14/11/02: Arrive and book in
at the Asia Hotel. Go to a bar called The Rock across the road where a covers band play quality renditions of other people's hits (for example, My Sharona by The Knack). Local beer appears to be quite potent. Proceed to get thoroughly plastered.
Customs is pleasingly slick and Bangkok’s airport
surprisingly modern. There aren’t people clamouring for your attention and
there are no beggars. This does not surprise me at the time but retrospectively
it will seem odd. I guess such places exist in their own
world, exempt from the conditions and the customs of their host country.
Step outside and the
predicament really hits home, the heat and the miasma and the noise
illustrating the distance travelled. I sit down for a moment while my lady
friend asks somebody about buses. It is a straight-forward operation and within
20 minutes we are aboard a moving vehicle. It is approximately 15:00.
The airport – as airports
often are – is located a little way out of town, and it takes some while for us
to breach a suburbia comprised of parking lots, warehouses selling car-parts,
garden centres and green fields dotted with grazing cattle. Quite a
sight, then, as we near this city’s hub: all tall buildings, advertisement
hoardings and flyovers, a metropolis of intimidating proportions.
So this is Asia, this is
inter-continental travel, and nothing has prepared me for it. The
conductor lets us know when our bus reaches the intended point of
disembarkation. I’m desperate to escape the stultifying humidity, to
change clothes and discard any traces of airborne travel. Mercifully, the Asia
Hotel is not hard to find and we book in without too much trouble (although a
little more than you’d think: they give our paperwork a thorough going over). Ours
will be a basic room with air conditioning, a television, mini-bar, and not much else. The décor within will be rather drab in hue and the bathroom
will have seen better days. The view from our window has something dystopian about it: a yellow haze with
geometric shapes fading into the distance. It doesn’t correspond with any vista
I’d preconceived of. It’s not like Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Mumbai –
cities I’ve not been to but which have been impressed upon me vicariously by
the likes of Michael Palin and Alan Whicker.
It is nice to be able to stretch your legs and have a shower
after such an arduous journey. I am not as hungry as I should be but do have a terrible urge to drink. After venturing no further than 50 metres in either direction
of our hotel, we settle for a bar across the street called
The Rock. It is pretty empty inside, save for a group of Thai musicians
executing competent renditions of other people’s hits. It’s actually Karaoke night, although every night could be Karaoke night for all I know. Nobody
seems willing to take part, and you can count me out – I’m just here to
familiarise myself with the local beer. Despite my fatigue,
I opt to get really rather drunk in an attempt to ameliorate the strange, otherworldliness of the situation.
15/11/02: Have buffet
breakfast at hotel. Leave to seek suggested accommodation on the Khao San Road – they call it a palace! Gulliver’s for food – pork chops have never tasted so
good. Weather very hot but a thunderstorm alleviates the humidity. Find Hole in
the Wall, play pool, get drunk and talk to English couple. Three ‘Beer
Changs’ for the price of two.
Bangkok is a beast of a city.
It reminds me of the sprawling metropolis from the computer game Grand
Theft Auto, only if Hounslow Borough Council had been given the job of
maintaining it for the previous 30 years. This is to say that a lot of the low rise
buildings have been poorly maintained, giving rise to dirty, concrete fascias,
although litter is conspicuous by its absence. Among the rudimentary
construction, the city is regularly punctuated with pristine monuments and temples.
The next day, after a disappointingly insubstantial
buffet breakfast, we check out and get a bus to the Khao San Road. If I
thought it was hot when I arrived then have I got a surprise coming to me. Our bus stop offers shade but is ineffectual. The bus itself is even worse. There is no
air-conditioning, just wooden framed windows that push outwards at the top, and
the traffic is heavy, emitting fumes that prohibit the influx of any draft that
might ordinarily be generated by the speed of such a vehicle. We then miss our
stop and have to walk back over an imposing bridge that crosses the Chao Phraya
River, fully laden, under the midday sun.
By the time we reach the Khao
San Palace – a guesthouse recommended to us by friends, because it’s cheap and
conveniently located – I am drenched with sweat. Thankfully, booking in is a
pleasingly straight-forward process. We are given a key with a plank of wood
attached, presumably to prevent us from losing it, and shown to our room, which
is basic and small with no air-conditioning to speak of, just a Bakelite fan spinning precariously from the middle of the ceiling. But the room is very cheap (about 350
baht, which works out at about £5) and I suppose we should be grateful for the
two scrawny, orange hand towels that come with it.
After a shower and a change
of clothes, I visit the internet café at the end of the road to check in with
anybody who cares; only the Khao San Road stands in my way. I have established
that I will be confronted by taxi drivers the moment I reach the end of the
tiled floor that acts as some sort of outdoor atrium, with a pharmacy just on
the right. Anticipating this, I keep my head down, mumble something in
English and break on through this commercial picket line with relative ease. I then feel an invisible force guiding me down the
centre of this semi-pedestrianised zone, protecting me from the unwanted
attention of the hawkers, eager restaurant staff and crippled beggars
intermittently lining the street. For a short while, I am completely oblivious
to the unremitting heat and humidity, until some vehicle starts snaking its way
through the throng and I catch the smell of hot diesel mixed in with the aroma
of unknown food-stuffs and stagnant drains. If this wasn’t enough, my fellow travellers
are already annoying me. What’s with the cornrows, tattoos, beads, baggy
clothes and the lax attitude? I’m not sure what I was expecting – more deference
perhaps.
