We just love the Thai

DRIVE-THROUGH WINDOW: Vendors wait for customers at a roadside market

Thailand: The long and winding road trip

Peter Malherbe | 29 April, 2012 00:19

The Thais do proper road trips like nobody else in the world

Until you have tasted a blue-candyfloss pancake, sipped hot tea from a plastic bag, said prayers to a tree and slept alone in a sex motel, then you haven't travelled. Well, not in Thailand, anyway.

In South Africa my road trips always seemed to be defined by travelling time. The first question on arrival would be: "How long did it take?" And I'd reply: "Five hours, 36 minutes from the Germiston off-ramp to Umhlanga." Then I would go into things like roadworks, speed-cops, the mist at Mooi River and the bad drivers.

That's not the Thai way. The trip does not get you from A to B - it's a fabulous voyage of discovery that starts the moment you turn the key in the ignition. This I discovered during an 18-hour trip across the kingdom, accompanied by a Thai family. We drove from Krabi in the south, through Bangkok, to Buriram, a small town in the northeast. You may not have heard of it, but Buriram is well known in Thailand for its ferocious football team, "The Thunder". And more than one maiden has set off from one of the platteland villages here to seek easy money in the bars of Bangkok.

Driving across Thailand at any time can be risky, attempting it around the annual Songkran festival is sheer lunacy. Songkran is the Thai New Year and, although it falls on April 13 each year, festivities can run for a week either side. And that means a massive water fight in which people wielding buckets, huge spray guns and firehoses douse each other. Even elephants join in the fun, spraying everyone to their hearts' content.

It's fun when you're in party mode - but a nightmare if you are hoping to get to your destination safely. Motorcyclists lose control of their bikes, over-excited water-throwers leap in front of the vehicle and visibility is down to a metre or two. It is a driver's nightmare. What can you do but grin and bear it?

But I digress, let's get back to the big trip. I knew things were going to be different when I tried to pin my fellow passengers down to a departure time. "After we get fish," was the reply. The fish in question were to be bought at dawn and then packed in ice in polystyrene containers as a gift for relatives upcountry.

In South Africa we have lost the tradition of arriving with "a gift from home". It may be that few of us have gardens anymore, but, having grown up on an Eastern Cape farm, I have vivid memories of setting off on journeys laden with home produce. We would never have left home without a box of lettuce for granny or a tin of rusks for Uncle Eddie.

In Thailand, the custom survives strongly. If you are travelling from the coast, seafood (in all its forms) is a no-brainer. We added a bag of pineapples, which they started harvesting just as I was ready to depart. Until the last minute, you never know how many people will be making the trip. They say that to judge how many Thais you can fit in a vehicle, you count the doorhandles and then times by four.

We ended up with six and got going at midday. I had planned to break the journey in Bangkok, 10 hours into the 16-hour trip. Little did I know it would take longer than that; I had not counted on the shopping stops.

Our first purchase was a bag of pancakes from a roadside stall. Everyone knows the pancakes are a secret delight of southern Thailand's highway system, but only the experienced know which stall serves the best.

We had passed at least a dozen rickety stalls before my friend's wife yelled: "Stop!" With the pancakes, you get a bag of candy floss, available in lime green, yellow and blue. It was blue for us.

Now, putting a pancake together in the back of a pick-up is difficult. Trying to eat it without getting the vehicle covered in sticky sugar is virtually impossible. But you learn to live with the stickiness, along with the smell of thawing seafood seeping out from the polystyrene boxes.

After eating, you need to drink, so soon we pulled up at a roadside market. Here the hot drinks are not served in a cup and drunk at tables, but served takeaway style in a plastic bag with a straw attached. Sipping steaming hot tea from a plastic bag is a real art - and one not to be tried while speeding down a bumpy road.

ONE NIGHT PAST BANGKOK: Buriram, a small town in northeast Thailand, was the destination

I soon realised we would be stopping every 100km or so to enjoy some treat or other. Scores of Shell Ultra City-like operations line the highways, but we shunned these clean supermarkets and takeaway outlets in favour of forays into small towns or villages to scoop up treats at stalls and markets. Among the culinary gems on hand are chunks of barbecued chicken, massaman curry, mango and sticky rice, sliced dragon fruit and desserts made from odd combinations, like coconut milk and beans. Of course, each purchase is packed in that hardy carrier of all things, the plastic bag.

And, of course, there will be at least one stop at a temple or shrine to get good karma for the trip. For travellers, it is especially handy when a roadside tree is put into service as a shrine. The tree is usually adorned with long strips of bright cloth or paper and, as pretty as they are, the Thai Buddhists take them pretty seriously.

When we finally hit Bangkok, it was after midnight and I brightened up at the sight of 24-hour KFCs, hotels and Tesco mini-marts. My suggestion that we stop for the night was met with horror. "No, we have fish," was the reply. My suggestion that we could replace the ice to keep the fish fresh was met with puzzled looks. No, we would sail on through the night.

We finally hit the outskirts of Buriram at dawn, just as the farmyard roosters were welcoming a dusty new day. As my sleepy cargo tumbled out and kids rushed to seize the boxes of smelly shrimp and squid, I announced that I would find a hotel with airconditioning for a few hours' sleep before returning to join the family. Nobody seemed offended that I wouldn't be dossing down on one of the sleeping mats or hammocks - that's what foreigners do.

And that's how I ended up in the sex motel. "New resort open," said the sign. After checking out the room and discovering it came at the bargain price of 350 baht (around R85), I signed up and finally slipped into bed. I failed to notice that the room did not have any windows, but I could not help but notice my naked body reflected 100 times in the mirrors that surrounded the bed. One of me is enough to cope with, more than that is a sight for very sore eyes. A real nightmare.

Only in the morning, while I was using the free wi-fi to check my e-mail, did I realise that my neighbours were changing rather regularly. The penny dropped. This was one of the legendary short-time hotels, where customers spend two or three hours in the throes of passion. The real giveaway at these hotels is that parking bays come with curtains, behind which you can hide your car from prying eyes.

Sadly, I had nothing to hide. I wonder what the staff made of the strange foreigner who spent so many hours in a room by himself surfing the Internet. Poor man, they must have thought.

When you read this, I will probably be preparing for the return journey. Believe it or not, bugs and insects are popular "exports" to the coast, so goodness knows the cargo I will be carrying. And there could be one or two extra passengers on board. I don't mind at all. One thing I do know is that we will be stopping for a heap of candy-floss pancakes again. I can't wait.

The journalist, Peter Malherbe