Two On Tour

We’re mostly here for Bangkok’s fine doctors and dentists.

Saturday 1 / Sunday 2 August

We’re in no rush to reach Vancouver airport. Immediately before checking out, we fall into an extended chat with Chris the helper. (He’s not with Trusted Housesitters, but something similar: odd jobs around the house and garden in return for free board.)

Another chat: this time with our Uber driver, who arrived six years ago from Afghanistan. He claimed asylum and is now a Canadian citizen, but was somehow able to visit Kabul two years ago. I’m not sure how that works, but it would be churlish to ask. He assures us that, yes, plenty is wrong in Afghanistan, but it’s no longer as dangerous as many people imagine. His brother-in-law even organises all-inclusive tours for foreign tourists. We’re not planning to visit Afghanistan anytime soon, but five months in Central America have at least persuaded us the real world is broadly safer than it is in the popular imagination.

The flight follows whatever coast there is: British Columbia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, the Kamchatka peninsula, and down to Japan. After rewatching Amélie de Montmartre — still the most warm-hearted film this century — I don an eye mask and spend the rest of the flight in the dark with music and podcasts for company. Bad weather delays landing: by the time we finally touch down we’ve been in the air 14 hours. Ugh.

Hong Kong immediately feels tense and stressed. There’s just something that hums in the air, even at baggage reclaim. I guess it’s always been there; I just never noticed it. I’m less excited to be back than I expected — a feeling that only grows when more rain greets us on the short walk from Hong Kong Station to our hotel. Despite umbrellas, both clothes and luggage are soggy by the time we arrive. Still, our 21st floor room at the Ibis is typically cheery, and a decent size for a modest price.

Monday 3 August

A grey, wet dawn leaks into Hong Kong. While making a morning cuppa, I peer through the rain-sodden window at hundreds of human habitation units:

It’s not a promising start, but little by little I ease myself back into my adopted city. Breakfast comes from a bakery round the corner: spam and a fried egg in a bun, washed down with strong coffee back in the hotel room. K leaves to take care of her errands; a few minutes later I set off to take care of mine.

It’s marvellous to walk the streets without being in a hurry. More than once I have to check myself and slow down. I have all day. No office to get to. No ferry to catch. The good people of Hong Kong swarm around me: harried, stressed and time-poor. I recognise my old self among them and do my best not to cause a pedestrian pile-up by dawdling at half their speed.

The city is buried under a veil of drizzle this morning. It’s unseasonably cool: an almost comfortable 26 degrees. By the time I reach Central I’m barely sweating. I’ve soon run my errands — M&S, Mannings, Smartone — and slip into DeliFrance for lunch before the office crowds pour in.

I still have hours before I’m meeting K at our lockup. Desperately needing a haircut, I hop over to Hung Hom for a zero-thrills experience in a tiny cubicle opposite PolyU. It’s the same lovely chap I had last time I dropped in over three years ago. I get more than my money’s worth: after a bout of over-zealous enthusiam, he leaves me almost a suede head. It’ll grow back.

Less lovely is simply being back in Hung Hom. It’s impossible to escape the long shadow of my working years. I still have a valid staff card, but I’m not carrying it so can’t access the PolyU campus, where I do have many good memories — even if most of them are over 20 years old. Instead, I walk the bleak loop from the station to Hung Hom Bay campus, and back round to the station. I only had an office at Hung Hom Bay for that final full-time year at PolyU, but what a long dark night of the soul it was. It still overshadows the relatively happy 22 years on the main campus. I don’t even glance up at the campus as I pass.

Back on Hong Kong Island, I while away the afternoon with coffee and cheesecake until it’s time to meet K and head to the lockup. We’re unimpressed to find fabrics succumbing to mould despite the 24/7 air con. It’s goodbye to my wide-brimmed Australian leather hat. Other fabrics not currently secured in vacuum bags we can remove and launder when we return in the autumn.

Henry and Fanny are waiting for us at a restaurant in Wanchai, looking as effortlessly elegant as ever. I joke that Henry could be the fifth Heavenly King alongside Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok. Then I perform my well-rehearsed party trick of becoming invisible. By nodding vaguely and looking intently at my food, K can catch up with mum and dad with no one feeling obliged to translate every second thought into English for my benefit. It’s good to see them.

