Paris may not be France but pug-ugly Bangkok epitomises Thailand. As my taxi crossed the great Chao Phraya River and filtered like a shark among red snappers into the city, I had no idea I was in for such a treat. It was nearly ten pm, January 3, 2010, when I caught site of the illuminations still in place since the Thai king’s birthday celebrations back in early December.
Tiny fairy lights, no bigger than large sequins, had been laced around branches of hundreds of roadside trees. It was a magical effect. Aah, I thought as I wiped a tear from an eye. Bangkok! After an absence of 21 years I was finally back in Bangkok.
The taxi-driver quickly wiped out my attack of positive nostalgia. I thought we’d arrived at my destination in Siam Square and we were fairly close. But having agreed to use his meter at the Southern Bus Terminal he demonstrated that legislation to protect consumers had not cured the predatory instincts of Bangkok’s taxi drivers. He pointed ahead as if to say, it’s just there. I went to pay. He looked at my Baht banknotes and whined, ‘Have no change,’ the usual ruse to gouge extra from sucker tourists.
Not only that. He had pointed ahead as if to the entrance to the narrow ‘soi’ (street) where I would find my guesthouse. I paid, he sped off chuckling to himself how he’d out-smarted yet another stupid ‘farang’, as they call all foreigners. But the entrance to the soi was not just ahead. I’d been dumped. So I asked directions of a senior police officer – senior enough to have his own driver - whose car happened to be parked just inside the false entrance to the soi, which was the entrance to business premises. The senior officer couldn’t understand my shaky Thai and neither he nor his driver spoke English.
After a short walkabout I found the soi and my guesthouse, only to discover after a warm welcome that my reserved room had ‘gone’ already. The 12-hour bus ride from Phuket was two hours and forty minutes behind schedule and they assumed I was a ‘no show’. ‘No problem, sir, there is another guesthouse near and tomorrow we give you a free breakfast.’
As I lay on my bed staring at the swishing ceiling fan I told myself, ‘No doubt about it. You’re back in the ruined city of Bangkok.’
Forty-odd years ago they filled in Bangkok’s canals in order to turn waterways into a grid system of roads. The Americans played a big part in this and it must have looked great watching progress from helicopters en route to Laos or Cambodia to fight secret wars related to the main event in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the Yanks failed again and the grid system led to the chaos that is Bangkok’s traffic. Plus, Bangkok was built on a swamp and subsidence based on weight of concrete poured is endemic. Roads constantly crack, potholes resemble canyons and abandoned buildings are still sinking.
After they had ruined the possibility of a workable road system, city planners caught an endemic disease. ‘Monstrous Building Syndrome’ (MBS) afflicted every architect, foreign or otherwise, and monstrous buildings went up everywhere. If it couldn’t be described as ‘monstrous’ it wasn’t going to get built. To make matters worse they’ve now connected the monstrous buildings by elevated highways. Built over the tops of jammed roads, slip roads provide access and egress but if you don’t have a motor vehicle, don’t expect to get there.
So I said to my mate, Nakhon, as we toured the city in a tuk-tuk driven by an illegal Burmese refugee that he’d found living in a filled in canal tunnel, “It’s as if you Thais believe that only buildings, elevated highways, plus buying and selling cars and houses are the only things that pay. What about infrastructure to match development?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Affordable public housing?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Health, safety and hygiene?”
“They don’t pay.”
“Pedestrian precincts, places where cars are banned?”
“Only inside shops and shopping malls. Pavements don’t pay, either. Take the one I crawl along every day...”
“Hang on. It’s as if you’re saying, if we farangs want improvements, let us and other foreign investors pay.”
“Now you’re talking.”
To me, the only noticeable improvement has been in Mass Rapid Transport (MRT). Tourists interested in the seedier side of Bangkok smile broadly when they learn that even though these MRT systems are limited in scope, the planners have actually managed to link them up with Bangkok’s three biggest red-light districts. Now that’s pragmatism at it’s very best.
The MRT systems do not go to and from city airports, or to the main railway stations, or to three out of four bus terminals. Try getting to bus terminal Mo Chit 2 with luggage. The elevated railway (Skytrain) goes to Mo Chit 1 station but to get to Mo Chit 2 you either walk about a kilometre across a park, or take a damn taxi.
They may never link up with the new International airport. There are too many powerful vested interests (taxi-mafia?) involved. Guidebooks inform would-be tourists that a train service to the inner city should have been in place by 2008. Some say it will become operable later this year. Nobody should bet on it. But should the Skytrain happen to be going your way it is an air-conditioned pleasure to use.
The downside to it is where they’ve built it. It runs over the top of some of the busiest roads in the city and creates what can only be described as tunnels from hell. Made of concrete, the structure’s base forms a roof over the roads and traps traffic noise and CO2 fumes, which exaggerates the already stifling heat. I suspect that CO2 and noise levels in the tunnels are harmful, which might be why an increasing number of city-dwellers and traffic police wear face masks.
Bangkok is a failed city. Visit it out of curiosity, if you must, but don’t linger because you’ll only serve to make it worse. Oh! It’s just been reported that there are an estimated 400,000 stray dogs in Bangkok and that cases of rabies are on the increase.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Pug-Ugly 1: The Man from Nakhon Nowhere
He’s crawling towards me. Not so much crawling as slithering like a slovenly slug trying to make its way back into a Spanish onion patch. He’s moving so slowly it’s scarcely definable. It must take years to master the technique. But this guy has been at it for years and he’s turned it into fine art.
It’s a hot day so the pavement must be packing 32 degrees C. of heat. He has to be attracting ants, but not cockroaches or rats. Here in Bangkok, rats and cockroaches, ever present and the world’s fastest improving species, are so spoiled for choice they don’t even try to bite lumps out of unwashed human beings crawling along pavements.
With the rim of his plastic begging beaker clamped between his teeth he’s pug-ugly, not a pretty site even to an old admirer like me. Though he’s not as filthy as the matt-black man of Mumbai – see a previous blog – you wouldn’t invite him to tea. Well, not until you’d soaked him in a tub you didn’t intend to use again; scraped him with a sharp, wallpaper removing tool and had him disinfected with Agent Orange.
I recognise him instantly. “Nakhon Shakhon Straphon,” I cry (he was named after his fabled birthplace), “what in the name of an abandoned iconic image from Thailand’s North East are you doing begging on the streets of Bangkok?” The last time I saw him he was working a market in Ubon Rachathani while I was discovering the Emerald Triangle for posterity. He’s impressed that I remember him.
Without spilling a single baht from the beaker he gently rolls over and over until he’s close to the edge of the pavement. “Take the weight off your old legs,” he advises and extols me to sit with my feet in the gutter. As this is Ploenchit Road in downtown Bangkok and jammed to buggery with six lanes of traffic that the authorities shelter from the sun with a Skytrain, I decline. Plus 99% of Bangkok gutter space is occupied by tens of thousands of two-wheelers, and a good place to lose your toes. Is this his intent?
Bending down I pat him on his left arm, the one that doesn’t sport a malformed stump, and invite him to tell me where it started to go wrong. He knows exactly when he began suffering for his art.
“I was five years old when my dad decided that I was the one who would become afflicted with amputations. He was a retired agriculturalist and depression about the old country – we’re originally from Laos - turned him into a rum and amphetamine man. We always needed extra money. My uncle was forced to pawn our last buffalo to pay off debt collectors and we were desperate. He held me down while dad chopped off my lower arm. He did a damn fine job; clean as a whistle and I didn’t feel a thing until I regained consciousness. I remember it throbbing.
“I worked as a one-armed child beggar until I was eight. I was a good-looking kid with a very sad face. Mum used to sit with me in her arms just outside the bus station. For three years we did all right. Then, well, I suppose I lost my poor, innocent, deformed, suffering child-appeal and not enough baht dropped into her cup. We went home with it empty one night and dad lost his rag. This time he chopped off both my feet. Unfortunately he got carried away and I nearly lost my right leg up to my knee. But he'd put us back on track.” He pulled up his ragged trouser leg to show me. He had not exaggerated.
“So why Bangkok?” I asked. “It must have been nicer relaxing on the banks of, say, the Mun River in Ubon” (where we first met) “on your day off.”
“Er, yes it must have been. But as I got older things started to change in Thailand. I found out, for instance, that the government had created the Middle Class; that they were greedy, prone to achieve elite status, yet still had guilty consciences. Well, people like that only come along once in a begging lifetime.
“There was none of their ilk in Ubon so I travelled the Asian Highway looking for them. Eventually I hit the Burmese border at Mae Sot. It’s bad up there, by the way. Fleeing Karen tribesmen; battered and blood stained Burmese monks and poverty-stricken idealists trying to bring down the Burmese junta, all trying to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrath of the Burmese army. Our politician-businessmen don’t help. They suspect that activists have information about illegal dealings with the Burmese authorities; about felling the few remaining hardwood trees and gem trading on behalf of the Thai army, for instance, plus the drugs.
