John Hoskins - Thailand: A Travel Adventure

Surprising Thailand

Anybody arriving in Thailand for the first time should be prepared to be surprised, to expect the unexpected. This is a country unlike any other. My own first glimpse of Thailand was from the deck of the Vietnam , a French boat of the Messagerie Maritime line, as we steamed up the Chao Phraya River from the Gulf of Siam to Klong Toey, the port of Bangkok. Young boys taking a swim in the river waved as our boat glided by. I remember the golden roof of a temple by the river glinting against a backdrop of green jungle. Since that first sight Ive never lost my love for the grace and dazzling exuberance of Thai templesand for the country itself.

That was a long time ago. Nowadays no intercontinental passenger vessels ply these Asian waters apart from cruise ships and private yachts. Most visitors fly into Thailand by plane and their first impression is the sweltering heat outside the airport terminal as they climb into a taxi to take them to their downtown hotel. In the old days the road between Don Muang airport and the city center was lined with palm trees and rice paddies. If you had flown in from colder climes it was a pleasure to roll down the window and feel the warm night air on the bare skin of your arm. Now massive billboards and high-rise buildings tower above the super-expressway and you keep the car windows closed against pollution. On the positive side, the journey time from the airport to downtown is far shorter.

Like most Asian cities, Bangkok has grown and changed dramatically over the decades but at street level it remains very much the same. The three-wheeled tuk-tuks still swerve in and out of the dense traffic, in spite of attempts to banish them from the streets. Mixing with the traffic fumes, pungent aromas waft from the woks, charcoal grills and bamboo baskets of street-side vendors. Cheap fake goods and carved elephants are hawked from stalls outside go-go bars, tailor shops and faux Irish pubs. To my mind, Bangkok is Southeast Asias wildest and most exciting city and I still love its energy and anarchy.

After you live somewhere for a while, however, you can become blas about what attracted you to it in the first place. Long-time residents sometimes take for granted the magic of the busy river that flows through the city, the sparkling temples, evenor especiallythe colorful nightlife. First-time visitors, on the other hand, are far more wide-eyed and open to the exotic and the unexpected that are just around the corner. Such a surprise could take the form of an elephant with its mahout begging outside a nightclub. While the visitor might buy the beast a bunch of bananas, the resident wont even stop to look.

Not long ago, I joined a small group of overseas travel writers who were visiting Thailand for the first time. As their unofficial guide, I was fascinated to see what interested and surprised them, especially those things that I had begun to take for granted. At a local market, for example, they marveled at and tasted strange fruits and vegetables that they had never even seen before, including hairy red rambutans, which have a delicious soft white flesh, and the spiky, evil-smelling durian, which tastes divine if you like your fruit rich and sweet. They were fascinated to see coconuts being chopped, scooped and crushed into milk. As for the chilies, as much an emblem of Thai cooking as garlic is to French, they were astonished by the numerous different types piled high in bamboo baskets. In general with chilies, the smaller the hotter. I told them that the smallest of them all, a real firecracker, is named after its shape, prik kee noo , which means mouse dropping chili.

If anybody was shocked by the piles of unpackaged raw meat and inner organs, floors awash, stench, noise, heatnobody showed it. We came back to the hotel with plastic bags full of lemongrass, galangal, chilies, fresh prawns and all the other ingredients for a Thai meal. To these visitors, buying the raw ingredients at the local market and learning to cook Thai food for themselves was a delightful surprise in this land already packed full of the unexpected.

Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, on the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya river, with its Khmer-style central prang and the four smaller ones that surround it, is one of the best-known landmarks of Bangkok. These towers struck by the first rays of the rising sun or silhouetted at sunset make a beautiful sight.

Like most temples in Thailand, Wat Benjamabhopit, the Marble Temple, features intricately crafted detail.

Another rare treat was the Thai massage at the spa of the JW Marriott Hotel on Phuket, where we were all staying. As the masseuses firm and sensitive handsas well as her elbows and heelspoked, pulled, twisted, stretched and soothed my defenseless body I murmured to myself, like a mantra, Heaven cant be better than this. We emerged from our chambers of sensual delights as zombies smelling of exotic Thai flowers. Like Thai cuisine, Thai massage has been around for centuries but its only in the last few years that the rest of the world has begun to appreciate it.

The next day we drove north over the bridge that connects Phuket to the mainland towards Khao Lak, which is fast recovering after being severely damaged in the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004. Workers were laying bricks on the driveway of the resort where we were staying so that we had to carry our luggage about 100 yards (90 meters) to the reception.

On this coastline, sandy beaches stretch as far as the eye can see with steep jungle-clad hills rising up behind them. For the travel writers this was paradise: warm sea, white sand and cold beer. What more did they want? Well, they wanted to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes. First-time visitors are always paranoid about this while residents tend to be less cautiousor maybe we have become immune. The visitors hadnt a clue how to deal with the green mosquito coils that are as much part of life in this part of the world as gloves are in Britain during the winter.

After a lot of breakages and laughter, one of the group finally succeeded in separating the two interlinked coils and lighting one. The glowing point of the coil produces an incense-like smoke that is repugnant to the noxious little beasts that carry malaria and dengue fever, though thankfully neither disease is prevalent in this area.

For another first time experience, our intrepid travelers wanted to ride an elephant. Who can resist the call of the wild? Next morning we stepped from a bamboo mounting platform onto the howdahs on the backs of our small-eyed mega-steeds, two people to each animal, plus mahout on the neck. Lurching and swaying, we proceeded at a stately pace along a narrow muddy path surrounded on both sides by huge trees strung with lianas and thick green vegetation. Riding on an elephant is great fun, a connection to an ancestral memory of man alone with natureMe Tarzan; you Janeand the very best way to see the jungle. The muddy path led to a fast-flowing cascade where we dismounted and frolicked in the refreshing mountain water. I reflected that our elephants were as much part of Thai culture as horses are in the west.