The adventure so far...
!! After 3 months of slumming it in a land tense with hard bargaining and sexual repression I exploded into a land of pampering, decadence, and easy living and it felt like home.
Impressed with myself that I had made it this far, conquered and had an interesting time doing so, the seductive bite of a bit of comfort left me mauled and made me realise that this was going to be oh so hard to let go. Twenty –somethings you can have your Kho San Road, I’m off to indulge in my 34 year old right to clean beds minus bugs, clean clothes washed in washing machines, warm showers with nice smellies and the occasional manicure and Thai massage! Thank God I have such good friends in interesting places at times like these.
Sophie I’m a coming and you may not be able to get rid of me!
My first indulgence of decadence was before I’d even set foot in Thailand. It was July 14th, the day before my birthday and I found myself in Singapore airport in the duty free section with a credit card burning a whole in my backpack.
Logic and better judgment, waning in the delight of being free from India, I found myself face to face with a pair of Gucci sunglasses and boy did they speak words of love to me. Budget Smudgit, it was my birthday after all and no one else was going to buy me a present! After 3 months of haggling down to the last 10 rupees for a variety of textiles/jewelry/food something just had to give and it felt good.
My days of looking and smelling like a hippy where over It’s time to bring on the new Sam!
I love Bangkok. Despite being told that it’s such a dirty city I found it quite the opposite.
I must admit that they have a serious traffic problem, much worse than London, but they have the most amazing public transport system which is so incredibly clean, reliable and cheap AND has AC so the traffic problem really shouldn’t be as bad as it is. Unfortunately the system doesn’t cover the city as well as it should yet but there is a great public boat that can take you further a field, and if you are lucky like me to have Thai speaking friends you quickly learn that as long as the Taxi drivers use their meters they are incredibly cheap. A half an hour journey across the city after 11 at night is the equivalent of around a pound.
Something our piss-taking black cabbies could learn a thing or two about in jolly old London.
The people here are amazing, everyone is so nice and smiley and willing to help you. The food is the best I’ve ever tasted and everything is so affordable.
My friends Sophie and Mark live on the 14th floor of a lovely high rise in on Suhkhamvit, which is in the centre of town and has the most amazing views of the city. It has a communal pool, gym and sauna and is a 2 minute walk from the underground. It is the quality of life I left London for, aspire to have and believe I could afford if I decide to take a job here, which within the fullness of time is looking a distinct possibility.
However, no point in bringing myself into the real world just yet, it was my birthday week, I’d just escaped the mayhem of India and there was some serious pampering needed.
It all started on my birthday where Sophie and Mark took me for one of the best meals I’ve ever had in one the most beautiful restaurants I’ve ever been too. Unfortunately of all the nights to forget your camera, tonight was it and is the first birthday that I can remember that I have no photographic evidence.
Boo! However maybe it’s not such a bad thing as for a girl who hadn’t been drinking for the past 3 months they reintroduced me to it with a bang and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Parasite or no parasite still lodging inside me it was time for it to get out of the way and make some room for some merriment and much was had.
When we were more than sufficiently inebriated I had my first experience of a Bangkok girlie bar called Pedro’s which soon became one of mine and Sophie’s local haunts. The place is a scream and we fit in there a bit too well, much to the delight of the girls who work there who take much joy in getting us to join in with their soliciting of ‘innocent’ western males passing the bar. Should I be admitting to this?
Oh well, most of you know me pretty well, I’m sure nothing shocks these days.
The following week was in such a contrast to my previous experience I felt like I was in a dream most of the time. Yoga sessions in heated rooms of 28 degrees in flamboyant gyms (thought I was going to die), free daily aerobic sessions in the beautiful public parks.
Manicure and pedicures for less than 3 pounds. Two hour Thai massages in beautifully scented rooms listening to ambient music for less than 5 pounds. Luxury cinema visits in armchair comfort for just over a pound - who needs a UGC ‘go to the cinema as much as you want card’ for a tenner a month and to hell with my Amazon DVD rental this is my idea of bliss!