“But there was no money about. Most people up there are worse off than me. So in my quest to find our elusive Middle Class I headed south. Bingo! They’re all here in Bangkok.”
“And here you are. How’s it going, Nakhon?”
“Really well. Take this Bangkok road. It’s not paved with gold but these pavements are a bonus. Pothole free and lovely to crawl along, they’re especially made for tourists visiting the shopping malls. When they see me they can’t believe their eyes. They think they’re back in India and usually cough up. But my theory was right and I get most of my money from the Thai Middle Class. Stuck in traffic jams for the weekend they hop out of their SUVs and throw their change into my beaker. It makes them feel much better about themselves. To my way of thinking I’m involved in a form of social work, which just happens to be very profitable.
“In order to make merit I expanded and now have a syndicate of crippled beggars. We’re a bit like your Protestants used to be. It’s all about the work ethic. We beg from dawn to about nine at night and our turnover runs into thousands of baht per day. Now that my folks have drunk themselves to death, 60% of all revenue is mine. I pay a tuk-tuk driver working the same shift to drop me off and pick we up and, if he has time, he brings me a bowl of fried rice with pork, garlic and Holy Basil. He’s religious and becoming Middle Class. He thinks this charity work-stuff helps him to make merit – you know about ‘merit’, the Buddhist thing?” I nodded, “By this time next year he’ll be doing it for free.
“Each morning I drop off an envelope at the local cop-shop and they never bother me or any other member of my syndicate. Got it sorted.” With that he gives me the famous Thai smile. If he had all his teeth it would look great set against his blackened and scabrous face. “Guess what? I’ve opened a bank account. Saving money at last. But I could use, I mean employ, more cripples.” As I edge further away from the gutter I say,
“Well done, Khun (Mr) Nakhon! What are you going to do with your new-found wealth? Buy some titanium prosthetic legs?”
“Not likely. I’m Middle Class now and can’t go back. I’ve got an iPhone, a flat-screen plasma telly in my hut and I’m saving for a Range Rover.” He sighs. “You may not understand this but solidarity with the syndicate is important. I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Will your Range Rover have tinted windows?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car without tinted windows. As soon as I take delivery I’ll drive straight to Nakhon Nowhere to prove to my old chums what a great country we Thais have created.”
Even though it’s against all my principles I drop a few baht in his cup before heading for the nearest bar.
It’s a hot day so the pavement must be packing 32 degrees C. of heat. He has to be attracting ants, but not cockroaches or rats. Here in Bangkok, rats and cockroaches, ever present and the world’s fastest improving species, are so spoiled for choice they don’t even try to bite lumps out of unwashed human beings crawling along pavements.
With the rim of his plastic begging beaker clamped between his teeth he’s pug-ugly, not a pretty site even to an old admirer like me. Though he’s not as filthy as the matt-black man of Mumbai – see a previous blog – you wouldn’t invite him to tea. Well, not until you’d soaked him in a tub you didn’t intend to use again; scraped him with a sharp, wallpaper removing tool and had him disinfected with Agent Orange.
I recognise him instantly. “Nakhon Shakhon Straphon,” I cry (he was named after his fabled birthplace), “what in the name of an abandoned iconic image from Thailand’s North East are you doing begging on the streets of Bangkok?” The last time I saw him he was working a market in Ubon Rachathani while I was discovering the Emerald Triangle for posterity. He’s impressed that I remember him.
Without spilling a single baht from the beaker he gently rolls over and over until he’s close to the edge of the pavement. “Take the weight off your old legs,” he advises and extols me to sit with my feet in the gutter. As this is Ploenchit Road in downtown Bangkok and jammed to buggery with six lanes of traffic that the authorities shelter from the sun with a Skytrain, I decline. Plus 99% of Bangkok gutter space is occupied by tens of thousands of two-wheelers, and a good place to lose your toes. Is this his intent?
Bending down I pat him on his left arm, the one that doesn’t sport a malformed stump, and invite him to tell me where it started to go wrong. He knows exactly when he began suffering for his art.
“I was five years old when my dad decided that I was the one who would become afflicted with amputations. He was a retired agriculturalist and depression about the old country – we’re originally from Laos - turned him into a rum and amphetamine man. We always needed extra money. My uncle was forced to pawn our last buffalo to pay off debt collectors and we were desperate. He held me down while dad chopped off my lower arm. He did a damn fine job; clean as a whistle and I didn’t feel a thing until I regained consciousness. I remember it throbbing.
“I worked as a one-armed child beggar until I was eight. I was a good-looking kid with a very sad face. Mum used to sit with me in her arms just outside the bus station. For three years we did all right. Then, well, I suppose I lost my poor, innocent, deformed, suffering child-appeal and not enough baht dropped into her cup. We went home with it empty one night and dad lost his rag. This time he chopped off both my feet. Unfortunately he got carried away and I nearly lost my right leg up to my knee. But he'd put us back on track.” He pulled up his ragged trouser leg to show me. He had not exaggerated.
“So why Bangkok?” I asked. “It must have been nicer relaxing on the banks of, say, the Mun River in Ubon” (where we first met) “on your day off.”
“Er, yes it must have been. But as I got older things started to change in Thailand. I found out, for instance, that the government had created the Middle Class; that they were greedy, prone to achieve elite status, yet still had guilty consciences. Well, people like that only come along once in a begging lifetime.
“There was none of their ilk in Ubon so I travelled the Asian Highway looking for them. Eventually I hit the Burmese border at Mae Sot. It’s bad up there, by the way. Fleeing Karen tribesmen; battered and blood stained Burmese monks and poverty-stricken idealists trying to bring down the Burmese junta, all trying to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrath of the Burmese army. Our politician-businessmen don’t help. They suspect that activists have information about illegal dealings with the Burmese authorities; about felling the few remaining hardwood trees and gem trading on behalf of the Thai army, for instance, plus the drugs.
“But there was no money about. Most people up there are worse off than me. So in my quest to find our elusive Middle Class I headed south. Bingo! They’re all here in Bangkok.”
“And here you are. How’s it going, Nakhon?”
“Really well. Take this Bangkok road. It’s not paved with gold but these pavements are a bonus. Pothole free and lovely to crawl along, they’re especially made for tourists visiting the shopping malls. When they see me they can’t believe their eyes. They think they’re back in India and usually cough up. But my theory was right and I get most of my money from the Thai Middle Class. Stuck in traffic jams for the weekend they hop out of their SUVs and throw their change into my beaker. It makes them feel much better about themselves. To my way of thinking I’m involved in a form of social work, which just happens to be very profitable.
“In order to make merit I expanded and now have a syndicate of crippled beggars. We’re a bit like your Protestants used to be. It’s all about the work ethic. We beg from dawn to about nine at night and our turnover runs into thousands of baht per day. Now that my folks have drunk themselves to death, 60% of all revenue is mine. I pay a tuk-tuk driver working the same shift to drop me off and pick we up and, if he has time, he brings me a bowl of fried rice with pork, garlic and Holy Basil. He’s religious and becoming Middle Class. He thinks this charity work-stuff helps him to make merit – you know about ‘merit’, the Buddhist thing?” I nodded, “By this time next year he’ll be doing it for free.
“Each morning I drop off an envelope at the local cop-shop and they never bother me or any other member of my syndicate. Got it sorted.” With that he gives me the famous Thai smile. If he had all his teeth it would look great set against his blackened and scabrous face. “Guess what? I’ve opened a bank account. Saving money at last. But I could use, I mean employ, more cripples.” As I edge further away from the gutter I say,
“Well done, Khun (Mr) Nakhon! What are you going to do with your new-found wealth? Buy some titanium prosthetic legs?”
“Not likely. I’m Middle Class now and can’t go back. I’ve got an iPhone, a flat-screen plasma telly in my hut and I’m saving for a Range Rover.” He sighs. “You may not understand this but solidarity with the syndicate is important. I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Will your Range Rover have tinted windows?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car without tinted windows. As soon as I take delivery I’ll drive straight to Nakhon Nowhere to prove to my old chums what a great country we Thais have created.”
Even though it’s against all my principles I drop a few baht in his cup before heading for the nearest bar.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Nothing could be finer...
“…than to be (on a beach) in Kata Yai-na in the mor-or-or-ning.” The words in the real song refer to the twin States of Carolina and rather like the way a Texan lady-friend used to massage shit into sh-i-i-et, it’s nice way of doubling the syllable content. And why not? It’s a free country.
But I’m not in America. I’m on the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand and Kata Yai is my nearest beach. Although it has a reputation for sustaining a freewheeling business culture Thailand isn’t quite such a free country. Take, for example the 5th of December 2009, the King of Thailand’s 82nd birthday, a time to celebrate. TV images focused on Bangkok, a sea of unpolluted patriotism. Love and support for His Majesty is genuine and far-reaching: as were restrictions on what everybody else should be, or not be, doing.
