E London
16 September - people asking me to talk 2 family members selling daughter s?
Finally arrived in London around 9:00am - although I was still in Thai time. More
significant was the fact that i'd gone over two days without any real sleep. I made my
way to Camberwell where I didn't have too much trouble finding Kimberley's house. I
was still exhausted so didn't do much more than head down to the shops but met the
flatmates and all seem very friendly. Ended up crashing out at 7ish (all in all about 72
hours before proper sleep). It's vey different wandering the streets and hearing nothing
but English after so much Thai, Khmer or Vietnamese and a smattering of German,
French, Hebrew (or Hip Bu as I saw it spelled in one place) and a little English. And all
the accents are really hard London accents. I've realised how dark I've got comparing
myself to all the English locals - except for most of the ones around Camberwell,
consideringabout 90 percent of them ar black. There were a few black people in Asia but
not many - I haven't seen so many of them since ... The last time I was living here.
Nobody seems as friendly as they were in Asia - nobody trying to sell me anything or
even making eye contact ... It's obvious i 'm in a different world.
Got a decent sleep after crashing out early but was still up hours before anyone else in the
house, hopefully I should adjust today. Also went for a run in the local area and it was so
different to Asia - not as polluted (it's rare that London gets that accolade i'm sure) and so
much cooler, although it was quite sunny. Very pleasant.
ALso, remembered a strange thing that happened in MBK on my last day in Thailand. I
was wandering the stalls lookingfor bargains when a Thai man did a double take at me,
told me I was reallytall, asked me where was from and then was thrilled when I said
Australia. His daughter is going there to study and could he talk with me about givingher
some advice. He asked me to sit with him and bought me a drink (asked me to pay for it
but I had no change) and then said that he wanted me to come with him or an hour to
meet his daughter. I told him I didn't have tme (i wanted to go to the movies) and he was
a bit upset but let me go. Later on that day a youngish girl (late20s) and her brother
stopped me by asking me where I got my sandles from. Then asked me where I was from,
Australia, wow! My sister is goingthere to study, sit with us. Do you want a drink? No.
Chatted for a while and whn they found out I couldn't come with them to meet her they
let me go. I just have to assume there was some scam going on and both people were
doing a similar one (probably unrelated) but i've got no idea what it was going to be ..
Would I have been kidnapped if I went with them? Would they try to get me to marry
their sister/daughter? Very confusing - I think i'm going to have to google that one...
Posted by S at 9/19/2005 05:04:00 AM 0 comments
Friday, 16 September 2005
Terror At 30,000 Feet
15 September - Okay flight to Frankfurt - because we're leaving Thailand on a German
carrier we have three languages to contend with. First there is the announcement in
German, then in English (where they repeat the video if necessary) and finally in Thai
(i'm pretty sure it's Thai but they don't get a video repeat). Stuck in the aisle but the
legroom stretches out to infinity compared to some of the buses i've been travelling on so
i'm not complaining. Avery bad whiskey was delivered up followed by a very nice dinner
(at 2am Thai time, I have quite the feeling that i'll be suffering from bit of jetlag not
having slept properly since Ko Phagna a few days ago). I still cannot understand why
airport food is so bad and airplane food is so good (maybe not British Airways airplane
food at the moment but generally it's all superb).
Caught on some newses before watching the movie (at around 4am) - The 'Fever Pitch'
remake about a baseball tragic who falls in love the year the Red Sox broke the curse of
the bambino. I thought it was pretty good, but really, it's got very little to do with the
original other than the fact that it's a sports rom com (and I am biased towards sports rom
coms). If it had been given a different title it would hardly be recognisable as the same
film and it wouldn't invite comparisons to the original (which was good but not amazing).
In any event, the Boston Red Sox triumph over an 80 something year losing streak is a bit
more signficant than a 20 year one for Arsenal. In any event, a movie worth watching
unlike the other one we had, Madagascar. The only fondness for that film I have is in its
name as it reminds me of the Cambodian children quizzing me on its capital but other
than that it's a complete waste of time (there are a few amuzing scatological jokes from
the monkeys). I'm not sure exactly what the makers of this film are trying to tell the
audience but it's obviously something along the lines of 'following the natural order is
wrong'. A lion gets stranded on an island and starts to think of his friends as food - the
other carnivores in the film are mutes with animal instincts and all the herbivores ar
intelligent talking anthropomorphised beings - the other animals never accept that the lion
is designed to eat them and the eventual solution is that the lion can eat fish (don't fish
have feelings, too? Maybe not but then again, neither does a zebra). Other animated films
have done this too, The land that time Forgot and Dinosaur (both by Disney, I think) were
dinosaur films with intelligent talking herbivores and evil animal minded carnivores
prowling them. Finding Nemo at least had intelligent sharks but these sharks had
reformed and learned that eatingfish was bad; In babe, the dogs that attacked the sheep
(following natural instincts mind you) evil - farm animals good and very talkative. And
even in the films where the carnivores are intelligent they're always evil (Jungle Book,
Shark Tale, even the seminal Animal Farm) I think that these films and stories send a
very warped message to children - are they funded by a vegan lobby group or are the
makers just trying to deny the reality that we're an evolved ecosystem that happens to
have a food chain in?
