Thailand - You’re About to Have a Problem…
Well, due to having airpoints to use up before their expiry date and at extremely short notice (I’ve know about this myself for less than a week), I’m about to leave New Zealand and bother the country of Thailand for a month. I’m going with my daughter’s grandmother (my ex-mother-in-law), henceforth referred to as Gill or my Mother-Out-Law - (we get on so well we’ve just reverted to calling ourselves outlaws instead of inlaws). She’s a wonderful, well-travelled and intrepid woman with a great sense of humour, so I’m looking forward to having her company on this trip.
Now, this is a weird concept for me. Boils down to it - it’s not India. And apart from whizzing through Bangkok on the way in and out of India over the last four years, I really don’t know a thing about travelling in Thailand (or any other country to be honest), except to never make jokes about their king. I’ve spent the last four years sharpening my Hindi and, dammit, now I have to go and learn Thai instead. I know how to say ‘thank you’ in Thai, and that’s about it. Mind you, I guess that’s a pretty good start. Never hurts to be polite, ay what?
We’re landing in Bangkok, staying two nights, then we’ll head to Chiang Mai (up North - AWAY from beaches and hopefully other tourists) and make things up as we go along from there. The other part of the challenge being, you could fit my budget for this trip onto the outside of half a pingpong ball and still have room to spare, but that’s not so unusual either. That’s where I gain the right to use the word ‘Intrepid’ for my journey. Perhaps when I get back I can put a book together about ‘Cooking Leeches and Other Jungle Food’, or ‘How to Get That Domestic Pig to Share It’s Verandah With You’ or ‘Juggling Lychees for Extra Baht’. What on earth do the rich people do to make life interesting, I wonder?
So it’s a mad panic from this end, due to my idiocy in trying to complete a Linguistics degree before I reach retirement (gerunds, plosives or metamorphonics anyone?) so I’ve been up to my eyeballs in English grammar (if anyone mentions present infinite passive participles, or comparative and superlative suppletive forms in the next few days I shall probably hit them). But this is reasonably typical for me before leaving NZ each time, so I shall just keep taking the Rescue Remedy (is it actually okay to swallow it by the gallon?), get my assignments in and, naturally, pack about five minutes before I actually leave. It’s all good though, today I took care of buying vegemite and coffee/sugar/milk in tubes, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m half packed already. (Yes Dad, I have travel insurance. Love you for wondering.)
Tags: Bangkok, Thailand, Travel
