BANKOK and THONBURI

6 February 1992, Bangkok
We arrived at 6:30 at the Northern Terminal but had no idea where that was but using my Thai we found that number three went to Banglampu where an hour later we were eating a typical European breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and fruit breakfast in Khao San road. I bought a bus map in the travel agents next door and so chuffed to bits we went off on a search for Pranee's house.

First we went down the river by express boat then took a bus across the river (buddha), then another bus to get along Petchasem Road and got off as we had been told at the Siam University, found Soi Wat and Khoo then Wat Koo Non before the problems started, but a local with a little English explained we had to find Area 7 (Mu 7) and the secret was to take the correct route from its square. He was correct indeed his advice would have been correct but we would never have found our way. 

Giving up in that square another Thai offered to call Pranee and she would fetch us. (In those days we did not even possess a mobile phone.) In fact he took us due west to relatively major T junction of tracks where he had agreed to meet Pranee. We followed her in amazement as she threaded her way along the tracks on the banks of rectangular sections of stagnant water. There was growth in the water which we later realised was root vegetables, the dry ground was mainly banana and coconut trees. The water was crossed at various places on logs and then finally she went over a rickety bamboo bridge built of four long canes in parallel with an equally rickety hand rail which would not have sorted our laden weight in an emergency. She left us on the far side and came back in a traditional type of boat and paddled us the rest of the way to her house.

The house was on solid ground in this patchwork of land and water. its wooden construction was fairly modern looking on concrete stilts. It had an electricity supply. A house was being constructed not far away and on the other side of the water they were digging huge pits in order to reach solid ground for the stilts, one piling technique.

The single storey comprised two bedrooms, an L shaped living room with a low wall divider separating the TV/sitting area, a kitchen with a small stove sink and a washing machine, a tiled bathroom without a basin but a very large water holding tank and a shower in the washing area plus a smaller tank by the side of a conventional (european) loo. The bathroom floor was drained through holes in the tiles probably straight onto the earth.

AT THE BOTTOM OF PRANEE'S GARDEN

Underneath the floor water was pumped in by plastic pipe and there were two large concrete water storage tanks, presumably one used to treat the sewage and the other the washer discharge. 

Add caption

WAT and LEK at HOME with KIM

BRIAN and WAT

PRANEE, Kim and TWATCHAY AT HOME

It was fantastic to see such a conventional style of life so near yet so far from the dense city life of Bangkok, for this idyll was free of the noise of traffic and completely free from air pollution. We noticed a small boat travelling the dyke from house to house, discovered it was selling ice cream and bought one for Kim as well.

It was very hard to convey the huge impression this environment created. Pranee now dressed in a traditional wrap around working skirt to add Thai authenticity to a very warm welcome with Twatchay and Kim. 

Lessons learnt
Pranee, as the rest of the gang, had not ever expected us to make it here on our own. For my part I was delighted with my ability to move about and make enquiries in Thai. It was vital that we had Pranee's address in Thai Script for Thai's to read and phonetic script for us to pronounce as her phone number. Amazing too how close you had to get before neighbours knew their name. 

Pranee's father/family bought 3km x 3km of now drained wetland here almost adjacent to their much older lovely house. Ground on which they were able to build houses for Pranee, her sister Venus ( her house next door was the on under construction) and a brother who we never met. 

PRANEE'S FATHER

As we settled in were were plied with all sorts of fruit from my 'endless garden' as Twatchay had described the 9 square km plot. Pranee split a coconut with a hatchet and gave us each a straw to drink with and a spoon take out the soft underipe nut, plus banana and underipe mango to be eaten with salt, pomelo and rose apples. 

On pranees advice we went for a walk around but armed ourselves with heavy sticks to keep the dogs at bay. We passed the large house owned by a retired colonel who was at first concerned about us in an area where no tourists ventured but soon became friendly and invited us in for the inevitable glass of ice cold water. He taught me how to pick rose apple, then mango using a long bamboo cane with a kid's fishing net end woven from bamboo. He had a daughter who was studying business studies in Wolverhampton so and took our address hoping she might visit. He spoke some English but his wife did not so I did my best to translate into Thai.

I retraced my steps to Wat Kho Non just before dark so as to consolidate knowledge of our path in and out. 

Speaking Thai a little was the key to this holiday. Thai's have a three letter nickname by which they are known from birth, Twatchay was 'Wat' and Pranee was known as 'Lek'. I noticed that the word 'language' was impossible for Thai's to pronounce, the nearest Wat could get was 'ranking' a frequent confusion between r's and l's.

Dinner was fried rice, dried-fish (which you break into pieces from the bone) and omelette. After dinner Wat played some videos in English through the TV, like me he was very fond of Nat King Cole, he also watched English league soccer on TV and knew some surpring towns like Oldham. These days many Asians would have heard of our home of Swansea through the Premiership in '92 they were languishing in the old fourth division.

By 8pm Joan was asleep and Pranee had changed into shorty underwear but Wat was drunk with slurred voice having drunk glass after glass of Chinese whisky from a dark beer like bottle.  

7 February 1992
Twatchay left for work at 6:30 our plans were to go to the Wat Sai floating market with Pranee, in fact she merely took us to catch the local number 10 bus and then left us to our own devices - great, ideal for both parties.It involved changing to a 43 bus which brought us to Soi Wat Sai followed by a long walk along a street full of small shops to our destination only to find just a few signs of a floating market little sign obut hundreds of tourists, predominately Japanese. Amazed to find the locals arriving by walking along an obviously functional railway track at right angles to the street we had followed. 

