Bangkok, 09:45, Suvarnabhumi Airport. I let the door of the silver Nissan Almera fall shut and set the air conditioning from 16°C to 25°C, whereupon the artificial cyclone in the car slowly loses power. First destination: 7-Eleven, I urgently need a coffee.
I cautiously step on the gas. Nothing happens at first. ‘Wow, there probably wasn’t a smaller engine,’ I think and press the accelerator pedal to the floor, whereupon the car finally picks up some speed. ‘Left side, left side, left side,’ I say to myself out loud as I actually manage to weave my way confidently into the left-hand traffic and activate the windscreen wiper at the next junction. Squeaking, the wiper drew a dusty streak on the dry windscreen. Oh yes, the indicator was also on the other side.
My next destination is now the small town of Suphanburi, in the north of Bangkok. There, again in a temple, there is supposed to be a legendary tamarind tree – the second oldest tree in Thailand at 1000 years old. But first I have to pass through the heart of Bangkok, a city of almost six million inhabitants. I had already done a bit of research beforehand and expected the worst, but the journey is relatively smooth and flowing. Sure, there was a lot going on on the roads and everyone was actually driving as they pleased. But if you expected it and stayed alert, I didn’t find it such a problem. I was on my way out of the city by 2 p.m. and I could hardly wait to leave the 15 million inhabitants, the noise and the stench behind me.
The image of the city changed after just a few kilometres. Instead of fancy bars, restaurants, cafés and boutiques for all social classes, there were now more retail and speciality shops for tyres or household goods, for example. Although I was still in Bangkok, I hardly saw any farangs, foreigners or any tourist shops at all. Slowly, the buildings became fewer and fewer until I was finally travelling north on a two-lane country road. The signs at the side of the road were now mostly in Thai, but every now and then a large yellow sign in English told me not to drive too fast. ‘RECUDE SPEED’, in combination with a 90 sign. Ninety!!! The roads here were so unpredictable, full of potholes, missing lane markings or suddenly turning into gravel tracks, that I often felt like I was already going too fast at 60 km/h in my small, flimsy hire car. But I really wasn’t in a hurry. Listening to good music from my Bluetooth speaker – the car didn’t even have a Bluetooth connection – I drove on relaxed but steadily, letting the surroundings pass me by and observing the local hustle and bustle at the side of the road. Vehicles of all types and conditions were often loaded metres high with all kinds of objects. Pimped-up pickups, one higher and visually more aggressive than the other, whizzed past me. People sat between work equipment and loads on the beds of pickups or lorries and dozed off, while the surroundings turned into lush green meadows, almost reminiscent of the meadows in northern Europe.
I had a cosy, joyful feeling of freedom, individuality and a thirst for adventure. The time of beautiful beaches and palm trees was over, but I was very excited about the next five days inland, in the ‘real’ Thailand. I didn’t get too far into daydreaming, however, as I was repeatedly startled by what felt like metre-deep potholes or extremely thick coloured stripes on the road, which were probably intended to motivate me to reduce my speed. Only the Thais didn’t seem to care about these circumstances. They simply ‘shot’ unimpressed over the holes and ‘abysses’ and the far too high coloured stripes.
After a little less than three hours’ drive, I reached my accommodation, the Baan Tor Mai Resort, in Suphan Buri at around 5.45 pm. Beforehand, I had stopped off at a large shopping centre nearby, ‘Big C’, to buy the essentials for the next few days. In the shopping centre, I noticed that I was actually the only European here. Even here, some Thais looked at me with surprise and interest, but this became extreme when I strolled through the nearby food market afterwards. It almost seemed as if the Thais living here had never seen a European before, even though I was only a few hundred kilometres away from Bangkok! Nobody spoke English here anyway and the translation app slowly became my most useful companion. The food market was much more than just a food market. There were car seats, jeans, hoodies, bags and much more. Only the ‘typical’ tourist shops with printed tank tops and colourful, light dresses that I was familiar with were completely absent. I had ended up at an authentic local market in a small town, far away from the tourist industry. It was marvellous! It was exactly what I had imagined. Without my mission, I would never have come here and would never have experienced this situation.
