Bird’s Nest Bevarage – 25% bird’s nest

Ruth and Sam, two friends from home had been planning to meet me for some weeks. I found them, as expected, in a bar nearby the hotel we arranged to stay at.

It was great to see them and yet i felt a short pang of homesickness for the first time in months. No doubt because of the strange juxtaposition of home and abroad, sedentry and nomadic, remote and immediate of my friends displaced from one context to the other. They brought into focus how far from home i was. But this was no bad thing, it reinvigorated my appreciation of this year.

So that night we went out to celebrate along the many bars on the Khao San. All i remember is dancing in some strange club with lots of young, trendy thai’s. The next day was rather more sedate. Poor Sam and Ruth were hungover the next day and had to press things to their eyeballs to see what they were looking at. Both turned a shade of green when i ordered fried rice for breakfast – i had not realised just how alien my diet has become to a western palate or norms.

We spent the next few days frequenting the ESSO garage bar, shopping along the Khao San and catching up on the past six months in each others lives.

Now, a business studies question. Imagine yourself a highly-driven, networking, downsizing, brainstorming entrepeneur looking to set up a stall offering facials. Where would you position it? Remember people, it’s location, location, location! In a park perhaps, with green grass and trees, and some modicum of fresh air? Or in an airconditioned spa with luxury products lining the walls and silk separaters dividing the rooms? Or in a modern, clean shopping centre such as MBK (Bangkok’s answer to Bluewater)?

No, no and no! Position it in an open tent on the forecourt of a petrol station and the pavement of a main road choked with traffic, fumes and pollution.

And yet we still found ourselves lying on a bed while various products and fruit essences were applied to the face, cucumber placed over our eyes and a steamer breathed out rejuvenating vapours onto our skin. Immediately afterwards we stepped onto the busy road and were caked in dirt, smoke and motor exhaust. It felt great for that split second though.

Other than pampering, the odd tipple and recovering in bed, finally, after two previous trips to the city I had the opportunity to visit some of Bangkok’s cultural offerings.

No trip to the city is complete without a stop at Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace, both architectural and historic treasures and one of the greatest spectacles on offer in Bangkok to an avid sightseers such as myself.

Ripped jeans are not suitable attire according to the authorities who tapped me on the shoulder and led me to a side room. In fairness this is the most sacred and important temple in Thailand – but my other jeans are even worse. Luckily they fitted me with a delightful pair of shiny blue MC-hammer pants.

For all those over 30 years old, a picture of the inestimably important MC Hammer….

The temptation to break out into a wild performance of the “running man” dance was acute but previous experience with this dangerous, complex move and memories of shattered bones and wearing a large Darth Vader support boot to Trinity College May Ball (the biggest event in the Cambridge calendar!) stilled my trembling legs. Once burnt, twice shy!

The rest of this post can be found here.

Originally i had planned to beetle on back to Bangkok to meet Sam and Ruth who were flying out from blighty to meet me. I had a few days to spare however and Leila and Alice were heading up north to a city called Chiang Mai. Plus the Israeli’s we had met were known to be in the vicinity. It all seemed a more promising venture than moping around the Khao San road for a third time by myself.

The travelling trio left the national park the way we entered, in the back of a pick-up truck. Despite the best efforts of the driver we reached the bus station just in time to see our next form of transport veer round a corner into the distance. After some peddle-to-the-metal we caught up, flagged down the bus and jumped on hoping we could now relax and catch up on some much needed sleep. I don’t know about other people but i can sometimes find it difficult to sleep with drops of water splashing on ones head every 2 or 3 seconds. Equally a wet seat does not suggest to me an adequate surface to snuggle down upon. Alice is a little less demanding than me and promptly fell asleep – it would also appear she swallowed some bullfrogs during the night which refused to be quiet once her eyes closed.

For the rest of this post please go here.

A big happy birthday to Amelia Gudgion, gorgeous, funny, witty, charming, intelligent (we were at uni together don’t you know) and fashionable.

I’ve written a poem especially for you:

Candle burning bright and clear,
Andrew picks it up and peers,
Puts it to his lips and hears –
“That’s not a drink my dear”

Thank God we are friends Amelia or my top lip may never have looked the same.

Miss you. Hope you have had a good birthday. Will be at the next one i promise.

Leafing through the registration book for entry into Pho Hin Rang Kla national park in north-eastern Thailand Leila, Alive and I were struck by the lack of visitors who used the Latin alphabet; not one, as far back as we could be bothered to search.

We were now ‘off the beaten track’.

For the rest of this post please go here.

