Today is less focussed on work. Well, it will be when the current batch of archive pictures have finished uploading anyway...

I'm off to meet Chrissorn, an old Thai friend. Today is the holiday of Makha Bucha. It's an important Buddhist festival and the temples will be busy tonight. Chris has offered to take me along again this year so I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

It’s been a fairly lazy day here in Bangkok. I’ve not moved far from the hotel as I’ve been busy editing a big batch of pictures from yesterday when I caught a train from Hualamphong to a place on the outskirts of the city whose name always raises a smirk or chuckle from English speakers: Bang Sue. The trip takes 20 minutes and cost me princely sum of 2 baht for a seat in a 3^rd class coach hauled by a rasping Alstom built diesel engine from the 1980s. I went to Bang Sue (stop sniggering at the back!) as it’s an area that’s seeing a huge expansion of rail and metro lines, they’re building everywhere and a walk of a few miles around three sides of a (metaphorical) square allowed me to see a lot of it. Firstly, the underground goes overground, (wombling free) passing over Klongs, past cement factories and (God help us) a ‘Tesco Lotus’ to what will be a substantial cross shaped multi-level interchange station connecting with the Purple line metro. The whole structure straddles a major road junction and towers above the area already but when it’s finished it’ll look tremendous. From here I followed the 90-100ft towering piers of the Purple line along Thanon Krungthep Nonthaburi. By the looks I was getting from locals they don’t get many Falangs here. Then again it could have been that having walked for ages the heat, humidity and the weight of my camera bag had turned me into a damp sweaty mess!

The piers led me to another station on the Purple line at Bang Son which will be the interchange for State Railways of Thailand’s new suburban ‘Red route’ which crosses underneath a few hundred metres farther on. This is another elevated railway which parallels the existing SRT route from Bang Sue (now, I’ve told you once..) to Taling Chan out to the West of the city. After quite a bit of haggling and plan changing this will be an electrified, double track metre gauge line. The new SRT station dwarfs the adjacent old, down at heel one which has been taken over as a workers compound/base and looks more like a squatter’s camp than a station. But I doubt that will be for long. A brand new road is being laid to the South of the route and this will be a very desirable piece of real estate in a few years time.

I followed the railway back towards Bang Sue (right, for the last time..) but decided against following the local practice of using railways as footpaths. Instead I ambled along the landscaped and tree lined Klong Prapra to get back to the station. It’s hard to believe it now, but last November, when the floods threatened to burst through and engulf central Bangkok this area was the frontline and final defence. The newspapers and TV were full of reports of the height of the floodwaters around here. Now, apart from the occasional shop that still has a flood wall outside (those who had the money built substantial brick and concrete ones) there’s hardly any sign of the chaos it caused. The effects linger on in other ways though. All the projects I looked at are months behind because of it as sand and cement became too expensive, so workers were laid off and left the city.

Back at Bang Sue (now will you stop it!) delays meant there was no SRT train for an hour so I plumped for the air-conditioned luxury of the metro back to Hualamphong – although the luxury came at a price. 40 baht instead of 2!

..................................................................................................................................................................Pt 2

It’s now 19.20 and I’m sitting at a street stall opposite the station replete after a fiery chicken curry with peppers, liberally garnished with the chopped chillies which are supplied as condiments on each table. The street stalls are quiet but the roads are frenetic as Bangkokians try to filter out of the city by car and bus through the nearby expressway. The level of traffic makes crossing the road ‘interesting’ to say the least, but you don’t seem to get as many damn-fool drivers here who see the roads as purely for them the way you do in the UK. There’s also some seriously cool coaches here (you’ll see a picture later). The paint jobs and body styling is excellent. Add a few green lights in the burnished engine bay and you almost have something out of a sci-fi film. Alien meets Plaxton perhaps?

Every so often you’ll get a scooter rider darting through the traffic in the wrong direction like a minnow (or a kamikaze). Sat here at the side of the road I get a grandstand view of all this and more.  This is the best kind of TV dinner you could ask for!

I’m writing this as I sit on the concourse balcony under the arched roof of Bangkok’s Hualamphong station. I’m sipping a cold beer whilst watching the world go by. A play on my Blackberry soon established the fact that there’s free wifi here, so it seemed like a good time for a blog entry.

