THREE GENERATIONS OF A FAMILY EXPLORE SOUTHERN THAILAND First notes
'What
an adventure', exclaimed a friend. 'That's a lot of responsibility',
said another. As T-day loomed I too was beginning to get cold feet. What
if Joe, the blue eyed, blond , three year old with a passion for
exploration and no idea of fear, got lost in a crowded Bangkok market.
It
had all sounded so much simpler last year when my wife, Joan, and I
were travelling in Thailand. Only twelve months before that Rheumatic
Arthritis had turned shopping into a Motobility scooter learning
experience. But a knee replacement had given what seemed likely to be
one last short window of opportunity to indulge our passion for travel
in Asia, before another joint packed in. Whilst we would never again be
fit enough to trek in Nepal, or walk the narrow planks of Borneo,
Thailand ,as expected, provided an altogether easier proposition.
For
a decade we have been enchanted by the Orient, and desperate to share
those experiences. Made conscious, too, of the speed with which the old
Orient was disappearing in globalisation and ever uglier disparities of
poverty. So why not use this window to retrace our steps next year -
with the whole family. Thai people offer a real welcome to The Land of
Smiles, and the south has arguably the best beaches in the world.
Standards of hygiene are high, the food tasty, travel easy and well
developed. Moreover I knew enough Thai to go off the beaten track. Going
native not only enhances the whole experience, to me it's what travel
is about, but also results in costs about 25% of those for a similar
holiday in Europe.
The
constraint of school holidays fixed the date to July/August, the season
of the south-west monsoon, one we had previously avoided. (December to
February are statistically the best months to visit). Would rain and
lack of sunshine undermine the attractions? Would the wet lead to severe
problems with mosquitoes? Would the grandchildren cope happily with the
heat, the humidity and the mosquitoes? Would we find five rooms free on
arrival at a desired hotel? Would the mounting worries never cease!
'Please
don't ask us about the weather', said the note in the guest house on Ko
Phi Phi, 'Maybe it will rain, maybe it will shine, we don't know - ask
the Gods'. We already understood that flexibility of destination was
desirable, for the east coast, in the shadow of the peninsula's
mountainous spine, and planned to flee there if the west proved too wet
and stormy. Security however merited thought. Although the itinerary
would be fluid with only the first three nights booked, we knew several
probable hotel/guest house destinations. All ten of the party carried
details in Thai script as well as phonetic Thai. The grandchildren
carried this, and essential identity information, in colourful wallets
slung around their necks. With everyone away together we would miss our
usual base for contact in Britain, so friends had these details as well.
Mobile phones which would operate in Thailand didn't fit in with
escapism. The obvious solution to separation,
communication via my home email, wasn't appreciated until halfway through the holiday.
The
bilingual, French, side of the family flew from Paris, the rest of us
flew from Cardiff, thanks to KLM's support of our local airport, and we
all met up in Bangkok at the Asia hotel. Excellent buffet breakfasts,
air-conditioning and a two swimming pools, softened the culture shock
for the eight newcomers to Asia. But to ease them in to the new regime
we took dinner at a nearby street restaurant, ordering by pointing at
photographs of the dishes on offer. Two of the party who went back for a
beer or two were surprised when it came disguised in a teapot!
Sky
train and Express boat took us quickly and pleasantly to Wat Po, site a
of a huge reclining Buddha, with a gold head and mother of pearl soles
to his feet. As we exited the main Wat, a service ended and the heavens
opened. A passing monk gave seven year old Alice his folding umbrella.
We were already in the Thailand I knew, one of the friendliest places on
earth.
Next
day a similar trip took us via the market on the quays, a second
opportunity to try a variety of new oriental fruit, Rambutan and Lam
Yai, Jackfruit and unripe Guava, deliciously sweet miniature bananas,
with stones! The sellers were thrilled to see four young European
children's enthusiastic delight, showed the best ways to peel the fruit
and proffered hose pipes to wash sticky hands, whilst their parents
worried about hygiene. When however we reached the Grand Palace it was
all too obvious the grandchildren were not to be interested in site
seeing, so back to the pool.