Feasting on some quality A4

Alice showcasing Prada’s fall line

I always like to look my best…

Moments later a sparrow landed on the edge – Alice never made it 🙁

The nodulated field.

Peering over the edge

Amongst the clouds

My limousine to the hotel…

Layla and Alice – always smiling, though this was unsurprisingly not their expression when offended by insensitive thai women! See post on my Thai nickname.

Cute kid who was the son of owner of one of the restaurants we ate at in Sukhothai, he was bathed naked (with a tub of cold water sloshed over his head and much scrubbing), powdered and then dusted with mozzie repellant (the white stuff on his face) right in front of us as we ate. Mum used to do the same with me until the Chatham McDonalds imposed a restraining order on her.

The second most reverred Buddha image in Thailand.

Buddha reincarnate…day trip back to sukhothai.

What do you think my Thai nickname would be? No, not Ting Tong! I found out in Phitsanulok when Layla, Alice and I were invited over to a young Thai couples table. Such hospitable people in the north and central areas – to an extent. The woman informed Layla her hair was “bad” and that she should, “lose 10 kilos”. Alice faired even worse! From the chin up she looked fine, “like a doll”, but her bubble was soon burst; below “needed work”, especially her “chunky arms”. How delightful. So, what did she say about me?

To read the rest of this post please go here.

“Enough of traveller VIP buses” thought to myself as i boarded the local bus to Phitsanulok. As such the one hour journey was filled with numerous erratic swerves onto the side of the road to pick up passengers. Who needs a bus stop when you can flag down transport along route?! Another momentary stop to buy a flower chain. After a ritual involving bows and prayers it was hung reverentially on the front mirror to bless the coming journey.

Filled with confidence! No chance of a head-on collision now, not with Buddha on our side. Alas according to a recent article “of all regions, the traffic accident death toll has been consistently the highest in Southeast Asia” – about 30 percent of global traffic fatalities! Yet few here connect the dots.

Onto Phitsanulok, a largely unattractive town of over 100,000 with little to see or do. Lacking the motivating force of mass tourism the town has scant need to speak the global lingua franca which i discovered on arrival, needing a bus to the centre of town. In the end i trusted my instincts and joined a throng of locals surging onto a small, tin-box contraption and hopped off at a busy junction after trying unsuccessfuly to charade “centre of town”. Try it – difficult! I soon discovered that ‘sounds like’ resonates little in Thailand. Vertically wiggling my fingers to portray all the buildings and then making grand circles with one hand and pointing to the middle with my other drew blank faces from commuters deciding i was mentally unstable, and fixed averted gazes from those who deemed me positively dangerous.

Luckily my instincts proved correct and i landed right where i hoped. Who needs a Lonely Planet guide eh?!

However, no one could identify the hotel i wanted to lay my head at. I tried asking around but once again came up against the Babelian problem of differing languages. This was demonstrably not the southern islands or Bangkok. Further hand gestures and exaggerated mouthing of the words again failed to work.

With help from a kindly women who took pity on my pathetic attempts to communicate i jumped into a tuk tuk. They come in all shapes and sizes. This consisted of one small seat pulled by a decrepit old man on a pushbike. After one metre i felt i should get off and help but after five metres he stopped. Right outside my guesthouse.

The last few weeks passed by alone. Meeting fellow travellers becomes significantly more demonading away from the main backpacker haunts of the South. This was hardly ‘off the beaten track’ but i hadn’t spoken to anyone in two weeks. I’m not complaining – individual travel is liberating. I enjoyed the sense of freedom and solitude. Still, on the way back from the internet i spotted two travellers (easy to identify in such a town) and on the spur of the moment crossed the road and struck up a conversation. Evidently i was through with backpacking by myself – for the time being.

So ten minutes after my intial introduction I found myself in a nearby bar with Layla and Alice who were both from England undertaking a universal backpacker tradition, the so-called ‘five questions’.

1) Where are you from?

2) What do you do back home?

3) How long have you been travelling?

4) Where have you been?

5) Why do we all ask the same questions? Sorry, that should be – Where are you going?

I don’t take issue with this tradition. It breaks the ice and is in fact interesting to see other people’s perspectives of travelling or the destinations they have been to. Plus it’s great to exchange tips on places and activities.

We soon broke through to more convivial and engaging conversation and Layla and Alice would become my travelling buddies for the next week or so, making Phitsanulok more enjoyable than it should be. “Vibrant” and “charming” gushes the Lonely Planet. Hardly. Dull and disagreeable more like. Amongst the mediocrity however sat the second most reverred buddha sculpture in Thailand; a beautiful image called Phra Phuttha Chinnarat and the reason for my visit.