One thing we holidaying foreigners on Phuket weren’t doing was raising a glass to toast His Majesty’s long life and to wish him better health than he has enjoyed recently. Millions of thirsty tourists were left wondering how a royal birthday could thwart a Right Royal Thirst-day. The restrictions affected the sale of alcohol and many tourists were shocked to find that the convivial watering hole they’d just discovered was shuttered up, as much in the dark as they themselves. Some may have noted that the restrictions resembled western Puritanism in its nay-nay days of yester-yore.
I walked to an outside bar near where I’m staying, a bar where conviviality is plentiful. In the gloom sat three waitresses eating and chatting at the table nearest the road. Instead of the usual smiles and shouts of welcome one rose slowly. ‘Cannot serve beer. It is our King’s birthday,’ she said. ‘Very sorry.’ Seeing tears rolling down my cheeks she cocked her head to one side and asked, ‘You think Thais are crazy?’ ‘Not crazy,’ I blubbed, ‘but some of us foreigners think birthdays should be celebrated with a drink or two. Never mind. Let’s drink to the King tomorrow,’ and I walked home to begin a sleepless night.
I suspect this mark of respect for His Majesty has a negative effect on the micro-economy, the bit of that millions of Thais depend on. The reward for working at the sharp end of Thailand’s service sector ranges from small to abysmal and on the 5th of December many wouldn’t have earned the extra money they often send home to their families. Meanwhile, the tourists wandered around baffled. Thailand’s tourist industry has taken a few knocks recently (there may be more to come) and in my opinion, restricting the sale of alcohol on the King’s birthday didn’t help.
Sometime the following afternoon I (finally) awoke. Feeling unusually well I took a high tea of muesli, coconut flavoured yogurt and a sweet Thai banana. Then I went to the northern tip of Kata’s crescent-shaped beach, Kata Yai to paddle in the off-turquoise shallows - my very favourite leisure pastime – and that was when I reflected that in the twenty-odd years of visiting Thailand quite a few things have not yet changed for the better.
My apartment – in a new development – has regular power cuts and water-pressure glitches that turn the supply the colour of Mekong river mud. Decrepit diesel-powered delivery trucks make a constant racket and belch out fumes that rise up to my balcony. Tuk-tuk drivers encourage ambling tourists to jump aside for their own safety. Dogs that no one seems to own chase motorbikes randomly and howl through hot and lonely nights.
There’s no local bus service between beaches and places of interest and the public service from Kata to Phuket Town is unnecessarily exciting. These half-open sided cattle trucks – they are not buses - wouldn’t look out of place in Afghanistan. Driven by Kamikazi-type drivers with misplaced panache they struggle up steep hills and creak as they round twisty bends. Worse, the last truck is safely parked up before it gets dark. Apparently this situation won’t get any better until the ‘tuk-tuk Mafia’ give a proposed bus service their blessing. Don’t watch this space.
And so on, and that’s just the tip of the melting Thai iceberg. But it’s treated as minor stuff by most tourists here and I suppose it is as they sit on the beach, cold beer to hand, awaiting yet another magnificent sunset.
Something has changed: the tourists themselves. As Thailand’s developers follow the Spanish model by building dozens of up-market apartments and resort hotels without planning permission; ripping out and scarring delightfully wooded hills in the process without improving the infrastructure, they merely imitate western corporate venality that is wrapped in the bundle labelled ‘profitable progress’. So one can expect to encounter up-market tourists? No. They’re tucked-up – pun intended – in their up-market resorts paying whacky races prices to international corporations who profit from tax breaks and a plentiful supply of cheap labour.
Like Lehman Brothers, some will fail for the same greedy reasons, even as they encourage their (entrapped) guests to contribute absolutely zilch to the micro-economy. Give me a black flag…
Then there are the down-market tourists who, whenever they’re allowed to, support the micro-economy massively. Best exemplified by working-class heroes and heroines in shorts and singlets (as we used to call vests without sleeves) you encounter them on the ‘buses’. Or as they stumble along pulverised pavements or, when pavements suddenly disappear and they are forced onto scary, potholed roads in flip-flops. Sporting colourful tattoos I fear for them, for I am unsure that they know where they really tread.
(I also have a bad feeling about colourful tattoos. Before I’m passed on to the great massage parlour On High, they may be as commonplace as female genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, and twice as distasteful.)
You see, Thai governments come and go but they don’t change one iota. The latest may or may not be as corrupt or useless as some of the others, but it has a reputation for being weak, and weak governments create vacuums for powerful institutions to step into. This government spends a lot of time looking over its shoulder in fear, fear of the return of the last but one Prime Minster, a convicted corporate-type criminal who seems to have modelled himself on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. (He’s the pouting Mussolini-clone and as distasteful a model as you can copy.) Having created a vacuum by leaving the country the Thai-clone was ejected from office during the latest military coup. They’ve had 20-odd coups since the end of the World War II.
But it’s not just the government who are afraid of him. Many Thais fear that with help from super influential friends who they regard as enemies of Thailand, he will reinstall himself as pocket dictator. So the poor health of the King is of great concern. The succession may not go smoothly and Thailand may find itself in the middle of some sort of revolution.
All the baffled tourists on whom Thailand depends heavily will dislike this as much as they dislike disrupted flights because of closed airports, dry royal birthdays, pulverised pavements, scary roads and being ripped off and threatened by ‘tuk-tuk Mafias’. But, as ever, the upmarket tourists know what’s going on and none of this is a problem - for them. They don’t ‘do’ hazardous short journeys on pot-holed roads and they don’t get stuck in foreign airports. If, when or even before the sh-i-i-et hits the fan, they’ll be gone in puffs of jet-smoke: along with the speculators – sorry, investors – and despoilers - sorry, developers.
But the down-market tourists may not know what’s going on and when they realise it’s time to flee the scene they might find themselves paying to be ferried to airports by rapacious transport operatives escorted by tanks. Tanks? Why not? ‘They’ say that the Thai army – and institutions in Thailand don’t come any more powerful than the Thai army – are sure to have business interests in the transport sector, as do the police.
Upon arrival at one of Bangkok’s two international airports – one is surplus to requirements - and assuming at least one of them is open, they’ll be left to sweat it out in hot and crowded lounges as at least one airport suffers a prolonged power cut. Er, an international airport surplus to requirements? Surely not! Oh yes. The Thais might not be able to lay and maintain a moderately inexpensive pavement, nor provide a decent bus service between resorts and towns on a major tourist destination like Phuket, but they have no problem building spare and ruinously expensive international airports.
But what a country for both up and down-market tourists! The food is still great and even if the beer is sometimes more expensive than mock-Irish pubs in Paris, the choice of copy-brand products is as plentiful as ever, together with boxes of (generic?) Viagra sold alongside them. (No. I did not.) The seas are still turquoise, warmed by weather that’s as hot as a four bar electric fire. Now why am I here?
So Carolina, the song, came into my head and I substituted Kata Yai. As I sang I cocked my head to one side and heard a lonely old seadog start to howl. Obviously I’d gone a syllable too far. And shit might be shi-i-i-et but I definitely prefer Thailand to Texas.
But I’m not in America. I’m on the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand and Kata Yai is my nearest beach. Although it has a reputation for sustaining a freewheeling business culture Thailand isn’t quite such a free country. Take, for example the 5th of December 2009, the King of Thailand’s 82nd birthday, a time to celebrate. TV images focused on Bangkok, a sea of unpolluted patriotism. Love and support for His Majesty is genuine and far-reaching: as were restrictions on what everybody else should be, or not be, doing.
One thing we holidaying foreigners on Phuket weren’t doing was raising a glass to toast His Majesty’s long life and to wish him better health than he has enjoyed recently. Millions of thirsty tourists were left wondering how a royal birthday could thwart a Right Royal Thirst-day. The restrictions affected the sale of alcohol and many tourists were shocked to find that the convivial watering hole they’d just discovered was shuttered up, as much in the dark as they themselves. Some may have noted that the restrictions resembled western Puritanism in its nay-nay days of yester-yore.
I walked to an outside bar near where I’m staying, a bar where conviviality is plentiful. In the gloom sat three waitresses eating and chatting at the table nearest the road. Instead of the usual smiles and shouts of welcome one rose slowly. ‘Cannot serve beer. It is our King’s birthday,’ she said. ‘Very sorry.’ Seeing tears rolling down my cheeks she cocked her head to one side and asked, ‘You think Thais are crazy?’ ‘Not crazy,’ I blubbed, ‘but some of us foreigners think birthdays should be celebrated with a drink or two. Never mind. Let’s drink to the King tomorrow,’ and I walked home to begin a sleepless night.
