After some raucous times in Bangkok and Pattaya with our
friends both new and old, me and my travel-partner-to-remain-nameless decided
that as great as clubbing non-stop with the upper echelons of Thai society was,
we were getting only certain aspects of Thai society and culture—aspects such
as club design (lots of Chipotle-sensibility such as brushed stainless steel,
faux premium woods, and warm lights), traffic patterns in affluent parts of
Bangkok (endless seas of sedans with a driver riding solo, stopping and going,
but mostly stopping; with cabs filling in the gaps), and off the beaten path
restaurants that would specialize in a single dish—so good that they would
often cause involuntary, orgasm like experiences full of ‘mmms’ and professions
to deities.
We wanted to experience that helpless, uninformed rambling
that is backpacking in Southeast Asia. We decided on Phetburi, a coastal, old,
Chinese style town that seemed to have a lot of character from the pictures on
Google images. Two main factors went into this decision: the cheap hotel with
good reviews and the occurrence of Chinese New Year; we figured we should bring
in the water-dragon year in style—Chinese style, that is.
We waited for a bus at a terminal in Bangkok; in the stead
of tickets, we received tokens that symbolized our bus fare. These tokens were
(roughly and irregularly) 1 inch pieces of plastic straws, and (roughly and
irregularly) 1 inch squares of corrugated plastic. The bus-passenger-wranglers
at the bus station would yell out the color and form of the tokens, not the
destinations, to signify the next departure. Thus, we learned to say ‘blue
straw’ in Thai (once we thought our bus was announced, but they were actually
announcing ‘blue corrugated plastic piece’).
Getting off buses in towns without a map is always a bit
frightening. We had acquainted ourselves with the layout of the town before we
arrived, and we knew our hotel was on the river that ran through town. After we
got our bearings and got a few sets of semi-contradictory directions, we found
the aforementioned river and followed that up to the hotel. Phetburi was subtly
beautiful; under overgrowth of vines there were bejeweled statues of The
Buddha, elephants, and other things held in high esteem by the lovely people of
Thailand. Dramatic and ornate Thai-style temples peeked up over the single and
two story store fronts with attached housing. The layout, like much of the
developing world, seemed a bit freestyled—a public planning jazz of sorts; no
streets were really straight, they all bowed and curved with the prior streets
and paths.
The hotel we stayed in was an old, stilted, wooden structure
right on the river. The owner was an eccentric old Thai chef and the
decorations reflected his eccentricities. The bookshelves were lined with
mid-20th century Sci-Fi, as well as the full gamut of English
literature classics of the last century or so (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner
etc) plus lots of indiscernible Thai books. The walls were covered in
mainstream and semi-obscure rockabilly, big band jazz, old school country, and
50s rock and roll. These were functional decorations until a year prior, when the
owner broke down and went digital.
Our room was old and conjured feelings of an AWOL marine
holed up and shooting heroin in 1970, only a little dingier; the best adjective
to describe it would probably be ‘Apocolypsenowian.’ Luckily we are flexible
guys and we had sleeping bag liners, allowing us to never have to make direct
contact with the sheets that seemed clean, but could have had any number of
unspeakable things done on and with them.
After ‘settling’ into our hotel, we set out for a stroll.
The town was covered in red and gold decorations of all sorts to signify the
Chinese New Year. Many of the shops were closed or semi-closed and the store
floors had been turned into familial lounging areas where dumplings and other
Chinese finger foods were being cooked in massive quantities. Unbeknownst to
us, a lot of the older Thai-Chinese people are actually Chinese people living
in Thailand. My travel buddy and I flexed our Chinese-speaking tongues and
impressed some of the grandmas and grandpas of the area. One family took a
particular liking to us and invited us in to sample all the homemade treats
they were preparing. The grandma seemed ecstatic to have big tall white guys
sampling her foods and complementing them in her mother-tongue, and we were
ecstatic to be sampling such lovely, authentic eats. One of the grand-daughters
of the family was only about 16, but it was clear that she was to be a striking
beauty. Her eyes were a combination of light hazel and blue and she was tall
and slender. We discussed after leaving their storefront for the first time
what an appropriate amount for a betrothal gift might be for this young lass
and settled on ‘unaffordable to us;’ we considered installment payments until
she reached 18, as well as a few other payment and exchange plans before having
an existential meltdown about how creepy the dialogue was.
The Chinese New Year celebration featured large amounts of
fireworks, dragon dances, temporary shrines for extra Buddha Points, smiles,
and well wishing. It was interesting hearing the old people’s recollections of
life in Taiwan and China and the tales that brought them to Thailand in the
first place, and there less-than-subtle introductions of grand-daughters
accompanied with those magical flirty looks that old women get when they start
recalling their past and hitting on young guys vicariously through their second
generation progenies.
