The route from Bangkok to Hà Noi, across the north­east of Thai­land, over Cam­bo­dia and then Laos, was – I assume – pretty much the same route US behe­moth B-52s took thou­sands of times dur­ing the Amer­i­can War to rain death more or less indis­crim­i­nately, despite the claims oth­er­wise, down upon the peo­ple of North Viet­nam. The main US B-52 base in Thai­land was at U-Tapo in Pat­taya just south­east of BKK — and is a pri­mary rea­son for the sleaze in that town even today.

I won­dered what the many young Amer­i­cans on the flight thought – given the lay­ers of Orwellian dou­ble­s­peak that gen­er­ates what passes for truth in the United States – but then, we were there too, our gov­ern­ment keen, as they are now, to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with their mas­ters in Washington.

Unques­tionly the Holyoake gov­ern­ment played cabin boy to John­son and Nixon’s Cap­tain Pug­wash as did the Australians.

My father was there – I recently found the let­ters he’d writ­ten me on the back of his Saigon hotel laun­dry lists. They talk of machine gun nests and vast Amer­i­can sup­ply dumps full of bil­lions of dol­lars of every­thing, most sit­ting unused as room was made for more being unloaded daily from the end­less shut­tle of Star­lifters and Globe­mas­ters from state­side that spilled their guts at Bien Hoa and Da Nang.

Land­ing at Hà Noi I noted — bizarrely, or so it seemed to me — a huge grey USAF C-17 Globe­mas­ter II, the suc­ces­sor to those cargo humpers that took large chunks of their home­land across the Pacific in the 1960s and 1970s as they sup­plied that tor­tur­ous and dis­as­trous two decades or so of failed and flawed Domino The­ory driven imperialism.

Across the other side of the run­ways sat 17 Mig-21s, the suc­ces­sors to, or per­haps even the same air­craft that used to take off from this very same air­field and take on — quite suc­cess­fully at times — US air­craft bomb­ing their homeland.

Walk­ing though Hoa Lò Prison, more infa­mously tagged the Hanoi Hilton in the west, a few days later I over­heard an Amer­i­can woman announce that she sim­ply couldn’t believe that ‘Asians’ could shoot down ‘Amer­i­can aircraft’.

How’s that re-education sys­tem going state­side these days?

Indeed Amer­i­can observers and travel pub­li­ca­tions love to reas­sure that all this was a long way in the past and most of Viet­nam was not even alive then. They’ve for­got­ten — they want to be just like us — they say.

It’s bull­shit. Lik­ing a West­ern pop star or two, wear­ing jeans and drink­ing coke as a part of your world doesn’t strip away who you are or where you come from any more than hip-hop has destroyed the Haka or New Zealand’s absolutely unique national pas­sion for Rugby Union. 1000 years of Viet­nam, defeat­ing the USA and France, the story of Ho Chí Minh, Dien Biên Phu and the his­tory that total­ity embraces, is even to the most casual observer, the national foundation.

It’s very arro­gant - racist even — to assume that the whole nation has been sub­verted by glob­al­ism and walked from their his­tory and a pri­mary rea­son to exist.

Research­ing our short trip to Viet­nam I came across sev­eral VN vet­eran sites all still argu­ing that if they just pounded the North Viet­namese a lit­tle longer/used nukes/sent the army north then the four-million-dead Amer­i­can war would’ve been won. This still hor­ri­fies me.

I sup­pose they need to find a way to jus­tify the wasted years, the bod­ies they left behind and took away and the hor­ri­ble point­less­ness of what they did — mostly invol­un­tar­ily but not always. ¹

It seems to me — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this — that if the US hadn’t extracted them­selves in 1972 they would still be fight­ing today. That they couldn’t see that was cen­tral to the quag­mire they found them­selves in.

But to Hà Noi in late Octo­ber 2011.

It’s an odd town.

I expected quite a bit more. It feels small — like a cen­tral Javanese town — nar­row, over­crowded and dirty in its cen­tral, very touristy in parts, Old Quar­ter, with wider French styled boule­vards (in Java read: Dutch) as you go beyond that.

And all just a bit run down.

Even with with the ‘burbs it’s hard to work out where the 6 mil­lion who live there are.

