2009

Bangkok ludicrous

March 8, 2009 by Christopher Buxton

Well we land in Bangkok airport without a hitch, collect our luggage and make our way through the customs and according to instructions seek out the official taxi rank.

Smug in the knowledge that we have a hotel booked over the internet months before, I show the name of the hotel and its address to the driver – The Royal paradise 836/1 Ladkrabang Road (only a few minutes from the airport) and off we go in his rickety taxi with one case in the boot – tied shut with wire Bulgarian-fashion and the rest occupying the front seat.The taxi does have a meter and it is working. It is seven thirty and now dark.

After ten minutes on ramped freeways, we exit a roundabout and he exclaims “Ladkrabang Road” as though expecting a round of applause.

We proceed down a long road of a thousand neon signs all in Thai, roadside cafe’s and workshops but no hotels. After a while the driver slows down next to a closed factory and says “Telephone!” I fish out the confirmation slip printed from the internet. There is the hotel address printed as clear as clear and of course my address and even my telephone number – but no telephone for the hotel. The booking agency has witheld it to prevent me ringing direct and getting a better deal.

The taxi driver scans the page, shaking his head. I point to a traffic police point behind us and we get out of the car. But our driver is reluctant to involve the police at this stage. Instead he prefers to wake up a local who has been asleep on a bench. The local waves his arm in the general direction of ahead and we continue down the road at speed. Annie points and says the word meter enough times for it to be returned to the beginning.

After ten minutes we reach the end of the road and the driver performs a U turn. We proceed back up the road. Perhaps I reason the driver has worked out that all the even numbers are on this side. After a number of slowings down and short halts and conversations on a mobile phone the driver is clearly no closer to knowing where he is going. So at a busy intersection I spot another Traffic Police point and insist he stop.

We sit in the car and crane our necks. Yes! Our man has gone into the post. Yes! After five minutes he emerges with a tall Traffic cop in white helmet who is talking on a walkie-talkie. Problem solved! But no! To our surprise instead of walking to the taxi to bring comfort to lost travellers they cross to a cafe where a number of young motorclists are gathered. There they stand chatting for the next half hour.

All sense of logic has now deserted me. I now know that a call to the police warning them of a murder taking place in the Royal Paradise Hotel would result in no action as they would not be able to find the hotel even with the address supplied.

Meanwhile we are now freezing in the back of the car. The aircon. has been turned to maximum cold. We huddle miserably together. I hope that the motorcyclists might turn out to be couriers who know Bangkok like the back of their hands. But no. Girlfriends turn up and one by one they chug off after pointing in all directions to our driver.

Still Thailand’s honour or at least its address system is at stake and finally the driver returns with the policeman. Their body language does not inspire confidence. At first the policeman prepares to mount his bike to provide a mounted escort but then decides to join us in the taxi. This means squeezing our two big cases into the boot so that the lid is now upright obscuring the driver’s rear view.

At least the driver now has a companion in his grief and for the next forty minutes they chat away as their shivering passengers are taken on a tour of Bangkok’s industrial zone. Occasionally we stop at the end of dirt roads and peer down their dark length to see no buildings of any kind.

As we get further and further from the famed road, so I begin to chant the address like some crazed Budhist monk. Our efforts to communicate our discomfort over the air co. has met with total incomprehension, but my chanting of the address does seem to focus the mind for the driver retraces the route.

The meter has been put back seven times and I am beginning to wonder whether we should not return to the airport and sleep in a chair.

Suddenly we turn off a main road and go down an alley way of shops. At the end there is a sign in Thai and English. Yes! It says Royal Paradise Hotel. It is now 9.30 and the stumpy building in a large carpark looks like paradise to us.

Next morning it takes just eight minutes to return to the airport and our flight to Chiang Mai.
Bali

March 6, 2009 by Christopher Buxton

I feel a perverse need to watch Road to Bali again. You know one of those family approved comedies back in the fifties where warbling Bing Crosby always stole Dorothy Lamour from wisecracking Bob Hope.

What I learnt back then at ten years old was that when Bing began to sing it really was a chance to nip to the toilet and that the exotic world was full of dark skinned people who flashed wide grins and danced strange dances.

What I learn now as we travel from temple to temple is that there must be more wooden and stone statues than there are people. The road between Denpasar and Ubud is lined with workshop after workshop stacked with monument size sculptures of Gods and mythical events. Who buys all these?

Certainly the decreasing number of tourists must be a problem for a population dependant entirely on tourism. Our guide speaks sadly of the effect of the recent terrorist bombing. Bali is a 90% Hindu island. Terrorists – muslim extremists – from outside the island felt that Australian tourists needed to be punished for flaunting their bodies on the beach and liking a drink of Bintang beer.

Half past seven in the morning I am woken by a phone call from a travel company. Great news! You’ve been selected to win a free holiday. You just have to come across to breakfast 40 miles away and attend a presentation. You see we’re really worried by the fall off in Australian tourists. But I’m not Australian – I say. We know that. But we still want you to enjoy your prize. My mum taught me to always look a gift horse in the mouth but I put the phone down.

