Day 3 - Bangkok
The plane touches down in, as I noted last time I was here, the hottest city in the world. It doesn't feel as hot anymore but then nothing does. It's an unfortunate side-effect of travel in my experience that the more you see the less there is to truly sweep you off your feet. The exotic becomes the familiar. It's a great pity to be sated even disillusioned by ornate golden temples but perhaps that's the way it goes. The SkyTrain whisks me over to the old town with discomforting ease. It's all smoother than I remember. Outside the hotel which is handily marked on Google maps (much like everything else) large buses drive past offering a street food experience, onboard. Try Bangkok's famous street food without setting foot on the street. Words fail me. I'm informed that my room isn't ready for another 3 hours so I have an iced tea in the café. Then a coffee. Then a sandwich. Then a lime juice. They'll be keeping to normal check-in time it seems, I should have taken the bus tour. I eventually collapse into self-conscious sleep until I get the key. As night falls and half unpacked I resolve to have the first beer of the trip proper. There is a bar conveniently located across the street fro the hotel. And again time has not stood still. Blackboards are chalked with the current beers on tap. Singha? No. Chang? Certainly not. Leo? Get out. The closest thing to a basic bitch lager to be sunk without bothering the taste buds is a pilsner that, upon checking the bill outside, cost me £7.50. Craft beer has arrived in Thailand. So, too has Michelin for I can see from my street-side seat the restaurant 'Jay Fai' , a one star establishment selling crab omelette for $33. It feels like the slickness of the western world and its obsessive branding of every square inch of our environment has ever more homogenised the planet. It has compressed the time it takes for a fad to arise in London or New York and be replicated on the streets of the east. Seven pounds fifty and I don't even like pilsner.
The first day of work I could largely handle through Teams on the phone but soon I would find myself between the rockiest of rocks and the hardest of hard places. The hotel had an unfrequented common room with a computer that, despite its slowness and habit of completely resetting itself every time it was turned off, was more than I could have hoped for. The advent of WiFi and mobile phones was the death knell for internet cafes here so my other options were non-existent. I would have to configure it to access bespoke work systems while making my location appear to be in the UK and avoid sending up any red flags to the IT department. The old computer was grist to the dark satanic mill of my first days in Bangkok. I would be starting this trip with all the baggage of the old world. It would take 3 days of the most tedious, Sisyphean, blood-sweating labour to begin to pay off the idiot tax I had incurred at Heathrow airport. Starting at midday and ending just before midnight, sometimes with nothing achieved at all. Daily I would rage against the dying of the light. And be defeated by it anyway. The window in my room faced a wall, the narrow alley that the common room looked out onto barely admitted any light. I felt like a creature of the night, unseen and scuttling, a ghost. If this all seems like towering self-pity then that's because it is while also acknowledging myself as architect of that tower.
Rescheduled meetings, incremental technical progress and an amount of luck meant I dodged all bullets and got to Friday. Aside from the Michelin starred omelettes there was also a place famed for its pad thai a few doors down. It also attracted large queues but they gathered around the traditional mealtimes as opposed to Jay Fai's constant crowd. My disjointed hours meant I could stroll in and get a table mid-afternoon. It was excellent pad thai and the experience was a little more like how I'd pictured my working holiday. UK lunchtime was 7PM Thai time so I investigated what Google maps suggested was a bar down an unpromising alley. Stepping over some sizable drainage pipes I found a local's bar of the sort that had eluded me all week. It was open air and I took a seat at one of the tables lined up along the khlong (canal). The outer walls and eaves of the building which I took to also be the owner's house were covered with all manner of ephemera that I can only assume he collected himself. It reminded me of an affected bar in East London where beer would be ten times the price. In fairness alcohol licences, tax and duty are high in the UK and the owner sourced his beer from the nearby off-license where he would dispatch a young fella when the stocks in his fridge ran low. With a very reasonable 10 baht (25 pence) markup I liked this place instantly. Shells and unblinking dolls hung above me. Elvis looked down from the wall with a sultry expression, John Lennon looked stern and, er, Taylor Lautner rounded out the trio of portraits. Fish unceasingly broke the surface of the khlong as the light faded, taking unseen insects down into the darkness.
There is live music tonight, an old rocker made of little more than long hair and bony limbs plays guitar and sings soft rock classics. The regulars sip Leo with ice cubes. After a few numbers he gives way to two of the aforementioned regulars who take up the mike and guitar. The guitarist is accomplished, the singer is...enthusiastic. They hit their stride with 'I'd love you to want me' by Lobo (who?) The sound technician is a rotund chap with ears so big the lobes wobble when he walks. He sets up a microphone for the multi-talented guitarist and with old rocker providing tambourine they all croon 'I just don't want to be lonely'. Quite.