I’ve even joined Sophie for a free Thai lesson which was great fun. I didn’t come away being able to speak much Thai but I got the gist of the lesson which I was most impressed by! My other favorite memory of Bangkok is the Night market near Lumpini park which is a huge food court with awesome food and has the most mental all night entertainment.
This compromised of full on cabaret style entertainment with all singing all dancing Thai girls giving what they got to the latest hot tunes or Linkin Park/ Nirvana covers from the local dodgy Thai rock band. It’s such a great place!
I even love the eccentricities of this nation.
At 8am and 6pm in all public places the Kings anthem is played and everyone stops where they are and stands to attention, it is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. Sophie, Mark and I were strolling through Lumpini Park on a Sunday evening when I witnessed it for the first time. It really was quite surreal.
Everyone just ground to a halt and stood perfectly still like something out of a science fiction movie even those mid jog! You even have to stand before to attention before a film at the cinema. Could you imagine doing that at home for the Queen?
The only problem I have with this place so far is the sight of all the incredibly gorgeous YOUNG Thai women with incredibly fat ugly OLD western guys. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get my head around that. It does make me worry that if I did decide to stay here I would end up spending even more of my life on the shelf as it seems that if you are not Thai, no one is interested.
However having said that I did have an incredibly fun night at a bar called Sin which involved an incredibly gorgeous Italian Rugby player called Fredrico and resulted in a case of stubble rash that reminded me of being a very naughty teenager, so I shouldn’t really complain. Unfortunately though of all the nights to forget my camera this was my second and I have no proof of my only conquest in a year, but believe me he was worth it.
My week of luxury was over far too quickly and soon it was time to get packed up again and reconvene my snail style backpack existence in order to hit the road.
Sophie and Mark who are both teachers were now on their holidays and we were all heading off to Cambodia together to visit Angkor Wat, an ancient city of temple ruins spread over a 40 mile area dating back to the 8th Century. Somewhere I have wanted to experience since my traveling companions headed there when I visited Vietnam in ‘98 but due to work commitments I never got the chance as I had to return to the UK.
The journey itself was an experience I won’t forget in a hurry.
Mark and I took the cheaper road option whereas Sophie flew as she had one more day of work to complete. However if I had know what hell was to follow I would have gladly put my hand in my pocket without a hint of a backpacker’s whinge. The first part of the journey on the Thai side of the border was all very agreeable, a comfy air-con coach where I even managed to catch up on a bit of sleep.
However, once past the border there is only one long road from Poipet to Seim Reap which is unpaved and created by the devil itself. At first I thought that the unbelievably bad condition of the road was due to land mines but apparently that’s just how it is, has always been and will most probably always be. The road itself I believe is only 160 Km, but it took 8 hours to get to Siem Reap.
Do the math - We were going VERY SLOW. Despite the speed there was much bouncing, head banging and falling off seats, which at first was funny and by the about the 3rd hour it became hysterical funny, but by the 6th hour we all just became plain hysterical. Words really can’t sum it up, you really have to experience it to believe it, but I don’t advise it.
Fly if you have any sense.
On top of this, despite my newly acquired worldly-wiseness for sniffing out a scam following my months of Indian sincerity and hospitality, I got well and truly ripped off along with my other fellow travelers by a currency exchange scam at the border. Luckily for me it was only to the tune of around 20 quid but many others got well and truly stung.
My recent lull into the world of comfort and trustworthiness was already feeling short lived and very far away.
I don’t know what I feel about Cambodia. The horror that this country has endured within my life time is still very evident and heartbreaking, but rather than get sucked in by it all I found it all a bit contrived at times.
The children and the mine victims where impossible to ignore and I did what I could to help, including giving blood at the local children’s hospital, but I felt that there was too much evidence of tourist baiting. Something which made me feel sad given the country’s history. It felt like it was making a mockery out of itself and what with my Indian experience so close to hand it was something I didn’t have the patience for.