The ease by which we can communicate now is what started me thinking. When I started travelling in this part of the world all you had was expensive phone calls home from landlines, or ‘poste restante’ maildrops.  I can just hear those who aren’t old fart travellers saying “ what the hell is poste restante”? Well, In the bad old days every main post office (and quite a few small ones in popular travelling locations) had a box, room or counter that dealt with letters addressed to individuals c/o their post office. The problem was that many of them would only keep them for a limited time before the letter was - in the words of the old Elvis song – ‘returned to sender’. In this era of instant communication it’s difficult to explain just what it was like to pitch up at a post office after weeks or months without contact with home and finding several letters with your name on them – and thick ones were especially prized as you knew someone had made the effort or had something to say. Now, I admit that I’m just as bad – but letter writing is a lost art. I can’t think of the last time that I wrote one. I don’t even send postcards anymore since my mum died.

But I digress. So, depending how long you were travelling for you’d tell people to write to you c/o the GPO in (say) Kathmandu between certain dates – and hoped the letter would be there when you turned up. It was all a bit hit and miss. You couldn’t have a decent conversation by letter when half the conversation went missing – as it often did. Of course, you could always ring home, but depending on where you were that was far more expensive and often just as unreliable (and, if you were in India – incredibly bureaucratic, but nothing changes there – even in the internet age).

I do remember making an eye-wateringly expensive radio telephone call back to the UK from a Thai Island on my mum’s birthday one time. Of course nowadays (if she was still there to pick up the phone) I’d use ‘Skype’ – for free.

What an incredible change in such a short time.

Now, thanks to the internet, Not only can I keep in touch with friends and family at will - I’m able to run my photographic business from anywhere in the world. All I need is an internet connection – just like this one.

Another transformation is internet banking. Back in the mid 80s I had to get some money sent out to me in India. Talk about a rigmarole. Telegraphic transfers, wads of paperwork – you name it. Now? I manage all my finances over the internet and beer voucher machines – sorry, ATMs are almost everywhere.  

In a normal day I might upload pictures only an hour old, email copies to a magazine, get a purchase order emailed to me, email an invoice back and then both receive and spend the money electronically. It doesn’t matter that the client is based in the UK and I’m sitting in a station in Bangkok, or a backstreet cafe in Bali, or Laos, or...

What a wonderful world!

The sun is slowly sinking and the heat of the day is beginning to lift here in Bangkok. A breeze has spring up to bring in cool air and clear the traffic fumes. I'm sat outside another street cafe opposite Hualamphong station waiting for the light to change and colours return to the sky before getting some pictures. Like the area around any big railway station it's teeming with transients. It's a mix of Farang tourists and backpackers, plus Thais who are stocking up on food for their journey or wandering (wide eyed and confused) after arriving in the big city - which is even more confusing at the moment. Work is underway on extending the Underground Westward so the area's a building site. Footpaths and roads have been blocked or diverted, cranes dominate the skyline and 'ItalThai' branded hoardings seem to be everywhere.
 
EDIT.
 
As I wrote this the light changed, gifting us the most lusterous sunset after colours I've seen for a while, the sky positively glowed from horizon to horizon.  Knowing that it wouldn't last long I dashed to the station only to find it frustratingly bereft of trains! (If there's one law I'd love to see repealed - it's Sod's).
 
Still, I managed a few shots - which will be online soon...

Meanwhile my time in Asia is coming to an end. I sorted out my return flight today which means I'll be back in the Sceptered Isle on the 12th March.

This short blog entry is brought to you care of the wifi in a restaurant overlooking Hualamphong station in Bangkok.

The trip up from Butterworth proved to be one of those journey's that's make so much fun purely by chance. In this case it was the fact that my companions in the coach were an entertaining couple of (ex) Brits who'd lived in Oz for 35 years and a young deaf and dumb Thai woman who made up for her inability to communicate in the standard fashion by her sheer exhuberance, facial expressions and body language!

All in all it was a great journey and the fact that the train was over an hour late leaving mattered not a jot.

Now I'm back in Bangkok, gazing out across the street at the illuminated facade of Hualamphong station and watching the world go by. I have to admit that - as much as I enjoy the food in Malaysia, the first taste of the Thai red curry I'd ordered was like manna from heaven. I absolutely love Thai food and all its richness and complexity. Washed down with a cold bottle of beer and it's truly sublime.

So, now I'm going to go and finish that beer and you'll hear more about Bangkok anon..

