TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

THAILAND - PART THREE

Eventually, we arrived in Hua Hin and the last stage of our sponsored adventure. The hotel was incredible and situated right on the beach. We took some time to adjust to this new piece of luxury after the two days of travel. I really can’t sleep during the day so, while I wrote up these notes, my girlfriend had a quick nap. After she woke we went for a swim and I have never been in such warm water. It was almost hot. Seriously. I know I may be comparing the North Sea, English Channel or the Atlantic, but it was warm.

We had a lovely meal that night and afterwards spent a little bit of time talking to a couple of the local girls who worked behind the bar. Firstly, they told my girlfriend she was very beautiful. She then asked them what sort of man did Thai girls like. The girls said they had to be tanned (1 point – I had been in Thailand over a week and I tan quickly), not very muscular (2 points and counting), longish hair (3 points and applying for residency) and then they said ‘just like your boyfriend and he is smiling all the time. That is important’. Actually, by now, I was grinning hysterically but never mind. I know it is the land of smiles, I know they live for tourism, I know they have been taught to be nice to tourist, but, at my age, you grab any piece of good news you can. As Barry Cryer once said, ‘I don’t even buy green bananas now as I don’t know how long I’ve got’. We went to the same school, about 15 years apart, and then lived close to each other for five years in the sixties. He doesn’t seem to care, not sure if I do either. To be honest, I haven’t a clue.

Seriously, it is interesting that it is the women in Thailand who spoke to my girlfriend and complimented her, not the men. She actually asked them why and they said that probably the men respected me too much to say anything about my girlfriend, another cultural difference.

A beautiful hotel, breakfast overlooking the beach, a quiet morning relaxing and then, time to go into town. Town was, unfortunately, about 15 minutes drive away so we had a choice. We could get a taxi or find a bus. Taxis were easy; they were queued up outside the hotel. Buses, so we were told, were about a 5 minute walk away. ‘Experience the real life’ is my motto, so, off we went to the bus. As we walked we went past a sign which said ‘motorbikes for hire’. ‘Let’s hire one of these’, my girlfriend said, and set off to see how.

Her idea was based on a fairly sound theory, but with one fatal flaw. She knew I loved driving. She knew I loved speed. She knew I had driven rally cars in my younger days. She knew I could ride a motorbike. Of those four elements which made up her knowledge, one was wrong. I had never ridden a motorbike. Ever. Not even a scooter.

You see, I have a theory. I don’t know of a single living creature that moves on land, that has one leg in front of the other one. Two legs, four legs, even centipedes, balance things out with an equal number of legs on each side. To me, that seems sensible. As a child, I had ridden a bicycle, possibly over-ridden, if you liked my father’s back lawn. My ambition to be a motor racing driver meant his lawn was transformed into Goodwood, usually, and I would cover hundreds, if not thousands, of laps, as often as I could. The lawn gradually became a dull, grey, earth-like colour, at least on the fast line.

I would strap my wristwatch to the handlebar, give myself something like 4 minutes to do 40 laps, and off I went. Funnily enough, my own career followed that of my hero, Stirling Moss, and stopped in 1962. He had a major accident while I suffered a mechanical failure when the gear wheel on the bike sheared going through the Goodwood chicane, or around my sister’s garden swing to be completely accurate. I never had it repaired, the bike, the swing was OK, nor got a new bike and my father’s lawn gradually regained its lush green colour. By then, I was into cricket so I laid out a wicket, all 22 yards of it, on the lawn. Back in 1958, while living in Leeds, I completed 328 laps of our very long driveway, thereby, effectively, winning the 1957 Le Mans 24 hours. I have no idea how long this took but I think it was well over an hour. Not bad for an 8-year-old.

There is another little story here. My mother, who was a professional worrier, indeed had possibly worried for Great Britain in several Olympics, didn’t like the idea of me having a boy’s bike, with the high cross-bar as she thought I might sustain a life threatening injury. Not particularly my life but any future life I might be instrumental in conceiving. So, she insisted that my first bike was a girl’s one, with the lower, dual cross-bar. Sadly, this decision did cause a quite serious injury. When not winning Le Mans, I displayed other elements of my love for speed and superb bike control. Not surprisingly, our driveway led to the garage. At this time we didn’t have a car. My parent’s made quite a big sacrifice to ensure I had the education they wanted and 14 years at various private and public schools meant other luxuries were missed. I did work out, recently, and scared myself, that they spent, in current money, about £250,000 on my education. From comments they both made to me in later in life, I think they thought it money well spent. At least I don’t end sentences with prepositions.