I’ve become used to the huge bustling Asian cities that rival New York in their mod­ernism, com­plex­ity, urban­ity and sophis­ti­ca­tion — Bangkok, Shang­hai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Sin­ga­pore — even KL. For some rea­son I assumed Hà Noi would aspire to all or some of that, but it had lit­tle of it aside from the con­fus­ing and glar­ing dis­par­ity in wealth that all those other places also offer and an obvi­ous com­plex­ity that I couldn’t begin to grasp in a few days.

That said, I didn’t need another few days trekking through multi-floor mega-malls gaz­ing into yet another Paul Smith win­dow. In BKK I have an abun­dance of that option in just about every com­pass direc­tion if I so desire, and I mostly only do so when there are vis­i­tors to enter­tain or I need a new book.

I was excited about the food though. I like Viet­namese food.

Or at least I think I do. I thought I did.

In Auck­land, we used to often go to some very cool cheap Viet­namese places in Otahuhu some years back. I liked those but they started to get a bit pricey. Or we were eat­ing more.

Prob­a­bly.

There, once upon a time, was a big­gish Viet­namese joint on top of the Auck­land Civic The­atre Build­ing — about where the IMAX is now — and Phil War­ren used to take me there when I was a poor label owner. I loved it. I sus­pect I’d hate it now. It was called Saigon.

I went to Hanoi in Auck­land in the mid­dle of the year. It dis­ap­pointed. Nice wine. Food was dull.

Restau­rants named after big cities in Viet­nam seem to have cur­rency in New Zealand. There is more to the coun­try I think.

On the first morn­ing in Hà Noi we went to the place rec­om­mended by our hotel for breakfast.

» as an aside the Hotel was the Hanoi Art Hotel and it was — service-wise at least — per­haps the best bou­tique hotel we’ve stayed at. Any­where. Ever.«

The small place next door had a long wooden table with benches. There was no menu to speak off. They served pho and pho only. You sat and they bought you a bowl of pho. It was hot and it had brown meat in it.

In Viet­nam when you are served meat part of the rou­tine is won­der­ing whether it used to bark. We played that game: is this dog we asked each other. Brigid was con­vinced it was. There was lit­tle point in ask­ing the staff. Convincing your­self it is canine and then fret­ting about it for the rest of your trip is part of the going-to-Vietnam game. I wasn’t con­vinced but really had no idea.

I added chilli sauce and decided it was delicious.

It was the last deli­cious meal we ate in Vietnam.

It may have been dog. Brigid thinks so. If so it was caninely delicious.

So then we walked. We walked all day, try­ing to find the inter­est­ing bits and we quickly found the cof­fee I wanted. The great Aus­tralasian myth is that the best cof­fee in the world is found in Aus­trala­sia. It’s not true. The best cof­fee in the world — a strong dark sweet, almost choco­late, syrup — is found in grubby lit­tle cafes in Hà Noi — served in a glass over condensed milk.

I manoeu­vred Brigid west­wards — towards the famous mil­i­tary museum and Lenin Park. When in a for­mer Soviet satel­lite, head to Lenin Park and any­thing with guns and flags. They do these things rather well.

The roads they don’t do quite as well — nor the foot­paths — and we encoun­tered motor­bikes. We were warned about motor­bikes by past vis­i­tors and var­i­ous web­sites. I expected much worse. I’ve crossed roads in Den­pasar and Semarang. This was noth­ing like the apoc­a­lyp­tic rush of metal I’d been warned about.

Cross­ing the roads was rather easy — you sim­ply set out and they go around you — some­thing that per­haps takes nerve if your ref­er­ences are only west­ern pedes­trian cross­ing rules, but a lit­tle less har­row­ing after any time in Asia or parts of South­ern Europe.

The Mil­i­tary Museum cel­e­brates Vietnam’s great vic­to­ries — France, USA and China — as well as var­i­ous parts of the pre-Colonial his­tory. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing, old and like the city itself, very run down — almost a museum of a museum. I couldn’t help but feel that this was a coun­try sorely in need of another grand vic­tory to keep the lin­eage going. There was no present or future in these rooms, only a cel­e­bra­tion of the national myths and sto­ries. It was their FoxNews.

The big Pana­sonic and Canon fac­to­ries on the city out­skirts were not going to pro­vide that. There were plenty of Audis and Range Rovers in the streets but the folks in the Old Quar­ter and in the depress­ing mar­kets didn’t seem any closer to own­ing the keys to one.

There was national glory in these halls but the rev­o­lu­tion seems to have stalled some­where between the wide boule­vards of the wealthy bits of the city and the rest.

