Thailand - Smiles & Spice

Hold on!

Why can't everywhere be like Thailand?  It is warm, but not too hot.  The food is delicious, and good for you.  The people are humble and friendly, but not obsequious or mercenary.  The cities are modern and comfortable, but not frenetic and filthy.  The temples are serene and beautiful, without being too pious or supercilious.  The beaches are pristine and relaxed, without being crowded or obnoxious. 

This may just be relative I suppose.  India was filthy, hot, crowded and chaotic.  Thailand is none of these things.  But neither was South Africa or Namibia, and I didn't crow on about them like I am doing now.  The only point I am trying to make is that Thailand is magical, and coming from India it seemed, relatively, both a heaven and a haven. 

The king of Thailand.  You see this guy *a lot* here

We flew from Trivandrum in India, via Colombo in Sri Lanka, to Bangkok on Christmas Eve.  Uneventful flight.  Everything worked as it should.  The first thing you notice when you land in Thailand coming from India is that everything seems to be in working order.  There are no loose, exposed wires hanging from the ceiling, no random installations of objects with no discernible purpose, no piles of rubbish, no bizarre bureaucracy.  Much less chaotic.  We sailed through immigration in a modern, spacious airport.

We flew in on Christmas eve.  Partly because we were expecting it to be busy with tourists escaping the winter freeze back home, partly because we were dreaming of a comfortable bed and air conditioning whilst in the helter-swelter of India, and partly because it was Christmas, we had booked a swanky hotel in Sukhumvit, a district in Bangkok, for two nights.  It was the mental equivalent of salivation for me; the anticipation of many layers of comfort after much relative lack of the same.  The skytrain slid smoothly into the twinkling, glittering, pulsating capital of this emerging nation.  I felt relaxed; at home.  This was a city with a similar feel to London.  Slick, well organised; busy but not chaotic.  I know those of you reading this in London might think this a very complimentary view of London, but all I can say is that London does work very well compared to almost every city I have been to on this trip.   Speaking of which, Bangkok has appalling traffic.  Much worse than London.  That's one thing I know I can no longer moan about in the UK.  It is not as bad as we think it is.  Everywhere in the world it seems is choking up with cars.  And people.

Adverts on the skytrain in Bangkok

I often get distinct feelings flying into new countries, and they usually represent the preconceptions I have about the country if I haven't visited before.  With South Africa it was a slight fear of being attacked and robbed, with Madagascar it was a fear of the unknown, with India an anxious anticipation of the filth and crowds.  With Thailand it was a good feeling.  I think it was the combination of so many good Thai meals in London, and the combined stories of so many people I have know who have gone and loved the place.  And perhaps rounded off with the idea that here was a country wedded to a religion that, if any, I feel represents my own view of life.  Buddhism.

But the rug is always pulled out from one's preconceptions.  In particular I was surprised at the glitziness of Buddhism here.  The solid gold buddhas, the precious stones and gleaming facades of the Wats.  It seemed at odds with the humility of the religion, but perhaps not at odds with the respect many people impart upon it. 

Anyway, lovely comfy hotel with soft beds and fluffy pillows and towels folded in to the shape of an elephant.  Our first meal in Thailand was Christmas dinner!  It had to be done.  It was Christmas, after all.  And I was feeling the pull too, being so far away from family and friends.  It was palpable over a period when I would normally be with family, and had been almost every year aside from this one.  Christmas in Bangkok is noticeable.  Plenty of Christmas trees and sparkly lights and santa hats.  But all in humid 30C heat, which just isn't so right somehow. 

A taste of luxury after many months

Bangkok by night

Bangkok on Christmas day is just like Bangkok on any other day.  Everything is working and life goes on.  We visited the Grand palace after a decent Christmas day lie-in.  It is utterly sumptuous!  I think it is one of the most impressive places I have seen on this trip.  Just shiny, glorious, glitzy,  splendour.  Just on the threshold of over-doing it, but not quite.  I was captivated, along with the throngs of other people there, which was the only downside.  A glorious emerald buddha (which you were strictly not allowed to photograph) was the star of the show.

The grand palace in Bangkok.  Pure glitz and splendour

A myriad of reflective surfaces

Intricate glitzy detail

The emerald buddha from outside his enclosure

A deva (I think) holds up a column

The searing Bangkok sun shining down over the grand palace

It's pure Thailand.  And very impressive!

