Our Kid Comes to Town

[Guest]

One of the duties (and may I say a pleasurable one) that you are expected to undertake as a 12-year resident of Bangkok is to act as a tour guide when members of your family hit town. Filling a five to six day itinerary in Bangkok has never been difficult for me. I can do it without breaking sweat. There’s just so much to see isn’t there? – The Grand Palace, Wat Arun, Patpong, Lumpini Park, etc, etc. The problem seems to be that five days just isn’t enough. Things become infinitely more difficult however when your guests have already been to Bangkok and you’ve exhausted your sightseeing repertoire. On this occasion the guests were my brother Paul and my sister-in-law Yvonne, a yuppie couple in their late twenties who last came here just over 5 years ago. They were on their way to Australia to attend a wedding in Sydney and had booked a five-day stopover in Thailand. Phil once again donned the tour leader’s hat and racked his brains on how best to fill five days for a couple who go naked shark-wrestling in the Maldives as merely a Spring break.

To be honest things got off to a rather bad start. Their Quantas flight from London was due in at 4.20pm and Liverpool versus Man United, live on ESPN, kicked off at 6.30 – those were really the only logistics that mattered. A casual glance at the arrivals board in terminal one told me that the flight had been delayed by half an hour. I did various mathematical equations inside my head and decided that if I grabbed them both by the hand the moment they cleared customs and we sprinted full pelt through the arrivals door, we might just make downtown for the kick off. Welcome to Bangkok.

The flight duly lands at 4.50pm and I take a position in the meeting point area and try to make myself taller than everyone else. “What if they come through the arrivals door and turn right?” the girlfriend chipped in (yes, she was there as well) “That’s a point” I said “Maybe I should wait where the tour operators are and you stay here” With that I walked around to the opposite meeting point so the girlfriend and I were sentries guarding both exits. Isn’t it amazing the panic that sets in at an airport? My watch is by now showing 5.30pm and still no sign of our kid and his charming wife. I’ve got mental images of him lying spread-eagled across a table with a rubber glove up his arse and all the while passengers are pushing past me with heavily laden luggage trolleys – obviously passengers from England. You instinctively know this by the way couples are already arguing with each other and that every male passenger looks tired and pale and is carrying a copy of the Daily Express. Enter the girlfriend who has legged it from the meeting point on the opposite side to inform me that the Quantas flight landed in Terminal 2 almost an hour ago. “Oh fucking bollocks” I cried in a particularly eloquent moment. There then began a mad dash to terminal 2 where our kid and his charming wife were wandering around in that sort of dazed state that people adopt when they’ve been hit over the head with a mallet. Traditional hugs and kisses over with, Paul gets down to the serious business of enquiring about the kick off time and possible team line-ups – a man with his priorities right. This draws looks of utter disdain from both the ladies who think it would be far more appropriate to go off and see some classical Thai dancing. The airport clock shows almost 6pm. We’re going to be lucky to catch the second half at this rate.

Taking the car to the airport meant that we at least didn’t have mess around with the airport taxi service. After taking an age to locate the car in the car park and missing the Sukhumwit turn-off on the expressway, taking an airport taxi suddenly seemed like a fabulous idea. We eventually pulled up at the Amari Boulevard on Soi 5, their home for the next five nights, at just gone 7pm and admitted that all hope of seeing a ball kicked at Anfield had disappeared.

After the rather tiresome ritual of checking into a fancy hotel – no, the reservation is for Williams with an S. Yes, we really don’t need you to show us how the air-conditioning works, and you gave him HOW MUCH for a tip! We headed out for a stroll along tourist Sukhumwit. Now the Amari Boulevard might well be a fine hotel, but it suffers the ultimate nightmare of being located in soi 5. Is there a street in Bangkok that I loathe more than this one? Taxi drivers stand there menacingly picking their teeth. Tuk-tuk drivers wave massage parlour leaflets right under your nose. Supermarket delivery vans rev up, back up and lurch forward. Russian prostitutes stand around discussing their evening schedules. And all this against a backdrop of overflowing garbage bins and rats the size of fucking otters. The distance from the Amari Boulevard front door to the mouth of the soi and relative safety is a distance of some 30 meters but by God, you suffer with every step.