I had already decided that I was not interested doing the Phnom Penh tourist trail, I wasn’t here to experience the hell that these people had been through. I’d done that previously in Vietnam and that had already left a deep enough scar. So the plan was a three day tour of Angkor Wat and then on to Laos as quickly as possible.
The ancient city of ruins was all I’d hoped it to be though and more. Sophie, Mark and Sophie’s brother who joined us at Siem Reap all bought 3 day passes as with so much to see over such a large area it was something you had to give yourself time for. The bonus was that because we bought the tickets late the evening before we intended to make use of them, we were given an extra free evening and so were able to watch the sun set over Angkor Wat, the main temple itself which was pretty impressive.
However despite Angkor Wat being the most well known of all the temples our next day’s visit to Bayon I found much more impressive with it’s 3,936 feet of superb bas-relief carvings of mysterious Buddha faces carved on it’s towers. It was such an amazing place and had such an air of mystery about it that for a short while I WAS Lara Croft and was lost in a world of wrestling with tigers, leaping effortlessly from stone wall to wall and abseiling across jungle courtyards. Then a second later in the real world I put my foot down awkwardly in typical buffoon Sam style, twisted my ankle and sat there crying like a baby while a little Cambodian monk woman came running out of some hidden hole and made a big fuss of me.
God I felt like an idiot!
However despite my gracelessness my intuition turned out to be pretty accurate and I later found out that my favorite temple Ta Prohm was actually the inspiration for the Tomb Raider game and used as the location for the film. So not so lost in the land of the fairies as I thought!
It was so impressive. Massive trees have been left to grow out of the stone work over the centuries and strangler figs in turn are sucking the life out of them. It’s such an impressive and extraordinary sight, a sort of bizarre cycle of destruction.
The place is also full of the most magical butterflies and the air is filled with tropical sounds of rainforest frogs, just like in the game/film. One of the most memorable sounds of this journey so far has been the sound of the screech beetles call which began when the moment the sun began to set. It blew my brain away the first time I heard it.
I really was truly somewhere very ancient and magical.
It was a fantastic three days. However the weather did turn a bit nasty which was a bit of a pain.
Especially on the second day when we had decided to hire motorbikes and head out to a couple of temples that where a good 40 KM away and got well and truly stuck in a torrential rain storm. So much so we had to come off the road because we couldn’t actually see it. My favorite day however was the final day when I took a break from the rest of the group as I was missing my push bike and decided to cycle round the smaller circuit of temples on my own.
It was still raining, but the freedom of being on a cycle and having all that nature around was absolutely exhilarating.
A very wet Mark Sophie and me!
I was now inspired and looking forward to my next move to Laos, however due to bad planning I found myself having to go to Phnom Penh after all which as I’ve already shared wasn’t part of the plan, but it was the only place to get a Laos Visa.
. So with the accompaniment of my new friend, an incredibly gorgeous 21 year old Danish guy called Simon who I had met previously on the drive of death from Thailand to Cambodia we braved Cambodia’s capital.
We hung out for a couple of days and even shared a room (lucky me!
), but he was a man in much demand by the ladies, and when I found that the Cambodian’s had the cheek to charge 60 dollars for a Loas Visa compared to the 1300 baht they charge in Thailand (around 18 quid), it was another reason for me to get pissed off with this place and so I decided to head back to Thailand.
The new plan was to go back to Bangkok, get my Laos Visa and enter Laos via the north of Thailand taking in the delights of Chang Mai etc. However in this crazy backpacking world which I’m starting to get grips with, plans are made to be broken and my ever growing need for the sea and the need to suck air from a pressurized tank was getting the better of me.
So my plans changed again and I headed for the little diving island of Kho Tao instead to embark on my Dive Master course, which is where you find me now. I’ve been here quite a while now 2 months in fact, and a hell of a lot has happened. But that is a whole new and another very long chapter so you’ll just to have to wait another couple of weeks my dear chums until I find the time to upload some gorgeous photos to make you all very green with envy.
Love you all. Don’t miss me too much!
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