Two New Years
27 - 31 Dec, Ian
On Tuesday evening we flew out of Sydney and into
Bangkok. I love the sense of ending one chapter of our travels and moving on to
the next new thing.
First, though, there's the admin. The final closure for me isn't achieved by crossing an international border or clearing customs but by the more mundane business of completing my data transfer tasks. This involves backing up all of my photographs for the month, posting a selection on line and composing and ordering a photo book that contains a much larger selection. Ideally, I also like to see the girls' newsletters finished and to post them on-line at the same time. The newsletters and especially the photo books are very data intensive, requiring a stable broadband internet connection. My best chance of finding this is often at an international airport but this month in Sydney we ran out of time and I only managed to post some web snaps on-line. If you've seen them you may have spotted that one unexpected occurrence at the airport was seeing Elle MacPherson - she seemed busy but friendly, and kindly agreed to have her photo taken with the girls.
Some of you have taken the BA flight from Sydney to Bangkok, which then flies on to London. Paula and I reacted differently to the inevitable sense that we were stepping off the flight "mid way": there was a part of Paula that felt, I think, a little abandoned, whereas I felt as lucky as a prison escapee. While I love my home, miss my friends and would be truly delighted to see any of you, not for one second this year have I had even a partial desire to be back in England early. I think the same is true of Paula and the girls, though Paula may have had the odd wobble at times, such as first thing on Christmas Day.
So far I love Thailand. In Bangkok we stayed for a couple of nights in a clean and simple hotel in the backpacker district of Banglamphu. As we drove in at midnight the street markets were buzzing with life and colour. The next morning we met Nui, who is to be our guide for the next few weeks, and she took us on a tour of the city, starting off in a tuk-tuk to the Grand Palace and then proceeding variously by foot, river boat, sky train and canal taxi. Apart possibly from the tuk-tuks, the transport seems mainly for the locals. The river taxi even had a section set aside for the orange-robed monks, but also attracted some custom from the visitors to the high-end international hotels that line the river. The canal taxi was the most fun. It ran along a narrow waterway that weaved through the back streets, washing waves up to the dirt paths that sometimes ran parallel. Periodically the boat, which was a kind of small engine-powered longboat, sped under a bridge lower than its roof - each time, immediately before passing underneath a guy in a helmet would swiftly wind down the boat's roof so that it scraped under.
If you've been to Bangkok you will have visited the Grand Palace, which is emblematic of the city. Immediately you can feel the press of tourism: 20,000 people stream into the Palace each day from China, Europe and all over the world. Despite this the place retains some magic, and if you amble around with any degree of independence you can still find quiet spots. Nui is the perfect guide: she quietly leads us into places and gives us interesting facts without any sense that we're being herded on her little route. Every time I've asked her a question she's either given me an immediate precise answer or, very rarely, confessed that she doesn't know and told me later; if only life was always like this! When, for example, I overheard a scouse girl telling her friend that the nine layers of the umbrella over the king's throne represent that he's the ninth king in his line (which he is), Nui was able to confirm that I was right to be suspicious about this and gave me the correct explanation: in the past warrior kings used to capture opposing kings' umbrellas and add them to their own, like power conkers, and so the nine umbrellas symbolise strength.
In the afternoon we visited what everyone claims is an authentic example of a traditional Thai house. Regrettably, you might feel, it was built by a New Yorker (Jim Thompson), who after working as a secret services operative in Thailand in World War II moved to Bangkok after the war. It seems that his own desires and whims for his house (stairs on the inside, US-style, rather than external, for example, and placement of some of the wooden wall panels back-to-front so that he could appreciate the facing pattern from inside the house) seem to have saved the place from pure pastiche, and his acquisitiveness is also appreciated now since his house became a ready-made museum.
Walking past the street markets you can't help but be struck by the variety of appetising food that's available, and by how cheap it is. I've discovered a few new foods - jack fruit is one favourite, and the girls like rose apples. Contrary to what I'd been told, the meals are not especially spicy. It's very handy to have Nui to guide us to eateries and by now she's realised that she doesn't have to ask for our dishes to be toned down. In fact, even with the dried chilly and standard sauces that are available as condiments everywhere it can be tough to rev the food up to be as spicy as, say, a decent Indian curry. The flip side of the shortfall on sheer macho bite is a delicious subtlety of flavour in even simple meals. The quality of food you can pick up for next to nothing must be indicative of what draws people here from everywhere. It's not only the food that's cheap. As well as all of the other tourist-relevant goods, Nui pointed out a new development of houses today, built in the vernacular of the local region but to top quality, which are selling, she says, for the equivalent of under £10,000, which is apparently very expensive here.
