last days in Bangkok

 Time to be leaving. It really is getting too hot here in Bangkok - 38 degrees . The whole northern part of Thailand is suffering from terrible smoke pollution, due to burning rice stubble and burning patches of forest. The newspapers report that government officials have told people to stay inside their houses unless they absolutely have to go out, but nothing is being done to stop the burning. Insane.

For the time being the wind is blowing from the south west, so Bangkok if smoke free.

I have discovered a vegetarian restaurant in a back stree in Bangkok, called Ethos. Low tables, cushions on the floor, hessian wall paper, beautiful old Thai wooden carvings and pretty paper lanterns create a relaxing, smoke-free atmosphere. The music is world fusion. The they have things to eat, like muesli with coconut milk, falafel, hummus and home baked brown bread. It is in a little street near to Kao San Rd.

Yesterday I took refuge in the Saigon Paragon cinema complex, which has arctic air conditioning, going to see The Ides of March, reading and drinking cold water. The canal boats that return from Siam square stop for a second at the landings, so if you don't jump on quickly, they leave you behind. I have seen passengers left behind, one after the other in the evening!

Bangkok Theatre Festival

Back in Bangkok I arrived just in time for the second weekend of a theatre festival, right in our local park in Banglamphoo. The park was built in the form of several Greek theatres, with tiers of semi-circular steps leading down to areas that can easily be converted into stages. Performances take place after dark and the floodlit tower of Phra Athit rises up behind the stages. There is a paved area with trees at the top of the steps and boats covered with coloured lights steam up and down the river beyond.

Much of the theatre was strictly for Thai speaking people, but a brilliant group from Taiwan, called Shinehouse Theatre, performed a stunning piece of physical theatre, a dystopia in which everything is organised and decreed by central government, when to study, when to marry, who to marry, how many children to have and even when to die. Subtitles in English and Thai were projected onto a screen to the side of the stage.

I spoke to one of the group afterwards and asked what their influences were. Pina Bausch, she said with reverence, and a French group I hadn't heard of. The show was about society's suppression of individuality. I said I felt it was a criticism of Chinese society. She said that was so, but it was also a criticism of Taiwanese society. Members of the group acted as a Greek chorous, speaking, moving and laughing in unison - a reflection of how society reacts unthinkingly enmasse. Interestingly the one male member of the group who rebelled against the demands of society was called Judah, and he chose to follow the Messiah. It was the persistent demands of society that drove him to betray the Messiah - an interesting angle on the Biblical story. He, in turn, was betrayed by the government.
The one female member of the group who rebelled was forced to marry by her companions. The treatment of the woman was far more violent than that of the man. The actors wore white masks, to express their clone like acceptance of government policy. They removed them when thinking individually.

Next year this group want to perform a piece all about the death penalty, which they oppose. Taiwan still has the death penalty.

Later I watched an excellent group of young Thai contemporary dancers and the last act was a popular Thai mime group called Baby Mime.

Chinatown

Yesterday evening Jaques and I caught a bus to Chinatown and wandered the streets filled with outdoor cafes and stalls selling birds nest soup, shark's fins (poor sharks, left to bleed to death with their fins cut off), illuminated signs in Chinese (that apparently Chinese people from China can't read) and crowds of people. We ordered a fried fish at an outdoor cafe and picked it to pieces between us, enjoying every last morsel. Jaques impressed me with his fluent Thai, though he said he can't read the newspaper. I am constantly amazed by the number of foreigners who speak Thai.

On the way home it started to rain. We caught a rikshaw which left us several streets away from Apple Guesthouse, so we had to brave the torrential rain.

My Indian visa is ready, so I'm off to the Indian embassy this afternoon to collect it, then I'm heading north tomorrow.

Jim Thompson’s house

An oasis of cool, green gardens, surround a large traditional teak house on stilts, right beside a canal in central Bangkok. Jim Thompson, the silk king, who lived and worked in Bangkok from 1945 -1967, had access to people and places that no other American could equal. He quickly became the go-to man for agents of the newly formed CIA. But he didn’t hide his support for nationalist fighters in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, or his opposition to America’s increasing military presence and support of the Thai generals. He was opposed to Washington’s ideological rampages in South East Asia and foresaw that  American anti-communist wars would wreak havoc, not only in Vietnam and Laos, but also in Thailand. And indeed everything that he had predicted took place.

Initially involved in Thai politics, he withdrew when US-backed reactionary forces took over. He set up one of the first fair trade silk industries in the world and revived the flagging Thai silk industry, providing a decent living to thousands of weavers in the countryside.

