Things we actually see as we walk

England arguably holds the world record for longest history of using the English language, and consequently has a fair amount of residual signage demonstrating this usage over time.

Walking around you can’t help but notice a whole lot of street signs that make you chortle, or at least wonder.

Cock Lane, Love Lane (no prizes for guessing how these ones were named). Little Britain (yes, it’s actually a street in central London). Festing Street. Seething Lane (guesses? There might be a prize in that one*). North, South, East and West Tenter Streets, which define a small city block, and no tenter in the middle to be found. Bevis Marks. Eastcheap, Cheapside (in the Borough of Cheap, naturally); Poultry; Cornhill. Catherine Wheel Alley. Frostic Walk. Savage Gardens (and I thought maybe the band had a shred of originality in their name, at least). Also the unforgettable: Crutched Friars (this actually has a sensible explanation, but I won’t bore you with it).

*Probably not, come to think of it.

London. Just the facts, Madam.

Yes, we’ve been here almost two weeks now. We’ve even been into the middle of town. A couple of times. Maybe more, it’s easy to lose count.

We’re such homebodies, it’s easy to stay in our (warm!) house in Wimbledon and more or less ignore the marvels half an hour away by Tube. The Tube is good, but walking is our mainstay. Walking around (and around) Soho we’ve found all the expected food, pubs, fashion, sex shops and post-production facilities you’d expect, but there’s more to London than Soho. There’s pubs! Everywhere! And they really make sense when you have to come in from the cold every few minutes to thaw your face and hands. As opposed to Thailand where you choose either Singha or Chang (to rehydrate and cool down) if you’re a beer drinker, in London I don’t think I’ve had the same beer twice (to help warm up. Yes it is served flat and tepid, trust me it makes sense over here.) Except Guinness, but that’s not a beer, it’s an institution, and since we’re living with a native son of Eire and St Paddy’s day’s just gone, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

But all that’s not really the heart of London (I hear you cry) where’s the theatre, the art, the architecture, the geezers, the whinging? Well, all in good time, we’ve had a little of those fings (a little geezer moment there), but we’re not rushing it. The architecture you can’t avoid, a good chunk of central London is like the QVB (together with all its relatives) on steroids, and makes Sydney feel just a little small. On the other hand, the modern architects here are committing just as many crimes against humanity as their Antipodean counterparts, so apparently all things are equal, to some degree.

Theatre? I’ll get to that in due course. Lots of it here, of course, the obligatory poly-decadic blockbuster thingies that they ship busloads of tourists to because they’re in London, and SEVEN different versions of The Tempest running concurrently across town. We’ll go and see some and report (thank you Karen and Geoff).

Art? All I can really report for now is that Gilbert & George are good. They continue to be good. And the Tate Modern (which houses the latest G&G show has some fun spiral slides. Keeps the kids amused, and the big folks too.

Common or garden information

One of the fun things to do here is wander around the Common. Wimbledon Common, obviously. The one with the Wombles. (We now have families of the cute little blighters in the bedroom wardrobe!) It’s big. It seems to be at least twice the size of Centennial Park in Sydney and far more given over to wildy brambley swampy bits. It comfortably houses an entire golf course (the Royal Scottish, strangely enough, and we haven’t seen any kilts or SAS entourages there yet). It has ponds with ducks, and geese the like of which at least one of us had never seen before (Canada geese). Dogs – doggie dogs! Cute, shaggy, fluffy. awfully well trained. A testament to the English public school system. There’s even a windmill – what? Yes! It doesn’t so much mill or wind as just sit there – it’s the thought that counts. All the trees are so familiar yet not at all familiar – oaks, elms and whole copses of birches! Even coppiced birches! And some pollarded ones!

Our new abode has a tiny garden, even smaller than the one at the old abode – unfortunately the neighbours on the left have decided that erecting a large concrete wall to block out all the southern sun was a great thing to do today. Urgh!

Blighty – first impressions

Having landed and negotiated the warrens of Heathrow, all that remained was finding someone to take us to our new home. That would be Paul, whom we’d never seen, and who wouldn’t know us from two bars of soap.

I eventually spotted someone I could make conform to my uncertain mental image of him, and wonder of wonders, he was holding a card with our names on. YAY! We were whisked (to our new) home, and chatted for a couple of hours, by which time we’d been (mostly) awake for 24 hours straight, and probably not so coherent anymore. It was a decent time for bed, about 11pm UTC, so an excellent first step on the road to circadian wholesomeness. That was until we both woke up at 3.30am. Oh well. Figured it wouldn’t happen overnight.

Stand by for installment 2 of the Blighty Chronicles.

Bonus facts and observations!

