Thailand Backroads

Our road trip up Thailand's stretch of the Malay Peninsula has officially come to a close. We are now back in Bangkok and just biding our time until we each travel our separate ways this following Sunday. To recap: the journey lasted 11 days in total, during which we stayed in 4 different cities/towns/municipalities, whatever, spent a net total of 22 hours on Thailand's surprisingly efficient, clean, and comfortable public buses, watched countless DVD's and televised movies dubbed in Thai (The Mighty Ducks easily being the most enjoyable among them), managed to refrain from getting drunk on at least 6 of those nights, ate some of the spiciest food imaginable, played hours of basketball, watched more soccer than I ever thought I would in my life, and generally had a very good time.

Though the trip was enjoyable for a million reasons, it was not the trip we had planned it to be. Initially our primary goal was to simply save money. This very straightforward initiative led us to seek out the names on the map that we had never heard of, cities that didn't show up in the guide books or grace the covers of the pamphlets in guide shops, places we could fairly assume that tourists didn't usually travel, and where as a result things would be cheaper, there would be fewer temptations, our time would be more leisurely, and we could expect to be treated more like foreign dignitaries than like ambulatory wallets. Our predictions were partially right.

What we found along the Malay Peninsula was not the expanse of loosely connected agrarian villages that we had expected, but instead a region of vast emptiness occasionally punctuated by mid-sized cities and the squat concrete buildings which house a given districts Social Services Office say, or the Ranong Province Biosphere Reserve Administration Center. Our first stop was the city of Pang Nga, which is just a boat ride north of Phuket. Here we discovered that even away from the metropolises of Bangkok or Phuket, Thai life does not consist of the quaint repose that we were hoping to find. To be fair Pang Nga actually turned out to be something of an anomaly (at least for 1 of the 2 nights we were there). While this city of merely one main street has its share of go-go bars and unsavory temptations, all in all its most notable attractions are of a more bucolic nature. The surrounding countryside proves a pleasant day's hike with a network of massive limestone caves that hold centuries old Bhuddist shrines and some very strange and wonderful sights aside. Largely Pang Nga's more village-like feel is a consequence of the 2004 tsunami, which, as you'll remember, essentially wiped out this entire area of Thailand. Evidence of the tsunami still scars the province. Even miles off the coast it is not uncommon to see flipped boats or uprooted palm trees strewn over deserted plots of land like garbage. My guess is that before the tsunami struck, and probably just a few years from now, Pang Nga was and will be more city than village.

Our next stop after Pang Nga was the city of Surat Thani. Bordering Bandon Bay, Surat Thani is the major jumping off point for travelers heading to the Gulf islands of Ko Samui, Ko Phangan, and Ko Tao. Surat Thani indeed sees its share of Western tourists but they are all generally in transit to those other places and the city itself gets no real mention as a tourist destination. In our 4 nights there we found Surat to be, if on a lesser scale, almost identical in nature to Bangkok and other major Thai cities. Large and seedy looking hotels, ubiquitous massage parlors, bars, dancing clubs, and cheap-eats at every turn characterize Surat's downtown area. It was here that we fell like rocks off a ledge from our purported game plan of saving money and more reserved modes of entertainment. Surat Thani is cheap, no doubt about that, but it's become painfully obvious that when something is cheap you don't always spend less money, you just buy more of it. In other words, el vino did flow. Perhaps the highlight of our stay in Surat was the night we happened upon Boogie Bar. In contrast to the establishment's unassuming and dime-a-dozen front, once inside the patron is immediately transported into an absolutely surreal setting that is 2 parts Texas ranch-hand watering hole and 1 part Thai. We're talking bull skulls mounted on the walls, confederate flags dangling from the rafters, waiters in ten-gallon hats and leather vests, old wagon wheels, all types of cowboy themed bric-a-brac sitting on the bar shelves, and of course, a live band with its bandana-ed and banjo pickin front man belting old Merle Haggard and Hank Williams tunes in an absurd Thai-cowboy twang. But for the 3 of us, the place was filled exclusively with Thais. Perhaps strangest of all was that they were all singing along with every song. Who knew that Thai people love country music? Just odd.

