Thailand

2^nd December - 18^th December

Apparently, early December is a popular time of year for people to go to Thailand, so I didn't get a window seat. Which is a shame, as there was a lightning storm somewhere over Australia, which was very impressive. I don't think I ever saw anything like that. The 'plane stopped in Sydney, and I needed to get off and back on again. I'm sure it was only to encourage us to spend money in the airport. I bought myself a Lonely Planet guide to Bangkok, seeing as how I hadn't gotten around to that yet.

I landed in Bangkok a little before 11pm, and within 5 minutes of leaving the air-conditioned airport to wait for the bus, I was sweating buckets. And this is in what they laughingly call the "cool season", too. The bus dropped me off at the end of Thanon Khao San, which is the heart of the backpacker district, and even more noisy, bright and chaotic than the rest of the city. I quickly booked into the Hello! Guesthouse, for ฿150 (THB) (about £2.15 (GBP), $3.52 (USD)) per night. And it was worth every penny. I got a bed (without sheets, but it was too humid for them anyway), a ceiling fan and a lock on the door.

I took a tuk-tuk across town on my first day. It was more for the experience than to actually get anywhere, which was just as well. Every time the traffic slowed down, the driver would turn around and try to convince my that I wanted to buy a suit, or some jewellery. Despite me making it as clear as I could that I had no intention of buying anything, he refused to take me where I wanted to go until I'd at least browsed in 4 different shops. And then after that, I'm pretty sure that I got overcharged. But the journey itself was fun: every time we went round a corner, we went up on two wheels, and as there are no sides so I kept thinking I was about to be dumped onto the road. And cutting between lanes of oncoming traffic was pretty scary too. The "drive on the left" thing seems to be no more than a bit of handy advice.

I finally managed to get to the Siam Square shopping centre, and browsed there. There were all sorts of odd shops, like Santa's Hamburgers. and it was kind of weird to see McDonald's and KFC selling rice as their standard side, rather than fries. I bought a 256Kb memory card for my camera while I was there, because it was about a third the price it would have been back home.

There was a cinema nearby, which was full of cool movie montages and models. Nothing interesting was showing, but I spent an hour or two in the lobby.

I decided to walk back across town. Of course, crossing roads was just as scary as riding a tuk-tuk, with hoards of motorcyclists completely ignoring pedestrians. It was like being an extra in Rollerball. And I think I exceeded my RDA of lead pretty quickly.

Many of the bars on Th Khao San show bootleg movies of an evening, often before they've been released in the cinemas. So pretty much every evening, I'd get a couple of bottles of water, or coke, or something, and watch Die Another Day, or xXx, or Harry Potter II or something. Gotta love weak copyright laws. I did have a beer in the first couple of nights but I decided that Thai beer was too yeasty for my taste, and that it was too hot too drink, anyway.

The next day I spent some time exploring the old City walls, which was interesting.

The 5^th was King Bhumibol's 75^th birthday. He's the world's longest serving monarch, and is held in very high regard by the Thai people. The Royal Park was just around the corner from my guesthouse, so I kept on dropping by to see what was happening. Even early in the morning, there was a big crowd of people, mostly getting a mass open-air haircut, although there were also lots of people picnicking (and the snack vendors, selling deep fried locusts and cockroaches seemed to be doing good business), or queueing up for some kind of white box thing. No doubt there was a subtle significance to all this that passed me by.

Next time I dropped by (early afternoon), there was a Muay Thai boxing match on that seemed to be drawing a big crowd, but I didn't really hang around to watch.

It was just before sunset that the real show seemed to start: There was a long motorcade, though the vehicles were spaced out quite widely, so it was hard to judge exactly how bit it was. Then there were marchers from various armed forces and boy scouts, nurses, and pretty much any other organisation you can imagine.

I managed to get near the front of the crowd as the Royal Park filled up, and everyone got given a yellow candle. A big long line of people went up to the front with these giant jewelled easter egg things, that I think are meant to be the Buddha's headdress up to the stage, where people in white uniforms (I'm guessing navy) would put them in big long rows. About half way through this, I worked out that the rhythmic chant going through the speakers was actually a list of people's names and occupations. I think I recognised "Watana" and "tuk-tuk" in there somewhere. Looking around, I suspect I was the only farang there.

