Crazy Thailand… as I like it

The beginning of another little trip around the world

Thailand just makes me smile: the overdose of pinkness, the constant hellos of the children, people helping you out no matter you speak a different language, the Thai massage by frail giggling girlies that could nevertheless easily break your bones, temples made out of recycled bottles or buses that look like spaceships and the trains that are like planes…

It took a while to get there

That's her: the Thai woman warrior

And that’s quite a statement after 36 hours of traveling: getting up at 5am, to take a train, three planes (Qatar decided to ship me via London and inevitably Doha), the new Bangkok airport express (35 Baht = 75 €cent – beat that Belgian rail!), metro & walk to the northern bus station, bus to Khorat and a tuk-tuk (how I love them) to my destination: the Yamo statue dedicated to the woman warrior that freed Thailand from ‘those Khmer’ (yeah! Girl power – that’s Thai too).

But my luggage took even longer

The Phimai temple - déjà-vu

Little detail: I arrived but my luggage never did. So I must say I didn’t notice much of the 5 stars, as the Qatar airways commercial goes: “the world’s 5-star airline”. I was almost getting desperate enough to start wearing the Qantas socks, as only attire (as all my other clothes were dirty), but that would not look so nice on the pictures next to the ancient holy temples… I went to visit the Phimai khmer temple, but having seen Angkor Wat, it all looked a bit ‘same same but different’. Except this one was older and smaller.

The land of pink

My kingdom for a fuschia ATM!

When roaming around buses and countryside to visit the Phimai temple, it dawned to me that Thailand is really the country of violent pink (fuschia) = my kind of colour, my kind of country! There’s bright pink taxis, the buses have pink seats and curtains, the government bank and ATMs are pink, the dogs even dress pink! Wow.

Double the spice, double the fun

Khorat and Si Saket are two towns located in the Isaan farmers’ region. That’s the real Thailand: where people are double as friendly than the rest of the country (if at all possible). Maybe it’s due to the food = they definitely put double the spice, double the chilies: so they had double the fun at the market where I tried to down some street food without crying. Like a real man you know (stuffing tissues up my nose because it was running like hell because of the overheating).

Just point and smile

Once you leave the tourist areas, the only language that’s useful is Thai. So it took me only a few moments to know to say ‘towrai kap’ (how much) and counting till 100. The rest is just a matter of pointing. I did get fed, but wouldn’t have a clue what I ate. It was tasty though.