This is Thailand. Chapter 8: Vacation with ghosts. Part 1.

There are three seasons in Thailand: hot, hotter and hottest. I had barely managed to get used to the temperatures like 80-90 degrees with almost 100% air humidity, when the hottest time of the year arrived. The jump happened in the second half of March, when my thermometer started showing 95 to 100 degrees daily. Leaving home at 8 in the morning, I was hiding in the shadows as I waited for a motortaxi. If it didn’t come in three minutes, the first signs of sweat appeared all over my body. Mid-April was the worst time, when temperatures exceeded 105 degrees in the shadow. Thank God this was a period largely free from work.

Link to the previous post: This is Thailand. Chapter 7: 27-year-old professor. Part 9 - Last.

Thais celebrate Songkran – New Year. One of the three. Yes, the Thais celebrate New Year three times. One the Christian (Gregorian) way, at night from 31st December into the 1st of January. The second the Chinese way, some time in January or February, depending on the lunar cycle. The traditional Thai New Year is the Buddhist way. While according to the Gregorian calendar it is currently 2012, in the Thai way it is the year 2555. To make it even more complicated, Thais celebrate their new year in April, but count the year, like the rest of the world, from the 1st of January. Somehow the year 2555 started in January, but was celebrated in April. TIT!

I took a few days holiday around this time, to give myself nine days off in total. I decided to take Piam and Apple to Ko Lanta – a picturesque island in the Krabi province of southern Thailand. Due to the high prices of flights, we decided to travel by car. And let’s be honest, I felt like driving on a famous highway connecting Laos with Singapore running through Malaysia and Thailand. We started at sunrise to avoid the morning rush hour in Bangkok and to see the famous Damnoen Saudak – a floating market.

The trunk was cluttered with, in my opinion, all sorts of useless things belonging to Piam and my future daughter-in-law. My humble backpack rode on the back seat next to Apple, whenever she wasn’t climbing over her mother, covering my mirrors or changing gears with a perfectly targeted kick to the gearstick.

We flew over Rama IX Bridge, the bridge connected the east and west of the city and stretched out past the never-ending urban developments that reminded me how big the city I live in really is. Eventually the buildings became less dense and gave space to empty fields, rice paddies and a few trees that were being dried up by the scorching sun. I listened to the music and focused on the road, while Piam fought with Apple about where the young one was supposed to sit. In Europe, I don’t think children are allowed in the front seat without seatbelts. But what do I know? In the case of an accident and death, no one is really dying. We are just being transferred to our next incarnation.

Just before a small town called Samut Songkham, where the highway turns south towards Singapore, a signpost leads me slightly north, towards Damonen Saduak...

TO BE CONTINUED...

IMAGE CREDIT: https://upload.wikimedia.org/