I love this guy on the left.  He has the best face ever

Next to the temple of the reclining buddha (aka wat pho).  This is a pretty huge statue.  15 metres high and 43 metres long!  The soles of the buddha's feet are inlaid with 108 auspicious symbols, and along the side of the wat are 108 bowls, which people proceed along dropping coins in, believing it will bring them good fortune.  It presumably brings the wat good fortune too.

The reclining buddha

The reclining buddha's feet...

Inlaid with 108 auspicious symbols

People dropping coins into bowls

A baht tree

That night, out to a restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms", which is the flagship restaurant of the Population and Community Development Association of Thailand.  This is basically a family planning and other worthy causes charity that has been running in Thailand for over 30 years.  The nature of the cabbage not entirely clear to me, condoms were nevertheless much in evidence, an entire Christmas tree decorated with them and the complimentary mint given with the bill of course replaced with a condom.  I've never really felt entirely comfortable with condoms, the combination of rubber and sex making me feel similar to when fingernails are scraped down a blackboard.  Prudish certainly, but the sight of condoms at every turn isn't a great addition to a meal in my book.  Others may differ!

A Christmas tree decorated with condoms

Next day to the ultimate in glam Buddhism, Wat Traimit, which houses the largest solid gold statue in the world.  It's a good job the golden buddha statue doesn't fit through the entrance to the Wat, otherwise I imagine someone would've been off with it by now.  Conservatively valued at £300,000,000, I'm a bit surprised someone hasn't had a go.  Still, at 5.5 tonnes of solid gold and 3m in height, it would be certainly be a headache.  Whoever decided that Buddhism was best embellished by gold this and gold that was obviously thinking on, gold prices rocketing as they are, however it does make the monks coming round cap-in-hand to the restaurants and guesthouses at crack of dawn asking for alms hard to swallow.  The appreciation on all the gold alone would be enough to feed the lot of them for a decade I should think.  That the buddha chose to relinquish his grasp on all material things is obviously ironic in this context, but I wonder if he was aware of the joke?  I've never experienced a religion with so many donation boxes, flanked by so many eager devotees encouraging one to ante up the readies, apparently unaware of the paradox.  Never have piety and economic prescience married so well.  In such circumstances it takes a great leap of faith to be faithful.  Still, that's religion all over, I feel.

Wat Traimit

And the golden buddha inside

Off down the Chinese market next, accosted and led by a delightful Chinese man who I at first thought was trying to swindle us.  It happens so much when you are travelling (the swindling I mean).  One learns to be suspicious.  But short and cheerful this man was just keen to show us his routine and his city and we obediently followed him through a chorus of sounds, smells and sights.  Colourful foods, fragrant spices, a cacophony of unintelligible words.  It was Bangkok at its hustling, bustling best and one of those experiences that travelling foists upon you and you learn to relax into, even if you did have other plans.  After a few hours of chatting and trailing, we said our thank yous and goodbyes and met up with some friends from the UK for a drink, before galloping off to catch a coach/catamaran combination to Koh Tao, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, where we planned to learn to scuba dive.

Me and our Chinese guide through china town in Bangkok

Tat

A variety of accoutrements to life were on sale...

Unfamiliar sights and smells in the Chinese market

Catching up with friends in Bangkok

Heading out of Bangkok to Chumpon, and then Koh Tao

And dive we did.  But not before bringing in the new year with a bang and a boogy at the Experience festival.  Set on top of a steep hill, the warm rain occasionally drummed down to cool the happy ravers.  Sparkling lights, warm, pulsating, psychedelic sounds and friendly hippies in colourful dresses and dreadlocks.  It's a lethal combination!  As were the long island ice teas.  What goes on at a festival, stays at the festival... ;)

Entry to the Experience festival

Lots of lights and hammocks

The main stage

Having a boogy with friends from the UK

Every tree had a little light or decoration

Alice in Wonderland stuff

Complete with hippy necklace bought at the festival

Happy new year everyone :)

I used to scuba dive when I was a teenager.  But the first time we went anywhere other than the pool was to a disused quarry in Lancashire, where I remember the water being so unbelievably cold (and murky) that I vowed never to don a scuba tank again.  Time and 29C seas mellowed my harshly taken stance though.  And into the depths we went for the next week, getting our basic and advanced PADI certificates, allowing us to dive up to 30m anywhere in the world.  And this, I realised, was what it was all about.  Scuba diving in tropical waters is magical.  No other word for it.  Koh Tao was pretty magical too, with stunning beaches and lazy bars and restaurants catering to every taste.  

