Sawaidee from Thailand

(Friday, 28 October 2005)

Thanks to my beloved Air Asia, I am in Thailand on holiday for 2 weeks. Budget airlines in Southeast Asia? Bring it on, particularly in the formerly closed markets of places like Vietnam and Laos, where foreigners used to get charged lunatic airfares. OK, sometimes it still happens in Laos.

It's great being a backpacker again, although I've just spent two days alone and didn't like it so much. The other times I've travelled alone (and loved it), there have been lots of people around, but it's off season in Kanchanaburi, and the only Westerners here are couples - either travellers, or sleazy old men with teenage Thai wives. Lovely.

But besides that, things are great. Finally bought a camera, so I can start sending photos back home. Thailand's also a lot more cruisy than Vietnam, and the people harass you MUCH less. It's cheaper to travel here than it is to live in Vietnam! I've had lots of fun buying goodies here that I can't get back home, like lip gloss, cute shoes made for Western feet, and essential oils. I even ate MacDonalds on the day I arrived - my first franchise food in more than four months. Yes MacDonalds are evil, and thanks to Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) I know why their fries taste good, but to criticise something you've first got to understand it. I love that there are almost no fast food multinationals in VN - just the one Maccas in Saigon - but I got curious.

I've also marvelled at all these Western things that I'd forgotten about, like road laws, street signs, food hygiene...and more. Being in Bangkok was the closest to Australia I've been for more than four months. Although Thailand is quite different, particularly the Buddhism. It's is also the first country I've been in that I couldn't speak any of the language. Besides VN, I've only been to Indonesia, and basic Indo's pretty easy to pick up. But Thai looks like really pretty telephone doodles with a recurring theme of elephants to me. Never mind, the people are used to babysitting you if you get off the beaten track. And I'm able to make myself understood through pointing and smiles - I even pretended to be a chicken the other morning to get my breakfast fried rice. Stupid, really, as I've been to enough Thai restuarants in Australia to know that the word for chicken is gai. But when words fail me, as they frequently do, I have the use of a dodgy English-Thai phrasebook (which didn't have the word for "bus" in it, although it does thoughtfully translate "Ostriches like to put their heads into the sand".)

Today I had a Thai massage (vanilla, mind you, nothing saucy), cycled to the Jeath (Japan, England, Australia, America, Thailand, Holland) museum which gives you all this information about the construction of the bridge over the River Kwai. It was amazing, and it was amazing cycling too. I never learned, you see, and then had 20 minutes in Hoi An (Vietnam) to learn, until the bike broke down. I also spent a couple of hours organising finances back home. I'm expecting a cheque and apparently it went into the wrong account. Oh God, what an ordeal, but I think it's OK now. Went on a little shopping spree in Bangkok you see. Had to buy lipgloss for all my housemates, and more for me :-) And one or two things besides.

I also changed rooms from the most primitive accomodation I've ever stayed in. Got in late last night and was too stuffed to look for something better. J Guesthouse in Konchanaburi...buyer beware. It is only 50 Baht (US $1.25), but you'd best spend more. I felt guilty leaving because the woman running the place was really nice, but...imagine a room constructed from low quality packing board built on a raft in an area of the River Kwai that is full of pretty green moss and water lillies and the highest concentration of mosquitoes I've ever been exposed to. There was a window cut in the packing board, an elderly mosquito net, and a tired single mattress resting atop the same packing board, which had been built on a raised level to hold the mattress. All of this was illuminated by a dim bare lightglobe, but if you looked closely, the packing board had a couple of small holes in it, so that you could look through it to the dank river below. Oh, and the bathroom had no light in it at night and the toilet had no seat. It was the worst place I've ever slept in, except for the second-class sleeper train I took to Hoi An. Did I ever tell you the story? All you need know is that the sheets had hair on them. Lots of black hair. And that the roof was around 20 from my head when lying down. The loud and distorted Vietnamese folk music coming on at 5am was particularly poignant. It would take a lot to surpass that particular train ride.

The place I'm staying in now (Backpacker's Haven, 100 Baht per night), is really nice. I'm enjoying playing with the two cats there who, like their Thai kindred, are well-fed. You see pet shops everywhere. And although dogs are more popular, cats are pets here. The things they do to cats in Vietnam, it's very depressing. At the street kitchen in Hanoi where I get my morning omelette, there's the nicest tabby that's tied to a tree by a string less than a metre long. It's a sweet cat, but dreadfully unhappy, and there's nothing I can do. Although now that Mia has disappeared (yes disappeared, we think she/he was kidnapped), maybe I could buy the cat off them. Mia has been gone for around 10 days now, and my (Vietnamese) housemate Lien said that it's quite common for drug addicts to steal cats and sell them at the market. Even though they only get a few thousand VND for them (maybe $1-2 AUD). We hope that if Mia's been stolen, that he'll be sold as a pet. He's so cute and still very tiny, you see, even though he's 5 months old.

But back to Thaiand, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow when my friend Sabine gets in. We are going to do a Thai cooking course, and go bathing with elephants. I know it's touristy, but at least the jumbos are getting fed. There's also hot springs, which I like to check out everywhere I go.

LATER: I went to those hot springs, and my group was the only lot of Westerners there. The other three hung in the super-hot pool, while I mooched around in the medium-hot pool with a couple dozen Thais. We all agreed that oufr pool was the best temperature. It was a public holiday, so everyone was there and they were in a good mood. Language was no barrier, we just chatted away - hey, I know ten phrases now. They were a bit bemused by my swimsuit, however. Although, as a one-piece, it's not terribly vixenish, it's a lot more revealing than knee-length shorts and baggy t-shirts, which all the other women were bathing in. One chubby toddler gave my shoulders a good poke, fascinated by the freckles I guess.

Now it's back to the backpacker shtick - next stop Chiang Mai via the ubiquitous Bangers.