Let's go out for dinner...

Friday 8th November again...

Well you see we wanted to go out for dinner in Bangkok, even if it was just once. On my birthday here we tried to go out to eat and the stench of Bangkok was so disgusting I could not eat for several days, so with the rain making everything smell so much nicer, we tried again. It seems that the forces of fate do not want me to eat in this city.

We left the hotel in the cool evening with the streets drying from the rain, the smell of rotting rubbish and effluence was quite low in the spectrum of aromas on the streets, most appealing of all was the smell of cooking coming from the various restaurants, I was actually hungry and looking forwards to something nice and spicy. Sadly this was not to be...

With Carol getting a little frustrated at trying to find a place she liked, we settled on a nice place with a good air con and a bit of equally cool jazz playing, the staff greeted us in English and showed us to a table before giving us a menu. Carol having forgotten her reading glasses struggled to read the menu and her face darkened with every aspect she could make out. Being a European place with a European owner, the prices reflected European incomes and were a somewhat higher than Carol really wanted to pay, so with a comment to me she stood up and we left to bemused looks from the owner and the staff. 

We crossed the road and went looking for something that matched our prices a little more, I though was starting to really struggle with the noise levels on the busy street and the traffic noise, people noise, music noise and day to day city noise was becoming so oppressive all I could do was cover my ears to stop the building roar that was ricocheting around my head. I know that my hearing is unusual, I can hear a watch ticking on the other side of the room, yet as soon as two noises happen together I have to work very hard to distinguish them. You can imagine how I am when in a busy pub with music and lots of drinkers, basically I tend to sit quietly because I am unable to follow a conversation. With the street in Bangkok though, the noise level was painful and when Carol spoke I could not hear a word she said. Why am I telling you this you may wonder, well it will soon become pertinent to our story. 

Carol found a small family run restaurant on the corner of the busy street and asked me if I wanted to enter, with my ears covered it was all I could do to follow her and we wandered inside. The small eatery was a roar of noise that to me sounded like I was stood in the path of a tornado (wind or plane, take your pick!) and the powerful fan at the back did not help. Carol asked if we could shut the main door and sure enough the noise level dropped to merely irritating. The radio was playing a mixture of old rock n roll and the news channel on TV was turned down, inside the floor was littered with the latest delivery and as we were shown to a table it became clear that the young boy working there had been doing his homework only moments before. 

Once sat down, the young woman who had invited us in came over with menus and asked what we wanted. Carol ordered a mild Pork curry, with steamed rice, some garlic bread and a pot of tea. I ordered egg fried rice with chicken and a sprite. A nice simple meal so that we could come back to hotel early and have a good sleep before our long train journey the following morning. A short while later A cup of tea was brought over to Carol and I was given a bottle of sprite. Carol's pot of tea, now a single cup had no milk or sugar with it. We waited for a while and in the end Carol asked for some milk and sugar. The owner of the restaurant spent some time hunting for it and in the end found a jug of milk of indeterminate vintage in the same fridge that my bottle of sprite had come from, a small amount was decanted and given to Carol along with a large pot of sugar. Again we waited, but this time for our food. After a while the restaurant owner returned to our table somewhat perplexed, she was confused over our order and could not understand what food we had asked for. Carol explained it again and after a few moments the light flicked on, even though we were sat with the the menus that we had ordered from, the owner smiled and left us to our drinks. 

It was at this point that I started to notice some things that did not seem right. First of all the young boy came out of the kitchen and washed his hands, he then went to the toilet and returned to eatery doing up his fly. He did not wash his hands again for the rest of the time that we were in the place. I pointed out to Carol that she may wish to avoid eating the melon that the boy had then started to slice. A few minutes later the boy was called into the kitchen and he returned carrying a plate of food and placed it upon the table infront of Carol. It was a bowl of indeterminate meat curry soup. a moment or two later the boy returned with a plate of steamed rice, his thumb holding down the edge to stop it wobbling. I pointed out to Carol that she may wish to avoid some aspects of her meal. The bowl of soup had been placed on a plate and was encircled by a a lay out of Bay leaves, some of which had black spots on them and obvious signs of decay, again I pointed this out to Carol and she stated that she had no intention of eating them anyway. Her soup though was very nice, even if the meat was a bit chewy. 