The beach at Chalok Baan Kao, where we learned to scuba dive

Not a bad little spot really...

...but other spots on Koh Tao were even more idyllic

...

...it doesn't get much better than this!

Buddha view, where we learnt to dive

Buddha View's resident Jack Russell Terrier puppy, Whisky

Sunsets and scuba gear

A very warm welcome.  Temperatures almost always above 30C.

Hiring mopeds from a fantastic Thai lady on Koh Tao who reminded me of Nancy Lam

Petrol Station, Koh Tao

Strong winds available!

Our dive crew, with instructor Cairine at left front

Underwater.  Actually difficult to get a shot like this with all the bubbles

AOK.

Exploring a steep face of coral

Snorkelling with the underwater camera

Myriads of tropical fish

And, suddenly, a giant turtle comes up out of the depths to breathe!  I dived back down with him as far as I could.  Majestic, beautiful, graceful creature.

Brain coral!

Buddha view bar, with Chalok Baan Kao beach in the background

Sunset on Chalok Baan Kao

After a couple of weeks here we took off to Koh Lanta for more of the same, but this time in the Andaman sea rather than the gulf of Thailand.  This is tsunami territory, or rather the coastline that was decimated by the boxing day tsunami of 2004.  But there was no sign of that to be seen and we spent the next week either diving the clear waters of the Andaman or soaking up the sun on Koh Lanta.  

The sleeping boat from Koh Tao to Surat Thani, then on to Koh Lanta

Khlong Khong beach, Koh Lanta

We initially stayed at Green Chilli bungalows, run by a Thai couple with their little boy, Arsene.  The cutest little smile!

Then on to BB Bungalows

Khlong Khong beach at night

The dive site at Hin Daeng, near Koh Lanta

Extraordinary pillars of rock jutting out of the sea, similar to Halong Bay in Vietnam

The clear blue waters of Hin Muang

Probably the closest thing to floating in zero gravity I'll ever get to experience

A clown fish hides in its protective anenome

A sea slug

More corals and clear blue waters.  Amazingly relaxing.

A nudibranch 

A batfish

A lion fish

A leopard shark

A box fish

No idea what this is, but it looks cool!

An octopus

Blowing water rings, so to speak.

A day trip out on a long boat brings us to an underwater cave...

...which you swim through...

...for a while...in the pitch black...

...to emerge at an extraordinary secret beach...

 ...surrounded on all sides by towering rock faces.

A trip to a waterfall through a cave with stalactites...

...with tree roots growing down through them!

Elephant ride on Koh Lanta

Stopping for a snack!

Sunset at Khlong Khong beach, Koh Lanta

Glorious times in Thailand definitely, but after three weeks of paradise islands it was time for a change, and off to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the darker side of South East Asia's recent history.  You can read that here, and the subsequent trip through Vietnam, Burma and Laos. 

Months later (years it really felt) we crossed back from the Laos border at Hoak Xay to Chiang Khong and caught a minivan to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second biggest city.

Always...hot

Well and truly fed up with all things Buddhist now, we skipped the temples and wats, chilled out for a day and then went on a Thai cooking course for a day.  I made yellow curry, chicken with holy basil, spring rolls and sticky rice with sweet coconut milk and mango.  The yellow curry and the sticky rice were particularly nom and with the recipe book they gave us at the end I'll be serving it up back in the UK if I can find all the ingredients :) 

Our host showing us different types of rice at the market

Sombreros and aprons on.  Chilli time!

Our host managed to show us everything whilst simultaneously posing for photos 

Making sticky rice

Thai yellow curry

Chicken with holy basil

The title of this blog entry, Smiles and Spice, leads me to remember the particular aspect of food in Thailand that I had not appreciated until I visited.  And that's the sheer amount of chilli they put in everything.  I was served curries that made my face go red, my nose and eyes stream and my whole body sweat.  And these weren't even meant to be spicey by Thai standards.  I don't know if the capacity to perceive the effects of capsaicin (the active ingredient in chillis) is dependent on genetic variation, but I don't honestly see how people can manage to eat the level of spice I was regularly served in Thailand.  It was, literally and figuratively, astronomical.  You might have thought India would top the spice list.  Not a bit of it.  I don't remember being served a curry I couldn't handle in India.  In Thailand it happened many times and I quickly learnt what not to order.  Not to say that the food was bad.  Quite the contrary.  But the amount of chilli sometimes.  Phew!

...

