The Buck starts here…

Yesterday evening I left Bangkok with four friends to travel by train down the peninsula that hangs off the bottom of Thailand. We arrived at Surat Thani, a port city, this morning just after dawn, & got a boat from there to the island of Ko Phangan from where I write this entry.

Because we had booked the tickets rather late our seats/bunks on the train were not together, and so we decided after an hour or so to go & sit in the restaurant/bar/disco carriage. We had a few buckets (literally small buckets of the type a kid might make sandcastles with, filled with rum, coke, soda & ice with straws sticking out of it) and ordered a bit of food. This being a “disco” carriage, there was loud music blaring from a ghetto blaster on the bar, & from time to time we would stick one of our own CD’s on. As the evening wore on, a large group of western travellers joined us in the carriage, and before long the party was in full swing, with much joy, merriment & dancing in the aisles. At 11ish we all left the carriage went back to our respective bunks & tried to get some sleep.

What’s wrong with that story? Sounds like a pretty nice evening hey? Well. Firstly it’s all true. So there’s nothing wrong with it in that respect. But’s its not the whole story. While we were happily enjoying ourselves spending what may have seemed to us like relatively small amounts of cash and dancing about having our fun, in the next carriage along row after row of Thai people were watching us. They were sitting in 3rd class seats. 3rd class doesn’t have fans. The seats are smaller and less comfortable. As our party progressed the doors between the carriages were closed. Every so often one of the partygoers would leave the carriage & forget to close the door. A Thai from the 3rd class carriage would dutifully get up & close it for us.

I’m not sure why this whole thing got to me so much. I’ve been in the developing world before. I’ve seen some of the poverty that exists here. It’s not like I’ve never heard of the fact that trains are split into classes. It’s not even as if I haven’t been on these trains myself in the past. But the division on the train last night really did upset me. Every time that door was left open I felt guilty. And the paradox in that is that in an ideal world I’d want that door to be left open.

Last night I felt like I was a member of a species of people I’ve seen all over Thailand: The arrogant westerner. I felt like my money was buying me into some kind of exclusive club. I felt like an accident of birth had given me the opportunity to travel & see the world, while the furthest one poor Thai guy will get is to Surat Thani to work his ass off for peanuts.

I couldn’t sleep for several hours after I left the disco carriage. I needed to somehow address the negativity. In a way I needed to convince myself that I’m not some arrogant, rich western shmuck just out in Southeast Asia to have a good time. And then I began to think about why I am here. To travel, and meet new people & experience new places & cultures & all that, sure. But also to be a teacher. To someow try & make a small contrbution towards making the world less of a place that has a carriage full of westerners dancing, whilst people who would live for a week on what we carelessly spend on another bucket look on. To make it less of a place where the train authorities decide that one way to differentiate between 2nd & 3rd class is to give one lot soap by the sinks, and the others not. How much does a bit of soap cost for crying out loud???

I know that what I’ve just written probably looks naive, idealistic, foolish even. But I truly believe that education is the answer to many of the worlds problems. My fellow teaching trainees are now fully qualified TEFL teachers. (TEFL = Teaching English as as Foreign Language). They have already spead across Asia and the world. One in Laos, one in Taiwan, one in Indonesia, one in Thailand and so on. It is people like them who will unite the train. Or if that is too lofty an ambition, they will at least get the people in 3rd class some soap. It’s really not too much to ask.

I’ve just spent the last few hours at an “Irish” bar called Shamrocks on the Khao san road – Bangkok’s tourist ghetto. I was there to watch England play Wales in a qualifying game for next years football world cup. There were two frustrating aspects to watching this game. The first is that the game itself was boring, uninspired & lacked any kind of real passion that people used to expect from fixtures between the home nations (games involving the countries that make up the U.K – England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland)

The second was even more frustrating. Some bright spark in the boardroom of the television channel that screens foreign football games in this country has decided that it’s a great idea to interrupt the game at roughly 30 second intervals to show adverts. They stick an advert on pretty much every time the ball goes out of play. This includes immediately after a goal when people generally like to watch the replay. To be fair to these plonkers, they don’t completely fill the screen with their commercials. They leave a small square measuring about a 1/6 of the full screen in the top right hand corner. Well thanks a lot.

