Blog 7: Siliguri, Maldah, Calcutta, Bangkok, Koh Samui (India and Thailand)

Blog 7: Siliguri, Maldah, Calcutta, Bangkok, Koh Samui (India and Thailand)

It has been over a week since I’ve had a chance to blog and during this time, we have endured the longest coach journeys of our trip so far. For four successive days, we were on board the bus for on average of ten to eleven hours each day and believe me, when we flew from Calcutta to Bangkok, we were delirious at the prospect of spending four days in the one location. Many of the group still speak about our time in Nepal and most say that they will return to hike and trek. Meanwhile, I have decided that if I ever return, it is to climb Mount Everest. This is coming from someone who hardly puts a foot in front of the other at the best of times, and definitely doesn’t if there’s any degree of an incline meeting that same foot. But, whilst on board the small airplane which took us up to view Everest, I was overcome with a longing to stand at the summit and stick the Irish flag into the frozen ground. In my photograph which would sit on every Renvyle mantelpiece, I’d be dressed in my red all-in-one snow suit, I’d have a gleaming smile and there’d be frost covering my moustache (all Everest climbers have to have the moustachioed faces). So when I return home, the training starts – the raw eggs every morning, the plates and plates of pasta, the protein filled steaks, the boxes of energy bars, the …….hmmm, even I am starting to see something wrong with this picture. Perhaps I’ll re-evaluate my strategy or I’d have to get my snow suit specially tailored to fit my dimensions.

But, I keep forgetting that this is a travel blog and not a Debbie Ruddy (a la Walter Mitty) innermost thoughts and feelings blog. So, getting back to Mount Everest, it was really fantastic to be able to view it and whilst having my turn in the cockpit and standing beside the pilot, once again I felt so fortunate to be on this trip. Actually, sometimes when sitting on the bus, I worry that when I get home, I’ll look back on those fifteen weeks and it will all seem like a dream. My genuine concern is that the countries and places I’ve been to will all merge into one and that I’ll struggle differentiating my thoughts and emotions and sensations from each other. I know you’re reading this and thinking ‘isn’t it little she has to worry about’, and you’re right. But I desperately want to remember that exact feeling of when I stepped out of the hotel in Amritsar and my first impression of India. I want to always remember how I felt that first evening in Bruges and my feelings of loneliness and homesickness. I never want to forget how I felt whilst up in the hot air balloon in Goreme in Turkey, standing by myself in front of the Taj Mahal, walking past the bodies awaiting cremation by the side of the River Ganges. I want to remember the emotions I felt when walking through the squalor and dirty side streets in Varanasi and witnessing several four or five year old smiling children tip-toeing through the filth and faeces, desperately trying to keep their beautifully turned out white and navy school uniforms clean. And I also want to remember the feeling in my heart when I saw the little faces of the impoverished and emaciated similar-aged children sitting on the filth and faeces covered steps watching those same children walk by – those children who would never be so fortunate as to have a school uniform to keep clean. Or my feelings of exhilaration during the jungle walk in Nepal, the vision of Iranian women in full hijab or the absolute fear and panic I experienced when surrounded by rats in the Rat Temple. But equally as important to me to remember are the memories of the specific children I’ve encountered, the smiling babies, the kindness and care shown by small children to their younger siblings, the conversations with wonderful people and how humble I’ve felt when a simple wave out the coach window can instill hysteric excitement amongst a group of young school children.
I think writing this blog has been a very helpful exercise in preserving my memories and indeed I’m hoping that my photographs will have captured some important moments that will jog my memory in the future. But for the moment, all I can do is to enjoy and make the most of the next six weeks. And I promise that when I’m sitting with you in pubs and restaurants and at your kitchen tables, I will do my very best not to start every sentence with ‘did I ever tell you about the time I was in India, Iran, Nepal, Hungary, Thailand …….?’. Already I can see eyes being thrown to heaven and mumblings of ‘she was always a bit of a bore, but dear God, she’s a hundred times worse since she came off that Oz Bus’.