It seems as though there are many more cats in Thailand than in, for example, Bali, per square metre. The dogs seem roughly commensurate with Bali numbers and conditions, but Thailand has cats that seem to fit into the same ecological niche – not feral, but not really pets as I know them. Laid back, unafraid, usually hungry, and often fairly unkempt. Usually in a better state than the dogs, though.
At Wat Pho there were hundreds of tourists and worshippers milling around outside the wat in the yard, and one very relaxed cat just lying on the ground in the midst of the feet. Not sleeping, quite alert, but definitely relaxed around the crowd. Another pregnant ginger cat living at the resort at Ao Wong Deuan was very happy when we gave it attention, though most of the cats we saw were relaxed enough when you were close, but got very suspicious of anything resembling what we thought were affectionate gestures.
I think we saw one Siamese out of the lot of them. Plenty that looked Burmese, though. Burmese have always struck me as the more sensible stronger breed.

Despite Bangkok’s reputation as a major centre of sleazy activity, nowhere was I (James) offered the opportunity to purchase the services of a woman (or anyone else, for that matter) except for the purpose of general transportation. Not that we went to any remotely seedy areas except for a walk, on a couple of mornings, down Th. Khao San (which can’t be regarded as particularly sleazy. A bit seedy, yes, but not sleazy). But it was about 9am both times, and I guess I don’t look like your prototypical sleaze tourist. Yay!

Specialization. I saw a man rummaging through rubbish bins near Th. Khao San. He only had one thing on his wish list: rubber bands. I wonder if the competition is so fierce for the plastic bags that we’re seeing speciation of these people?

The end of facts about Thailand.

Day 7. Monday 12.03.2007

Wake up at the crack of dawn, as we have every day except when we planned to get away early on Thursday. Computer things, photo things, discover lack of camera memory card containing memories of most of our time at Ko Samet. Ring Ko Samet resort, but they deny all knowledge of same. Bugger.
Linda’s not up to breakfast, so I head out alone to eat, then out to the post office, which we’ve been meaning to do for several days now, but haven’t been within cooee of one. So now postcards are en route. Yay!
Back to hotel, pack, then off to airport. Linda had rung Thai Air as per instructions previously obtained, to request seats with extra leg-room, and was promised same, pending turning up at check-in to demonstrate tallness and therefore need of aforementioned seats. At the airport (Suvarnabhumi, the brand-new one with the famous runway cracks) we are almost 2 hours early, and there are no queues! Stroll up to the counter, to find not only no queues, but also no seats as promised! There are apparently only 3 seats left, and the check-in chick says she can’t get us seats together, even. Oh wait, yes she can. Huh? Everyone is checked in 2 full hours early? What gives? Sadly I think we’ll never know, unless we can ascribe it to the famous English penchant for, and love of, queuing. Weird. No duty-free purchases, we just look at all the stuff and move slowly towards England.
I’m typing this on the plane, cattle class, down the back, last time we had an update we were over Turkmenistan, the Himalayas were beautiful an hour or so ago, and we just finished watching Stranger than Fiction, and for as long as my batteries hold out I’ll probably listen to music and prepare photos to put on the web.
So eventually the plane lands, as they do, and we shuffle through the warren that is Heathrow. We’re separated at immigration control – Linda is quizzed as to her friends, marital status, employment, etc. James walks up to the counter (the UK citizens one), passport and landing card in hand: “I have an Australian passport, but I have this:” opening passport to Certificate of Entitlement to the Right of Abode. Official looks at passport, takes landing card and dispenses with it, “you don’t need this, Sir, straight through here, thankyou, goodbye.”
Wow, that was easy.
Once again, as in Thailand, the customs area is a ghost town, so we stroll through unimpeded. We’re in England!

Extended factual observations

Day 7. Sunday 11.03.2007
Breakfast, swim, checkout. No speedboat back to the mainland (we’re not made of money – we couldn’t swallow the fleecing we were offered on that kind of extravagance, so we opted to be swindled on a ferry ride instead, only paying more than 6 times what any local would pay!) A nice slow sedate trip, quite pleasant except for the vile boorish (Dutch? That would make him Boerish, almost, I guess) tourist standing and smoking on the front of the boat like he owned it, throwing his butts into the water. After days of almost 100% unadulterated Thai comestibles, we stepped into the first little place to hand, catering to Europeans as it turned out, and had a cleansing ale and some chips with tomato sauce. It felt good. So we wandered back to the fleecy touty shop where we were to rendezvous with the minibus back to Bangkok. We were offered a taxi instead for the paltry (it seemed – we were getting well used to the idea of two price scales by now) sum of 600 Baht extra to cover the 180-odd kilometres. The prospect of private transport (air-conditioned!) which could get us back to Bangkok at least an hour earlier, and accommodate any personal gastrointestinal requirements, which was a very real and forceful consideration, was one we couldn’t resist. We didn’t get the driver’s name, sadly, but he was VERY keen to make good time back to town. With 2 clocks on the dashboard, and the radio on, he kept checking his watch, weaving through the (heavy and occasionally very competitive) traffic like a pro. I heard the rattle of a bottle of pills at one point, washed down with a can of coffee, and followed up with a few snorts on his menthol inhaler (very popular in Thailand, it seems). No seat-belts in the back, so it was fairly entertaining to be witness to and part of. We all enjoyed making good time, despite the terrible traffic. Turns out it was the end of a religious holiday and everyone was trying to get back to Bangkok before work on Monday.

