Suddenly our senses got another shock. This time, it was the sheer overwhelming colour of the place. A fair bit of it gold.
Perhaps we were feeling better, perhaps the rest and recuperation had done us good, or perhaps Thailand was just more colourful than China.
We went to see the world’s largest reclining Buddha. We’d already seen the largest sitting-on-the-top-of-a-hill Buddha in Hong Kong. In fairness this one was pretty big, lying indoors, and I managed to only get dark pictures of his toes…
Wherever we went there were colourful shrines, always decorated with flowers, incense and candles. Everyone had a shrine in the front of their house, and fed it daily. We saw dancers on the street and people generally wore bright clothes. There were bright window displays of colourful silks, opportunities to buy blingy jewellery and a huge number of offers to view very colourful activities involving ping-pong balls.
Our time in Thailand included the end of June, July, and a few days of August 1991 (when my sister, Cath, and her boyfriend made an appearance). During our Thai-time we visited Bangkok a number of times, trying to get to the bottom (no pun intended) of the recurrent illness that I was experiencing. We went to visit a doctor and his wife (probably to the dismay of the travel insurers) who completed a raft of tests, and gave me more meds to try, before going off on trips then returning for results.
Bangkok itself was a busy city – lots of people and horrific traffic congestion. We returned from one trip sitting on a bus for two hours just getting beyond the city limits. It would have been quicker to walk…
There were things going on everywhere though, and it was a pleasant place to explore. There were lots of monuments (different again to anywhere we’d been before) and they were colourful and opulent.
It was fairly easy to travel around and people were friendly – that was such a difference after being treated so suspiciously in China. Thailand had a reputation for having the smiliest people – and for the most part that was what we experienced. Sometimes you did get the impression that the ready smiles were partly fuelled by the lure of the tourist dollar (or Bhat).
It was good to explore some of the city waterways by boat, just to get away from the busy roads.
From Bangkok we travelled to some of the holiday islands. We had a week in Koh Samui, just reading, eating well (the abundance of fresh fruit and fresh bread) and enjoying the company of other travellers. It was pretty basic accommodation – we had a hut with a straw roof and were allocated a bucket of water each every day. Whilst we were there I think we had thunderstorms every night. Lots of rain and a straw roof didn’t work too well together…we slept round the puddles. And caught up with any sleep we’d missed during our lazy sunny daytimes. It was a beautiful, quiet island with idyllic beaches until the weekend when the young professionals from Bangkok danced in the next bay until the early hours. We suffered greatly those nights when we had to walk on the moonlit beach and sit on the rocks watching the stars.
After this trip we tracked back to the doctor and I reported being so much better from his prescribed medications – wanting to give him some credit, even though this was a recurrent pattern. It was at this point that he said he needed to treat me properly as I had typhoid. Typhoid!! Like really!! And I’d had the travel jabs – was typhoid one of the ones that had really made me ill when I’d had it? We took his advice and paid him huge sums of cash for a nice cocktail of drugs to be taken for a month. Each day I needed to take 16 tablets of 3 different antibiotics. Oh fun!!
I had never been too bad at taking tablets, but some of these were monster-sized. I have fond memories (not) of the struggles that I had being unable to get them down me. Suffice to say that the only way to take my meds was to sit in a public place – I could not run round a restuarant chucking them back up.
Another trip out was to a town called Nakhon Ratchasima (now often known as Korat – can’t imagine why that is preferred). It was a very quiet little town, only accessible by rail or bus in those days, where we had the hottest (spice) food we had ever experienced. This so soon after the doctor had suggested plain foods…
It was also a town favoured by some American Vets who’d been there since the Vietnam war, and we ate with them in the Veterans of Foreign Wars cafe on a number of occasions, and one night watched them as they downed numerous beers. They’d clearly been doing the same since they’d demobbed. Not a bad place to do it I imagine. We also were ‘adopted’ by a Thai English teacher, Mona Lisa (yes, really), who introduced us to her students and we had a really funny evening and traditional dinner with them. It was weird though because at the end of the evening they all left together and suddenly – apparently it wasn’t what we had said, rather the Thai equivalent of Coronation St was about to start!
