Whatever Happened to David Icke?

STATS: Day count=169; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=4; Chris’ photo count=1540; Emma’s photo count=60; touch-typing char/min=234; Poi skills mastered since last post: None

Many people like us go travelling in order to see and experience ‘the real culture’ of faraway lands. When people wear their traditional costumes we all get very excited and some of us snap away with our cameras to record the show. However in our experience on this trip, and in business beforehand, the young people of most of the countries we visit want to be like people in the West. Companies selling tanning products in Britain sell skin whitening products over here. Hairstyles and clothing styles are the same. Music is similar. Television, ease of travelling, and now the internet seems to be globalising everything and traditional cultures seem to be disappearing. Is this a good thing, or just a natural progression? Or is this simply the American empire, rising before an inevitable fall one day, in the same way as empires before it, albeit this one grows by osmosis and commercialism rather than by the sword or politics of previous empires?

After Phitsanulok we headed into less travelled territory. Next stop was the Issan area of Thailand to the East. The town of Chiang Khan lies on the border with Laos, with the great Mekong river here forming the natural boundary between the countries. We found a nice guest house (it seems wrong to call them ‘hostels’ when they have such views!) overlooking the river – the bedroom was tiny – back to cats being safe from being swung territory – but it was right next to the balcony next to the river and with very few other guests (it seemed like we were the only foreigners in the entire town) we had that to ourselves for the couple of days we stayed there. Sitting by the river, walking to the ‘rapids on the Mekong’ (actually about 5 rocks causing minor ripples in the river’s otherwise very smooth flow) and then once again experiencing the hospitality of the Thais as someone stopped to give us a lift back as we walked back. The Mekong is a lot less busy than I expected – there was next to no traffic on the river at all – a couple of small boats with individuals fishing was all we saw. We didn’t miss the large karaoke boats from the river Kwai.

Next stop Sang Khom. The book (Rough Guide this time) says it’s an easy journey between these towns, along the road following the river downstream. Having failed to find any boats travelling downstream to hitch a lift with, we were intending to use this ‘easy route’. It turned out to be a lot less easy than that. In fact we needed to get a bus heading away from the river and be dropped off at a road junction in the hope that another bus will come along, which luckily it did. I had a great time sitting on the roof (not entirely legal, but I was invited up!) and chatting to a laid back Thai guitar player – I was trying to look cool whilst hanging on for dear life as the bus rattled its way over every bump in the road. I had just learnt Thai numbers so with his poor English and my terrible Thai I was trying to steer every conversation round to anything involving a number. I warmed to him when he didn’t believe my age and said I only looked 27. Then again, he could have said 53. My grasp of Thai numbers was still in its infancy at that point. We then had to change bus again in a local bus station. This time we had to wait 3 hours for the next bus to leave – time spent talking to a local guy who was really happy to have some foreigners to talk to so he could practice his English. We were happy to oblige, but it was good that there were two of us so we could ‘tag-team’ a bit! Each bus we got seemed to have fewer working parts than the previous one. The 80km (as the crow flies) journey downstream between the two towns took around 8 hours in total.

Luckily the guest house in Sang Khom was worth it as once again we managed to get a room (this time a bamboo bungalow) overlooking the river. Taking the advice from our Canadian neighbour, we decided to cool off after the long journey by swimming in the Mekong – not being put off by the fairly strong current and the murkiness of the water (it was clean, just opaque due to the brown mud that it carried from the upstream logging activity in Laos, apparently). Emma decided the river was infested with crocodiles and didn’t stay in long.

We had hoped that there would be somewhere in Sang Khom to watch the important England v Germany match – a fair assumption as everywhere else in Thailand had many bars and restaurants showing matches. Unfortunately Sang Khom consisted only of a single road with 30 shops on it and I believe the town was home to the entirety of the non-football loving Thai population. Nowhere was showing the football on the evening prior to The Match so we decided to move on the following day, rather than stay in such an uncivilised area (any town preferring to show soap operas rather than a key football match must still have a way to go in the evolution stakes, in my humble opinion).

