Forward to Koh Phangan. Back to Bukit Lawang

Well the President may not be in Bangkok at the moment but I still am, day nine. I think I am about ready to make my first big move out of the city. There are still a few things to do here but I think I am coming down with Khoasan fever. It seems the choices are rains and floods in the mountains or rain and beaches on one of the Islands or Koh’s. So, tomorrow night I am heading off to Koh Phangan. It’s back on the bus tomorrow night for a twelve hour run down the Thai Peninsular to Sarit Tani, close, but comfortably far enough away from, the Malaysian Border. Then it’s on the boat for a four hour trip out to Koh Samui then Koh Phangan. I almost made it here last time around before Amanda persuaded me to stay on the train and keep going to Bangkok. So, I go here with no knowledge or experience although I do know that Koh Samui is a party island of young folk mixing it with alcohol, drugs, techno, house, reggae and other music. I don’t mind staying where young folk are having fun but the deep duff duff duff bass of the sound systems could penetrate two meters of concrete so I’ll head north to Koh Phangan. I don’t know too much about this island either but I’ll be heading to Haad Kuwad, (Bottle Beach). The guild book makes it sound quiet idealic although every beach in this part of the world looks like it deserves a postcard. The appeal of Hadd Kuwad is that it’s only accessible by boat and the thought of spending a little while on a bleached white beach in a hammock sipping fresh coconut juice and reading a book, without the sound off cars, trucks and buses buzzing about is rather appealing. Yet the reading the book in the hammock image could well turn to sitting in a thatched hut in teaming rain squatting mosquitoes and trying to avoid the leaks from the roof!!! I cross my fingers.

Bangkok has been fun. I’ve been up and down the Chao Phraya river a few times on the high speed river boats. They are a cheap, easy and reliable way to get around. Two days ago I did a full circle of the city by heading down the river on the river boat, catching the Skytrain to the Freedom Monument with a stop and a change along the way then finally a bus from there to the Banglumpu area to complete the circle. The last two days have been very humid with heaps of rain. Well, it is the rainy season here but hopefully we are coming to the end of it which apparently is the end of September. I might then be able to get that train up to Chang Mi. There are buses there and they are no doubt cheaper and quicker but when you have had this idea of catching a train to Chang Mi in your head for a couple of decades then hell a few extra dollars and a change of itinerary is a small sacrifice. I like the idea of travelling there by train because, well, I am a self confessed train buff, and secondly trains bet buses hands down when you can take a sleeper and arrived refreshed as opposed tried, dirty and stiff. But then I suppose that is nothing that a day or two relaxing under palm trees on a tropical beach doesn’t solve fairly quickly.

Backpacking around places like this is a bit like playing cards as you never know who or what is going to be dealt to you next. There was the French guy sitting on a bar stool who started to tell me how he liked Australia but thought we were a racist country and part of the history of bloody English colonisation. I had to remind him of Frances little ventures in West Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and so forth and their current colonial presence in New Caledonia and the fact they continue to drop atomic bombs on tiny atolls there against the New Caledonian’s wishes. Oh, and isn’t there considerable right wing neo fascists in France and weren’t Paris suburbs burning for months due to racial problems a year or so back? Oh course there are racists in Australia but I wasn’t going to let this French man get away with it so easy sitting on a bar stool in Bangkok.

Next morning it was a Swiss woman probably in her early sixties sitting at the breakfast table. She had just come over from Indonesia to Panang by boat then a train up to Bangkok with a young Indonesian who she was paying his course fees to do a Thai message course. Having been to a number of places in Sumatra, Indonesia’s northern most island, I knew the tourist village she told me she had come from. Bukit Lawang is a small village, probably four or five hundred people, situated on the edge of a lovely river right on the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park. The place holds special memories for me as I had travelled their with my mum somewhere back in the late 90’s so probably about ten years ago. My mum discovered backpacking herself later in life and had been a number of times to Bali, a place she loved. She surprised me and others by becoming quiet proficient at Indonesian Language, Bahasa, and actually taught it at U3A, University of the Third Age. Anyway, mum hadn’t been outside of Bali and as I was heading up to Sumatra we arranged to meet up and travel together for awhile and Bukit Lawang was our first destination out of Medan where we had meet up. The main attraction for many was the orang-utan rehabilitation project up the river which is worth a look but be quick to move as a number of oranguatan’s get particular pleasure out of urinating on tourists standing below taking photos.