Eventually, when he had made enough money, he bought a piece of land in Bangkok and ‘built’ his house. He bought six antique traditional teak houses from the north east of Thailand, dismantled them and transported them by boat to be reassembled into one great house in Bangkok. He filled the house with beautiful pieces of ancient art and sculpture that he bought from junk shops as he travelled around Thailand. He entertained every evening, his guests including Eleanor Roosevelt, the du Ponts, Truman Capote, counts, countesses, film stars and politicians, both Thai, European and American. They would sit round his dining table, eating Thai food with the dim light from the chandeliers illuminating the gold lacquer bodhisattva statues and sandstone Buddha heads from the twelfth century, as they listened to his stories.


Thompson’s opposition to established American policy earned him plenty of enemies, especially among Thai generals, and towards the end of his life he told many of his friends that he fully expected someone to kill him. In 1967 he disappeared from outside a friend’s house in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, and was never seen again. Personally, I am convinced that he was abducted and killed.

Thompson's silk industry continues to thrive and now includes a farm, producing fruit and vegetables as well as silk worms. Thousands of tourists visit his house, where a highly organised gaggle of beautiful Thai women show groups round. I could imagine being entertained in his dining room and would have loved to have met him 

Map of Old Bangkok

I came across a map of old Bangkok. It was a walled city, surrounded by a moat. Rivers fed into and out of the moat and four canals crossed the island from one side to the other. Numerous smaller canals crisscrossed it in the other direction, themselves feeding into larger and smaller lakes. The canals, moat and rivers were crowded with thousands of tiny boats that looked like insects or fishes on the map. Large seafaring vessels gathered round the river that led to the sea. Turrets and drawbridges protected the entrance to the canals and palaces and temples were situated next to the lakes. It looked beautiful, but probably was a malaria-infested swamp.

Today the moat has become a semicircular canal, connecting to the river at both ends, the largest canal that crossed the island is now a busy thoroughfare for river buses, while many of the other canals, together with all the lakes, have been filled in, covered in tarmac and buildings. Remnants of the old wall, particularly the guard towers, remain to remind one of the former splendour of the city.  Modern Bangkok, with its high rise buildings, motorways, overground metro system and skytrain, crowd in on old bangkok, dwarfing the ancient city.

 Connie

Connie is a diminuitive American woman who has been travelling for sixty years.

"I'm eighty four now" she said "and I don't want to carry on travelling. There are just four places I still want to go to: Afghanistan is one. I understand that they take you out under armed guard to visit interesting sites. Anyway I don't care if I get killed. At this point what does it matter?

I also want to travel up the Nile. I've seen all the ancient ruins in Egypt but I haven't travelled up the Nile yet.

And I want to visit Libya. I realise that there are a few problems there at the moment but Libya is full of interesting things to see.

And I want to go on a cruise from Berlin.

Apart from that i don't want to travel any more."

A Vietnamese woman arrived at Apple Guest House on an old Chinese bicycle with no gears. "Everybody asks me how I go uphill" she said "but I don't peddle uphill. I walk. It takes all day to get to the top, then one hour to go down the other side.

I was travelling around Laos and China by public transport and I got bored, so I bought a bicycle, very cheap, because I said I was a student, so they thought the bicycle  would get stolen very quickly. But I left very quickly before it got stolen.
I want to cycle round India."
"It will be terribly hot" I said
"Oh I know," she said "I was in India before and it was fifty five degrees."

Geoff
Geoff is a giant from Finland, tall with a huge head, enormous shoulders, broad chest and sparkling blue eyes. He works as a night club bouncer when he is in Finland.
"I'm not really fit for work at the moment" he said "I'd have to spend a couple of months training" (presumably to get those bulging muscles back).

Suraj
Suraj is the original Don Juan, into whose arms women fall, one after another. Half Indian, a quarter Romanian gypsy and a quarter American, tall and dark with penetrating black eyes, Suraj flirts incessantly, with everyone. He chooses to sleep with tourist women who are about to leave because he doesn't want to be tied down to any relationship. Suraj holds court in the alleyway outside Apple Guest House, drinking bottle after bottle of beer, smoking cigarette after cigarette, laughing and joking with his mate Geoff and the rest of the crowd. I very quickly get bored with them, but they are the most friendly people I have met in a long time and make me feel at home at Apple guest House.

