Travellers' Tales

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I have fallen in love with Thailand and its wonderful, gracious people. A couple of funny stories - on my first backpacking trip to Thailand, last May, I awakened exhausted and jet-lagged in my hotel. My husband had apparently gone for a walk, and I was alone. The temperature in that room must have been about 100 degrees! After getting up, I realized that the power was out, and called for help. How embarrassing to realize that the hook they had shown us to put the key on when we arrived was not just a handy spot, but controlled the a/c and power as well!

My husband returned and eagerly wanted to show me the funniest set of stairs he had ever seen - short and very shallow, could only fit about 2/3 of my foot on the actual step. We laughed at the red sign above the stairs saying, "beware your step" with a picture of a tumbling body. Then I promptly took a header down the whole flight! Also my first day, in Bangkok, we were picked up by a taxi in the sweltering heat. The driver was missing fingers on both hands, and his car was desperate for some maintenance, but we still had to comment on his joyful disposition. This guy was just the most pleasant, helpful man and his spirit just shone. His air con was only cooling the front of the car, and he could see us sweating in back, and so he began to gracefully take his left hand, with its missing fingers, and scoop the cold air up as it left the a/c vents, and then swirl his wrist around so as to push the cold air back to us in the back of his cab. It was a most beautiful, giving thing. I wish we had known then how much we would come to love this story about this man, as it typifies our experiences with the Thai people. For the good he did our hearts, we wish we had tipped him a week's wages.

When I think of Khao San Road I think of one of the most nervous making thing in my life. Back in June '95 it was all about making important phonecalls. But let me start from the beginning.

After finishing my civil service in Germany I decided to go on the road to Australia. It was an unbelievable trip meeting so many fine people, seeing some many nice places + things. But after a few month the typical travellers disease caught me: money probs ! So I decided to leave Oz again and head over to Thailand where everything was said to be so cheap. I had this stop over ticket from Olympic Airways so it was no big deal. I changed my tickets, got a visa and flew to Bangkok. Fellow passengers who were several times before to Thailand invited me to join them and they order in Thai language a taxi from the airport to KSR.

Ah - what a BIG change from the fresh city of Melbourne to this sultry, sweatin Bangkok. But it was great. After 2 days I took the train (3rd class) down south to Ko Phan Nghan - where I spent a great week in a hut. Indeed, it was cheap down there but not THAT cheap as I thought and I was running out of money again. So I tried to change my airline tickets again via phone from this island. But it was hard to explain to those guys what I wanted. And those long distance calls were too expensive for my small wallet. At that point I had like 40 Euros left. So I decided to go back to Bangkok via coach. That was the beginning of this wild 4 day adventure of gettin a flight back to Germany because there were no seats vacant on the planes!

The 1st day I tried again by phone to get this Olympic Airways agency - But the phone always crashed and it was impossible to get through - Then the 2nd day I walked by foot to this agency - to save money - only to hear the same answers: "Sorry Sir, there's no seat for you - call again tomorrow." I was getting nervous. What that hell can I do Just a couple of bucks left and still no flight in sight. So I called again + again, wasting my last few Baht. After the 2nd day the guy from Olympic already recognized me by my voice but the problem was the still the same. I was getting into some sort of horror - nervous tensions! On the 4th day in Bangkok I had less than 5 Euros left when I grabed the phone in that public phonebox near the library. I dialed that number again like dozens of times before. I just started like: "Hello, this is" - when the man at Olympics shouted into the phone: "Mr Martin, Mr Martin !!! You can fly out tomorrow. Isnt that great ?!" This guy was even more excited than me!

That was one of the greatest, happiest moments ever happend to me. I will remember this guy till the end of my life, I guess. That was my story of KSR. That I nearly missed my plane because I took the public bus to the airport the following day is another ... ;-)

Greetingz from Cologne/Germany + a big THX for this great KSR Site !

Magnus

I have nothing but good memories from Thailand. I've been to this country 3 times already, and each one was full of great experiences. I do understand the following episodes are far from being exciting, but in my opinion they are worth mentioning since they show how kind Thai people are.

One time, visiting Wat Pho, me and my friend noticed there is a school behind the temple, and a court beside it. I believe it was break time for the kids and they were playing basketball. Once we got close to the court, they immediately invited us to join them, and our "cultural" sightseeing tour turned into a sweaty and funny afternoon. It also turned out to be the greatest picture of my trip (my buddy is a photographer!): me and a bunch of Thai kids playing ball, with Wat Pho as background!!

Another time, in Chiang Mai, on December 31st (sorry, don't remember which year), I decided to do some shopping. Bad decision: shopping on New Year's Eve?!?! Anyway, I entered a gift shop and no one was inside. I came out of the shop and saw a family having a barbecue nearby and then decided asking them if they knew who was running the shop. Well, a lady at the grill was the manager! I apologized for interrupting her family gathering and explained that I really needed to buy some stuff since I was about to leave Chiang Mai. She just smiled and invited me to join them at the barbecue, and after that she would help me with my shopping. A couple of hours later, I was heading back to my hotel, full of presents, beef and beer!

Well, here are a couple of stories from a happy traveller. If you do decide to put these tales on your HP, please feel free to rewrite, it since the English is certainly not that good. Regards, Sylvio"

No need to rewrite - perfect as they are!

It was with a frustrated and indeed fairly audible "oh f**king hell" that we jumped off the slowly moving train, as it pulled out of New Delhi train station. All 3 of us lay there in a heap atop our rucksacks that were flung off in quick desperation before the train picked up a head of steam.