Tuesday 4 August

Less than 48 hours after arriving in Hong Kong, we’re back at Chek Lap Kok to fly to Bangkok. It’s only a three-hour flight, and it’s punctuated by a full meal — the joy of flying in Asia! — but I’m restless. I’ve already logged nearly 20 hours in the air over the past week. Three more feels like torture.

The trial continues at Bangkok airport: an hour and a half queue at immigration. And this is low season. I’m certain we breezed through passport control when we last arrived here 18 months ago at the height of tourist season. Thankfully, we both have books to bury our noses in as we shuffle forward like prisoners queuing for gruel.

There’s an MRT station three minutes from our Airbnb: public transport looks a better bet than a taxi. At the open-air interchange between the airport link and the line leading to our neighbourhood, we plough into our first full-on encounter with Bangkok since 2015: hot, loud, chaotic. Canada feels like another world.

The flat is easy to find and looks much like the photos: a little clinical, but comfortable enough and with a sweeping view of Benchakitti Park (above) — the reason we chose it. Tired and unwilling to trek to the nearest supermarket, we settle for a roadside diner outside the building. Three dishes and a large beer each come to HK$140 (£13.50). I have a feeling we’ll come in on budget this month.

Wednesday 5 August

With no groceries yet in the flat, my first breakfast in Bangkok is a 7-Eleven pot noodle bought last night and intended for lunch. Late morning, I head back to 7-Eleven in search of something to replace it and come away with a couple of oily savoury pastries. Normal food routine will be restored soon, thank goodness.

Lotus’s, the nearest supermarket of any size, is a 20-minute walk through chaotic traffic-clogged streets. The plan is to take a Grab back to the flat, but the best offer involves a 35-minute wait. We pivot and plod back on foot through the afternoon rain, weighed down with our haul of groceries.

Thursday 6 August

Our second full day in Bangkok revolves around a dental appointment: K needs an implant to replace a tooth she broke in Pattaya last year. Today’s appointment is an initial consultation at Bangkok International Dental Hospital. We leave with another appointment tomorrow evening to see an implant specialist.

A couple of stops on the Skytrain brings us to Terminal 21, a big mall that now stands opposite the entrance to Soi Cowboy. We find a café to while away an hour with iced coffee and cheesecake. It’s busy and hard to relax.

Annual MOT tomorrow. Early to bed without the prospect of coffee and breakfast in the morning.

Friday 7 August

Annual MOT day. Never a day I look forward to.

As ever, the worst part is waking up without the comforting anticipation of breakfast and coffee. Having overcompensated for traffic, we present ourselves at Bangkok Hospital almost an hour ahead of schedule and are immediately swept into their well-organised health screening system. Over the next five hours we’re ushered from room to room: bloods, eyes, heart, lungs, bones, hearing, and much else besides. Finally, we’re seen by Dr Nina, who pores over our results and concludes we’re both in fundamentally fine fettle for our age, if rather deficient in vitamin D. My uric acid is high again — more water, less beer, and more vitamin D should fix that — and K needs iron supplements. But otherwise we’re all good.

It’s already gone two and we’re starving. Cue a welcome lunch at the hospital food court:

Back in Hong Kong, Oli and Maria are about to leave for the airport to start a new life in Australia. I text Oli from a gridlocked Grab to wish him well. We pencil in a plan to catch up once they’re established in Newcastle.

There’s barely time for a cuppa and a chocolate digestive before we’re off to another dental appointment for K. It’s rush hour on a Friday. The flaws in the Skytrain’s ticketing system are immediately obvious: no pay-as-you-go tap-in system, and banks of ticket machines standing at right angles to each other. Long queues block access to the platform, reached through the gap between the two banks of machines. Those with tickets squeeze through gaps in the queues as best they can. It’s hot. It’s chaotic. Somehow everyone remains gracious. Thank goodness the locals are Buddhists.