Mama
Mama told me she is seventyfive. She fell down some stairs three years ago and damaged her knee. She showed me. It's very swollen. "I no go doctor" she said "no sleep at night. Hurt".
Mama never goes upstairs now.
Apple Guest house supports a whole family -Mama's son, her grandson, who seems to do all the clothes washing, a great grand daughter and probably a whole load of other relatives. Mama is happy when every bed is full, which has been the case for some weeks.

Raiding the archives some more

Rather fierce looking temple in Bangkok

I spent another day in the all-too-cool arts and cultural centre (armed with pullover) watching experimental film from India, 60s HongKong and Malaysia. The strangest film of all was a Finnish film about a historical incident in French occupied Algeria. An Algerian boy killed a French boy, who happened to be his friend. The authorities were baffled. But to the Algerian boy it was clear - the French were killing Algerians, including children, so they needed to kill someone in revenge. The only person they could lure out of the city onto the hill was their friend, so they had to kill him. But the strange part of the film was the Finnish woman, in Finland, which interspersed the part shot in Algeria, conversing with Death, and later with her priest, saying she wanted the devil back.

Back at Apple Guest House, the party animals sitting outside last night kept Mama awake as they squawked and hooted, worse than the chickens and cocks at Lake Toba. I stuffed earplugs in and slept, until the suffocating heat woke me at eight in the morning. This is the hot season, which comes between the cool season (max 30 degrees) and the rainy season in May. And I thought the cool season was hot!

Raiding the Archives

I thought at first that this was some kind of Thai joke, but I realised that it was in fact a reference to the King of Thailand, who used to play the saxophone and even jammed with some jazz musicians in New York when he was a young man.

Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

I was caught in another torrential downpour on my way to the boat. Usually it’s a quarter of an hour’s walk from Apple guest house to the boat that takes you into the centre of the city. But in the rain the pavements turn into skating rinks and progress is slow. I was drenched to the skin, despite my umbrella. This kind of rain falls so hard and fast that it bounces off the pavement and splashes you right up to the waist. The ticket sellers on the boat were wearing plastic raincoats that only covered them to their waists. Their trousers were soaking.

Bangkok Art and Culture Centre is a gleaming new building with white marble floors, a huge central atrium open all the way up to the roof, with escalators connecting the various floors.

Raiding the Archives was an event featuring presentations by members of the film archive, curators and film historians, interspersed by short films, some experimental, some low budget local Thai, some documentary.

I was disorientated when I emerged from the Centre since the roads at this point are crossed by a kind of spaghetti junction of overpasses and walkways on multiple levels. A busker was playing a set of plastic dustbins and a skateboard at ground level. A huge audience lined one of the walkways above, their cheers rising above the noise of the traffic. I negotiated various staircases, walkways, a department store, more walkways and staircases and eventually found my very wet bus stop. The bus ground slowly through the traffic, past thick crowds of young people, all waiting for some form of transport to take them home.

Another overcast, thick, muggy day today. More rain coming.

Canal Trip

Yesterday I took the canal boat from the Golden Temple to the centre of town. The canal boat is the fastest way to reach Siam Square, but the boats only go during daylight hours, which is why I decided to go to the cinema at midday. More rain was forecast and the atmosphere was heavy and thick. The ticket sellers on the boats wear black plastic helmets and balance precariously along a narrow ledge that runs round the outer edge of the boat, their heads above the boat. They lean down to take people’s fares, sidling along the ledge from one row of seats to the next. The boat roars through the canal, past little houses, washing flapping over the canal and all kinds of junk piled up outside people’s back doors. The canal is surprisingly green. Every little house has potted plants. Trees, bushes and vines grow in every available space. At the boat stops, canalside cafes full of potted plants offer coffee and cold drinks to waiting passengers.

I stepped off the boat and climbed the stairs up to street level, finding myself suddenly surrounded by giant tower blocks, a gigantic shopping centre, thick traffic pouring through major roads that pedestrians are obliged to cross by bridge, a world away from the old Bangkok of the canals. Not so long ago Bangkok was crisscrossed by canals, much like Venice. But the great god, the car, has been responsible for devouring most of the canals, transforming them into traffic filled roads.

I went to see Luc Besson’s film “the Lady”, starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis, about Aung San Suu Kyi. A lot of old video footage had been incorporated into the film, which was made in Thailand and the UK. The local paper here in Bangkok slated the film for not focussing on the intricacies of Burmese politics, just showing the generals as a clique of superstitious, shouting tyrants. But the film is about Aung San Suu Kyi, her relationship with her husband and sons and the heart-breaking choices she was faced with, her isolation under years of house arrest, the death of her husband, far away in England, and her courage and determination to stand by her people. Michelle Yeoh was magnificent and I found the film truly moving.