The hotel is a society in microcosm. At least fifty gardeners work in the cool of the morning across the lawns. Each pool has at least four attendants. Uniformed personnel stand on every corner and intersection of every walk way and nod and wish you the best of the day. Breakfast must be a military operation involving tons of food broought in from off the island each day. Chinese tourists swoop on the fruit and empty whole plates of cut pineapple into plastic bags.

As you walk through the streets of small shops and stalls, there are no obvious signs of poverty. There are no beggars. Teenagers who flock the beaches in the evening on bicycles and scooters are unfailingly polite, always calling excuse me when coming up from behind on the pedestrian walkways.

But there is desperation here. There aren’t enough spending tourists – the women clamour for your custom. Come see my stall: looking! looking! Every five metres you are approached by a driver wanting to take you to palaces volcanoes rice fields or temples on far away points on the island. So many unsold trips, Batik shirts, sarongs, massages, wooden sculptures – and every night the same Dutch pensioners walk on by – pensioners who winter a whole three months at cheap rates.

The offerings to the Gods three times a day have not brought back the numbers of tourists that Bali once enjoyed. The guide explains Karma to me. Sumatra was hit by the Tsunami because the people were destroying the environment. In Bali the environment is often close to a version of Paradise. Gouged by Lava the island is full of sudden lush gorges with steep high cliffs and miraculously stepped paddy fields.

However take a look at their Gods – particularly Shiva and his wife – Gods of destruction and Death. They must be honoured and held in equal repect with Rama and Vishnu and so on the road you will see statues of Gurga eating children.
Sydney with Doc Martin

March 5, 2009 by Christopher Buxton

First a big thank you to Martin Belinda Mila and Theo for making space for us in their distinguished long old house in a Sydney suburb. Our bedroom window is by the frangipani tree.

We arrive at Circular Quay on our first day, through the precipitous Sydney Business district. We get off the bus impatient to see one of the world’s most famous views. Behind us is a wall of skyscrapers. In front is the long building that marks the entrance to the waterway hub of the city and the view.

But just as we make our way through the crowds, a sheet of water drops from the heavens and the brief glimpse we had of the harbour bridge disappears. As soaked tourists and locals squeeze together under the shelter of the ferry wharfs, the curtains are drawn on the outside world.

Driving in Sydney – don’t take the wrong turning you’ll find yourself in a jam on the express way with no means of retracing your steps.

The Magic Flute featured dancers hanging from creepers in the magic forest and Masonic symbols in the temple – and a vertically revolving room in which the singers tumbled. Papegono strolled onto the stage with a six pack of Castlemain XXXX.

To Sydney Botanic gardens to see the bats. They hang like some grotesque fruit on trees that are stripped of foliage. When disturbed there is a cacophony of shrieks and their flight is straight out of a Hammer Horror film.

I really like lime and ginger marmalade.

On Bondi Beach a group of young men as thickly bearded as Ben Gunn sit on the pavement on mats. One gets up and performs a party shuffle that is slow and almost menacing in its apparent playfulness. To hoots of hilarity, he suddenly bends his body and in one sinuous move he rolls onto his back and spins. It is his party piece and it never ceases to delight his friends. At last he jumps up and proffers his cap to imaginary passers by.

There is a pedestrian walkway that takes you from the headland of the Sydney inlet along all the ocean beaches. If you want to watch the surfers the best viewpoint is from the cliffs as you have turned the point so that your eye is in line with the breakers out at sea hundreds of yards from the beach.

Has Doctor Martin tried surfing? He nearly died. “You’ve got to do it from a young age. No-one tells you you’re up on the crest of a wave and there’s a sheer drop down to nothing. They brought a young Englishman in last week; landed on his head; he’s a vegetable now.”

Recent Incidents of dangerous marine life – sign below The Ladies’ Beach at Coogie.

How weird and scarey is Australian wildlife?

The flight to Bali took us over the centre of Austrailia – unremitting emptiness just black lines in the red.

Among the photographs of those 200 burnt alive in the Victoria fires, one face catches my eye: he poses with jaunty hat and cheeky grin, a few beers inside him and ready to yarn, have a crack at the poms, wind up his mates and pull a tipsy sheila. Rest in Peace.
Bad human material, one eyed idiots and gollywogs

February 11, 2009 by Christopher Buxton

Even from the azure waters of New Zealand I hear that Sofia’s mayor is again where he wants to be – in the eye of a mini-media storm at least within the Bulgarian Diaspora.

Boyko Borisov, that proud Bulgarian prototype, travelled to Chicago in the belief that addressing a cross section of Bulgarian expat “great and good” would somehow enhance his statesmanlike reputation at home.

Chicago is in the State of Illinois – reputedly the most politically corrupt state of the Union, boasting the largest number of impeached governors including the most recent incumbent Ron Blagoevitch. The city is run by Mayor Richard Daley who follows in the footsteps of his infamous father in carrying on the city tradition of Irish machine-politics.

