The Thai Times - I

Thailand is a highly tourist-friendly country, and earns major revenue through international tourists. I have visited Thailand half a dozen times between 1999 and 2013, making it a trip every two and a quarter year, though that wasn’t exactly the frequency. You have seen me mostly trying to locate India or things Indian in ‘Paris times – I to III’. As far as Thailand is concerned, you need not look far, but only little deeper, to locate India. It’s there, all over, mainly in the soul of that land.

 

 

My first visit (1999) was more of an adventure than a pleasure trip. Since I worked for an airline then, I could manage a heavily discounted ticket. But as I was already planning to explore better career options outside, I was in a bit of hurry to be through with this first international trip of mine. So I simply flew off one day to Bangkok without any bookings made for local stay and such things.

 

 

It’s an absolute fact, though some may find it difficult to believe. But given those days when internet was not high in usage in India, one didn’t have easy options either. I was given to understand by my friend who worked with Air India, and who had helped me in the process of securing the ticket, that a locality by the name Phahurat had a sizeable Indian origin population and it was advisable to land there first for anybody like me, who had no other clue whatsoever, to get help locally. So when the cab driver dropped me at an intersection of roads leading to all four directions, I simply kept to my left as a disciplined pedestrian and started walking down the road lifting the only one heavy bag I carried, changing hands every minute to manage its carriage (the wheels to pull the bags were not invented then).

 

The only landmark I was to look for in Phahurat was a Sikh Gurudwara, which I finally found on my right, after walking down around half a kilometer, as language and thus right advice on direction was a problem. By that time I was tired that I had no energy to walk more, looking for an acceptable place for stay. Somebody on the pavement outside Gurudwara pointed to a small alley across the road and I just sneaked in. It was a dark, ancient looking lodge tucked inside of a bustling city street, managed by Indian migrants from eastern UP. They spoke Bhojpuri among themselves, Hindi with visiting Indians like me and fluent Thai with local Thai people. Being a born and brought up Mumbaikar, I used to worry about rising influx of UPites and Biharis in Mumbai, flooding its streets etc. till then with an obvious dose of resentment. But after seeing them so well settled in far away Bangkok, and being my saviors in offering me cheap stay (though bit shabby) option, feelings of affinity and certain respect for them started developing in me naturally.

 

 

My first meal in Bangkok was however Indian, though not by design, in a Punjabi restaurant a few steps away, as I simply didn’t want to walk even a little more, after dropping my bag and taking bath in the lodge. The place had a photo-frame displayed conspicuously, showing the owner receiving blessings from then Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama-IX) in the customary manner of taking the king’s hand in a half-lying position. That should suffice, in place of a shops & establishment certificate, I guessed. The Indian girl operating it, possibly the owner’s daughter, served me hot rotis and also filled me with an unsolicited advice to go with Thai girls, and not Russians, as the latter were inseparably associated with dreaded Russian drug mafia with who even the local mafia generally avoided to clash. I thanked her for the freshly cooked lunch and also the advice; if not for anything else, it did provide me information about Russian mafia which I didn’t know.

 

I had till then thought them to be operating only in Goa, with similar ‘reputation’. Although it is not about a particular ethnicity, it nevertheless points at something that the socio-cultural analysts should study – what must be making the Russians so daring, fearless, hard, desperate to reach all over the world and make a mark, though an unenviable one? Was it an inevitable outcome for a community oppressed, deprived under an iron curtain regime for almost a century, pushing them go all out post ‘Glasnost / Perestroika’ to make the most of the outside world in a limited time-frame? And was it going to be a sustained phenomenon about them? It also raises questions about the abilities of Russian state to handle its societal affairs, apart from handling the nation’s scientific / technology projects and military programmes, which it has handled undoubtedly well, consistently through decades. The matter is worth pondering!

  

One Tuk Tuk (auto rickshaw) driver I had hired was an incessant talker. With little English he tried to endear himself to me by telling me about two of his trips to (then) Calcutta a few years back, but didn’t throw light on the visits’ purpose. They could have been for smuggling even, you never know. He introduced himself as Abdul from Malaysia. But he could very well be one from the Muslim-majority provinces of southern Thailand (bordering Malaysia), whose residents being ethnic Malay consider themselves as Malaysians, though officially being Thai citizens.

 

 

My last meal (breakfast before leaving for the airport) was also Indian (that too Punjabi, like the first one), this time by design. The purpose was to eat free, as I had realized that I was running short on money. The ideal place for the same was the Langar at the Gurudwara opposite my lodge, where the only requirement was for one’s head to stay covered throughout. The UPite manager of the lodge, whom I had befriended by that time, accompanied me out on the street, haggled with a Tuk Tuk driver and fixed the fare at 30 Baht, to drop me at Hua Lamphong railway station, starting point of the local train (ticket 5 Baht only) that would take me to Don Mueang station, where one would need to take the elevator and just cross sides to arrive at Don Mueang international airport (old one, before today’s Suvarnabhumi).

 

The Gurudawara breakfast, the Tuk Tuk haggling and even identifying Hua Lamphong before that for finding alternative mode of low-cost travel as if on intuition, seemed to pay back at the time of clearing the security check. The two personnel standing there asked for 500 Baht, saying it was the official fee of the government. Being a novice and without an advice, I simply paid that, thanking my intuitions and precautions exercised in saving that much till that moment, though secretly suspecting the whole thing. Needless to say, I never had to deal with such a situation ever again during my five subsequent visits, confirming that it was simply a wrong practice by the wrong people.

 

My overall trip was good except such few aberrations, but I now stop here and wait to fill you with more interesting details in the next part!