I suspect this mark of respect for His Majesty has a negative effect on the micro-economy, the bit of that millions of Thais depend on. The reward for working at the sharp end of Thailand’s service sector ranges from small to abysmal and on the 5th of December many wouldn’t have earned the extra money they often send home to their families. Meanwhile, the tourists wandered around baffled. Thailand’s tourist industry has taken a few knocks recently (there may be more to come) and in my opinion, restricting the sale of alcohol on the King’s birthday didn’t help.
Sometime the following afternoon I (finally) awoke. Feeling unusually well I took a high tea of muesli, coconut flavoured yogurt and a sweet Thai banana. Then I went to the northern tip of Kata’s crescent-shaped beach, Kata Yai to paddle in the off-turquoise shallows - my very favourite leisure pastime – and that was when I reflected that in the twenty-odd years of visiting Thailand quite a few things have not yet changed for the better.
My apartment – in a new development – has regular power cuts and water-pressure glitches that turn the supply the colour of Mekong river mud. Decrepit diesel-powered delivery trucks make a constant racket and belch out fumes that rise up to my balcony. Tuk-tuk drivers encourage ambling tourists to jump aside for their own safety. Dogs that no one seems to own chase motorbikes randomly and howl through hot and lonely nights.
There’s no local bus service between beaches and places of interest and the public service from Kata to Phuket Town is unnecessarily exciting. These half-open sided cattle trucks – they are not buses - wouldn’t look out of place in Afghanistan. Driven by Kamikazi-type drivers with misplaced panache they struggle up steep hills and creak as they round twisty bends. Worse, the last truck is safely parked up before it gets dark. Apparently this situation won’t get any better until the ‘tuk-tuk Mafia’ give a proposed bus service their blessing. Don’t watch this space.
And so on, and that’s just the tip of the melting Thai iceberg. But it’s treated as minor stuff by most tourists here and I suppose it is as they sit on the beach, cold beer to hand, awaiting yet another magnificent sunset.
Something has changed: the tourists themselves. As Thailand’s developers follow the Spanish model by building dozens of up-market apartments and resort hotels without planning permission; ripping out and scarring delightfully wooded hills in the process without improving the infrastructure, they merely imitate western corporate venality that is wrapped in the bundle labelled ‘profitable progress’. So one can expect to encounter up-market tourists? No. They’re tucked-up – pun intended – in their up-market resorts paying whacky races prices to international corporations who profit from tax breaks and a plentiful supply of cheap labour.
Like Lehman Brothers, some will fail for the same greedy reasons, even as they encourage their (entrapped) guests to contribute absolutely zilch to the micro-economy. Give me a black flag…
Then there are the down-market tourists who, whenever they’re allowed to, support the micro-economy massively. Best exemplified by working-class heroes and heroines in shorts and singlets (as we used to call vests without sleeves) you encounter them on the ‘buses’. Or as they stumble along pulverised pavements or, when pavements suddenly disappear and they are forced onto scary, potholed roads in flip-flops. Sporting colourful tattoos I fear for them, for I am unsure that they know where they really tread.
(I also have a bad feeling about colourful tattoos. Before I’m passed on to the great massage parlour On High, they may be as commonplace as female genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, and twice as distasteful.)
You see, Thai governments come and go but they don’t change one iota. The latest may or may not be as corrupt or useless as some of the others, but it has a reputation for being weak, and weak governments create vacuums for powerful institutions to step into. This government spends a lot of time looking over its shoulder in fear, fear of the return of the last but one Prime Minster, a convicted corporate-type criminal who seems to have modelled himself on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. (He’s the pouting Mussolini-clone and as distasteful a model as you can copy.) Having created a vacuum by leaving the country the Thai-clone was ejected from office during the latest military coup. They’ve had 20-odd coups since the end of the World War II.
But it’s not just the government who are afraid of him. Many Thais fear that with help from super influential friends who they regard as enemies of Thailand, he will reinstall himself as pocket dictator. So the poor health of the King is of great concern. The succession may not go smoothly and Thailand may find itself in the middle of some sort of revolution.
All the baffled tourists on whom Thailand depends heavily will dislike this as much as they dislike disrupted flights because of closed airports, dry royal birthdays, pulverised pavements, scary roads and being ripped off and threatened by ‘tuk-tuk Mafias’. But, as ever, the upmarket tourists know what’s going on and none of this is a problem - for them. They don’t ‘do’ hazardous short journeys on pot-holed roads and they don’t get stuck in foreign airports. If, when or even before the sh-i-i-et hits the fan, they’ll be gone in puffs of jet-smoke: along with the speculators – sorry, investors – and despoilers - sorry, developers.
But the down-market tourists may not know what’s going on and when they realise it’s time to flee the scene they might find themselves paying to be ferried to airports by rapacious transport operatives escorted by tanks. Tanks? Why not? ‘They’ say that the Thai army – and institutions in Thailand don’t come any more powerful than the Thai army – are sure to have business interests in the transport sector, as do the police.
Upon arrival at one of Bangkok’s two international airports – one is surplus to requirements - and assuming at least one of them is open, they’ll be left to sweat it out in hot and crowded lounges as at least one airport suffers a prolonged power cut. Er, an international airport surplus to requirements? Surely not! Oh yes. The Thais might not be able to lay and maintain a moderately inexpensive pavement, nor provide a decent bus service between resorts and towns on a major tourist destination like Phuket, but they have no problem building spare and ruinously expensive international airports.
But what a country for both up and down-market tourists! The food is still great and even if the beer is sometimes more expensive than mock-Irish pubs in Paris, the choice of copy-brand products is as plentiful as ever, together with boxes of (generic?) Viagra sold alongside them. (No. I did not.) The seas are still turquoise, warmed by weather that’s as hot as a four bar electric fire. Now why am I here?
So Carolina, the song, came into my head and I substituted Kata Yai. As I sang I cocked my head to one side and heard a lonely old seadog start to howl. Obviously I’d gone a syllable too far. And shit might be shi-i-i-et but I definitely prefer Thailand to Texas.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Crash-Bang-kok and Curious Thais
Now I’m back in Thailand I’m reading up on stories that make news fun. But in this Land of Smiles there’s always one story to wipe grins off faces. One ‘minor’ headline stirred my memory bank. “Gas tank in city van explodes in flames.”
Basically a gas fuel tank in a passenger van exploded, destroying the van and damaging nearby shops. The driver told the police that the fire broke out while he was waiting for more passengers. A busybody passenger raised the alarm and they all tried to put out the blaze. But it spread quickly. Wisely they ran away before the explosion blew them to hell. No one was hurt, which cheered me, as did the fact that the Thais were still doing quality events and explosions associated with them.
I’ve spent time in Bangkok. Back in the 80’s I was romantic to a fault about the city, using words like ‘mystical’, ‘graceful’ and ‘serene’ to describe it, casually forgetting poverty, corruption, pollution, traffic and danger. As an oriental city, Bangkok is about as serene as a chainsaw hacking through corrugated iron.
Bangkok, of course, is no Kabul but my favourite story is about a rocket slamming into a city department store. Back awhile, an aggressive ex-soldier became involved in a dispute with the owners of the store. They did not see eye to eye about the location of an unregistered motorcycle taxi business. Both parties wanted to monopolize this lucrative venture but whereas the owners might have compromised, the ex-soldier stuck to his guns, so to speak. Not interested in a negotiated peace treaty and being an ex-infantryman he decided on a frontal assault.
So there you are buying a genuine Gucci bag for buttons when, from inside his jeep, the old warrior takes aim with his trusty rocket launcher. Bang! Thais are not easily frightened and I reckon that most would carry on shopping. On the other hand, you and the other tourists, forgetting that Bangkok is to traffic what paddy fields are to rice, split for the exit and dash out into the road. Splat!
Back to the rocket launcher: the police, realising that this guy was Rambo incarnate, called in military assets. Following classic search and destroy tactics they surrounded his apartment and demanded his surrender. During the ensuing gun battle – he counter-attacked with a grenade launcher – they nailed him with overwhelming firepower.
I love this country! I remember another interesting explosion. Either poverty or opportunism caused a hundred or so Thais to descend on a truck carrying dynamite soon after it left a city road and overturned. As it started to smoke the driver knew it was time to look for another job. But the Bangkokians continued to filch the cargo. In the ensuing blast more than one hundred died: too many body parts for complete accuracy.
Bangkok’s traffic is epitomised by the curious driving habits of ordinary citizens. Take Thai motor-bikers: a sociable breed who happily accommodate extended families on two-strokes. Passengers sit where they can, hanging onto the rider or any bit of the bike they can latch on to. Kids bestride handlebars, petrol tanks, or sit on mums’ or grannies’ knees holding baby brothers or sisters. How they gurgle!
Askance, if not horrified, you look: they smile. Here comes a truck! The driver’s driven non-stop from Chiang Mai and he’s gone to sleep. Time to look away before the impending image sears your brain.