When checking in at the accommodation, language was again the biggest problem. Two very young Thais were very helpful and super friendly, but didn’t speak a word of English, so that the check-in had to be done over the phone with the boss and took almost 20 minutes in total. The accommodation itself was surrounded by a few fish ponds and the grounds were quite attractive, almost a bit like an amusement park. My room was ok at first glance, albeit very run-down. But it would do for my purpose, I didn’t need any luxury. I grabbed a beer and set off on foot to the nearby ‘centre’ of the town, as the navigation app said there were two restaurants and the Wat Khae temple with the legendary tamarind tree .
The sky was slowly turning a slightly orange-reddish colour as I stepped out of the hotel entrance onto the street. The road itself was in very good condition and the houses I passed were also very tidy, attractive and well maintained. In front of many of the houses were neatly arranged flower pots, planted with all kinds of colourful flowers. A canal meandered to my right, while green meadows opened up to the left. Obviously, this place was doing very well and it felt a bit like being in the countryside in northern Germany again – on a warm August evening, of course. Quite strange.
However, the familiar feeling disappeared again immediately when I came across some busy Thais, who again scrutinised me with incredulous, interested looks. After just 700 metres, I reached the town centre and found that the restaurants indicated by the navigation app were either not there or had already closed. There was certainly no culture of going out here. My only option was the restaurant on the grounds of my accommodation, so I made my way back, now enveloped in deep red evening light and accompanied by two puppies.
After ordering a fresh beer, I took a look at the restaurant menu. It was all in Thai. I pulled out my translation app and opted for a ‘whole fish’, a species I didn’t recognise, with a ‘spicy salad’. After all, I was surrounded by fish ponds here, so it would be good. When I signalled my choice to the waitress, she looked at me incredulously and questioningly. Only after tapping the menu several times and nodding at the same time did she take the menu back and slowly move away from the table. “All right, ’ I thought to myself and topped up my beer, when suddenly the head waiter appeared next to me and placed the menu in front of me again. In broken English, he asked me if I really wanted to order this dish, as it was a whole fish. At least that’s how I understood it. I said yes and the head waiter disappeared into the kitchen. ‘Strange, what did I order?’ I asked myself and took a big sip while looking at the fish pond.
A sliced, black, crispy fried and even partially charred fish, full of innards, garnished with a kind of spicy coleslaw that was barely edible for me. ‘Oh well‘, I thought, ’it’s your own fault, you’ll have to go through it now”. I tried to break off pieces of the crispy fish with my fork to reveal something edible, which I only partially succeeded in doing. With every bite, my mouth crunched and cracked and the spicy coleslaw made my forehead sweat and my mouth ache. Somehow I managed to cut up the fish as best I could and eat it, and I also ate the coleslaw completely – after all, I couldn’t give myself a hard time after the action. But I still wasn’t really full. ‘Breakfast will fix it’ I thought to myself and ordered another cold beer.
‘Breakfast will fix it’. Rarely have I been so wrong as with this statement. On the whole, there was only a thin rice soup, a kettle with instant coffee powder from small paper cups and some white toast with two kinds of red jam. At least it should be. However, one of the ‘jams’ tasted more like chewing gum and had the consistency of silicone sealant, while the other at least contained a little fruit and had a hint of strawberry flavour. ‘I‘ll be fine, I’ll just have to eat a lot of toast,’ I thought as my stomach growled loudly. ‘Besides, I’m not here for fun,’ I said aloud to myself and grinned as I spread a finger-thick layer of butter on a slice of toast while I watched the eyes of the other Asian guests resting on me out of the corner of my eye. That was also part of this ‘experience’ – and that’s what I wanted so much.
