Too far to walk...

 

"We begin here then, in the very quick of the nightmare, in the crucible where all values are reduced to slag."

Henry Miller - The Air Conditioned Nightmare

This evening I find myself enjoying the slightly salubrious yet subtly seductive comforts of the 'Jolly Frog'. This particular guesthouse, perhaps more than any other, was responsible for putting Kanchanaburi on the map as a backpacker's destination. That was many, many years ago now, and of more recent times it has become something of an emblem of Kanchanaburi, despite an ongoing process of delightfully delapidating degradation that has rendered its décor somewhat dated by modern standards . To say the rooms are basic is to understate the reality. This is not the place to come if one requires high levels of opulence in order to enjoy a break. On the other hand, its throwback decadence to its glory days of the seventies has an almost timeless appeal to a huge variety of travellers. The clientèle this evening are an odd mixture of the geriatric remains of a peripatetic generation and a cosmopolitan group of footloose and fancy free youngsters trying to reinvigorate the bygone days of backpacking yore.
In short, the Jolly Frog has a rather pleasant way of attracting the outlandish and the eccentric. Its garden is perhaps its most notable feature, sitting as it does aside the River Kwai. Unlike the rest of the establishment, it is always looked after with great care and, perhaps, even love. As I tap out these notes on a hot and steamy Wednesday evening I cannot help but overhear the delightfully bizarre conversations of the youngsters sharing a beer or two and swinging to and fro in the hammocks in the centre of the garden. From the accents I am guessing we have several Spaniards, a Frenchman or two, a young American with a predilection for swearing every time he wishes to emphasize a point and several girls, perhaps one American, one French and one English. They, much like myself, are enjoying the late night delights of a bottle or two of 'Archa', a cheap but cheerful Thai beer that sells for the very reasonable 49 baht in the local convenience store, and the soporific atmosphere of a warm night relaxing beside the river.
Actually, I have to admit to being pleased to be back here this evening after a very unpleasant sojourn into Bangkok over the past couple of days. In my years of travelling I have visited many, many cities from Moscow (very dull) to New York (very noisy), Barcelona to Venice (both fascinating), Cairo to Izmir, and many others far too numerous to mention, but I cannot think of any city over decades of travelling that is quite as unremittingly unpleasant as Bangkok. It is a dirty, dingy, dilapidated dystopian disaster of a city that has few, if any, redeeming features.
I spent last night in a hotel 2.5 kms from Don Mueang Airport, chosen for its proximity. In practice, it took nearly an hour and a half to find said hotel (the Pool House Guest Residence). My first resort was to attempt to hire a taxi, but trying to communicate with the drivers of these vehicles proved to be almost impossible. None of them seemed to recognise the name of the hotel, even though I had it written in both English and Thai. None of them seemed to have the foggiest idea of how to read a map, the very concept seeming to throw them into a state of confusion. None of them seemed to want to go on the metre, even though the law requires them to do so, preferring attempts to arrange a hugely inflated price beforehand instead. 

 
After several efforts that merely resulted in increased frustration, I resolved to walk to the hotel. This was probably a mistake as it took vastly longer than expected owing to the lack of anywhere to actually walk. What pavements there were were invariably broken up to the point of unsuitability, the rest of the journey being a case of either walking through a seemingly endless building site or against the stream of a apparently never ending cascade of recklessly driven motor vehicles.
Eventually, I found a 7-11 store that I knew to be in the vicinity of the guest house. I asked the girl behind the counter if she knew the hotel. She did, but she assured me that it was far too far to even consider walking. Instead, she suggested I take a motor bike. Tired, sweaty and a little fed up (a rare emotion for me), I took what I perceived as a rather desperate option and clambered aboard a Honda 90.
The rider rode thirty metres to the West, twenty five metres to the North, followed by one hundred metres to the east and…. we were there. As an expression of the idea of 'too far too walk' it seemed to be lacking something vital that, in the West at least, we tend to call 'distance'. 

 
To be fair, the Thai conception of 'too far to walk' is very different to the British or American. To those of us in the West, the expression would indicate several miles of challenging perambulation, whereas here in Thailand 'too far to walk' means anything above 40 yards or so. An old joke sprang to mind: question“What do you call a person walking in Thailand?”, answer “A tourist!”.
(Actually, I was tempted to use another, very much similar, line earlier, It was along the lines of 'what do you call someone hopelessly lost in Bangkok', the answer being, obviously, 'a taxi driver').
It is hard to conceive of a form of words that will convey just how hopelessly unpleasant Bangkok is. It consists of street upon street, road upon road, of sheer, adulterated ugliness. Even the centre of town, the area around the Royal Palaces, are notable for just how tacky the use of excessive gold leaf can appear. It comes across as a depressing display of unjustified opulence in a land where most of the population are struggling even to put a meal on the table.

Such tasteless decoration accounts for only a small area though, the vast majority of Bangkok being an endless chaos of cars and cables, broken pavements and unrepaired holes, officious policemen and self-righteous military men. From East to West South to North, inside and outside, over a vast distance, there is barely anything that one could recommend to someone about this truly atrocious city.

Luckily (I survived!), I now find myself back in the far pleasanter environs of Kanchanaburi where, if all goes well, I intend to spend the next couple of weeks reading, writing and learning to juggle. The last being the result of meeting Alex, a professional German juggler who was happy to pass on the basics to me in return for a few lessons of twirling nunchucks (I am no master, but sufficiently competent now to start a complete neophyte on the path towards a level of competence).
The hot season has arrived, with rumours of temperatures in excess of 40C on the way in the coming week. This seems a good enough excuse to me to curtail the more physical aspects of flaneurial activity and to concentrate instead on the process of writing, both this blog and a book I have been planning for a year or so now. The prospect of afternoons spent in air conditioned cafés slowly imbibing Americanos and fruit smoothies whilst tapping away on my netbook seems pleasant indeed in this heat...