In Pol Pot's shadow

When Douglas Adams, the late, lamented author of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, finally landed himself a well-deserved, seven-figure publishing deal, it completely wrecked both his head and his writing career.
How? Well, Mr. Adams did some calculations and figured out that every time he typed a simple word like ‘and’, ‘the’ or even ‘a’, he earned about 15 pounds sterling.
Despite his legendary sense of humour, as a lefty Guardian reader he apparently found this concept so utterly ridiculous that he was unable to write.
Temporarily Thairish also gets paid by the word, but is thankfully made of much sterner stuff.
I’m still anxiously awaiting my own seven-figure publishing deal so, in the meantime, imagine my delight when I discovered that the Thai name for Bangkok is – and at this point I’d like to advise all patriotic Welsh people to avert their eyes to avoid disappointment at the loss of their monopoly on ridiculously long place names – ‘Krungthep mahanakhon amonratanakosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amonpiman avatansathit sakkathattiya witsanukamprasit’. Whew! Catchy, eh?
According to Lonely Planet, that tongue twister roughly translates as ‘Great City of Angels, Repository of Divine Gems, Great Land Unconquerable, Grand and Prominent Realm, Royal and Delightful Capital City Full of Nine Noble Gems, Highest Royal Dwelling and Grand Palace, Divine Shelter and Living Place of Reincarnated Spirits’.
It was given the name in 1782, but times have obviously changed. Today, a more accurate translation would be ‘Great City of Chancers, Repository of Fake Gems, Great Roads Jammed, Neon Signs Ahoy, Dirty Smelly City Full of Nine Million Frustrated Drivers, High-inducing Exhaust Fumes and Suicidal Tuk-tuk Drivers, Divine Go-Go Bar and Dying Place of Inebriated Ladyboys’.
Seriously, it’s a fucking crazy town. Like the song says, one night in Bangkok makes the hard man crumble.
Speaking of songs, in 1989 the Thai rock duo Asanee-Wasan released an album called Fak Thong (Pumpkin), which featured their biggest ever hit ‘Krung Thep Mahanakhon’ – essentially Bangkok’s full Thai name chanted over a hypnotic rhythm. In other words, the entire lyrics went: ‘Krungthep / mahanakhon / amonratanakosin / mahintara / ayuthaya / mahadilok / popnopparat/ratchathani / burirom / udomratchaniwet / mahasathan / amonpiman / avatansathit / sakkathattiya / witsanukamprasit’.
Anyway, not to beat around the bush, I only mention Krungthep mahanakhon amonratanakosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratchathani burirom udomratchaniwet mahasathan amonpiman avatansathit sakkathattiya witsanukamprasit because I went there this week, for reasons which I’ll come to in a moment. First though, I’ve a few more easy euros to earn.
Of course, in order to save conversational time, and to avoid having to paint ridiculously large signposts, the Thais usually shorten the name to Krung Thep (‘City of Angels’).
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Three cheers for my landlords Mr. and Mrs. Pong! Regular readers will be aware that illness prevented me from making the hugely inconvenient monthly visa-run which Thai immigration law demands of all farangs (westerners). Basically, you can stay in the country more or less indefinitely, providing that you leave it every 30 days.
Having recently paid 1900 baht (€38) to extend my visa for 10 days, I woke up one morning 11 days later and said, “Shite!”
Shite, indeed. I was now in the country illegally, having outstayed my official welcome. This can actually be quite serious. If you make it to a border, it’s no big deal – you simply pay an overstay fine of 200 baht per day.
However, if, for any reason, the brown-suited Royal Thai Police Force happen to check your passport before you get there, they can make life really difficult. You can be arrested, heavily fined and deported. If you can’t pay the fine or produce a plane ticket out of the country, you can even be jailed.
The most likely scenario, however, is that the cops will demand a big fat bribe, which, all things considered, it would be in your best interests to pay.
The nearest borders from Ko Pha-Ngan are the Malaysian and Burmese ones. However, both involve a round trip of roughly 24 very uncomfortable hours in a minibus. I really wasn’t in the form for either journey, but it had to be done. I was about to flip a coin when, fortunately, the Pongs came to my rescue.
Mrs. Pong’s delightful younger sister, Tim (Mrs. Pong’s name is Jim), had come to stay on Ko Pha Ngan a few weeks earlier and was now visiting relatives up in Bangkok, before flying back home to New York.
