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It was in 1991 that me wife and I decided to make our first holiday together to South East Asia. For me it would become the first time that I returned to Thailand since 1985. We made the plan to travel from Bangkok to Singapore by train with a few stops on the way.

A friend of ours who lived in Bangkok at that time made a 4-day reservation for us at The River View Guesthouse in Bangkok. As the name says it located along the Chao Phraya River and tucked away between all the small streets behind the River View shopping mall. So tucked away that our taxi-driver could not find it and had to stop many times to ask where the Guesthouse was. It's a great location, just 5-min walk to the river to take the ferry to visit the Wat Po and Wat Arun. The next day we made a visit to the Grand Palace. In the evening we walked to the open area in front of the River View shopping mall which was in that time still a real Thai market place with food and street restaurants.

In the meanwhile we had made the plan to travel to Hua Hin by train. This is actually a stupid thing to do by train because it goes much faster by bus. But on the other hand I like to travel by train. You can walk around and experience the local way of life. And it is much safer also. We arrived in Hua Hin (that's actually only about 170-km south of Bangkok) and took a samlor to bring us to a guesthouse. I forgot the name but there are right above the sea a few wooden guesthouses. After 4 days in hot & busy Bangkok it was a refreshing day at the beach. Hua Hin is called the royal beach resort but actually the beach resort of the King is just outside Hua Hin. But there is a very beautiful royal railway station, and at the beach you can take a horse ride along the water front. Hua Hin is a little bit more expensive than other beach resorts, but at that time it was still a cozy little town with small streets and good restaurants.

After 2 days our tight schedule forced us to move on to our next stop at Koh Samui. So again we took the train to Surat Thani to take from there the ferry to Koh Samui. In those days we were greeted at the island by Songtheauw drivers who would bring us to anywhere we liked and that just for 20thb pp. Of course they would get their commission from the hotel where we would stay. We were together in the taxi with some English and German people and with a young American couple from California. We drove the west route of island and stopped at Chaweng beach where the most of the people got off. Together with the Californian couple we continued to Chaweng Noi where we all together were stunned by the beautiful and peaceful small beach resort "Fair House". With only 6 wooden beach cabins with out air-conditioning, hot water, or TV, it was really like a secret hidden away paradise. We did not have any doubts, here we would stay. It became 5 days in sweet paradise with doing nothing else as swimming, eating, sleeping and watching the sunset. This was for me the best island beach I had ever been. Even until now.

The last day on our tropical island we left early in the morning to go to the ferry to Surat Thani. From there we would have liked to take the train to Hat Yai deep in the south but we just missed it. So we had to overstay one night in Surat Thani. We finally found a place to sleep that looked nice. But in the evening to come it seemed that we were staying in a short-time hotel and in the middle of the night a drunken man tried to enter our room. So after a bad night's sleep we took the train to Hat Yai. It is the biggest city in the south of Thailand and it's considered the border town with Malaysia. That is a little bit strange because it is not, but it is always busy with many Malaysian people who like to come to Thailand for the entertainment that they can not have at home. It's a city with high-rise buildings and full of massage parlors. Not the city for us to stay so we took of to nearby Songkhla about 20-km from Hat Yai and along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Songkhla is a nice old small city with a rich cultural history. We found a nice guesthouse to stay that is managed by a lady from Amsterdam and of course the guesthouse is also called "Amsterdam". We explored the old city and the nearby Wat on the hill in the middle of the city.

After 3 days it was time again to continue our journey and we headed back to Hat Yai to make a big mistake there. We arranged ourselves a mini-van to Penang in Malaysia. It became a nightmare of driving too fast on the busy highway of the south. One road for cars, trucks, chickens, people and whatever. And to make it all worse it started to rain like hell. I prayed to Buddha and all others that we would arrive alive in Penang. I'm too young to die.