Nakhon Ratchasima has a number of significant historical and religious sites around that you can explore, as well as silk-producing factory shops (more like factories than our understanding these days of factory shops).
Chiang Mai was another trip out of the big city. It’s a small (or it was then) city in the northern mountains of the country. We hired a motorbike for some exploration of the nearby countryside. I am not a natural – and this photo is a real example of the camera lying.
We did make it up to a temple in the hills, after a minor argument with a ditch (I was not a great pillion passenger either as I tended to lean the wrong way…).
We also had a trip to a number of factory shops – but as ever we were never good shoppers – and preferred a day-trip to the zoo.
From Chiang Mai we flew on a tiny little plane to a hillside town called Mae Hong Son where we found a very rustic place to stay – all wood and palm leaves. It really was out in the middle of nowhere – and we could see the landing strip from our garden so Mark was happy going out each day to watch the landing and take off (of the one plane a day).
We trekked up to the top of a hill to see a temple – and the views of the green valleys.
We took a day trip to the Burmese border. There were a few of us in the back of an open jeep. That day it really, really rained, so not only did they need chains on the tyres to get a grip of the road surface we needed a makeshift roof (plastic sheet). This was at the height of my medication too – and it made me feel sick and burpy (not great for travel-sickness) – so I poked my head out in the rain anyway! As you can see I was not that impressed.
I remember on the way down the driver appeared to just get each tyre in a rut on the wet, muddy road and slide down…
At the border there was a small village, and we could see how people lived out there in the rural outposts. Not dissimilar to so many of the villages we had been to in Nepal.
Rain was a feature of that day and a few others in Thailand. Typical of those months there I assume. Back in Bangkok for a few days we found ourselves walking around the city centre during one of the most dramatic rainstorms I have ever witnessed. It was so sudden and so heavy that the road suddenly became a river and although we still had reasonably dry feet walking on the raised pavements we were joined by thousands of cockroaches and then rats out of the flooded drains… We moved pretty quickly back to our accommodation that day – didn’t want a scared, panicking rat assuming our legs were drainpipes or something.
I think you could do a day-trip to Kanchanaburi from Bangkok, but we spent a couple of days there. It was a sobering place where you could visit the allied war cemeteries, the great Bridge over the River Kwai and a museum detailing the building of the death railway. As in many other places the hostels and cafes showed the relevant movies into the evenings.
As an antidote to the sobering information around us we enjoyed some respite in the coffee shops and had ‘friends’ join us.
Thailand is well-known for its islands and beaches, so off we went to another holiday spot. This time to Krabi and a nearby beach called Phra Nang.
We had to get onto one of the long-tailed boats, and precariously off at the other end, carrying a huge backpack…I’m sure there was no awareness of health and safety back then. Phra Nang was a relatively busy (for travelling types) beachy-place – and again we found ourselves in a tiny thatched hut (cottage would have been too grand a term). Mark had his birthday whilst we were there…and this is our celebration cake! (I clearly hadn’t mastered the flash (or procuring birthday cakes) etc but it gives an idea of our accommodation).
We also went on boat trips to visit the famous islands and caves.
The area had particularly sprung to fame 15 years earlier with a James Bond boat chase. As well as the secluded islands and caves we visited this beach, where you could buy your James Bond tat and paraphernalia.
A treat was to stay overnight on a floating island. As soon as the boat trips finished the place was quiet, just a few tourists and the locals. It was a real community – a fishing (and tourist) village. The floorboards making up the streets didn’t always feel entirely secure, and some of the walkways needed you to jump between the boards.There was no traffic though…and below you was just the briny.
We spent our last few Thai-days with my sister back in Bangkok – sorry Cath, I have no photos of that time…they do exist but must have been on Mark’s camera!! We went on trips to places we’d already seen and explored places we hadn’t. I remember some fun times at the night markets with them haggling for t-shirts (which they got at great prices but gave us the next day as none of them fitted). We ate well with them and were reminded of the kind of opulent luxury that you could find in places when you weren’t travelling on £5 a day!!
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