The big bits of big Amer­i­can planes, fash­ioned into art­works, or just there in their entirety, were very sober­ing too — peo­ple died need­lessly inside and under those. It was a museum com­mem­o­rat­ing an awful lot of mis­ery. Most are.

Young Viet­namese walked around in some num­bers in pretty much com­plete silence, and I really don’t think they’d done the right thing by the Amer­i­can tour advi­sors and ‘for­got­ten’ all this.

We drank Bai Hoi — the morning-fresh, preser­v­a­tive free (it needs to be con­sumed the same day), pilsener intro­duced by the Czech work­ers in the six­ties and now part of the daily rit­ual of the city. Peo­ple drink it for break­fast but we passed on that bit.

The bar was grotty and the first beer glass had a huge crack. We swapped it - which caused con­fu­sion: why? — and drank more. At 30c a glasses you do, and it tasted won­der­ful. We ordered ribs in the grotty bar. They tasted like pork and verged on tasty.

The restau­rant next to the bar was full and looked mid-range authen­tic. It was awful. So we walked some more to get rid of the greasy flavours that refused to leave the back of your throat.

The next day we drank more cof­fee. It was as good great as before. And then we went to see Uncle Ho.

Sadly the father of the nation wasn’t in. Every Octo­ber they appar­ently ship him back to Rus­sia for a month or three to restuff the car­cass and blow him up again, so the vil­lagers who the Amer­i­can writ­ers tell us have long for­got­ten the past and become aspir­ing and com­pli­ant GaGa lov­ing global cit­i­zens can arrive in their daily bus­loads and shuf­fle past in an end­less ador­ing line as they do for the next 9 months.

So we went to the Ho Chí Minh museum — up long stairs, past Aus­tralian and Chi­nese (many) fam­i­lies being off loaded from hotel minibuses, on a hill in a vast Soviet styled mono­lith — and it was really sur­real in way that only an Asian museum in a Soviet styled con­crete mono­lith ded­i­cated to the founder of a total­i­tar­ian state who wanted no memorial could possibly be.

South East Asia doesn’t do total­i­tar­ian very well — with the excep­tion of course of Cam­bo­dia but that was another heinous level alto­gether — as the chaos inevitably sub­verts what­ever the state is try­ing to dom­i­nate no mat­ter how they try. The Old Quar­ter, away from the sub-Kuta-ness of Ma Mai and the lake­side hus­tlers, is evi­dence of that in Hà Noi.

They counter that by hav­ing these odd — stand­alone dis­con­nected — cel­e­bra­tory places where the real world is kept away by con­crete or other bar­ri­ers — this case a vast ster­ile concrete-path crossed, per­fectly man­i­cured grass field where I was firmly told off by an armed guard for step­ping over some semi vis­i­ble line. This was one such place and it was odder inside than any other I’ve seen. Every­thing was extreme and noth­ing made any sense at all — from over­sized fruit plat­ters, semi-masonic pyra­mids, a glass maze that sup­pos­edly rep­re­sents Paris in the 1920s where Ho honed his rev­o­lu­tion­ary trade, to the best part — a vir­tual walk through of Ho Chí Minh’s brain.

I loved it — but just the once I think.

We went to the mar­kets. Thai­land does those bet­ter. Thai­land does mar­kets bet­ter than anywhere.

After hunt­ing for hours we bought bad food in a tourist trap and I refused to eat it. We walked out of two other places and I ended up eat­ing French deserts from the cake shop next to the hotel. I needed some­thing after walk­ing all day.

The next day the shoe street didn’t have our sizes or shapes and we took pho­tos of old French Colo­nial build­ings. We found an Ital­ian place in an appar­ently upmar­ket part of the French Quar­ter and ordered pizza. It was awful. Brigid went out the back and came back gag­ging — we had already eaten so yet another meal stayed in our minds and mem­o­ries far longer than it should have.

And it rained and rained. Dirty, fume filled rain.

We passed the old French courts — all grimy and nine­teenth century-like for­merly grand. It is still in use, and given Vietnam’s his­tory of doing bad things to its own peo­ple, prob­a­bly just as unpleas­ant as when the French were using it to send Viet­namese next door to the prison.

It was almost a relief to finally get to the gates of Hoa Lò and pay our entry dong (is the plural of dong ding, dongs or just dong? The last one I guess, but when you’re deal­ing with never less than thou­sands at any one time it becomes academic).

