The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul…

It’s not quite 4pm yet, but I have firmly entered what Douglas Adam’s coined “The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul”. The part of a Sunday afternoon when:

that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

Being stuck in Vientiane – possibly the most laid back capital on the planet – on a Sunday with nothing to do as there is nothing open has brought me closer to the “long dark…” than I have ever experienced before, and I have had some awful Sundays.

Seriously kill me now.

We stepped off the boat and into the Jungle.

(Trek was undertaken over the 12th and 13th February 2010 basing from Pai, Thailand)

After a few days in Pai, Anna, Luke, Mat & myself decided it was time to do something energetic and we made arrangements to do a jungle trek. We used Back Trax on the main road in Pai, mainly because they are recommended in “the book” (Lonely Planet Thailand), which is usually something I avoid following as once a “service” is in the book, the reason for it being there tends to vanish rather quickly.

However this recommendation proved to be brilliant. We spoke to a guide named Cha, who basically offered us what we wanted: Trekking with no elephants and no hill tribes, just roaming through jungle and over/around mountains, staying overnight under the stars.

Cut to a day or so later and we arrived – after a start that was early even by my standards – at our starting point. For me it went well at first, however the heat and being fabulously unhealthy soon caught up with me, and I had to slow it down a lot. This did give me more of a chance to appreciate our location, which while not deep jungle was still ensuring it let us know our place.

After a good few hours – and a slight fall that pulled all the muscles in my ever messed up right foot – we made camp, well everyone else swam while the guides built it and I got some well earned shut-eye (neatly avoiding any effort). The guides: Cha & Sap, really out did themselves on the preparation for the overnight stay, they built a “sala”, which is like an open-sided sleeping area, made a huge number of utensils and cooking pots out of bamboo as well as building the fire and along with Anna’s assistance, made a wonderful dinner.

And they provided booze in the form of local whisky, presumably made from rice!

I really was not that useful as standing up required a huge amount of effort and so slept soundly – near enough anyway – for the whole night after I’d had my fill of dinner (a very delicious potato soup was the stand out thing in my mind).

Due to my foot making it hard for me to walk a lot and often, my second day of the trek was cut very short and after watching a squirrel get shot for lunch I, with Sap’s assistance left the others to finish out the trek with a serious hike and arranged to meet them near the road to Pai after they were done.

Despite my slight injury I really did enjoy myself on the 2 days and would do it again, given a few months of gym time obviously.

Chilled (to the bone) in Pai

Make a note folks, Im as cold here at night as I was at lunch time in the UK during january…

Somewhere under the sea, or how I left Bangkok…

There I was, all checked out and starting a stupidly long wait before I needed to be at Hualamphong Train Station in Bangkok, when it occurred to me: Why not get a mouse for the net-book, which might solve the super-sensitive cursor issue? So off I head to the local pier to get a boat down to Saphan Thaksin, and low and behold I’m accosted by Jay and Silen – oh wait I mean Adam.

Apparently Adam being VERY hungover on Sunday had scrubbed their plans (made after advice from me) and remembering what I had said to them about tuk-tuk drivers, closed temples and the like, they too had decided to get a boat and go to the mall (imagine a typical US teen saying it!), before attempting Wat Pho again.

After wandering for a while through various malls and and only encountering hordes of screaming fan-girls (Apparently Thailand has boy-bands – that look suspiciously like The Beatles), we grabbed lunch and more importantly, beer for Jay, then went to Siam Ocean World to play tourist.

This place lays claim to being South East Asia’s BIGGEST indoor aquarium, and we could quite believe it, for an indoor centre there is so much going on and included in the 950bht price, from feeding’s, behind the scene’s and glass bottom boat tours, diving opportunities and beyond; However the star of the place has to be the chance to have “Doctor Fish” nibble at our feet – again included in the 950bht ticket (separately its 400bht) – which was really something different.