The plane touches down in, as I noted last time I was here, the hottest city in the world. It doesn't feel as hot anymore but then nothing does. It's an unfortunate side-effect of travel in my experience that the more you see the less there is to truly sweep you off your feet. The exotic becomes the familiar. It's a great pity to be sated even disillusioned by ornate golden temples but perhaps that's the way it goes. The SkyTrain whisks me over to the old town with discomforting ease. It's all smoother than I remember. Outside the hotel which is handily marked on Google maps (much like everything else) large buses drive past offering a street food experience, onboard. Try Bangkok's famous street food without setting foot on the street. Words fail me. I'm informed that my room isn't ready for another 3 hours so I have an iced tea in the café. Then a coffee. Then a sandwich. Then a lime juice. They'll be keeping to normal check-in time it seems, I should have taken the bus tour. I eventually collapse into self-conscious sleep until I get the key. As night falls and half unpacked I resolve to have the first beer of the trip proper. There is a bar conveniently located across the street fro the hotel. And again time has not stood still. Blackboards are chalked with the current beers on tap. Singha? No. Chang? Certainly not. Leo? Get out. The closest thing to a basic bitch lager to be sunk without bothering the taste buds is a pilsner that, upon checking the bill outside, cost me £7.50. Craft beer has arrived in Thailand. So, too has Michelin for I can see from my street-side seat the restaurant 'Jay Fai' , a one star establishment selling crab omelette for $33. It feels like the slickness of the western world and its obsessive branding of every square inch of our environment has ever more homogenised the planet. It has compressed the time it takes for a fad to arise in London or New York and be replicated on the streets of the east. Seven pounds fifty and I don't even like pilsner.
The first day of work I could largely handle through Teams on the phone but soon I would find myself between the rockiest of rocks and the hardest of hard places. The hotel had an unfrequented common room with a computer that, despite its slowness and habit of completely resetting itself every time it was turned off, was more than I could have hoped for. The advent of WiFi and mobile phones was the death knell for internet cafes here so my other options were non-existent. I would have to configure it to access bespoke work systems while making my location appear to be in the UK and avoid sending up any red flags to the IT department. The old computer was grist to the dark satanic mill of my first days in Bangkok. I would be starting this trip with all the baggage of the old world. It would take 3 days of the most tedious, Sisyphean, blood-sweating labour to begin to pay off the idiot tax I had incurred at Heathrow airport. Starting at midday and ending just before midnight, sometimes with nothing achieved at all. Daily I would rage against the dying of the light. And be defeated by it anyway. The window in my room faced a wall, the narrow alley that the common room looked out onto barely admitted any light. I felt like a creature of the night, unseen and scuttling, a ghost. If this all seems like towering self-pity then that's because it is while also acknowledging myself as architect of that tower.
Rescheduled meetings, incremental technical progress and an amount of luck meant I dodged all bullets and got to Friday. Aside from the Michelin starred omelettes there was also a place famed for its pad thai a few doors down. It also attracted large queues but they gathered around the traditional mealtimes as opposed to Jay Fai's constant crowd. My disjointed hours meant I could stroll in and get a table mid-afternoon. It was excellent pad thai and the experience was a little more like how I'd pictured my working holiday. UK lunchtime was 7PM Thai time so I investigated what Google maps suggested was a bar down an unpromising alley. Stepping over some sizable drainage pipes I found a local's bar of the sort that had eluded me all week. It was open air and I took a seat at one of the tables lined up along the khlong (canal). The outer walls and eaves of the building which I took to also be the owner's house were covered with all manner of ephemera that I can only assume he collected himself. It reminded me of an affected bar in East London where beer would be ten times the price. In fairness alcohol licences, tax and duty are high in the UK and the owner sourced his beer from the nearby off-license where he would dispatch a young fella when the stocks in his fridge ran low. With a very reasonable 10 baht (25 pence) markup I liked this place instantly. Shells and unblinking dolls hung above me. Elvis looked down from the wall with a sultry expression, John Lennon looked stern and, er, Taylor Lautner rounded out the trio of portraits. Fish unceasingly broke the surface of the khlong as the light faded, taking unseen insects down into the darkness.
There is live music tonight, an old rocker made of little more than long hair and bony limbs plays guitar and sings soft rock classics. The regulars sip Leo with ice cubes. After a few numbers he gives way to two of the aforementioned regulars who take up the mike and guitar. The guitarist is accomplished, the singer is...enthusiastic. They hit their stride with 'I'd love you to want me' by Lobo (who?) The sound technician is a rotund chap with ears so big the lobes wobble when he walks. He sets up a microphone for the multi-talented guitarist and with old rocker providing tambourine they all croon 'I just don't want to be lonely'. Quite.
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