Lower Sukhumwit was a mass of noise and neon lights that caused our kid’s mouth to just fall open. He described it as an ‘attack on all your senses’ but I was too busy trying to tell the tailor’s shop touts that a new Armani suit was not high on my agenda. As if the sweat that was pouring off me was not enough. I needed to shed layers - not add to them with a nice mustard sports jacket and a camel crombie. It suddenly dawned on me that the football match between Man U and Liverpool had finished and here we were – two fanatical United supporters – without a clue. At that point we were walking past Big Boy pool hall and I noticed that the TVs were showing the sports channel. I ran up the small flight of stairs and tapped a young barmaid on the shoulder. She didn’t have a clue about any game involving the two biggest clubs in the world but suggested that I ask the customer sitting at the bar – a man in his early fifties who was in the middle of getting his crotch rubbed by a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. I politely enquired as to if he knew the score of the big match. A smile spread across his face and he held two arms aloft as though he’d just won the world cup. The young girl continued to massage his manhood. “3-1 Liverpool, Owen 2 goals, beautiful!” he shouted in an accent I took to be German. “Thanks” I muttered and left him to his hand shandy. He was having a far better day than I was and I relayed the bad news to our kid.

We walked Sukhumwit as far as Robinsons on soi 19 and then crossed over the road to amble down the other side. Leeds against Spurs was now being shown on ESPN and all we wanted was a nice bar in which to enjoy a hearty Thai meal and a wide screen TV tuned into the match. I knew that soi Nana would probably come up trumps. Left into soi Nana past the throbbing Nana Plaza and yet more tuk-tuk drivers and then inevitably deeper and deeper down the soi than I’ve ever gone before. Jools English pub looked as uninviting as it always does and Warblers, a bar I’ve heard rave reviews about, was almost empty. Well, not entirely empty. There was a group of four of the meanest looking musicians I’ve ever seen tuning up their instruments in readiness for an evening of appalling Eagles covers. Either that or they planned to take hostages. No thanks, let’s walk on a bit further.

The twinkly lights started to thin out and it became apparent that we were faced with choosing a bar, any bar, or walking back to the main road. We had to settle for a hi-tech pool lounge called the Brunswick, which boasts in big neon letters ‘ Full-size pool tables’ and ‘ice-cold beer’. It didn’t say anything about ‘The Most Miserable Girls in Thailand’ but it certainly had those as well.

It was one of those awful places where you enter and everyone looks at you just because a group of four strangers – two obvious tourists, a Thai lady and a bloke wearing a ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression have to decide on where to sit. Preferably a place where they’re not going to get the butt of a pool cue rammed into their throat but where they can still see the TV. This proved rather difficult because to actually be out of the range of pool cues and to be able to see the TV required you to have a 10-foot neck with eyes on the end of two antennae. We ordered four ice-cold beers and a bite to eat.

Our kid, being a bit of a pool hustler on the quiet, challenged me to a game or two. The thing I hate about pool bars is that if you’re not a regular, you invariably don’t know the rotation system for playing. Do you have to put a twenty baht note on the cushion? Do you write your name on a whiteboard? Or do you open a bottle of beer with your teeth and walk around the table feeling the cloth as everyone around falls silent in complete awe? I will freely admit that I did none of these things and stood there like an uninvited guest at a Hindu wedding reception. What I really wanted was one of the bargirls to come up to me, show me where the cues are, and lead me gently by the hand to the Brunswick’s finest table where she would rack up the balls and piss off. The girls in this place just ignored me. Eventually, I tossed gentlemanly conduct aside and marched right up to the most miserable looking girl in the place. “I want to play pool!” She smiled sweetly, showed me where the cues were, racked the balls and then pissed off. My brother beat me 3-2. Arsenal got thumped at home to Charlton. Time for bed.

[Guest]

Classic BP! HaHaHaHa. Please don't stop. Keep them comin!

[Guest]

Monday morning dawned bright and golden. Well I guess it probably did but it was 11.30 by the time I got to the Amari hotel on Our Kid’s first full day in Bangers. The new arrivals had awoken refreshed after a 7-hour sleep and had repaired to the 24-hour restaurant in Foodland for breakfast (I had marked their cards the night before). Set yourself up for the day with a 39 baht American breakfast at Foodland – just you, Yvonne and a thousand Russian prostitutes. He thought I was joking. I had to laugh when I pictured him stabbing at his solitary bacon rasher with Itora Bolokov on one side and Onya Bakyabitch on the other, both winking at him whenever Yvonne was momentarily distracted. A wink that says ‘ditch your wife and the three of us can party’ I think he had already made his mind up to run the gauntlet of the taxi touts and try out Starbucks the following day.