Mobile caterers push wheelbarrows piled high with portable restaurants along city roads. Living life on the edge, some position their establishments near bus stops. Good positioning: bus stops are well used in Bangkok. Unwary tourists use them because they think that’s where buses stop. True, but bus stops also serve as winning posts for the daily bus races. Another headline highlighted the problem: “Man escaped death yesterday after he was hit by bus.”
The driver admitted that while racing to be first at the stop he swerved on to the pavement, crashed into a telephone booth, a power pole and then “bumped” into a potential passenger. Competition between bus companies is fierce. Red, blue and green buses hunt down passengers aggressively then race off. I’ve seen tourists dismount, stoop forward and, pope-like, kiss the ground in deliverance. Smiling Thais gently kick-box them out of the way so that they can take the best seats in the restaurant.
You can imagine the carnage when, as everybody sits eating duck and rice with diesel fumes, a brace of competing buses collide, mount the pavement and career through the tables. No? I can.
We had a portable restaurant near our office. Located in a narrow lane it was equipped with gas and kerosene-powered barbecue facilities, as in ‘Whoosh!’ We all partook of cheap and delicious grizzled chicken, pig, prawns, fragrant rice and fresh vegetables. An adjacent business supplied bottled gas for household and industrial use. They had a variety of delivery vehicles from trucks to motorcycles. The position of the restaurant made access a challenge. Diners obliged by picking up their tables to allow bigger trucks through - cheerfully.
Well, if you can’t face poverty, hardship, monsoon floods, tsunamis, military coups and general inconvenience cheerfully, you may as well become a monk. (Easily arranged.)
One morning I arrived by motorcycle taxi - not recommended for those of a nervous disposition – to find deposits of sand, gravel and huge concrete pipes. A wooden hut - deluxe living-quarters for a cheerful bunch of flat-nosed Thais from some impoverished North Eastern province - had been erected. Sewage was the name of their game. Using steel spikes, shovels and wicker baskets they carved through tarmac and anything else to cut through to the crap.
As the trench grew in proportion to the stench, life went on. The gasmen struggled; the portable restaurant sizzled; dedicated customers giggled, and some wore facemasks between courses.
I love stoicism. I can watch it all day. My wimpy-western concerns about health and safety had long gone. Or had they? Suddenly I realised we might all be in terrible danger. If the malodorous fumes were toxic, might they not also be inflammable? What would happen if a spike hit an electric cable? What if a spark made contact with a leaking gas bottle on the back of a motorbike, just as the barbecue in the portable restaurant was being encouraged with kerosene? Would there not be one hell of a bang?
I went back to Bangkok some years later to find that the lane in which I worked had gone. But there’d been no big bang. The pipes were the harbinger of a huge block of luxury flats. A billboard offered ‘exotic views of a mystical, graceful and serenely oriental city’.
That was when I realised that instead of writing fiction I should have been an advertising copywriter.
Basically a gas fuel tank in a passenger van exploded, destroying the van and damaging nearby shops. The driver told the police that the fire broke out while he was waiting for more passengers. A busybody passenger raised the alarm and they all tried to put out the blaze. But it spread quickly. Wisely they ran away before the explosion blew them to hell. No one was hurt, which cheered me, as did the fact that the Thais were still doing quality events and explosions associated with them.
I’ve spent time in Bangkok. Back in the 80’s I was romantic to a fault about the city, using words like ‘mystical’, ‘graceful’ and ‘serene’ to describe it, casually forgetting poverty, corruption, pollution, traffic and danger. As an oriental city, Bangkok is about as serene as a chainsaw hacking through corrugated iron.
Bangkok, of course, is no Kabul but my favourite story is about a rocket slamming into a city department store. Back awhile, an aggressive ex-soldier became involved in a dispute with the owners of the store. They did not see eye to eye about the location of an unregistered motorcycle taxi business. Both parties wanted to monopolize this lucrative venture but whereas the owners might have compromised, the ex-soldier stuck to his guns, so to speak. Not interested in a negotiated peace treaty and being an ex-infantryman he decided on a frontal assault.
So there you are buying a genuine Gucci bag for buttons when, from inside his jeep, the old warrior takes aim with his trusty rocket launcher. Bang! Thais are not easily frightened and I reckon that most would carry on shopping. On the other hand, you and the other tourists, forgetting that Bangkok is to traffic what paddy fields are to rice, split for the exit and dash out into the road. Splat!
Back to the rocket launcher: the police, realising that this guy was Rambo incarnate, called in military assets. Following classic search and destroy tactics they surrounded his apartment and demanded his surrender. During the ensuing gun battle – he counter-attacked with a grenade launcher – they nailed him with overwhelming firepower.
I love this country! I remember another interesting explosion. Either poverty or opportunism caused a hundred or so Thais to descend on a truck carrying dynamite soon after it left a city road and overturned. As it started to smoke the driver knew it was time to look for another job. But the Bangkokians continued to filch the cargo. In the ensuing blast more than one hundred died: too many body parts for complete accuracy.
Bangkok’s traffic is epitomised by the curious driving habits of ordinary citizens. Take Thai motor-bikers: a sociable breed who happily accommodate extended families on two-strokes. Passengers sit where they can, hanging onto the rider or any bit of the bike they can latch on to. Kids bestride handlebars, petrol tanks, or sit on mums’ or grannies’ knees holding baby brothers or sisters. How they gurgle!
Askance, if not horrified, you look: they smile. Here comes a truck! The driver’s driven non-stop from Chiang Mai and he’s gone to sleep. Time to look away before the impending image sears your brain.
Mobile caterers push wheelbarrows piled high with portable restaurants along city roads. Living life on the edge, some position their establishments near bus stops. Good positioning: bus stops are well used in Bangkok. Unwary tourists use them because they think that’s where buses stop. True, but bus stops also serve as winning posts for the daily bus races. Another headline highlighted the problem: “Man escaped death yesterday after he was hit by bus.”
The driver admitted that while racing to be first at the stop he swerved on to the pavement, crashed into a telephone booth, a power pole and then “bumped” into a potential passenger. Competition between bus companies is fierce. Red, blue and green buses hunt down passengers aggressively then race off. I’ve seen tourists dismount, stoop forward and, pope-like, kiss the ground in deliverance. Smiling Thais gently kick-box them out of the way so that they can take the best seats in the restaurant.
You can imagine the carnage when, as everybody sits eating duck and rice with diesel fumes, a brace of competing buses collide, mount the pavement and career through the tables. No? I can.
We had a portable restaurant near our office. Located in a narrow lane it was equipped with gas and kerosene-powered barbecue facilities, as in ‘Whoosh!’ We all partook of cheap and delicious grizzled chicken, pig, prawns, fragrant rice and fresh vegetables. An adjacent business supplied bottled gas for household and industrial use. They had a variety of delivery vehicles from trucks to motorcycles. The position of the restaurant made access a challenge. Diners obliged by picking up their tables to allow bigger trucks through - cheerfully.
Well, if you can’t face poverty, hardship, monsoon floods, tsunamis, military coups and general inconvenience cheerfully, you may as well become a monk. (Easily arranged.)
One morning I arrived by motorcycle taxi - not recommended for those of a nervous disposition – to find deposits of sand, gravel and huge concrete pipes. A wooden hut - deluxe living-quarters for a cheerful bunch of flat-nosed Thais from some impoverished North Eastern province - had been erected. Sewage was the name of their game. Using steel spikes, shovels and wicker baskets they carved through tarmac and anything else to cut through to the crap.
As the trench grew in proportion to the stench, life went on. The gasmen struggled; the portable restaurant sizzled; dedicated customers giggled, and some wore facemasks between courses.
I love stoicism. I can watch it all day. My wimpy-western concerns about health and safety had long gone. Or had they? Suddenly I realised we might all be in terrible danger. If the malodorous fumes were toxic, might they not also be inflammable? What would happen if a spike hit an electric cable? What if a spark made contact with a leaking gas bottle on the back of a motorbike, just as the barbecue in the portable restaurant was being encouraged with kerosene? Would there not be one hell of a bang?
I went back to Bangkok some years later to find that the lane in which I worked had gone. But there’d been no big bang. The pipes were the harbinger of a huge block of luxury flats. A billboard offered ‘exotic views of a mystical, graceful and serenely oriental city’.
That was when I realised that instead of writing fiction I should have been an advertising copywriter.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Decisions
It's true what they say about decisions; they come back to haunt us. One of the worst decisions my uncle Owen ever made was allowing me use of his green, 150cc Lambretta. Not as iconic as ‘Vespa scooter of Il Dolce Vita fame’ but quicker, he used it to go on fishing trips and to take himself to Stamford Bridge to watch ‘Chopper Harris’ do Chelsea’s dirty work.
Nagged by his wife, my sainted aunty Mavis, who took pity on me for the wretchedness of my commute from Wandsworth to Fenchurch Street in the heart of the City of London, and the fact that I was newly married and struggling, he handed it over reluctantly. When I handed it back it was a wreck. He didn’t talk to me for several years, only forgiving me as he lay on what he thought was his deathbed. After fifty-odd years of rolling his own he’d been advised to stop smoking cigarettes. Thinking the decision to stop would kill him, it nearly did.
