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Kho
San Man
I was worried. By the time we came to leave Indonesia
・in
a sort of culinary equivalent of Stockholm syndrome - I壇
actually started to like
the food・mmm
monotony. I don稚
really know what happened,
but somehow, in our last few weeks in
選ndo・I
started to crave the bland stuff I壇
been railing against.
Morning, noon and night would see me queuing at the warung, desperate to
eat exactly the same fried rice-based meal.
But Bangkok quickly cured me of this. The Thai devotion to matters
gastronomic astounding, easily up there with that of France and Italy.
Food vendors are everywhere and selling everything: from donuts to
savoury rice puddings to excoricatingly hot curries. After the vapidity
of Bali Bangkok also had real life: what energy! What animation! This, I
thought, is where we should have come instead. Even the Kho San Road (so
often dismissed as Backpacker Benidorm) seemed to have an agreeable
bustle and purpose to it. Perhaps, I thought in my star-stuck state, it
even represented a genuine sociological phenomenon; whatever, it
certainly deserved more of a chance than most gave it.
Well, it got it. On our second day there, we both developed mild food
poisoning. No really big deal, you understand, nothing like the week of
oyster-induced evisceration that had crippled me a few Christmases back.
But enough to ensure we had neither the energy nor the inclination to
leave the area of our hotel, some two streets back from the Kho San.
Thus, we had the chance to examine the environs Kho San in far greater
depth than we would have otherwise done.
And, my God, it is an awful place. Once upon a time it must have been
OK. But nowadays the people who throng it are now largely a sort of
traveling pond life. Initially, I fought this thought
・you池e
one of them, I told myself. But I soon realised I had no more in common
with most of this lot than I have with the kind of wankers who ask you
if you池e
staring at them in Home Counties pubs. Sad to say, but Thailand has
become a mainstream destination and the egg
創・chips
brigade are there to stay.
Kho San Style.
Actually, there痴
quite a distinctive
銭ho
San look・
And you too enjoy the sense
of style and savoir-faire it conveys by following these simple steps.
Get a tattoo
・a
really, really bad Celtic design is nice and, of course, bigger the
better. Get some piercings (not in your ears, stupid), but in clever
places like your eyebrows, lip, chin, etc. (If you池e
a girl) have your hair dread-plaited - this is particularly effective if
you have very pale skin and dark hair for maximum scalp-contrast. (If
you池e
a boy) buy a
舛hang
Beer・or
然ed
Bull・vest
and wear this no matter how ill defined your physique; better yet wear
nothing at all on top, allowing the world to appreciate your
礎ag
of spuds・torso.
And, a relatively recent innovation: don稚
wash! How clever, original
(and cheap) to define yourself with your own distinctive odour. Above
all, make sure that no matter how you choose to express your
individuality, there are at least 20,000 other people doing exactly the
same thing.
Right, you致e
got the look. Now you need to apply the same thinking to your thinking.
If you talk to anyone, make sure that what comes out of your mouth is
the same identikit travellerbabble. When someone asks you a question,
spend 20 minutes talking absolute crap about all the amayyzing places
you致e
been. Just make sure you don稚
go anywhere off the beaten
track; if the Lonely Planet gives it less than a chapter, it痴
really not worth your
while. And, if anyone you meet tells you致e
they致e
been somewhere you haven稚,
politely ignore them and move the conversation on to how stoned you got
up in Chang Mai.
But if I had expected dullness and the conformity of nonconformity,
nothing prepared me for the kind of shape the denizens of travellerville
were in. I was expecting everyone to be a bit like us
・sort
of lean, skinny and like they could do with a good meal. Nothing could
have been further from the truth - huge numbers of them had that fat,
pink puffy look you get from drinking plenty of booze in the sun and
doing no exercise. And this was especially true of the girls. Jesus,
they looked terrible. I remember starting a conversation and after the
usual banal pleasantries, one of them asked Jane how old she was. Jane
replied that she was 29.
塑ou池e
eight years older than me・the
girl said. She looked an out of shape 35 and she was by no means
exceptional. I don't know how many of them would get the reference but
they all look a bit like the boozy ex-pats, all flabby minds and flabby
bodies, of a Graham Greene novel.
