December 20, 2014
39 fingers in Thailand: Craaap!!!
Although my relationship with Robin was developing nicely into the long-awaited hapless-sidekick-makes-me-look-good scenario, unfortunately my Laos visa expired on the 20th and I had to leave the country. On the plus side there was another country just across the river and so I did not have to go very far to find another location where I could sit and feel sorry for myself until Robin could return to me. He could not enter Thailand until the 24th, because he had a flight out of Bangkok on the 22nd of January and would only be granted 30 days in the country. So I planned to spend our four days of forced separation in Nong Khai, the town on the Thai side of the border, waiting to be reunited.
It was an easy cycle to the Friendship Bridge, twenty kilometres from the centre of Vientiane, and then a couple of very easy border posts. The Laos side took two minutes and, although there was a form to fill in on the Thai side, and a bit of queuing, there were no customs checks and it was all very simple to get my free 30-day entry stamp. The bridge itself was interesting because I had to switch sides at the beginning of it and cycle on the left side of the road, as is the way of things in Thailand. It was very easy to do this, because the two lanes of the road completely separated and crossed one another in a four-way crossing. There were signs saying 'drive on left on bridge' and at the crossing a sign saying 'go straight on' and others saying 'no right turn,' 'no left turn,' 'go straight on.' It was very easy, you would have to be a complete idiot to turn right and try and keep cycling on the right side of the road. So it wasn't that much of a surprise to find out a few days later that Robin had done just that.
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The first thing that I saw in Thailand was this:
The second thing that I saw in Thailand was this:
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I was clearly in a much more developed country now, something that was confirmed by the big home-hardware stores I came to next along the big highway, and the drinking water fountain I sipped from once I'd located the modern riverfront promenade. But I wasn't here to sightsee, I was here to lock myself in a room and feel sorry for myself, and so I quickly set about looking for a guesthouse.
I had read about a guesthouse called 'Mutmee' that was run by an Englishman on the riverfront and so I thought I'd go there, and cycled along the river looking for it. Little did I know that I was going the wrong way and finally, when I was almost out of the town the other way, I realised this and turned down a side-street to double back. By chance there was a guesthouse on this street and I stopped to speak to a man in the garden, who offered me a room for 300 baht (six pounds.) The room looked okay, and the man had the very easy-to-remember name of 'A' and was very friendly, but I'd heard there were rooms at Mutmee for 200 baht, and so I didn't stay.
Eventually I did find the Mutmee guesthouse. It had a big garden on the riverfront that was filled with foreigners but it had an air of being just a little bit too hippy-ish. You know what I mean. Sarongs and kindles and yoga mats. Eventually I managed to speak to the owner, Julian, who I'd been emailing regarding booking one of the cheaper rooms. Alas they were all taken. So I thought I might go somewhere else for a couple of days and then come back here, but it turned out that I couldn't book a room for a few days time, just in case the people that were in them now decided that they wanted to stay.
"So, I can't book a room for Monday, just in case the person who has booked it on Sunday decides that they don't want to leave?" I asked.
"We like to give priority to the people that are already here" came the reply, in the annoyingly calm and tranquil voice of a man that has done too much meditating.
"Okay. So effectively you have no booking system?!"
"Well, we're not really in the business of kicking people out."
"Fine, I mean, fine. I'll go somewhere else then. That's just not how accommodation usually works." I was getting a little worked up by now. A calm middle-aged woman was looking at me and shaking her head and tutting at me in a way that suggested I should do more deep-breathing exercises and have a little more tantric sex in my life. I thought it time to leave.
I gave up on the riverfront and tried the next parallel road in, a busy street humming with life and motorcycles, and I soon came across the Sawasdee guesthouse, a traditional wooden building of considerable character. I went inside and found that they had a room for 200 baht and I very happily checked in for two nights. There didn't seem to be any other guests and my first impression was that it would be a good place for me to relax and feel sorry for myself. Unfortunately my first impression proved to be typically unreliable and I endured one of the worst nights sleep possible. The front of the building was wooden, as were all of the interior walls, except for the back one of my room, which was concrete. This had the effect that all of the noise from the street and all of the other rooms was not only transferred to my room but also echoed and amplified by the concrete wall so that my room became a deafening cacophony of noise. All of which might have been just about bearable had not most of the other guests that arrived been making that horrendous hacking-up-flem noise that had been so prevalent in China. It was horrific.
The next morning I met the owner of the establishment, an ailing Chinese man, and realised that this was a Chinese guesthouse, filled with Chinese guests. I fled as quickly as I could.
Having failed so miserably with the English guesthouse and the Chinese guesthouse I finally came to my senses, and returned to the Thai guesthouse. I made my way back there, but 'A' was nowhere to be seen, and the place looked quiet and empty. But then two cars pulled up and a man and many laughing women piled out and greeted me happily and went into the guesthouse. The man spoke to me, explaining that he owned the guesthouse with his brother (A) and that I was very welcome to stay, and they all invited me to come in for coffee. 'A's brother was disappointingly not called 'B', he was called Thanarphong Puttichaiyanant, although he very thoughtfully shortened this to 'Om' for the convenience of everyone.
Om worked in Bangkok airport in traffic control, and these women were his colleagues, and they had all come here for some sort of mini-vacation. Because of their job they could all speak some English, and were all very friendly and smiley and fun. 'A' returned from somewhere, and told me he also worked as an air-steward with some of the girls, and that usually none of them were here, so I was lucky to meet them. I told them all about my trip and, seeing a Thai flag on the guesthouse I spotted a unique opportunity to get my country-photo in. Certainly there were 39 fingers available to me here, but could we make it work?
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The girls and Om all left soon after because they had to return to Bangkok to work, but A stuck around for the night. He took me out to a local bar that belonged to a woman that might have been his sister (I soon found out that Thai people refer to each other as brother and sister, even when they are not remotely related, and so finding out actual family ties was sometimes difficult.) The bar was completely empty, except for a man that might have been A's sister's boyfriend, or perhaps the barman, or the guitar player, or all three, I was never quite sure. In order to try and improve my understanding of who people were I asked A to teach me some Thai as we sat sipping our cokes. At first I thought Thai was going to be very easy, as a lot of the words were similar to Lao. For example, instead of 'sabadee', they used 'sawadee'. But then A dropped the bombshell.
"You have to say 'crap' at the end of every sentence," he said.
"Sorry, what?" Was he having me on?
"You say crap, to make it polite."
"Really? To make it polite? It has the opposite effect in English."
"Sawadee craap!!!" he almost screamed the last word.
"And you do this at the end of every sentence?"
"Yes. Thank-you is 'Kop-kun-craap!'"
This strange linguistic custom had the effect of making me sound like I was suffering from an extreme form of tourettes whenever I tried to speak Thai, but, you know, I have a very immature mind, so I was okay with that.
20/12/14 - 33km (13km in Thailand)
21/12/14 - 5km
Today's ride: 18 km (11 miles)
Total: 34,969 km (21,716 miles)
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