Jayne still waiting for her meal to arrive while Carol finishes her own.

I started to laugh, struggling to suppress my giggles as I noticed that stray cat had entered the eatery and was crouched low on the floor watching the staff moving about. As they moved from the eatery to the kitchen the cat bolted across the restaurant floor and hid behind the ice cream freezer for a moment before emerging and scanning the floor looking for dropped morsels. As the young boy entered the eatery again, the cat pelted from the room as fast as it could on the polished floor, my giggles started to get louder, but could still not drown out the roar of noise from outside and the cooling fans. Carol was half way through her meal when the young woman returned to our table and placed a plate of garlic bread upon it, slices of garlic the size pills were grilled into submission upon the stale looking bread roll. Again my laughter was hard to suppress and even Carol started to laugh. However my food was still some other place. 

Still no food for Jayne while Carol enjoys her grilled garlic on toast!

It was then that I noticed the large beetle crawling along the work counter where the garlic had only recently been sliced, Carol had nearly finished her meal when I commented that food had better be good given that I had no idea what if anything I was going to be served with. It turned out that I was to be served with nothing, they had forgotten to cook my meal and again my giggles were hard to suppress. What made it funnier is that it was only then that we found out that Carol's curried meat soup was actually curried chicken soup which they assured us was exactly what we had ordered. Carol explained again our order and the young woman rushed away to the kitchen and the hurried sounds of cooking emerged. While this continued I watched the young boy washing used dishes that had been placed on shelves in the kitchen during the last opening, the dried contents took some scrubbing in the cold clear soap free water that he used and with each plate he "cleaned" he placed it on the drying rack, along with the empty bear bottles. I could not stop laughing by this point

The plate of food placed infront of me resembled a pile of vomited up slop, in a rounded mound, next to that was a freshly sliced salad. I did not check it for invertebrates! I picked up a piece of chicken with my fork and placed it in my mouth, it had the consistency of old school rubbers and no flavour at all. It simply did not taste of anything, not even chicken and my confused facial expression caused Carol to ask if it was OK, to which I honestly answered that I did not know. I tried another piece of flavourless rubbery chicken and then tried some of the rice. The Rice had flavour, but it was not a nice one, it tasted the way a bin smells on a hot day after it has been left to putrefy for a week. It was at this point that I gave up and put my fork back down. Carol finished her garlic sandwich and we asked for the bill which we promptly paid. My comment to Carol that she should give them a big tip because I had not laughed so hard in ages was met with a cold look! 

Bangkok on a nice day

Thursday 7th November 

Some times you have to sit back and be the traveller and sometimes you have to be the travelled. Today I am the traveller and my dear Carol sits with me snapping away with her cameras as always. She is I think looking for that illusive perfection that can be captured on film and maybe find that moment and hold it forever. I guess that this is the aim of the artistic photographer over the wedding photographer, a wedding photographer has t deliver the goods for a couple on one day while a photographer like Carol is always looking for that moment and will be looking for that moment for ever. The ones she does capture are in my view beautiful, she is good at her art and on long journeys like this one today, it will keep her occupied for the several hours that the train takes to reach our destination.

Not our train, no really!

This is a table of lies and miss-information!

Woo woo, I am a train!

Our first Mantis

Today we leave the delights of Tara B&B, the company of Nort and the other girls who made our stay in Kanchanaburi and are now sat on the train, for them the sausage factory of guests and travellers continues and a new couple will sleep in what we called our room, maybe make love in our bed and let us hope that their stay is as precious as ours was. AS we have said many times already Tara was special for us and we loved our time there for as long as it lasted, but we are at heart travellers and it is better to leave while the heart is filled with the joy of a place than to grow tired of it and wish to move on. Had we stayed much longer maybe we would have grown weary of the place that we loved so much.

