The midnight train to Bangkok
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2004
1
13
50
Trip End
Nov 27, 2004
Chumphon,
Thailand
Friday, July 2, 2004
Hua Hin is a beachside city originally favoured by King Rama VII as a holiday retreat back in the 1920s . Its about 250 kms south of Bangkok and boasts more golf courses than any other resort in the country. Now home to many expats who enjoy the facilities and concessions on foreign ownership of property. The wide sandy beach is about 8 km long and holidaymakers can be seen charging along it on horses. Sounds nice doesn't it. It's not.
I check into a small fan room for about 200 baht per night which seems pleasant enough. Two long blocks of single storey rooms sit either side of a wooden decked promenade with a nice terrace at the sea facing end. There is an Indian restaurant round the corner and I am very satisfied with my meal there, at the Taj Mahal. I'm ready for a nose about town. It's not very long before I've planted myself at the solidly made bar inside some sort of German brewhouse. They have big vertical tubes of beer with a tap at the bottom for that ' self-pour ' finesse when enjoying the strong German lager beer. I find it comical and try it out. A band plays rock music on stage and I begin to focus on the lead singer. How I'd like to have a girl who is both oriental and can sing. Almost as rare as rocking horse shit. This one probably can't sing either, but the beer says otherwise. I begin to get ahead of myself and send a drink over to another very pretty lass facing me from the other side of the bar. She's available ( well, of course ! - this is Hua Hin ) and I discuss with her how I'd like to take her home. Firstly, her friend / elder sister wants to take a peek at my digs concerned with, with what ? With what may lurk in there ? Oh that chainsaw in my bag, sorry I forgot to mention it.
To cut a long story short, they both stay. When the beer wears off, I decide its best to leave town as soon as possible and I buy a railway ticket on this evenings midnight train to Bangkok.
The intervening day is spent walking on the beach avoiding being trampled by either a horse or else a much older man, blind with lust for the sizzling babes on each arm. I grab a couple of beers and I sense I am being sized up continuously by the large pack of hungry bar-wolves. This really is ' Sleaze-on-sea '. A utopia for old men and their fat wallets and even fatter whores. A pension book piss-hole. On Koh Pha Ngan the kids are doing Ecstasy. Here, Grandad's getting it on with Viagra.
I go and buy a ticket at the local boxing stadium and watch two young men batter and kick the shit out of each other. As the baying crowd of sweaty gamblers wave their money around. Muay Thai, as its known, is vicious and bloody and I must be in the minority of spectators who don't really enjoy it.
Finally I walk to the quaint little railway station which is a real treasure. It looks like it could be a small Buddhist temple. I have some time to kill and there are a crowd of drunk Thai's wanting to practice their postage-stamp size dictionary of English words. I am not rude to them but do not wish to engage in the ridiculous conversation that dribbles from their ugly mouths. A young and friendly Thai police officer comes and sits next to me. He is polite and we smoke some cigarettes together. Then I notice that his smart black bomber jacket ( bearing POLICE on the back ) has shoulder patches displaying the crest of the Michigan State Police, or something like that. Is he a policeman at all ? I begin to wonder. The last few days have been quite bizarre enough and I am pleased to board the night train into normality. Or perhaps quite the opposite.
Next ; The cock lodger
