I Love Thailand Now

A year ago I really didn’t like Thailand. I arrived from England wanting to be somewhere different and, although it was all very nice, it was also really very similar in some frustrating ways. It annoyed me to have travelled half way around the world just to walk down a notorious Bangkok street and bump into someone I knew from a small corner of England, and presumably it annoyed them a lot too. It annoyed me that everyone rushed to give English kids beer and elephants and it annoyed me that the English kids couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere else.

Despite much of this remaining the case I wish to retract all previous negative statements and announce that I love Thailand now, just because it’s nice.

In Thailand most of all I love:

1. The abundance of vegetables.

2. Lady boys; Thais think women are so great that even the men want to be ladies.

3. The sewage system; not very much of it is in the streets.

I also love the weather, the abundant smiles, the not yet extinct honesty,  the presence of transport that doesn’t require planning months in advance, the awareness of personal hygiene and love of medicine, the people who feed stray animals and have poodles in their motorbike baskets, and coconuts.

Many of these things were lacking almost entirely in another country I recently visited. This has made me really, really love Thailand. I love Thailand now.

Some more specific things I have loved in Thailand this trip have been:

1. When, In Bangkok, we went to a bar fifty nine stories above the city and ate aubergines (they said eggplants but they meant aubergines). This cost about the same as pizza express in England.

Last time we were at the same place, fifty nine stories above Bangkok, we borrowed trousers and shoes to abide by the dress-code and then tried to leave in them, we slipped whisky into our virgin cocktails on a Buddha day and I tried repeatedly to steal an ashtray as a souvenir, but they let us in again anyway.

2. When we took the train to Chumphon and ate shrimps and vermicelli in clay pots at the market and looked at poor, dead squids.

3. When we went to the hot springs in Ranong and the biggest, hottest one bubbled bubbles that glowed as they floated up what looked like miles and miles because of strange, refracting light effects, and water spilled over the edge and the whole thing looked like an immense, man-eating cauldron.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In another one Jonny went swimming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. When we climbed up rocks over the sea (I was a bit rubbish at it because I could hardly get up the ladder but Jonny was very good) and swum with phosphorescent plankton in Krabi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to go on an adventure, don’t go to Thailand, but if you want to go somewhere very nice, it is very nice.