Thoughts on Thailand
So I went to Thailand last week for work. Working through a local consultancy for a gas company based in Chon Buri - I tend to end up in industrial cities. Chon Buri is a province as well as a city, and is about 100km from Bangkok on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, where some gas pipes come ashore. Eating out in the evenings I had some great seafood which I had not really associated with Thai food from eating it in the UK. The local beer, Chang or Singha, went well with the food and the warm weather but would not be something I would choose to drink in the UK. The restaurants where we ate they kept filling your glass when it was half empty and I lost track of how much I was drinking. The Thursday in Chon Buri we went to a market square in the older part of town and ate at the street market there - watching the fish being roasted over coals and the shrimp (prawns) being plucked out of a tank. Friday night we drove from Chon Buri to Bangkok where I was going to be based for three touristic days before leaving.
I stayed in Bangkok's Chinatown, as though the Internet I found a hotel that looked pretty good and was acceptably priced (a little cheaper than the hotel for Novacon), and as the client was paying for the flights I felt I could indulge myself a little in the extra days I took to stay and look round, plus it was also close to the older part of town that I wanted to visit. I arrived about 8pm on the Friday night, and because it is close to the equator the sun had already been down for a couple of hours and the night-time bustle was well under way. The neon signs were predominately in Chinese, but with a whole bunch of Thai ones and some in English which gave a bizarre Blade Runner-esque feeling to the place. There was also the familiar Tesco logo, but coupled with the word Lotus - their local joint venture. Later in my visit I discovered quite a few Boots stores as well.
Bangkok is a place where after a while you truly think absolutely anything is possible. I did some of the touristy things - the Grand Palace, the Golden Mount Temple and so on - but I also did a lot of walking around talking in the ambience of the place. This annoyed the tuk-tuk drivers who kept asking where I was going and wanting to take me places, but I was happy not knowing precisely where I was and ducking into alleys that looked interesting because of the street stalls, or the smell, or both. There are also smells that put you off - the hotel in Chon Buri had a "No Durian" sign and there were also notices at the airport about contacting your airline if you wanted to take Durian on the aeroplanes. One time I went into an electronics market and ended up in an underground complex with small individual stores selling toys and electronics. There were people sitting fixing games consoles and the like, and I got the impression that if I had asked a round someone would know someone who could supply me with an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 deck. It is a science-fictional place and I am looking forward to getting my paperback of The Windup Girl soon as it is due for UK publication this week. Monday I went into the centre of the city and was a little disappointed, as at times I could have been anywhere. Outside Centralworld they were setting up a Christmas grotto and the signs and the brands were global ones. I did get a Thai edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, published in 2553, the Buddhist year, otherwise known as 2010.
So on Monday I was wandering round Bangkok in shorts and t-shirt sweating in 35 degree heat. On Tuesday I landed at Heathrow at 06:30 and it was literally freezing, although Cambridge was a little warmer by the time I got there. Human beings can move too fast around the planet. GMT +7 is a pain if you fly overnight on a Saturday and don't arrive at your hotel until 18:00 local and have to work at 09:00 local the next day. The one upside was following the test match in Brisbane where I could go to breakfast as they went off to lunch.
I stayed in Bangkok's Chinatown, as though the Internet I found a hotel that looked pretty good and was acceptably priced (a little cheaper than the hotel for Novacon), and as the client was paying for the flights I felt I could indulge myself a little in the extra days I took to stay and look round, plus it was also close to the older part of town that I wanted to visit. I arrived about 8pm on the Friday night, and because it is close to the equator the sun had already been down for a couple of hours and the night-time bustle was well under way. The neon signs were predominately in Chinese, but with a whole bunch of Thai ones and some in English which gave a bizarre Blade Runner-esque feeling to the place. There was also the familiar Tesco logo, but coupled with the word Lotus - their local joint venture. Later in my visit I discovered quite a few Boots stores as well.
Bangkok is a place where after a while you truly think absolutely anything is possible. I did some of the touristy things - the Grand Palace, the Golden Mount Temple and so on - but I also did a lot of walking around talking in the ambience of the place. This annoyed the tuk-tuk drivers who kept asking where I was going and wanting to take me places, but I was happy not knowing precisely where I was and ducking into alleys that looked interesting because of the street stalls, or the smell, or both. There are also smells that put you off - the hotel in Chon Buri had a "No Durian" sign and there were also notices at the airport about contacting your airline if you wanted to take Durian on the aeroplanes. One time I went into an electronics market and ended up in an underground complex with small individual stores selling toys and electronics. There were people sitting fixing games consoles and the like, and I got the impression that if I had asked a round someone would know someone who could supply me with an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 deck. It is a science-fictional place and I am looking forward to getting my paperback of The Windup Girl soon as it is due for UK publication this week. Monday I went into the centre of the city and was a little disappointed, as at times I could have been anywhere. Outside Centralworld they were setting up a Christmas grotto and the signs and the brands were global ones. I did get a Thai edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, published in 2553, the Buddhist year, otherwise known as 2010.
So on Monday I was wandering round Bangkok in shorts and t-shirt sweating in 35 degree heat. On Tuesday I landed at Heathrow at 06:30 and it was literally freezing, although Cambridge was a little warmer by the time I got there. Human beings can move too fast around the planet. GMT +7 is a pain if you fly overnight on a Saturday and don't arrive at your hotel until 18:00 local and have to work at 09:00 local the next day. The one upside was following the test match in Brisbane where I could go to breakfast as they went off to lunch.