But to return to my mother-induced accident, our neighbour, who had a car but no garage, often used ours. His car leaked oil, so mother made father put sand down to make sure that we wouldn’t ever bring oil into her house. I discovered, without much effort, that if I pedalled furiously up the driveway, sped into the garage, hauled on the back brake when over the sand, I could execute a 180-degree turn and head out of the garage and back along the driveway. One day, I was getting faster and faster at this, until, I leaned the bike over a bit too far. The inside pedal hit the ground, the bike stopped abruptly and, you might think, luckily, so did I. If you thought this because you didn’t want me catapulted into the garage wall, thank you.

However I only stopped so abruptly as my left knee was firmly wedged between the two lower cross bars. I never liked to make a fuss or cause my parents unnecessary worry and several of my injuries I kept quiet about until it became obvious. Two delayed concussion incidents on the rugby field only became apparent at the end of the delay period. On another occasion, after suffering a suspected broken ankle, again on the rugby field, I walked the length of the Finchley Road, caught a tube and walked another half mile to my home. This injury became obvious when my father spotted my ankle was now twice the size of my shoe and insisted I went to casualty. After a bit of an argument, I was 18 by then, I agreed but only if he let me drive. He knew better than to argue and off we went to Stanmore Orthopaedic Hospital, where they announced the bruising was so bad, they couldn’t tell if it was broken bones or torn ligaments. They strapped me up, almost to the life threatening bit that mother was worried about earlier, told me to rest the leg, take the strapping off after 6 weeks and then go back. I had a 33% success rate on these instructions and it took me over 3 hours to get all that stuff off. I knew then why the nurse had shaved my leg.

However, not telling your parents is difficult when you are wearing a bicycle on your knee and they soon spotted the problem. Mother panicked and went off to fetch butter, believing that a liberal coating of that would ease my knee from the bicycle. This was also in the days when she would put butter on a burn. Father acted more intelligently and, with the help of a neighbour and a vice like instrument, stretched the bars apart and my knee popped out. It was a little bigger than usual for a week or so and still gives the odd bit of trouble.

However, none of this bike riding was going to be much use riding a motorbike, as power had been supplied by my own little legs. When my girlfriend and I arrived at the restaurant where the bikes were hired, the lady took all my details, explained about the controls on the bike and asked if I would like a little practice. This seemed a good idea. She quickly said don’t try it here as customers had started off a bit quick and gone straight through the restaurant. I laughed, nervously. She placed a helmet in the shopping basket hooked over the handlebars and pointed over to the car park round the corner. So I wheeled the bike down the road a bit, sat on and slowly moved off. Until now all power for movement in my life had been provided by my legs and feet. They had done really well. Now, the power was in my hands and the gears were with my foot. Luckily, I think it was automatic so no clutch was required. I cruised sedately past the restaurant, smiling and turned the corner and fed in some power. At this point my brain, finely tuned over years as to where speed came from, got confused.

When I say, fed in some power, I actually meant gorged on some power. The bike shot forward, went straight through the small garden at the back of the restaurant, some bushes, small trees and came out the other side. During this brief piece of motocross, the helmet had leapt, sensibly, from the basket so, having re-engaged my brain, I stopped, climbed off, picked up the helmet, replaced it into the basket, got back on and calmly rode back around the corner. I looked so cool. Sorry, I thought I looked so cool. The woman asked how was it? ‘Great’, I said, ‘let’s go’. My girlfriend, sensibly wearing her blue jeans with brown patches, straddled the bike behind me and off we went. In her usual way, she had tried to barter the price but having failed she had negotiated a day as meaning 28 hours. We now had this bike for all that time.

The reason for my haste in leaving was that as I had “performed” around the back of the restaurant, I had seen a taxi driver parked there, presumably awaiting any clients. I spotted that, following my display he had quite rapidly jumped out of his cab and was walking, almost jogging, around to the front, possibly to relate what he had seen to the lady owner. By the time he explained the tyre tracks through her garden and the flatter than usual bushes, we had gone.