They were planning on driving up to see her and saying a final farewell. So, very kindly, they offered to take me along with them, and also to take me to the Cambodian border – about two-and-a-half hours drive east of Bangkok.
Having stayed with them for the best part of the last six months, I’m now officially their ‘best customer ever’ so I didn’t feel too guilty about accepting.
Care of the Double Duke was entrusted to the only other customers, a friendly Dutch couple named Rianne and Hilco, and we set off on the 750km drive to Bangkok (though obviously enough, we had to take the ferry to the mainland first).
Pong did most of the driving and I took care of stereo duties.
By the time we were passing through Hua Hin, I had taught him all of the words to Whipping Boy’s ‘When We Were Young’. “Babies, sex and flagons, shifting women, getting stoned...”
Motoring up through Thailand is actually not that different from motoring through Ireland. They also drive on the left, the roads are almost as bad, and the countryside is lush and verdant.
The biggest difference is the traffic. The most popular forms of transport in Thailand are pick-up trucks and motorbikes. The further north we got the more it rained, and many of the pick-ups I spotted were full of miserable looking Burmese workers huddled in the back.
As for motorbikes, absolutely no-one wears a helmet. It’s not unusual to see people speeding down the motorway on rusty old Hondas, with a young child perched precariously on the back. Unsurprisingly, motorbike crashes are the number one cause of death on Thailand’s roads.
We arrived into Bangkok at around 5.30am to find that the traffic was already getting heavy. Amongst the many taxis, tuk-tuks and private cars, were a number of vividly painted buses carrying bleary-eyed, white-shirted students to school.
School begins at 8.30am, but apparently the traffic gets so congested that they have to leave that early to make it on time.
As a native Bangkokian, Mrs. Pong took the wheel for the drive through the city. It quickly transpired that Mr. Pong isn’t a big fan of the Thai capital. “Dis place full of crazee people,” he sighed, closing the car window to muffle the horns and other traffic sounds. “No good for welaxing.”
Narrowly avoiding about six crashes, we made it across the city in a record 50 minutes and hit the road to Cambodia.
While Cambodia itself is apparently a beautiful country, the border at Poi Pet is an extremely depressing place.
For a start, it’s absolutely filthy, with rubbish strewn eveywhere and mangy dogs, cats and rats foraging through it.
The roads are actually dirt tracks and so there’s dark mud everywhere, spraying up in fine arcs from the wheels of battered cars and rusty bicycles.
We arrived there at about 8.30am and I badly needed a shower by 8.32.
The moment I stepped out of the car I was approached by a Thai teenager brandishing visa application forms.
“I help you, I help you,” he urged, waving the papers in my face. “No thanks,” I replied, trying to brush past him. He remained at my side the whole five minute walk to the immigration office, though, angrily pushing away everyone else who tried to approach me.
Gambling is illegal in Thailand (you’re not even allowed to bring a packet of playing cards into the country) but from the Thai side of the border you can see the Cambodian casinos – big, luridly coloured buildings with neoned names like Holiday Palace Casino.
Apparently, by special arrangement with the Cambodian government, these are all Thai-owned and most of the border traffic is comprised of hopeful Thai gamblers.
The immigration office was jammed but, at that early hour, I was the only farang there and so the ‘Alien Checkpoint’ was free. I paid my overstay fine, had my passport stamped, and then crossed over no-man’s-land to the Cambodian side. As soon as I left the office, a Cambodian teenager materialized at my side. “I help you, I help you.”
Walking into Cambodia, you’re immediately aware that you’re entering a very different country. Every Thai considers him or herself to be “lucky” to have been born in Thailand. Seeing the state of their neighbouring country, it’s easy to see why.
These people are poor – really poor. Many people were dressed in old rags and wearing muddy plastic bags for shoes. Farmers and women were carrying back-breaking loads on bamboo poles or pushing them around on primitive wooden-wheeled carts.
I spotted a couple of unfortunate women with hideous acid burns on their faces (apparently throwing acid is the revenge attack of choice in Cambodia). Paul Pot’s legacy lives on.
As the only white-skinned person in the vicinity, I was immediately targeted by just about everybody. Little kids ran up with their hands out, saying “please, please, please.” Ladyboys and prostitutes blew desperate kisses and made lewd gestures. It could’ve been my imagination but the women holding hands with young children (some mere infants), looking pointedly at them and then pointedly at me, seemed to be offering them to me, sexually.
