Everything filed under: 'Asia 2005'

153 photos

Back now. Two days into my new job. My body clock is fixed while my imitation Franck Muller wristwatch is already on the blink. The luggage remains unpacked. (I left with seven kilos and came back with 48, but I left five kilos of excess body weight somewhere in Phi Phi.) My enthusiasm is waning and this will be the last of the entries. Thanks for reading and thanks a lot for your messages of support.

The trip ended, post-trekking up north with a drunk called Noi, with dinner for two atop the Banyan Tree Hotel on the 62nd floor’s Vertigo restaurant. I had a nine course dégustation menu. Mrs K had soup and salad.

We went to tailors, we hired scooters, we ate in restaurants that served wine. We counted the days until we had to come back. Then we came back.

I’ll let the photos do the talking. Over and out.

01/18/2006 | Asia 2005 | 2 Comments

Genocide, suicide and enterprise

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the safest place to hide from wild monkeys is in the back of a stationary motorcycle taxi. Thanks to that prior knowledge Mrs K, Charmaine and I avoided serious harm in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat, one of the few true wonders of the world. The sunrises are spectacular. We woke at five o’clock on three consecutive mornings and managed to miss them all, though. The town itself is small and poky, a raggedy collection of touts and vendors, cripples and glue-sniffing five-year-olds.

Mr. Pros was our driver for three days. He picked us up, dropped us off and waited for us. He took us to the best place for lunch, ferried us around on shopping trips and yet we didn’t share a single word of a common language. He clocked on to the size of the girls’ bladders and stopped every fifteen minutes outside the public toilets without our asking, grinned, laughed and drove off again. I liked Mr. Pros.

It is said that Pol Pot nurtured his distaste for the monarchy and bourgeoisie when his sister was a dancer at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Having sat through a “cultural evening with buffet dinner” and an hour’s worth of traditional dance I can state with some certainty that I may well have become genocidal had I been forced to watch it more than once a lifetime. To top it off, Mrs K got food poisoning from some dodgy “morning gror-ly” and spent three days contemplating suicide.

Prior to that she had the following exchange with possibly the sweetest and shrewdest seven-year-0ld girl in Cambodia.

-Hello
-Hello
-ooohhh you very very beautiful and he very very handsome. What your name?
-Mrs K
-ooohhh very beautiful name. Where you from?
-Malta
-But where you born?
-Malta
-No, you born in a HOSPITAL.
-And you, where you born in a hospital too?
-No … I born at home. Because I Cambodian.
- …
-(pause, followed by devious smile and sideways glance) You want to buy baby?
-You’re selling a baby?
-Yes, baby over there (points out baby)
-Well, it’s certainly a very sweet baby. How much?
-Ten dollar.
-Well, that’s a bit too much.
-Okay, Mrs K. See you later.

01/10/2006 | Asia 2005 | No Comments

The Jumping Frog and Babel

Welcome back. It’s been three weeks now and a lot has been going on. I’ll update in bite-sized chunks. It’s only four days now until I fly back to Brussels and start work again after a leave of six months. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it very much.

Mark Twain wrote a short story once about a jumping frog. He included it in a second anthology as a translation into English from a translation into French, with an attack on the Gallic language and its literary reviewers. I noticed that somebody in Italy had recently used Google to translate this website into their language. So I translated that version back into English using the same software and got:

As to kill time to Bangkok

It has been of five days of it appeal to-pleasure-hunting with Gus, posterior part still from the Laos. We have been to the restaurants Headquarters-Orientals and Japanese, the Irish banns and the Korean bars, the barbecue of the way, the bookshops, the cinematografi and the uneven place with a name like “Spanky” or “one night to Bangkok” in order to watch the human traffic.

  • Squali of the blow to the world of the ocean of the Siam.
  • They contemplate to go to the church to sing the carols, then change idea when, on I consult of the website ones of the church, you do not see nothing but the photos of small army of Institutors of the women white women-haired who ago the good actions.
  • It carries out immense, a study detailed and comparable of the malls of shopping de Bangkok. Vibration chair is based in a store of electronics in one while watching one television $60000. It admires Ferraris and Bentleys on the concourse (you do not obtain that one to Bluewater) and eats the pastry shops imported cream cooked from a chef French with a famous face.
  • It reads something from Paul Theroux (witty) or Michael Palin (verbose.)
  • It drinks the tea of the mint and smoke one sheesha in little Arabia.

Beer or three is met me with Jerry Hopkins for one. Jerry has written the biography of Jim Morrison, nobody exits alive and is hour here a resident of long duration de Bangkok. It possesses a house upcountry with its moglie but it passes the greater part of its time in the city, that it has telephone lines. After a brace of the beers in its appartment we have gone to one bar. It was empty beyond we but there was traffic through the bar. Salt-job bar is transparent was one. “they do not sell the a.lot of beer,” Jerry here said. Therefore, been born them happy.