At the dental clinic, K learns she won’t require the implant she was expecting to need. A crown will suffice, at a fraction of the cost. Hurrah.

It’s too late to return to the flat to cook. Instead, we slip into the vast Terminal 21 mall and order bowls of ramen.

More appointments tomorrow. These first few days in Bangkok are exhausting. We’re both looking forward to a more predictable routine once they’re over.

Saturday 8 August

There’s little to write about at the moment — a trend I expect to continue for much of August. We haven’t really come to Bangkok for new experiences; we’re here for medicals, dental work, and vaccinations. No doubt we’ll explore in due course, but for now days remain strictly functional.

This morning we’re back at the International Dental Hospital, where K has another planning-stage appointment. We leave with two dates circled on the calendar later this month for the work to proceed. There’s a lunch stop for dishes we haven’t tasted for far too long: khao soi chicken, salt and pepper fried tofu, and a plate of morning glory:

A Grab drops us at a well-stocked Big C supermarket opposite Lotus’s — a better default option for grocery runs. By three we’re back home. We’d usually be heading out at this time. It’s all a bit topsy-turvey at the moment. Still, I’m left with plenty of time to read and resume my Spanish study. I haven’t touched it since we left Mexico a month ago and I’m desperately rusty already. The plan: keep chipping away with regular listening and reading so that I arrive in Argentina 17 months from now with more confidence than I left Mexico with.

Sunday 9 / Monday 10 August

Sunday is little more than work. Whether the result of a few moments of sun on my briefly uncovered head on Saturday or the air con blasting, I’m under the weather again: temperature, stomach ache, and a foul mood. I’m even grumpier as I’m forced to retrain Gemini as an editor. CoPilot’s recent update seems to have wiped months of prompts and capped the daily allowance. And Gemini is a frustratingly slow learner.

On Monday morning we’re back at Bangkok Hospital for jabs: Tetanus for K, tetanus and pneumonia for me. After lunch we take the short walk to Khlong Toei market to stock up on fresh produce. It’s about as far removed from Terminal 21 as it’s possible to imagine: a ramshackle local market with stifling oppressive air. Some traders nap behind their wares — I pay the stallholder opposite for a bag of eggs. A sudden downpour floods the narrow alleys in minutes.

I wouldn’t have felt comfortable sneaking tourist shots of sleeping market traders, so here’s the unremarkable busy road outside instead:

Neil and Sarah vanished from YouTube nearly three months ago. We chose the flat we’re in thanks to a video Neil shot from nearby Benchakitti Park, which we overlook. I text them to thank them for the tip. K discovers they’re still alive on Patreon and recently announced their plans in a live stream. I join for a modest fee, and we spend the evening watching the two-week-old live stream to find out what’s going on. They’re done with YouTube, sick of running the hamster wheel for the sake of the algorithm; it’s going to be a small Patreon-only community from now on. Suits us fine.

Tuesday 11 August

Overnight, a message appears on my phone from Sarah of 2GoRoam, followed later by one from Neil. It’s good to hear from them. We compare notes on our shared love/hate relationships with Bangkok.

Our view is completely unimpeded. The lack of any window covering certainly doesn’t compromise our privacy, but despite the north-facing aspect the light can be uncomfortably intense in the afternoon. I notice this when a headache creeps in as I sit on the sofa after lunch. I skulk into the bedroom, draw one curtain against the glare, and send a note to our Airbnb host suggesting he might consider installing some sort of window cover for future guests.

Adrian, our host, offers to pop over to demonstrate a workaround. Within an hour, he’s improvising a protective cover: large clips holding a window-high length of dark blue cloth to the window frame. It works fine. We fall into conversation. He’s a gentle, self-effacing Romanian, married to a Thai, and has lived in Bangkok for 15 years. I don’t understand how anyone could do that. Right now, I’m struggling to make it to 15 days.

K’s unearthed a regular quiz night at a sports bar in the Sukhumvit area. We roll up with half an hour to spare. Almost every table is reserved but we’re shown to the last walk-in seats, right next to Quizmaster Chris. Chris turns out to be very good indeed at writing quizzes. We wisely play our joker on a round that involves naming the frontperson of backing bands — an effortless 10/10 for us (and for several other teams). The bar’s too big and anonymous for Chris to engage much on a personal level, but he gives it his best shot. We finish a respectable sixth out of twelve.