It would be foolish of me to say that, after my initial problems, everything went smoothly. Before taking the nice, straight road into Hua Hin, we decided to take a trip to see a temple on top of a hill. Roads tend to wind up hills and this one was no exception. My notes tell me that changing gear was the most difficult as, moving my foot to do so, usually meant we wobbled slightly to the right. It was at this stage that I wished the Thais had opted to drive on the right. I do remember a more intense wobble occurring just as we approached a van load of Thais driving down the hill. There were at least 12 of them sitting in the open back of the van and they fully endorsed Thailand as the land of smiles, possibly hysterical laughter.

We parked, something I was quite good at it, and then climbed hundreds of steps to get to the temple. There were monkeys sitting around all the way up, some incense in front of the temple but we didn’t go in. We just turned round and walked down the steps again. My girlfriend claimed all the climbing had left her legs shaking but I think it might have been the thought of her pillion ride back down the hill. No need to worry, I was into this thing now. Besides which, I didn’t need to change gear going down.

The almost straight road to Hua Hin was no problem and we arrived in the town, parked, and went off to an internet cafe and later to have a look around. Hua Hin (pronounced any way you like but it sounds like Wha Heen) is an average size town and its people obviously all have kitchens as there was very little cooking in the street, at least where we were. There were some restaurants but they were all inside or at least not as stalls. This was where the King of Thailand takes his vacations, so the notes say, and he also has a palace there. Maybe the two are connected.

By then it was mid-afternoon, but we spotted that there was a night bazaar, which was open during the day. Bizarre. We decided to come back and have a look tomorrow. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a real local market, I actually did a 180° turn on the motorbike. Reading that again I realise those of you who are pedantic about English grammar may, conveniently, misconstrue my meaning. Both the motorbike and I did a 180° turn.

This market was very different from the ones in town which cater for tourists and locals. This one didn’t bother too much about tourists and had many stalls selling distinctly Thai type things like spices. I think, to many Europeans, this would seem to be a rather unclean and unhygienic place but to these people it was perfectly normal. My girlfriend, remember she is a Thaiphile, loves their food but not quite as spicy as they like it. Every time she says ‘No spice’ and they, remembering what land they are in, smile and say ‘OK’, and every time she eats it, tears stream down her face and flames pour out of her mouth. Weird.

Next morning, as usual, I was up early and went down on the beach to take some photos. ‘Where are they’, I hear you ask? No idea, sorry, While there, I saw a couple of typically dressed Thai people who were, I thought, cleaning up the beach. I thought they were taking discarded plastic bags off the beach but then I noticed they were actually scooping off large jellyfish. The woman was raking them into piles, while the man came along and put them into bags and into a rubbish van. I never saw these jellyfish when I was in the water and the question why was not far from my brain. I subsequently discovered that these creatures are actually fished for, out at sea, brought in here, the sting is removed (no-one told me they had a sting) and they are then sent off, mainly to Japan, where they are made into soup. By the way the sting is not that bad, so they say. It just itches for ten minutes or so.

Meanwhile, more fish news, which we could skate over but won’t. There is, as I may have said, a lot of seafood in Thailand and consequently, a lot of fishing. In the place where we stayed there were loads of trawlers or fishing boats that would go out at various times during the day looking for fish. Interestingly, I haven’t heard that they have an over-fishing problem in the way we seem to have in Europe but maybe that is because they fish on a smaller scale. Lots of little boats instead of our big fish-factory ships. I noticed that these trawlers, especially those that left at dusk, had green lights all over the back of the boat and entwined in the nets. I was told, by an elderly Thai gentlemen who befriended me, that squid, particularly popular here, are attracted to green lights, so all the trawlers fishing for squid have green lights and all the squid swim over.

Personally, I think this says something for the intelligence of the squid because if I had seen mummy, daddy, all my aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters disappear into a net, now would be the time I changed my favourite colour to purple or yellow. But they don’t, so it seems, and they get caught and very nice they taste too so I’m not complaining too much.

After four days we checked out from our sponsored hotel and set off to do our own thing. My girlfriend, the Thaiphile, had decided we should head south and do some island hopping. It would be fair to say that the next few days did not go exactly as planned. Much of this was because of the cultural difference between us, the Europeans, and them, the Thais.

We left the hotel late afternoon, needing to go south to a place called Chumphon. We took a taxi from the hotel to the station, although the taxi driver, when learning of our destination in Chumphon, offered to take us all the way there, some 300 kilometres and all for 2000 Baht (about £40). I dissuaded him and that may not have been such a good idea.