To the Skytrain pronto – a feature of Bangkok sadly lacking on our Kid’s previous visit and a feature I felt proud to show off to them. When they asked me how to operate the automated ticket system it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t have the first bloody clue. I have always bought stored value tickets and now here I was as helpless as the Thais when the skytrain first opened – standing in front of the ticket machine like a blithering idiot while Thais as young as 13 waltzed past me and completed the ticket-buying transaction with a veritable flick of the wrist. Still, I was not about to admit defeat and we were soon on our way to Siam Square with the sister-in-law’s face wearing the kind of expression that only comes from the promise of a morning’s shopping at Mahboonkrong. She’d come for some heavy-duty handbag shopping to add to the sixty handbags that she’d already got at home. Just enough time for me to get a bagel and cream cheese on board at the brilliant Au Bon Pain in the Discovery Center. (Great food folks but please work out a system where the customer doesn’t have to order their food and then stand around by the preparation area like a naughty schoolboy that’s about to get caned) and then on to Mahboonkrong shopping center and its five floors of fun (or however many floors it has). There comes a time when you are bartering for handbags, purses, watches and blouses when you realize that you are working up a sweat trying to get fifty pence off the price. Yes, I know it’s an Asian tradition but is it really worth it I wonder? Regardless of that, the sister-in-law was now the proud owner of a Gucci Handbag and a few other odds and ends – she was very, very happy.

When you’re looking for a traditional Thai restaurant in the heart of Siam Square and you want to impress the pants off your guests – Baan Khun Por (my father’s house) fits the bill very nicely. Two stories of highly polished teakwood, interesting objet d’arts and a very commendable level of service. We ate and drank lavishly and the bill barely broke a 1000 baht. I was disappointed though that we couldn’t get mangoes and sticky rice for dessert and had to settle for the ubiquitous fresh fruit platter which always seems to consist of water-melon, pineapple and papaya – a combination which is strangely as exotic for my guests as it is deadly dull for me. How odd it is to watch two people go weak at the knees over a slice of fresh pineapple. By the way, the restaurant has now changed its name to Baan Khun Mae (My Mother’s House) which strikes me as a tad unimaginative but the food is still excellent.

The afternoon was spent wandering around the labyrinth of independent retailers that make up Siam Square and after picking up the girlfriend at her office (the company would only allow her 2 days off work – miserable bastards) I left the evening’s choice of restaurant to a democratic vote. Three people voted for Japanese and I voted for anything but Japanese. So there we all were in Kyoto restaurant on Rama 9 tucking into fishes heads, and a heap of other things that the chef forgot to cook and discussing our plans for tomorrow – a day in Cha’am and Hua Hin. If we picked our guests up at 6.00 am we would be in Cha’am for nine, which meant me getting up at five – a time of the day when I’m usually rolling over for another 3 hours.

The incredible thing about Cha’am is that you can do it in 10 minutes. You park the car next to the beach, walk in a northerly direction along the beach road for 5 minutes, walk back down the other side for another 5 minutes and that’s about it. You’ve seen as many bicycle-for-rent shops as you care to see and at 9 in the morning on a slow out-of-season Tuesday nowhere is open anyway. And people fly here on package holidays and find themselves holed up in Cha’am for a week. I’d go insane. On the road to Hua Hin, you pass the summer palace of Rama 6, which is well worth a look (it was in fact the hi-light of our kid’s day). What depressed me a little was that it used to be free to get in but has now adopted a dual-pricing system of 100 baht for farangs and 20 baht for Thais. Not only that but there are one or two exceedingly tacky souvenir stalls in evidence selling sea-shells, plastic Thai dancers and wait for it….ceramic German Shepherd dogs. Quite what the connection is between German shepherd dogs and the King’s summer palace I do not know. Do tourists wander around the palace and then say “Fuck it…give me one of them German Shepherd dogs?” It struck me as rather odd.

Before we drove into Hua Hin, we took a de-tour to Khao Takiab (monkey mountain), bought some bananas from the miserable-looking nun at the temple entrance and waited for the monkeys to descend and oh boy did they ever descend. Monkeys came at us from all directions. I’ve never seen the sister-in-law look so scared. I was left holding the bananas and as fast as I could throw them the monkeys would eat them. The older and more ferocious monkeys clung to my trouser legs like shit to a blanket and in minutes my khaki trousers were a mass of tiny paw prints. Our kid just stood around laughing and taking photos.

