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I should, for my own sake, finish the story.
The "Malaysia" was awful. Worse than the shitty guest houses on Khao San (but cost more). Fuck you LiveJournal, since when do you have that filthy red underline like Microsoft Word?
Whatever.
People tell you that when you go to Thailand, you WILL get ill. Watch out for the food, watch out for the water.. it aint none of that. It's the air. Immediately, being back in Bangkok made us ill. I took pills for it, which I happen to be very good at.. But Michael, being the closet hippie that he is, decided to ride it out. In style. We, or rather he, picked a hotel at random called "The Amari", and announced that we would splash out since it was our last night in that bustling, polluted neon jungle. We got there and it cost something like NZD$250 for a night, that's about US$215 for all you foreigners (since the exchange rate RULES right now). About the most expensive hotel I have ever stayed in. So Michael spent the afternoon shitting while I happily, constipatedly, visited the local office of the company I work for...
It seems that they charge more fees than we do. Holy Jesus fuck, I felt like some ignorant provincial pleb. Everything glistened.. or maybe I'm exaggerating, but the view was like.. well, unbelievable. I had to show them my passport to even get into the building. Think of it this way: our office is next to a brothel, between two high rise apartment buildings. Theirs is probably the only office in Bangkok that ISN'T next to a brothel. If anything has convinced me to keep pushing paper in my fluorescent hellhole, the thought of fleeing to some exotic(ish) country to work in that kind of opulence certainly fucking did.
I'm really glad that when they asked me where I was staying I didn't have to say "The Malaysia". I couldn't have lied anyway, because they had one of their PERSONAL DRIVERS escort me back to my hotel. My very expensive hotel. I sat in the back seat, reading the newspaper, until we arrived at the foyer of my hotel, and the doorman opened the car door for me, and yeah. I felt cool. Small things eh.
Upon the recommendation of one of the delightful MYI staff members, we visited the "night markets", the name of which I forget. Lum something. Our Tuk Tuk ride there - after some high speed careening down alleyways that were definitely not designed for driving in - convinced me that there should be a theme park dedicated to Bangkok traffic. However, we arrived relatively safely at the markets. The vast, vast, vast, huge, sprawling markets. Spending your last night in Bangkok, with a lot of presents to buy, in a craft zoo, almost makes for a panic attack. But the life! The collision of people and things! They even had live music.. which wasn't anywhere near as good as the live music in Vientiane.. in fact I think it might have been "big time" karaoke.. but I got a few bits of crap and a fake Mont Blanc fountain pen. Which sometimes works..
Our last morning, and it was more frantic present shopping before an incredibly desperate taxi ride to the airport. And that was it. It all ended so quickly.. No more "Long Live the King", no more cunning Tuk Tuk drivers, no more bad/weird/interesting/foreign smells, no more ... good lord, had I grown to really quite like the place? Somehow, the frenetic evidence of life, the general cheeriness amongst poverty and pollution, the COLOURS, had drawn me in. There I was, open to it all, no longer horrified and judgemental, and it was about to end.
Or was it?
No, actually it wasn't. There was a little note at the check-in counter at the airport, advising that they had (vastly) overbooked the flight and offered us US$400 (fucking exchange rate!) and a night in the Suvarnabhumi Novotel if we took another flight the next day. We checked in, and then....... then... took the money and the hotel.
Nobody can ever tell my boss that. Or my mother.
It was 7PM Saturday by the time we got checked in to the hotel, so there wasn't much point in trekking back to the city for any more culture. We quickly ascertained that ALL of the hotel staff HATED Qantas layover customers. Whatever. We had our weird buffet dinner, and had the porter find us a taxi. We weren't paying western prices for drinks, so we (tried) to find a "7-11" to buy some vodka and Singha to pass the time. After a service station and two roadside stalls, the taxi driver eventually got the point and pulled up at the filthiest 7-11 I ever saw. And that's coming from Khao San. Still, we got what we wanted, and bounded back to the taxi gleefully clutching our alcoholic loot. I don't think the driver was very impressed when he figured out what our little trip was all about, he was all religious etc, but we tipped him.