Walking back to Sukhumvit MRT is our first real encounter with Bangkok by night on this visit. Dozens of working girls loiter on the stretch of Sukhumvit Road linking Nana Plaza with Soi Cowboy, but Thailand somehow has a knack for making this feel unremarkable, nor even especially seedy. It’s a very different vibe to our unexpected brush with San Jose’s red-light scene back in February.

Back in Hong Kong, Guy Miller, Lamma’s celebrated bird photographer has recently passed away.

Wednesday 12 August

I’m back at Bangkok Hospital, this time alone, for a shingles vaccination. It’s the first time I’ve booked a ride-hail myself — something K’s always taken care of. It feels like being all grown up and walking to school unaccompanied for the first time.

I’m soon back. Time to try the pool. We’ve been here a week and haven’t been near it yet, either on account of dental and medical appointments or simple forgetfulness. It’s small — four strokes get me from end to end — but it’s good to be back in the water for the first time since Madeira back in January.

With the initial flurry of appointments behind us and enough groceries in the flat, we can start thinking about how to spend this month in Bangkok. Given that we see it every day from the balcony, the obvious place to start is Benchakitti Park. We’re ready to leave when it starts pouring with rain. Half an hour later we’re ready again, and it pours again. We eventually make it to the park and amble around its landscaped lake, but it’s clear we need to rethink how to organise our days here. We’re approaching peak rainy season.  Regular afternoon downpours are a feature, not a glitch.

Around the Queen Sirikit Convention Centre, between us and the park, young women — they’re all women — are posing for graduation photos. Why here? Why all women? I’m not sure, but I’m glad we passed by today and not on some other random day. In the Centre, we share a matcha ice-cream and complain to each other about the heat outside. My arm is tender from the vaccine. Enough for today.

Thursday 13 August

“Are you from Montreal?”

I’m wearing my new Montreal t-shirt in our local Big C supermarket. The Sikh dad shopping with his young son has spotted it as we pass in the tea and coffee aisle. I explain that, no, I’m not from Montreal, but I did recently visit. He’s from Calgary. Am I British? Yes, I am. Where from exactly? Hampshire, since you ask. Mr Sikh dad turns out to have relatives in Reading.

“Reading’s just up the road”, I marvel.

We’re practically family. I wish him well and kickstart the shopping trolley in search of K.

For the first time since we arrived, Bangkok stays dry and mostly sunny. I’m never going to be a fan, but the better weather is enough to boost the spirits. After a late lunch, a combination of a morning swim — something my body’s still adjusting to — and the after-effect of the shingles vaccine leaves me drained. We eventually head out again, but only almost next door for iced coffee and cheesecake. (We tried to be more ambitious, but two other places we showed up at were either closed or about to close.) The air-con is set to frigid. A hot drink would have been more appropriate. By the time we step back onto the street, my teeth are on the verge of chattering.

I’m still drained. We settle down to watch a local dramatisation of the famous cave rescue in the northern Thailand in 2017, but I nod off well before the end of the first episode. By 9.30, I’m in bed.

Friday 14 August

For the first time on this visit to Bangkok, something more than a bare-bones functional day: no medical or dental appointments, and no supermarket run. It’s taken a week and a half to get this far.

A morning swim and the unglamorous paperwork of everyday life ensure it’s already mid-afternoon by the time we get out. We pick a museum that won’t be preparing to shut by the time arrive and head for it. The Queen’s Gallery is a hot, ugly twenty-minute walk from the nearest MRT station at Sam Yot. The lady on the front desk explains the enormous construction site around the gallery is a new MRT station slowly taking shape.

Inside, away from the heat and noise, the gallery is peaceful and almost empty. Security staff seem to outnumber visitors — and there aren’t many security staff. The gallery showcases work by Thai artists. Most of it has strong Buddhist themes, but it’s far from traditional. Ninety minutes well spent.

