Boxing Day in Thailand

Christmas dinner actually turned out weirder than I’d anticipated. We made our way through the Bangkok rush hour at five (it’s just a normal day for them, sensible people) to an outdoor restaurant on one of the main drives and plonked ourselves down on some stone benches. Waiters rushed around with heavy braziers full of flaming coals placing them on our stone table with huge iron callipers (best keep out of their way as there’s no ‘elf ‘n safety executive this far from the EU!). On top of the braziers there are barbeque grills or a domed contraption with a mini-moat around the outside that you fill up with water from a dented tin kettle. The idea is to help yourself to a variety of unidentifiable dead slimy stuff from trays at the centre of the restaurant and cook them on the now-hot sizzling domes without letting them slide into the moat (it doesn’t matter if you do as the moat becomes a nice, but unidentifiable, soup later in the meal). If you are not into dead slimy stuff you can help yourself to some pre-cooked Thai green curry, Korean pork or Japanese sushi. Or, if the mood suits you, you can fish some seafood out of a large tank of water and cook it on the BBQ grill. Linda wasn’t too keen on that when one of the larger prawns decided it wasn’t dead enough and leapt off the grill, twitching and crawling its way across the table towards her. Back on the grill and to Prawn Heaven it went. They had an interesting way of serving beer, too. 3 litres of Singha came on a tall tower which was placed at the side of our table from which PGs (Pretty Girls, according to Mike) refilled our glasses at regular intervals. We managed two of the towers during the four hours we pigged out (set price, you see?) after which Mike and I really pissed everyone else off by deciding we were going down his local for Thursday night happy hour. . . .

I felt fairly good the next day, all things considered. Everyone got up late so I decided on a mooch with my camera bag. First, the skytrain to Ratchathewi station, then a walk down to Klong Sean Saep (klongs are names for the many canals running through Bangkok from the Chao Phraya river). Next came the hairy bit; a water taxi down to Wat Sahhet. Now, remember what I said about the ‘elf ‘n safety executive – or lack of it. Boarding a water taxi is a clumsy affair for an old fart like me: you jump across to the narrow ledge on the outside of the boat, crouch down under the rope and simultaneously step over the plastic sheeting that protects the passengers from the turgid horror that is the klong water (lots of shanty homes on the side of the canal, if you know what I mean!), mind the drums containing god-knows-what, step over the benches until you can park in a spare seat (there weren’t any), and hang on tight. One guy got his wife and daughters in the boat but was still hanging half out of the boat when it took off. As it was, I panicked and got off one stop too early and had to make my way through a clothing market and a series of timber warehouses before I found the wat. To compound my error, I thought it would be a good idea to climb the steps of the Golden Mount (for a full description of this artefact follow this link http://thailandforvisitors.com/central/bangkok/goldmnt.html ) to see the city from a height. To be honest, apart from the occasional wat roof and chedi spire, the cityscape of Bangkok is not inspiring – in fact it’s quite shabby. This is a city best experienced at street level, methinks. Since my feet and knees hadn’t really recovered from our mooch in Chinatown, I hobbled down to the nearest main road to catch a taxi home but one look at the gridlock convinced me to try my hand at the water taxi again. Another hobble back to the wat (groan!) and another mad scramble on the boat, although this time I was getting used to it and got off at the right stop.

After a couple of hours kip I was dragged out to a Boxing Day party at one of Carolyn’s expat friends’ places in the very posh Emporium Suites up at Sukhumvit. It was actually quite pleasant (you know I’m not one for polite company chit chat) as a lot of the English people living here lead very interesting lives. We met some families who are going to be on the same island as us on New Year’s Eve (but more about that anon). I even met someone who was heavily into photography and dragged me into the 21st century by recommending some decent hardware and software. Well, it amused me more than talking about the cricket scores or whatever. As we left Mike suggested we go and have another beer on the way home but since it was around midnight, it probably wasn’t a great idea. Just a few days left before our next adventure. Perhaps we should chill out a bit . . .