In which we have trouble with red tape, travel to Bangkok, wonder why we bothered, escape to the country and cross the bridge over the river Kwai.
Day 139 (bus to Thailand and arrival in Bangkok)
Last time I wrote, it was from Siem Reap, Cambodia, where we’d just visited the wonderful Angkor temple complex. I wrote that post the day before our journey to Bangkok and I see I told you how much we were looking forward to both (NOT). Well, we weren’t disappointed by either.
The day started okay with an early-ish pick-up (after breakfast) from our lovely guesthouse, which meant we didn’t have to lug our bags to some edge of town bus station, so that was good. The bus was comfortable enough and the journey to the Thai border only three hours, but it was a really hot day and the air-con was on the fritz, so when we arrived at the Cambodian exit post we were all a little frazzled.
Everyone on our bus and every other bus there were, of course, all trying to get out of Cambodia at the same time. There were about 80 of us all crush-queuing to get our passports stamped at one of two windows. At least we were out of the sun, but no one was really in the mood for orderly queuing and it descended into a bit of free for all. Eventually, they opened a third and then a fourth window and the flow of passengers eased somewhat.
Once we’d got our exit stamps, we could move on to the Thai side of the border crossing, but that involved a walk with our bags (it a new bus on the Thai side) of about half a mile, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but sure felt it in that heat. As we walked, we were amazed by how many people were milling about and how many seemed to have businesses in no mans land, including a large casino. How on earth would you get planning permission for such a thing and to whom would you apply? Obviously you wouldn’t and I suspect a lot of ‘special arrangement fees’ are paid.
We’d been given little bits of red sticky tape in exchange for our Cambodian bus tickets and told that we wouldn’t be let on the Thai bus (waiting for us on the other side of the border) without them. We were supposed to attach these to our clothes, but as we got hotter and sticky-er, the glue on the tape got warmer and less sticky and it wasn’t long before passengers and tape were becoming separated.
At the entry point, there was more queuing (and form filling) to be done before we even got into the customs hall. Again, mercifully, the queuing area was protected from the Sun. Still, we were more than pleased to reach the cool of the air-conditioned customs hall. More queuing there then, finally, we got our Thai visas ($25) and were through. Then the fun really started.
Those of us who still had our bits of red tape – I’d stuck mine on my passport as there was no way it would stick to my super high-tech, repels everything, Rohan T-shirt – were given a number that was supposed to correspond to a bus seat, but because the extended passage through the border had caused our group to become somewhat strung out, the first bus was full before we’d all got on it. Consequently, a few of us (and some members of another group) were put onto the back of a pickup with our luggage and driven to were the others were having lunch and waiting for us. I ordered Pad Thai – it was the first thing that came into my head – but Juli went for something different with rice. She’d only just got it when we were told to get into a couple of mini buses, which had been laid on to accommodate us all after Karen refused to allow everyone and their bags to be crammed into one small bus that didn’t even have enough space for all the passengers, let alone their luggage too.
It was another baking hot four hours to Bangkok through some terrible stop-start traffic. Thank God Karen made a fuss and we got comfortable seats in smart, new, auto-gas powered minibuses with A/C.
To begin with, Thailand looked a lot like the part of Cambodia we had just left: flat and cultivated, though not all given over to the production of rice. We saw fields of other grain crops plus acres and acres of small trees at various stages of development, which I think were destined to be lumber. Certainly, we couldn’t see any fruit or other crop on them, though, of course, it may not have been the right time of year for that.
At Bangkok, we were dropped off at the end of a dingy little alley way and told to follow the signs to the New Joe Guesthouse, one of many backpacker hostels in this part of town, just off Bangkok’s infamous Khoa San road. There we met back up with Will, the owner/driver who, you may remember, had to go ahead with the truck from Laos, plus Martin and Ange, who had elected to miss out Cambodia in exchange for more time in Bangkok. I can’t understand that, personally, but each to their own.
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| Khao San Road |
We went up to our room and home for the next four nights to shower and change, and were somewhat dismayed to find that we’d been put into a rather odd shaped corner-room with a tiny shower room, where you had to stand over the loo to get under the shower head. The room also had a communicating door through to the next room, which might just as well have been made of paper for all the sound insulation it provided. The towels they had provided were worn to the point of being thinner and more full of holes than lace, and the bedsheet was about two feet too small in both directions. All in all, and to be blunt, it was a bit shitty.