On
the third day we travelled by the normal river taxi, across the Chao
Phraya river to Thonburi, up the Bangkok Yai Canal to Bang Yai and a
simple quayside restaurant for lunch. The spray from the bow wave, from
those fast slim long tailed boats, gives a cold shower to the passengers
in the middle of the boat, with the acceleration and roll (I have
experienced a 'death roll' to compare with any in my Laser sailing
dinghy) added up to sufficient to keep the children excited and
helpfully nervous. Not unreasonably this trip is no longer available to
Europeans at local rates, coins handed back from row to row to the
driver as their home is reached, but only by special ticket. Only by
this means, or the inexpensive canal round trips organised for passing
tourists, is it possible to get the feel for the charms of traditional
waterfront lifestyles that existed in the capital before the
skyscrapers, dreadful traffic jams, and fumes, of modern-day Bangkok. In
the evening we boarded a train heading for the southern terminus of
Trang. Our last booking, a second class, fan cooled, berth. Now we were
travelling, and gaining confidence.
Trains
are an excellent way to travel with children, they can move around at
will, though the carriage joining systems would not pass European safety
standards, so they were confined to a single carriage. The four
children got together around one table and constant shrieks of delight
and complex singing-clapping games, 'Oh granddad will you never learn!'. Such
antics amused rather than annoyed our fellow Thai passengers, fellow
European touring travellers were less amused to see us on their patch.
Samran
approached immediately we got out of the train, 'I've a car, where do
you want to go'. 'Yaak ca pay Krabi', I said, giving him the name of a
guest house 100 or so kilometres away. 'Thawray?', how much? We settled
at his asking price of 1000 baht. His car turned out to be a pick up
truck, the children sat in the air-conditioned cab with me and Samran,
the others were getting a taste of Thai travel sitting on the sides of
the back! We got on fine, he had a good knowledge of English a welcome
enthusiasm for making me exercise my Thai. A few days with him and I
would have made a lot of progress, in what is grammatically a very
simple language, pronunciation is a different matter, a single phonetic
spelling can have up to five different meanings depending how it is
voiced. If Joan and I had been on our own we would have taken up his
offer to help us around Trang, a beautiful area of beaches and islands
far less developed than Krabi. But we couldn't desert our vague plans on
the very first day.
Yes
there were five free rooms at the Bai Fern guest house, but the much
better ones Joan and I had the previous year were out on long term
rental for the low season. How would the newcomers react to backpackers
budget accommodation, the need for mosquito repellents, cold showers,
fan cooled rooms, so hot and sticky that lying awake until the early
hours becomes an art form? We aimed for early rises, knowing that rising
early with the sun was the gateway to the most pleasant part of the day
in the tropics. But this was simply adding to the burdens of dealing
with a six hour time shift. Everyone was getting over tired and tetchy,
and the overcast weather and evening rain didn't help. In retrospect we
should have transferred to air-conditioned accommodation and taken more
time to acclimatise.
Our
first visit to the beach at Ao Nang, was a near disaster. Within five
minutes of being in the sea the children were howling from painful
jellyfish stings. Something to look out for at high tide particularly.
Had we come all this way to swelter on the beach? No, for us it turned
out to be an isolated event. When we first went to Ao Nang ten years
earlier there was just one entrepreneurial Thai working an almost
deserted beach, armed with a sack of pineapples, a large knife, and
panache.
Although
the weather was largely over cast for those first few days they
produced two of the more memorable outings. The first an elephant ride,
now the children started to believe they were in Thailand. Then a trip
by longtailed boat to an off-shore island, a tropical paradise of light
blue sea and glistening coral white sands. Though as the helmsman
skilfully surfed a quartering sea on the return journey he underlined
why this was the low season.
A
chance discussion with German family on the deserted beach lead to the
recommendation of Long Beach on the island of Phi Phi. This is an
example of the networking common to backpacking, the longer you stay in a
country the more ideas you get, the more you reshape your plans. We had
exceptionally fond memories of Long Beach Phi Phi from a decade
earlier, but stories of the island's demise meant it was not part of our
plans. Well it is far more developed at the port of Don Sai, a four
story hotel, and bungalow accommodation far up-market of the simple
bamboo style. But it's still recognisable as the beautiful island we
first knew, with excellent swimming, snorkelling, and a burgeoning scuba
diving industry. We stayed a week, the kids spent the whole day in the
warm water and the two non swimmers learnt to snorkel, wearing water
wings, over the live coral reefs. Jim tells me that I went within a few
yards of a three foot reef shark. People with a long track record say
they're harmless, but I'm rather glad I was oblivious to the experience!
I prefer to reflect on the beautiful fish, the colourful clams embedded
in the rocks and the large phosphorescent star fish on the bottom.
After
an eight day side trip we had to compress our time on the east coast.
