Thailand

Who would have thought my time in Thailand would be shaped by a meeting in Kolkata of all places. When I was there the first time, suffering and on my deathbed, I met a baba who gave me a blessed prayer bead seed to wear around my neck, and told me that my stomach would be okay now. The next day I finally, after three weeks, passed something resembling what normally comes out of your bottom and I was immediately convinced of his powers. The fact I had been taking antibiotics for the previous four days may have been a factor but I like to believe in the power of the baba. When I flew to Thailand, I went from Kolkata, and having bumped into the very same baba; he introduced me to a Canadian guy who told me of a squat in Bangkok and I made it my plan to set up home there for a few days. The few days turned into nine, then a break in Pattaya and a further six back in Bangkok. To say I haven’t really seen a lot of Thailand would be an understatement. When I arrived I had two conflicting plans, one was to sit on a beach and the other was to go up to Chiang Mai and get a abdominal massage called ‘Chi Nei Tsang’, which unlocks all the bad chi, making you all happy, smiley and cuddly. I did neither.

Thailand was only on the list because to enter Burma, I have to do it from Bangkok, and in all honesty I was not particularly looking forwards to it; “it’s going to be full of clean folk, ‘the horror’”, was one particular thought which entered my mind. The clean folk are here because Thailand has sold it’s arse to both tourism and the west, making it quite a wealthy country in the process, but destroying whatever soul it may have had. My first night I went down Kho San Road, the most infamous of drinking streets in all of Asia, and one not to disappoint. I watched a Lady Boy getting touched up by a tourist and was amused by a policeman doing his best T-1000 impression on a motorbike. Having become fully acclimatised to India and Nepal, I was a mixture of shocked and horrified by this place. For those from Newcastle, it’s like the Bigg Market, and for those with any knowledge of British culture, it’s like one of those awful resorts we’ve created in little fishing villages around Europe. I was sober so I watched it all with clear focused eyes, and found myself questioning, as I watched the pissed Thai girls needing help walking, and the tourists shouting, screaming, making tits of themselves and generally pissing off the locals; whether these are those values we’re trying to spread around the world; I bet the Iranians can’t wait to be liberated. Welcome to civilisation, it’s shaped like a golden ‘M’ with a drunk hanging off it.

When I arrived here I was determined to prove how easy it would be to travel in a country of clean folk and order. “I’ve travelled India”, I told myself, “if I can travel India I can travel anywhere. Step aside Marco Polo, William has arrived”. Unfortunately I was proved very wrong. It’s not that I can’t cope with this country, that part was a doddle, but I realised I’m not actually a very good traveller if I’m on a time budget. My time in both Nepal and India had been quite infinite and for that reason I had simply been able to sit around, soak a place up and in, and then leisurely move on when I felt the time was right. That wasn’t possible in Thailand, I had less than three weeks here, and my birthday was smack in the middle, so I had that to take consideration of too. When I first arrived in the squat it was great, I was staying in a house, not a guest house, where my house is my room, but an actual house, and it was amazing. Throw in the fact the people there were great, especially my little companion Off; so I decided to stay a little while, but a little while as I’ve already said became nine days, and then it was nearly my birthday and after much deliberation I decided against either the beach or the chi, and went and visited an old friend in Pattaya; which is not like a resort town in Europe but is a resort town, and of course Thailand’s infamous sex capital.

Now for all my bravado and ability to give an impression which isn’t always quite accurate, most could easily believe me to be an enlightened saved man. I was once a drunkard who liked a good smoke, yet I now do neither and am actually happier for it, I even contemplated veganism recently; if twenty year old me could see what I have become, he would be horrified.  But if India reveals you for who you are, to a degree so does Pattaya, or at least the darker side. Last year on my twenty-fifth birthday I spent the morning and afternoon in a Buddhist monastery and the night getting a hot oil rub down and a little ball tickle from a fortune teller. I swore the very next day, for as long as I continued to have birthdays; I would never out of curiosity stay sober on one ever again, and never would another man tickle my balls. So this year I had naked Thai girls sing happy birthday to me, and drank enough Thai whisky that I feel I suitably made up for last years sobriety and molestation. I would like of course to point out that I didn’t actual do anything with these naked singing Thai girls, and had no intention of, but it was nice of them to sing happy birthday to me all the same, and it’s a memory I certainly won’t forget in a hurry.

Having embraced the darker side of life; I returned to Bangkok with the plan of going to Chiang Mai and unlocking some of that bad chi I had built up of recent. However, having not sorted my Australian visa yet, and with these few days being the last chance I would have, I decided the sensible option would be to hang around in case of any problems. I feel vindicated in that I had to go and have a chest x-ray to prove I didn’t have tuberculosis and enjoyed my time with my friends in the squat. A few days before leaving; it dawned on me that maybe it would be possible to unlock some chi in Bangkok and a trip to Chiang Mai may not be completely necessary and I was proved right thankfully. With the darkness lifted; I finished my time in Thailand with a skip in my step and a smile on my face. I didn’t do a lot there and there’s not really a lot to tell but I enjoyed my time; and now I’m in Burma, which despite being so close, is, I can assure you, a complete other world.