I remember my first accident well. Steaming round a corner in Victoria during the morning rush hour I was surprised to see a bowler-hatted man in hesitation mode. I didn’t hesitate to hit the brakes but there was not enough space for the front of the Lambretta not to clobber him amidships. Down he went. Off I fell. I was even more surprised when he sprang to his feet and sprinted to the nearest pavement. How a black cab didn’t get him or I we’ll both never know. Safe on the pavement he raised his funny hat, smiled, mouthed ‘Sorry about that’ and sped off to catch his tube. Picking up the dented and scratched Lambretta I stopped cursing and drove warily on.
My best ever accident was in the evening rush hour on Wandsworth High Street. Near the town hall I was duelling with two car drivers who seemed inclined to make a sandwich out of me. As they had a weight advantage I had to brake and it was wet. Fortunately they’d both passed me when the skid maximised. Down I went. My scattergun effect on the surrounding, speeding traffic would have looked comical from the air, but God bless those London drivers. As I threaded my way through them I received nary a scratch.
The Lambretta was not so lucky. Sliding along the road and spinning like a top did it no good whatsoever. But do you know, I ventured out into the middle of the maelstrom, retrieved it, wheeled it to the side of the road and it started first time. Thinking no more about it and ignoring the slightly buckled front wheel it got me home.
The worst decision I’ve made for a while is one I made last Thursday. I decided to rent a studio in Kata, Phuket and the deal includes a new set of wheels. The connection with events all those years ago is ironic rather than iconic. The bike is a streamlined 150 cc scooter, model Mio Amore, but the name was coined in Tokyo. Yamaha make great bikes but isn’t it sad that they have to resort to lifting names that are synonymous with Italian-made two-wheelers? Well I think it is.
But it is a bike. It goes like ordure (shit) off a sharecropper’s clod buster, a sharp spade the Irish call a shovel. Nought to a hundred in about nine seconds but we’re only talking kilometres. Hills? Yes it does hills. And so far as my use of it is concerned, this is a good thing.
Do you know Kata/Karon Beach? It’s a sort of paradise. They say that James Bond rested-up here between scary trips to spiky islands where a man brandished a golden gun. Kata, Karon and neighbouring Patong can only be accessed by scary roads or by boat. To get in and out, hairy hill roads are involved, roads that look to have similar gradients to the A39, the trunk road between Devon and Somerset. The A39 features Porlock Hill and like that monster these Thai roads feature unusually explicit signs. In Thai and English they shout ‘Danger!’ ‘Slow down!’ and for God’s sake ‘Use low gear!’ What they keep to themselves is probably more important.
At this time of year, Phuket and elsewhere is subject to the prevailing north-easterly monsoon. Like typhoons blow, monsoons rain. Rain? Dear Lord, and how. But it seems to be official policy to ignore it, to act as if torrential rain was just one of those things. The fact that it can bucket down several centimetres as you cross a road seems to be no big deal. And probably isn’t. But, my dears, in my opinion the one sign that I would have liked to see, hear or feel before I biked across from Karon to Patong the other night was ‘Don’t go tonight. Change your mind. Tomorrow will be fine’.
Dear Lord, the journey of just seven kilometres was unbelievable. Dressed in light trousers and a blue, short-sleeved shirt I was as physically and mentally unprepared for danger and hardship as I have ever been in my entire life. The moment I felt the first drops bang into my face, splat onto my glasses and ping off my helmet I should have turned around and fled the scene. But no. I decided to blast on with the rest of the mainly four-wheeled traffic. Spray? I’ll say.
The downhill bits were the worst. Tarmac spread on steep slopes obeys the law of gravity and eventually slides downhill. Cracks form and widen, and I didn’t see one of them! Bang, crash, wobble, wobble, fright after fright. One thought I remember well. ‘Did I pass wind involuntarily just then or was it something worse?’
On a dry day at the bottom of the last hill before Patong there is a water feature. It has all the attributes of a permanently burst water main. On a dry day one should approach this feature with caution. On a black and super wet night one should only approach it in a military hovercraft.
Having reneged on a decision to never again drive a two-wheeler, my friends may want to know if, upon my arrival in Patong this year, whether I made a splash or not. I’m not telling until the insurance assessor has submitted his report and if my claim for a new, blue, short-sleeved shirt is approved.
Nagged by his wife, my sainted aunty Mavis, who took pity on me for the wretchedness of my commute from Wandsworth to Fenchurch Street in the heart of the City of London, and the fact that I was newly married and struggling, he handed it over reluctantly. When I handed it back it was a wreck. He didn’t talk to me for several years, only forgiving me as he lay on what he thought was his deathbed. After fifty-odd years of rolling his own he’d been advised to stop smoking cigarettes. Thinking the decision to stop would kill him, it nearly did.
I remember my first accident well. Steaming round a corner in Victoria during the morning rush hour I was surprised to see a bowler-hatted man in hesitation mode. I didn’t hesitate to hit the brakes but there was not enough space for the front of the Lambretta not to clobber him amidships. Down he went. Off I fell. I was even more surprised when he sprang to his feet and sprinted to the nearest pavement. How a black cab didn’t get him or I we’ll both never know. Safe on the pavement he raised his funny hat, smiled, mouthed ‘Sorry about that’ and sped off to catch his tube. Picking up the dented and scratched Lambretta I stopped cursing and drove warily on.
My best ever accident was in the evening rush hour on Wandsworth High Street. Near the town hall I was duelling with two car drivers who seemed inclined to make a sandwich out of me. As they had a weight advantage I had to brake and it was wet. Fortunately they’d both passed me when the skid maximised. Down I went. My scattergun effect on the surrounding, speeding traffic would have looked comical from the air, but God bless those London drivers. As I threaded my way through them I received nary a scratch.
The Lambretta was not so lucky. Sliding along the road and spinning like a top did it no good whatsoever. But do you know, I ventured out into the middle of the maelstrom, retrieved it, wheeled it to the side of the road and it started first time. Thinking no more about it and ignoring the slightly buckled front wheel it got me home.
The worst decision I’ve made for a while is one I made last Thursday. I decided to rent a studio in Kata, Phuket and the deal includes a new set of wheels. The connection with events all those years ago is ironic rather than iconic. The bike is a streamlined 150 cc scooter, model Mio Amore, but the name was coined in Tokyo. Yamaha make great bikes but isn’t it sad that they have to resort to lifting names that are synonymous with Italian-made two-wheelers? Well I think it is.
But it is a bike. It goes like ordure (shit) off a sharecropper’s clod buster, a sharp spade the Irish call a shovel. Nought to a hundred in about nine seconds but we’re only talking kilometres. Hills? Yes it does hills. And so far as my use of it is concerned, this is a good thing.
Do you know Kata/Karon Beach? It’s a sort of paradise. They say that James Bond rested-up here between scary trips to spiky islands where a man brandished a golden gun. Kata, Karon and neighbouring Patong can only be accessed by scary roads or by boat. To get in and out, hairy hill roads are involved, roads that look to have similar gradients to the A39, the trunk road between Devon and Somerset. The A39 features Porlock Hill and like that monster these Thai roads feature unusually explicit signs. In Thai and English they shout ‘Danger!’ ‘Slow down!’ and for God’s sake ‘Use low gear!’ What they keep to themselves is probably more important.
At this time of year, Phuket and elsewhere is subject to the prevailing north-easterly monsoon. Like typhoons blow, monsoons rain. Rain? Dear Lord, and how. But it seems to be official policy to ignore it, to act as if torrential rain was just one of those things. The fact that it can bucket down several centimetres as you cross a road seems to be no big deal. And probably isn’t. But, my dears, in my opinion the one sign that I would have liked to see, hear or feel before I biked across from Karon to Patong the other night was ‘Don’t go tonight. Change your mind. Tomorrow will be fine’.
Dear Lord, the journey of just seven kilometres was unbelievable. Dressed in light trousers and a blue, short-sleeved shirt I was as physically and mentally unprepared for danger and hardship as I have ever been in my entire life. The moment I felt the first drops bang into my face, splat onto my glasses and ping off my helmet I should have turned around and fled the scene. But no. I decided to blast on with the rest of the mainly four-wheeled traffic. Spray? I’ll say.
The downhill bits were the worst. Tarmac spread on steep slopes obeys the law of gravity and eventually slides downhill. Cracks form and widen, and I didn’t see one of them! Bang, crash, wobble, wobble, fright after fright. One thought I remember well. ‘Did I pass wind involuntarily just then or was it something worse?’
On a dry day at the bottom of the last hill before Patong there is a water feature. It has all the attributes of a permanently burst water main. On a dry day one should approach this feature with caution. On a black and super wet night one should only approach it in a military hovercraft.