Back at the Trang we were greeted, not quite as old friends, more like yet another chore in a long line of indistinguishable farang to be processed (there’s one to google). Ring the front desk for a power adapter to plug in, recharge camera batteries, etc. as on previous stay. get sent the wrong one that won’t accept Australian plugs. Ring again, we’re told that they don’t have such a thing, so mention previous stay. Go to front desk with plug in question. Ah, they do have one. Excellent (didn’t say ‘I told you so’).
We want to go to the Chattachak weekend markets, so ask the desk what time they’re open until – 7pm, apparently. Once again, excellent, it’s almost 6 by now, so we lurch back outside into the warmth, and flag a tuk-tuk driver, determined to strike a bargain, or at least some price not criminally extortionate, but he says the market closes at 6. Bugger. So we walk off into the sunset, thinking vaguely of dinner, but not keen on more Thai food (it all gets a bit, hmm, Thai after a while) and decide to go to Chinatown, this being the closest either of us have ever been to China, it seems like a good idea. Tuk-tuk time, again. We drive a hard bargain, and for what may be the first time we feel as though a local hasn’t just dipped his (or her) hand into our pockets at will, or at our request, even.
Dinner, after scoping out some local establishments, was at a place we think was called Canton House, a dimsum place mostly, but with lots of other really good (and surprisingly cheap) things on the menu. Many varied dimsum were eaten, followed by ‘4 Vegetable’, one of which was actually a fungus, and the medium sized roast duck, which we would happily have called large. Delicious, though accusations of MSG assistance were levelled.
Hotel. Sleep.

Observations on Ko Samet

Day 6. Saturday 10.03.2007
Snorkel before breakfast, at the North end of Ao Wai. After breakfast, we go for a walk to the South end of Ko Samet, to the famed Sunset Point. About 3 or 4 KM there and back, very hot and sweaty walk, mid 30s, and a bit pointless as no sunset was in evidence at 10am. Fun (for James at least). The forest seems to be almost entirely monocultural, odd for a National Park, but when you consider that the Ko Samet was called something like “The Beautiful Jewel of the East” and that the new name reflects the fact that the samet tree is popular for its efficacy as firewood the apparent lack of virgin forest begins to make sense.
Most of the rest of the day consisted of renting beach chairs and sitting in the shade in same, and reading, or lathering on the sunblock and swimming.
Caught up with David again, for drinks, then dinner, then more drinks, at which point Linda abandoned the proceedings claiming gastric unfitness. Still, in bed by midnight. The latest night yet!

The nature of things, in Ko Samet.

Day 5. Friday 09.03.2007.
Light breakfast (toast for Linda, fish congee for James, sweet black tea all ’round), pursued by snorkelling. Much broken and bleached coral, some good bits though, further out and further down (seems that most of the tourists to the island can’t swim. True!) Many many urchins & lovely giant clams (not so giant, mostly, but beautiful). More Thai tucker for lunch and dinner, all lovely, and the rice was always teddy-bear shaped. We’re both having some tummy upsets now, though Linda’s faring much worse. We’ve been relocated to a new bungalow – off the Northern end of the beach, amidst trees. The balcony features the old Thai favourite, Grecian columns, and the finest fibro. Geckos!
Over dinner James noticed a familiar-looking face devouring the BBQ pork-on-a-stick, so went for a chat on the way back to the bungalow – turns out it was a guy called David Smith, an artist who once worked at Ambience as a VFX Supervisor while James was there, in Thailand now helping to set up a facility in Bangkok. Had just been saying how several days had passed without seeing a familiar face. Funny.

Facts not entirely about Bangkok

Day 4. Thursday 08.03.2007
Check out of the Trang today, then we’re driven to Ban Phe by the hotel-commissioned driver, which was vastly preferable to catching a minibus for 3 hours. Swindled by the nice ladies at the travel tout shop over fares to Ko Samet, but the speedboat ride was fun, if bumpy. Check in to rather good secluded cabin at the Sametville Resort (Ao Wai) with absolute bloody water frontage. Nice, though we’re off the south end of the beach and onto the rocks.
Refreshing ales and snacky treats follow (we went the raw prawn with whole garlic cloves and green chillies, fish-cakes and something thai-salady, all of which was good, but Linda responded badly to one of them and has nothing more to say about day 4 than to groan feebly. Swimming was also done – many underwater cucumbers and urchins (just fitted it in before commencement of feeble groaning).