After only a day and half in Bangkok (we're returning later this month) we took an 18 hour train journey down to Nakhon Si Thammarat in the south of Thailand, which is were we are now. A constant procession of food and drink vendors moved through the train, and if you wanted more variety you could hop off and buy food from hawkers at station stops. We had seats that turned into beds and overhead bunks, which were perfectly comfortable. Bright green curtains insulated the beds from the corridor. The bumpy motion of the train was conducive to sleep, although I seemed to wake at the end of each dream cycle, surprising myself with how many dreams I generated in a single night. At breakfast time we had a very tasty snack of sticky rice and custard wrapped in a banana leaf pyramid, washed down with sweet Thai coffee.
Since we left Bangkok we haven't seen any other non-locals. As I've written previously, I've got over any sense I may have once had that travel is mere tourism if you see other travellers. It is, though, notable, that at this time of year so few people are making it out here. We certainly draw attention. It's no surprise to learn that Thailand is sometimes called "The Land of Smiles": most of the time here we're either on foot or in semi-open minivan taxis (often shared), and people on the pavement, in mopeds and even in cars invariably beam at us and often point or wave or call a greeting.
Yesterday we went to a temple, or wat, that has the renown of being relatively ancient and housing bones of the Lord Buddha. I suspect that this is as common as Catholic places that claim to have shards of the true cross. The temple was fascinating, and Buddhist wats are also a great place to become lucky: you can be dowsed with holy water, rub a brass hemisphere to make a lucky sound, walk three times around the pagoda or try various other rituals. Here's a snap of the girls enhancing their luck by dropping a small coin into each of 108 bowls fashioned from coconut shells; Buddhas line the wall behind Heidi:
Afterwards we went to the market next to the temple and bought some local sweets that they spin in front of you into little birds' nests, coloured brown or blue or green.
And after that we went to Carrefour! This sits incongruously alongside the local stores inside a small mall that also has a Boots and other franchises, some of which are familiar from home. The template of the Carrefour experience is the same as anywhere else but the food is different. I've noticed the same localisation in Nice, where they have fantastic stalls of fresh fish from the Med and other regional produce; here there is a much more exotic array of fresh sea food and fruit, and dishes that are stir fried in store on request.
This morning we went to the Khao Luang National Park. It's the largest NP in southern Thailand - 80% of which is given over to rubber plantations - but at 570 square kilometres it's relatively small by international standards. Despite this, the rainforest hides a surprising range of elusive beasts including clouded leopards and tigers - our driver reports that there was a tiger paw print by the waterfall last week. It was the waterfall rather than the dark heart of the rainforest that was our destination. One of the repeating stories of our trip has been that the weather has been unusual this year - we seem to have heard it everywhere. In Thailand, there has been much more rain than is normal in the past month or so, and so the waterfall was exceptionally impressive. We swam in a large natural basin with a huge fall just upstream, and, ominously, more below us but out of sight.
After we'd done our swimming and had our lunch some locals came along. The girls, whom I'd guess were about 13, all went in wearing trousers and t-shirts. Nui says that this was partly to avoid darkening their skin with a tan as well as to preserve their modesty. The modesty-preserving side of things was compromised in the case of one girl, whose t-shirt boasted the slogan in large English lettering (set alongside the stylised names of early punk bands in much smaller print): FUCK OFF WANKERS. This was similar to our visit to the Wat yesterday where, as at the Grand Palace, we naturally had to observe proprieties of dress. Nui walked respectfully through the temple and its grounds, always following the protocol of how and when to bow and when shoes could and couldn't be worn, in a modest t-shirt in the traditional Buddhist colours of yellow background and orange script, which, in English, prettily spelled out the simple phrase: Kama Sutra.
I mentioned above that Paula had had half a heart to keep straight on to England when we arrived at Bangkok airport; she and, to a smaller extent, the girls have been a little out of sorts since we've been here. Viscerally, when we get to places that are more unfamiliar my mood instantly improves, while Paula has an adjustment period proportional to the extent of the culture shock. Previously this was most notable in Fez, although we all had a good time there. Here again, we find a different way of life, an alien and unreadable language, loos that often have foot plates built into the seat, a new cuisine and (outside of Bangkok) an absence of Caucasians. But Paula has decided that, being New Year's eve, she and the girls are going to master their negative energies and have a good time. Besides, this place is easier than Fez. You can buy a jolly Osama t-shirt on the street in Bangkok, which I never saw in Morocco, but we Europeans coming to Thailand enjoy the clear conscience arising from being in the only country in SE Asia never to have been colonised by Western powers rather than the race guilt that our disgraceful treatment in the Islamic world has watermarked into us, which increasingly is experienced as fear.
