We are back for our annual thawing in Thailand. Well, when I say thawing, apparently the locals are struggling to cope with a recent cold wave. Our cabbie at Suvarnabhumi confessed to not showering the morning of our arrival. “Too cold!” Outside, along the sidewalks on the beach in Hua Hin, people are in jumpers and sweats. Along our pool, a line of unclaimed beach chairs lie in wait.
A Mancunian woman of a certain age tells us brightly that it’s the coldest she has seen it in 10 years. We’ll take it. So what, if the water in the pool is, truth be told, a little icy? At least you can plunge into it, as opposed to walking on it, as we’d be doing in Beijing.
I tell her this. She shivers delicately and turns over to roast her other side. My son yelps through his snorkel as the water hits his chest. I glimpse a kite-surfer through the palms and wonder idly if a waiting shark would prefer him with a coconut garnish. I feel equidistant from both Beijing and Delhi. I’d giggle if I wasn’t so sleepy.
Normal or Express queue?
As I’ve pointed out before, there are few things more frustrating than waiting in the Visa on Arrival queue when you land. Since the last time of writing, however, I seem to have stumbled upon a fix. To the left of the visa hall is a line supposedly for groups. If you go and boldly stand there, an officer will come and tell you that it’s an express queue — no, it’s not marked — and you’ll pay 200 THB extra, un-receipted, for the privilege. The people in the ‘normal’ line look on suspiciously; one or two may ask you, ‘what’s up’: stay quiet. Do not give the game away, and walk away five minutes later towards your luggage.
In Hua Hin, there are preparations for a wedding on the beach. The beach itself isn’t the widest here, so the commerce of the strand continues around the pink balloon-festooned dais. Families wander by, gawping. Jet skis and banana boats careen past scant yards away. A horse carefully drops his lunch inches away from where the bar is being set up. A harassed-looking wedding planner screams at the horse, then the hotel staff who look back at her impassively. My wife and I nod at each other. There’s service, and then there’s stuff you won’t do. Cleaning horse poo is definitely under the latter category.
The wedding planner looks Indian. We wonder if the wedding is sub-continental. There’s an element of trepidation to this — the last thing we really want on our family holiday is bhangra on the beach. As it happens, the wedding is Indian, and they’re almost incredibly well-behaved. There’s a burst of Punjabi pop at full volume around sundown, which lasts about five minutes. That’s the last we hear of them.
Friendly elephant
There are two things my son loves more than anything else here. One is the water park he has made his own (he thinks). The other is Songkran, a female elephant at the Hutsadin Foundation. Songkran is five days older than my son, though she is a bit larger. However, she is under-sized for her age, having been rescued from pitiful conditions, while still an infant. She’s never quite going to be normal-sized, we’re told. She is incredibly sweet, however. Though it may be down to wishful thinking on all our parts, she does seem to have a bond with our son. She slips her trunk around him as soon as she sees him.
We compare photos from last year with her mahout. She has grown. This year, she grabs a coconut from my wife, tips the juice down her throat, then mashes the shell with her foot so she can get at the meat. I point this out to my son, telling him no matter how docile she seems, she’s capable of causing massive injury. He reads it as an invitation to start gnawing at coconuts. Delicious, he pronounces. I’m waiting for him to step on one in plain view.
At ‘his’ water park, there are no lines. We have the entire complex at our disposal. “The cold,” sniffles the ticket lady. He shoots down his favourite rides again and again and again. I hear his laughter through the tubes he’s corkscrewing through. He emerges every time in a welter of spray that glistens in the sun.
Avtar Singh was an editor and is an author. Necropolis was his last novel. He lives with his wife, son and singing dog in Beijing.