Travelling was simplified by hiring door to door minibuses for all our
remaining journeys, at a cost of around £10/hour, very economical for a
party of ten. Shared taxis, and shared minibus, run city to city in the
south. Our advantage was that we didn't have to wait till the minibus
filled up.
First
stop was Phattalung. We were up at six the next morning, off to nearby
Thaleh Noi, a brackish sea of reeds, water lilies, lotus flowers, wild
water-buffalo, but above all a bird reserve. Unfortunately, although
the flowers were better, there only a hundredth of the massive bird
population of November, but gliding between the reeds in a long tailed
boat in the early light was a lovely experience.
Next
stop heading south was Songkla. In November we had met Sao, operating a
simple wooden cloth weaving loom in her home on the nearby island of Ko
Yoh, their traditional cottage industry. Possessions let alone
photographs are a rarity in such peoples lives, so we always send copies
after each trip to say thank you. On this occasion a letter came back
in almost perfect English. It explained that she worked at the loom all
week, but studied at college in the city at the weekend. I hoped to make
contact at her home again, but in Krabi I read an email from her friend
Noy, a graduate in English, which warned that Sao was unlikely to be
free because she was now working at the post office. Next morning I went
to the post office hoping to recognise her arrive for work, but didn't.
When they opened for business I tried out my best Thai on the woman at
the empty counter, 'do you know Sao, a student, who is now working right
here?', I asked. She made enquiries, and Sao appeared. The clerk now
revealed excellent spoken English and offered to translate. We arranged
to meet them both for an early dinner straight after work leaving a
couple of hours before it got dark.
Finally
south again to Pattani. I hired a song theaw for the afternoon to take
us to the harbour of traditional open fishing boats at Had Talo Kapo.
These highly decorated long tailed boats are housed in dried reed
shelters, along a stretch of open sandy beach, a truly stunning sight.
Using my knowledge of Thai I was able to find that crews of three men
went to sea in these open boats for two days. They showed me large traps
for catching cuttle fish, small ones for catching crab and long two
metre deep nets for fishing. This part of the country features mile
after mile of beautiful, deserted, sandy beaches. The children went in
for a swim, so did the one Thai family we had seen at lunch, they were
westernised to the extent of using goggles, but bathed Thai style in
full clothing. None of our party was prepared to strip off into bathing
costumes. Swimming was dearly missed on such a lovely hot day, c'est la
vie!
Next
day Nok met us at the hotel and took us on a tour of the town. of which
the visit to the Chinese shrine was the most memorable. She encouraged
the children to shake a numbered stick out of a container, something to
be seen in Buddhist temples, showed how the number linked to a
particular sheet of paper, and then translated the fortune. Young Joe
will be successful in business, we'll see. They bought bundles of
tapers, lit them and then distributed them into the three receiving
pots, and finally banged three times on each of three overhead drums -
though strictly this was the job of the resident Chinaman. Even our
Buddhist interpreter was unable to glean the significance of the threes
in these last operations. Years earlier a priest at a Chinese temple in
Sibu Borneo had explained the significance of three to the Chinese. We
went to a park playground, many of the elaborate roundabouts apparently
feature at touring festivals in France. We went to the open air
university refectory for lunch, the price 25p for an excellent main
course made us wonder yet again how exchange rates between the developed
world and the emerging economies get so far out of line with the basic
needs of living, food, accommodation and transport. Globalisation isn't
doing them any favours, though it does serve to widen the gap between
winners and the rest - protests from the poor and the response of those
in power is forming a major part of the political debate, in Bangkok's
English press at least.
We
waved good-bye to Nok from the minibus which was to take us to the
railway station at Hat Yai. A couple of hours later we were trying to
decipher the notices at the station only to discover that the enquiry
desk alone knows which platform trains leave from. To add to the
confusion there was a notice in Thai script which told that certain
coaches of our train were standing at a different platform. Our berths
were in a front coach, which would arrive from Malaysia. After much
shunting, whilst the two halves of the train were joined, we set off on
our journey north. Unlike the first train which we had booked several
weeks in advance the seats were scattered, not surprisingly that set up
contact between us and the other passengers which added greatly to the
journey. In the morning as we neared Bangkok the terrain changed from
jungle and rubber plantations to mile after mile of rice fields, and so
many peasants at work in this labour intensive form of agriculture. Men
now plough with rotavators instead of buffalo, they are shaded from the
heat of the sun by umbrellas rather than the traditional wide brimmed
hats. Life is changing slowly on the land.
