In 1961 I came to this country and rented a bungalow
type house off Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok. I was going to be an artist and to get some
inspiration, I decided to see more of the country. Travel in those days was different from
now. The roads were generally in poor shape, full of potholes, dusty in the dry season
while many were flooded during the west monsoon, which often made them impassable.
American friends who owned a car once invited me to visit Ayuthaya, but we had to turn
back only a short while after we passed the airport, as the countryside was one big lake -
including the highway. Most of my travel I did by train and bus but I preferred the
former, as the colourful busses in those days were not only unreliable but most
uncomfortable and although they could not achieve the speed of the present day monsters,
they were just as perilous.
I visited Goh Samui when hardly anybody went there and most people had
never heard of the place. I embarked on a coaster from the Thai Navigation Company called
the Bandon and made a voyage to Songklah and Narathivas. I also went up north to Chiang
Rai, Mae Sarieng, Chiang Mai, Lampang and so forth.
Usually I made these expeditions on my own, until I became friends with
an American free lance teacher who lived in the Saladaeng area. He was called Vance and a
bit of a character. Vance was a good and straightforward man but he had quite a temper and
a low flash point. The doctors in New York had told him in the late fifties that he had
not long to live, but he was stubborn and died about twenty five years later. Travel with
Vance could be quite difficult as he was rather picky about what he ate and he also
suffered from diabetes mellitus.
At one time I proposed to make a trip to Rathburi, a town in the west
of the country where I had never been. Early in the morning we took the train to the south
from Bangkok Noi railway station and on arrival in Rathburi we left it and rented rooms in
a small Chinese hotel over an open restaurant. After we did some sightseeing we had dinner
in the market place on the banks of the Menam Maeklong River and the following day we were
going to rent Samlors (Trishaws) to see more of the temples and the surrounding
countryside.
In the morning Vance stated that he would have a western style
breakfast and since my Thai was slightly better than his, I was supposed to order it. What
he wanted was two soft boiled eggs, black coffee without sugar and two pieces of toast
with butter. In those days there were no western style coffee shops in the country towns
so we sat down in the restaurant on the ground floor. The Chinese woman who operated the
place with her husband came over and I ordered in my best Thai, Vance’s breakfast and
for myself a plate of rice with Moo Deang (red pork).
First the eggs, which were brown and greasy, were brought to the table.
They had - as I later found out - been dumped in a big pot with simmering pork stew for a
while. Vance looked at it with suspicion and carefully proceeded to break the top of one,
discovering that what was inside was hardly cooked at all. It is called "Gy
Luak", or eggs briefly put in hot liquid. Usually they are broken into a cup, some
soup sauce or soy is added and the whole unappetising mixture is spooned up. I immediately
noticed Vance’s horror and displeasure so I hastened to tell the lady to cook the
eggs a little more. Off she went slightly irritated about the fuss.
The Thai coffee, old style, mixed with roasted tamarind seeds, was
served in a glass, with a thick layer of condensed sweetened milk on the bottom. She,
apparently, had never heard of people who drank unsweetened coffee and as I had said,
"no sugar" she had substituted the sweet creamy milk. My friend’s face
showed his anger at this point and I felt very guilty indeed. After explaining what the
gentleman wanted, the proprietress took the coffee away and came back with two pieces of
thick Chinese bread, generously spread with orange coloured margarine and sprinkled with a
thick layer of sugar. This was it. Vance was livid. Albeit the eggs came back overcooked
of course, the black coffee came without a sweetener and the toast without sugar or
grease, he did not recover from this disastrous meal until the next morning, when we had
fried rice before we boarded the train back to Bangkok.
When Vance became a more seasoned traveller, we ventured a trip to
Phuket. By train we went to Chumpon where we stayed the night in a Chinese hotel. The next
day we took a bus to Ranong where we slept in a most peculiar flophouse where gambling and
other nocturnal activities went on until the crack of dawn. We paid the bill and bleary
eyed, boarded the bus to Phuket.
It was in those days that the road was widened and the bridges across
the small streams to the Andaman Sea were also being enlarged. The colorfully decorated
buses were made of wood, including the seats, and we were given a place of honour next to
the driver. This was a harrowing experience being directly faced with the dangerous
practices of Thai bus drivers. Only later we found out that the bus people thought we were
missionaries, that’s why we had the seats usually reserved for monks. We did not
enlighten them. Every now and then the bus was let through a stream, as the bridges were
in disrepair and sometimes we even had to walk over one or along the road because it was
too dangerous to stay in the bus when navigating a particular weak structure or a bad
stretch. I recall that it took us until late in the afternoon to reach the ferry to the
island, as the Sarasin Bridge from the mainland to the island had not been build yet.
The tourist resorts and the developments in Phuket had not been built. Accommodations
were simple and cheap. We stayed in - I recall the name - Senthavee Hotel in downtown
Phuket, which was full with travelling salesmen. We toured the island for a couple of days
and went to several, still deserted beaches like Rawai, Surin and Patong Beach, the latter
is now a second Pattaya. After a couple of days we took the bus back to Chumpon and were
treated again with the utmost courtesy by the staff. A drawback was that in the back of
the bus a few crates with fish in brine were stowed, which seeped, and every time the bus
driver stepped on his brakes, a thick smelly liquid flowed over the floor to the front.
The result was that, unless we raised our feet, we, on the front bench, were sitting with
our shoes in this pungent ooze.
Elephant shows are a big attraction for tourists.
But are they actually helping or hurting the massive creatures?
Photo: Kim Fletcher