For those of you who read my blog about my entering the Rat Temple because of my desire to grasp every opportunity thrown at me (despite knowing it was probably going to be a mistake!), I want to tell you that I did not learn from the experience. Whilst in Bangkok two days ago, I decided (as did most of the group) that it would be the place to get a really good massage at a relatively cheap price. When leaving the hotel I met Lana and a few others and they had been for one the previous day and it was fantastic. She asked me about my plans and said ‘Get the hot oil massage Debbie, you’ll love it’. So off I went by myself, arrived at the place and there was a four feet six inch woman sitting on the doorstep eating her lunch …. a bowl of noodles. I asked where the massage parlour was and she left down her noodles and stood up (she came up as far as my navel). She revealed that her name was Pokie and she herself would do the massage. ‘Thai massage or hot oil massage?’ she asked. Now although I had genuinely never thought of having anything other than a hot oil massage, what came out of my mouth was ‘Thai massage’. Maybe subconsciously I thought ‘when in Thailand one should get a Thai massage’, but it was VERY subconsciously and I most definitely did not engage brain before I opened my mouth.
She removed my shoes, filled up a basin of water and bathed my feet (there were dual benefits as she washed the noodle juice from her hands in the bathing process) and then she ushered me up a rickety stairs. Off came my clothes and she handed me a pair of emerald green loose pantaloon type things. The thought crossed my mind that they looked like they had been worn by every one of the Bangkok soccer team, the Bangkok cricket team, the Bangkok sumo wrestling team and the Bangkok judo team … without ever seeing any Bangkok detergent. But despite her size, Pokie looked quite a formidable a character and I meekly but ever so sprightly stepped into them. Then she beckoned me to lie on the mattress on the floor. Down I went onto the mattress (feeling the first sense of trepidation) and then she herself turned to a lighted tabernacle type of religious icon on the wall. She joined her hands in a praying type of gesture and gave a big bow in front of it. Then she did three rapid genuflects and mumbled a few prayers which sounded something like ‘dear Buddha, throughout the next hour, please let me not break her back’.

She put me lying onto my back and smiled down at me as she too stepped onto the mattress. The thought went through my head ‘relax and enjoy it Debbie – you’re so fortunate to be having a Thai massage in Thailand – make the most of it’. She knelt down and gently picked up my left foot in her tiny little hands and I closed my eyes. ‘AAAAGGGGHHHH’ I roared. I looked down to see that in one move, she had separated my little toes so far from each other that one could easily have fit another full foot in between each toe. She smiled at me, pushed me back onto the mattress and proceeded to maneuver each toe around the ball of the foot, wrap them around my heel, up around the ankle and then she had a little game to see how far up my calf muscle she could stretch them to. I honestly thought that I would collapse and die with pain. After about five minutes of savaging my left foot, I contemplated paying Pokie and leaving but decided against it as she had at this stage manipulated it from being a size 6 to a size 9 ….and I felt that unless she did the same thing with my right foot, I would never again be able to buy a pair of shoes in a normal shop as very few would sell a size 9 and a size 6 as a pair! After about ten minutes, like a cat that tires of playing with a dying mouse, she had exhausted all the fun she could have with my foot and moved up my leg. Then she came at me with her bony elbows. Even before they hit skin, I winced and let out a very loud screech. She looked at me and said smiling ‘you strong or soft?’. When she asked the question, I didn’t know did she mean my flesh, my feelings, my emotions or my legs … but my immediate reaction was that ‘soft’ seemed a safer option than ‘strong’. Now this may have been a motivation technique that might work with some, but I’m afraid not with me - ‘Oh soft Pokie, VERY VERY soft’ I replied. She threw her eyes to the heavens and the tabernacle and muttered something under her breath and proceeded to knead and pummel me as hard as she physically could. There was obviously a lot lost in the Thai translation of the words ‘soft’ and ‘strong’.

So just picture it, me lying there on the broad of my back shouting ‘ow, oww, owww’ every time she exerted pressure. Now I wasn’t shouting because I’m a wimp who simply can’t tolerate any level of pain, but she was so rough and was like a woman possessed (or a woman who had been disturbed from eating her lunch). As I was the perpetrator of the crime i.e. it was I who had separated her from her feckin’ noodles, I was the one who had to pay! And although only about six stone in weight, when every one of those six stones is ‘resting’ on ones thighs ….through her elbows … it is EXTREMELY painful. She then grabbed my right leg and put her iron grip hand on my right shoulder (thus anchoring my body in place) and twisted that same leg over to land on another mattress, which was located about twelve feet away. My body and my mind went numb and I honestly thought that she had dislocated both hips and both shoulders. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I lay there as she then repeated the procedure with my left leg, bringing it almost out of the massage parlour and onto the corridor. As I waited for some sensation to come back to my body, all I could think of was ‘does the Oz Bus have a wheelchair ramp?’ I could envisage myself for the remaining six weeks, being loaded up and down the ramp, with my rucksack on my back and my container of nappies in my carry-on bag on my lap.