I made it back to Apple just before the torrential downpour.
More rain is forecast for today.

Indian embassy Bangkok

Yesterday I asked Carl if he knew where the Indian embassy was. He found it on my map and told me to take the number 2 bus to Sukomvit, then a motorbike taxi. So this morning I got up bright and early on a hot and smoggy day and caught the number two bus. I carefully followed the bus route on my map and got off at sukomvit and set out in search of sukomvit 22, as instructed. I joined a queue for motorbike taxis but in the end jumped into a regular taxi and said “Indian Embassy”. The taxi took me to Makkasan. I caught the metro back to Sukomvit and started my search again. Eventually I found Sukomvit 22 and started off, on foot this time, looking for the Indian Embassy. After a while I began to ask people and luckily found a woman who not only spoke English, but even knew where the Indian Embassy was. It had moved from the location marked on my map. “Go down here,” she said “turn left and when you get to Nana look out for it on your right. Ask an Indian. There are lots of Indians about.” And so I did.

I don’t know why India has to make it so complicated and difficult to get a visa. Every other country in south east Asia just stamps your passport when you arrive, sometimes asking for money, sometimes not. But not India. To get an Indian visa you must go to the embassy, go through security checks, queue up for a form, fill out the form, stating your name and nationality, your father’s name and nationality, your mother’s name and nationality, provide referees in India and addresses in Thailand, have your photo taken, pay for the form, pay for the photo, queue again, collect your form, photocopies of your passport and your passport, queue again, this time with a number, then hand over form, passport, photocopy of passport and sit down and wait – again. All this in a room with the air conditioning turned up so high that by this time you are shivering and sneezing with cold. Eventually you get to pay 2,230 baht and be told to check a website in a week to see if your passport will be ready to collect.

As I came out of the building the heavens opened and raindrops the size of cups of water started to fall. It was like standing under a waterfall. I took cover. When it stopped I made my way to the bus stop and caught a number 2 bus. The bus conductor decided to have his lunch at this point, not so difficult really because the bus spent such a lot of time stationary in heavy traffic that he managed to get in a few mouthfuls between each bus stop. The torrential rain started again. By the time we reached Kau San Rd the main road was flooded. We stepped off the bus into ankle deep dirty water. The pavements had become lethally slippery, so I was reduced to shuffling along with tiny steps, like an old Thai granny, in order to avoid falling flat on my face.

This took the better part of a day and I arrived back at Apple Guest House exhausted.

Back to Bangkok

Goodbye Bagus Bay with all the lovely long haired Batak boys, smiling and laughing, playing their guitars and singing in harmony in the bar.

Goodbye Lake Toba with its cool, clear water.

I caught a shared taxi from the Lake to the airport at Medan for three times the cost of the local bus .i.e. five pounds, rather than one pound fifty. The taxi business assured me that it was a non-smoking taxi, so I was understandably upset when the driver lit up. Probably thinking that I was threatening to jump out, the other passengers remonstrated with the driver, who threw the cigarette out of the window. It was a boring journey, but a smoke-free one.

The plane was full of Thai people, who laughed and joked all the way to Bangkok. But as we approached the airport, the pilot announced that we would be circling for a while, waiting for a slot to land. When we did eventually land the queues at immigration were enormous. Why is everyone coming to Bangkok on the 31^st January? It’s hot, it’s humid and it’s full of tourists. Anyway, by the time I got through immigration, caught a train into town and got a taxi the rest of the way, it was ten o’clock. In Apple guesthouse Mama was distraught. No rooms, she said. Carl, who had arrived the day before, having hitched all the way from Penang, had written my name on the board (Mama’s booking system) for the 31^st, but someone (her son, maybe) had rubbed it out and put someone in the last room. I ended up spending the night on the hard wooden bench in Mama’s sitting room. Mama tried to make it more comfortable by giving me a pillow and a sheet. It was still a hard wooden bench

Chiang Mai

There is a temple every few yards in Chiangmai, with beautifully carved wood and gold leaf.

Thailand was once covered with old trees like this. Now there is only regrowth on the hills but a few ancient trees remain in cities like Chiang Mai.

Bangkok

Apple Guest house

Apple guesthouse with very drunken Thai man

Cat Temple in Bangkok

A lot of cats live in the house behind the temple. There is a dog temple in the street behind, and a house full of dogs behind that.