Back to our (moderately, relatively) palatial pad to get bleary eyed and happy.
Fuck the Novotel, they (deliberately, I'm sure), didn't have any movie channels. Or music channels. Or anything worth watching, except BBC world which just repeats itself. I would have cost about NZ$26 for one of their pay movies, which is OBSCENE! Even ESPN (and I hate sports) played nothing but repeats of David Beckham's induction into some US soccer team, and nothing about how NZ caned SA in the Tri-Nations. Not that I care, I just like seeing Kiwi shit while I'm in another country. No one cares about us though. That reminds me: David Beckham is an illiterate dickhead.
Somehow though, and I'm sure it was BBC, we learned about cave paintings and ancient carvings in Turkey, and how Tony Blair isn't as much of an arsehole as he.. is? And then we passed out drunk. Which was a significant achievement, I might add. We all know I'm a raging boozehag, but I never once got properly drunk throughout the whole trip without wanting to go to bed first. God knows I wanted to, I just couldn't. I think it was the heat. But something about that Novotel.. induced, primal drunkenness. Harks back to the Don Chan. Fuck, we were having that much fun learning about Tony Blair that we ran out of alcohol, and I decided to be very, very.. well I ordered room service. At American prices. $10 for a crap panini, and god knows what for the beer and their weird version of a vokda & lemonade.
Next day I woke up, had some more peculiar buffet..
We checked our e-mails.. I discovered that Mark had raped all my dope plants in my absence and that my bank account was very very empty. How depressing, but I was slightly richer anyway! Thanks Qantas!
All I had left to do was buy strange, foreign junk food, and a carton of cigarettes. We had, once again, planned to have the porter call us a taxi. I kept my 7-11 plastic bag so there would be no confusion. And with that, the lovely little man pointed towards the airport and said there was a convenience store of sorts quite close by (in his jilted english). After our alcohol mission the night before I refused to believe that it could be so close, that we could have been so ignorant, but we stumbled out of the hotel in the general direction of his finger.
And found another hotel porter with a radio, pointing "supermarket", so we wandered that way, and heard "farang, supermarket" over a radio in the distance, and found another hotel porter beckoning. Fuck me. It was just over the road all that time. And there was a chain of them, leading us there. Praise the lord for "Happy Pearl Mart". And fuck the porter who had convinced us that we needed to go back to MBK the night before.
I spent half an hour trying to choose which kind of bad chocolate to buy, which kind of innocuous dried fruit I could smuggle back home. And then it was lunchtime.
We chain smoked for a while.
And then we got on the plane.
And even the Australian wine and over the counter Valium didn't put me to sleep.
So I watched "The History Boys" which is a fantastic movie and I can't recommend it highly enough. Another drink, another couple of valium, and I still couldn't sleep. So I watched "The Bridge To Teribithia", which made my cry like nothing since "My Girl". Why they make kid's movies so depressing is beyond me.
And then I spent 6 hours in Sydney transit buying booze and toblerone. And chewing constantly on my nicotine gum.
And then I flew back to Auckland. After they changed the boarding gate 3 times.
And then NZ customs harassed me about going to Laos. "And what were you doing in Laos?" asked the customs man, "getting royally fucked up on drugs" I replied... I wish I had replied. "It was cheaper than Thailand" I said, "And I'm a practising Buddhist".
They didn't fuck me over. Or cavity search me.. or any of those other vile things I had been warned about. The tubby Maori customs officer grunted and made almost unintelligible comments about my duty free alcohol, then waved me through.
And then I saw mum & bob. And I nearly cried, but I didn't.
And then I went home and downed a bunch of Valium and went to bed.
THE END.
OH, and I have just run out of valium and duty free booze. SO this will be the last post from me for a while.