WAT SAI FLOATING MARKET

The quickest roadway to the market

From Wat Sai we made our way to the market where we met a Thai speaking good English who claimed to be a doctor offering to help us find our bearings. He advised us to come back to China Town after 3pm because they weren't allowed to put stalls on the street by law until that time to go to the Siam Centre and called a tuk-tuk which took us to the Export Centre. The first of several times we were conned by an English speaking doctor. As Joan said 'don't trust people claiming to be doctors, teachers or students with offers of help, they are simply salesmen'. To which I would add full of deliberate misinformation for I decided he was even wrong about China Town for we went there on our first visit to Thailand at lunch time and it was hectic, but by 4pm it was quiet.

Feeling conned we took another tuk tuk this time really headed to the Siam Centre were we bought many more presents, a dozen bronze nickel spoons and cake forks 280B, later returning for another set for Helen, bought a short sleeved silk shirt for myself but they had not got one in medium size I needed for dad but later bought a very high quality one for 1200B (£30) in an Indian shop. From there we walked to China Town because the traffic in rush hour was at a virtual standstill and tuk tuk drivers were not interested in local fares. The delight of the day was a plastic bag full of pineapple for we were famished. We just made it home to Pranee's by sundown 45 mins late our 5pm rendezvous with a neighbour's boy 'Soy' who lived by the bamboo bridge - a rendez-vous presumably set up by Pranee. Once home we talked in turn with him whilst the other took a shower - for we were exhausted and soaking with sweat. My final comment records that perhaps we were less than courteous to Soy.

Twatchay was home before us and already drinking whisky so we ate with Pranee on rice omelette white fish king kung shrimps and ginger with hard boiled eggs which had been preserved in salt. 

I forgot the main purpose of our visit to Siam Square was to find DK Books to get a good dictionary. The one that fitted the bill was by Gordon Allison which had Phonetic Thai in English letters and Thai script in the same volume. We made excellent progress in conversation that evening. I also purchased two guides with maps of the canals by George Veran and for years after thought of using them as the basis of a realistic insight to Thai rural life on a future trip but never did, though I still have the books.

The dictionary though made us lazy in future as it negated the need to learn vocabulary, though it was surprising how often by listening carefully I could locate the Thai word from its entry in the phonetic - English section. As with French Joan has a far better ability to mimic sounds she heard - I mentioned the way she pronounced suay (beautiful) drawn out and rising, and suay (good for nothing or whore). 

Wat, Joan and I had a great conversation whilst watching the TV, he was drinking less but obviously spent the night in the TV room after we went off to bed.

8 February Last Day in Bangkok
Joke Soup for breakfast boiled rice, liver, intestine and raw egg, with two others to remember Khaaw Tom and Nam soup.

They had quite firmly refused to take a 500B note for Kim and said they were pleased with our letter but it must not have money inside. They hoped we would come to visit them again. 

Pranee had to visit her mother who had fallen ill. We had a last friendly conversation them, we became better friends as we started to learn more about each other. Wat gave us the address of his work at the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives and told us to write to this address. In fact on subsequent occasions we would meet him there wary of the difficulty of finding their house on our own. The previous evening he had shown us some of their magazines which he as Director of Artistic Design had laid out.

We all left together in their boat and as we passed the couple we had met on our first excursion waved us goodbye as we passed their house, the Thais had not previously met. 

FERRY BACK TO BANGKOK

We moored the boat on a little landing in Wat Kho Non square and we left by tuk tuk in search of Hualampong railway station where we left our heavy rucksacks and discovered that the options of eventually getting to the airport were two either pay 100B each for the air conditioned express or 5B for third class on the normal train - no contest. We also learned there that the airport tax was 200B (£5).

We ate some of the lovely fruit Pranee had given us before a last bout of shopping for presents in the Siam Centre and China Town. Finally having spent 250B in Thailand for 18 unforgettable days of holiday. Not bad for backpackers in spite of the shopping!

BANGKOK FLOWER MARKET

The station had the classic s look of a London station though we almost walked straight by and Joan rushing through the crowd found us almost the last two seats. It was crowded like a Southern Railway train at rush hour. The airport was the seventh stop but we needn't have worried because the conductor who spoke excellent English was very helpful even returning just two stops short to warn us of the stop, highly desirable as from our seat it was difficult to recognise the stations. People got out on both sides one lot to the platform the others crossed the lines.

In the crowded airport we were effectively back in Europe, eg Coke at 25B a small tin, nobody would look at you let alone smile and most looked miserable.

PROLOGUE as written on the plane home

This ranks as one of our best holidays on which we made plenty of friends and had lots of interesting conversations. A healthy holiday too, there is little doubt that both of us will have lost weight, with no overeating and little drinking (perhaps only 3 or 4 beers in the whole holiday) and lots of excercise especially our time with Phu Kradung.

There is no doubt my limited knowledge of Thai was a vital ingredient as I knew enough to construct sentences and to use a dictionary. Few Thais speak English and even fewer fluently except for common exchanges, eg those with tuk tuk drivers. The English of Twatchay, Sam Luk and Ping Ping was far better than my knowledge of Thai. It was obvious that accent in a foreign language was the main problem of both parties, r's and harsher tones and the inflections we use in asking questions or to express emotion being particularly difficult for them. For us the huge problem is copying tones and tone changes with Mandarin being an even bigger problem awaiting me. 

PHOTOS SENT LATER BY PRANEE, SAKAUART and TANIYA

PRANEE in office at WORK

TANIYA'S LATEST

ALL TOGETHER IN PHRU KRADUNG BUNGALOW