As Pad Brat (army child raised in married quarters) I am well used to moving on and making new friends, but sometimes it is with a bitter sorrow that we move. In truth we know nothing about the people who made our stay so welcome adn this is as it should be, they should not lay their hearts on the table for us to scrutinise. They should be distant, they should leave the tourist thinking that their time was special when for the tour worker it is just another tour on the rota, another set of faces to learn and understand in the short time that we have with them. To mark our stay as special for us, Nort gave us two mugs, printed with the Logo of Tara and because our time was special, they will be treasured. The cynical part of me that has worked in travel thinks that this is just the usual ploy to spread the word of Tara and increase business, by making us feel special. Maybe they give mugs to every one, maybe they do not. But the truth for Carol and I is that it was special and we will treasure those simple gifts.

Would we recommend Tara to our friends? Yes, I think that we would because our stay was so lovely. Had we had the same stay in the UK it would have still been special (albeit considerably more expensive!), so what emerges is that Tara was a beautiful place for a pair of wandering travellers to stay and rest. Also the Milk Shakes are to die for!

The train back to Bangkok was laughably late, not just irritatingly late, or annoyingly late, but in the realms of Virgin trains agonisingly late. The train was supposed to leave Kanchanaburi at 14:40. We checked out of the hotel at 12:00 and sat in the bar for brunch until 13:00 when the bike taxi that we had ordered arrived. Our plan was to find a place out of the sun and just wait for the train for a an hour or so, this did not work out because the train was so late that I managed to have a sleep, Carol spent close to sixty Baht going to the toilet and we saw a Mantis take up residence behind the mirror of the ladies toilet.

I got so bored waiting for the train that I went exploring and found the following interesting animals. There was the inch long black ant scurrying about its business, there was the large weevil sun bathing on the rail, there was the discarded pretty snail shell and a dried up centipede. I saw butterflies and birds and dragon flies all while we sat bored in the station. finally at close to the time our ticket states that we will get into Bangkok, our train arrived and this is where I am now sat, waiting to get back to the Roof view hotel in the smelly quarter of Bangkok. Tomorrow we go To see the tailor and find out how well our clothes have been made. Custom made clothes, bought cheap like the rich Western imperialists that we are, I feel no shame.

Friday 8th November

Feck me, what a night...

The train was so horrendously late that when we finally got into Bangkok it was dark and it was also pissing down. This was not a bad thing, the rain has damped down the stench considerably and it is almost nice to walk around the city. However there are several places that still have that delicate aroma of a badly dug latrine! What is nice though is that with the stench gone, you can smell the food being cooked in the many places that allow tourists into their homes, porches, gardens or window seats to eat "exotic foreign food". The local Thai people must tire very quickly of travellers getting pissed and trying to out do each other with hot curry mixes. They do smell lovely though as you wander past.

The journey from the station to the hotel was a nightmare, first we were hassled by an irritating Tuk Tuk driver who would not take no for an answer and kept trying to fleece us for as much cash as he thought we had. We finally got rid of him and got into a taxi with a driver who was probably doing the driving having finished his homework and having some time before he had to go to bed for school in the morning. As I understood taxi driving as a profession, it is a requirement that a taxi driver must have a car or suitable vehicle and must also have a sense of direction or at least be able to read a map. Our teenage driver could provide only one of those prerequisites! We got hopelessly lost and it was only thanks to Carol's sense of direction and then her sat nav that we were able to get to the hotel at all! Once checked in we climbed into bed and discovered that the Thais had stolen the mattresses and replaced them with ironing boards. Sleep came eventually, but it was a hard fight and I kept banging my knee on the edge of the ironing board mattress every time I turned over.

Breakfast this morning was scrambled egg on toast. Coffee and tea were free, but a juice or coke was an extra 16 Baht. So we yummed that down and buggered off into town, which now smelling only like a slightly dirty gents toilet was almost pleasant. What does make this trip though is our interactions with the Thai people, who are on the whole lovely (although Tuk Tuk drivers may get a hammer to the face next time they try to force me to pay vast sums of cash to drive me a few hundred meters!) and the place is quiet and peaceful with out fights breaking out or the like. As I keep stating, the only poor behaviour we have seen has all been performed by tourists and this can cause us some embarrassment.