It’s not a happy place — the prison that is. The French were evil and for all the archi­tec­ture and won­der­ful light baguettes (I always used to think these uni­ver­sally tore the roof of your mouth off until I left New Zealand and came to under­stand that that was a par­tic­u­lar NZ twist on ‘French bread’) every­where — yes those were great — you leave the place despis­ing what that nation, and all colo­nial pow­ers includ­ing the British despite the myths we are taught, once was and what it did in the name of Empire.

French tour groups were –when they weren’t repeat­edly block­ing the only exits smok­ing — notice­ably silent.

I just wish the mid­dle Amer­i­cans look­ing at the bomb dam­age from the car­pet bomb­ing of Hà Noi in 1968–72 were a lit­tle more gra­cious and reflec­tive: “This is all bull­shit” one loudly exclaimed.

I guess it is when you’re still throw­ing this ‘bull­shit’ at parts of the third world daily and call­ing it freedom.

It took three days to find the most inter­est­ing part of the Old Quar­ter — the shops, gal­leries, cafes and streets around the gothic French con­structed Cathe­dral - which seemed to toll the hour about 7 min­utes behind sched­ule. I won­dered how long it had done that but in SEA you don’t waste energy won­der­ing these things for too long.

The best food we had in Hà Noi was there — at a cute Span­ish tapas joint which made me feel like a trai­tor to some sort of odd unde­fin­able eat-Asian cause. I was a farang and in Hà Noi — dogs or no dogs — I was made to feel it.

I was glad I went to Hà Noi — glad because it was Viet­nam and I’d wanted all my life to go there even though I’d just been to the cap­i­tal, but like China, all my early life this city had per­son­i­fied my country’s enemy, as ridicu­lous and point­less as all that was; glad because I was able to put all that together in some sort of men­tal order; glad because the old build­ings were won­der­ful and I loved the noisy bro­ken streets; glad because I love look­ing at com­mu­nist edi­fices and Viet­nam edi­fices quiet well; and glad because I like going to fas­ci­nat­ing places espe­cially ones with mind­blow­ingly good cof­fee for a few cents.

I was glad to leave too — happy because I think I’ve done Hà Noi as ridicu­lous as that sounds (and yes I’ll go back at some stage to do the Museum of Eth­nol­ogy which I’m told is very good, and use Hà Noi as a base to see the coun­try) and had walked and seen all I needed to see in the small­ish cen­tre; happy because I missed the food and sophis­ti­ca­tion of my cur­rent home; happy because I don’t like being always on the watch for scams; and, yes, I really don’t like dog. I think.

After we returned to BKK we queried sev­eral expe­ri­enced Hà Noi vets. Where is the famous good food, we asked? The uni­ver­sal cho­rus was, more or less: ‘nah, the eat­ing is mostly bad there — good cof­fee and beer but…’

So it was..

I’ve been to the bor­ders of hell and back: I’ve been dri­ven (many times) in rural Java. I’ve gone around a cor­ner and seen a bus — count­less peo­ple hang­ing off the doors and hug­ging the roof — being over­taken by a grossly over­loaded — and I mean grossly, with the load twice the height of the vehi­cle — truck sway­ing from side to side on a two lane road which is bet­ter described as one step up from a quarry — on my side of the road.

With­out a moment’s pause, Ali (the dri­ver) careered into the grass verge, which I could see some­where had a ditch begin­ning in it, and we missed the truck — which seemed to be doing a sim­i­lar 120km/h to us — by centimetres.

Peer­ing up from the space I was now cow­er­ing in near the floor (none of the seat-belts worked), I noted that Ali was calmly tug­ging on his kretek and txting whilst pro­ject­ing the clat­ter­ing, shak­ing early 90s vin­tage Toy­ota van — which in most lands would’ve been long assigned to the junk­yard but in Indone­sia is seen as a state of the art SUV, com­plete with welded in seat­ing, long col­lapsed but still in use — back onto one of the dusty road-behemoth bat­tered tracks that Indone­sia likes to call roads.

Another day in Jawa Ten­gah. We drove on and repeated vari­a­tions of the same sce­nario over and over again.

Those days, how­ever, hav­ing moved trans-SEA, seemed to be in the hazy past. The end­less endor­phins that dri­ving in Indone­sia pump into your body per­haps blur the long term memory.

Bangkok has heavy, heavy traf­fic — noth­ing out­side of Jakarta that I’ve seen comes close. Auck­lan­ders talk of traf­fic issues. I smile and mostly keep quiet. How­ever, mostly the dri­ving verges on the sane and almost ratio­nal in the royal city, and, aside from the odd feisty cab dri­ver — a global phe­nom­ena surely — it never sug­gests rural Indonesia.

