That time I got wet in Thailand

It was 5am in England, we hadn't had a wink of sleep, and we were walking round the streets of Bangkok looking for something to do.

We looked up and a little man wearing a straw hat, talking from his nose.

                “Tuk-tuk! You waant tuk-tuk?” He was driving what looked like a motorized shopping trolley with a flimsy roof attached. Another Tuk-Tuk zoomed past us and round the corner so fast that it went up on 2 wheels. We heard a toot of a horn and a faint ‘Soweee’.

                “No thank you, we want to walk.”

                We were tired, and our clothes were wringing with sweat from the humidity. After an overnight flight, the hostel wouldn’t let us into our rooms yet, and we were forced onto the streets of Bangkok for the day. 

                An ashy smog hung over the city, turning the city grey. Bangkok wasn’t as pleasant as I’d expected it to be, it was dark and dull and polluted. In between skyscrapers and billboards of pale Thai women, the Sky Train dominated the horizon. Giant concrete pillars emerged from the stone underbelly, plunging through the pavements like a beast’s legs. It cast a shadow on three 21-year-old girls below, who were very confused, and very lost.

                We’d set off half an hour before to explore the city, and had a map of Bangkok we’d picked up from the Hostel reception held out in front of us. Our first mistake. Like piranha to its prey.

                “You no’ from here? I show you temples, 20 Baht!”
                “Oh, no thank-you; we really are ok walking.”
                “No, you come with me, I show you temples, 20 Baht!”

                No-one understood that we actually wanted to walk.  It wasn’t that we didn’t want to pay - 20 Baht is  roughly about 50p, we just didn’t trust that we’d make it through the journey in one piece. Another Tuk-Tuk beeped as it went past, darting through a red light and narrowly missing a lorry.  We folded up the map and walked into the nearest café to escape the humidity.

                There was a clean rush of air as we walked in, like entering a giant fridge. We walked past a man in a dingy room cooking on a makeshift stove. Having already decided this seemed a safer bet than the fly-swarmed street vendors selling crickets on a stick, we found a table and sat down.

                 My insides felt confused as to whether I should be ordering breakfast, lunch or dinner, quite similar to the odd sensation of falling asleep during the day, waking up, and not knowing whether it’s 7 in the morning or 7 in the evening. I smiled as I ordered a ‘strouberries’ smoothie and a vegetable dish in sweet and sour ‘source’ from the laminated menu, and tried mouthing the words ‘no spicy’ whilst shaking my head to a baffled waitress. I've tried getting used to spicy food, I really have, but I just can't understand how you can enjoy food when your mouth and throat are burning. The waitress looked like she understood, and nodded at me.

                Well, I won’t be trying that again; all she'd heard was the word ‘spicy’, hence the nodding, and I think asked the chef to add more chilli to my dish than normal . My smoothie disappeared up my straw faster than the nearby Thai family’s soup in the ‘how to throw soup in your mouth’ act that most Oriental people seem to have down to a T.

                Twenty minutes and two jugs of water later, we left the café, still tired, desperately in need of a shower, and in possession of a map that was no use to us because we couldn’t for the life of us work out where we were. To the delight of some nearby Thai men, squawking broken English to us like a swarm of vultures, we flagged down the nearest Tuk-Tuk.  He, along with every other local we had met, insisted we go see the Black Buddha.

                “Oh yes, Black Buddha! You vay lucky, it open just today!”

                What were the chances, eh? We squeezed onto the hot black seat, our knees knocking together, and sped down the road.

               Five minutes later, however, we were skeptically taken down an alleyway between two shops. Our driver turned off the engine to his Tuk-Tuk, and pointed inside the gates to a small temple.

"Black Buddha," he said.

                We were slightly confused when we got out and stood in front of a large, gold statue. Wasn’t it meant to be black? We got out our cameras, not wanting to miss our first opportunity to take pictures of something touristy, but were told we weren’t allowed to take photos. Our driver quickly ushered back to the Tuk-Tuk, and then took us (much to our objection) to a local gem store where we could look at rare stones being cut and crafted into jewellery, because he apparently needed to take us there to get petrol money. Something wasn’t right. We quickly walked through the gem store without purchasing anything and clambered aboard the Tuk-Tuk, demanding to be taken to the Temples we originally wanted to go to.

                “No gems for fwends?” asked the driver, disappointingly.

                No, we didn’t want gems, thanks. Obviously annoyed at us, our driver didn’t drop us off at the temples we asked for, but in the middle of a busy crossroads, and sped off to the next unfortunate set of tourists. Thailand, the Land of smiles, my arse.             

