05/04/03: Breakfast at some
swanky joint before boarding our flight back to Bangkok. Book into Kho San Palace
and go straight to bed.
06/04/03: Breakfast at
Wally’s. Look for souvenirs for relatives. Go to Siam Square for a third and
final time. Tea at Chart; drinks at Dong Dea Moon, the Banana Leaf and Hole in
the Wall.
07/04/03: Hungover. Send
e-mails. Rainbows for coffee. Buy more souvenirs. Place with spinning ball for
more coffee. Eat at Wally’s and then get a cab to the airport for flight home…
When we’d booked our flights a year earlier, we decided a few nights in Bangkok might make the passage home easier to bear. When it
came to it, I regretted us not arranging to stay for longer. New Zealand's mild climate had left me with a yearning for tropical heat and the poignant aromas that come with it: grilled meat, fish sauce, garlic, even the smell of
stagnant drains. We entertained the idea of putting back our flights, but I didn’t
know if this was something I could afford to do and was in no fit state to
carry on regardless. In New Zealand, I’d put back on a bit of the weight I’d
lost in Southeast Asia, but my general condition wasn’t great and my clothes
were torn and frayed.
In keeping with C’s enthusiasm for fine dining, he drives us
somewhere nice for breakfast before dropping us off at the airport ahead of our
flight to Bangkok, which will take something like twelve hours. The time
difference between Auckland and Bangkok works in our favour and we arrive at
the Kho San Palace, to check into the room we had the foresight to book before
we left for New Zealand, at around midnight.
Breakfast
at Wally’s. This must be at least our tenth visit, and it will not be our last.
Peruse the gift shops on Rambuttri Alley, a charming street that runs parallel
to the Khao San Road, and wonder why it was that we hadn’t spent more time here
during our previous visits. Back to Siam Square to make last minute purchases
and take shelter from the sun. It’s hotter now than it has been at any other
time since arriving in November, with an average daily high of at least 35°C.
In less than a week Songkran will commence, a national holiday that once
denoted the beginning of the Thai New Year, in accordance with the solar
calendar. It is traditional to engage in the throwing of water, to symbolically
cleanse sins and to relieve one another of the heat. If we’d known about this
when we scheduled out flights then we would surely have accommodated it.
We eat at
Chart. I don’t know why here and not, say, Gulliver’s, but I do know that our
last night in Bangkok is about drinking rather than eating. We go to Dong Dea
Moon for old time’s sake, then to new favourite The Banana Leaf, and finally
Hole in the Wall. The Hole in the Wall is where it all started – the first bar
we frequented, where we were impressed with how the staff kept your beers cold
for you until you were ready to drink them. Pipi’s still there, hustling around the pool
table, but I don’t think he recognises me. Why should he?
It’s a
heavy night – I drink Chang, not Singha – and a bittersweet one. The next
morning, hungover, I can only manage coffee for breakfast. Our flight isn’t
until the evening, so there’s plenty of time to recover, and we return to
Walley’s for lunch. Nothing is enjoyable from thereon in: pick up our luggage, taxi
to the airport, passport control, customs, and then just waiting, with nothing
in particular to look forward to.
'Hole in the Wall'
When we touched down at Heathrow, it was typically overcast
– no rain, just that grim low-lying cloud that we get so much of in the UK. It
was a genuinely depressing situation. Freed from the anxiety and trepidation
that I suffered at the beginning of my trip, I hadn’t wanted to come home,
maybe ever. The next month or so was spent moving about between my parents’
house in Plymouth, Louise’s in Upminster, and my brother’s in Wandsworth, as I
went about signing-on, seeking employment and a place to live. It turned out
that I had more money left over than I’d thought, although given my predicament
it was probably just as well I hadn’t spent more of it.
The routine
that afflicts Western living seemed absurd now, even if it did come with
certain benefits. What was harder to reconcile was the sheer formality of
things – being expected to dress a certain way, cross the road at predetermined
points, or being told to turn up to work at a specific point in time. Not to
mention so-called first world problems and the sense of entitlement a lot of
people seem to possess. It wasn’t as if I didn’t appreciate any of this before,
just that I saw it now with greater clarity: that modes of living are generally
arbitrary in nature and that our problems are rarely a matter of material
survival.
But travelling had been an unsustainable way of life. I may have exaggerated the volume we drank,
for dramatic effect, but we did by and large drink every day, if only because
there had been very little else to do in the evening. Our movements had been governed
by our whims, bereft of any impetus other than boredom or a vague curiosity.
This was not altogether a bad thing because it gave room for places, or people,
to surprise you. In this respect, travelling is a form of gambling. No matter
what the guidebook says, you don’t usually know whether you’re making the right
move. Thing is, the stakes are never very high, because there’s not anywhere
that isn’t worth even a brief visit, and there aren’t many places so amazing
that it’s worth staying for much more than a week. And so you plod on aimlessly without a care for anything, until you realise that you're in thrall to a different sort of routine, but a routine nonetheless.
