Auf dem Weg nach Hua Hin

Failing Conductors

There are a thousand naked ladies in my bed, there are a thousand naked ladies in my head… (that’s where they really are)

So, back in Hua Hin, in a nice air conditioned hotel room recovering from playing at a small local bar last night and trying to compose some tasteful new lyrics for our next song… (That’s where that little gem above comes from)… Anyways, here in this great room, where everything works, nice dunnies, internet, clean sheets, good food, and Air Con!!! It’s weird when you are young you don’t care about that kind of crap but as you get older it’s just good to have clean toilets and space. First week was pretty awesome as can be seen from our “Fighting Thailand” video, but there has definitely been a whole pile of dumb stuff which just comes with the territory of trying to do something like this. And we’ve been covering some pretty bumpy ground in the last two weeks!

I think it all started going bad when we couldn’t find our way back to the boat, and had to drive around the coastline of Thailand looking for Marianne for a couple of hours. The guys driving us had no patience at all, I think it was all a big show really to get the price up – as though they really HAD to get back to the street corner and lounge around for another few hours. But things really started sucking big time on the boat itself, (for me anyway) when the seasickness set in – basically felt like being really drunk for two days straight (but, like, the drunk at the end of the night when everyone has gone home and the toilet bowl is your only friend in the whole wide world)…

I think this picture of our route says it all really:

Auf dem Weg nach Hua Hin
On our way to Hua Hin

Except that it leaves out the storm we sailed through, and Benni’s faith in car jumper cables running from the mast to the sea as a way to deflect lightning strikes… and almost being run down by fisherboats during the night, and Hannes’s extremely liberal use of soya sauce (due to adverse cooking conditions because of bumpy swells) in morning breakfast. And the toilet ritual is a bit strange.. hanging off the side of the boat.. and the tins of dog food in the pantry… and the conspicuous absence of a dog on bord… I won’t go into this any further.

Paddling back to land from basically exactly the same spot where we left two days before was pretty humbling, but not as bad as being rescued by some Thai fishermen when we were clearly heading for the rocks and certain oblivion.

All in all a great introduction to the hard core life of the Sailing Conductors.

So anyways, to cheer us up we thought we’d go to Khao San Road in Bangkok… but yeah, really bad bad choice of accommodation.. this place has definitely fallen a long way from grace over the past 8 years since I was last here. And to make things worse our plans all fell through within about an hour of getting there, with our contacts suddenly finding themselves a tad busy to meet us for drinks and music. Bummer!

new haircut
new haircut

To save some cash, we all piled into about 10 square meters of festering, squalid Bangkok homeliness, with only a shower screen between the toilet/shower and the bed, but now at least we have really shared everything and… um, bonded, or something. It was like being on a budget school trip or something, but at least we finally got some music recorded and filmed some funny dancing with new haircuts – I don’t think there is a name for what Hannes did to himself, I went with a good old number 2.

So what to do? What do you do for a night in Bangkok??? Three guesses… it should suffice to say I will never look at birthday cakes and balloons the same way again.

They really know how to squeeze every dollar out of you in this city. Bangkok is such a sprawling metropolis, a throbbing hub of South East Asian business activity. But there is one niche market I noticed, and if you want to make a fortune here I would suggest becoming a taxi meter repairer.

Anyways, watch this space! If there isn’t enough lyrical stimulation from the past week I don’t know what I have to do…

Til next time!

Lincoln.

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