When we went out to change money, we met Adam, who had been on the other bus with Corinne and Christopher. They had been dropped off at a different spot, and Adam had been sent on ahead to find the guesthouse while they others stayed with the bags, and we were able to show him where the place was. When we went back with him to where the others were waiting, we learned that Christopher had left his life-containing laptop on their minibus. As luck would have it, Adam and Corinne had memorised the license plate number of their minibus so they got back on the right one after a fuel stop. Armed with this information and with the aid of Will’s phone plus Karen’s knowledge of the bus company and the help of the guesthouse receptionist who translated, Christopher was eventually reunited with his computer and its vital contents. It was an anxious wait though, and not one any of us, Christopher especially, want to live through again.
After a perfectly acceptable meal (me: veggie green curry; Juli cheeseburger and chips) we returned to our room to sleep, though with the incessant noise of ceaseless traffic, a constant boom, boom, boom from a nightclub nearby and the guests in the adjoining room talking into the small hours, that was easier said than done. When the neighbours started up again at not yet five in the morning, I’d had enough and banged on the afore mentioned door, explained its acoustic limitations and appraised them of the hour, but by then, of course, it was too late as a new day was dawning.
Day 140 to 143 (Bangkok and beyond)
After a bleary eyed brunch, We collected our train tickets – you remember we’d decided to stay on an extra night in Bangkok (instead of going with the truck to Kanchanaburi for two nights) and take the overnight train, bus and ferry to Koh Samui a day and a half early to maximise our time there with Marion and John – put our laundry in and checked e-mails.
Later, after the hottest part of the day, Juli and I went for a walk down towards the old Royal Palace and around in a big circle. On the way, we passed huge pink elephants, crossed over a number of seemingly disused canals (Bangkok was once dubbed the Venice of the East) along a street where you could buy everything you meet need for your new Buddhist temple or shrine, a Giant Swing (without a seat) the Democracy Monument, another which celebrates a bloody student uprising in October 1973, and ended up walking along the Khao San Road with all its hawkers, souvenir sellers and T-shirt shops.
That evening we met up with Corinna, Sandy and Jenny, (who, with us, comprise the 40+ contingent) and after a nice hot pot of tea, went out for cocktails and a civilised dinner, accompanied by a young Thai woman singing and strumming British and American songbook classics on her unamplified guitar.
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Up before dawn this morning to get a taxi to the station with Corinna for our tourist excursion special to The Bridge Over The River Kwai and the end of the line beyond it. I’d booked our tickets at the same time as the ones down to Koh Samui. Every weekend, the Thai State Railway run a special service through Kanchanabburi, where the others go by truck, across the famous bridge built buy Allied and Asian prisoners during the Second World War, and beyond to the very end of the line where there is a popular picnic spot by a waterfall at Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi.
The train, which was mostly full of Thai families out for the day with one or two other westerners, took quite a while to get out of the city. The suburbs go on for miles before you get into open countryside. Once there, we saw that almost every acre of it had been put into production. Lots of Sugar Cane, Bananas and fields of small tree-like plants, which I thought were Yams but Corinna identified as Chilli plants, plus a little maize.
On the way, we stopped off at a small town with a very large golden Buddha. The town’s entrepreneurs were clearly anticipating our arrival, and it wasn’t hard to find dozens of delicious deep-fried delicacies for our breakfasts.
The train only makes a brief photo-stop at the bridge, which wasn’t actually built over the original River Kwai, but a tributary of it, which the Thai government expeditiously renamed to fit the title of Pierre Boule’s book and David Lean’s famous film. (See
this page by The Man in Seat 61 for more.)
After lunch by the waterfall, the train makes the return journey via Kachanaburi, where you take a taxi bus (all ready and waiting for you at the train station) to a park containing immaculately kept war graves of those who died laying the infamous Death Railway.
By the time we’d made our slow, uncomfortable way back to Bangkok, the train was an hour late and we were ready for a quick supper before bedtime. What with still needing to recover from the long journey to Bangkok from Siem Reap, the sleepless night and the early start, we were more than relieved to discover that the room next to ours was empty, so at least all we had to contend with was the drone of the traffic and the nightclub.
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We had another early start the next day too, though the sleep we got the previous night meant we were ready for it. Our truck mates were getting ready too, as they were all moving on by truck to Kanchanaburi, where we’d been (briefly) the day before by train. We had arranged to go over to where the truck was parked early with Will, who had to settle the bill, so that we could retrieve more of Juli’s tablets and some bits and pieces including Christmas presents for Marion to take home for herself and Juli’s mum.
