. To cross the road there was some kind of pedestrian crossing but no lights. After waiting ten minutes for a gap in the traffic I knew I had to make a run for it although I was anxious that if I got run over, the insurance company would claim it was an act of suicide and refuse to pay up. It occurred to me that disabled people living in Bangkok would have to remain on their own block or hire a taxi to take them from one side of the road to the other.
The first thing we noticed was how warm and friendly everyone was. When I changed money at the airport the young girl serving me put her hands together in a praying gesture, bowed and said what I assumed was thank you. I thought that kind of thing only happened in films but it happened everywhere in Bangkok and people seemed to have a real desire to please. When I returned to England I was going would to write my mother’s local council and insist that all civil servants bow in a similar manner.
Before leaving England some friends surprised us by saying that most of their time in Bangkok they ate in air conditioned shopping malls because it was so hot outside. That was the last thing we were expecting to do but the sudden contrast between a freezing cold England and the extreme heat of Bangkok meant that when lunchtime came we couldn’t get to a shopping mall fast enough.
Our hotel was right next to the Skytrain which was convenient although very crowded. Inside the trains were the usual signs like “Please give this seat to someone who needs it.” There were even pictures of possible candidates like the elderly, the pregnant and young children (do children really have a problem standing up?) What intrigued me was a couple of seats with a sign saying, “Please offer this seat to monks.” I thought one of the reasons to become a monk was to get superpowers so do they really need to sit down? As a rapidly ageing, oldish man, was I supposed to give up my seat to a strapping young monk like the ones we see in the Kung Fu movies?
Early evening we took a private boat tour on a long-tailed boat. They looked a bit like gondolas only with what looked like an airplane engine mounting on the back. I was expecting it to go plodding along like a gondola when suddenly the driver hit the throttle and we took off at great speed. The water was surprisingly choppy so we were bouncing up and down waiting for a wave to soak us but surprisingly we remained dry. The river was very busy and was full of giant pieces of green weed which I would have expected to get caught up in the propeller but the driver didn’t seem to be worried by them. Suddenly we turned off the main river and started moving slowly along beautiful little canals in near silence. There were houses built on stilts over the water on either side. It was dusk with a deep red sky which slipped effortlessly into darkness. Houses lit up, so we were able to look through the open fronts at people going about their lives as if we weren’t there. I couldn’t have wished for a better start to our holiday. 
Next day we went to the local temples in town. We had intended to make our own way there with the Skytrain and water bus which sounded like a great adventure but the receptionist talked us into booking a private tour guide. The guide picked us up from our hotel in her car and it wasn’t long before we were sat in an awful traffic jam, wishing we had taken the train instead. We had been promised a guide who spoke fluent English but her English was so bad that I was considering paying her extra to stop talking. She was a very nice lady so we made the odd grunt here and there to trick her into thinking we understood.
First stop was the famous Gold Buddha which was the biggest solid gold Buddha in the world weighing around five and a half tons. I was confused as to how worshipping a statue worth a billion pounds was compatible with a religion founded on austerity but there was no point in asking our guide. Next, we went to the nearby Emerald Buddha which our guide told us was made of emerald which was a bit of a porkie pie. It was made of jasper (nothing to do with the ghost) but even as a semi-precious stone, it was still very impressive.
I loved the signs we saw at the entrance to most temples.
“BEWARE THE FRAUD (GUIDE PLAYOFF). IN THE TEMPLE TRY TO SCAM THE TOURISTS TO TRY TO BUY THE THINGS AND TOUR SERVICE VERY CHEAP, AND BEWARE THE SPRINTER PROPERTY OF YOU”
“BE WARE SCAMP IN THIS TEMPLE. BE WARE THAI GENTLEMAN WELL DRESSED WHO POLITE DISCUSSION TRY TO SCAM TOURISTS TO BUY TOUR SERVICE VERY EXPENSIVE FROM GOVERNMENT OR SUIT.
They had gone through the expense of producing a professional sign but not bothered to ask an English-speaking person to check it first. Or maybe they ordered the signs from one of the “scamps” they were warning about.
At breakfast the next morning we were greeted by some extraordinary news on the TV. We had just flown halfway across the world in a big piece of metal weighing hundreds of tons and arrived safely. While that was happening a group of people in Glasgow popped round to their local pub to enjoy a few beers when a helicopter crashed into it and killed seven of them. When faced with a risk, people often say “I might get killed crossing the road” but how often do you hear “I might get killed by a helicopter?”