With thirty minutes gone and thirty still to go, the fun wasn’t over for Pokie. She then physically picked me up and turned me over onto my stomach (at this stage I was gone beyond being able to perform such a maneuver myself). If she needed any convincing, the rolling eyes and the drool coming from my mouth was probably an accurate indication of the fact that I needed her helping hand. Every limb and sinew and bone and muscle felt like it had been rolled over by a double decker bus. With my head buried directly into the fluffy pillow, on all fours, Pokie climbed up onto my back. I was unable to shake her off simply because I was on the verge of smothering to death in the pillow as I couldn’t turn my head to breathe. Utilizing all her years of experience at attending Karate classes, she proceeded to karate chop her way from the nape of my neck all the way down my spine. I tried to think back to Biology classes and remember whether it was possible to sever ones spinal cord with a bang to the back. I wondered whether my insurance company would pay for an Air Ambulance for the transfer back to the spinal cord injury hospital in Dublin. I figured if they would, they would probably have to bring Pokie with me as well, as her right hand would still be securely embedded between my seventh and eighth vertebrae.

She then climbed down off my back and sat cross-legged at the top of the mattress, put a pillow between her legs and beckoned me to come towards her, with face down and put my head on the pillow. Although conscious that it was an open-plan space and it might appear to be a slightly strange positioning for those other victims who were entering and exiting the room, I crawled to her and did exactly as she said. She started massaging my head which initially felt very nice, until she entangled all her rings in my hair and I thought that I was going to be the first person ever who went for a massage and ended up being scalped. I had visions of myself going home at Christmas and walking in the door and saying ‘do you notice anything different about me?’ ….either with having great clumps of hair missing or else being completely bald. After a few prayers to the tabernacle, she eventually disentangled herself and her rings from my head and she then turned me over like a chicken on a spit and proceeded to massage my forehead and face. But that didn’t last long … the sight of my bare and available shoulders were too much for her to resist and from her improved and elevated position, she couldn’t stop herself having another ‘go’ at them. In between my bouts of consciousness, I could see that only her elbows were visible and her hands, wrists and forearms were nestled deep within the flesh of my shoulder blades, probably resting somewhere close to my esophagus.

Pokie then looked at her watch, and although it was covered with 2/3rds if my attached tresses, she managed to tell the time. ‘Lady’, she said ‘time up – maybe hot oil massage now?’ Like someone who had just experienced a miraculous recovery at Lourdes or Medjugorje, I leaped from the mattress, had the pantaloons off, my own trousers on, had paid my money, had bounded down the steps and was back in the hotel before she had finished her sentence. Since then, I’ve been applying equal proportions of Deep Heat, Difene, Diazepam, Tiger Balm and Regain for the hair loss and I have sworn to myself that I never ever will succumb to the fleeting thoughts of ‘whilst in Rome do what the Romans do’ philosophy. In all truth, my body really is so sore to touch – every part of it … and I can no longer fit my feet into my flip flops. With all the bone manipulation, Pokie has turned them into boats ….which incidentally may be quite useful over the next few days.

I’ll explain. I am writing this blog from Koh Samui island (also in Thailand) and since we arrived yesterday evening, the island has been hit by a tropical storm with the worst thunder and lightening that I’ve ever seen. Apparently all the boats and ferries have been cancelled and the airport is closed until the storm subsides. I am sitting here in a little beach hut about forty feet from the wildest sea I’ve experienced …. and coming from Renvyle, that’s saying a lot. The beach has been closed to swimmers, many of the businesses have closed up, electricity has been off most of the morning, the wind is howling around me and we are bound to the complex as it is impossible to step outside with the monsoon rain. I just keep thinking of the recent panic in Bangkok amongst the females to buy ‘the perfect bikini’ for those four days of island life. (present company excluded may I add … I still have my Confirmation money swimming suit!). Instead, those same bikinis are still in their boutique wrapping paper and everyone is going around now in Lowe Alpine and North Face rain jackets and barely able to stand up. It goes to show, so much for plans.
But, despite the fact that we sincerely believed that we’d be lying on the sun recliners by the aqua blue sea, sipping pina coladas and margueritas, I still refuse to complain. It’s been a rare occurrence to be able to sit on the bed and write this blog without worrying that I’m missing something in whatever location that we’re staying in. If the rain continues (as is forecasted), you may even get another blog fast on this ones trail. Now isn’t that a worrying thought? For what its worth, when I sat down to write this, I had thought it was going to about Chitwan and the elephant trekking and bathing …. best laid plans, they say. I’ve just heard that the next location we’re going to after Koh Samui has been flooded out ….so I don’t know whether that will have repercussions for us. But, before there’s panic and consternation amongst the Oz Bussers, you and me now know that if we have to get off the island, my feet can more than improvise as a sea faring craft. We have a lot to thank Pokie for! Until we chat again, love to you all, Debbie x