So it was off to the tailor for us and a custom made set of leathers for Carol and a skirt and top for me. Hers looked lovely, mine however makes me look like a high end escort. I need to get some New Rock boots and a bit of Goth make up to set the scene a little better.

Leathers colour matched to her bike... I am saying nothing!

Does my worship of Satan look big in this?

As well as picking up our clothes, we also had a bit of a wander about in the not so smelly part of Bangkok and it was so nice that we have decided to go out for dinner later.

On of the things that does get to me a little is the poverty here, as a tourist we are bringing in much needed wealth to an otherwise poor nation, but you know it is pretty bad when people have to live like this.

A sad and sorry shanty built on rotting wood struts above the polluted river 

The Tuk Tuk, one of the plagues of pedestrianised areas.

Leave me alone, I am just too hot!

Bangkok, oh how I love thee

Thursday 31st October Halloween

I woke up this morning bitten to fuck by insects, Carol is bite free and said so in the sheepish manner of a person who is glad that they are travelling with some one who attracts the bugs away from every one else! Yes, I am bug food in the very literal sense here. Another dawn saw us waking up with the sun and feeling quite content to do so, the streets outside are busy and there is even some building work going on somewhere, which given the state of the buildings around here means that another level could be being constructed on top of one of the rickety buildings in the street.

Breakfast was another treat of scrambled egg on toast and served by yet more polite and helpful Thai folk, who must be sick to death of travellers expecting the world on a plate here. I can honestly say that the people who work and run this hotel are so kind and considerate that to treat them with anything other than the same back would show just how poor European standards are when communicating with our neighbours. Carol has pointed out to me yet again the difference here among road users, Road Rage does not seem to exist here, it is just a case of live and let live. A truly remarkable way of being given the amounts of traffic on the streets and how much of it is young people on mopeds and scooters who ride about in the sort of gear that would horrify the average DSA examiner. Remember folks, back in dear old Blighty, for a young person to ride a bike they must take several tests and then be restricted to a certain power level decided not by their skill level but by their age.

Seeing another culture that is so different from our own in so many ways makes me realise just how tightly compressed and controlled the people of Britain are. Surely with the state of the nation people should be rising up and demanding change, not laying down like a dog pleased to have its belly tickled no matter the cost to personal dignity. There is Poverty here in Thailand and some of it is very extreme, but there is also freedom and peace. I have not felt at risk walking down the streets here like I do at home on a Friday night. Any violent outbursts I have seen so far have all been in form of tourists combined with alcohol or tourists combined with frustrated locals. This may well be a rose tinted view of the people here, but when every one is friendly and wants to know where we are from and wants to say hello, what can we expect. Yet when we eat breakfast, none of the other tourists will make eye contact and it almost feels like they wish to remain silent, talking only to those in their particular group. A very insular bunch it would seem.

One assault on the senses this morning was the rising smell of Bangkok, which Carol informs me is to her barely noticeable, one dreads to think how she achieved this level of immunity, but I suspect I know the cause of this and can possibly point the finger at my own bottom. For me though, the smell of Bangkok is close to revolting, that rising stench of drains and fried food, the delicate putrefaction of the streets lined with the bustle of a busy population.

Currently I am typing this while laying down on my tummy. It would seem that I am one of the very few travellers in the world who goes to exotic locations and gets constipation! I feel like I have eaten a tub of quick drying cement and it has balled up in my lower intestines, which means todays plans for a trip to the grand palace may have to be cancelled for a little while.

Friday 1st November

I did not sleep last night, being tired and emotional both of us had a rough evening and ended up fighting into the early hours. These are the things that a strong relationship can overcome and once the frustration at the things we cannot change and the anger over the things that hurt have faded away, love takes over and all is mended. That is until "she" starts snoring/farting and then one of us wants to kill the other!

So with two hours sleep behind me and more pain than I truly deserve we went for breakfast this morning and I managed two slices of toast before returning to our room and Carol putting me back to bed with the words, "get some sleep." So pumped full of painkillers I hit the sack under the icy blast of the air con machine. Bliss. I woke up at twelve and managed yet more painkillers and returned to sleep for another hour before I managed to wake up fully and then we got ready to go out and indulge in the joys of Bangkok.