Like the locals, I'm splitting my New Year's into two: tonight, when the Western New Year is marked, I'm going to redouble my attempts to formulate good resolutions; on April 13, the Thai New Year that conveniently falls a week or two after we get home, I'll get down to implementing them in earnest. My major resolution may be to be less politically docile, and this is a determination that's growing in me as I read my way through Robert Fisk's outstanding book The Great War for Civilisation. All of the major figures (bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein...) and events (the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and defeat there, the fall of the Shah, the Iran/Iraq war...) that he covers are familiar, yet I feel as though I'm reading about them for the first time. It's hard to explain how it is that while nothing in the book at all surprises me, reading it is one long revelation. I knew that Jacques Chirac was no paragon of high ethics, but to read him, as mayor, welcome Saddam to Paris with the expression of "my esteem, my consideration and my affection" when his torturous practices were already well known is breathtaking. Likewise, to read of Thatcher's miserable worms Waldegrave and Howe deciding to continue promoting trade and arms sales to Saddam for fear that if we didn't others would, and then covering it up in case it appeared "cynical". And to read the details of the range of nerve agents and gases - WMD as they say now - that Rumsfeld and his cronies purposefully exported to Saddam, on record in a report to Congress, and the collusion of the CIA in their use against the Iranian army, especially knowing what happened later. While none of the tyrants come out of this book looking good, the more actionable evil is the support they receive from the lazy Western press and the docility of us all in the face of our governments' role as accessory to their crimes. I want to do something. If I can only rattle a steel fence at the next protest I'll do that, but hopefully by the Thai New Year I might have some better ideas. What about you?
As a side note, I finished off my Aussie data tasks yesterday. After timing out at Sydney airport and finding a Starbucks with wifi in Bangkok only to discover that the network is too patchy for multimeg uploads, I unexpectedly found wired and wireless ADSL here in our £7/night hotel in Nakhon Si Thammarat. So now I can be immersed in Thailand.
First, though, there's the admin. The final closure for me isn't achieved by crossing an international border or clearing customs but by the more mundane business of completing my data transfer tasks. This involves backing up all of my photographs for the month, posting a selection on line and composing and ordering a photo book that contains a much larger selection. Ideally, I also like to see the girls' newsletters finished and to post them on-line at the same time. The newsletters and especially the photo books are very data intensive, requiring a stable broadband internet connection. My best chance of finding this is often at an international airport but this month in Sydney we ran out of time and I only managed to post some web snaps on-line. If you've seen them you may have spotted that one unexpected occurrence at the airport was seeing Elle MacPherson - she seemed busy but friendly, and kindly agreed to have her photo taken with the girls.
Some of you have taken the BA flight from Sydney to Bangkok, which then flies on to London. Paula and I reacted differently to the inevitable sense that we were stepping off the flight "mid way": there was a part of Paula that felt, I think, a little abandoned, whereas I felt as lucky as a prison escapee. While I love my home, miss my friends and would be truly delighted to see any of you, not for one second this year have I had even a partial desire to be back in England early. I think the same is true of Paula and the girls, though Paula may have had the odd wobble at times, such as first thing on Christmas Day.
So far I love Thailand. In Bangkok we stayed for a couple of nights in a clean and simple hotel in the backpacker district of Banglamphu. As we drove in at midnight the street markets were buzzing with life and colour. The next morning we met Nui, who is to be our guide for the next few weeks, and she took us on a tour of the city, starting off in a tuk-tuk to the Grand Palace and then proceeding variously by foot, river boat, sky train and canal taxi. Apart possibly from the tuk-tuks, the transport seems mainly for the locals. The river taxi even had a section set aside for the orange-robed monks, but also attracted some custom from the visitors to the high-end international hotels that line the river. The canal taxi was the most fun. It ran along a narrow waterway that weaved through the back streets, washing waves up to the dirt paths that sometimes ran parallel. Periodically the boat, which was a kind of small engine-powered longboat, sped under a bridge lower than its roof - each time, immediately before passing underneath a guy in a helmet would swiftly wind down the boat's roof so that it scraped under.