You can see why Gary Glitter chose to move here. It’s obviously a sex tourist’s paradise.
There was a guy hanging outside the Cambodian visa office smoking a cigarette, who turned out to be the visa officer.
Having stood there, blowing smoke in my face while I filled out the forms, he gave me a sly look when I handed them back along with the 1000 baht fee. “Do you have a tip for me?” he asked. I reluctantly slipped him another 100 baht, and he affixed the visa to my passport.
Now all I had to do was get stamped in and then stamped out again. He told me that he’d do it for another 500. I told him to go fuck himself, and he shrugged and turned away. It turned out to be a slightly more expensive mistake.
I went over to the entry checkpoint and presented my passport. The uniformed official spent a long time examining my passport, smiling broadly at me, while keeping his rubber stamp hovering over the page. It took me a few moments to realise what was going on. I handed over another 100 baht note. He shook his head and discretely flashed three fingers. Sighing heavily, I gave him another 200 and he stamped it. I know these people are poor, and they undoubtedly realised I was just doing a visa run, but there’s still something repugnant about having to pay a uniformed official to do his job.
Having been stamped in, I now had to get stamped out again. I was tempted to pay a quick visit to the casino (where they’ll apparently give you gambling chips in return for a watch or a ring), but the Pongs were waiting for me.
The official in the exit office wanted 500 to stamp me out. I offered 300. He wouldn’t stamp, I wouldn’t budge. Stalemate. After about five minutes, he laughingly gave in.
As I walked gratefully, and legally, back into Thailand, the teenager (who had been at my side throughout most of this) asked, “You have tip for me?” I felt like saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, stop ripping people off and your country might get more tourists.” But who am I to judge?
These people live almost unimaginably bleak lives. I gave him 100 baht and a pack of Marlboros.
He was ridiculously grateful. “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.”
Although we were all pretty wrecked from the car journey, I still had a good old time with the Pongs in Bangkok. Much of our time was spent visiting Jim’s relatives in their homes or eating out with them in some of the city’s exceedingly fine restaurants. Her family is quite wealthy, by any standards, and both her parents and her brother lived in suburbs with quite serious LA-style security outside the houses, and armies of servants inside. Staying on Ko Pha-Ngan, where most people live in primitive wooden huts, it’s easy to forget that there’s a much richer and more cosmopolitan side to this country.
On the last night, we had finally said goodbye to Jim’s sister, and were preparing to leave, when Pong got a farewell phone call from the Dutch couple, who had just flown up from Samui. It turned out they had a few hours to kill so we drove out to the airport to meet them. Rianne and Hilco were depressed to be leaving the Land of Smiles, and not looking forward to their return to Holland. Mr. and Mrs. Pong take customer relations very seriously, and so decided to take them into town for a meal.
We wound up in nearby Patpong, Bangkok’s notorious red-light district. Apparently the area has calmed down a lot in recent years (it’s heyday was in the 1970s when thousands of American soldiers would visit the city on R&R), but it’s still well worth seeing. Although its main attraction nowadays is a bustling night market, there are still many go-go and girlie bars, most of which offer ‘ping-pong’, ‘razorblade’ and ‘banana’ sex shows. I wanted to take a look, but I was afraid of embarrassing Mrs. Pong. No need. She was 10 steps ahead of me. Straight through the doors of the tastefully named Pussy Palace.
So there we all were, me, the Pongs and the Dutch couple, lined up at the bar with about 20 bikini-clad girls gyrating unenthusiastically to an old Abba track on the platform behind it.
Every girl wore a numbered badge and, for 4,000 baht, you could pick any one of them and take them to a private bedroom upstairs. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, but you wouldn’t think it here.
Mr. Pong, Hilco and I were certainly enjoying the view. Mrs. Pong seemed highly amused, however, and was smiling cynically as she sipped her “velly expensive,” 150 baht OJ. I jokingly asked her was she not worried that her husband was so obviously ogling the fleshy wares.
“Not weally, Olaf,” she said. “You see, dey is all men! Ha, ha!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I quickly replied. “I knew that. I mean, obviously I knew that. Of course they’re men. I knew that. Really, I did.”