Heat and dust; Thailand may be the land of smiles, but for new

Sunday Herald, The, Mar 3, 2002 by Kathleen Manson

I ONLY discover, when the plane is landing, that there are no toilets in Thailand. I wonder why I hadn't come across this important consideration earlier in my preparations for this trip and make a mental note to use the airport loo and bid a fond farewell to the convenience as I know it for two months. My guide book informs me that as a budget traveller I can expect to experience everything from a hole in the ground with a plank slung over it, to the luxury of a tiled ceramic squat hole with handy foot indents and a bucket to sluice myself off with - nice. I may have been scanning my guidebook for the majority of our 13-hour flight, arming myself with as much knowledge as possible about our exotic destination before arriving at Bangkok International Airport, yet this startling fact strikes home more than anything else.

Shambling through the usual culture shocks of arriving in a new country, we leave the cool, sterile and surprisingly modern airport and as the doors swish open the heat hits us like a brick wall. Every one of my senses feels assaulted. The noise is the first thing you notice, the thundering roar of Bangkok's heart-attack inducing traffic, which forces you to call up all your Playstation skills just to cross the road. Next is the damp, oppressive heat. I'm instantly coated in a wet sheen and everything I'm wearing sticks to me as if I've been shrinkwrapped. And then finally, the smell - a mix of petrol fumes, cooking and sewers.

Sprite-like Thai men rush at us like sharks sensing blood in the water. Surrounding us, they take our arms each one attempting to steer us towards their cab, offering to take us to a good hotel/ restaurant/tailor/tourist tat house - our milk bottle white skin and rucksacks branding us as clearly as cattle, and indicating our comparatively monied and potentially gullible status. "Never-try- never-know" and "same, same, but different", they say over and over again and I can imagine them lulling the weary with their persuasive sing-song accents. Avoiding the cab tout trap, we take a short and hairy bus ride to Central Banglamphu and Khao San Road. Khao San Road is a bit like Blackpool - at first it seems to be a fantastic, colourful, buzzing slice of real life - a backpacker heaven. But its appeal quickly fades, and after a few days on the strip it begins to feel more like the tawdry, gaudy tourist drag it is - full of pseudo- hippies eating banana pancakes, congratulating themselves on having got away from it all while sitting stupefied in bars with a big screen TV showing re-runs of Terminator II.

We find a place to stay and set off for Wat Pho - the oldest and largest wat (temple) in Bangkok, which houses the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand. The crazy traffic and its insistent horn honking leaves me feeling frazzled and a sudden downpour of tropical rain sees us flagging down one of the cities hundreds of tuk-tuks. Cheaper than a metered cab, they look a bit like a rickshaw with motorbike wheels and hum like bees. Soon we're nipping in and out of traffic, the wind whipping away our jet lag. We step out of the baking sun and into the soothing coolness of the wat, and pad into the main foyer in our bare feet. I'm not expecting to be particularly impressed by a religious icon, but my jaw drops at the size and imposing beauty of this colossal gold-leafed statue. The tremendous reclining Buddha is 46 metres long and 15 metres high, and illustrates the passing of Buddha into Nirvana.

Gazing at it for a while, I feel a real sense of peace, decide on impulse to buy a sheet of gold leaf, rubbing it on one of the smaller shrines as an offering.

We collect our shoes from the communal pile at the wat's entrance as evening is setting in, bringing welcome relief from the hot sun but not the warm, mouldy dampness. Wandering the streets for a while we come across an alley full of food stands and after a confusing transaction we're both munching happily on peanut satays.

I peer into a stand of smoking hot woks, thinking I still have room for more, then suddenly I make out the crystallised wings and shells of dragonflies and beetles. Our hunger vanishes but we are in the minority. The stand is doing a roaring trade with locals dipping into their paper cones of bugs, spindly legs dangling from their mouths as they smile at the squeamish tourists, Feeling full of what we hope is chicken, we flag another tuk-tuk to take us to an evening of Thailand's national sport - kick-boxing. We head to one of Bangkok's two, drab boxing stadiums and pay for the cheapest seats that aren't really seats at all, but rather big concrete bleachers, which do have a good view of the action. First into the ring are the lightweight teenagers who barely seem to touch each other. They try a few high kicks, and dance around a bit, but don't have enough brute strength to do any serious damage.

Hours later, and after umpteen rounds of progressively larger, more muscular and more violent boxing, the once sedate crowd - virtually all men - are now in a chain-smoking, shouting frenzy, betting madly with thick wads of money rapidly changing hands. I stop watching the boxing altogether and concentrate on the crowd.