                Three hours later, we finally got back to the hostel, sweating as if we’d walked there from London. We were met in reception by our tour guide, a smiling man called Willy (his real name was Damrong, but he chose the name Willy instead because he apparently liked the film ‘Free Willy’ very much). He patted the sweat from his brow every few minutes with a small handkerchief he kept in his shirt pocket, and I half wanted to suggest he changed into shorts instead of a long-sleeve shirt and trousers.

                 I found a Lonely Planet guidebook on a dusty shelf after lunch, and discovered our Tuk-Tuk ride earlier was actually a well known scam, aptly known as the ‘gem scam’. Tourists, I read, are usually approached by friendly men explaining the temple they are at isn’t open:
“Closed for renovation,” they’d say.
 “Buddhist national holiday.” 

                I think the man who had approached us was either bored, or not the brightest bulb in the box; all he said was: “No go in. Lunch.” 

                 I would have at least been original, and assessed the stupidity of my targets, and then make up lies accordingly: “No go in, Monk’s private birthday party,” or “National Nudist Day,” or maybe perhaps, “No go in, Monk’s private nudist birthday party.”

                 Apparently the scam has been in effect for over 20 years, with members of the Royal Thai Police work to protect it. Well, no wonder all the locals are always so happy.

                With the help of my Lonely Planet Guidebook, we later made it to the actual touristy bits, like the famous ‘Golden Mount’. Constructed in the 18^th Century, it contains over 300 steps (not what you want with severe jetlag) and a line of large mottled bells that a small child so delightfully decided to chime as I walked past.  At the temple at the top, I was so exhausted I was tempted to lie down on the floor and cunningly disguise a quick nap as committed praying. 

                We continued to get questioned by inquisitive locals that day, like how long were we in Thailand for, and where we were going. We were, in fact, headed to Angthong, a rural town on the Noi river, 108 kilometres from Bangkok. According to my guidebook, it was formerly known as Muang Wiset Chai Chan and changed, I’m half inclined to believe, to stop Westerners sounding like they’re sneezing and more like they’re wearing sexy undergarments. As well as this, the only thing the locals said when we told them where we were headed was: “Angthong wewy wet.” It was at this point I realised that our guide was called Willy, and wondered whether this whole trip was some giant foreign orgy and we were actually the mail-order brides.

                Notorious for its severe weather, parts of Angthong were apparently badly flooded, and we weren’t so sure what we were getting ourselves into. 

                We left Bangkok the following day in a small hippy van with brown fur seats and set off to the rural countryside, scattered with little villages and close-knit communities.  With the air conditioning on full and rain splattering the windows, we could have easily been driving through the English countryside on a dismal Spring afternoon. I noticed a pink wreath of flowers dangling from the rear-view mirror, something I’d also spotted on every other vehicle we’d seen. They ward off all bad spirits, so Willy assured us. Well, in that case, I’ll buy one for my car; no more parking tickets for me.

                We were to be teaching English at the local primary school for the next two weeks, staying with a host Thai family. I tried not having any expectations about their house, but admittedly I had prepared myself for living in a mud hut with no water or electricity or even a plug socket for my hairdryer. It was safe to say there was enough survival equipment in my rucksack to make an expedition to the Amazon for three weeks.

                 Imagine my shock then when we pulled up to a collection of large houses on a dirt track, bigger than my house back in England, all connected to a telephone pole in the centre. There was a Jeep outside, a microwave in the kitchen and, after getting used to using a hole in the ground for the last two days, noticed there was even a working toilet in the bathroom beyond. Yes, there was a god. Perhaps my nap-praying had worked after all.

                Standing in the doorway to greet us were two elderly women in long floral skirts. They helped unload our suitcases from the van and stayed smiling as they went to and fro with our baggage. They were sisters, and lived alone, while their nieces and nephews lived in one of the opposite houses. On the way to the school, Willy explained it was Thai custom for all the generations of families to live together (“Wery stwong famiwee bonds”), pointing at other clustered houses as we drove past.

                We arrived at the school that afternoon and were given a little tour around the school by Willy. The children were extremely friendly, and had a habit of hugging whatever body part was closest to them, namely our legs, or arms, or if you were sitting down, your face. Willy led us into each classroom, from Reception (where they were playing with building blocks), up to year 6. When we got to the year 6 classroom, we noticed there was no teacher present, and all the children were staring at us.

                Now, when we signed up for this trip, we had no knowledge of teaching, and the lovely lady at the travel agents who was wearing far too much make up had assured us that we would be given lesson plans on our arrival.