Now what i want to know is this: How can anybody seriously think that advertising a car, or a vacuum cleaner, or a new type of cheese spread, in the middle of the action and thus pissing off every single punter watching is somehow going to endear any of us to the product they’re trying to market? You can almost imagine the conversation:

“Hey honey, the washing machine’s buggered, we better get a new one.”
“Sure sweetheart, which one should we buy?”
“Let’s get the XXX brand. They advertised it on TV last night during the replay of Defoe’s 3rd goal for England. It really caught my attention & I didn’t even care about the football game after hearing how brilliant & soapy it is…”

So if any Thai television execs are reading this – which is about as likely as a colony of guinea pigs spontaneously deciding to populate Mars – then please stop this idiotic practice. If you want to make millions from advertising revenues then stick the damn things in at half-time. Everybody’s at the bar then anyway…

I had to get a bus from Bangkok to Ban Phe yesterday, & i saw some things that made me wonder..

First thing: I’m sitting on the bus waiting for it to leave Ekkamai bus station in Bangkok. As is usual in bus stations, there is another bus next to mine. The people on that one are also waiting to go somewhere. I glance to my left at the window opposite mine on the adjacent bus. The person there has pulled the curtain across part of the window. All I can see is two hands, and a big, fat box of Dunkin Doughnuts. Over the course of the 10 minutes or so i sat there waiting to depart, the hands would dart into the box scrabble around slightly, pick a piece off one of the dougnut, & move out of view, presumably towards a mouth. it was fascinating to watch. What it really reminded me of was an old kids TV program from the U.K which I believe was called “Zzzap” & one section of which featured two gloved hands doing various things, whilst disembodied.

The Second thing I noticed was after we had been driving through Bangkok for the best part of an hour. (Greater Bangkok is enormous). We drove past a shop that sold bits of car. They had windshields, bumpers, headlights etc. And they had doors. Not really that surprising, every car needs at least 1 door right? It was the range of doors that got me however. They had several that were made out of wood. Wooden car doors. Now there’s an idea whose time has come. Just think about a whole wooden car for a second. Drive it into a river & it’ll float. Get in an accident involving a fire & the road maintenance people can just leave it burning until morning & then sweep the ashes away. Get in an accident and fail to survive (A wooden car in a head-on collison with an articulated lorry hasn’t got a whole lot of hope) and they can just put you & the car in 1 big hole in the ground. Now there’s an environmentally friendly burial..

The last thing I noticed on my bus ride was that traffic lights have big, red L.E.D displays with a number countdown telling the people waiting for a green light how long there is to go. I think these would last about a week in the U.K before Dom Joly or Johnny Knoxville or someone decided to play a practical joke with it. Just imagine a fake timer taped in front of the real one, where the numbers go up. Or go down from 60 to 2 and then just sit there….

I think it may have been Isaac Newton who said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And this holds true in other things too. For every good film you see there will be a bad one. For every sandwich you make that brings a smile to your face & a feeling of joy to your tummy, there will be one which has stale bread, dodgy cheese, not enough sweet chilli sauce etc…

And I have found over the last 2 days that for every terrible journey you go on, where every damn thing that can go wrong does, there will be a smooth, enjoyable and blissfully pleasant one.

My journey two weeks ago from Thailand to London was almost certainly the worst I have ever undertaken. This was due in no small part to the journey’s purpose: Going to see my Dad in hospital before he had heart surgery. But so many other little things helped contribute to making this journey thoroughly crap. Every taxi I got during that trip (there must have been 5 or 6, in both Thailand & the U.K) dropped me off at the wrong place. Generally i dont mind a little stroll to get to the correct place. Little strolls are fun & refreshing. Not, however, when one hasn’t slept for 2 days & is carrying a large backpack. Even less fun is carrying said large backpack whilst wading through ankle deep water (that may or may not have originated in a sewer) wearing sandals.