It’s only ten minutes further on foot to the Khao San Road. In my memory, the road runs north-south, so I’m surprised to find it in fact runs east-west. This confuses me as to which end I arrived from when I tumbled out of a taxi at Chinese New Year 1999 and literally found Tim Pile on a plastic stool in front of me sipping a bottle of Singha.

I have no photos of the Khao San Road in 1999, and memory has dulled it to no more than fleeting impressions. Nevertheless, the cafés and restaurants feel bigger, which they probably are. We find a quiet café a couple of blocks away to read, then at sunset find our way to the nearby bank of the Chao Phraya river, where a tug is pulling an enormous barge upriver:

It’s good to be back among tourists. Monterey Place, our current home, has plenty of foreign residents, but most seem to be working expats. By contrast, even now in low season, the Khao San Road area has a cheerful laid-back vibe. We settle for a place just off the Khao San Road, order absurdly cheap food and drinks, and discuss whether we’re finally beginning to feel relatively well-travelled. (We are.)

Mum wants a quick chat. I call her. Her flight back from Vietnam has been cancelled and she’s weighing up the relative merits of rebooking or cancelling her trip altogether. She’s clearly had a torrid time with the relentless heat this summer. I persuade her again that air con will make all the difference in SE Asia, at least inside.

With the nearest MRT station thirty minutes away, we opt for an above-ground journey home in a Grab. It’s hard to tell after rush hour, but despite its fearsome congestion, Bangkok has what seems an effective elevated motorway network covering the vast city centre. We whizz through the city twenty metres up and arrive back before we could have even walked back to Sam Yot station.

Saturday 15 August

A second day of exploring Bangkok before we revert to dental appointments next week. Today’s destination: Chatuchak Weekend Market, where we join thousands of other tourists and the odd local shuffling through the labyrinth of narrow alleys.

We’re not searching for anything in particular, but I do lay my hands on a copy of Colin Thubron’s 1967 debut travel book Mirror to Damascus. It’s one of his few travel books I haven’t read.

Elsewhere, the market is one vast repeating maze of stalls selling counterfeit bags, floral teas and wooden frogs. I think a few of the several thousand stalls had other things available, but not many. I guess it’s not the stallholders’ fault: they’re presumably just responding to demand. Tiring of the repetition, we duck into a café, where I plough through the opening chapter of Mirror to Damascus over an iced orange coffee:

Back in the flat, Thai Cave Rescue predictably veers between heroic thriller and mawkish tosh.

Sunday 16 August

One advantage of being somewhere hot: I needn’t feel I’ve frittered the day away if I don’t leave the flat until late afternoon. It’s Sunday, so K’s not going anywhere. I wait until five before heading to nearby Benchakitti Park, this time aiming for the western half, away from the formal lake.

It turns out to be a freshwater swamp forest crisscrossed by paths, with an elevated sky bridge that sprawls, octopus-like, over the entire site. It’s a pleasant spot — as half of Bangkok seems to know. On a Sunday afternoon, it’s not somewhere to escape the crowds. This photo makes it look wilder than it really is:

Still, it’s ideal for people-watching. Those who aren’t among the throng of joggers are mostly preoccupied taking photos of each other, hunting for the perfect Instagram shot. A sign explains the whole park was the site of a tobacco factory until not long ago. The derelict factory building still stands — there are signs for a small museum though I don’t see it — and what’s now the park was all factory grounds.

Back at the lake, one large steady crowd circles anticlockwise around the jogging circuit. It’s very different to midweek, when we could have counted people on the track using our fingers:

The rest of the day isn’t entirely frittered away. We book overnight train tickets from Danang to Saigon, and wrap up Thai Cave Rescue. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to become a cave diver, but I’m glad they do. Without them, those kids would never have seen daylight again. I’ll stick to strolling in the park.

Two and a half more weeks in Bangkok. It’s taking time to readjust to the heat and chaos of SE Asia. We’ve seen a lot more world since we were last here. It’s fair to say that at the moment this part of the planet doesn’t have the pull it had three years ago when we started out. But re-evaluating is all part of the journey.