May 2005 - Thailand and Cambodia - part 1
So, back from Thailand for more than a week now. This is what I wrote whilst still in Bangkok Airport. You'll find all picture galleries listed under "Bangkok", "Chiang Mai", "Siem Reap" and "Cambodia".
“Time to write my Thailand/Cambodia memoirs whilst I have 10 hours to kill and a cup of coffee that cost double the daily salary of the average Indochinan!
The last two weeks have been an extremely mixed bag, but enlightening. Certainly the nine days spent with Dad travelling between Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Siem Reap were fantastic. We experienced the full tourist spectrum from high culture (Thai Classical Dance) to tawdry entertainment (Ladyboys – at my request); from the riches of hermetically sealed 5-star tourist hotels, to the horrendous poverty and slums along the rivers and canals of Bangkok; from the honesty and goodwill of genuine Thais and Cambodians, through to deception by shysters, frauds and tricksters.
Rather than bore you to tears with the facts and details of the multitudes of garish and overly ostentatious Buddhist temples we visited (along with how old they are, how many gold Buddhas they have, what was particularly auspicious about the albino elephant that died on the spot of the concrete chedi…), I’ll do my best to give a brief overview. It goes without saying that we chose the worst time of the year to visit (inevitable given that we’re both penny-pinchers, eh!). Gallons of mineral water, talcum powder to soak up the sweat, mopping towels, malaria pills, mosquito spray etc., were all part of the heady concoction necessary for white sissy boys to survive the Thai summer! Nothing seems to bother the locals of course, who consider it impolite to wear anything less than a buttoned up shirt, trousers and shoes even through 39C of hair-soaking humidity. No doubt they enjoyed a hearty guffaw at the sight of us coating ourselves in Jungle formula.
Thais and Cambodians are consummate salesmen (perhaps rip-off merchants would be a better phrase). One of the least enjoyable aspects of travelling in south-east Asia is knowing that everyone to the last man, woman and child, sees you as nothing but a big fat white cash cow ripe for the milking. Everything is to be bartered for, nothing has a price, and as a rule even savvy tourists end up paying about 500% what the locals pay. Thailand has clearly profited hugely from this, is a model of how to build an entire economy on tourism. It’s known as the “Land of Smile”, though it’s not clear if that’s a happy, welcoming smile, or a cynical grin of pure money-making glee. There’s a fair deal of official corruption out here too. About a third of the cash I parted with in Thailand and Cambodia went on airport departure taxes and entry Visas (20-25US$ a pop; or to put it in relative terms, a weekly salary out here). Much to my chagrin, I was forced to buy two Cambodian one-month Visas within four days, because I re-entered through a different port. I even met an Australian who told me the airport Visa official encouraged him give a bribe for the Visa he’d already paid for!
Indeed, you really have to be on you toes in SE Asia. This is a lesson my father and I had to learn again and again and again. To illustrate, let’s consider the events of the first day. Having ridden the superbly modern Skytrain to the Chai Praya River, we embarked upon a speed-gondola (as I term it) up stream to Wat Arun (temple of the dawn), the symbol of Thailand. Thoroughly impressed, we decided to see the other major site on the opposite bank, the Grand Palace. Before we could get there though, we were met by an extremely helpful gentleman with perfect English who kindly explained that the Grand Palace was closed for a special Buddhist function. Rather, he suggested, why don’t we go to a temple that isn’t in our guidebooks, then buy a couple of cut-price Armani suits in a Special Sale (of which this happened to be the last day!). He hailed us a Tuk-tuk (a 3 wheeled motorcycle with a canvas roof, named after the spluttering noise of the engine), and saw us on our way. At the “temple of the Happy Buddha” (cackling Buddha more like), our driver excused himself to go to the toilet for “10 minutes”. During that 10 minutes, a stranger began speaking to us, again in perfect English, telling us that we really ought to buy these great Armani suits, and if we bought two, we’d get a third free! Wow, amazing we thought (still unaware), two recommendations for suits on the same day, from perfect English speakers. The only snag was neither of us wanted suits. On our drivers return, we insisted that he take us where we wanted to go, and not to a suit shop. Ten minutes later, skirting through Bangkok’s chaotic traffic, we ended up, predictably, outside the Suit shop. “Please go inside” he insisted, “I need to get some tokens”. Okay we thought, we’ll humour him this once, and went inside for five minutes. Upon our return we insisted that he take us where we wanted to go, but again we ended up down another side ally, at another dodgy establishment, selling gems. Could this be the famous gem scam, I wondered, thoroughly hesitant now about continuing with the same driver, who appeared to be collecting more tokens from a dodgy dealer on the street corner. This time, he realised that our mood had changed, and we could see him for what he was – part of an interlinked scam network of fake suit and gem shops, collecting petrol tokens for his part in delivering stupid tourists to the establishments. We demanded that he stop and let us out immediately. We hadn’t parted with any cash, but the b****** did rob us of most of an afternoon.