The internet café exudes a
mellower timbre, and I can relax a little. Working the computer is a laboured affair, but at least it's cool here. I have no idea what I want to do or
where I want to specifically be, but the idea of being out of doors seems
particularly unappealing.
My appetite is starting to show signs of recovery from the
disorientating effects of long-haul travel. We look for somewhere to eat and
opt for Gulliver’s at the end of the road, by virtue of its air conditioning. The
place is done out like a bar back home: dark stained wood, sport related
paraphernalia, spirits piled high behind the counter. We are served from our table,
which brings with it a welcome sense of formality. I order the pork chops in
pepper sauce with fries, which has a positive effect. As does the darkening
sky, painting everything in a more colourful and exciting
light. We find a bar called The Hole in the Wall, play some pool and get drunk.
16/11/02: Wally’s for brunch;
walk to a gallery and then down to the river; back to our hotel and then to
Gulliver’s again, this time for egg fried rice; then to Dong Dea Moon; back to
Hole in the Wall where ‘Pipi’ scams me for 40 baht via the medium of pool.
17/11/02: Breakfast followed
by a spot of mild depression and a certain anxiety. Take a nap, followed by a
shower, buy fresh pineapple from a street trader and feel all the better for it.
Come the evening we’re out drinking again and discover two new bars: Dong Dea
Moon and what we decide to call ‘The Hendrix’.
That first week took some getting used to, not least because
of the fervid heat and humidity. Lying spreadeagled on our bead, with the fan
rotating as fast as its modest motor would allow, I just couldn’t get
comfortable. The sound of the neighbouring 7-Eleven’s door relentlessly
bleeping open and closed, no less incessant by night than it was by day – perhaps
even more so – exacerbated my restlessness. Consequently I spent a not insignificant
amount of my time boozing. This was not so surprising, given that I was on a
kind of protracted holiday, but I had five months of this to get through. If I
couldn’t get a hold of myself soon then I might end up developing some sort of
drinking problem.
The Hole in the Wall on Khao
San Road: a local lad by the name of ‘Pipi’ – a rangy, wide-eyed guy wearing old clothes – insisted I play him at pool. He was a hustler, but charming with
it. The bar offered a
three-for-the-price-of-two deal on bottles of Chang and Singha. This worked out
at no more than 60p for a bottle of premium strength lager (6.4% and 5%
respectively), and they’d keep your second and third bottle on ice until you
needed it.
On my first visit to the Hole
in the Wall I recall being aware of an earthy odour to the water in the
washroom. Standing there, sweating buckets – for most of the bars were devoid
of air-conditioning – it struck me how completely trapped by my predicament I
was, this not un-redolent smell a sort of metaphor for the unfamiliarity that had me in its thrall. I’d committed to five months abroad, and almost four of
them in a climate as relentless as this. Counting down the days as a mechanism
by which to cope seemed hopelessly futile. How to go about it? I could drink
some of the time, but not all the time. Rather than spend the majority of my
time in bars, I would need to move around and occupy myself somehow. And what
impact would this have on my relationship? I didn’t know. I felt that an
extended company of sorts would be hugely beneficial, and meeting up with other
people was certainly part of the loose plan. In the meantime I would need to
get a grip of myself, maybe think about what I wanted out of all this.
Come Sunday, I had reached
something of a watershed. I felt emotionally desolate during the morning, and
then, after taking a short nap, I began to feel physically unwell. I tried
sleeping some more, with some degree of success, until a fan induced chill had
me scrambling for one of the orange hand-towels for protection. Relief was only
momentary as I suddenly became aware of an all-encompassing itching about my
form. The mild dampness of the towel had attracted many small red ants,
creatures that I was now transferring onto my body, encouraging them to bite. They
were everywhere, yet I could not identify an obvious point of origin prior to
them descending on my miserable rag. There were no holes, no nooks, no nests.
The room was clean, I could give it that.
Insects eliminated, and
starting to lose my mind, I decided to leave my room and buy pineapple from one
of the many street vendors that work the Khao San Road. This proved to be of
great benefit and I soon witnessed a significant improvement to my constitution.
By the early evening we were out drinking again. What this lugubrious episode
represented, I do not know. Maybe I was suffering from mild heatstroke, or perhaps I was just homesick. Either way, for a while it had me staring into the abyss.
The Mango
There is a road around the corner from the Khao San Road –
do a right at Gulliver’s and then first left – where everything feels a bit more
laid back (emphasis on ‘a bit’). You can eat out on the street without too much
interference, or take a drink in one of the many bars there with travellers who don’t
seem so intent on drinking themselves into a stupor. Dong Dea Moon (now
deceased) was particularly pleasing, run by a Korean guy who could flick the
tops off bottles with the end of a lighter at a high velocity, for
entertainment purposes only.
Further on down there used to
be The Mango. It amounted to little more than a sort of garden with wooden
tables, a wooden bar, a few small trees and a pond, which attracted mosquitoes.
But they would often play an old BBC Jimi Hendrix
session on rotation, the tunes inter-cut with broadcaster Brian Matthew
providing a bit of background on the recording. They didn’t make a big show about
calling themselves Mango and so neither did we, referring to it as ‘The Hendrix’
instead.
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