P

Well, the plan to move on from Malaysia to Thailand today was undermined when I couldn’t get a berth on the train, which mean I’ve suffered a terrible hardship and had another day in Georgetown.

However, I did venture over to the mainland, catching the ferry across to Butterworth to check on the progress KTMB are making on building their new station. When I was here a few months ago the site of the old place was a wasteland. Now foundations have appeared for the new platforms – which start to give you an impression of its size. I hung around for a few hours getting pictures (which are now on the website) but when the latest thunderstorm rolled in, turning the sky the colour of slate and lacing it with lightning  – It was time to leave. Still it made for a dramatic ferry journey as I was caught between weather fronts. On the other side of the channel the Southern suburbs of Georgetown were getting a soaking from a mini monsoon that had boiled in over Penang hill. You can see the effect in some of the picture in the travel gallery.

I managed to walk home without getting soaked by the rain – just dripping in sweat because of the humidity and the weight of the camera bag. After a quick shower and change I headed out to eat, then shot some pictures around Lebuh Chulia. Now, this area has always been famous for the fact that it’s been a hangout for the local ‘working girls’ – although in times past, many of the girls were anything but.  Thailand is famous for its ‘Ladyboys’ – who’ve fooled many a man. In Georgetown they’ve always been more like Les Dawson in drag. But times (and maybe tastes) have changed. Now when you walk down Chulia you’re more likely to see examples of female Indian pulchritude rather than a chubby Chinese bloke who really should have shaved before he put the make-up and tights on...

What hasn’t changed is the becak (ricksahaw) drivers who hang around on the pavements outside the bigger hotels, playing draughts on makeshift boards using bottletops as pieces. Most of them are so stick thin they’d make a famine victim look overweight.

For old times sake I had a beer in a bar called the Mona Lisa. I’ve been going there for years but this was my first visit on this trip. It hasn’t changed – it’s just that everyone’s got older and the decor’s got tattier! Walking home afterwards was fun as the rain held off but the lightning was superb – masses of sheet stuff from all directions, like someone going crazy with a strobe.

So, there’s enough time for a final beer at home and typing this, then it’s off to pack. Another day, another country. I’m going to miss this place...

OK, it’s not quite what the Small Faces had in mind when they wrote the lyrics, but Georgetown certainly knows how to do a lazy Sunday!

It’s blissfully quiet here in Jalan Muntri,  the small hotel I’m staying in is favoured by an older clientele – many of whom are retired and either staying here in Malaysia for the  winter months or are regulars from Thailand on the ‘visa run’. That means that it’s not full of excitable young travellers who are so absorbed in themselves they forget about other people.  As I’m typing this an older American man has just turned up on a bicycle festooned with panniers. This intrepid chap is fulfilling his ambition to cycle around SE Asia in contrast to the preferred method of the younger types who have eschewed the inconvenience of going overland and dip in and out of places by budget airline like so many social butterflies. 

Jalan Muntri is a backstreet in the old part of Georgetown that runs parallel with the much more well-known Lebuh Chulia. The busiest thing that’s happened here has been a Chinese funeral a few doors up the road. A marquee with tables and chairs was set up n the road outside the house for the nearest and dearest to pay their respects. The send-off lasted a few days, until this afternoon when the deceased got his final send off accompanied by a band and several trucks containing the sort of flower arrangements you normally see at a state funeral.

Now peace has returned broken only by the bells and horns of the occasional scooter, becak (pedal rickshaw) and evening thunderstorm – although that was more sound than fury with a pretty poor attempt at rain compared to what you can get here.

My day has been just as lazy. I relished a lie-in and uninterrupted sleep before a brunch of roti canai, which is a chapatti like bread cooked on a griddle. It’s served with a gorgeous curry sauce to make a cheap and cheerful (but very delicious) meal.  Suitably replete I wandered back to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon editing the archive pictures which are uploading to the website now.

So, now I have a tough decision to make – what to eat tonight? Georgetown is a gourmands paradise. You have Indian, Chinese and Malay food (or a fusion of all three) to choose from.  From sublime samosas in Little India, nourishing noodles in Chinatown or succulent seafood from the Malay stalls on the promenade.

Decisions, decisions...

I'm back in Georgetown on Penang Island. It's one of those places that I truly feel at home. I first came here 20 years ago and fell in love with it then. After 5 weeks of the hustle and bustle (and mayhem) of Kuala Lumpur it's like slipping back into a pair of old slippers.