Anyway the direction of this whole story revolves around the river which runs through the tiny village. It is probably the only river in Indonesia, or Asia for that matter, that I would swim in. It comes straight out of the national park and is crystal clear. The river running through the town moves fast over rocks and boulders yet it is still deep enough to ride down on a tyre tube. I hired a tube and walked up the track a number of times coming zooming back down the river into town. It was great fun and a little unnerving as you realised that things could go wrong. So when I noticed my 60+ mum walking up the track with a tyre under her arm I was just a little concerned. Hell, I could see my brothers standing around me beating my breast bone if something went wrong asking why the hell had I let my mum go tubing down such a rapid. I thought she would go once, freak out, and quietly take the tube back and spend the rest of the afternoon drinking tea and reading a book which is what you would expect of your mother at that age. Hell no. She was up and down all day having the time of her life. I could feel the role reversal thing happening as I started to wonder if I should persuade here to take the tube back thinking the more times she went up and back the more possibilities of a disaster. In the end I just gave up and thought dam it she is a 60+ year old woman and can make her own decisions and hell would you rather your mother died from sticking a knife in the toaster or in high adventure in the jungles of Northern Sumartra?

I am now getting to where this story was heading too from the start. It is very dark at night on the edge of the national park especially as there is no electricity and people use candles and kero lanterns. There is also no cars in Bukit Lawang with pedestrian access via a long suspension bridge over the river. . I think it was the second night we were there we were sitting at a large rough cut wooden table at a restaurant which literally had the river right at its side. You could drop a stone straight into it. As with most places in Asia there was music playing at volume so when a noise rose above it you seemed to take notice. I heard it first. A rumbling indistinct kind of a sound which seemed to be gaining volume. I walked to the edge of the balcony and tried to concentrate. I could see flashes of lightning in the distance but it didn’t sound like thunder and it persisted. Then suddenly crash, it hit, a wall of water about five feet high came pass where I stood, now only about ten feet above, and I got a free shot of adrenalin that night. Whoa, I’d never seen anything like it. A flash flood. Mum and I travelled together for a couple more weeks before she headed down the west coast of Sumartra on her way back to Bali and I headed up to Banda Aceh on the very north tip of Sumatra yet that night remained etched in our memories and we often liked to recall it later.

My mother passed away four or five years on from then so the last part of this story needs to be told in her absence. I meet the French woman over breakfast downstairs where I am staying. She told me she had travelled with the young Indonesian man from Bukit Luang to Bangkok so he could do a massage course then began to tell me the reason behind this. Apparently in 1993 there was another flash flood in Bukit Luang yet this was the mother of flash floods with a wall of water 35 feet high ripping through the town and killing around 350 people or most of the village. She produced a photo from her bag and I recognised some of the buildings still standing but basically it was all gone and it was quiet a shock. Apparently there had been so much illegal logging up in the national park that the water which would normally soak into the ground simply sheeted off the bare hillsides and into the river. I could remember this boys father who ran the guest house mum and I had stayed at. He had been killed in the flood and the son, who I vaguely remember as a child, now ran the guesthouse and was here to learn massage to try gain a marketable skill for tourism.


It had taken years to cross a path I had taken here before yet yesterday a part of my history found me here in Bangkok. You never know what cards are going to be dealt to you.

Chao Phraya River.

Another day and another venture out on the public transport system, today in search of the Prahip Plaza. Travelling with a laptop and spending some of my time learning a new web animation program the track point mouse was murdering the muscle between my shoulders after many hours delicately push the button this way and that I decided to splash out and buy a mouse. I asked one of the locals and he said, ‘you must go Prahip Plaza’. So with the help of No. 60 bus Prahip Plaza I went. When it comes to shopping malls and plazas there is a Thai saying, ‘same, same’ that describes my general feeling towards these places yet this one was a little different from what I’d seen before. An eight story building with nothing but computers and computer accessories, not too mention more pirated cd’s, games, movies and programs than you could use in a lifetime. I hate to admit it being an anti consumer but I did find myself walking around the complex after I had bought my humble mouse just marvelling at the size and scale of the enterprise.

The novelty soon wore off and I found myself back on the grimy streets of Bangkok and back to Khoasan Road. As interesting as a trip to the Siam Square area of the city might be I felt I had to venture out again in the afternoon and headed off on foot to the Chao Phraya River a couple of blocks away. Twenty three years ago the tourist strip began and ended with Khoasan Road yet now it overflows for streets and blocks. In fact much of the accommodation and restaurants are far better when you get away from the carnival atmosphere of Khoasan Road which without exaggeration is akin to staying in side show alley with a tide of people, loud music, neon lights and snake oil salesman. So it was pleasant to find myself walking down a few leafy streets with only a relative few tourists and locals ambling about. I made a mental note to keep this area in mind and was soon by the Chao Phraya. It is a fairly large river around the size of the Brisbane River at South Bank yet it is murky, has some floating weed that congests much of the shoreline and a treacherous current that keeps even the locals well away.

