Ajarn World

Thailand? yes we went there last weekend

When one man's tropical paradise becomes everybody else's

4th February 2010

Just recently, I've been reconnecting with a few old school-friends on the social networking website, Facebook. We're talking secondary school and even infant school friends here folks. These are guys I haven't seen since the days of short trousers, cowboys and Indians, and discussing ways to keep our conkers hard (British people will know what I mean)

I was friends with ‘Broadie' purely on account of the fact we both shared the same birthday and our respective grandmothers went to bingo together. Other than that, we didn't have a great deal in common. He never aspired to be anything other than the class dunce and while the majority of the class got to grips with basic maths, Broadie would sit quietly in a corner licking Lego bricks.

Wally was another one of my junior school pals. This time sport was primarily the common denominator. We both represented the school at football and cricket. He was also what was commonly referred to back then as ‘the cock of the school'. I never once saw the guy lose a ‘scrap' - those ten minute sessions of unarmed combat invariably broken up by a ferocious-looking dinner lady. Wally was short and wiry, but when it came to knocking seven shades out of another poor guy, size really didn't matter. Wally would put his fists up and just get on with it.

In later years, Wally became one of the respected leaders of the notorious Zulus, a group of working-class football hooligans who followed Birmingham City Football Club. His photograph appears prominently in several books on football violence. So as you can imagine, it was with some trepidation that I accepted Wally's friend request on Facebook. Would the passing years have mellowed him or would Wally still have old scores to settle?

We chatted a while about our schooldays and the paths our lives had taken since then. He asked if I still followed the same football team and I confessed that I was indeed still a big United fan. But naturally Wally was most interested in my life in Thailand. So I filled him in on a few insignificant details and generally made light of the subject. I didn't want to play the ‘top-it' game and make life sound too exotic to someone who probably only left the neighborhood when there was a chance to duff up rival supporters somewhere on a Saturday afternoon. However, I thought best be polite and ask Wally if he'd ever ventured out this way before.
"Oh yes" came the immediate reply. "I was in Thailand about six years ago with the wife-to-be and spent a few days in Pattaya. We didn't care much for Pattaya though so we moved on to Koh Samui and spent some time there. At least a month if I remember right"

Let's leave Wally aside for a second and go back to Broadie, the Lego-licking dunce from infant school who finally got his life together, emigrated to Montreal, met a nice Canadian girl and started his own meals-on-wheels business. I had very much the same on-line conversation with Broadie except this time my old school-friend had travelled to parts of Thailand I'd never even heard of. He'd also gambled in the casinos of Macau, rode stallions bareback in Mongolia and got into the odd bar brawl in downtown Jakarta. The man had travel stories to keep you up well into the small hours.

You're probably thinking by now - well, what's your point Phil? A few people have been to Thailand. So what? And in response I would say but it's not just a few is it. The bloody world and his uncle have been here.

On my last trip back to the UK, who should I bump into but my old dentist. I made appointments with this very nice lady twice a year in the days when British people could afford to have their teeth checked. Or I should say the days when British people could even find a dentist. Anyway, this dentist fitted a false tooth for me shortly before I departed for a new life in Thailand and for the next five years it flew out every time I sneezed. But I was willing to let bygones be bygones and stood there enthralled as she told me in great detail about the six trips she had made to Thailand in the last ten years. "Oh Tony and I just love it there"

Even my old boss and his wife had been. And when I met up with them in a small town just outside Birmingham, they were thinking of booking up for a second trip. This was a guy who had a caravan in Towyn, possibly the dullest and most boring seaside resort in Wales. There are people who have lived all their lives in Towyn, who actually dream about days when it stops raining. And you never forget those first dry dreams.

I can vividly recall all the fuss and palaver that surrounded my first trip to Thailand all those years ago. My Aunt Jean - not, it must be said, the brightest bulb in the marquee - called me on the phone as I was packing a suitcase and reminded me to take a few bars of soap. She'd seen a documentary which included footage of Thai kids bathing and splashing about in the local river. And she thought that's what we all had to do. For crying out loud, I was staying in a four-star hotel on Sukhumwit Road. Would the porter accompany me to the room, point out the dimmer switches, demonstrate the TV channels and then with a swish of the curtain say "there's the river if you want to freshen up before dinner - now get your kit off"

But Thailand did seem to be a destination on the other side of the world. There was something unutterably tropical and unexplored about it. Getting there involved a fifteen hour flight with brief stop-offs in Frankfurt and Karachi. Then after Bangkok, the plane journeyed on to Manila. Manila in The Philippines. I didn't even know what an archipelago was.

Even the local free newspaper got wind that there was a man in the community going to live in Thailand and a photographer came to my house to take snaps of yours truly holding up a Thailand guidebook.

WARD END MAN JETS OFF TO PARADISE screamed the following day's front page headline with accompanying photograph. It was directly above PENSIONER LOSES TOE IN COUNCIL DUSTBIN FIASCO and to the left of CAT SWALLOWS DIABETIC OWNER'S LOTTERY TICKET

And what about when I got there? What magical things would I see? Gigantic poisonous snakes being chased around the temple by co-joined twins wearing floppy trousers. It was going to be a far cry from a chalkboard outside a pub in Majorca announcing half-price sangria from six till nine.

Everyone told me I would need inoculations - otherwise I might die. So I trotted off to the local health center to get a syringe-full of everything available. I had jabs for hepatitis A to hepatitis Zee and felt weak and dizzy for a fortnight. I had arms like pin cushions.

I lapped up every bit of information I could uncover. Dehydration might be a serious problem I read in one Sunday magazine article. The next day I was in the local pharmacy looking for salt tablets. I was the first customer ever to ask for something so utterly ridiculous. The pharmacist overheard the conversation, stuck his head through a serving hatch and sarcastically asked if I was going to run in a marathon. I told him I was going to Thailand and had read that dehydration was a potential killer - so let's have less of it.

"Thailand eh?"

"Yes, Bangkok"

The pharmacist beckoned me to cease gassing with the assistants and enter his private domain at the back of the shop. I could sense straight away that this was a man with dark secrets he wanted to share.

I sat down on a chair, surrounded by plastic bottles and pill scoops.

‘Thailand eh?"

"Yes, Bangkok"

"Would love to go myself but got married last year. Not exactly a place you would take the wife to if you get my drift. I don't suppose I'll ever get the chance"

It's been twenty years since I last saw the pharmacist but I'm sure he's been here at least a dozen times by now!

Tags: fun articles moving to thailand

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