Coincidentally the city has attracted large numbers of enterprising Bulgarian emigrants who strive for success within the American dream.

On his way to compare notes with his fellow mayor, Richard Daley, Bulgarian man of the moment, Boyko Borisov had a speech prepared for this young and thriving community. What could they have expected from a compatriot who enjoys speaking his mind and aspires to be leader of the homeland they left behind.

Like Christo Stoichkov without the football skills, Borisov charged his problem head on. He was a leader of men fated to live in a country that failed to meet the mark. He wished to compare his fortunate New World audience with the bulk of those living back in the home country. So he described the 7 million Bulgarian population as “bad human material”. He went into detail: what could you expect from 2.5 million pensioners so stupefied by nostalgia that they could only vote for the Socialist party over and over in the vain hope that those days of Communist wine and song would return? What could you expect from 1 million gypsies who voted for the party that paid them the most on election day? What could you expect from the 800,000 ethnic Turks who voted for the DPS no matter what? The unspoken supplementary question was what could you expect from the surviving middle class who had become so cynical that they would not vote – even for such a splendid specimen as stood before this enthusiastic audience in Chicago?

How could the audience not feel the pain of a leader disappointed by his troops? It was as if before battle Asparukh had suddenly realised his Bulgar horde had sent away their horses and were squabbling over whether they should return to the Azov sea.

Describing your potential voters as “bad human material” ought to be a fatal mistake and of course leaders of the Socialist and Turkish parties have raised a cacophony of predictable protest. As with the controversy over the depiction of Bulgaria as a toilet, there is a desperate appeal to political correctness – that most withering of EU imports.

However political correctness is not a feature of Bulgarian political life and there is every likelihood that the brash bold Mayor will have enhanced his reputation for the kind of straight talking usually associated with Taxi drivers. If George Bush could be elected president twice as the man Americans would most like to have a drink with – so Bulgarians may well still choose as leader the man they would most like to be forcefully interrupted by.

On Bulgarian internet chat rooms a transatlantic row has erupted as to who are the biggest cock suckers – Chicago expats or Bulgarian citizens of the EU. This is reminiscent of British 18^th century politics at its most pungent and entirely suits the style of Sofia’s mayor.

In contrast in 21^st Century UK, right wing professional infant Jeremy Clarkson has called the British prime minister a one eyed idiot and has been forced to apologise after a storm of protests from the disabled community. Daughter of the Iron Lady, Carol Thatcher has been sacked by the BBC because in an off-air conversation she commented that a tennis player looked like the gollywog she used to have as a toy in her non-politically correct childhood.

Clearly the ethics of the Stasi are alive and well in the BBC.

The UK is currently covered in snow and the blood is being drawn from its cultural, financial and political life. Bulgaria can rejoice in its colour and occasional stupidity.
Notes towards an aquamarine future- News from New Zealand and Bulgaria

January 28, 2009 by Christopher Buxton

Our ears are becoming attuned to the Kiwi accent. Like chords in a key change, vowels just move one sound over. Bat becomes bet; bet becomes bit; bit becomes but; but becomes bat. In the museum the guide explains how a new pist introduced by the Maoris ate the eggs of the flightless bird population in New Zealand. Annie (Ennie in Kiwi) is shocked and wants to know more about this pist. “What’s a ret?” she asks. The guide is lost for words – a European who doesn’t know what a ret is. I say the problem is that the Maoris didn’t bring any cets.

The sky is an intense blue and at the crest of every hill in Auckland you look down to see a faithfully reflecting sea that fills the vast bay of volcanic islands, moulded into green dough cones and darkening into the distance.

Even the air tastes of aquamarine. It blows into the faces of underdressed Kiwis who stride beneath cool blue skyscrapers towards their next peak, like stars in their own health advertisement.

I have never been so aware of trees. Mossy green boughs are flung outwards to provide a child’s climbing dream. Branches twist and curl beyond the scope of the widest angle lens. Then the palms explode from their centre like showering fireworks. Slender maidens with trembling branches just budding, extend their as yet leafless fingers to flirt with the blue sky. Ancient neighbours in dark green leaf bow beneath the weight of a heavy bearded lecherous parasite that sweeps the air like besom.

Meanwhile the news from Bulgaria is for once unexpectedly good. In the latest court case the demolition order hanging over Milka’s property in Vuzrazhdane 4 has been lifted – at least for the time being. At this announcement from the judges, our champion, Assen Yordanov let out such a triumphant whoop that he received a warning from the court.

Further whooping energy went into the making of a TV documentary. Milka now looks on Assen as the Bulgarian Martin Luther King.

None of the above changes the ground reality of the unnecessary conflict we find ourselves in with the third richest man in Bulgaria. Even though Milka’s rent from at least one part of the property is secured, the other tenants have been scared/bought off. We hope at least that Gravé’s case for compensation has now been compromised.

Mitko Subev – we are always ready to negotiate.