Heathrow Airport. Busiest one in the world apparently. Eery amenity you could posibly want & several that nobody ever does. (Who buys giant teddy bears with British flags at an airport?? I mean really???) Heathrow is so big & so busy that they park some of the aeroplanes 25 minutes walk from the immigration desk. And then decide they only need to employ 2 people to work at that immigration desk thus creating a massive queue. And then have the idea that since we live in an age of mobile telephones, nobody is going to need a public payphone pretty swiftly after leaving the plane. It took me more than half an hour after landing to get to a phone ( on the other side of immigration) and find out that my Dad was OK. So I pick up my backpack from the conveyor belt (which, surprise surprise, takes forever) & head off for the hospital I understand him to be at. Of course he’s not there. He’s in a different hospital on the other side of London. And on. And on.

And one more thing before I switch from righteous indignation mode to mellow joy mode. I used to have a very good, mutually beneficial relationship with my personal CD player. My side of the bargain was to keep it protected in a special soft CD player coat & keep it well fed with nutritious, non-leaking batteries. His side of the bargan was to play me the tunes I wanted to hear, at the times i wanted to hear them. This bargain worked well. We had an understanding. We were good together. And then the little bugger decided to start playing games with me. He decided that as he was closer to the CD’s than I was, he could make executive decisions about what it was going to play. Now I’ve always been careful to listen to a variety of different music. I certainly didn’t want my little CD player pal to get bored. But he decided that on any given day he would play, for example, only Pink Floyd & no Blur. Why? Because he could. And so..after helping secure my terrible journey into the number 1 spot for all-time terrible Bucky journeys by not allowing me to listen to things that might actually make me feel better, I dumped the fucker.

So yes..that journey was crap. But in a way its utter crapness helped me appreciate the return journey. A journey where everything that could possibly go RIGHT did. Firstly the lovely people on the Heathrow Express decided to get my journey off to an excellent start by not asking me to buy one of their extortionately priced tickets. Then I check in at the airport (no queue at all) and am told I can have 4 seats to myself to stretch out in. Don’t mind if I do. The money saved by not having to get a Heathrow Express ticket is then spent on 2 excellent albums. I glide down those great moving walkways listening to Jeff Buckley singing “Hallelujah” & I feel fantastic. The stewardesses on the plane are wonderfully efficient at keeping my red wine topped up. And in the morning after a brilliant night’s kip there are croissants for breakfast. I love croissants. Especially warm ones with butter melting. Mmmmm.

And then I arrive back in Ban Phe in the middle of a mates birthday party. Another tequila? Why the hell not…..

So… I was walking through Central London today on a quest for noodles. This story is not about my quest for noodles. I could have been on a quest for sausages, a quest for Slovakian banjo players, or just out for a stroll. It’s incidental to the main thrust of the story. But while I’m off on a tangent I think its only proper to let you know that my quest for noodles was successful & that my plate of noodles was delicious.

But anyway. Central London. As you may have gathered from calendars, newspaper mastheads etc, the month is currently August. And in Britain – August means summer. And in Central London today we had some traditional British summer weather. Yep. It was pissing down with rain.

I like rain. It’s wet. And it creates glimmer effects. And while some people are unfortunate enough to suffer adversity as a result of rain (landslides, flashfloods, dehydration etc) I’ve always been lucky. That’s not to say I haven’t ever got wet. Coz I have. More than once.

So it was raining. I can’t say with any kind of certainty what people in other countries do to shelter themselves from the rain whilst walking in it. I suppose I could guess. Or I could even do a piece of simple research on the internet. But I can’t really be arsed. And once again I appear to be going off on a tangent. This story is not about other countries or the internet. It’s about Central London on a rainy day in August. Actually, this story is really about umbrellas, and specifically umbrellas held by short people.

Ok. So In Britain when it rains people either A use an umbrella, or B wear a hood. Now clearly these are not the only alternatives. Nor are they mutually exclusive. Earlier today I witnessed my dear mother perform the umbrella/hood combo. She called it “double protection”.

So I’m walking in Central London in the rain. Alone. (That’s not particularly relevant – I’m just trying to help you set the scene in your mind) I had opted for option B. If everyone else in London had chosen the same option then this story would never be on your screen, distracting you from your spreadsheets/emails/porn. But they hadn’t. And herein lies the problem. The crux of the matter if you will. I’m about 5 foot and 10 inches. That’s my vertical height before anyone gets too excited. It is with no particular measure of pride that I can tell you that a goodly sized percentage (I have absolutely no idea how goodly sized) of people on this beautiful planet are shorter than me.