Having reneged on a decision to never again drive a two-wheeler, my friends may want to know if, upon my arrival in Patong this year, whether I made a splash or not. I’m not telling until the insurance assessor has submitted his report and if my claim for a new, blue, short-sleeved shirt is approved.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Bankers!
Banks became important to us as individuals when companies demanded that ‘we’, their employees, needed bank accounts. Putting cash in a brown, window-envelope complete with payslip had become too much trouble for them. As bankers looked at the advent of millions of deposits from captive customers they knew they’d cracked it.
From then on we had to check with our banks that our money was in our accounts. Invariably it wasn’t. We went to the accounts department and remonstrated with the bean counters. ‘My kids have to eat, so what’s the story?’ They held up their hands and cheerfully blamed the banks. They were right. It became standard practice for bankers to exploit our money for as long as they can get away with it. That’s what bankers do.
Workers did receive an envelope. Inside was a meaningless document called ‘Payslip’. Originally a simple record of money earned, the slip had morphed into a something resembling a research paper by a demented nuclear physicist. To this day, most workers do not understand what, how or why they are being rewarded and robbed at the same time.
Concerned that my ubiquitous UK high street bank did not have my best interest at heart – they failed to inform me that my savings interest rate had been lowered three times - I changed to a bank owned by Spaniards. It was no big coup on their part. I’d used all my redundancy money to buy a motor-caravan, which I then sold at a huge loss. Fearful I would be impoverished before my desultory pension kicked in, I sought a new haven for the remainder of my nest egg. Nest egg? A predatory cuckoo’s misplaced chick would have heaved it straight out of the nest with ridiculous ease.
Nothing went right. (I blame the Spaniards.) They not only duplicated the new account, they fouled up my address details. Stuff sent to my Dutch address never arrived. I made phone calls to their Customer Service department located, not in Santander, but in Pokhara, a small town in central Nepal. Wherever! An unreconstructed Maoist and I - he claimed to be an advisor – misunderstood each other. Stalemate prevailed and nothing changed until I went to the UK and kicked an underpaid English teller’s ass.
The Credit Crunch played into their hands. To my relief and their credit the Spaniards had not been sucked into the sub-prime, derivative-beribative vortex. My northern Spanish bankers were not dopey Northern rockers or nasty Lehman brethren. Off the government’s controlling hook they blew their own trumpets mightily. They’re so chuffed with themselves they’ve decided to ditch the iconic UK banks they own, electing to go public about a Spanish heritage.
If their UK banks had worthy reputations this might be a mistake. But they don’t. Indebted Britons won’t give a damn that Spaniards now control the money they don’t have. Elizabeth the First’s Protestant (and Jewish) moneylenders must be turning in their graves.
To add insult to injury caused by painfully low rates for the common man – that’s the rest of us - the Bank of England’s interest management policy serves the bankers well. They have just announced that their unworthy UK subsidiaries have made lots of money: for them. Profits are sizzling like paella in a pan. In the first nine months of 2009 they made 1.3 billion euros. Now that’s a nest egg!
Realising that the announcement sounded like gloating, when nearly 4 million heavily indebted Britons might be unemployed by the end of the same year, they had the brass neck to add a ‘oops!’ proviso: “The UK economy is still fragile.” What colossal chutzpah! Fragile? I’ll say it’s fragile. Spanish or otherwise, these people are Bankers with a capital B.
I’m off on my travels and will be forced to use their wretched debit card at ATM machines in exotic locations. I’m getting too old to carry cash around and fight whoever would relieve me of it. Did you know that banks sometimes block cards for security reasons, especially when you’re abroad and want to use them? They do. It happened to me, and guess what? You have to phone a Maoist in Pokhara and beg him to unblock it.
He’ll hum and haa, check his list and ask embarrassing questions. The one about my long dead mother’s maiden name tends to catch me out. Despite him calling you ‘sir’ you want to crawl down the line and kill him with his own Kalashnikov. Why? Because you’re paying for the call!
To avoid this blood-sucking trap I sent an email asking them to make sure that my debit card was not blocked. Two days later they replied: not ‘they’ but their automatic, standard letter reply system. Did it understand? No it did not. It merely told me how expensive it was to use their card in foreign ATM machines and that my daily limit was insufficient to feed and accommodate a cuckoo’s well-muscled chick. Next time I’m in the UK…
Bankers! Akira the Don got it right when he advised us to ‘put our fingers in the corners of our mouth and say, “Wxxkers”’.
From then on we had to check with our banks that our money was in our accounts. Invariably it wasn’t. We went to the accounts department and remonstrated with the bean counters. ‘My kids have to eat, so what’s the story?’ They held up their hands and cheerfully blamed the banks. They were right. It became standard practice for bankers to exploit our money for as long as they can get away with it. That’s what bankers do.
Workers did receive an envelope. Inside was a meaningless document called ‘Payslip’. Originally a simple record of money earned, the slip had morphed into a something resembling a research paper by a demented nuclear physicist. To this day, most workers do not understand what, how or why they are being rewarded and robbed at the same time.
Concerned that my ubiquitous UK high street bank did not have my best interest at heart – they failed to inform me that my savings interest rate had been lowered three times - I changed to a bank owned by Spaniards. It was no big coup on their part. I’d used all my redundancy money to buy a motor-caravan, which I then sold at a huge loss. Fearful I would be impoverished before my desultory pension kicked in, I sought a new haven for the remainder of my nest egg. Nest egg? A predatory cuckoo’s misplaced chick would have heaved it straight out of the nest with ridiculous ease.
Nothing went right. (I blame the Spaniards.) They not only duplicated the new account, they fouled up my address details. Stuff sent to my Dutch address never arrived. I made phone calls to their Customer Service department located, not in Santander, but in Pokhara, a small town in central Nepal. Wherever! An unreconstructed Maoist and I - he claimed to be an advisor – misunderstood each other. Stalemate prevailed and nothing changed until I went to the UK and kicked an underpaid English teller’s ass.
The Credit Crunch played into their hands. To my relief and their credit the Spaniards had not been sucked into the sub-prime, derivative-beribative vortex. My northern Spanish bankers were not dopey Northern rockers or nasty Lehman brethren. Off the government’s controlling hook they blew their own trumpets mightily. They’re so chuffed with themselves they’ve decided to ditch the iconic UK banks they own, electing to go public about a Spanish heritage.
If their UK banks had worthy reputations this might be a mistake. But they don’t. Indebted Britons won’t give a damn that Spaniards now control the money they don’t have. Elizabeth the First’s Protestant (and Jewish) moneylenders must be turning in their graves.
To add insult to injury caused by painfully low rates for the common man – that’s the rest of us - the Bank of England’s interest management policy serves the bankers well. They have just announced that their unworthy UK subsidiaries have made lots of money: for them. Profits are sizzling like paella in a pan. In the first nine months of 2009 they made 1.3 billion euros. Now that’s a nest egg!
Realising that the announcement sounded like gloating, when nearly 4 million heavily indebted Britons might be unemployed by the end of the same year, they had the brass neck to add a ‘oops!’ proviso: “The UK economy is still fragile.” What colossal chutzpah! Fragile? I’ll say it’s fragile. Spanish or otherwise, these people are Bankers with a capital B.
I’m off on my travels and will be forced to use their wretched debit card at ATM machines in exotic locations. I’m getting too old to carry cash around and fight whoever would relieve me of it. Did you know that banks sometimes block cards for security reasons, especially when you’re abroad and want to use them? They do. It happened to me, and guess what? You have to phone a Maoist in Pokhara and beg him to unblock it.
He’ll hum and haa, check his list and ask embarrassing questions. The one about my long dead mother’s maiden name tends to catch me out. Despite him calling you ‘sir’ you want to crawl down the line and kill him with his own Kalashnikov. Why? Because you’re paying for the call!
To avoid this blood-sucking trap I sent an email asking them to make sure that my debit card was not blocked. Two days later they replied: not ‘they’ but their automatic, standard letter reply system. Did it understand? No it did not. It merely told me how expensive it was to use their card in foreign ATM machines and that my daily limit was insufficient to feed and accommodate a cuckoo’s well-muscled chick. Next time I’m in the UK…
Bankers! Akira the Don got it right when he advised us to ‘put our fingers in the corners of our mouth and say, “Wxxkers”’.
Monday, 26 October 2009
Calling Abdul
There’s a new political force afoot in the UK. Made up of likely lads from the ranks of football supporters and far right activists, they say they’re going to defend Brits from marauding Muslims. I need to call Abdul to see how he feels about this development.
Abdul’s still pissed off with the British National Party. And Abdul’s been around. Bin on a further education course at a chanting centre in Wazzakstan. He knows the score: knows it’s okay to criticise Christianity. As do the atheists. Safe in the knowledge that cheek-turning Christians won’t come gunning for them, some make money doing precisely that. I sometimes wish that Satanists were Christians. They wouldn’t stand for it. But we all know where we stand with Abdul and his version of Islam.
