Day 26 - Kanchanaburi
Trucks to the left of me, cars to the right, here I am stuck in the middle lane with you. 'You' in this case would be my skewed sense of the possible and impossible. The scooter experience on Ko Samet emboldened me to go further. There's a national park about an hour away from Kanchanaburi with waterfalls and caves and the like which I set my sights on. I'll be damned if I'm doing an organised tour so scooter it is. The distance makes me apprehensive, some of the busy roads I'll go make me very apprehensive but people said I needed to push myself on this trip and try new things. I'm sure this is what they meant. No, they'd say "you don't have a license, don't do it". Like the Indian headbob or the Egyptian smile, they say "it can't be done". But we place such faith in a piece of paper as if it wards off all the bad things that may happen. The momentary competence that that piece of paper endorses has no sway over the future. We live our lives slavishly obeying somewhat well-intentioned rules. We live by them and die slowly by them. This isn't what the trip is about. It's about finding a version of myself that isn't defined by what he's been told he can do by others, by what he's been told he can do by himself. Live fast and die middle-aged is my motto. I shall try to specialise in the living bit.
With due care I pick my way through the traffic, mirror, signal, manoeuvre. And I begin to feel like I won't become roadkill unless someone else does something stupid. This is reassuring because so far the Thais have proven to be reasonable drivers. Turning off the highway soon all I have for company is signs warning of cows crossing, deer crossing, elephants crossing, the normal stuff. Sometime later and, finding that I haven't died up the arse of a pachyderm, I pull up at the Erawan waterfall. It is closed. They have closed a waterfall. Did they build a dam or is there just a tap they can turn? Part 1 of my day trip is a bust. I continue on for another 30 minutes of winding mountain roads to the caves. They are closed. Did they fill them in or just make a big rock door? Either way I pretend to be annoyed that I can't walk up 600 metres of stairs in 40c heat and leave. Part 2 of the plan is a bust. There's another waterfall some kilometres further. Further than I'd planned but I can't return to Kanchanaburi having only seen 'closed' notices. And in defiance of my bad luck it was open, the water flowed. I descended four levels to where it became a river again and watched children throw themselves theatrically into the deep pools formed by thousands of years of pounding water.
Chatting to an American girl who'd joined in with the kids I couldn't overcome the resistance to inconvenience that getting wet would have brought. It's a banal handicap of later life this aversion to discomfort. You can see it in the Homer Simpson-esque groove in my sofa, my irritation at dirty clothes. It is a product of age I have no doubt but I can also see that it provokes a feeling of control lost. That my ducks aren't all in a row and the minutiae of life is dangerously disordered. If I can find a way to loosen my white-knuckle grip on life then maybe I can jump in a waterfall, just maybe I'll have a better time.
The journey back is broken by a Cornetto for lunch in some nowhere place but otherwise the same scenery with the added fun of fuel anxiety.
I watch the petrol meter tick down, 4 bars, 3, 2, while trying to maintain the most efficient speed which the meter suggests is an ever-changing figure between 60 and 100km/h. At least if I'm doing 100 there will be less time to worry. Wiping the dust from the corners of my eyes I drop off the scooter quietly satisfied with my incident-free day (apart from a snafu with a one-way street). It's back to the main street for dinner. A man and woman walk past the bar I'm in. They confirm the odd habit some couples have in the later stages of their relationship of starting to physically resemble one another. Time slips away from me as I read my book. How long have I been here? I've only had one beer but did I drink it quickly or slowly? Travel like this does unhook you from days of the week, from hours, from the need for any kind of routine. Anyway the beer is done and the night is young enough to warrant another one. There's a waitress nearby but she is entirely absorbed by her phone. She's scrolling some kind of social media feed I guess from her alternating reactions of chuckling amusement and eyebrows raised in mild shock. It's more enjoyable to watch her than interrupt. I turn to the waitress at the bar and order a beer with a raised index finger. If she were closer to me she would have asked "one?". This is the normal response here but since I had one beer before and no-one has joined me since the question seems redundant. Kanchanaburi is quite a demographic change from the Chinese island that was Ko Samet. 90% British would be my estimate and quite a large proportion of them older men with Thai brides. Some stereotypes do hold up. Perhaps they come for the death railway and stay for the death rattle.
Trucks to the left of me, cars to the right, here I am stuck in the middle lane with you. 'You' in this case would be my skewed sense of the possible and impossible. The scooter experience on Ko Samet emboldened me to go further. There's a national park about an hour away from Kanchanaburi with waterfalls and caves and the like which I set my sights on. I'll be damned if I'm doing an organised tour so scooter it is. The distance makes me apprehensive, some of the busy roads I'll go make me very apprehensive but people said I needed to push myself on this trip and try new things. I'm sure this is what they meant. No, they'd say "you don't have a license, don't do it". Like the Indian headbob or the Egyptian smile, they say "it can't be done". But we place such faith in a piece of paper as if it wards off all the bad things that may happen. The momentary competence that that piece of paper endorses has no sway over the future. We live our lives slavishly obeying somewhat well-intentioned rules. We live by them and die slowly by them. This isn't what the trip is about. It's about finding a version of myself that isn't defined by what he's been told he can do by others, by what he's been told he can do by himself. Live fast and die middle-aged is my motto. I shall try to specialise in the living bit.
With due care I pick my way through the traffic, mirror, signal, manoeuvre. And I begin to feel like I won't become roadkill unless someone else does something stupid. This is reassuring because so far the Thais have proven to be reasonable drivers. Turning off the highway soon all I have for company is signs warning of cows crossing, deer crossing, elephants crossing, the normal stuff. Sometime later and, finding that I haven't died up the arse of a pachyderm, I pull up at the Erawan waterfall. It is closed. They have closed a waterfall. Did they build a dam or is there just a tap they can turn? Part 1 of my day trip is a bust. I continue on for another 30 minutes of winding mountain roads to the caves. They are closed. Did they fill them in or just make a big rock door? Either way I pretend to be annoyed that I can't walk up 600 metres of stairs in 40c heat and leave. Part 2 of the plan is a bust. There's another waterfall some kilometres further. Further than I'd planned but I can't return to Kanchanaburi having only seen 'closed' notices. And in defiance of my bad luck it was open, the water flowed. I descended four levels to where it became a river again and watched children throw themselves theatrically into the deep pools formed by thousands of years of pounding water.
The journey back is broken by a Cornetto for lunch in some nowhere place but otherwise the same scenery with the added fun of fuel anxiety.
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