We hit Hua Hin at lunchtime and enjoyed a fine meal in a restaurant near the Hua Hin Hilton before taking a stroll around the town’s shopping areas. Hua Hin has become very commercial over the years and now boasts a mind-boggling number of tailor’s shops, souvenir shops and agencies specializing in golf tours. Our kid and I (a couple of piss-takers supreme) had great fun laughing at the clothes hanging (and I do mean hanging) on the tailor’s window dummies. I have reached the conclusion that all tailors in Hua Hin are actually color-blind.

An afternoon on the beach seemed like a very agreeable proposition and we decided to do it Thai style by relaxing in deckchairs under the shade of outsize beach umbrellas. Our kid had brought me the excellent ‘Playing the Moldovans at Tennis’ by Tony Hawks and I settled in to read it with an ice-cold beer by my side. I eventually managed to get through the first page after being disturbed firstly by the man with horse, followed by the tattoo artist, the man selling Thai silk, the manicurist, the pedicurist and finally the woman selling sunglasses. What I really needed was the man selling whiteboards and magic markers because I could have written ‘will all vendors please fuck off and let me read me book’. Alas he never came.

I had promised our kid the chance to see Hua Hin railway station, not only because it’s one of the most beautiful stations I’ve ever seen but it was also used in the movie ‘The Killing Fields’. He hadn’t actually seen or heard of the film anyway so that was rather lost on him. However as we got to the station a train was just pulling in and we were there to witness the magic of Asian train travel as food vendors walked hurriedly up and down the platform serving tasty viands to the passengers on board. Feeling as though I’d been a great success as a tour guide, I ordered us bicycle rickshaws to take us to the local night market for the princely sum of 30 baht (locals probably pay 5) and from there we walked through the night market itself and dined like maharajas at Hua Hin’s finest Indian restaurant. As I soaked up the sizzling juices of my chicken dupiaza with fluffy naan bread, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Japanese and their cuisine that continues to baffle me. You really don’t know what you’re missing.

Back home to Bangers at 11pm – totally knackered. Don’t try and attempt Hua Hin and back in a day.

[Guest]

So we arrive at day 3 in the schedule. I had envisaged a rather tiring day 2 so I’d set aside day 3 for some genteel Thai culture – the boat trip on the Chao Phrya river stopping at Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn. My guests had actually done this trip five years earlier but it’s a trip they enjoyed immensely and one that I always get a kick out of no matter how many times I do it. At the back of the River City shopping complex on New Rd near the central post office, is a boat company that will hire you a long-tailed boat for two hours at a bargain 800 baht. To me that’s just unbeatable value. Not only is the boat yours for two hours but you also get to plan where you go. Personally I like going into the smaller canals and having a butchers at the people living fifty to a wooden house right on the water’s edge. Periodically, you will see families scooping dirty gray water from their living room floor with huge plastic jugs. It never fails to make me appreciate how lucky I am. I hadn’t done the boat trip for several years and was astonished to see that many houses had been rebuilt with sturdy looking flood-walls and quality wooden facades. I don’t know if I felt happy or dejected that their houses looked appreciably better than mine. Anyway, after an hour’s waving at bare-arsed kids swimming in the polluted water we arrived at Wat Arun. Wat Arun is my favorite temple in Thailand and thankfully the restoration work has now been completed and the ugly scaffolding has been taken away. But why oh why do we have to have yet more tacky souvenir stalls selling goods at 5 times what you would pay at the weekend market and some fat bloke who wants to take your picture with his pet snake around your neck. This is a beautiful temple. It’s a sacred religious experience that begs to be enjoyed without all the glitz and razzamatazz of Walt Disney World. When I came to the cardboard cutouts of two Thai classical dancers that you can stick your head into and take silly photos I sank to my knees and beat my head on the grass in despair. Is this what it has come to?