Getting out was as difficult as getting in. We were in the “Of course there’s a bus - it leaves a week on Tuesday” territory. Well, maybe not that bad. However we arrived at the side of the road in good time for the scheduled 11am bus…which didn’t arrive. We had to wait for the next bus which wasn’t due until 4pm (and didn’t arrive until 45 minutes after that). If nothing else this trip is teaching us patience. Luckily we arrived in the next town, Nong Khai, which is a much larger town, in good time to see England’s poor performance against a much better team. Roll on 2014.

Nong Khai is also on the banks of the Mekong, and is the site of a major border crossing into Laos which makes it a busy place. Quite a few ex-pats here, most with their young Thai wives (I am reserving judgement). A pleasant enough place, but not enough to keep us here for very long.

An interesting evening was spent in the restaurant of a local guest house chatting to a Swedish guy whose first comment to us when we told him where we came from was “There’s one great and brave Englishman I respect. David Icke.” That possibly should have set alarm bells ringing. For those who don’t remember (or are too young!), David Icke was a well respected sports presenter (and former goalkeeper) in the 1980s who then had an apparent revelation and decided he was the son of God, and that the world was being run, and humans manipulated, by a race of alien shape-changing lizards, including the Queen Mother, George Bush (well, he could have been right there…) and, for some bizarre reason, Boxcar Willie. He proclaimed as much on a Wogan interview in the early 1990s and was completely ridiculed. Curiously, I was hit by a ‘I wonder where he is now?’ moment about David Icke earlier on this trip (I cant remember what inspired that) and had looked him up a couple of months ago on the internet so was fairly well versed in his antics, past and present. Anyway, the Swede was a great advocate of Mr Icke’s (mainly his less controversial ideas) and surprisingly the conversation we had was very interesting – despite the guy’s obvious paranoia and conspiracy theory obsession!

We hired bicycles and rode out to an unusual sculpture park – very large (see Emma in the picture for a sense of scale) stone sculptures on a Buddhist / Hindu theme with some weird and inventive subjects – like the elephant surrounded by dogs barking, driving cars and riding scooters. Interesting place, and some massive catfish in the surrounding ponds. Their size wasn’t surprising as everyone seemed to be buying food to feed them. I obviously had to join in the feeding frenzy.

July – new month, new town. We needed to get to the south eastern part of Thailand to cross at the Cambodian border so we broke our journey south up in a small town called Phimai. Not much happening here – a set of ruins from the 11th Century or so that were more Khmer in style than Thai, so sets us up well for Angkor Wat in a few weeks. We walked to a park containing the largest banyan tree in Thailand. Impressive. It looks like lots of small, low trees growing together but is in fact a single tree where the branches drop down to form new ‘trunks’. The photos show (a part of) this single tree. It was a nice setting, walking beneath the twisted and entangles branches of a massive tree. I got my fortune told by ‘shaking the sticks’ at a small Buddhist shrine beneath the tree – you shake the pot of numbered sticks until a single stick falls out of the pot – the number on that stick corresponds to a fortune which you collect from numbered drawers. This was the first time I had seen the fortunes written in English as well as Thai so I had to have a go! My fortune can be summarised thus:

I’m in a trance (many may agree)

If I am pregnant, it will probably be a girl (good to know, and useful that the ‘probably’ stops it from being wrong regardless)

I can find a lost treasure and recover from sickness (about the first time on this trip I haven’t been sick! Treasure always comes in handy, though)

I am contented being married (of course. Can’t argue with that. Not while Emma has editorial oversight of the blog, anyway)

I must live my life carefully (very true, if rather vague)

All very useful stuff, as with all fortunes and horoscopes, of course.

Photo: As we sat and ate a meal at a nearby foodstall, Emma commented that she liked it there as there was a breeze around. I wonder why?

After our brief stay in Phimai we headed for Trat, which is really just a convenient stopover before heading into Cambodia, but was still a pleasant enough town to spend a day.

I think it is definitely time to leave Thailand. I am starting to think that the 125cc ‘Fino’ Yamaha moped looks really good. This is very worrying. By the time you read this, barring border problems we should be in Cambodia. Hopefully they will have proper motorbikes there. But I doubt it.