Leaving Thailand

Leaving Thailand? Well, to be honest our passports are plastered with Thai stamps because this is the third time we’ve left Thailand on this trip – visiting Laos and the UK in between. But as we’re now moving on south through Malaysia to Singapore before flying to Australia, this will be the last time we leave Thailand this year!

It’s been fun – fragmented, but fun! Great massages, beautiful islands, tropical fish, golden Wats… Thailand is a surprisingly varied country, with more to it than just the idyllic islands seen on the tourist brochures, or the backpacker havens you’d read about as the haunts of teenagers and aging hippies. But anyway, now we’ll hop over the southernmost states (as there’s a reasonable chance of getting blown up or kidnapped by local terrorists there) to land in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malysia.

Anyway, the now obligatory good versus scary list for Thailand follows:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Massages. No dodgy ‘massagee?? Soooo beautiful!’ middle of the night calls as in China. This is the real thing. Thais are seriously into massages, and seem to have them for any excuse from a bad back to a cold to a sore fingernail! Saying that, they do make you feel better more effectively than the average doctor. Very relaxing, very cheap… what more could you ask for? You even get to like your feet being viciously attacked by a stick during a foot massage after a few goes – although the first time it feels more like the masseur is trying to skewer your sole or at the very least dislocate a toe or two!

2. Islands. Or should I say the coral reefs around the islands? Either way, they are beautiful, and teem with life (be it monkeys or little fishes – or big fat sting rays). Oh, and the beaches are pretty too if you like that sort of thing 

3. Wats. These spiky temples usually have enough gold paint splashed around to cover the Eiffel tower. Or they coat everything with mirror glass (again, mostly gold) for a particularly shiny look. These were good in Laos too.

4. Italian food. Strange as it may seem, we’ve had some truly excellent Italian food in Thailand. Pizzas from stone ovens with crisp, thin bases, al-dente pasta – great stuff. Even the red wine to go along with it is nice! Not what you’d expect in Asia.

And some scary things…

1. Food. This is a one-off entry. Grossly unfair to the majority of Thai eateries with their very lovely noodely things. But I still going to stick it in on the basis that it left me traumatised! When we were in Patong beach, we made the mistake of having lunch in our hotel one day. We’d passed it over for food before – I don’t know why, somehow I had bad vibes about the restaurant even though the hotel was perfectly OK. We made simple sandwich orders – Gary wanted a BLT, I thought I’d try ham and cheese – and when Gary’s turned up it was fresh and tasty. Mine took a bit longer to come, but when it did it also looked great. So I took a nice big bite – tasty! Until I looked down to see a green caterpillar emerging from the other half of the sarney and legging it away across my plate! Eeeeugh! I handed it swiftly back, and an apologetic Thai bloke took the offending plate away before giving us a refund. A few seconds later we heard a loud female scream coming from the kitchen – I think the bug traumatised the chef too! I mean, I don’t mind caterpillars, but the thought of the bite I’d taken and the thing wriggling… lets just day it put me off food for the rest of the day. And in some parts of Thailand of course insects are a delicacy! But then they do deep fry them first to stop the wriggling…

2. Tuk tuks. And Taxis. Now these drivers are as bad as the auto-rickshaw guys in Delhi – they seem to try anything to rip you off as much as possible. They have an impressive range of scams in their repertoire, or even if you get an honest one it’s hard to get quoted less than twice a reasonable price for your journey. Worst of all you can hardly move 5m without being hassled by them… very tiring and boring. But actually riding them can be fun if it’s not raining!

3. Sugar Daddies. And their prey I suppose. Although with these weird couples of a young pretty Thai girl and an old, invariably fat, bald and sun-burned man you never can really tell who is the predator and who is the prey. We’ve seen them for a few weeks now though, and still can’t get used to them – or the sleazy pick-up bars where they seem to meet.

4. Ping pong!

London

Tropical, exotic, mystical London. Heart of the Orient. Just down the road form Bangkok, eh? And one of the first destinations that would cross anyone’s lips when planning a great journey across Asia…

Or maybe not. So much for taking a year out of the UK travelling – giving ourselves space to recover from the traumas of the NHS by exploring vibrant and exotic countries. No, the one destination written firmly on our list for August (on pain of disembowelment if we didn’t turn up) was Essex. Cheers Amit and Karyn! Couldn’t you two wait until next year to get married?

Oh well, so we nipped onto a delightfully quaint series of Gulf Air Planes along with what felt like half of the population of Thailand – they really pack-em-in to make sure you can NOT move even your little toe during the flight (a new fuel economy idea maybe?). And wizzed back across the globe to the lovely sunny UK. And actually while we were home it WAS lovely and sunny for a change. Weird!

Actually we wouldn’t have missed Amit’s wedding for the world. It was a fantastic day – a really relaxed and touching civil ceremony followed by a great reception with one of the best desert courses I’ve ever seen. I was far more nervous than Amit beforehand as he’d asked me to give a short reading – but even that seemed to go OK! Although I don’t think I was as nervous as the newly-weds just before their first dance, but they pulled that off brilliantly. Oh, and it was fantastic to see loads of people from College that I hadn’t met for years. Amit, Karyn – if you read this – thank you again for inviting us, have a wonderful honeymoon, and we hope you enjoy your wedding presents fully!

As for the rest of the time we had in the UK, well, we thought we’d relax, have a break, a holiday from our year-long holiday… Yeah right. It was a bit, erm, busy. In a nice way. We did lots of things, caught up with lots of people, and even did a spot of paid work believe it or not. An entire of year of dosing is proving more difficult to achieve than you’d think. But suffice to say that by the end of our ‘break’ we were absolutely shattered, physically drained, and needed desperately to get back to Thailand to get some rest and a good massaggee!