Bangkok: huge, pulsating, beautiful

BANGERS at daybreak: it was Chinese New Year in Bangkok.

Strings of crackers cackled like mini machine guns outside our guesthouse window.

Jet-lagged, and refusing to rouse myself, I thought this is what it must be like to wake up in a hotel in Damascus, Cairo or Cote d’Ivoire. But I knew there was no danger. Bangkok isn’t a dangerous city, unless you’re a local gangster or a foreign fool.

It had been a surreal night, humid, heavy and never silent. The pavements were lit with impromptu Chinese shrines and the Bangkok policewomen, normally a tough-looking, truncheon-toting bunch, had exchanged their uniforms for slit-skirted cheongsams. Twice I had been woken by screeches, possibly a Bangkok barn owl freaked out by the bangers. Some owl, to survive in the fumey air of frenetic Bangkok. Opening the bedroom curtains, my wife spotted a small red animal dashing around an asbestos roof below us. Was it an Asiatic weasel or maybe a mongoose — it was certainly no rat, not that there aren’t rats in Bangkok. Canals and rivers flow through it, and where there is water, there are rats.

But the streets and waterways of Bangkok have much to offer besides rodents. The other evening we took a water bus — a sensible alternative to the massive traffic jams backed-up in four-lane highways winding between towers of grand hotels, apartment and office blocks scraping the sky.

It was a lovely trip, with all the riverside temples in their tiers of gold throwing reflections on the dark water. Thirty four years ago, we had taken the same trip; it was a very different Bangkok, then.

Brahminy kites swooped over the klongs [canals], beautiful, chestnut-coloured birds with white heads and breasts. Perhaps they are still there, a unique aspect of Bangkok city wildlife. Temples are beautiful too, and full of grace. But they don’t take wing from a riverside post and soar and shine against the blue sky above.

On board the boat, we encountered a mildly inebriated Dane, one of the thousands of backpackers enjoying the huge, pulsating city, the great beauty of the place and the people themselves (still genuinely friendly, as they were over 30 years ago) and, of course, the affordability of it all. The Dane transferred to me a pastel-green praying mantis which had walked up his arm. It posed on my wrist like a creature from outer space until we reached shore, where I persuaded it to go its way.

These days, we no longer join the exotic backpacker tribes at the cheapest hostels but even our elegant, suburban, all-mod-cons guesthouse cost only €24 per night for us both, with an ensuite room and breakfast included. God help the Irish B&B provider or hotelier trying to compete with that. However, while we wander overseas now and then, we pay our taxes at home and welcome overseas friends to spend their money in Ireland.

Sri Lanka had been a choice for this break from beloved Ireland but the fares were €800 return, rather too much even if we defrayed it by spending two cheap months on that island. Then, I came across a return fare that took us at ‘backpacker rates’ to Thailand, stopping off at Colombo, Sri Lanka, on each leg. Thus, on the outwards journey, we had 12 hours at Colombo airport, and I got to have a swim in the Andaman Sea at a beach nearby. Then, onward to Bangkok, jet-lag and Chinese fire-crackers.

I write this in a cafe on a small island off the Thai coast just south of the tip of Burma after a 10-hour overnight bus trip from Bangkok. We arrived at the mainland port, Rangon, at dawn and there, as we waited on the rickety pier for the rickety boat for the two-hour journey to our destination, I saw a pair of Brahminy kites and a brace of kingfishers, all in the grey and purple shades of dawn.

We will spend some time on this island where there is no motorised transport whatsoever (but one internet cafe!) Then, we will visit friends in Malaysia and in northern Thailand — and meet the wandering youngest son and his girlfriend somewhere in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.

If the gods remain willing, we may have two weeks to explore the tea-grown hills and jungles of old Ceylon on the way home.