Singapore To Bangkok By Train

In 1990 I bought a second-class ticket from Singapore to Bangkok with stops in Penang and Suranthani.

The old Pearl of the Orient was too clean for me. The Chinese president had ordered the city-state's police to fine people for chewing gum or not washing their hands after using the WC. Effacing the walls with graffiti has punishable with a rattan caning and possession of heroin earned addicts the death sentence.

At night the city was quiet.

The famous Long Bar at Raffles Hotel had been closed for renovation.

Gone were the 'girls' from Bugis Street. All transgender Bugis banci girls.

I was ready for another country.

To the north Malaysia stretched up the peninsula to Thailand.

The early-morning train departed Tanjong Pagar rail station. I bought roti and beer for the seven-hour trip to Georgetown, from where a ferry crossed the harbor to Penang.

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The conductor called for the passengers to board and we left the station several minutes behind schedule. Several westerners complained about the delay, but the engineer made up time through the Woodlands and the train crossed the narrow bridge into Malaysia..

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On the other side immigration officers checked our passports and we reboarded the train for the northbound journey. .

The train stopped at Senai, then traversed verdant ricefields into the thick mountain jungles of Segamat to arrive at the Malaysian capitol of Kuala Lumpur.

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The Central Train Station had been designed in a "Neo-Moorish/Mughal/Indo-Saracenic/Neo-Saracenic" by AC Normanhad and completed in 1897. The train stopped for a few minutes..

I ran across the platform to buy two can of ice-cold Tiger beer from a store. I had forty-five seconds. That was the limit for each stop on the Malaysia Rail.

The day was getting warm with the sun rising in the east, but speed of the train pushed air through the windows and I stayed on the side without any sun.

I bought another beer at Kluang.

Around noon the train pulled into Taiping. The hill station was reportedly the wettest region of the Peninsular, but the monsoon was months away and we traveled under sunny skies.

A beared Muslim man boarded the train. I put away my beer. Admad spoke of the Koran.

"Everything known is written in the holy words of Allah. It gives all answers."

Having spent the last six months in Indonesia, I did not challenge his statements.

Strict Muslims have no use for atheists.

Neither did Christians.

I got off at Georgetown. The Sultan Abdul Halim Ferry Terminal was a short distance from the train station. The trip across the narrow channel lasted twenty minutes. Penang was a beautiful city with ecletic melange of architecture.

British Empire buildings.

Chinese godowns.

Malaysian mosques.

Hindu temples.

There were beaches.

Jungles.

And funny hotels and ol bars catering to the few British left in town and good Indian food.

I stayed a few days extra.

I met a young British nurse. She was vacationing in South East Asia. Sara and I had a good time. No sex, but a good time.

But she was heading south and I was going north.

Sara and I bid fare-well at the train station. The train left on time. Sara waved from the platform. Here train was in thirty minutes. I sat by the open window and enjoyed the comforting sway of the train.

Past Gunung Jerai.

Through rice fields.

To Pasang Besar and the Thai border.

To the passport control I was just another westerner was heading Thailand. A bald Frenchman pointed to a sign proclaiming death for possession of drugs.

"The Thai are serious about drugs."

"So are the Malaysian and so am I."

I had no death wish.

We spoke on the train. He was traveling with a Grrman woman. She was just a friend. Michael lived in Pattaya. Maria made a face. Women didn't approve of that city.

"Come see me some time. It's the last Babylon."

"I've heard of it."

Everyone had heard of Pattaya.

Wicked had not shame there.

I got off the train at Suranthani.

A ferry ran tourists to Koh Samui. The day was beautiful. The weather was warm. The beer was cold. Paradise.

The sea at the beach was as clear as gin rimmed by coconut whte soft sand.

I rode a dirt bike around the island.

I met a girl named Vee. She worked a bar. We pretended to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

After a week I was almost sad to leave the island

The night train pulled out of Suranthani a little before sunset.

The 2nd Class sleeper was clean.

The food in the dining car offered a special menu for Thais. We drank Mekong whiskey with soda water and ice. The windows were open to the wind.

I slept in the upper berth.

The cleaning crew woke the passengers before dawn.

Bangkok was less an hour away.

I held off on breakfast and watched the scenery change from rice fields to factories to city..

Steel tracks split, as the train neared the station. The engine lurched to a halt. I checked my seat. Everything was in my bag or on my person.

I tipped the cleaner fifty baht.

The price of a big beer.

Hua Lamphong wasn't busy. Almost all the passengers was Thai. This was not the West. None of the trip had been and I would expect anything else.

It felt good to be in the Orient.

It was the other side of the world.

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May 30 1992 - Bangkok - Journal

Two mornings ago I was making an overseas call at the phone booth in the Malaysia Hotel. A young bearded man entered the lobby with two young ladies. I had last seen Dice in Kathmandu 1990 after a ten-day trek to Lantang Glacier. Upon departure westward to Europe I had told Dice, if he was ever in Bangkok, then he should stay at the Malaysia Hotel and there was a good chance, if the Hawaiian passed through Bangkok next year I might be at the Malaysia Hotel. Room 203 overlooking the swimming pool. Dice was a no show in 1991.

One late night in May 1992 I was in the hotel lobby making an overseas call to my parents and spotted Dice. Two go-go  girls in tow. Upon seeing me the thirtyish Hawaiian called out, "Pascha."