It’s funny how com­pla­cent time and space makes one. I’d for­got­ten most of this until ear­lier this week.

We went on holiday.

It was a brief one to be sure, but last Sun­day four of us — Brigid, our friends Blake and San­dra, and myself — went to Hua Hin.

A cou­ple of hun­dred kms south of Bangkok, I’d never been before but long wanted to. We tossed up how to best get there. Rent a car (seemed like a has­sle for two days)? Fly (the trip to the air­port and the etc. bits would take longer than the flight)? Train (five hours — it may have roman­tic charm on a longer trip away, but not for two days)?

We set­tled on the bus down. The pub­lic bus sys­tem in Thai­land is, as I’ve said before, quick, cheap and very efficient.

So off we went.

Unevent­ful and easy.

Hua Hin is absolutely lovely — per­haps best described as a Thai twist on Brighton — a small (-ish: some 90,000 peo­ple) sea­side town with cute wind­ing lanes, a pier (albeit not quite Brighton’s) and truck­loads of char­ac­ter. It is, we were told, par­tially melded by the fact that it’s the town where the roy­als hol­i­day, and there a large palace — open to the pub­lic when the king or his whanau is not in residence.

It was fun. We ate lots of food, swam, ate more food, found a bar which served pints of beer in frozen mugs, and then ate more.

On the Tues­day we checked out, called the cab and dragged our­selves reluc­tantly back to the bus sta­tion. On the way there the dri­ver pointed at a big blue vehi­cle com­ing in the other direction.

‘Bus to Bangkok’, he said.

That’s cool, thought I, they go every half an hour or so.

We were dropped at the office and the woman out­side in the clean white shirt with a badge on the front and blue epaulettes said: ‘Two hours.’

We let out a uni­form groan.

She offered a mini-bus. We went inside. ‘Two hours’ said the small man in the clean white shirt with a badge on the front and blue epaulettes. He offered us a mini-bus. A choice of two mini buses: 1 to Mo Chit, or 1 to Vic­tory Monument.

We nod­ded and sup­pressed more groans. The big blue buses are comfy and relax­ing. The mini-buses on offer looked too small and cramped.

Two hours is two hours though, so we paid our 180B each and clam­bered in.

Aside from the huge crack across the left side of the front wind­screen it seemed fine — newish and clean. I grabbed the seat at the very back — a lit­tle higher than the rest of the seats and next to the bags. It seemed roomy and suited to a large farang.

That was my first mistake.

I noted the sign on the win­dow that warned against assault rifles, sex or goats in the van.

As we headed out onto the high­way — Thai­land has good road­ing — unlike Indone­sia — with four lane divided high­ways trans­vers­ing the nation, I began to think that the road was rather uneven. I was being bumped into the air every few sec­onds and couldn’t see a bloody thing.

I realised I was sit­ting over the wheels. And our dri­ver had no under­stand of var­i­ous con­cepts. These seemed to include pas­sen­ger com­fort, eas­ing into cor­ners, and slow­ing for bumps or road works. As he accel­er­ated I found myself divid­ing my time between the roof and the seat. I was being flung ver­ti­cally every few sec­onds and my head was more famil­iar with the roof than my head­phones which sim­ply refused to stay on.

The dri­ver was a bloody maniac.

One word came back to me.

Ali.

Fuck­ing Ali and his fuck­ing kretek flashed before my eyes — as I bashed my crown on the roof yet again. I clenched the handrail to steady myself but it was pointless.

We passed the bus. The 12pm bus to Bangkok — about twenty min­utes after we’d left. Between blows to my head I worked out we were trav­el­ling at an aver­age speed of three times the bus.

Drive safely the big cream road sign said, in both Thai and English.

The van swerved, at some speed and with­out the usual touch on the brakes to smooth the manoeu­vre, off one high­way onto another, inches behind the car in front, and we swung into a big gas sta­tion and stopped.

I twisted my back into a rough approx­i­ma­tion of what I thought it was sup­posed to look like and crawled for­ward to a spare seat ahead. My head throbbed from the blows. I sat. I hope­fully mused, ‘this seat must be better’.

Blake stepped out for some air. When he returned he was pale. ‘They’re fill­ing the CNG tank — it’s in the front of the van, behind the radiator.’