                There were no lesson plans, and the only English-speaking teacher in the whole school was away on holiday. Perfect. We looked at Willy, casually leaning in the doorway of the Year Six classroom with his hands in his pockets. He drew an imaginary zip across his lips. The room was silent apart from the soft hum of the ceiling fans, gently wafting the children’s black hair back and forth. 

                After an awkward whispering debate between the four of us (“What do you think?”, “I have no idea, I’ll go with whatever you want”, “I can’t remember what I learnt in year 6,”, “Well someone pick something!”), we settled on teaching them animals. It was relatively easy, and if we couldn’t explain it to them, we could act it out. I have to say, I didn’t expect that on my first day teaching in a Thai school I’d be parading around the room doing an impression of an elephant, while the other wrote on the board in big letters (as you can tell, I drew the short straw). But the first lesson went extremely well, the children could now say 'Ewehphant', and they couldn’t wait for us to come back tomorrow (cue more face hugs).

                That night saw the heaviest rain we’d had since we’d arrived in Thailand. Cara was upstairs in the shower having  what sounded like a screaming contest with the resident  frog, who we discovered usually lingered around the sink (I honestly had no idea frogs could ribbet so loud?). Gaby and June were asleep, and I was lying on my mattress on the floor. Well, I say mattress. It was a block of wood with a sheet on it, really. There wasn’t that much to do in the evenings, so the four of us resided in our room and usually read magazines or talked about how much we missed English things like chocolate and cereal.  I picked up my book from the floor to read it, and noticed that it was very wet. Funny, I don’t remember it being wet when I put it down…. I looked over at my bag. That was wet, too. I looked again and realised it was not only wet, but slowly floating across the room and out the door.

                We were in a flood. I woke the other two up and we quickly tried to throw everything we could onto the mattresses. There was a commotion outside in the lounge, and suddenly our host lady shuffled through the ankle-deep water in sodden slippers clutching her skirt, one hand on her forehead.

                “I sorry! I sorry!” she cried, picking up some of our belongings, as if all the rain was her fault. We moved our bags to a bedroom upstairs (which, we noticed, had proper beds; why we hadn’t been given this room in the first place I have no idea). The rain continued to pour for the rest of the night, and we helped scoop out as much of the water as we could from the ground floor, only for it to flow back into the house again. When the rain died off, our host lady told us to head to bed, and so we trudged upstairs to our new bedroom and I spent the next hour air-drying my book on an electric fan. Throughout all of this, Cara was still in the shower. I’m guessing the frog had won.                 

                Turns out that the Bangkok locals really did mean it when they said Angthong was wet. In July 2011 the severe Tropical Storm Nock-Ten caused three major landslides in Southeast-Asia. Along with the monsoon season, floodwaters headed down rivers and reached the Chao Phraya watershed at the end of September, right where we were. From that day on, as we rode our bicycles to school in the morning along the riverbank, we noticed the waters were rising a considerable amount, and getting dangerously close to spilling over the top and into the unprepared village below. Everything would be destroyed. A whole community swept away in a matter of minutes. 

                The next day, Willy informed us we would only be teaching until lunch, and afterwards we were to follow the children to the river. There were half a dozen locals crowding round a small lorry by the side of the riverbed, and on the back of the lorry was a large mound of sand. On the floor were a handful of shovels and hundreds and hundreds of empty white sandbags.

                “You help build dam!” they all shouted triumphantly at us, thrusting the shovels into our already sweating hands. The kids were excited we were helping, the teachers enthralled we were on hand to help. After half an hour of shovelling in the dense heat, our hands were throbbing, and the piles of sand in front of us looked like a never-ending mountain. Tired, we stopped for a minute and looked around; there was no sign of surrender. There were six-year-olds relentlessly dragging bags of sand as big as themselves, and my spade was stolen by a girl half my size who began shovelling a small heap by her feet. There was no talking. No whining. Only the rustle of bags and the crunch of sand underfoot. I felt ashamed. Ashamed I was ready to give up so soon while these kids endlessly fought for to save their school. If I was going to do some real good in the world, now was the time to do it. I took the spade back from the little girl and we persisted.

 

                Our hard work paid off. Three hours and several tons of sand later, a line of sandbags stretched across the riverbank, some four high in places. We were given hot corned cob as a thank-you, getting many claps on the back and attacked by small koala-like children. Not only that, but the local television news crew had got wind that English girls were helping out the efforts, and before we knew it were being filmed and interviewed and asked if we would stay forever.

                Well, probably not. Eating dinner while fanning my mouth was starting to get a little tedious. As we parked up the bicycles at the house that night our host rushed out to us and pointed to the television set inside.

                “You famous! You superstars! We have big cewebwation at weekend!”
                Well, maybe forever wouldn’t be so bad after all.