By its own admission, Bangkok has a very serious hygiene problem, to paraphrase the man in the restaurant in the film The Blues Brothers "Frankly Bangkok is offensive, smelling, I mean it smells bad!" A combination of pollution, bad drainage, heat and street cooking make Bangkok an assault upon the nose, but I was able to ignore it for long enough to go out and enjoy some time with Carol. However as we crossed the river I noticed the tell tale signs of hydrogen sulphide bubbles rising through the water and bursting into the air.

Do not drink from here!

Years of the cities waste being pumped into the rivers and streams have given them an ecology that borders on toxic, any locals who are immune to that river have become so through great suffering. To any westerner who is foolish enough to go in that water, disease awaits.

Anyway, back in Bangkok and Carol was on a mission to find something nice to wear. It is nice to see Carol enjoying herself and after a while it became clear that every stall had the same old shit bought from the same supplier and then sold to Westerners who want that Eastern experience. The locals are wandering around looking good in nice dresses, jeans and shirts or nicely designed outfits. The serious tourists are the ones in sun cream and Rohan trousers, overly technical and barely used cameras weighing them down like anchors around their necks. Then there are the drunken slob tourists in shorts, flip flops and ripped vest tops and with a half drunk beer in each hand as they shout their conversation to the fellow slob stood next to them.

Some lovely tourists

Finally we have the hippy chic tourists, the one in the Indian style pants that have the crotch by the ankles so that it looks like they are wearing a pillow case that has been tied in each corner about their ankles. These tourists generally have dreads, a dirty face and an even dirtier back pack. Dirty feet are slid into dirty sandles and for the women there is the ubiquitous ankle bracelet that contains at least two small bells and depending on the length of the trip, more! I have nothing in common with any of these people and can only conclude that this is why none of our fellow travellers in our hotel will engage in conversation despite my smiles and politely spoken hellos.

Carol and I searched through the stalls and then like an oasis in the desert, we found the one stall that had one last skirt hidden in the dark under store of the piles of fashionable rags sold as clothes. In bold reds and blacks, it was beautiful and once she had slipped into it, Carol looked gorgeous. After hours of struggling to find it, we had succeeded and it was promptly bought for the price of about £2.00! From there is was off to the Tailors to see how her custom Bike Leathers were coming along.

St Michaels Fashions of Bangkok is a lovely shop and the charming gentleman who runs the store is both efficient and helpful.

As a guy in his mid twenties he is sharply dressed, cool in his height of fashion shoes and grey business trousers cut perfectly to his form. Originally from Burma he is as settled in Thailand as any local and he seems genuinely happy to be there. Carol's leather jeans were cut out in pattern form and stitched together as a fabric guide, the real leather will be cut soon and then it will be stitched together by a woman so small she can barely reach up to adjust the collars of the clothes she is making for us! The gentleman of the store adjusts carols waist coat pattern until it hugs her form perfectly and makes her look like a hard biker, even when she is on foot in a tailors in the posher bit of Bangkok!

Some one is a very happy teddy indeed.

Once happy, we made our outside and hired a TukTuk to take us back to the hotel and the cool of the air con machine. Our clothes were soaked with sweat and needed washing there and then, so it was into the shower and rinse the sweat and dirt from out clothes.

We then decided to head out into the city to find a restaurant and maybe have our first meal out together since arriving in Bangkok on Monday. As soon as I stepped out of the room, the hot stink of Bangkok filled my nostrils causing me to gag slightly. Down stairs the receptionist had the main doors wide open and the smell had invaded like the smell of the Diskworlds Foul ole Ron! Outside the smell was pungent and raped my olfactory senses in a brutal attack, I swallowed back the bile brought up into my throat and we made our way to a restaurant. With in meters of the hotel, any appetite I had had vanished to be replaced by the urge to purge the contents of my stomach onto the street. Carol was not impressed and so with a heavy heart and my hand clasped across my nose, we returned to the hotel. I truly am such a wimp.