They of the Incandescent Soul

Part One of MartinT’s adventures in Thailand

Beer Travels October 30, 2003
Written by MartinT

Montreal, CANADA -

The following is a leisurely account of a month-long endeavour my fiancée Marie-Eve and I undertook throughout Thailand during the month of May 2003. The various paragraphs shown here are to be taken as journal entries, for which time spent was less important than the location of its continuous flow and the multifarious experiences encountered. Most of the time, when there was thunder, there was ink. A heavenly shower was the pause I needed to recollect, assemble and assess all that had occurred since the last downpour. Because otherwise, the intake of new experiences was too much of a drug for me to sit down and stop ingesting it all at first hand. We were lucky it was the beginning of the rain season.

(DAY = 9 W.A., YEAR = 2546)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF DON MUANG AND CHATUCHAK NEIGHBOURHOODS IN BANGKOK

Ripping and roaring from high above. After 30 low-in-oxygen hours of planes and airports, we finally touched ground in a Thai neighbourhood teeming with insalubrity and an obvious lack of maintenance. These tired beings (aka us) were evidently not ready for this multi-dimensional assault at this moment. A good night’s sleep though, in a horizontal position thank you, made us notice the many protruding Thai temples which are oases of freshness and spiritual wealth amidst the concrete ant farm that is north Bangkok. We also quickly discovered that the people indigenous to Chatuchak are opportunistic, always ready to serve, but maybe a bit too much so for now. Granted, a young couple with backpacks is a bit like a 1000-watt spotlight in a dark cavern for a starving salesman but still…as in many cities of the world, Bangkok seems to be the meeting of a very particular culture (which we will discover later) and an overpowering occidental megalo-commerce. This, surely, will not be our most interesting foray into the Thai world.

“WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

AT ALL MY SOUL DID WINK

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

AND EVERY DROP I’D DRINK”

Stick your head in a Jacuzzi for a few seconds and feel the heat and humidity. That is how we were feeling today in 40-degree Celsius temperature, accentuated of course by 100% humidity. Every step, precious water leaked abundant from my pores, bringing me a step further from the sticky Velcroman I had become earlier. Thank goodness for these frequent cleansings from the sky. This morning, after having resoundingly rebuffed the idea of having an American breakfast (e.g. fake eggs, fake bread and fake sausage on a bed of lettuce), I served myself of few little bowls of what was prepared for the Thai people sojourning at my hotel. One of these was described as being cooked with a hot curry. This strange salad, with Lilliputian shrimp, weeds, green onions and a host of ingredients unknown at this time to yours truly (read “this poor fool”) simply gored my every taste bud on the first mouthful and finished them off by sucking the life out of them in the subsequent bites. Right then and there, I almost wanted a Singha…that feeling will hopefully not come back often.

Thus, the avid, sleep-deprived adventurers we are quickly took the train, this the day following our arrival, to get to southern Thailand, where our aching bodies and disoriented minds will rest amidst the healing sun rays and soothing crashing of the waves (clichés, but oh so true) of the islands of Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. After having witnessed an emergency welding procedure between two coaches, the train departed and the deafening roars of life and machine are now intertwining. Indeed, every station we meet, after the frighteningly slow huffing and puffing of the olden train dies down, high-pitched frog engines vibrate from all around over tightly-woven cricket carpets. And if you concentrate a bit, you can hear a new sound amidst the others all the time. One of them, I swear (I hear it right now), is the actual alarm in “2001:A Space Odyssey” when Dave makes his forced entry into the spacecraft without his space helmet. Hearing all of this, an inward sigh of relief charms my exhaustion to a state of semi-well-being. And the train comes back to life and drowns, for me, this plethora of nocturnal amphibia. Which is always immediately replaced by my neighbour’s snoring. Ah, the multifariousness of life. Actually there were two of the sinus-impaired entangled in a highly complex, Steve Reich-esque minimalist yet contrapuntal improvisation. My goodness, they seem to be carrying the train.

...

Throughout this tiring night, every time the train stopped, for seemingly too long, worries emanated from my tired mind, but I soon learned to quell them. Somehow, I was sure Thai people don’t hurry and don’t worry…And sure enough, the train limped and hiccuped its way back towards Suratthani.

A PRISTINE PALETTE OF PALATE PLEASURES

Full fledged, raging tropical storm on Koh Samui. So intense, this can’t last very long. Upon arrival, the summer from above was in fact a summer from inside. Our starving gullets, tongues and minds would now undertake the tasting journey we had been longing for. So after wading in our resort’s vacant pool with a few lemon shakes for a couple hours (this was a very low season for tourism, with SARS, the war in Iraq and the excessive temperatures of this time of year), we tackled our first traditional meal. This “hormok” was a quite complex and delicious seafood omelette, cooked with coconut milk and steamed in a banana leaf with a medium curry. This spice level of curry is perfect for our weakling occidental palates (well...mine anyway). If you think you are quite the fire lover because you can tolerate a bowl full of the Five Alarm BBQ Wings at your local sports bar, your palate will cry for help like a young toreador in “Revenge of the Bulls – The Bejewelling”. The medium curry of the hormok was perfect to allow all of its other flavours to surface and play around delightfully. A hot curry, like I had on my first Thai breakfast, is palate blinding. A frozen mug of Chang Beer accompanied this culinary delight, but could have easily been replaced by water. Thirst-quenching would be a nice and polite way to describe this vapid cereal juice.

THE ANTIPODES OF KOH SAMUI

A shining grey curtain falls over the sea of Thailand. Indeed, every once in a while, as if things were programmed (“okay boys, let’s water the plants”), a torrential flood is unleashed from the smoggy heavens to cleanse and regenerate...and some flee of course. Because Samui is not all what the extravagant brochures and artfully photographed websites clamour. Fringed by hundreds of forsaken construction sites and hundreds of active ones, urban Samui is a filthy, rundown, giant flea market spawned by occidental trade practices. Some Thais have sold their souls to the devil of commercialism. Sexual tourism is prevalent and at first we could not avert our shocked eyes from the blatant “courtisanship” unfolding in very public places. If you’re into that sort of thing though, just rent yourself a motor scooter and you’ll have a young Thai riding behind you faster than you can say “juvenile prostitution”. It seems that easy. Once these Canadian eyes have breathed this fully and completely, and finally spit it out, worldly eyes open…frowns and worries evaporate and the real trip begins…thankfully...

Grilled barracuda with crispy garlic and roasted pepper soon paraded in our salivating palates, as did delicious ginger-laced ducks and quite succulent shark à la pineapple. Thai cuisine is at once flavourful and complex, but the recipes don’t seem that complicated. Just filled with ingredients mysterious to us, which we will of course learn how to use in a few weeks. So far, the Leo, Klosterbier, Klassik Lager and Thai Beer were all quite awful and do not require any intense analyses. Nor do I want to torture myself doing some. The Thai Amarit Brewery in Pathumthani, brewers of the infamous aforementioned Klassik Lager and Klosterbier have even stooped to a new low in the beer world, as far as I’m concerned, when labelling their pseudo-German lagers. Mimicking the green bottle of you-know-who, they flat out lie to the innocent German tourists (there are many in Southern Thailand -- no idea why) and say these beers are brewed under close supervision of fictional breweries nestled in a surreal German landscape. Only in small print in the back can you read that these are not German at all but that they are brewed by T.A.B. in a lowly town whose name does not even remotely sound German. These shameful and disgraceful attempts disgusted me even before I opened the bottle. Not that the content was much better either...

Part two next week.

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