I felt con­fused by it all — the blows to the head, my twisted back, and now the cheer­less infor­ma­tion that we had an IED posi­tioned at the front of a van being dri­ven by a lunatic.

‘At least it will be quick,’ he finished.

The dri­ver, his fag hang­ing from his lips, pumped the last of the CNG, and then we were off — back to the main highway.

The break and the now-full tank seemed to have added zest and vigour to our dri­ver, who was now snort­ing out of one of those small plas­tic bot­tles that, I’m told by Thai folk, con­tain some­thing that ‘make you go faster’. Joy.

He did.

We were soon hurtling along the motor­way at speeds of 140km/h. My under­stand­ing has always been that mini-buses like the one we were in would top out at about 100. I was wrong. I’m loathe to use the words: dead wrong.

Our speed­ing — per­haps speed induced — dri­ver was now repeat­edly accel­er­at­ing up to the vehi­cles block­ing his way ahead. When he reached a point a few cen­time­tres from the back of the car or truck in front, he would hit the brakes hard. Our radi­a­tor — with the poten­tially lethal  CNG tank just behind it, would be so close to the next car that we could some­times see what the pas­sen­gers in the rear seat were read­ing.


The dri­ver would then drop back and repeat the process over and over again, until either the guy ahead pulled aside, or a nar­row gap appeared some­where — some­times between two lum­ber­ing trucks, where­upon he’d grit his teeth, lean for­ward, pump the pedal, and — push­ing the groan­ing people-mover far beyond it’s intended max­i­mum veloc­ity — roar through.

Every­one in the van — aside from the Thai girl behind Blake, who was wisely sound asleep for the whole trip — would audi­bly take a relieved breath and release their white knuck­led grips on the seat in front.

Until the dri­ver, a few moments later, repeated the same pro­ce­dure, and we all sucked in air and held our breath, grasp­ing quickly again at what­ever attached han­dle or seat edge our hands reached first.


As we hit the out­skirts of Bangkok, we passed another bus from Hua Hin. ‘The ten o’clock’, Blake opined. I guess it must have been.

The high­way into the city offered no respite — it got worse. We stormed, after a crawl­ing up its back trunk for a kilo­me­tre or two, past a grey Toy­ota sedan. The speedome­ter said 145. The car took it as a chal­lenge and blat­ted past us at what must have been at least 150. We then over­took the car and the two of us went back and forth as we bul­leted pre­car­i­ously along the multi-lane ele­vated high­way into the cen­tral city, swerv­ing from lane to lane, paus­ing only to stop — from 140 to nought in a flash (we all tum­bled for­ward and my head reac­quainted itself with the car body) at the toll gate.



Even­tu­ally we pulled into the garage off Vic­tory Mon­u­ment, and crawled out. The dri­ver stood, smil­ing, with a thumb raised high.

Last night — in one of those awful throw­away rags that cel­e­brate the hor­ri­ble world where fat ugly old white men hang out with young wee Thai girls and call it true love — I saw a story about the vans. The writer called these vehi­cles ‘god­sends’. I con­cur — meet­ing our var­i­ous mak­ers — be they Thor, Ik Onka, Allah, Yah­weh or the vagaries of Bud­dhist nir­vana seemed like a very real pos­si­bil­ity in those two hours.

Ali, you are forgiven.

Com­ing back from Kan­chanaburi on the bus the other night, the sky opened up. The four of us, Brigid, her par­ents and myself, had wan­dered around the mostly deserted tourist trap with an even darker past under the shadow of huge black clouds which drib­bled a lit­tle but didn’t really belch out the hot rain until we got back to the bus, the local Kan­chanaburi to BKK Express, which we deemed fortunate.

The for­tune was tem­pered by the break­down, as far as we could tell, of the wind­screen wipers at some bus-stop in some rural Thai town, com­plete with the end­less trac­tor and pick-up show­rooms, which remains still name­less to me, and the seem­ing inabil­ity of the bus dri­ver to turn the air con­di­tion­ing below sub arc­tic, so much so that the hot air was con­dens­ing on the out­side of the glass as we roared through the end­less motor­ways into inner-outer Bangkok and the South­ern Bus Ter­mi­nal, which, not really oddly since we are in Asia, is not South but West of Cen­tral BKK. Peo­ple in the bus were plug­ging and cov­er­ing the air vents increas­ingly des­per­ately. Few in Thai­land carry a cardi­gan, just in case. Read the rest of this entry