Ok. Try & picture short people. You may be one yourself in which case this will be pretty easy for you. There may be one in the room with you. Look at them. If they’re feeling particularly benevolent get them to stand up with an extended umbrellla in one hand. (Forget that utter tosh you were told as a child about this being bad luck. The reason your mother told you not do it is because she was afraid of EXACTLY what I’m gong on about – or will be if I ever get to it) I doubt anybody, anywhere who’s reading this (and has got this far – cheers for sticking with me by the way, you’re clearly a masochist for rambling tales of crap) will actually do the whole benevolent short friend with an umbrella indoors idea. Ok. never mind. I may as well just get to the bloody point.

The bloody point.

Short(er) people carrying umbrellas put taller people at risk. Why?? The damn metal spikes! Whose idea was it to put metal spikes on an implement designed to be held somewhere around eye level??? It’s total insanity!! And does this implement cure cancer or help make hydrogen into a usable energy? Nope. It protects people from the sweet loving rain that waters our gardens, fields & allotments. Now if one had full visibility in a street chock-a-block with short(er) people wielding umbrellas then things might not be so bad. A little dicey perhaps, but I think we could keep the casualty figures down in the low teens if we all stayed alert. But you’ve forgotten option B. The hood. Next time you’re wearing a hood try checking your peripheral vision. it aint exactly 20/20. Now try wearing your hood and walking in a busy city street where metal spikes are constantly coming at you from all directions. It’s not as bad as, say, wheelchair kickboxing. But its a hell of a lot worse than , say, yesterday. When the sun was shining.

“Old man look at my life,
Twenty four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things that don’t get lost.
Like a coin that won’t get tossed
Rolling home to you.”

These lyrics, from the Neil Young song Old Man have been floating around my head the last few days looking for a place to land. Seems like this is it.

On Thursday I recieved an email that my Father had serious heart problems and was in hospital awaiting a triple heart bypass. On Friday I flew into Heathrow & went straight to the hospital to see him. On Saturday he had his operation. All the signs are that it was a complete success. He’ll be in hospital for a few more days, and then will need to recuperate at home for a few months after that. All I can say is that we’re all really, really thankful that he’s going to be O.K.

So where does this leave me? One of the ironies of this whole situation is that immediately before I recieved that fateful email I had completed my first solo teaching practice. The lesson was about “scary things”. I was just about to email my family about how much I was enjoying being a (trainee) teacher. Instead I got some news I was not expecting.

I think a friend of mine on the course got it right when she told me that sometimes you have to bypass obstacles to achieve your goals. This is not the end for me & teaching. And it is not the end for me & Thailand. We all have unfinished business.

Hope everybody is well.

Bucky.

To get into the head of a Thai student learning English and thus hopefully become a better teacher – I was temporarily transformed last week into an English student learning Thai. (I also spent a pleasant morning learning Tsestwana, a bush language from Botswana in Southern Africa. However since I’m living in Thailand at the moment, and have no particular plans to go down Africa way, the Thai language is the one sticking in the gloopy bulge of chemico-electrical activity that is my brain right now.)

So there I am learning Thai, slowly building words to make simple sentences, and I come across probably the most brilliant phrase in the history of language. When all those geezers were shouting the odds on the Tower of Babel, I doubt they produced anything quite this good….

I’ll build it up for you bit by bit. By the way, if you dont appreciate traditional British toilet humour then this may not be an anecdote for you. But read on anyway. Toilet humour always needs new converts.

Ok…so in the Thai language it’s polite for men to finish off every sentence they utter with the word “krap”. Women use the word “ka”.

Ok, next step. Rice is what you might call a big deal over here in Asia. A food that your average Westerner might consume once a week with their friday night vindaloo is often eaten 3 meals a day, 7 days a week….

So it pays to know the translation for rice. And if you like it fried, which I do, then it also pays to know the translation for fried rice. Which I do. It’s: “Khao Phad”.