Next Chiang Mai experience was to the Tiger Kingdom where, apparently, you could hug and pet real tigers.  If that sounds exciting to you then you'll know how I felt before going.  But it was actually a curiously sterile experience, and I struggle even now to know quite why.  We were shunted through with relatively little grace.  I felt like cattle a bit.  But that wasn't quite it.  The tigers seemed relatively unfazed by our presence.  Of course that's to be expected to an extent as they have been brought up in captivity and are used to humans in all shapes and forms.  It went slightly beyond that though.  

 About six months old (the tiger, that is) and playing with a coconut

Tough life

This chap about 2 years old.

Very placid and used to humans

This guy about 3 months old

They spend 16 hours a day asleep

But not, we are assured, because they are drugged

Feeding time at the zoo

There is a rumour that goes around that the tigers are drugged.  Being a relative expert in this area (psychopharmacology in humans, that is) I am not sure what they would use to keep an animal permanently sedated (insofar as there isn't much that would do the same thing in humans either).  In any event the tigers didn't seem sedated as such, just non-reactive.  I also doubt the drugging theory is true because a drugged tiger is probably more unpredictable in reality than an undrugged one.  They sleep 16 hours a day as it is.  Anyway, there were stringent rules about petting the tigers.  You couldn't approach them from the front, and always had to stroke them or cuddle them from behind, so that, we were told, the tigers didn't think you wanted to play with them.  Majestic animals, and quite obviously potentially lethal, it does amaze me slightly that this petting experience (which involved tigers from as young as three months up to 2 years old) is apparently sanctioned by the powers that be.  It's certainly a gravy train though (which probably has a lot to do with it).  It cost about £30 for an hour's experience and there was no shortage of eager punters when we were there.  The tiger keepers are with you at all times and seem to control the experience very strictly.  Perhaps it was this that contributed to the relative lack of feeling I felt during the times I had my arms wrapped round a tiger's belly.  They were very dear it's true (the tigers I mean), and the feel of their fur was wonderful, and they were truly majestic animals, but you would've thought somehow that the experience would involve an element of apprehension, excitement, even fear.  But there was none of that. 

Now I come to write all of my sentiments about it down it occurs to me that my lack of reaction to the tigers is most neatly explained by their lack of reaction to me.  Brought up in captivity and with people fondling them all day they must just be completely habituated to people and all their machinations.  In the wild you might get a menacing look, or a roar or worse still an attack.  Here we were, to them, of as much interest as our daily pint of milk might be to us.  Perhaps this is it.  At an emotional level the tigers were uninterested and unengaged with me so I was uninterested and unengaged with the tigers.  But since I expected there to be more at an emotional level, I experienced a general unease attributable not so much to the tigers, but to my lack of reaction to them.  A strange experience really.  Good pictures though.

Back in Chiang Mai and with time fast running out we decided to spend our last few days in Thailand in the sleepy town of Pai.  This whole area of Thailand (the north) is distinctly different from the south, and Bangkok in particular.  It is geographically different, and therefore often cooler, although when we were there it was topping 40ºC most days. But also the ambience is more laid back than the rest of Thailand, in fact more like Laos now I come to think of it.  Anyway, Pai epitomises this attitude and in recent years has attracted a sizeable hippy community to live there permanently.  On the back of this more general migration come the young backpackers, presumably seeking a slice of the action (or non-action as the case is here).  Protected not just by the attitude of its residents, the town is served by one of the most vomit inducing stretches of road from Chiang Mai I have ever had the misfortune of travelling down.  It must put some people off.  Still, we made it.  And Pai was just what it was billed to be.  Sleepy, pretty and relaxed, it's paradise for the sort of people who would prefer to kick back in a hammock, although there's a few bits and pieces around town you can gather your loins for and take off on a hired moped for the day to as well.  Waterfalls, swimming holes and the like.  None of them we visited were particularly noteworthy, but the overall experience of Pai was definitely worthwhile visiting for.  We completed a Thai massage course over 3 days, so if anyone's got any knots I can probably use an elbow or a foot to massage it out.

Pai.  Sleepy and relaxed.

Our bungalow

This type of thing

A random reminder of home

With our instructor having completed the traditional Thai massage course in Pai

A few days later we were out of time, heading back to Chiang Mai and then took the plane to Hat Yai and then Singapore.  A brief, and very pleasant, visit and catch up with my cousin Rupert Rucker in Singapore, and a whisk round the main Singapore sights, and it was off to Australia, the 'proper' travelling, I mused with a note of regret, seemingly over.