In any event - i'm glad i'm at the top of it ...
The connecting London plane had some kind of problem so we had to wait for a
replacement - lots of grey men in grey suits milling around the lounge - certainly makes
business travel a lot less glamarous when you're waiitng for the plane and you're not
business class - also, some woman wanted to sit with her daughter so I swapped seats
with her and lo and behold she happened to be sitting in the very last row of the plane
(with a spare seat to me so I think they're tryingsomething on) - the back of the plane
feels the turbulence the most (not the first time i've taken pole position) and felt myself
stomach roiling and I had no bag - luckily I kept it down ... So, London, here we come,
aye???
Posted by S at 9/16/2005 07:25:00 PM 2 comments
Don't Panic
14 September - Went to the Sawasdee Khao Sann Inn to collect my bag and be collected.
I bought my ticket for the airport bus and then as I went into the luggage storage room
something brushed my right eye and suddenly everything went blurry. Sometimes it's just
a minor displacement and a few blinks set everything right but not this time of course. It
took me about 30s to realise what had fully happened as I was having a wrestling match
with my expanding rooksack. By then, it was panic time. There was about a four squar
metre space where the lens could be and people were traipsing through it without a care
in the world, lost in their own little existences and not giving a damn for my blindness. I
managed to put my glasses on but they seemed to make everythingworse, especiallyas the
rain and humidity made them as translucent as a banana milkshake. I had some of the
hotel guys lookingwith me but they had no idea what they were lookingfor. Eventually I
found the lens through feeling for it, draggingmy hands across the dirty wet floor until I
came up with the gold. The hotel guys couldn't believe I could find somethingthat small
(well, I have had some practice). In this little fracas the bus had already left and I had to
wait for another one. It was then that I realised that I'd misplaced my itinerary and I had a
vague notion of beingtold i'd need it due to the fact that my flight to Frankfurt-London
had been brought forward. Once again, panic time - I tried to see if I could use the hotels
printer to run off another one, no printer. Then ran up thr road to the nearest internet café,
full. Next one, no printer. Next one, no printer. Gave up and thought i'd try at the airport.
The bus was late and stuck in traffic and I was in a very worried state for the first half of
the journey. Then I thought to myself of the sage words printed on the universe's greattst
travel guide, 'Don't Panic'. What was the worst that could happen? No way am I going to
miss the plane - at worst, aabsolute worst, I might not get on this flight, and then I can
just call Flight Centre or the insurance and get put n the next one. That's what you can do
when you're insured and you've paid a full f**king fare - so I didn't panic . Got to the
airport and couldn't find a printer but then it turned out I didn’t need one. The only bad
news was that I couldn't get an emergency exit - again! Can't these people see how tall I
am? I need special treatment.
Anyway, I obviously haven't missed my plane because i've been sitting in the Bangkok
airport KFC nursing an overpriced pepsi for the past half hour and my plane hasn't even
had a boarding call yet.
Footnote - I missed the boardingcall and was one of the last to get on the plane (well, at
least I didn't have as long waiting around for it to take off ...)
Posted by S at 9/16/2005 07:25:00 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, 14 September 2005
Dark and Stormy Morning
14 September - Have arrived in Bangkok after a particularly unpleasant bus trip. No leg
room whatsoever and the air con on full blast (i was warned about how cold it can get on
these buses and this was the worst thus far) - eventually got into town only to find the
drop off is in the middle of nowhere and the bus actually arrived on time (5am) and it was
raining buckets. Got a taxi into Khao San where I hoped to find somewhere to leave my
bag and to sort out a ticket to the airport tonight. KS road was like a ghost street so the
tuk tuk driver took me a bit further down the road to the only place that was open, the
Sawasdee Khaosan Inn, the very same hotel where I spent my first two nights in
Bangkok. They organise a bus and have bag storage but I still needed to kill a few hours
before the rest of the town wakes up and it hopefull stops raining so I reluctantly chose to
wait here and partake of their awful buffet breakfast - even at 5 in the morning everything
is cold - when do they make it, 3? The most likely answer is, of course, yesterday.
Eventually broke away from the hotel and went for some proper pancakes from the lady
on the corner who i've gone to every morning i've spent in bangkok and had a very nice
thai massage (am going to miss them very much) before heading to MBK by omnibus.
Did some shopping, stressed out about not finding shoes in my size, saw a movie, stood
up for the king and eventually returned back to KS road. Not a very productive day in
terms of sight seeing but it never stopped raining and i'm quite glad I finally got a little
bit of shopping done.
Am just finishing off this missive in a dingy little restaurant and am enjoying what could
well be my last Singha beer before leaving this wonderful country behind.
When i've done this i'll go and sync up so I have news to read on the plane then i'll
probably have a last thai meal (the airport doesn't have thai food it has airport food) and a
banana pancake before hitting the road and then the tarmac and then the air ... And so the
Asian odyssey will end.