For the third time that morning our rucksacks lay on the dusty platform of New Delhi station in the searing heat. The 3 of us all rather dumbfounded that we, with a combined age of nearly 80 years, could not find a damn train to our destination. Was it us, or was it just India? How hard can it be to reach Agra from Delhi? Surely, all roads, and in this case rails, must lead to the Taj Mahal right? Obviously not!

India had proved, time and again that nothing was ever as simple and nothing was ever likely to be simple, never in a million years. The 3 previous months seemed to work out more due to luck than any calculated judgments on our part; I really could not see this altering over forthcoming months. Although, it did seem that the longer we stayed in India the more accustomed to total confusion we became. We had been to places not mentioned on a map, places I had never heard of, destinations I had not attempted to reach.

As we whinged about our shambolic attempts at traveling John shouted that the 'proper' train to Agra was departing from platform 10. Rather helpfully this was the furthest platform from our current position! We donned the rucksacks, and with the best intentions of saving time we decided to forego the footbridges and begin the steeplechase of steel rails, shunting engines, aimlessly wandering bovines, platforms, negotiating the obligatory piles of shit that litter Indian train stations to reach our elusive train - all the while being mistaken for 3, obviously quite lost, members of the English cricket team.

Slinging our battered and bruised rucksacks and carcasses on board the train the normal bun fight for the seat / bed began, under the watchful, if slightly bemused, gaze of several hundred Indian travelers. I ended up sharing the top bunk with Dan. I willed him to be anywhere else apart from on my bed, and I wished that I had never bloody opted to travel India. What the fuck possessed me to do this? Surely it wouldn't be long now until the tap would begin to flow freely from my arse and I would be found squatting over a gaping hole in the floor sweating in this metal furnace on wheels.

Trying to get comfortable I found it to be quite perplexing how a fan, like the one whirring above my head, pumping out a racket not dissimilar to that of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari, could be so ineffectual. As I lay there drifting off to sleep (thank goodness for the benefits of cheap, plentiful, over the counter availability of valium), I got kicked a few times by my rather fidgety bed fellow and could have sworn that a formula 1 car whizzed past my head. Where was the bloody off switch for that fan????

As I slept the shrill shouts of 'chai, chai, chai' rang out down the carriage and brought me back to some level of consciousness, away from my valium induced doze. I noticed that my fellow Indian passengers were still slightly bemused by us. Particularly bemused and entertained by the way that John was now making friends with, and handing 'baksheesh' to, a hand clapping transvestite as (s)he tottered her merry way through the train.

As the train pulled in to the station, a mere 7 hours late, we picked up our rucksacks and headed off to find a resting place to eat, drink and get our bodies out of the foetal position. On our way into town our thoughts turned to seeing the Taj Mahal. Unknown to us the nearest landmark to our current location was the Golden Temple - strange how Amritsar and Agra can sound so similar, with that strong Indian inflection; or perhaps how dense we can possibly be! Surely, all roads, and in this case rails, must lead to the Taj Mahal right? Well, obviously not!

So then, it would be a trip to the Golden Temple first then after that we would worry about how to finally get to see, if ever, the Taj Mahal on a Delhi Departure!

Vanessa (Vanessa.Ellis@gmx.de) writes: Hi, last year my mum and I went to Bali,our plan was to rent a jeep and go round the island. We arrived at Denpasar where we had booked a cheap hotel for the first night. Next day in the morning we asked at the reception where we could rent a jeep, and the bell boy was very nice telling us he had a friend who was running a car rental service. As he was such a nice guy we trusted him and ordered a jeep for the afternoon.

His friend arrived with a quite a dodgy looking jeep but it was running so we got our luggage and started to load it into the jeep. Then my mum asked him, just to make sure, if there was enough petrol in the car and he said that it was pretty empty, immidiately starting to tell us the way to the next petrol station. As his desricption got longer and longer my mum asked him to be so kind drive the jeep to the petrol station and bring it back. So we unloaded the jeep again and off they went. We waited about one hour which was pretty long concidering the fact that the petrol station was "just around the corner". Anyway when they came back they said that the car stopped on the way to the petrol station because there was not enuogh fuel!!!;-))) So they had to walk there get a canister an then walk back fill it into the car and go there again to get the petrol. We were pretty glad that we had them doing all this instead of us.

Now finally we could start off with the jeep on our way to Ubud, by the way Balinese drivers are all suicidal!! Half way there the next problem occured: We got stopped by a police control. As we THOUGHT we had done nothing wrong we were pretty confident that we would get out of that pretty soon. WRONG!!! The police officer started asking us questions like: Where are you from? What do you do in Bali? and most important: Where did you get this car? Well, we answered all the questions and he wanted to see the contract, which at first we had some trouble in finding. Which again made him believe that we had stolen the car, this belief got no better by the fact that all rental cars on the island had to be signed out with an yellow "R", and ours wasn't. Well as we found our contract with the rental car company he got much more friendly, he kept on saying: " Not your problem his problem" pointing at the car company. But he didn't tell us what we should or could do now.

After a while my mum phoned the guy from the rental car place and he ended up talking to the police officer for over ten minutes on our cell phone!!!! From that point on the police officer was very freindly, even offering me to stay in his house and my mum to marry him, of course as his second wive! He gave us a green sheet of paper, saying that this was our permission to drive around in that car for the rest of our holidays in Bali, he kept the car papers and said that the guy from the car rental would have to collect it after we had left. I guess he was into trouble. Anyway we got stopped by the police again two days later and the officer there seemed very impressed when he red our green sheet of paper, I never found out what it said on the paper because it was all in Balinese.

Next time we'll take public transport!

Vanessa, Germany