The "Malaysia" was awful. Worse than the shitty guest houses on Khao San (but cost more). Fuck you LiveJournal, since when do you have that filthy red underline like Microsoft Word?
Whatever.
People tell you that when you go to Thailand, you WILL get ill. Watch out for the food, watch out for the water.. it aint none of that. It's the air. Immediately, being back in Bangkok made us ill. I took pills for it, which I happen to be very good at.. But Michael, being the closet hippie that he is, decided to ride it out. In style. We, or rather he, picked a hotel at random called "The Amari", and announced that we would splash out since it was our last night in that bustling, polluted neon jungle. We got there and it cost something like NZD$250 for a night, that's about US$215 for all you foreigners (since the exchange rate RULES right now). About the most expensive hotel I have ever stayed in. So Michael spent the afternoon shitting while I happily, constipatedly, visited the local office of the company I work for...
It seems that they charge more fees than we do. Holy Jesus fuck, I felt like some ignorant provincial pleb. Everything glistened.. or maybe I'm exaggerating, but the view was like.. well, unbelievable. I had to show them my passport to even get into the building. Think of it this way: our office is next to a brothel, between two high rise apartment buildings. Theirs is probably the only office in Bangkok that ISN'T next to a brothel. If anything has convinced me to keep pushing paper in my fluorescent hellhole, the thought of fleeing to some exotic(ish) country to work in that kind of opulence certainly fucking did.
I'm really glad that when they asked me where I was staying I didn't have to say "The Malaysia". I couldn't have lied anyway, because they had one of their PERSONAL DRIVERS escort me back to my hotel. My very expensive hotel. I sat in the back seat, reading the newspaper, until we arrived at the foyer of my hotel, and the doorman opened the car door for me, and yeah. I felt cool. Small things eh.
Upon the recommendation of one of the delightful MYI staff members, we visited the "night markets", the name of which I forget. Lum something. Our Tuk Tuk ride there - after some high speed careening down alleyways that were definitely not designed for driving in - convinced me that there should be a theme park dedicated to Bangkok traffic. However, we arrived relatively safely at the markets. The vast, vast, vast, huge, sprawling markets. Spending your last night in Bangkok, with a lot of presents to buy, in a craft zoo, almost makes for a panic attack. But the life! The collision of people and things! They even had live music.. which wasn't anywhere near as good as the live music in Vientiane.. in fact I think it might have been "big time" karaoke.. but I got a few bits of crap and a fake Mont Blanc fountain pen. Which sometimes works..
Our last morning, and it was more frantic present shopping before an incredibly desperate taxi ride to the airport. And that was it. It all ended so quickly.. No more "Long Live the King", no more cunning Tuk Tuk drivers, no more bad/weird/interesting/foreign smells, no more ... good lord, had I grown to really quite like the place? Somehow, the frenetic evidence of life, the general cheeriness amongst poverty and pollution, the COLOURS, had drawn me in. There I was, open to it all, no longer horrified and judgemental, and it was about to end.
Or was it?
No, actually it wasn't. There was a little note at the check-in counter at the airport, advising that they had (vastly) overbooked the flight and offered us US$400 (fucking exchange rate!) and a night in the Suvarnabhumi Novotel if we took another flight the next day. We checked in, and then....... then... took the money and the hotel.
Nobody can ever tell my boss that. Or my mother.
It was 7PM Saturday by the time we got checked in to the hotel, so there wasn't much point in trekking back to the city for any more culture. We quickly ascertained that ALL of the hotel staff HATED Qantas layover customers. Whatever. We had our weird buffet dinner, and had the porter find us a taxi. We weren't paying western prices for drinks, so we (tried) to find a "7-11" to buy some vodka and Singha to pass the time. After a service station and two roadside stalls, the taxi driver eventually got the point and pulled up at the filthiest 7-11 I ever saw. And that's coming from Khao San. Still, we got what we wanted, and bounded back to the taxi gleefully clutching our alcoholic loot. I don't think the driver was very impressed when he figured out what our little trip was all about, he was all religious etc, but we tipped him.