At the station we tried to book on the night train; no seats, fully booked. The train before, at 10.00 pm had a few seats but this would leave us less time to look at Hua Hin by night and visit the night bazaar that we had failed to do previously. So we thought, OK, we’ll go by bus. The taxi driver had waited, maybe half in hope of his 2000 Baht fare, so he took us to the bus station and, realising it was hopeless, left us there. We tried to book a ticket but the guy said, no just buy it when the bus arrives. ‘What time’, we said? ‘I have buses at 11, 12, 1, 2, no problem’. ‘Can we leave our luggage’, we asked? ‘No’, he said, providing the first problem. Eventually we found a friendly hotel, left our luggage and set off for the night bazaar.

I had noticed that, in Thailand, they can transform a normal looking street into a market in about 10 minutes. This is another reason why everyone rides motorbikes because, after that point, only bikes can go up and down the street between the rows of stalls. This they had done in Hua Hin. We also travelled up and down the street and then, just after eleven, picked up our luggage and returned to the bus stop. My girlfriend asked to buy a ticket, I thought there might be some bartering involved, and the guy again said ‘no, wait and see when the bus comes as to how many seats are free’. A bus arrived, going somewhere else, the conductor got off signalled two, or made a very rude gesture, and two people got on. I sensed another problem approaching.

We then found that, sitting behind us, were a couple from the UK. They had been there since 8.00 pm and there had been no space on any bus they wanted. They had two chances left. I didn’t rate our own chances and so we asked them about hotels in the area. They told us about one down by the sea so we hired a tuk-tuk and drove down there, found a room and had some sleep.

We left the hotel early next morning and, as we walked toward the station, we saw a Buddhist Monk walking down the road and stopping at various times, when people would put something in a basket he was carrying. The inquisitor, Thaiphile, went and asked some questions and found out that this is quite a normal practice in all parts of Thailand. The locals provide food, for this is what went in the basket, for the monks. I prefer this to a collection box as at least you know what is being provided. My girlfriend told me that in Poland, very Catholic of course, priests come to the house each year and the owner has to give money, poor or not.

We then headed for the railway station and asked for a ticket for the first train south. We were told it would be at 11.00 am and that we couldn’t have seats next to each other because it was full. We could, however, sit with the aisle between us. It seemed to me that train travel in Thailand was very popular. Later I found out the truth and how lucky we were to actually get on. Our train, the express special, arrived about half an hour late and, when it did, I saw why it was so easily becoming fully booked. It only had two coaches. There were only 120 people on this train, that’s all. However there were about 8 staff and they did serve us a meal as soon as we got on. For about £5 each, we had a seat on a 300 kilometre train journey and lunch.

We had decided that, rather than go to the trendy islands of Koh Samui (pronounced just like it looks) and Koh Pha-Ngan (pronounced koh pangan) we would try something a little more remote. We wanted to go to Koh Tao (pronounced Koh and town without the n). It is a really small island, about 21 square kilometres in size, but interesting for quite a few reasons, which I will tell you about when we get there. But, getting there was easier said than done, I can assure you. You have to take a boat, not unusual with an island, but the boats only leave in the morning and we were arriving in Chumphon, the nearest port, late afternoon.

However, when we got off the train, there was the sight that I was rapidly becoming accustomed to. Sorry, there was the sight to which I was rapidly becoming accustomed (better father?). There were loads of people standing outside the station, all offering a taxi ride, accommodation and a boat ticket to Koh Tao. We listened, asked questions and finally chose one and were whisked away in the back of a pick-up truck to our hotel for the night. Once there, we were sold our boat ticket and told the “taxi” would pick up us again at six in the morning. Some people thought the work we were doing was like a holiday. Well this was the second morning in a row that we would be up by six.

We then went out and found another night market, which totally transformed the main street in Chumphon, only this time the street was wide enough to allow cars to use it too. As usual they were selling nearly everything and, again, as usual, there were many stalls selling food. This is one of the main things that struck me about Thailand; the fact that so much food is cooked, and presumably sold, outside, mainly on market stalls. There were also some children playing a game with a piece of rope, a pleasant surprise in an age where so many children seem to play computer games. Simple can be good; well I try.

We got up early, we had no choice did we, and climbed into the pick-up and set off for the boat. This was the high-speed service that would take 2 hours to reach the island of Koh Tao. It took three. Never mind, it was a great trip because we could see many other islands scattered around the Gulf of Thailand, as this piece of water is known. Strictly speaking, I suppose it’s part of the Indian Ocean but who cares? All of the islands were very green and very hilly. Koh Tao would be no exception as you will find out next.

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