Next day, while Federika was shopping and visiting a few art galleries I went for a day to the Bungsamran Fishing Lake. I was picked up by taxi and taken through Bangkok in a never-ending traffic jam to the outskirts of town. At the lake, a guide was appointed to look after me for the day and I was given a nice little hut at the edge of the water. 
The guide was very good and although it was a struggle to understand him, there wasn’t much he needed to say. He knew the best technique to use for the lake and while he mixed up a large bucket of rice powder mixed with buttermilk (for the smell) he gave me a 100% guarantee that I would catch fish. I took it with a pinch of salt as any fisherman will tell you it is a guarantee that can’t be made. He pressed the rice mixture together to form a ball about the size of a grapefruit and cast it out for me. I had been fishing for over 50 years and in all that time, the biggest fish I ever caught was seven kilos but after one minute of my bait touching the water, I had a 23-kilo catfish on the line.
It took 15 minutes to land and I asked my guide to photograph it in case I didn’t catch any more. He put the catfish carefully back in the water as although it was edible it was worth much more to them for sport than for selling in the market. He cast the bait out again and this time it was only a few seconds before I hooked another catfish about the same size. By lunchtime, I had caught seven of them and although the novelty had worn off I was still hoping to catch a 100-kilo monster or at least something other than a catfish. The biggest-ever catfish caught in Thailand was 293 kilos but I would have been happy with anything in the 200 range.
For lunch I was given a menu and my order was brought to my hut. There were cushions provided so after lunch I was able to take my usual siesta. The afternoon continued with me never having to wait more than a minutes to catch a fish. They were always catfish and always around the same size as if they were produced on a conveyor belt. I would never have believed it possible but halfway through the afternoon, it felt like catching fish was a chore so I finished early. The irony was that there were countless times in my past when I was perfectly happy to sit by a river bank all day without catching anything.
By the time I got back to the hotel after another traffic jam I was shattered and my arms and back were aching from fighting the powerful catfish. Federika also had a tiring day so we struggled down the road to a Japanese restaurant that was recommended to us. It wasn’t great and it was the only Japanese restaurant I had ever known that didn’t serve sushi but it was full of Japanese people and they seemed to like it. Most of them were taking bits of raw meat from a plate and putting it into a pot of boiling liquid in the middle of the table to cook. What is the point of going to a restaurant and doing your own cooking? 
There was an amazing number of people selling street food with a wide variety including fried grasshoppers and cockroaches. Many of the stalls were homemade contraptions mounted onto motorcycles or pushbikes and they were all doing a thriving trade. The food was so cheap that a lot of people didn’t bother to cook at home. I knew we should have been adventurous and tried the street food but why take the risk when we could get a good meal in the food hall for two pounds? A lot of the street food was barbecued in front of us so I might have been tempted if I hadn’t seen them washing the dishes in buckets of filthy water.
Next morning we woke early to visit the weekend market, reputed to be one of the biggest in the world. Having grown accustomed to the heat we were faced with a new problem, the freezing cold temperature on the Skytrain. It was so bad that we had to get off at one stop so I could stand on the platform to warm up. It was obvious which station we had to get off for the market because nearly everyone got off and we just had to follow the crowds. There were some great bargains but we had to control ourselves because whatever we bought, we had to carry around with us for the next six weeks. One thing that impressed me was there was no pressure to buy anything.
The cost of the food was amazing. We had lunch in a big tent which cost £1.80 for the two of us. There was no danger of it winning any Egon Ronay stars but it was perfectly acceptable and must have been the cheapest meal of my life. Not far from there was a trendy café where we had two espressos which cost £3.80 making them the most expensive espressos I have ever bought and probably the worst tasting. It was worth it though to sit and watch a Spanish chef dancing happily to an Elvis Presley song whilst standing in front of a giant paella dish. He was wearing a traditional chef’s outfit complete with a hat and looked like there was no place in the world he would rather be.
Some serious anti-government demonstrations were happening in one area of Bangkok though we would never have known if we hadn’t read it in the newspapers. The only effect it had on us was when we went on the temple tour, the guide had to avoid a small area where the demonstrations were at their worst.
2013 South East Asia