Back to our (moderately, relatively) palatial pad to get bleary eyed and happy.
Fuck the Novotel, they (deliberately, I'm sure), didn't have any movie channels. Or music channels. Or anything worth watching, except BBC world which just repeats itself. I would have cost about NZ$26 for one of their pay movies, which is OBSCENE! Even ESPN (and I hate sports) played nothing but repeats of David Beckham's induction into some US soccer team, and nothing about how NZ caned SA in the Tri-Nations. Not that I care, I just like seeing Kiwi shit while I'm in another country. No one cares about us though. That reminds me: David Beckham is an illiterate dickhead.
Somehow though, and I'm sure it was BBC, we learned about cave paintings and ancient carvings in Turkey, and how Tony Blair isn't as much of an arsehole as he.. is? And then we passed out drunk. Which was a significant achievement, I might add. We all know I'm a raging boozehag, but I never once got properly drunk throughout the whole trip without wanting to go to bed first. God knows I wanted to, I just couldn't. I think it was the heat. But something about that Novotel.. induced, primal drunkenness. Harks back to the Don Chan. Fuck, we were having that much fun learning about Tony Blair that we ran out of alcohol, and I decided to be very, very.. well I ordered room service. At American prices. $10 for a crap panini, and god knows what for the beer and their weird version of a vokda & lemonade.
Next day I woke up, had some more peculiar buffet..
We checked our e-mails.. I discovered that Mark had raped all my dope plants in my absence and that my bank account was very very empty. How depressing, but I was slightly richer anyway! Thanks Qantas!
All I had left to do was buy strange, foreign junk food, and a carton of cigarettes. We had, once again, planned to have the porter call us a taxi. I kept my 7-11 plastic bag so there would be no confusion. And with that, the lovely little man pointed towards the airport and said there was a convenience store of sorts quite close by (in his jilted english). After our alcohol mission the night before I refused to believe that it could be so close, that we could have been so ignorant, but we stumbled out of the hotel in the general direction of his finger.
And found another hotel porter with a radio, pointing "supermarket", so we wandered that way, and heard "farang, supermarket" over a radio in the distance, and found another hotel porter beckoning. Fuck me. It was just over the road all that time. And there was a chain of them, leading us there. Praise the lord for "Happy Pearl Mart". And fuck the porter who had convinced us that we needed to go back to MBK the night before.
I spent half an hour trying to choose which kind of bad chocolate to buy, which kind of innocuous dried fruit I could smuggle back home. And then it was lunchtime.
We chain smoked for a while.
And then we got on the plane.
And even the Australian wine and over the counter Valium didn't put me to sleep.
So I watched "The History Boys" which is a fantastic movie and I can't recommend it highly enough. Another drink, another couple of valium, and I still couldn't sleep. So I watched "The Bridge To Teribithia", which made my cry like nothing since "My Girl". Why they make kid's movies so depressing is beyond me.
And then I spent 6 hours in Sydney transit buying booze and toblerone. And chewing constantly on my nicotine gum.
And then I flew back to Auckland. After they changed the boarding gate 3 times.
And then NZ customs harassed me about going to Laos. "And what were you doing in Laos?" asked the customs man, "getting royally fucked up on drugs" I replied... I wish I had replied. "It was cheaper than Thailand" I said, "And I'm a practising Buddhist".
They didn't fuck me over. Or cavity search me.. or any of those other vile things I had been warned about. The tubby Maori customs officer grunted and made almost unintelligible comments about my duty free alcohol, then waved me through.
And then I saw mum & bob. And I nearly cried, but I didn't.
And then I went home and downed a bunch of Valium and went to bed.
THE END.
OH, and I have just run out of valium and duty free booze. SO this will be the last post from me for a while.