Ok. Step number 3 and then we sling the whole glorious thing together. Residing as I currently do less than 200 metres from the sea, it is hardly surprising that people round these parts tend to eat the things that swim in it. This is generally called seafood. Mmmmm. Ok. So one of the many, many types of delicious seafood that can be eaten, caught, sold & bought on these fair shores is the humble crab. And the humble crab is called a poo. By that I dont mean that the other crustaceans pick on him in the ocean playground. I mean his name really is “poo”! As you might be able to imagine if you know me, a fairly large smile appeared in the centre of my face when first I heard this wonderful news.

Ok. Here we go. So…just say a person happened to be hungry. And just say they happened to be of the masculine persuasion. And just say they happened to be in a restaurant in this neck of the woods. And just say they decided to order fried rice. And just say they decided that they wanted some crab with their fried rice. And just say they decided to make their order in Thai. And just say they decided to be polite about it…..

They would utter the magical phrase: Khao Phad Poo Krap, or if you prefer the anglicized spelling:

Cowpat Poo Crap!

I haven’t actually ordered this yet. I probably never will because Crabs are not really my favourite friends. But the joyous joy of joys is that if I so desired I could walk across the street, say hello to the waitress with the most beautiful smile in the whole of Thailand and say: Cowpat poo Crap.

And the only eyelids being batted would be the ones accompanying that beautiful smile….

I’ve finally had enough time to shape, sort, drape & snort my photo’s from my last night in Brighton & stick them up here. so here they are:

So..I’m in the night market in the nearest city, Rayong, wandering up & down the asiles filled with delicious foodstuffs & fake designer shirts & aftershaves. then whaddya know?? There’s an insect stall! I can’t pretend to be able to identify by sub-species the 6 or 7 types of creepy-crawly for sale, but I’d guess something like beetles, cockroaches, grubs, large flies & locusts!

Now I’ve never seen a locust before. I didn’t live through a biblical plague, and suburban brighton hasn’t had a locust infestation for as long as I can recall…

So I’m interested. Hmmm. Then Mike, one of our teacher trainers here (he’s actually a teacher trainer training to be a teacher trainer but thats not important, or of any relevance to the story from which I am currently digressing) tells me that he’s just eaten a locust and that they are delicious!
“Nice aftertaste” is the phrase i think he used. A small crowd of fellow students has gathered by this point. The more that gather, the more I’m starting to consider taking the plunge. You have to understand that the eating of weird things is 10% culinary inquisitiveness and 90% bravado. I mean do i really give a shit what locust tastes like?

I ask the Thai guy whose stall it is what the procedure is. he tells me. I then proceed to rip off this insect’s wings, legs, arms and head. Then i pop it into my mouth. And I crunch. “Mmmmmm!!!!” . That’s not what I said. It was ok though. slight meaty vibe & very greasy, which is kinda surprising considering its just been deep fat fried in a vat of hot oil.

below is a picture of a locust. It’s not the specific locust i ate, just a picture I found using google. but I think it illustrates the point just as well.

Next week its scorpion pie for Mike & myself. I can hardly wait…

Hello!

Ok, how to start my 1st entry from Thailand??

I could tell you about my journey. except there really isn’t much to tell. two tubes, a train, two planes, two buses and a sweaty 15 minute walk.

So i’m in Ban Phe. At the Siam english school. its nice. nice people. nice food. a nice cat who seems to have adopted me. i was only the 1st or 2nd person from the course to arrive here, so my 1st day was spent exploring the local town, eating some strange but delicious savoury porridge meal and playing pro-evolution soccer on a playstation with some young thai kids. For those who care about football games on computers this one is pretty up to date and includes Park on the Man U team, but sadly no Davids for Spurs. For those who don’t: I lost.

I was also invited to have some drinks with some of the locals within 2 minutes of stepping out of the school. We spent a pleasant hour drinking beer chang & learning the respective swear words in English & Thai. what an ice-breaker.

Ok. That’s about as much of my exciting life as I’m prepared to share with you right now. (there isn’t a whole lot more – believe me) . Some more students have arrived in the last couple of hours and it seems like a nice bunch of people.

Hope the U.K is doing O.K. It generally does. Just look at who gets to host the 2012 Olympics!

Peace and Love

Bucky