The
adults made the most of their day shopping in Bangkok, leaving their
children with the us in the hotel pool. Hazel and Joe, the two youngest
were swimming, albeit with too great an expenditure of effort, not much
idea of breathing and in Joe's case not much forward motion. That much
at least had been gained by all that exposure to warm tropical seas. We
followed a Guide Routard recommendation and ate at the
.................? However we arrived so late that all the children fell
asleep before ordering, ensuring a peaceful meal.
I
was woken at 6.30 the next morning by the telephone. It was our friend
Taniya. We agreed to meet at the home of Pranee and her sister Venus. We
hired two taxis to take us to Petchkasem, soi 31, over the river in
Thonburi, the original capital. From there we walked the zigzag path
along concrete pathways on the polders to their house, which was
situated in the midst of a jungle of coconut, banana and all the other
tropical fruit trees. As usual we were made thoroughly welcome by the
extended family. Our party saw traditional suburban Thai lifestyle,
idyllic, pastoral, where even the mail is delivered by canoe. Thai food,
sunshine and shade, jungle and canals, sitting in groups chatting and
playing on the floor. Rachel was quite certain, 'that was definitely the
best day of my holiday'.
That
evening the French contingent left to catch the midnight plane back to
Paris. The rest of us had one more day which we spent by visiting the
huge Chatuchak weekend market which is reached from the Mo Chit station
on the Skytrain. It is packed, mostly by Thai's, hot, with a staggering
scale that ranges through household goods, material, food, china and
ornaments, then stall after stall of live pets to enchant the children.
They were impressed too with the caged cockerels, until they peeked
over a crowd to observe a cock fight, excited at first by the spectacle
they soon shied away from the cruelty - but then we still hunt foxes!
If
summer is the low season in Thailand, then why were the flights and
intercontinental hotels in Bangkok so expensive. Because it of European
school holidays, stupid! But it did mean there was little problem with
finding accommodation outside Bangkok.
We had taken to travelling, backpacking if you like, a decade earlier,
and found an antidote to the increasing pressures of work. We couldn't
understand why it remained the territory of the under thirties.
Thailand 20 July 2000
NOTES
8 July 2000
I am just beginning to recover from a bout of extreme misgiving about the project caused by the following:
1)
Geoffrey walked away from me when I was taking him round town with a
view to buying him a rucksack and some new clothes for the holiday. He
doesn't take kindly to charity or to the idea that he needs new clothes.
We would like to see him with the minimum of secure multi pocketed
(poly)cotton trousers, a proper bathing costume, lightweight rain wear
and footwear. As usual he had allowed me only a little time, so the
whole exercise had been unreasonably rushed. He has been unwilling to
come to talk to us about the holiday, in marked contrast to the others
who talk frequently about it and ask for advice. I worry that he will do
the same thing in Thailand and get separated from the rest of the
party. If he can't handle it he is at danger of getting rolled and left
without money, passport and return tickets. I will deposit enough money
in his bank account to get him out of trouble. Also I am the one who
plans to accompany him back to Bangkok and the airport. Joan thinks he
will be okay once we are under way.
2)
I start to worry about the grandchildren becoming separated, especially
Joe who is the least disciplined. How would they cope in a land where
few speak English. I immediately started to prepare printed details of
the hotels we might visit so they can carry this vital information.
3)
Joan is having increasing trouble with her right leg. The right ankle
had begun to swell up at the end of our stay in Sicily, but we had
expected that to go away once we got back home. But it didn't. The
reason is that the poor circulation in her ankle is due to swelling of
the knee and that is symptomatic of the end of remission of rheumatoid
arthritis, as is confirmed by swelling of her left wrist and problems
with an elbow.
4)
I become concerned about my own fitness. I mustn't take risks with
either my damaged thumb, my left knee or my back. I therefore decide to
halt work on the patio.
5)
Geoffrey confides in Joan that he is not looking forward to going,
because he sees every one else as being couples and fears he will be
left out. He expressed the view that he would be alright if Shani was
coming. I start to understand Geoff's point of view, and also his lack of
contact with the rest of the family. He has already confided in Judy
that he is nervous about returning home on his own.
6)
I talk to Joan about my fears 6 July, in turn she expresses again her
own, about the unsuitability for the kids of too much travelling, and
what they will do first thing in the morning. She always preferred the
idea of a hotel on the beach, eg at Cape Panwa in Phuket. We have always
been concerned about the weather especially on the west coast. It
appears that the east coast and Ko Samui should be much better. Things
come into perspective and we both start to sleep properly again.
