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Nights of pleasure or horror, I am determined to enjoy every moment of it when my plane lands on Thai soil fifteen minutes earlier than scheduled on a Thursday. By 9.30 a.m. I have checked into room 9064 at “Bungkok paaaaaaace othel” and find myself waiting for Mr. Sukhum Bhukkanasut - a friend of my father’s who had promised to “look after me” during my stay here. I call my room-mate, a spinster who had been over-excited about visas, passports, customs and immigration, throughout the journey. Unable to grasp my total lack of enthusiasm for shopping, she leaves me to my own devices. Mr. Sukhum is
middle-aged and smaller and shorter than I. Standing next to him
I feel like a giant. Both of us speak English but he can’t
understand me and I can’t understand him. We say “Pardon?
Pardon? And Pardon” but now and then pretend to understand
one another even when we don’t know what on earth the other
is saying. heese,”
he says as if he is speaking to a six-year-old. Then I understand.
“Of course, I have a camera.” I drag my camera out of
my hold-all. He makes me stand in front of a plaque in the lounge
of the hotel, with a sign saying “Doorian strictly prohibited”.
This at least would be a photo I could show my grandchildren (someday),
I mutter to myself. Relief comes at long last when Mr. Sukhum finally looks at his watch and says we’ll head back to the city for lunch. On our way to the restaurant where he treats me to a typical Thai buffet lunch, Mr. Sukhum points Khao San Road to me. Khao San Road is the only place I had wanted to be on earth for a long time. I beg him to take me there. But he has a meeting at three. He promises to send one of his “female staff” to take me to Khao San Road when he leaves me at the hotel. Muthanee Lau, sent by Mr. Sukhum, does not seem to know half as much as what I know about Khao San Road. She says not many Thais go there, it is packed with foreigners and that it looks more like a street in Europe than one in Thailand. I nod my head to show I am listening, but wish she would walk faster as we make our way towards the bus halt to get into a Number 60 bus which would take us to this dream street of mine. No sooner than we are dropped off at Khao San Road, we come across a backpacker. He wears shorts, sandals and a T-shirt with holes in it, carries a bag on his shoulders and a bottle of mineral water in his hands. “Can you tell us how to get to Khao San Road?” we ask him. “I am going there right now. Come with me,” he says with a warm smile. “It is a pity that this happens to be my last evening on Khao San Road. I have to catch a flight to London this evening. Otherwise I would have taken you around.” He is from New Zealand. He has been living here for two weeks. He grimaces and says, “You can’t learn anything about Thailand by living here. It is filled with foreigners. The place is like the United Nations.” We part on top of Khao San Road. I stare at the place open-mouthed. It looks exactly the way I had dreamt it to be ever since I read of it in Alex Garland’s The Beach and saw the movie with Leonardo de Caprio starring in it. Khao San Street is backpacker country. People of my age, from all over the world, travelling on low budgets, carrying all their possessions in a bag strapped to their backs, live here. White is the dominant skin colour, but there are blacks and brownies like me as well. Everyone smiles with everyone else as if they have known each other all their lives. “Namasthe, Namasthe,” shout a group of Europeans when they pass me, mistaking me for an Indian. “Namasthe,” I wave back. The fascination I have for travel and my inclination to embrace anything that is anti-establishment, makes Khao San Road look like heaven to me. There are no laws, no conventions here. Everybody is free to do what they wish. And so I get myself tattooed. I buy cotton shirts which are new but have a faded worn-out look, and Muthanee and I gorge ourselves on everything the roadside vendors have to offer us - banana pancakes, sugar cane juice in a bag, roasted duck’s legs, iced pineapple cubes, sweetened meat balls, packets of fried noodles, tea with lemon... but the thing I would like the most, I dare not buy. I dare not trust Muthanee, who might tell Mr. Sukhum who might tell my father. Thus, I will never get to know what it is like to smoke “grass” and get “wasted”. Muthanee takes me to Ayutthaya on Friday. The place looks a lot like Polonnaruwa to me. Both of us would gladly have skipped this journey. But my father and Mr. Sukhum had insisted we see this city of ruins. “Pointless going to Bangkok and not seeing Ayutthaya,” my father had said. On our way there we stop at the Royal Palace at Bang Pa-In, where a priest tells me my fortune. To my chagrin, Muthanee summarises the whole of his 10-minute narrative into a single sentence in English - “Your beginning is bad but the end will be good.” I find myself still puzzling over this statement. Every night before I go to bed, I promise myself, “Tomorrow night I will go to Patpong”. But I know in my heart of hearts that I will never find the courage to venture out on my own to this famous walkway which is said to be the premier spot for sensual fun. I realise I don’t want to have “my dreams come true” the way the magazines had boasted. I prefer them to remain dreams. I don’t want them to get shattered in a go-go bar with a sleazy name like “Pur House” or “Emotions”. My four days in Bangkok come to an end sooner than I had anticipated. I step off Thai soil on Sunday night determined to come back when I save some more money. All the way home, I daydream of returning to Khao San Road, the heaven of all backpackers. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
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In
the City of Angels