I’ve written a book about organised religion and rumour has it that I once kicked a vicar. Rubbish. I’m superstitious enough not to call Buddha a fat bas…Not that that would be a problem if I did it in front of a Buddhist. I imagine he or she would smile, safe in the knowledge that enlightenment would never enter my head no matter how long I sat cross-legged under a boa tree. But when Abdul’s around I know it’s best to rein in careless profanities directed at the Prophet, Mohammed, ‘Peace be upon him’.
Abdul has a nostalgic yen for a super-state called ‘Caliphate’. As did the Mahdi of Sudan. Remember him? He had a quarrel with General Gordon about Caliphate, which was settled with a spear. Not completely settled. Nothing much changes in Sudan.
There are about 1.5 billion Muslims and Abdul’s phalanx is lined up for a quarrel. Pretty quick to take offence over literature, art, cartoons, those deemed to insult the Prophet, ‘Peace’ etcetera, and they have no problem recruiting decapitation and stabbing specialists. Some are quite willing to obliterate non-believers by way of self-detonated bombs. Carried by the wives of close friends and directed by wealthy Bin-patrons, the easily led are cajoled into blowing offenders (and themselves) into tiny pieces. Not just offenders but bystanders. It’s indiscriminate, of course. Believers, fellow Muslims, get whacked, too.
Before killing themselves, Abdul’s bombers get to star on MeeeTube. ‘Look at meee, mamma. I’m to be martyred, so peace be upon meee. Next time you hear from meee I’ll have seduced forty virgins. Am I cool?’ Er, no, actually. You’re just a murdering little wank..Git. But I needed to better understand Abdul’s perspective and gave him a call. He’s the only bomb maker I know.
“Abdul! Not blown yourself up then? Abdul, I’ve just had a thought. Did you know that we Westerners were once in thrall to religious nutters? Yes. We used to chant like hell. We put our holy men on pedestals and did what they told us. A pope told our crusading ancestors to invade the Middle East and chop up your ancestors whilst under the protection of his blood red cross... Aah, you knew about that.
“Well Abdul, that sort of collective stupidity didn’t even last two thousand years. Like Black Death it was a sort of debilitating disease. And Abdul, what would you say if I told you that a lot of us are cured? We’ve cast off our religious yokes; the chanting has stopped and we don’t do what they tell us. So tell me, Abdul. When are you guys going to do the same?
“Never?” I paused to let him spit, curse and rant. “I see. Not until we get our crusaders out of Afghanistan and Iraq and start giving a toss about what happens in Palestine. Abdul, we didn’t like it when we went into Iraq to support the Septics, er, Americans. Millions protested. Yes. We knew it was an oil grab. We hate Big Oil...
“What do you mean you don’t believe me? Oh. You’ve been watching Jeremy Clarkson. Even you, Abdul? You think he’ll become Prime Minister of Great Britain then, to feed his habit, he’ll come after your oil. Abdul, the man’s a joke. His programme is an anachronism…Okay. That’s true. A lot of people love it and Brits are stupid enough to vote for him. Good point. But the reason I rang was to ask you if you’ve heard about our new political movement? Yes. Football supporters turned politicians. Oh. You have.
“And how. Steady on Abdul It’s just a joke. No. Not remotely funny. The thing is, Abdul, we’ve got freedom of speech over here and…Abdul?”
But he’d gone.
Heard about what the old German on the pedestal in the Vatican has been up to? Concerned that Anglican vicars can’t live with the idea of ordained gays and women becoming bishops, he’s extended the treacherous Catholic hand of friendship. After four hundred years. Strewth. This is a big deal.
‘Why not hop into your panzer – I meant your SUV. Join me here in Rome,’ is his sales pitch. ‘Weather’s great; food marvellous; communion wine from Chiantishire and you can chant all day. You’ll love it.’
The Grand Wizzer of Wazzakstan, whatever, homo-hater and confirmed misogynist, is thinking about getting in on the Anglican recruitment act. Observers expect his pitch to the vicars will be much more honest. ‘Listen. So you’re against progress and change? Peace be upon you! Come here, to the epicentre of our religion. Yes it’s hot but we’ll show you what good old-fashioned medievalism is all about. You’ll do well, if you pass the test…’
Don’t ask.
Abdul’s still pissed off with the British National Party. And Abdul’s been around. Bin on a further education course at a chanting centre in Wazzakstan. He knows the score: knows it’s okay to criticise Christianity. As do the atheists. Safe in the knowledge that cheek-turning Christians won’t come gunning for them, some make money doing precisely that. I sometimes wish that Satanists were Christians. They wouldn’t stand for it. But we all know where we stand with Abdul and his version of Islam.
I’ve written a book about organised religion and rumour has it that I once kicked a vicar. Rubbish. I’m superstitious enough not to call Buddha a fat bas…Not that that would be a problem if I did it in front of a Buddhist. I imagine he or she would smile, safe in the knowledge that enlightenment would never enter my head no matter how long I sat cross-legged under a boa tree. But when Abdul’s around I know it’s best to rein in careless profanities directed at the Prophet, Mohammed, ‘Peace be upon him’.
Abdul has a nostalgic yen for a super-state called ‘Caliphate’. As did the Mahdi of Sudan. Remember him? He had a quarrel with General Gordon about Caliphate, which was settled with a spear. Not completely settled. Nothing much changes in Sudan.
There are about 1.5 billion Muslims and Abdul’s phalanx is lined up for a quarrel. Pretty quick to take offence over literature, art, cartoons, those deemed to insult the Prophet, ‘Peace’ etcetera, and they have no problem recruiting decapitation and stabbing specialists. Some are quite willing to obliterate non-believers by way of self-detonated bombs. Carried by the wives of close friends and directed by wealthy Bin-patrons, the easily led are cajoled into blowing offenders (and themselves) into tiny pieces. Not just offenders but bystanders. It’s indiscriminate, of course. Believers, fellow Muslims, get whacked, too.
Before killing themselves, Abdul’s bombers get to star on MeeeTube. ‘Look at meee, mamma. I’m to be martyred, so peace be upon meee. Next time you hear from meee I’ll have seduced forty virgins. Am I cool?’ Er, no, actually. You’re just a murdering little wank..Git. But I needed to better understand Abdul’s perspective and gave him a call. He’s the only bomb maker I know.
“Abdul! Not blown yourself up then? Abdul, I’ve just had a thought. Did you know that we Westerners were once in thrall to religious nutters? Yes. We used to chant like hell. We put our holy men on pedestals and did what they told us. A pope told our crusading ancestors to invade the Middle East and chop up your ancestors whilst under the protection of his blood red cross... Aah, you knew about that.
“Well Abdul, that sort of collective stupidity didn’t even last two thousand years. Like Black Death it was a sort of debilitating disease. And Abdul, what would you say if I told you that a lot of us are cured? We’ve cast off our religious yokes; the chanting has stopped and we don’t do what they tell us. So tell me, Abdul. When are you guys going to do the same?
“Never?” I paused to let him spit, curse and rant. “I see. Not until we get our crusaders out of Afghanistan and Iraq and start giving a toss about what happens in Palestine. Abdul, we didn’t like it when we went into Iraq to support the Septics, er, Americans. Millions protested. Yes. We knew it was an oil grab. We hate Big Oil...
“What do you mean you don’t believe me? Oh. You’ve been watching Jeremy Clarkson. Even you, Abdul? You think he’ll become Prime Minister of Great Britain then, to feed his habit, he’ll come after your oil. Abdul, the man’s a joke. His programme is an anachronism…Okay. That’s true. A lot of people love it and Brits are stupid enough to vote for him. Good point. But the reason I rang was to ask you if you’ve heard about our new political movement? Yes. Football supporters turned politicians. Oh. You have.
“And how. Steady on Abdul It’s just a joke. No. Not remotely funny. The thing is, Abdul, we’ve got freedom of speech over here and…Abdul?”
But he’d gone.
Heard about what the old German on the pedestal in the Vatican has been up to? Concerned that Anglican vicars can’t live with the idea of ordained gays and women becoming bishops, he’s extended the treacherous Catholic hand of friendship. After four hundred years. Strewth. This is a big deal.
‘Why not hop into your panzer – I meant your SUV. Join me here in Rome,’ is his sales pitch. ‘Weather’s great; food marvellous; communion wine from Chiantishire and you can chant all day. You’ll love it.’
The Grand Wizzer of Wazzakstan, whatever, homo-hater and confirmed misogynist, is thinking about getting in on the Anglican recruitment act. Observers expect his pitch to the vicars will be much more honest. ‘Listen. So you’re against progress and change? Peace be upon you! Come here, to the epicentre of our religion. Yes it’s hot but we’ll show you what good old-fashioned medievalism is all about. You’ll do well, if you pass the test…’
Don’t ask.
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