If you've been to Bangkok you will have visited the Grand Palace, which is emblematic of the city. Immediately you can feel the press of tourism: 20,000 people stream into the Palace each day from China, Europe and all over the world. Despite this the place retains some magic, and if you amble around with any degree of independence you can still find quiet spots. Nui is the perfect guide: she quietly leads us into places and gives us interesting facts without any sense that we're being herded on her little route. Every time I've asked her a question she's either given me an immediate precise answer or, very rarely, confessed that she doesn't know and told me later; if only life was always like this! When, for example, I overheard a scouse girl telling her friend that the nine layers of the umbrella over the king's throne represent that he's the ninth king in his line (which he is), Nui was able to confirm that I was right to be suspicious about this and gave me the correct explanation: in the past warrior kings used to capture opposing kings' umbrellas and add them to their own, like power conkers, and so the nine umbrellas symbolise strength.
In the afternoon we visited what everyone claims is an authentic example of a traditional Thai house. Regrettably, you might feel, it was built by a New Yorker (Jim Thompson), who after working as a secret services operative in Thailand in World War II moved to Bangkok after the war. It seems that his own desires and whims for his house (stairs on the inside, US-style, rather than external, for example, and placement of some of the wooden wall panels back-to-front so that he could appreciate the facing pattern from inside the house) seem to have saved the place from pure pastiche, and his acquisitiveness is also appreciated now since his house became a ready-made museum.
Walking past the street markets you can't help but be struck by the variety of appetising food that's available, and by how cheap it is. I've discovered a few new foods - jack fruit is one favourite, and the girls like rose apples. Contrary to what I'd been told, the meals are not especially spicy. It's very handy to have Nui to guide us to eateries and by now she's realised that she doesn't have to ask for our dishes to be toned down. In fact, even with the dried chilly and standard sauces that are available as condiments everywhere it can be tough to rev the food up to be as spicy as, say, a decent Indian curry. The flip side of the shortfall on sheer macho bite is a delicious subtlety of flavour in even simple meals. The quality of food you can pick up for next to nothing must be indicative of what draws people here from everywhere. It's not only the food that's cheap. As well as all of the other tourist-relevant goods, Nui pointed out a new development of houses today, built in the vernacular of the local region but to top quality, which are selling, she says, for the equivalent of under £10,000, which is apparently very expensive here.
After only a day and half in Bangkok (we're returning later this month) we took an 18 hour train journey down to Nakhon Si Thammarat in the south of Thailand, which is were we are now. A constant procession of food and drink vendors moved through the train, and if you wanted more variety you could hop off and buy food from hawkers at station stops. We had seats that turned into beds and overhead bunks, which were perfectly comfortable. Bright green curtains insulated the beds from the corridor. The bumpy motion of the train was conducive to sleep, although I seemed to wake at the end of each dream cycle, surprising myself with how many dreams I generated in a single night. At breakfast time we had a very tasty snack of sticky rice and custard wrapped in a banana leaf pyramid, washed down with sweet Thai coffee.
Since we left Bangkok we haven't seen any other non-locals. As I've written previously, I've got over any sense I may have once had that travel is mere tourism if you see other travellers. It is, though, notable, that at this time of year so few people are making it out here. We certainly draw attention. It's no surprise to learn that Thailand is sometimes called "The Land of Smiles": most of the time here we're either on foot or in semi-open minivan taxis (often shared), and people on the pavement, in mopeds and even in cars invariably beam at us and often point or wave or call a greeting.
Yesterday we went to a temple, or wat, that has the renown of being relatively ancient and housing bones of the Lord Buddha. I suspect that this is as common as Catholic places that claim to have shards of the true cross. The temple was fascinating, and Buddhist wats are also a great place to become lucky: you can be dowsed with holy water, rub a brass hemisphere to make a lucky sound, walk three times around the pagoda or try various other rituals. Here's a snap of the girls enhancing their luck by dropping a small coin into each of 108 bowls fashioned from coconut shells; Buddhas line the wall behind Heidi:
Afterwards we went to the market next to the temple and bought some local sweets that they spin in front of you into little birds' nests, coloured brown or blue or green.
And after that we went to Carrefour! This sits incongruously alongside the local stores inside a small mall that also has a Boots and other franchises, some of which are familiar from home. The template of the Carrefour experience is the same as anywhere else but the food is different. I've noticed the same localisation in Nice, where they have fantastic stalls of fresh fish from the Med and other regional produce; here there is a much more exotic array of fresh sea food and fruit, and dishes that are stir fried in store on request.
