The heat and the devil

#2 13/09/04

Do I know this street? It is somehow too small as it could be the Thanon Rama IV. And where are the rails which are supposed to be here? I stop and check the time: 40 minutes until my train to Chiang Mai leaves, basically enough time to make it, but Bangkok is huge – too huge for walking around lost in thought. Furthermore it is evening, the people are heading home from work – the traffic is insane.

My backpack sticks to my back as it is a fat, organic creature which has swallowed a heater, my T-Shirt is close to complete its metamorphosis with my skin. I wipe the sweat from my forehead, than I stroke my shin bone. A feeling like touching extreme fine sandpaper: The smog of Bangkok is not as unvisible as you think it is.

A few hours earlier:
The wheels of plane VN 601 get in contact with the landing strip of airport Bangkok with a crashing noise. I get thrown to the front lightly, a suitcase falls down a row behind me, my seatmate, a British Businessman grins at me as he wants to say: "This guy still needs some practice."

My biological clock tells me it is 4 a.m. but the sun over Bangkok welcomes me with a dazzling brightness of a 10 o´clock Tuesday morning. I feel weary. I leave the plane, get my backpack, pass the security check and take the train to the city. At Hua Lamphong Centralstation I buy a sleeper ticket for the train leaving at 6 p.m. to Chiang Mai. The most time of the day I spend in the Lumphini Park. I like big cities, but Bangkok is too much. Too much of everyhing: 14 Million habitants, unfiltered exhaust, coughing engines, honking, all this shrouded in a muggy, scorching heat.

I turn back, take the right street on the last crossroad I passed, think about taking a taxi but dismiss the thought in view of the stop-and-go on the streets and start to walk faster.
30 minutes later I am sitting in the train, happy to not have taken a taxi (this weird, pink, japanese coach was my constant companion the whole entire 20 minutes walk to the trainstation). With a deodorant, a fresh shirt and the freezing cold of the aircon I get control over the situation again. At least a bit.

It is nine o´clock in the morning, the train doors open clicking and hissing at the trainstation of Chiang Mai. After getting rid of the most insistent Tuk Tuk drivers I take a taxi to the Team Quest gym: I will train here the next few months. Joel, one of the gym owners, gives me a warm welcome – we know each other from my last year trip. Secretly I regret not having talked to him before I left Bangkok: The quite uneventful train ride would have been more thrilling if I would have known that in the last months eleven trains have been derailed on this line.

With the help of Joel I find a really nice and cheap flat, a ten minutes walk away from the gym. I just hope I did not sell my soul to the devil when I signed the contract, written in Thai. Because Joel ist from the United States he could just reassure me with telling me that there have never been any problems with students living in this apartment house. At least you pay in cash here. That is kinda credible. It is Honest.

I do some shopping, enjoy a couple of delicious fruits and the day takes a relaxed end.