Rest of the afternoon was spent at Wat Pho seeing the Reclining Buddha again:

then having a quick large Chang before I had to shoot off and find a meter taxi (difficult, but doable in Bangkok, even in a traveller neighbourhood) to take me over to Hualamphong station. Taxi driver, when I got one was obsessed with sex and money, so no change there really regardless of wherever I go, unless I tend to attract the money loving nymphomaniac ones and the rest are all Bobby De Niro?

Hualamphong is a station in the classic Victorian style – large train shed with platforms, conductors, helpful station staff, plenty of places to grab supplies and so on. Easy enough to find your train too, and once on-board its a MASSIVE improvement to previous sleepers I’d been on, especially those in India. After a slight delay, we departed the station for our journey into the darkening Thai countryside…

“Traveller Culture” Ey?

Last-night – as my Facebook status suggested – I decided to brave the KSR and see exactly how my night would end up. It was rather messy, thanks to towers of beer and numerous shots of Sambuca, although I wasn’t alone in this endeavour, I had earlier met a couple of Canadian guys: Adam & Jay, who are in Thailand for 5 weeks or so, seeing all the major sites and generally after having a good time. Really sound guys, although Adam cannot handle his Sambuca! I’m positive they were trolling me with all the “Ey”, but I can’t really say anything, when every other word I speak is either a swear word or some form of colloquialism.

Best thing about the night was NOT ending up looking like a clown pants wearing freak at one with myself and some faux dreadlocks as I had suspected it could! There is something about the KSR that brings that out in people, and despite numerous visits, I am yet to understand what it is or why it has the effect it does. People who would otherwise be normal folks back home, suddenly think clown pants makes them more of a “genuine traveller”, dreadlocks confirm their status as a die-hard stoner and of course staying somewhere with others of this ilk makes them all part of the same community of non-conformist free spirits.  In reality they are just repeating what so many others have done before them in a spiral of self perpetuating cliché’s; However at least the rest of us know where our towel is!

Of markets. Or I learned to love shopping!

For a change I had settled on an early night in order to make certain I’d fully use the day ahead, and after a relaxing breakfast I returned to Wat Arun, and as I have linked in my previous post, I scored some good images, however the climb up the praang was beyond me, so I didn’t get some panoramic shots of the Bangkok sky-line or the river like I had intended, but I’ll be back.

Rather than heading back to Banglamphu, I thought I’d head up to Chatachuk market, this market is Bangkok’s largest and is only open on weekends. Its handily at the northern end of the Sukhumvit sky-train line, so air-con baby!! Let me tell you this, its awesome fun shopping on your own in a place like that – no women to deal with, which means no stress, and a stress free Jon is a happy Jon.

Unlike the day before when I didn’t really care for anything more than perfunctory bargaining – hey frankly my patience wears thin too easily when it involves blagging, or being blagged by the vendors on the Khao San Road, its just fighting a losing battle there – I really got into my stride while meandering the seemingly endless corridors of Chatachuk. Was good to enjoy myself in such a place and score some fabulous deals on shorts and tee’s. I happily lost 4 hours of my afternoon just looking around. Its a sea of humanity!

Bangkok nights (& days).

After much hassle – and a chance to fly on a very well appointed Airbus A380-800 – I finally arrived a couple of days ago in Bangkok. The flight from Dubai to here on the super-jumbo that is the aforementioned aeroplane was much better than the journey I had undertook before it, cramped legroom, hit & miss service and a endless loop of crying babies, and Hell of course!

Getting out of the airport was no hassle at all, having been before, and done my research before hand I knew exactly where to head to get a regular everyday taxi into the city.

A note about Thai taxi drivers. They have obviously heard that every Italian drives like they are in the Ferrari team for Formula 1, however they may have contenders in Thai taxi drivers. Either that or they think they are in car-chase scenes in Hollywood movies.

