|
 |
THE BARUTI COLUMN PART 4: Thailand by baruti armstrong aka robotsex Thailand Departure Feeling much better after another short night of the sweats. Waiting for the bus at the bus station. Words/adjectives that come to my mind: Putrid Exhaust Gas/fuel Contamination Dirty Hot Fumes Pollution Litter Smog Sweat Late Smokey Dusty Gross Diesel I have my Adidas trainers, strings tied together, hanging from my backpack (probably a red flag that I am a traveler/backpacker- besides everything else about me). I prop them up on my right side and lean against them fitting them between me and the guardrail that separates where I am, platform 2, from platform 1. I wish I had a surgeon's mask. The place was easy though, easy as everything else- deciphering Malaysian English and songs in Malay, making sure I was in the right place. With every breath; choking, coughing. But I am much better now than I was, now I was cutting the life out of my lungs-that was better than being lovesick. One bus to Butterworth, Malaysia approximately half-an-hour late. I eye other people's tickets, double-checking that I am on the right bus-and I seem to be. As the bus pulls into the Butterworth station I see children turn around and run alongside the bus. One foot out of the bus, and a girl no more than 10 years-old taps me on the forearm, grabs my attention, and holds up a key chain in her right index finger (as she hold several others in her hand). She's wearing the Muslim female clothing that I barely notice anymore, and has some of the bluest eyes I've ever seen. I quickly shake my head-no. A taxi driver tells me he'll drive me to Hat Yai in 2 hours for 220 RM. We haggle- -I get him down to 160 RM, then down to a trip just to the border, but it is all too expensive. The bus clerk says the bus leaves at 2:30 pm the next day, after I get him to understand that I know there's no bus today because I'm late and it's 4:30 pm. "Comeback tomorrow at 2pm, I sell you a ticket." I walk around in search of a place to stay, anywhere- and the closest I can get. I settle, 30 RM for the most basic of basic on my fumble across the Ruby Hotel. I try to find an Internet café but I see a very serious game of chess being played with a checkerboard and bottle caps, and least I think that's what it was. 
The next day. I feel truncated. After getting hustled into purchasing a seat, an uncomfortable bitch back seat in a taxi ride which was just over 3 hours long for 35 RM to Hat Yai and then surviving the 17 hour train ride from Hat Yai to Bangkok (not that it's that far, rather that it goes anywhere from 15 to 40 miles an hour-45 miles per hour max). I rustled into Thailand's capital city bright and early at about 10:00 am, nearly broke, lone-wolf looking to more than anything else get another point up on the scoreboard for the good guys in the game/the hustle and get a good night's sleep. Immediately taxi drivers approached me. I [get] stuck with a tuk tuk driver who wanted me to pay him 60 B to drive me to Khao San Road. I get him down to 10 B, the stipulation being that we make three stops. Now I knew this hustle. I get taken somewhere they want to take me. Wherever it is, whatever they do, I'm talked into spending money, and the driver makes a commission on the sale. 
I got out of stop one-a travel agency- by telling them that I had to contact my friend whom I was meeting later on that day. It was true, and I was actually a little sad because their pitch was to Chang Mai-a place I did really want to go. The second place was a temple, cool with me since I certainly wanted to see as many temples as I could while I was here. In the temple a guy named Mao Ung sells me on going to a jewelry store to buy something which apparently I could turn around and sell for double the price over seas. At least I leave letting him think I'm sold. But how would he know that Robotsex is not motivated by money or greed? Conveniently the next place I end up is that jewelry shop. I go in as an interested shopper, look around for an inoffensive 5 minutes and leave. I held my part of the bargain; they held to theirs and got me to Khao San Road. All for 10 B. 
As soon as I arrived here I knew that it wasn't a place I wanted to be, but there were many things catering to travelers so I stuck with it. I got a room easily, in what was probably one of the cleaner hotels. Expensive for Bangkok budget, but I got my own shower and air-conditioned room, so... my room also has a television. An amenity I didn't need and would have rather not paid for, but there was nothing I could do. However, the television, cable television, had a channel that enthralled me enough to send me off to the best nights rest I'd had all week. The "this is what's happening downstairs lobby channel". It was mesmerizing. So when Robotsex could've spent his first night in Bangkok cruising for euro-babes, or getting a massage he was glued fast to the nonstop entry and exit of people at his hotel. Khao San Road is so much of what I hate (what everyone should hate) about traveling. Manu Chao blaring Spanish axioms backed by trance music, locals selling anything and everything, old men checking out girls, the list goes on but it is an old list. This place isn't Bangkok, nor is it Thailand. Thailand I will see when I come back with more money and time next time, sometime in the future. I spend my days searching the city, and the exploration is more than enough to keep me busy. I stand placated in front of a food stall. Absorbed by the atmosphere, I'm just another casualty. But underneath the dirt and grime, submerged somewhere under the hedonism and the everything else, I stand out like I point to two beers; two tall bottles of the same brand. ³You want two?² the lady at the stall asks me with her heavy accent. ³Yes, please.² I reply politely. She offers to make me a special drink. I look to my left and see a man squatting down in front of a small set up of assorted glow sticks that he's trying to sell to a man and a woman who appear vaguely interested in making the purchase. The lady at the stall continues and informs me that Thai rum mixed with Coca Cola and Red Bull is very good. She assures me that it is very good several times and offers me a deal since it would be my first one. I only take her word for it, and tell her that I'll try it next time. ³Next time!² I say, a small white lie. 
Khao San Road is everything that Del Playa in Isla Vista has the potential to be-and I don't mean that in a good way-a market place, a zoo, a nuclear power plant, a town hall, a dump. If the list is endless, which I think it is, it is because the possibilities are endless also. Trance music blaring from a speaker, or the street closed off and jammed with people going nowhere except back and forth along a path woven in the cement- it's all the same. I decided not to stay in Thailand for very long. I didn't have the patience for it. And I didn't feel like where I was in Bangkok, was giving me a valuable experience, so after a few days of seeing what I could see, I booked a train ticket-one that cost me a pretty penny (a cheap pretty penny, because of the urgency that was telling me to leave the city as soon as I could). I shrugged off a few things I was supposed to do and got myself out of there. But before I had left I was fortunate enough to find a quiet little gem of a secluded corner. And in this secluded corner in Bangkok where there was only a restaurant and a handful of apartments and a few offices and a driveway, I discovered that one of the best things about traveling was not the destination itself but the getting there, the movement (constant or intermediate) from one place to another place. Although I don't think that I was able to relate it so clearly to the guys I was having the conversation with that spawned this realization, as they didn't speak English very well. The Baruti Column Volume 3: Singapore The Baruti Column Volume 2: Little India The Baruti Column Volume 1: From Trinidad to Malaysia |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| lunchboxing.com 2003 | all content © | all rights reserved | suck it so hard | feel the rhythm of the night |