The afternoon was a first for me – Jim Thompson’s house. I’ve been promising to go for years but never quite made it. Let me now that it is quite splendid and well worth your time and effort. There’s a very nice air-conditioned restaurant in which to enjoy a Jim Thompson lunch while you sit on Jim Thompson sofas with your bum resting on Jim Thompson cushions covered in Jim Thompson cushion covers. I feel sorry for the old bugger I really do. He’s lying in some unmarked grave in Malaysia while his nephew rakes it in. And what an empire it truly is. 100 baht will gain you admission to the house and the English-speaking guides are wonderful. I was in awe of all the nic-nacs and antiques that J.T managed to collect over the years and as the guide was explaining that this table was a gift from China to King Rama 5 and that cupboard was a gift for King Rama 3’s wife, I couldn’t help but wonder how JT had so many connections whereby he was able to snap up these priceless royal artifacts and cart them off to his wooden house. That really intrigued me along with the fact that he lived alone with his manservant for many years. And on a final note as nice as Jim’s house undoubtedly was it didn’t strike me as homely or comfortable. Did he ever tire of walking from one wooden room to another and gazing upon priceless paintings and furniture? Perhaps he longed to loll around with his manservant on Habitat scatter cushions and have late night pillow fights. Just a thought.

To complete a day of heady Thai culture, we ended up at Patpong night market or rather the tourist walkway of Silom Road that extends from Patpong up to Robinsons on the corner of Silom and Rama 4. If you are into buying fake watches and moody gear then Silom pisses all over Sukhumwit it really does. The goods are of a higher quality, the vendors are far more fun to barter with and it’s an altogether more enjoyable experience. You do have to barter hard however because the vendors know every trick in the book.

And so to our kid’s final day before he heads down under. The girlfriend had to return to work so we were back to our ménage a trois. We did a bit of shopping at the Emporium in the morning, well actually the sister-in-law ran around the stores as though she was on a five-minute grab while me and our kid stood around as men tend to do when they are waiting for women to come out of changing rooms and they’re trying to desperately look macho while surrounded by racks of lacy bras and panties – never easy. From the Emporium we rode the skytrain to Siam and a look around the Siam Center, which always seems a bit neglected these days. It was then that we found ourselves with a dreadful limbo period until the girlfriend finished work at 6pm. It prompted our kid and me to have a discussion about what Bangkok lacks in the way of afternoon or daytime attractions and we both felt that it misses an aquarium or a dolphin show or a big museum and art gallery. Of course we could have just gone to the nearest pub and got pissed but that’s not the point. So it was for that reason the three of us found ourselves in a deserted Scala cinema watching the afternoon showing of Don’t Say a Word with Micheal Douglas and it very watchable it was too. Just a pity that Scala can’t afford to turn on the air-conditioning when it has only three paying customers and the projectionist. And yes, we did stand up for the national anthem.

Our kid wanted to do something extra special on our final evening together and when the girlfriend knocked off work we all sat down in the Amari Boulevard’s beer garden and perused a restaurant guide to Bangkok. Most of the restaurants in there necessitated a trip to the bank with a wheelbarrow but we settled on a dinner cruise along the river for 1,000 baht a head – a teakwood rice barge for just 50 diners, traditional Thai dancers, traditional Thai music, 6-courses, wine and beer……sorted. I’ve always steered clear of dinner cruises fearing that the captain of the boat will make everyone introduce themselves to each other and at some stage of the evening a bloody karaoke machine will appear from nowhere. I needn’t have worried because the Sri Phya boat company do a quite magnificent dinner cruise. Yes, it’s a bit touristy but tasteful at the same time. The service is out of this world. The food is excellent and the Thai dancing lasts for a very bearable 10 minutes. I even found myself purring with delight when the desserts arrived – a slice of watermelon, a slice of papaya and a slice of pineapple.

[aussiejohn]

Phil, I'm on my knees to Buddha now praying "This man shall never have writer's block".ONE OF THE BEST EVER ! ......day 5 ..day5..please?--Aussiejohn

[Guest]

Bangkok phil,

As previously said Keep them coming please

mitch

[Guest]

What the fucks all this " our kid ".Dreaming of Manchester to much you're trying to speak like us,you'll always be a southener to us up north.Its Scholes now,hopefully when "Taggart" fucks off it'll completely go off the rails.

CTID.

[Guest]

Your use of words and your writing skills are outstanding and make your posts to one of the best i ever seen one this board.

I feel really happy for all your students because you are really a master of the english language.

Why you dont write a book about thailand and make a shitload of money ?

Well i guess one of the reasons that people like LOS so much are your posts and website.

You really have all my respect and please dont stop writing about this wonderfull country.

bye Fenris

Ps. What the hell is so bad about german shepards