I lay there in the bottom bunk, curtains drawn around me, and listened to the horrific sounds of gagging, spitting, the spewing of bodily fluid and gurgling on the verge of choking. Was all this suffering really the work of a bit of cheese? Or was it something more than lactose intolerance? Was it food poisoning? I thought about those weird balls of pork that were floating in my soup yesterday. Could this suffering be my suffering further down the line? Surly it will be… I shuddered. How was Caesar going to be ready to cross the border in the morning?
My alarm went off. I silenced it immediately, felt myself drifting back to sleep. Suddenly… the sound of running footsteps, a heave, liquid splattering the floor. Then more gagging. Caesar was at it again. Then I realised I had to get up if I wanted any breakfast before the journey.
I pattered down to the reception where I helped myself to the breakfast facilities and set about making myself some toast. That was when I noticed a swarm of ants crawling around the jam jar. As soon as I popped open the lid, the ants swarmed up the side of the jar heading straight for the top. I frantically spooned out as much jam as I could before slamming the lid back down, just as the ants began to invade. Good job I won’t be using that jam jar again… I thought.
It was approaching 6am and still dark outside, mere minutes before our bus was due to arrive. That’s when I got a message from Caesar confirming what I already knew. I offered to stay behind with him, but there was no sign of the others… were they still in bed? After showing a Korean guy how to butter toast – he’d never done it before apparently – I went back to the dorm. Everyone was still in bed. The bus came and went… we were stranded in Chiang Rai.
I’d have been frustrated had I any appetite for travel, and though Chiang Rai has thus far failed to charm me, another day in the city came as a great relief. I checked us in for another night at Grace Hostel and treated myself to a shower before Tiberius and I set out for the Blue Temple.
Known in Thai as ‘Wat Rong Suea Ten’ the Blue temple is very different to the others I’ve seen so far. The exterior was embroidered with gold, but everywhere, snaking around the stairs, the walls and the gilded rooftop were great snake-bodied creatures with sapphire scales and heads of dragons. They leered over you as you walked through the gate and approached the stairs.
The walls inside were decorated with rows of framed pictures depicting various different scenes – it reminded me of the stations of the cross you see at church. What exactly was going on in these pictures? Make of it for yourself…
Hundreds of strange creatures – crosses between seahorses and dragons leapt and danced across a rich blue tapestry, among them marched tiny gold Buddhas. Visitors dropped to the blue carpeted floor, putting their hands together and bowing over and over again.
I didn’t prostrate myself on the floor, but walking around in my socks amidst all this blue was making me feel a peace I’d been missing for quite some time. Finding some chairs by the wall, Tiberius and I sat down side-by-side.
When I imagined coming to these religious sites, I imagined learning a tonne about them, filling myself with the culture of the people and their religion. But instead, I just seem to be blundering through them, ogling at the outlandishness with which I perceive them, without learning anything new at all. I thought about the ex-Monk Rahm, and the monks I met at the temple of Wat Suan Dok. It felt so long ago, and I felt a million miles away from any kind of cultural experience I might have been hoping for. I cleared my head, trying to empty my thoughts of everything except the images of the odd-looking creatures swimming across the walls. Were they swimming or flying? With all the blue swirls and patterns you’d have thought the temple was celebrating the ocean. But it was impossible to tell whether these patterns were waves and water currents or merely blue flames. Was I surrounded by dragons or sea serpents? Is this journey I’m on enlightening me at all? Or is it just a lads holiday gone wrong? Am I a silly tourist or a traveller who’s still finding his way? The patterns were ocean currents, I decided. The blue temple was cool, but through the open windows the blue sky burned fiery hot, and I felt awash between the two.
I realised I needed time by myself. Was this to be my last day in Thailand? Everything was still up in the air, but if it was, I wanted one last cultural experience before I left, and for me, the easiest cultural experience you can get is food. I was determined to try a staple of Thai cuisine I’d never had before.
I stopped at a Thai restaurant very uninspiringly named STEAK specialists, but they were much more than the name suggested. I ordered a Massaman curry with steamed rice. It certainly wasn’t the cheapest thing I’ve had out here, but well worth what I paid for it (somewhere around £6.50). I ladled the curry over my rice. It was a creamy and spicy coconut sauce, full of massive chunks of potato, cherry tomatoes and succulent chicken. Once the waitress saw I’d run out of carbs and was spooning the sauce from the bowl, she brought me down another whole plateful and my rating of the restaurant went from 9/10 to 11/10. Was this the best meal I’d had? It’s too hard to tell at this point. But it was the perfect meal to end my time in Thailand – well, round 1 of Thailand anyway… Who knows if I’ll come back at this rate?
I was not savouring this great meal for long however, before a terrible message from Caesar filled my mouth with a very bitter taste indeed…
Caesar’s sickness was worsening. He’d now been violently throwing up for almost 24 hours and he couldn’t take it anymore. He was throwing in the towel, desperate to get back to the safe comforts of the U.K. Obviously, this was simply not acceptable. We can take him to hospital… I thought. He can’t give up now… I hurried back to the hostel to assess the situation.
Caligula was already there and had been persuading Caesar not to cut his journey short and leave us all so soon. Caligula had made good ground in the negotiations, and managed to persuade him not to make any rash or hasty decisions. But there was no arguing with the fact that Caesar was still far too ill to be going anywhere anytime soon.
After some agonising discussions, it was finally agreed that Caligula would stay behind in Chiang Rai with Caesar in case he needed to be taken to hospital, and also to make sure he didn’t jump ship and suddenly take-off back to the UK. Meanwhile, Tiberius and I would go on ahead and cross the border by ourselves. The group was breaking apart.
With one casualty of probable food poisoning, it looks like the group could be torn apart for the foreseeable future.