I found my way to a large grassy park at one end of riverside walkway and I sat down to watch the passing traffic on the river. Finding a place to sit in Bangkok is a real treat. There is simply no public seating anywhere. Zip. When you walk the streets as much as I do you notice quickly that there is nowhere to park the posterior when you need a break. Maybe it’s a ploy to get people into cafes and other places or perhaps just as likely it reflects the hectic pace of life in a city that moves at a frantic pace where people are either at work or at home or going from one to the other. At the Chao Phraya I had only just sat down and two people, rather youngish, started walking my way and I immediately thought, here we go again what are they trying to sell. I don’t like being so guarded and presumptive yet it is a reality that you are targeted from morning till night here and you do need to get a bit of a thick skin or you wouldn’t make it to the end of the street. A bit of selective deafness is certainly helpful when you here someone calling, Hey Mister, from a distance. Well, this time it was all rather innocent. Two school students studying English and armed with an mp3 player wanting to ask me a few questions and record my answers as part of an assignment. Sure, no problem with that. The rest of this blog is that interview as best I can remember it from a few hours ago and are quick off the cuff one line type replies, nothing too profound here.

Q. Do you have any hero’s
A. What do you mean, like super hero’s
Q. No, like people you respect
A. Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, An Sun So Chi(forgive the spelling)
Q. Who? [surprised]
A. An Sun So Chi from Burma, do you know her?
[yes, I know her]
Q. What is the most important thing in life for you.
A. Family
Q. Do you have disappointment in your life
A. Nothing in the world is perfect so there will always be disappointment. I suppose my philosophy is a bit buddist, being in Thailand you might understand, disappointment often comes from others and events outside your control and you really need to focus on the self and realise the things you can and can't control.
Q. If you could have one wish come true what would it be?
A. World Peace, no more blood and killing.
[funny, everyone is saying that answer]
Q. If the world was to end tonight what would you like to do
A. Well, it would be difficult from here in Thailand but I’d wish to be with my family.
Q. [impromptu] Family seems very important to you.
A. Well, when you strip everything else back there is much left but family is there?
Q. What is your main ambition in life
A. I don’t have a huge ambition other than to know when the time comes that I have had a good time and given life a good shake and chased the crack.
Q. If you could speak to yourself as a ten year old child what would you say to him.
A. Hum, don’t waste time. Work early to get the rewards early.
Q. Do you believe in god?
A. It is possible. I believe humans are naturally driven by good rather than evil. If there is a god then he goes by many names.
Q. Do you believe in live after death
A. That is the huge question of our existence and I am too small an entity to know the answer.

Transavante out.

Khoasan Road

Some things in Khoasan Road never change it seems. It is still possible to loss your head on low awnings, twist your ankle in a hole in the pavement and there is still the omnipresent tuk tuk driver harassing you to take a lift the moment you set foot outside. Walking down Khoasan is no small feat as you dodge the obstacles and street vendors trying to sell their wares. Anything from pirated cds, to tailored suits and everything between, even Australian drivers licences, can be bought at, ‘good price for you mister’.! It can be hard to browse as the moment you stop to look at something you are accosted by someone with a well practiced routine in sales technique. Other times strangers walk up and begin with simple conversation which invariably leads to a sales push of some kind. It runs against my general courtesy but most of the time I find myself needing to walk by and ignoring the touts and other hopefuls. The good thing is that I have been here three days and some of the touts and tuk tuk drivers recognise me and hone in on fresher faces in the crowd.

When in Riga an Australian bar manager there gave me the advice to ‘get out of the old town’ if you wanted to see Riga. A few days after arriving in Bangkok I realised I needed to get out Khoasan to see a bit of the real Bangkok and decided I wasn’t going to let a few grey hairs, failing eyesight and memory stop me from heading out on the public transport system as I had all those years ago. I wanted to make my way to the central train station and get information about trains up to the mountain region of Chang Mi in northern Thailand. It would have been all too easy to catch a tuk tuk for around $A3 each way like everyone else and for a one off this is not such a bad way to get to Hualampong Station if you are heading off somewhere on a train. However, Khoasan is a long way from Bangkok’s underground Metro and the Skytrain system and I figured if I could master the bus to one of the stations I could move around the city far more easily and cheaply. I also like just moving around the city the way the locals do and rubbing shoulders with everyday people who often seem a little curious to see you on their turf.

I asked a few questions, bought a couple of transport maps and broke the encryption they contained in understanding them and soon found myself twisting through the streets of Bangkok. I’ve always thought of myself as fairly handy with a map or street directory but it took all my effort to follow my journey on the map through the labyrinth of Bangkok city. It doesn’t help when streets are left off the map leaving the counting streets technique corrupted. I managed however to have a rough idea of where I was and recognised a building as fairly unmistakably a train terminus. I was there and now connected to greater Bangkok.

I had arrived in Bangkok at this station from Malaysia many years ago but I had no recollection of it. I had arrived here with Amanda, the daughter of a South Australian federal politician and had passed through fairly quickly on our way to, you guessed it, Khoasan Road. Hell, what a round trip over various continents that was to get back here! Today I had come to get information on a train to Chang Mi a journey of around 14 hours to the mountain region to the north. The information booth at the front of the station informed me that all trains had been cancelled due to flooding in the north of Thailand and it would probably be around two weeks before services resumed. The information window inside the station informed me that the services would be suspended for two or three days due to flooding. I decided the two to three days sounded better and will head back to the station in a few days and try and buy a ticket then. My days mission had been accomplished and I returned home on the 159.