Anyway after a couple of near-death experiences I finally found myself at my guest-house and lugging my stuff up 4 flights of stairs, which finally proved how unhealthy I am, but never mind that, I’m sure a reduced diet, heat and lots of walking over the next few months will cure me of my extra baggage. The place itself is pretty good, its cheap and has a pretty good location that is especially handy for the river boat services that plough the Chao Prayha river. It also turned into the unofficial guest-house of a Facebook group of which I am a member, with a decent number of us from it all staying here for some or all of our time in Bangkok. I really do recommend it if you want a good place to stay off the KSR and is still close enough to that area and the big sights of the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, that little effort is expended in getting around.

I have met and spent a couple of fun days and nights with a group of people from Facebook (Hi Fabian, Lucy, Rachel & Simona), after they approached me hoping that I was who they thought I was from my image on FB. I’d thought about yelling across the restaurant when they walked in to it on Tuesday evening but after nearly 40 hours of wakefulness, I just could not find the energy. Roll forward a couple of hours later and the 5 of us are – as usual with long term travellers – very merry and very much acting like we have been friends for much longer than a late night.

Being an old Bangkok hand I took it upon myself (it could be said I just decided what the 5 of us would do, but that just is not how it is at all.) to show them a couple of places they had not thought about visiting. We set out to do a few fun things over the course of the day including visiting Wat Thawit – home of a 5tonne SOLID GOLD Buddha:

exploring Chinatown (not easily helped by the river not staying where I wanted it too and as a result we may have gotten a little turned around), spending a good [sic] few hours at Suan Lum Night Bazaar, which has vastly improved since I was last here, even if shopping with 3 women was the worst idea I’d ever had! We managed to do all of this using local transport – both the riverboat and the sky-train – which was surprisingly for Bangkok, still as excellent as they had been on previous visits.

There are still things I need to do here, including see Wat Arun, get out of town to Kanchanaburi for the day, get my hair cut and maybe do some shopping (you just can not do stuff for yourself when herding three women around so they don’t spend all their budgets in 1 night!), but I know I’ll continue to enjoy myself here.

Lazy days

So, here I am sitting in the restaurant of my guest-house, the New Siam 1 feeling pretty rough despite having had a decent while to acclimatise. I know its not jet-lag as I have had a civilised amount of sleep since arriving, its like every ounce of energy I had after each refreshing shower just seems to vanish with 30 minutes and I get to feeling really lethargic until I either sleep or have another shower. I know its not a hangover, as while I do get them, I am barely drinking alcohol here.

Just what it is has gotten me really puzzled and I cannot stand feeling like this all the time.

Answers on the back of your medical qualifications please!

Hell is…

So, its been said by someone, somewhere, much wiser than me, that “Hell is other people”, they obviously had never transited airports on long haul flights; its made me change “Hell is..”, to Hell is other people when found en mass in airports.

Seems people have an inability to walk in straight lines, follow obvious – REALLY OBVIOUS sign-age, not understand they can pay with nearly any currency at the checkouts in airport stores, and the really big one of mine: FAIL TO listen to simple instructions when it comes to boarding procedures.

Now it could be argued that they have been on the go for too many hours, have been dealing with their raucous and unruly offspring, have not travelled before or are just generally worn out by the never-ending amount of security BS airline travellers seem to have to put up with these days, however if I, the most impatient person in the world can get through it with a modicum of common-sense and without turning into a gibbering mess that does all the above, then why cannot the rest of travelling humanity? Or are we doomed?

People in airports really are Hell. Milton & Bosch just fluffed it.

Last Day in Blighty

For a few months anyway!

Im all packed and ready to go. I just cannot wait until tomorrow!  Being organised on Mary Poppins levels of organised is really bad at times like this!

I have my netbook all ready and sorted to try and get me some free/cheap wifi at Manchester Airport.  A joke I know as I do live a country where nothing is free, least of all its citizens!  However, thats not my problem as for the next few months, I find myself free of any of the shackles that have held me to my life in England for the past few years.  Roll on endless days sitting on beaches or chilling in a coffee shop somewhere watching other people life their lives.

Cannot wait until I land in Bangkok late on Tuesday.  Hopefully meet up with some people off of Facebook and share advice and a few beers. Either way, GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!