New Year in Bangkok

I spent the evening in the jazz bar - "Jazz Happens", in the company of the mother of the child genius pianist who so impressed me two weeks ago. He is so small that he has to sit on the edge of the piano stool, so that he can stretch his right leg out to the pedal. The bar was full of Thai students. My friend leaned over to me and said "I feel so old here". Not as old as me, I could have added, but I didn't. She bought me a beer and when I came to leave I found that she had paid for the drink I had before that.

I still haven't met up with Pier Luigi Tazzi, who has been partying so much that he says he's not in a fit state to see anyone, but tomorrow we will meet in a part of town that I have yet to see.

And then the slow train south. . .

Back in Bangkok

A lot of people have left Bangkok, taking advantage of the four days of new year's holiday.
But that doesn't seem to make any difference to the crowds in the city. Everyone is gearing up for the new year's festivities, buying all sorts of buiscuits and strnage jellied sweet things. Apple guesthouse is full. While I was away one of Mama's "guests" left in the middle of the night without paying his bill. Another "guest" has overstayed his visa by two months, is running out of money and hardly leaves the premises at all, so terrified is he of being arrested. Of course the longer he stays the worse it will be when the authorities do catch up with him. He hasn't paid the rent for weeks. Mama is too kind to throw him out. All sorts of odd people turn up at this place and she's nice to them all.

Jazz in Bangkok

I was walking along the road near Phra Athit Pier when I heard jazz. I looked through the window of a bar and saw a young boy, sitting at a piano, surrounded by a group of musicians much older than him, playing jazz. As I walked in I noticed that everyone in the bar was Thai and they were all grooving to the music. I turned to  the woman near me and said how amazing I thought this young boy was. It turned out he was her son. He'd been exposed to jazz ever since she was pregnant with him and he started to play piano when he was five. By the time he was nine he was playing jazz. Now he was twelve. His fingers flew over the keys, improvising lavishly, but always in tune with the mood and tempo of the others in the band. They played jazz standards, blues, bossanova, and a great funk number.

By the time I left, found something to eat in the market and made my way home, Mama had locked the front gates. I let myself in and walked past her sleeping form under her mosquito net in the middle of the room, on my way to the stairs.

Today I caught the river bus down river, intending to visit China town. But I ended up in Wat Pho, another gloriously over the top temple, where I saw the biggest reclining Buddha (in Thailand? inthe world? surely there must be another even bigger somewhere in India?) I was glad to sit down in a little restaurant that used to be a Thai apothecary, complete with teak ceiling and glass fronted teak drug cupboards and tiled floor. Now the cupboards house carved soaps, tea pots, gold plated hands on pedestals and a gold plated horse.

The Grand Palace Bangkok

I caught the river bus, a very crowded boat, down river to visit the grand palace.
The grand palace was built towards the end of the eighteenth century, in a severe European style, with pillars and balustrades and arched windows. On top of this someone in his infinite wisdom built a multitiered Thai roof, sparkling with gold leaf, golden nagas shooting their heads up into the sky. The whole effect is ridiculous.

The temple complex, within the grand palace walls, is a flashy, kitch confection of gold leaf, multicoloured mosaics, tiles painted in ice cream colours. A Stupa in the centre of the palace complex is completely covered in gold leaf. Thai devotees buy lotus flowers and incence sticks to give as offerings. Many buy small pieces of gold leaf to stick onto a small golden statue of Buddha.

The palace and temple gardens are adorned with trees, clipped and bonsaied to within an inch of their lives.

Bangkok

I finally made it to Bangkok. I am so happy to have left that nightmare place - Patayaia. I'm at the Apple Guest house, down a narrow alley, near the river on one side and near the night market on the other. Apple is run by the wonderful Mamma, a little thai woman, who walks slowly on arthritic legs. Mamma shies away from publicity. Her guest house is not in the lonely planet or the rough guide.

A room with a bed and a fan and a flimsy lock on the door, with a lovely polished teak floor, sets you back 180 Baht (about £2). Paper thin walls separate the rooms. A steep teak staircase leads down to the ground floor, where Mamma appears to live, amongst washing machine, wardrobe, beds, TV and assorted junk. Toilets and showers are downstairs too. Some of the motley collection of guests sometimes sit with Mamma and pinch the remote control from her and try to find channels in European languages. She doesn't seem to mind. However she definitely doesn't allow anyone to wear their shoes indoors, or to smoke in the house. Mamma commands respect.

A couple of rickety benches outside provide a socialising area. Mamma provides cold beer for 55 Baht per bottle. The socialising goes on until late at night. Our rooms are far too hot to sleep in until past midnight.

Everyone goes to the night market to eat. This  is just a narrow street, with bright lights, food stalls on one side and bars playing loud music on the other.