Rather than risk another dodgy tuk-tuk driver, we took the canal ferry – ridiculously slow but ludicrously cheap – back to the area of our hotel. It exposed us to the filthy, poverty stricken underbelly of Bangkok which, otherwise, is putting on a reasonable developed world city façade. The state of the shanty houses was truly third world, the stench unbearable. Through the centre of the city with its tourist hotels and endless taxis, it’s almost possible to pretend that Thais are reasonably affluent (and indeed they are, compared to Cambodians), but the crippled beggars, street urchins and slums are evidence of festering underlying structural problems.
The second day involved a tour to Ayuthaya, the first capital of Thailand, and trading hub in the early days of Empire. The city was wiped out after a raid by neighbouring Burmese, and these days crumbling mud-brick temples are pretty much all that’s left of a once mighty city. The tour guides, their elephants, cruise boats and coaches, and thousands of hangers-on selling trinkets and souvenirs constitute the main activity here today. Our final day was spent sightseeing around the Grand Palace in similarly sweltering heat. I think we both agreed by this stage that we were fed up with temples, and the sheer wealth on display in the form of (presumably) gold plating is tacky rather than classy.
Nights in Bangkok are very different from days. Everywhere you walk, young pretty Thai girls are draped around old fat white men. Souvenir stalls are omnipresent. Unlicensed taxis hustle for business, charging treble and quadruple charges. Pat Pong, the Bangkok of legend, is the seedy venue where Thai girls gyrate lethargically in their underwear. The area has a very strange atmosphere – its fame precedes it, and as a result thousands of middle-aged and elderly middle-class tourists traipse around the streets for something slightly “dangerous” to talk about at the golf club or the boutique back home. Khao San Road on the other hand, was a lot more fun, a hippy/backpacker/dropout haven of bookshops, internet cafes, guesthouses and cheap cheerful bars, anticipating the atmosphere in Chiang Mai.
After three days in Bangkok, Chiang Mai was a relief. The temperatures were more forgiving, the air was clean, and life seemed to be led at a much less frenetic pace. The nights were perhaps the best aspect, trying and failing to haggle with stall tenders at the Night Bazaar for a reasonable price. I had my first and only run in with a troupe of 6-foot tall Ladyboys who took a photo with me and then wanted to be paid for it. I don’t find them attractive, it’s just confusing… The third evening was spent eating traditional North Thai food and watching the famed Thai dance, all for an extortionate (ha) £2.50 or so! The finger dance, of which I’m posting photos, looks tremendously elegant in stills, but it was the creepiest spookiest experience, set-off with eerie traditional music. Highly recommended.
Days in Chiang Mai were spent doing all the usual touristy things – elephant rides, rafting, visiting hill-tribes etc. We learned many things about elephants – they can be trained not only to lift logs, but also to paint “pictures”; their dung is bright green when fresh, and floats (furthermore, you can make paper from it); they are easily annoyed, and if they begin to secrete yellow anger fluid from a gland 6 inches from their eye hole, they have to be gunned down; elephant burgers are considered a delicious if expensive delicacy. On leaving the elephant camp, we punted (yes, check out the snaps) back to where our driver and guide were waiting, but not before our raft had been sunk by hordes of naked children using it as a mobile diving board! The hill tribes I mention supposedly migrated from southern China, Nepal and other areas in the last 100 years or so. I say supposedly, because there is little in their features to mark them out from other Thais, and having experienced trickery and fraud at every step of the journey, can’t help wondering if this isn’t another cunning money making ruse. If the hill-tribes are indeed genuine, then their “culture” if it may be termed so, is in a rather sorry state of disarray. They dress up in colourful costumes and charge for photos, sell useless trinkets to passers-by, and otherwise sit around looking rather depressed with their lot in life. I can’t help feeling that the onset of mass tourism has played a large part in the desecration of their ancestral ways of life.
(to be continued)
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