My Oriental pseudonym.

Dice was just in from Nepal and a long night at the go-go bars. He was having breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, which offered a restorative American breakfast. The girls were very happy. Thais are always hungry.  

"Then sleep. I'm sending these girls home. They have probably had enough of me. I'll see you later."

We rendezvoused that afternoon at Kenny's Bar on Soi Si Bamphen. We drank Singhas that day, which was my 40th birthday.

After a few beers at Kenny's we told some girls we would be back after dinner and wandered over to the Chandrphen Restaurant, a top-notched Chinese chicken restaurant across from the Lumpini Muay Thai boxing stadium, where we finished off a bottle of small bottle of Mekong whiskey. The waiters invited us to a comedy club. I was drunk enough to allow myself to be dragged on stage by a troop of improvisers. They mocked me, but I grabbed the mike. I have no idea what I said, but I thought it was funny the Thai audience laughed at the farang fool.

Finally I was thrown off the stage gently. Todd said, "You're natural ham."

We were late for the rendezvous at Kenny's and rode a tuktuk over to Patpong. Despite being my birthday I wasn't in the mood for whoring. Maybe Bangkok's wild fun doesn't glitter as wickedly coming from Indonesia, instead of New York. Maybe it's all part my monastic onanism. I had passed through Bangkok three times this trip without bar-fining a single Go-go girl. The old age truck has hit me so hard. 

40 and overweight. I don't know how many more years I've got to go. Decades I hope.

No pension plan. No retirement cabin. All I have two written books, a script, thirty or so journals, an East Village apartment, and a crapped-out Yamaha 650 on the sidewalk outside on the East 20th Street sidewalk, unless someone had stolen it in my absence.

Of course I also had my fading good looks and by the time I reach California I'm going to be in tip top shape ready for the conquest of the modern world of the West.

As I packed to check out of the Malaysia Hotel, I listened to Velvet Underground on a cassette player. NOTHING AT ALL. I won't be coming back here until next year after working at the Diamond District from September to January. Any possibility of my earning any cash from writing was probably decades away. My typing sucks and my spelling is worse.

Two days ago I had gone down the Victory Square. Hundreds of thousands of young people had been protesting for weeks against the military rule for weeks without any violence. The hometown troops would not shoot their neighbors friends and family. The generals ordered troops from the country. The fascists called the demonstrators communists and gave the order to shoot to kill. The rural Isaan soldiers killed hundreds of their countrymen to prevent democracy. But nightlife in Bangkok remained open under the harsh rule of High Society over Low Society. The murderous crackdown stilled the revolution. The King and his family were once more saved by the Army.

Today Bangkok remains under martial law. 

I'm catching a bus to the South island of Koh Phi Phi. 14 hours overnight.  

I wonder when I'll into into Dice again.

ps Dice aka Ty Spauling aka Todd and I remained friends since then. We have met in Paris, New York, Hawaii, LA, Whitby Island, San Francisco, and lived together in Ballyconeeley, Galway in 1997. The best of friends.

Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

Much more to come.

May 29, 1992 - Bangkok - Journal

May 13, 1991 - Bangkok - Journal Entry

Last year this time I was hiking up a river to the Langtang Glacier. The year before I was selling diamonds for the Winicks on 47th Street and in 1989 I was in New York working at Eric Beamon, planning on spending the summer in Perpignan. My passport has three entries to Paris from that year. Why I can't remember why. 1986 I was working at the Milk Bar front door, watching Seventh Avenue with Joel Bernard, my Haitian bouncer. My years were wasted as a doorman. Standing outside while all the action was inside. How long has it been since I threw a punch. A long time.

Now I'm in Bangkok.

This morning I went to the Bangkok GPO.

My only letters were from Irina K. Pamphlets about the Haute Savoie in German, a short note from my father, and two letter from Aunt Jane and the Pampolones.

My friends are either illiterate nor else I disappeared into the ether of their world. Far from thought. I send postcards, always listing the next destination's poste restante as my address. I do get letters, but what more can I expect. I'm on the other side of the world.

The silence from Paris is deafening.

I don't exist.

I had stopped my novel ALMOST A DEAD MAN.

No progress for two months. The longest break since I left the USA.

Too much pot and lack of privacy on Koh Tao, so I fled to the Malaysia Hotel and Patpong and the Soi Duplei bar, Kenny's.

Tomorrow I'm heading south to Pattaya to stay with Michel and his daughter. I'll make a collect call to Andrew and Richie. I stole a Paul Theroux books from Asia Books. THE LOOP. He published his first book at 26. At that age I was a bouncer at Hurrah and going out with Ann or Lisa Johnson. I have always wondered if I would see Lisa again. The last time was in Paris at the Nouvelle Eve. She was still with Vadim or was it in the Metropolitan Museum buying a Christmas card. How old is she now?

32?

30?

28?

Dustin Pittman said she was younger than she said, but she was a nutter.

Vinnie Gallo he had seen her walking barefooted around the East Village when I was going out with her.

He was also from Buffalo.

Better I should never see her again.

The past is the past.

Long gone.

Why does the past haunt the future?

Better to go to Kenny's and have a beer with the girls.

Zee is my favorite.

And Kenny is always a good time.