Mrs K will arrive after tomorrow so as to the free-time to modernize this will be to a prize. It will control or two times once within, however. I have of I have of I have and all that one.

01/09/2006 | Asia 2005 | No Comments

How to kill time in Bangkok

It’s been five days of pleasure-hunting with Gus, back again from Laos. We’ve been to Middle-Eastern and Japanese restaurants, Irish pubs and Korean bars, street barbecues, bookshops, cinemas and the odd place with a name like “Spanky’s” or “One Night in Bangkok” to watch the human traffic.

  1. Stroke sharks at Siam Ocean World.
  2. Contemplate going to church to sing carols, then change your mind when, upon consulting the church’s website, you see nothing but photos of a small army of white-haired Women’s Institutors doing good deeds.
  3. Perform an extensive, detailed, comparable study of Bangkok’s shopping malls. Sit in an electronics shop in a vibrating chair whilst watching a $60000 television. Admire Ferraris and Bentleys on the concourse (you don’t get that at Bluewater) and eat cream pastries cooked by an imported French chef with a famous face.
  4. Read something by Paul Theroux (witty) or Michael Palin (verbose.)
  5. Drink mint tea and smoke a sheesha in Little Arabia.

I met up with Jerry Hopkins for a beer or three. Jerry wrote the Jim Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, and is now a long-term Bangkok resident. He owns a house upcountry with his wife but spends most of his time in the city, which has phone lines. After a couple of beers in his appartment we went to a bar. It was empty apart from us but there was traffic through the bar. Transpires it was a blow-job bar. “They don’t sell a lot of beer here,” Jerry said.

So, happy Christmas. Mrs K arrives the day after tomorrow so free-time to update this will be at a premium. Will check in once or twice, though. Ho ho ho and all that.

12/19/2005 | Asia 2005 | No Comments

From your Father

Dear Matt,

Have just re-read your latest blog and have come to the conclusion that your memory is failing you or have chosen to indulge in spot of boasting.

With respect to the number of condoms you took over – my memory tell me that I counted them all out and counted them all back in again and that the totals tallied exactly not so much as one had been used!!! Perhaps you would like to publish a retraction?

Your ever loving

Dad

12/14/2005 | Asia 2005 | No Comments

Medical notes part II

I am still in Bangkok, bathing in splendid torpor and reading a lot. Yesterday I played a game that entailed staying in bed all day and seeing which of a series of unlikely body positions would induce sleep the quickest. Prior to that I read all 650 stunning pages of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections in one sitting, which got me sunburn and a headache.

Previously, I set myself the task of exploring the city entirely on foot, watched two dogs launch a guerrilla ambush on a third and then stumbled across a cinema and sat down to an afternoon of The Great Raid (great) and Harry Potter (hairy.)

My walking tour was curtailed by an aneurysm in my groin. Well, not an aneurysm per se but it might as well have been. My glands were swollen and aching. I managed to convince myself that I was probably dying and got a fitful night’s sleep, waking every seven minutes to inspect myself.

(Aside 1: The last time I had underpant discomfort in Asia I hobbled back to the UK with my tail and “the worst case of herpes” my doctor had ever seen between my legs. She was ultimately proved wrong through a series of elaborate and largely painful and humiliating tests. I was never in doubt, of course. That year had been particularly barren for me. My mum had given me 144 condoms for a ten-month stint in Malaysia. I came home with 143 and knowledge of the “posh wank.”)

So the next morning I was pleased to see that the swelling had gone down and I could swing without discomfort. BUT! the pain had crept up twixt my buttocks and was really quite sore. So I jumped in a taxi, ready to hear that I had an insect living in my veins. Or only a few days left to procreate.

(Aside 2: My medical history is largely the story of my backside. When I was only a few months old, I was laid on an operating table and force-fed a barium enema to highlight a fistula. Fast forward 23 years and there is a big black man shaving my bottom while I sob quietly into a pillow, prior to the removal of a pilonidal cyst.)

Bumrungrad Hospital is awesome. The first two floors have Starbucks, McDonalds and Pizza Express, it’s listed on the Bangkok Stock Exchange and is testament to how hospitals the world over should be. Within five minutes I was having my vitals measured and okayed, then a receptionist asked me what the problem was. I told him – “enlarged glands in the groin, painful buttocks” – which was more than his English could grasp. I said it again, louder. Then again. Then I said, highly embarrassed, “I think a GP will be fine.”
“OK , no problem sir … is a lady doctor ok?”

And after 15 minutes of questioning, medical history, sexual history, early modern history and the weather in Belgium, I am once again in a hospital with my pants around my ankles and a very petite, gentle Thai lady has her nose level with my arsehole, prods a bit, mutters sympathetically and diagnoses cellulitis and lymphadenitis, which will almost certainly clear up after a course of antibiotics. “Don’t worry! No more surgery.”

So if you need me, I’ll be lying on my front, inducing sleep.

12/12/2005 | Asia 2005 | 1 Comment