While this happened, the front of the crowd was allowed to move forward every now and again, until I was about 50 yards from the stage. Then there were song sung, which I assume were the National and Royal Anthems, and such like, but might have been The Lumberjack Song translated into Thai, for all I could tell. About 7:30, the King, Queen and Crown Prince appeared on stage. The Crown Prince read out a speech that King Bhumibol had written, and then people sung more songs. Or the same ones again. I couldn't tell. Everyone lit their candles. More songs were sung, one of which seemed to end earlier, judging by the way half the crowd continued singing for a few moments before tittering nervously. Then there were the fireworks.

As everyone left afterwards, I seemed to find myself in the wrong spot. I found myself being pushed to one side by a para, as the royal party was escorted out within arm's reach of me. Which was quite a surprise. After that, it took me ages to work out how I was supposed to leave the park, as I'd managed to find myself surrounded by uniforms. When I did finally get out to the road, everything was far more chaotic than usual, even for Bangkok. Motorbikes, tuk-tuks, cars and buses were all heading in every which way, with no heed of traffic regulations, or the seething mass of pedestrians who were trying to get across the road. There were many other celebrations through the night, with traditional dances and theatre in any free space they could find.

I wandered down to Chinatown the next day. Which was fun. There were lots of restaurants that were no more than a wok by the side of the road, and a couple of tables. And markets. The Smuggler's Market, the Chinese Market, the Foreigner's Market, and the Amulet Market, all within a few hundred yards of each other. I browsed around and looked at things, but I didn't buy anything.

On the way back, I went past the Museum of Corrections, which used to be Bangkok prison, one of the most feared prisons in the world. Now, despite being named as a museum, it's no more than a city park, with a few of the watchtowers kept as features. And Rod Stewart playing over the speaker system. It was all very strange...

That evening, there was a Chanukah parade going down Th Khao San, led (as you might expect) by a pair of young elephants bedecked with Hebrew lettering. It was all quite surreal, really. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me at the time. But I'm sure you can imagine it.

The next day, I went to Jatujak Market, which is supposed to be the largest market in Thailand. Or maybe it was the world. Well, either way, it was big and crowded. It was divided into sections, so every stall selling one category of stuff would be in the same place.Mind you, it did take a while to work out whether I was in the pet section or the food section at one point. Maybe it was both. I'm pretty sure that this was in the pet section, though.

In the garden section, I found a very interesting life-size Robocop statue, among other things. I was tempted to buy that, if I could have gotten it into my backpack.

On the way back out of the market, I got given a Chick Tract. I still don't understand how many non-Christians believe the Bible enough to convert on its say so.

That evening, back on Th Khao San, there were a couple of interesting events. There was a Thai couple getting wedding photos taken, early on. Now, I don't really see the attraction of having cheap flophouses and unwashed farangs as a backdrop to your wedding photos, but that's just me. Then later, there was another baby elephant! This time, the idea was that people could feed it for ฿20 (which is about £0.30 or $0.45). Very cute.

The next stop was the tropical island of Ko Samet. It made quite a difference from the hectic pace of the city, and I spent much time lazing around on the beaches, reading. I read Stranger In A Strange Land, finally. I really don't know why I'd never read it before.

I also got to see a set of traditional tropical Christmas decorations, which was quite interesting. And I stayed up one evening to see the sunrise over the sea, and I got attacked by mosquitoes, and I got sunburnt. Again. And one evening, I found a frog in my bathroom, and had to carry it outside. It was significantly heavier than I had expected.

Ko Samet was fun, but it would have probably have been more fun if I was there with friends. And eventually I headed back to Bangkok. I went to Dhusit National Zoo. I saw elephants, crocodiles, tigers, monkeys and all sorts of other animals. They also had the world's coolest ATM machine. Which was fun.

The museum there was interesting. They had lots of stuffed animals in their exhibit on poaching. Rather more happily, they also had one of the best tree-of-life maps I've ever seen. In total it probably covered about 150 square feet. Certainly, it was three walls of a fairly large room.

A couple of days later, I headed to the airport for my flight to Rome. Because I had to check out of my hotel at noon, and my flight left at midnight, I spent a few hours in the airport, mooching around, reading things in the bookshop, and starting to feel slightly ill. I think I must have picked up some kind of stomach bug along the way. But I managed to get through the flight without incident, so that was alright.