Nothing’s Familiar

This is going to be a slightly different post than most of the previous. As most of you know, I have 2 friends from back in England (Dan and Stu) who now live in Thailand and an amazing Thai girl, now my girlfriend (Reene), who I have known for around 2 years and has taught me to speak Thai.

I original planned on going to Thailand in April but Ben, another mate from England, wanted to come meet me and do a spot of scuba diving. So, I paid the 30 pounds and flew from Singapore to Bangkok.

For the past few weeks I haven’t really been doing the independent walking around getting lost, chatting to travellers of equal fragrance and saving money quiet as much as I should have been. I have however shared a bed with a man and a woman for 4 days, slept on a floor another day and visited bizarre ‘off the beaten path’ things.

The first week in Thailand my girlfriend took me pretty much all over Bangkok, I visited the crazy JJ Market again, this time only slightly hung-over and dehydrated. I purchased a t-shirt for about 3 pounds and pair of sunglasses (my 7th pair) for 4 pounds and I’m trying not to be upset that the t-shirt is falling to bits and the sunglasses have lenses which prefer falling off the frames and laying on the floor than protecting my eyes from those pesky UV rays. (I am now on my 8th pair of sunglasses).

Reene and her family also celebrated a Muslim day ” Eid al-Adha” whilst I was there, so I was invited to meet the whole family (it’s huge believe me) and consume ample amounts of really nice Muslim/Thai food. I was pretty nervous at meeting the family, due to the language barrier, but did OK, I think. I only got “Hello” and “Thank you” mixed up, which compared to what I said around a restaurant dinner table a few days later is nothing in comparison. I also learnt how to greet Muslims (Salam) and was told by Reene’s family that I am very handsome, not bad for a days work I’m sure you’ll agree.

The next few days consisted of going to the cinemas, or deep-freeze freezers as they should be called. Visiting more markets and shops, meeting up with Australian Jodie, a girl I walked the Inca Trail with, strolling down Koh San Road – the backpackers haunt and going to go-go bars to watch naked women wobble about the stage dressed in ‘clothes’ which would make Pamela Anderson blush.

Another one of my ‘off the beaten path’ experiences was attending a Thai University graduation ceremony. Reene had graduated last year, but they save the graduation ceremonies until the following year (go figure). I wasn’t allowed to sit in the 7 hour ceremony, which was a disappointment, so arranged to meet Reene and her family at around 3pm for the photos. When I arrived at the university I had a small problem. There were about 10,000 students all wearing the same clothes, with pretty much the same hair style, and being Asian, they all shared the same hair colour as well. So, after 5 minutes of standing around like a complete circus act (not many travellers there) and waving at people who I discovered weren’t actually waving at me, I met Reene and her family, took lots of photos, greeted more family then left to go for a meal.

We drove in Reene’s Dad’s lovely air-conditioned car until we reached the restaurant of the Muslim variety, I was introduced to more of her family and then Reene left me at her parents table, with other elders who all wanted to test there English out on me. They (I forget names) asked me where I was from, so I said “Manchester” (saying Manchester as supposed to Rainow kind of guarantees a larger conversation) and we talked about the inevitable Rooney and other players I have never heard of. The 2 men to my left then said “you should say you are from Ruu-man-daa”, so I practiced and was comfortable I could remember to say that, so – they chatted in Thai to other table members and I had the same question to me repeated “Where are you from”, “Ruu-man-daa” I replied confidently.

I later found out that Ruu-man-daa meant Vagina in Thai.

Bi bi also means vagina in Thai. This is what I was calling Reene’s mum all night, luckily she understood I was being used as a comical scapegoat and didn’t take too much offence, I also called Reene’s dad something of an equal insult, but I forget what that was.

“Cunt, can you pass the fish please?”

I did get my own back by translating various words into English for them, but it was only me who found it funny that they were happily drinking ‘testicle soup’.

When Ben arrived we paid 400 baht to get the train to Chumphon and then a boat to Koh Tao, the whole journey took about 14 hours and cost a mere 6 pounds. Bargain. A minor draw back was that I ate some dodgy train food and the following day when we arrived in paradise I spent 90% of the day sat on the toilet, or crouching over the toilet – both positions involved removing food poisoning. I did however lose a little weight, which was nice. I also get the hint that Ben disliked travelling in such long drawn out forms of public transport, he paid for the return flight home!

So, apart from telling you about chilling on Islands and playing in the sea – that’s pretty much all I have done over the last few weeks.

I’m back in Thailand in April, so I’ll travel the whole country then, I might get something stolen too if I’m lucky.

I am in Singapore again now, and I will get a boat over to Indonesia (Sumatra) tomorrow where I will travel South through Indonesia for around a month. I’m looking forward to entering a country where I have to learn the language from scratch and don’t know anyone or anything about the country!

Speak soon,

Rob

Tags: Thailand, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 9:36 am and is filed under Thailand, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.