Going to Penang

But somehow we made it in one piece with only one flat tire on the way. When we arrived at Penang it was still raining and it was already dark. As we and other people were hungry we all went to MacDonald's to have something that looks like dinner. Well, it did look like a MacDonald's but it was not. But as we all were bloody hungry it tasted just fine as well. We had no idea where to stay and I remembered the name of a hotel from a travel magazine in Holland. We walked with our backpacks to a samlor and asked him to bring us to the Eastern Oriental hotel. Totally wet from the rain we walked in the huge entrance lobby of what had once been one of the world famous hotels of the Shark brothers (check out the Raffles in Singapore, the Oriental in Bangkok, or the Stand in Rangoon). We did not know that then, but this is a really gracious hotel and built about 100-years ago. And it basically still looked the same. The nice thing was that the front desk manager was not even surprised to see two totally wet young tourists with backpacks. Just a, "May I have your credit card?" Well that was a problem because in those days I had not a credit card. But with a friendly smile, "No problem, you take a shower and after that you can come down to pay." And, "I'm sorry we have only a suite twin-rooms at the moment. But it will be for the same price of ..." The bellboy, or should I say bell-grandpa, brought us to our room with the ancient elevator. Probably the first elevator ever installed in Malaysia. We entered our room to find two huge king-sized beds and a living room with balcony overlooking the channel between Penang Island and the main land. The next day we would find out why they only had this room. The whole hotel was in degrading condition and they only maintained the best rooms. The other rooms and some other parts of this huge hotel were closed. When returning many years later I saw that this once beautiful hotel was now a part of a big hotel chain and that they had fucked it up just like the Raffles and the Oriental. After 2 days in Penang again it was time to move on and we took the ferry to the mainland to take the train from Butterworth to Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur

We arrived at the beautiful Islamite train station and again we did not have a clue where to stay. And so after now almost 2 weeks we got tired of searching for a good hotel again. So we ended up in a terrible Chinese hotel in an old totally pink room. Really totally pink, the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all pink! After a busy day in busy KL full of noise making Chinese we wanted a nice and quite breakfast the next day. Of course not in our hotel, so we looked around and we saw a very impressive and expensive looking hotel. We walked into the huge marble lobby and asked for the restaurant for breakfast. The nice smiling lady told use to take the elevator to the 7th floor. While the elevator did fly to the 7th floor a nice quiet elevator music was played. This until we stopped at the 7th floor and the door from the elevator opened. We looked into a ballroom sized restaurant full of Chinese screaming for food. A straight hell and we did not even bother to leave the elevator. We probably had breakfast at MacDonald's.

Singapore

From KL it is an easy and short train ride to Singapore. This was for me the second time and I was still impressed by the huge shopping malls and hotels. We did stay in a small hotel not far from Orchard road, built on a small hill. After we did check-in it started to rain and we took a nap in our room. Until I heard some noise of water and I looked in the room to see that we had about 10-cm water on the floor. Good that we didn't have our backpack's on the floor. Our room was down at the end of hotel and all the water was coming down straight to our room. And the people working in the hotel were not the least surprised about it or helpful at all. The next day we made a shopping tour in town and suddenly I felt very tired. My wife was of course angry, "You never want to go shopping!" But I could almost not walk anymore. So back at the hotel I had a very high fever that did not change in the next 12-hours. Even not with medicine. As we were afraid of malaria we went to a hospital to check for that. A few tests showed that I probably did not have malaria. They did give me some medicine. After 1 day of using anti-biotic the fever was much lower but not gone. So we returned back to Holland, 2 days earlier than planned. Once in Holland I still had fever and somewhere in the middle of the night my sister had enough of it and brought me to a hospital. They checked my blood and were shocked. I was hospitalized and taken off the anti-biotic that I was still using. Within 24-hours I was totally better again. And now looking back on it all the symptoms for allergy were there.

It was an ending to a holiday to never forget. But worse would come on another home-coming.

-Chang Noi-