For the rest of this post please go here.

From one temple-studded city in Thailand to the next – Sukhothai. This time via VIP bus.

Sukhothai is a small, provincial town of 30,000 where tourism has not forced daily life into the backseat. The market, for example, still served the local population. No fake Thai memorabilia, no counterfeit shoes or bags. Baskets of fresh and dried fish, salted meats, whole chickens and squashed pig’s heads lined the streets. Old women with red teeth sat cross-legged on the road behind banana leaves covered in bright red tomatoes, pink dragon-fruit, yellow pears, mounds of cocunuts, bunches of bok choi and other veg. Other women ground pungent herbs and spices into curry pastes in huge pestle and mortars ready for those making their way home from work. Flowers on ribbons, to protect against spirits or danger are equally not standard backpacker ‘fare’.

Even walking the streets i was reminded that few backpackers bother to stay in new sukhothai and prefer to take a day trip from nearby Phitsanulok. Middle-aged women would giggle and whisper and then call out “hi”, laughing excitedly like a schoolgirl who thinks they have just been particularly naughty.

The ‘wai’, a traditional thai greeting (hands are placed in front of your chest, palsm touching each other, and the head is bowed slightly – so civilized!) is also more common here. Generally the people seemed friendlier, no doubt because the rampant tourism afflicting the south, with too many culturally insensitive travellers, has not penetrated here (no beaches!). At present I can say a few words in thai: hello, goodbye, chicken, chicken soup with cocunut milk, delicious, not delicious, very delicious, diamond (will explain in my next post), spicy, not spicy and a few more. Here i found if i spoke any of these the population were very appreciative, the only trouble being they then proceed to speak only in thai…

But onto the reason for my visit – the temples. Listed by UNESCO in 1991. The Khmer empire (forerunner of modern day Cambodia) was a dominant force in south-east asia during its golden age. Its power and reach extended far into the contemporary borders of Thailand before a rival emerged in 1257, chipping away at the Khmer frontier. This rival power, the first Thai state, established its capital in Sukhothai (Rising Happiness). Militarily and culturally successful, its achievements ranged from expansive conquests into naighbouring states, the development of a uniquely Thai alphabet and experimentation with distinct and beautiful art and architecture; the reason for my visit. After 150 years the state and city were superseded by Ayutthaya (see previous post). Lonely Planet suggests if you have time for only one of the two cities/ruins Sukhothai should be your choice. I disagree. Ayutthaya’s temples were the more impressive – though Sukhothai had much to offer.

After a good nights sleep, now defined as lacking bed bugs, i got a ‘two bench’ (an apt name for transport involving two benches on the back of a truck) to Old Sukhothai where the temple ruins are situated. Like a recaltriant donkey refusing to budge the vehicle remained stationary for half an hour, slowly but steadily filling up. The pace of life in provincial Thailand is a relaxed, sedate affair unhurried by the dictates of package tourists and tourism. The population is moved by slower rhythms that can’t be rushed. Fine by me. Travel is so much more than the simple act of changing geographical locations.

The main difference distinguishing Sukhothai’s ruins from Ayutthaya’s is their location and surroundings. The latter are urbane, part of and intimately mixed up with the new city. Round a bland, concrete monolithed street corner and i would suddenyl stumble on a crumbling chedi! The latter, or at least the central parts are in a designated park, 10km or so from ‘new’ sukhothai. Few cars, lots of trees and numerous ponds and lakes providing a tranquil, complimentary backdrop to the ruins. Wats were located down small, leafy lanes, surrounded by lotus covered ponds or amongst wide fields full of grand old trees.

Got to ticket booth where i soon discovered the park seemed full of forgetful workers.

“Sawadee Khap (hello), one special ticket please”

“We don’t do one”

“But it says here on the board…” pointing to the ‘Special ticket’ sign in front of me. This seemed to jog his memory.

“Oh yes!”

“One special ticket then please”

“We don’t do them here, you need to go elsewhere.”

“Do you have a map?”

“No”

“What’s that behind you?” pointing to the pile of maps.

For the rest of this post please go here.

I missed out two posts from Cambodia, they are now slotted inbetween Bangkok and Ayutthaya! Enjoy.

Happy Birthday Gemma (who has just turned 24 – her wisdom and grace would suggest a higher figure!) I met Gemma in Oz and her and Claire were two of the best people i met travelling. I told her to stay tuned to my blog around her birthday but put the wrong timestamp on the post so alas this is late (and edited!).

Anyways here is a lovely pic of Gemma and Claire with their new Fendi bags. Gemma is on the right.