French Pick-Up Lines and a Wee Thai Toad
Thursday, May 7th, 2009That night we had a rum on the guesthouse balcony, whiling away the time watching a little toad nearby hop around harvesting insects. A cute little brown guy who blended in so well with his surroundings, you’d miss him if you weren’t reptile-spotting fools like ourselves. Well, Gill had a rum or two and I had the remains of a hip flask of whiskey that was still gracing my bag from the final night in Chiang Mai. Just tidying things up, you understand. A bad night’s sleep was had, due to the heat and humidity and the fan’s ability to do nothing more than shift the heat from one part of the room to another, then back again. I started to actually look forward to the colder weather back in New Zealand and had fantasies about snuggling under feather duvets and wearing more than one layer of clothes.
Our last day in Bangkok found us doing one more round of the Khao San area, for something to do and to escape the heat of our sauna room. Oh, for a verandah off our room once more, to poke our heads over and catch breezes, even the slightest of which is almost exciting in such stifling heat. Waterfight anyone? We realised, in retrospect, just how lucky we had been in Chiang Mai, with Chow delivering free buckets of ice to our room whenever we fancied it, a private bathroom to shower in at any time and fresh air right outside our bedroom door.
In one of the many shops we meandered into, I had the cheek to ask how much an item was. When the guy told me, I said ‘no thanks’, as I didn’t have anywhere near enough money for it, even with a hefty discount, and I didn’t want to waste his time. This guy was having a bad hair day for sure, because he kept asking me to name a price. I said ‘no thanks’ again a couple of times, but something had lit his fuse and he wouldn’t drop the subject. ‘Why you no tell me no price?!’ he yelled after a while. ‘Don’t talk to me like that’ I said and started to walk out of the shop. He still kept on and I had to keep walking before we actually came to blows or something. I walked into another shop one or two doors down, and who should walk in? Yep, the same guy. He worked in that shop too! He went to the back of the shop and started slamming things around in a temper, so I made myself scarce again. Goodness me, I guess I didn’t read the paper the day that Thailand passed a law that it’s a crime to not buy something. Consequently, the next stall vendor that spoke pleasantly actually got some money out of me. And so now, somewhat ironically considering my feelings on the creatures, I am wearing a bracelet that consists of a snake’s backbone.
We found a little gateway into the Wat and slipped through to find some food stalls and lovely tall, shady trees. A few monks wandered around and a dog or two, and we lingered over fried rice and soup. It’s funny how the last day or two of a journey almost don’t count, because you spend them mentally packing your bags and anticipating lugging baggage through two lots of airports and customs and other such logistics. That night, we yet again graced the guesthouse balcony and sat at a table next to a couple of French guys and an Argentinian. The French guys were blatantly chatting up an English women at the table on the other side of them, and at one stage turned around to catch us rolling our eyes at her. They asked if we understood French, to which I replied ‘Tres petite’ and so they explained that they were teaching their Argentinian friend chat-up lines from French movies. I just hope the guy never uses them, ‘cos the girls are more likely to slap his face or run away if he tries…
It turned out they were really nice young men and we had a fine old yak about French movies, rugby (they were gracefully brief about mentioning the World Cup), politics, America, the media and the Rainbow Warrior affair - about which they cringed and apologised several times over. Like they could help what their government does any more than we can help what ours gets up to. From what they said, the French people were extremely embarrassed about that whole affair, and very ashamed. I had only bought the subject up because I was curious as to what the French government and media had told the average guy on the street about it. Turns out they didn’t know about the bombers receiving medals upon returning to France. Funny how some things don’t quite get round to being told.
The next day rolled around finally and it was time to leave at last. We shared a taxi with a Chinese girl, all giggling at how the taxi driver and his friend had to strongly exercise their lateral thinking skills to get all our luggage as well as ourselves in. She was really nice and harked from the same area in China that the Terracotta Warriors were found in and gave us both a keyring each from her home town. She said she liked to bring things from her hometown to give to others when she was travelling and we were pretty impressed by the thoughtfulness of that, coming from a fairly young person.
The airport scenario was surprisingly straight forward, considering all the news coverage about the ’swine flu’. Same thing when we landed in New Zealand. We got handed a piece of paper with info on it about the flu when we walked up the ramp from the plane, and that was about it. Pretty low key, when you think how the papers have been front-paging it for several days. I still didn’t dare sneeze though and tried to look as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as it is possible to look when you’ve just spent 12 hours trying to sleep sitting up in a one-foot-square space. Customs didn’t have a problem with my bow and arrow - just inspected it for holes in the wood - but they spotted my Thai axe pillow, dammit, which is apparently stuffed with hay, so that went off for treatment and I won’t see it until next week when I’ve forked out a bit more money for that. So it goes. It was a wee bit stressful, considering Thai airways had put our flight back by an hour so we had that much less time to get to Manukau and catch our bus home, but turned out the bus was late, so all was good. We paid a killer taxi fee compared to Thai tuk-tuk prices though. We could’ve eaten for two weeks on the money we forked out to him!
The last and final irony of the trip was having no transport from the bus stop to our house - all of a couple of km’s away. We could get all the way to North Thailand and back but not from the bus stop to home! Nobody I could think of was home or available to give us a lift and to top it off, the weather was cold and looking like raining. We came up with a plan to get around it, albeit a somewhat long-winded one, but then our wonderful local travel agent came to our rescue, turned up with her car and ferried us home. Thanks again Seugnet, you’re still our heroine. 
So, we are now safely ensconsed in our homes once again and the Great Journey to Thailand is complete. So cheers all, we’re safe and sound, haven’t been bombed or shot, fallen out of a rickshaw or contracted a piggy disease and the trip was brilliant fun. Love to you all, and may I suggest that if you want an interesting, cheapish holiday, wander on up to Chiang Mai and say gidday to Chow for us.
Sawasdee Kha