I didn’t need to go with Juli (other than to help her, of course) but I very glad I did, as it afforded me the chance to see a bit more of Bangkok from the comfort of an air-conditioned taxi. On the way to the truck park (actually the Scania workshops – cheaper than long-stay parking) we saw loads of impressive designer skyscraper office blocks and swanky new hotels. Quite a different view of the city from the seedy, dirty, run-down backpacker quarter.
After a late breakfast, we head out once more to the old palace, which is packed chock-full of ‘blingy’ temples, pagodas and mausoleums, any one of which would be an impressive sight set in it’s own grounds, but cheek by jowl with all the others, looses out and, for me, the over all effect is very much less than the sum of its parts.
Also within the palace grounds is a separate building housing a collection of the Queen’s dresses as worn on state occasions: visits and receptions and the like. The museum really stands out as being ultra modern, using hi-tech conservation techniques to preserve the fabrics.
The story of her dresses is interesting too. When she and her husband came to power, as a young Queen she realised that all eyes would be on her and what she wore, and she wanted to represent and showcase her country and its crafts men and women. But there was a problem: the previous regime had outlawed the wearing of traditional dress and many of the old weave patterns and the skills to reproduce them had died out. She set about researching old palace records and photographs and sent envoys out all over the country to collect textiles with the instruction ‘leave no rag unexamined.’
The result is a collection of dresses made of traditional Thai textiles (including Thai silk) designed by world class designers (including Pierre Balmain) based on traditional designs. First class.
After all that, we needed an afternoon nap, but, unfortunately, had more noisy neighbours and so that was impossible. Instead we went downstairs to check e-mails. One was from Marion telling us that she wasn’t going to be able to get on her flight to Bangkok in time to catch the train down to Koh Samui with us the next day and could we get a refund on her train ticket.
There was more bad news from Juli’s friend Ann on Menorca, whose sister, Joy (in the UK) has been fighting cancer. Evidently Joy had taken a significant turn for the worse and Ann couldn’t visit her as she had a chest infection. Very distressing for all concerned and brought back memories of Juli’s illness when she couldn’t receive visitors while undergoing chemotherapy as the treatment reduces the strength of your immune system. We’ve since had another e-mail to tell us that Joy is on the mend again. Lots of love to you, Joy; we’ve got everything crossed.
***
For our last day in Bangkok we visited the 43 metres-long reclining Buddha in the temple complex of Wat Pho, which also houses the tombs of Kings Rama 1 to 4 and, according to Wikipedia, is known as the birthplace of traditional Thai massage.
On the way back, we spotted a crowd by the river bank and, of course, wanted to know what was going on, so walked over to get a better look. On the other side of the river, in front of a large official looking building, were two ranks of tiered seating arranged either side of a covered jetty. Obviously something big was on, but we couldn’t find any one to tell us what.
We waited for a while to see what would happen next, but apart from a couple of small boats, nothing came along. Shortly after that, some monks came out onto the jetty and did a bit of chanting, then nothing again. After a while we gave up waiting and moved on down the road heading back to our guesthouse. As we walked, we saw more crowds climbing a wall outside a naval base and, when we joined them, we saw a large number of barges with rowers making their way along the river towards the jetty. We watched for a bit but were soon moved on by a base guard.
Later, in the taxi to the railway station, we asked the driver, who spoke some English, what had been going on. He explained that what we had seen takes place once a year when the King visits all the temples in Bangkok and prays for prosperity.
At the station, Juli found a very helpful tourist information type person who explained that to get a refund for Marion, she would have to print out her ticket, which Marion had sent her in the e-mail, then take it to the information desk. This she did and managed to get a fifty percent refund.
We (me, Juli and Corinna) were able to board the train as soon as it was announced and find our seats. Shortly after that, the train departed and we were on our way out of the city, along the same line as we’d travelled the other day.
Once we were well underway, a guard came through and started to turn our second class seats (40 to a carriage) into second class bunk beds, still 40 to carriage, but each one screen from the others by a curtain. The whole process is quick and almost balletic to watch. By 10 o’clock, everyone was in bed. All very private and certainly comfortable, but probably not as private and comfortable as Marion and John’s first class compartment for two would have been. Ah well: maybe next time.
That’s it for today; I have to go and eat now, so I’ll write about our super relaxing time on Koh Samui in the next part soon.
TTFN - N
