Daniele Somenzi's Thailand

Thailand The SAS flight from Copenhagen, a Boeing 767, lands at Bangkok in the early morning; before landing Michela and I went to the cockpit where, besides the instruments of the cockpit, we saw the clouds coming at us, and those in the morning when the sun rises, with those colours on the horizon, are the most beautiful.

After clearing customs, we go into the city centre with the train that's right opposite the (old) airport.

In the centre we leave the central station and on foot with our backpacks, in a humid heat to die for, we reach the hostel marked on our map.

We spend 2 days in the capital; that night we don't sleep despite the tiredness and the messed-up jet lag, because of the bestial noise of the traffic even in the middle of the night.

We literally escape from the hell of Bangkok, with the dirty and polluted Chao Phraya river; one canal was even black as pitch from the discharges that all the houses pour out. With unimaginable smells. I put this city in my black book along with Cairo and São Paulo.

That evening we take the sleeper train for a night trip to Chiang Mai. On the train air conditioning full blast; outside 35 humid degrees, inside Siberia.

The carriages, of an old style but very efficient, we discover were Japanese carriages. On each carriage, a guard; we don't understand why, then on asking for explanations, we understand that at night there had been some thefts.

Some little stations in the north are very pretty, small and full of vegetation that floods the building; nothing like Bangkok; just thinking about it turns my stomach.

On arrival, the next morning, a taxi to the hostel, very nice this time and on the outskirts of the city, so no traffic. We organise ourselves and hire a 110 cc two-stroke moped, leaving my passport as a deposit. Given the acceptable rental cost, we keep it for some days and go everywhere around, to about twenty km away we also go to see the orchid farm, where there are orchid plantations, and then also a snake show, and to finish we also take a ride on elephants in the jungle.

We set off by moped for Chiang Rai, to the north, on the border with Burma; along the road (here you drive on the left) we stop at little restaurants to eat, rice or other very good things, but mind the spice. I'll remember for my whole life that spicy pasta; my tongue was burning with inflammation; I immediately ordered a slice of iced watermelon to put it out.

We arrive at the border; beyond the river they advise us against going (in Burma there are riots); a big hotel on the north bank of the river puts on a fine display in this magical place surrounded by vegetation.

From here tourists are boarded on rafts made of bamboo canes, complete with a screen for one's needs, which naturally go into the river, for excursions lasting a few hours. It would have been nice for us to do it too, but who would have come to pick up the moped? We sleep one night, sprinkling ourselves well with mosquito repellent; the bed of the guest house even has a mosquito net.

The next day we return to the base. Before returning the moped though we go to see that great Buddha you can see on the hillside.

We decide to return to Bangkok by bus rather than by train, for a change, a journey that lasts less, but which in hindsight I would have avoided. We did 8 hours of travelling with a few stops for the toilet; the driver is 70 years old, and he never had himself relieved of his shift; in the evening when we were entering the capital's traffic he was destroyed, putting his life and ours at risk; anyway he was a madman, he even overtook when he couldn't. Here the law of the biggest prevails.

Unfortunately we have to sleep another night in Bangkok because the bus that takes us to Phuket leaves the next day, and in the evening at that, so we stay inside the hostel on the third floor the whole day.

The journey is at night, but what an adventure; we travel all night, and try to sleep as best we can as if we were on a plane. The windows are super fogged up; luckily the air conditioning works. We arrive at the central bus station of the island and here we're hooked by a guy who takes us in a little boat to a nice place with bungalows, where though we stay only one night because it's too isolated. So we move to Patong Beach in a guest house where we stay a couple of nights and hire another moped, which lets us visit the whole island.

On the beach we hire a jet ski for half an hour and have some fun; we move for another night further north to a small national park at the edge of the airport; here there's no shower, you wash with a basin of water and a ladle. On the beach a little elephant strolls, which its owner uses to make some money with tourists; besides, masseuses offer themselves on the beach for half an hour of massages.

The moment has come to move again, and with a 9-seat minibus we transfer to Krabi, where for the umpteenth time we hire the moped and go around the beaches; here we also do an excursion to a little island with the meal included for the beautiful beach, and the next day a scuba dive with the instructor while Michela waited on the longtail boat with the long propeller shaft.

From Krabi last transfer, this time faster, to Hat Yai, where we buy a plane ticket inside the little restaurant of an Italian who, besides serving food and selling plane tickets, rents out books.

We say goodbye to Thailand with its good and its bad sides, with the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 737 flight for Penang in Malaysia.

bye bye