After Surat we decided to rededicate ourselves to our initial goals and with the help of wikipedia we identified the inconspicuous provincial center of Chumpohn as a city seemingly aligned with our newly restrained desires. A 5 hour bus ride from Surat through the peninsula's aforementioned rural void deposited us into the austere city center of Chumpohn's capital district. From our 6th story, $9.00/night, 3 person suite in the city's finest hotel, we overlooked a very unimpressive pseudo-cityscape that recalled the moribund concrete framework of Prague's post-soviet outskirts. Perfect. This would finally be the place to get some rest and save some money. Later that evening, walking solo through the city, I happened upon a basketball gym where 9 jersey clad Thais were in the midst of pre-game warm-ups. As it happened the Chumpohn Health Services Department was gearing up for their mid-season matchup against the District 5 Steel Workers squad. A man short, the Health Services Department called me over from my seat near the entrance and in their barely comprehendible English and my even worse Thai it was agreed with the District 5 Steel Workers captain that I could fill in as the 5th man for the HSD. I might as well have been Lebron James to these guys. Even at my abbreviated stature I was the 2nd tallest man on the floor and was able to dominate the defensive frontcourt while also playing a Bill Waltonesque high-post against the Steel Workers ineffective 2-3 zone. After storming to an early lead, and receiving a stunned applause from the opposing team for executing a behind the back dribble en route to a layup, I deferred most of the scoring to my two running mates, Thoon, and Sammy Krung – Thoon a lithe power forward willing to run the break, and Sammy the bank-shooting assassin, a-la his nominal counterpart, the Celtic great, Sam Jones. In a rout the HSD handed District 5 Steel its 1st loss of the season (or so it seemed they were trying to tell me). After the game I retreated back to our hotel in a very placid state of mind, more than happy to let the rest of the night slip by in front of the TV or hiding behind a book. But no. What do I find when I return to the hotel? Fergus chugging from a bottle of Mekong whiskey, Ace putting on his dancing shoes, and 2 Thai girls in their weekend skivvies ready and willing to take the newly arrived farangs for a night on the town.

THAILAND, YOU RELENTLESS SEDUCTRESS!

Apparently Agent Smith and Fergus had met these girls at a nearby restaurant, and the next thing any of us knew, the 5 of us, and another of these girls' friends, are sitting in a bar drinking cocktails and watching a song and dance performance by very scantily dressed girls that was really more like a pathetic karaoke performance than anything you'd expect to find on a professional stage. And I was personally loving every minute of it. Turns out that Chumpohn, despite its drab facade, is hardly lacking in the kinds of attractions that make Thailand so famous. And the 3 of us are absolute suckers for all of it. And the beauty of a place like Chumpohn is that we were the ONLY white people we saw the entire time. So in the same sort of way I was able to dominate the basketball game, being in those dance clubs in Chumpohn was like a group of A-list Hollywood actors showing up at the Round Up. Good times. We spent the next 4 days in Chumpohn drinking, being hungover, eating, and drinking some more. Again, not exactly how we planned things, but I'm not saying we didn't have a good time.

For our last stop on the tour, 2 Thai girls agreed to drive the 3 of us from Chumpohn to the coastal city of Hua Hin. None of us had ever heard of Hua Hin, not from the guidebooks or from other travelers, so we expected to find a sleepy little fishing village or at most a quiet getaway spot for Thai nationals. The girls driving tried their best to clue us in, but their English was virtually non-existent, and we were all hungover anyway so we didn't really care. What we discovered in Hua Hin was a bustling resort city, complete with a Hilton hotel, about 30 Starbucks, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Giant mall with a state of the art Cineplex, a hundred other grotesquely lavish hotel resorts, and a massive stretch of waterfront condos which made me immediately think of Miami Beach. Apparently Hua Hin, though not a backpacker favorite, is hugely popular for European retirees and a place of conspicuous consumption for Thailand's own upper crust. Fancy restaurants and Vegas style clubs abound and our 2 escorts were eager to show us a good time. And so it was – back into the fray. Fortunately for us, each of the girls we were with owns and operates at least 2 beauty salons and they both have plenty of expendable income. They paid for the majority of a very nice seafood dinner that we had and then took us to a huge club in Hua Hin's downtown where I bet we all had a really good time, but I couldn't say for sure because I don't remember any of it. Somehow I woke up in a bar miles from where we had been the night before just in time to see the opening kickoff of the Eagles v. Saints game. All's well that ends well, I suppose. Our 2nd day in Hua Hin was predictably uneventful, and we ended up scrapping Petchaburi from our itinerary and coming back to Bangkok after our 2nd night in Hua Hin.

Now only 1 problem remains. No one knows where Fergus is. I'll keep you posted on his whereabouts.