As well as confining us to Kho San Road, food poisoning also limited our
diets somewhat: instead of tasty Thai dishes, I had to spent my time
eating crappy, gut-blocking quantities western fast food, thus ensuring,
I had a pretty authentic Kho San experience. So all in all, Bangkok was
a complete washout. Had I not had a spectacularly liquid large
intestine, I don稚
doubt that I would have
enjoyed it more. But even so, what little I saw, confirmed my suspicion
that Thailand is rapidly becoming the new Spain.
Frenchies
After this, Vientiane was a delight. For starters, the second you leave
Thailand 80% of the Brits (and a far higher proportion of the grottier
ones) melt away. As I have said before, the British are unbelievably
conservative tourists and, clearly, even taking an overnight train to
Laos is too adventurous an undertaking for most of them. What you do
get, however is a lot of French. Which is fine with me. The French may
be considered rude and obnoxious and generally get a fairly bad press.
But at least they are interested in culture and don稚
turn anywhere they visit in
large numbers to shite.
Of course, the reason that the French come here in numbers is that Laos
used to be a French colony. And they left a useful legacy. For along
with the indigenous food which is fine and fiery stuff, the city has a
profusion of decent French restaurants; this despite the fact that it痴
a sleepy little place
somewhat smaller (and far less frantic) than Cambridge. It is
interesting here to note, that everywhere that was colonised by the
Brits has good railways and curiously smooth bureaucracy while all
former French colonies have good bread and coffee.
For us, Vientiane also had the plus of a ready-made social group.
Jethro, a bloke I know from home lives there, his brother Dan was
visiting and Jon Redding and Mallice (friends from Letchworth) were also
in town. After Indonesia (where no-one speaks English) and the Kho San
Road (where everyone speaks it but no-one is worth talking to) this was
a fabulous prospect indeed. So, the first night we were there we went to
a party got well and truly sloshed on Beer Lao in true ex-pat style.
Nothing wrong with this, but it set my intestinal recovery back a good
three days. The next day, I compounded my problems by ordering a laap (a
sort of spicy salad) hot. You should never order anything hot in Laos:
this had so much chilli in it that my lips changed colour and doubled in
size and I almost cried; as you can imagine the effect on my still
delicate digestion were nothing short of devastating.
Hot wet monks
Apart from my ongoing need for lavatorial proximity, we had another
problem. Laos has a rainy season that runs from July to October. And
while many other countries have pathetic, nancy rainy seasons, in Laos,
the rainy season means business. Everything I have done in Laos takes
the suffix
訴n
the pissing rain・
we池e
still talking about a rain-shine ratio of about fifty to one. Still, in
such inclement weather being British is an obvious advantage. So, the
next day, we ate breakfast in the rain then spent the afternoon at a
temple in the rain. Quite a special temple, actually, as it came with a
sauna attached. I heartily approve of this arrangement, since as
everyone knows (but no guidebook will ever admit) temples are actually
rather dull. But, if you can go to a temple, get your culture fix and
relax in herbal steam with Buddhist monks, well, that puts a slightly
different complexion on things. So we spent the afternoon as happy as
pigs in steam, although, in the fog of the sauna, one of the monks did
get a little fresh with Jon.
Toilet Massage
On our final day in Vientiane (and the day before we had to get up for a
12 hour bus journey), we went out clubbing, Laos style. First we drank
plenty of Beer Lao (Lao: one government, one beer) then we watched a
Vientiane version of the police, a sort of Laotian ska band, after which
we experienced some Laos mixing. Then, I noticed the weirdest thing: a
girl on the dance floor, boogying away clutching her copy of the Lonely
Planet, the backpacker equivalent, perhaps of a handbag. It truly was a
beautiful traveler moment and we all saluted her for keeping it so real.
But there was a far bigger surprise in store. In the boys・loo,
I was there at the urinal, disposing of my Laos beer and the toilet
attendant was suddenly behind me. Then he was massaging my head. I
looked at the bloke in the next urinal and he too was having his head
massaged and having a good laugh at my obvious surprise. And apparently
this is quite the done thing. In many respectable Laotian
establishments, rather than hand you a towel and demand a quid, the
attendant offers you a head massage, gratis, while you piss. Goodness
knows what you get if you go for a dump but I certainly intend to find
out. Watch this space.
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