This morning we went to the Khao Luang National Park. It's the largest NP in southern Thailand - 80% of which is given over to rubber plantations - but at 570 square kilometres it's relatively small by international standards. Despite this, the rainforest hides a surprising range of elusive beasts including clouded leopards and tigers - our driver reports that there was a tiger paw print by the waterfall last week. It was the waterfall rather than the dark heart of the rainforest that was our destination. One of the repeating stories of our trip has been that the weather has been unusual this year - we seem to have heard it everywhere. In Thailand, there has been much more rain than is normal in the past month or so, and so the waterfall was exceptionally impressive. We swam in a large natural basin with a huge fall just upstream, and, ominously, more below us but out of sight.
After we'd done our swimming and had our lunch some locals came along. The girls, whom I'd guess were about 13, all went in wearing trousers and t-shirts. Nui says that this was partly to avoid darkening their skin with a tan as well as to preserve their modesty. The modesty-preserving side of things was compromised in the case of one girl, whose t-shirt boasted the slogan in large English lettering (set alongside the stylised names of early punk bands in much smaller print): FUCK OFF WANKERS. This was similar to our visit to the Wat yesterday where, as at the Grand Palace, we naturally had to observe proprieties of dress. Nui walked respectfully through the temple and its grounds, always following the protocol of how and when to bow and when shoes could and couldn't be worn, in a modest t-shirt in the traditional Buddhist colours of yellow background and orange script, which, in English, prettily spelled out the simple phrase: Kama Sutra.
I mentioned above that Paula had had half a heart to keep straight on to England when we arrived at Bangkok airport; she and, to a smaller extent, the girls have been a little out of sorts since we've been here. Viscerally, when we get to places that are more unfamiliar my mood instantly improves, while Paula has an adjustment period proportional to the extent of the culture shock. Previously this was most notable in Fez, although we all had a good time there. Here again, we find a different way of life, an alien and unreadable language, loos that often have foot plates built into the seat, a new cuisine and (outside of Bangkok) an absence of Caucasians. But Paula has decided that, being New Year's eve, she and the girls are going to master their negative energies and have a good time. Besides, this place is easier than Fez. You can buy a jolly Osama t-shirt on the street in Bangkok, which I never saw in Morocco, but we Europeans coming to Thailand enjoy the clear conscience arising from being in the only country in SE Asia never to have been colonised by Western powers rather than the race guilt that our disgraceful treatment in the Islamic world has watermarked into us, which increasingly is experienced as fear.
Like the locals, I'm splitting my New Year's into two: tonight, when the Western New Year is marked, I'm going to redouble my attempts to formulate good resolutions; on April 13, the Thai New Year that conveniently falls a week or two after we get home, I'll get down to implementing them in earnest. My major resolution may be to be less politically docile, and this is a determination that's growing in me as I read my way through Robert Fisk's outstanding book The Great War for Civilisation. All of the major figures (bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein...) and events (the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and defeat there, the fall of the Shah, the Iran/Iraq war...) that he covers are familiar, yet I feel as though I'm reading about them for the first time. It's hard to explain how it is that while nothing in the book at all surprises me, reading it is one long revelation. I knew that Jacques Chirac was no paragon of high ethics, but to read him, as mayor, welcome Saddam to Paris with the expression of "my esteem, my consideration and my affection" when his torturous practices were already well known is breathtaking. Likewise, to read of Thatcher's miserable worms Waldegrave and Howe deciding to continue promoting trade and arms sales to Saddam for fear that if we didn't others would, and then covering it up in case it appeared "cynical". And to read the details of the range of nerve agents and gases - WMD as they say now - that Rumsfeld and his cronies purposefully exported to Saddam, on record in a report to Congress, and the collusion of the CIA in their use against the Iranian army, especially knowing what happened later. While none of the tyrants come out of this book looking good, the more actionable evil is the support they receive from the lazy Western press and the docility of us all in the face of our governments' role as accessory to their crimes. I want to do something. If I can only rattle a steel fence at the next protest I'll do that, but hopefully by the Thai New Year I might have some better ideas. What about you?
As a side note, I finished off my Aussie data tasks yesterday. After timing out at Sydney airport and finding a Starbucks with wifi in Bangkok only to discover that the network is too patchy for multimeg uploads, I unexpectedly found wired and wireless ADSL here in our £7/night hotel in Nakhon Si Thammarat. So now I can be immersed in Thailand.
Posted: Sat - December 31, 2005 at 05:17 PM
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Published On: Jan 01, 2006 09:13 PM
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Published On: Jan 01, 2006 09:13 PM