Return to paradise
Fiona Bruce revisits the country she visited as a backpacker 30 years ago to see how it lives up to her memories
Should you ever revisit the past? Should you go back to somewhere you loved more than 30 years ago and risk shattering the dream? I backpacked around Thailand when I was a university student and have wanted to return ever since. Then I stayed in basic guesthouses or A-frame huts on beaches. Showers were saucepans dipped into oil drums full of rainwater and poured over my head. My budget was $5 a day, to cover food, accommodation and travel. Thailand was a revelation; the landscapes, the culture, the food and the people.
After decades of procrastination I decided to return, this time with my husband and two teenage children, Sam and Mia. With the internet making even the most exotic places seem familiar, now you can find a Thai restaurant in most towns, would they experience the same culture shock I did? Would I fall in love all over again?
The first thing that hit me as I walked down the plane steps at Bangkok airport was the air — like a hot wet cloth laid over my face. I suddenly remembered the sensation of the humidity weighing on my skin, pressing into fold, beading my forehead with sweat.
Bangkok has changed dramatically in 30 years. It was always hectic with tuk-tuks and people rushing in every direction, but now it feels like the set of Blade Runner. It’s a dystopian crush of choking traffic, neon advertising hoardings, thick skeins of looping electric wires overhead, towering skyscrapers with ancient wooden houses crammed in between with air con units hanging lopsidedly off the walls.
Fortunately, our hotel was a blissful oasis of peace, with lush gardens along the side of the river, where you could enjoy the breeze and a cocktail while watching the long-tail boats shoot rooster tails of spray out the back or the slow, stately rice barges, as long as football fields, and each carrying 2000 tons of rice, strain through the choppy water. The food in the restaurant took me back — peanut, lime, chilli, galangal, toasted coconut and lobster wrapped in a betel leaf —
a shot of intense flavour straight to the brain.
Our guide to Bangkok was the enthusiastic and good-natured Gop, who shepherded us around just a few of the city’s 500 wats (Buddhist temples) all with pitched, brightly tiled roofs with upturned points at either end and enough gold within to make the Catholic church look Presbyterian. In Wat Pho, a 46m-long reclining Buddha covered in gold leaf looks as if it’s been squeezed into the building. Wat Traimit is home to a solid-gold Buddha weighing more than five tons. The security is negligible considering it was last valued at $86 million. But then how could you ever steal it?
My children were as awestruck by the temples as I first was. But then we headed to the daddy of them all, the compound of the Royal Palace. Thirty years ago my budget didn’t stretch to a visit here and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
The Royal Palace is the Versailles of the Orient, a stage set of gleaming spires and dazzling, jewel-encrusted temples. It is ancient Thailand at its most mystical, marooned in the trappings of modern cities everywhere, a haze of traffic fumes, blaring horns and huge groups of Chinese tourists trying to preserve their pallor under umbrellas.
I managed to show my family the Bangkok I remembered as we took a boat along the quiet canals and back waters off the bustling Chao Phraya river; past wooden houses teetering above the water on rickety stilts, women stoking woks on charcoal burners on lacework balconies hanging out precariously over the water, watched by unblinking monitor lizards basking in storm drains. We strolled through the flower market open 24/7 with new mounds of jasmine and rose petals arriving every few minutes. I showed the children the array of alien herbs and vegetables at the grocery market, with shoppers picking through ruby-red radishes, aromatic stalks and leaves, knobbly roots and huge piles of garlic. And I feasted on the thing I’d been longing to eat since I was last here: mango and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf. It has the magical combination of sweet and salty, sharp and unctuous that you only find here. It was as wonderful as I remembered. The kids wouldn’t touch it.
Three days was enough for me in Bangkok all those years ago, and it was no different now. To recover from our sensory overload, we headed south to the island of Koh Samui. Last time, I arrived by boat, as there was no airport, and I stayed in a hut on the beach, as there were no hotels. I wasn’t seeking to recreate that particular idyll and was very happy to get on a plane and turn up at our beachside hotel on the north-east coast of the island. What was once a sleepy paradise in the Gulf of Thailand for unwashed backpackers with little money but lots of time has metamorphosed into an altogether sleeker and more affluent experience. The roadside villages have grown, bookended with stylish hotels that wouldn’t look out of place in New York. Amid the markets full of fresh fish, mini marts, tailors claiming to be Armani or Boss, open-air cafes with plastic chairs and tables, and massage parlours (one with a sign proclaiming “no sex, no happy ending!”) are swanky restaurants where you can eat in luxurious comfort on the beach with the sand between your toes.
I was glad to see the food stalls where fiery Thai curries or banana pancakes are cooked by the roadside were still doing a roaring trade. The stalls were just as good as I remembered and I introduced the children to red pork pulled so fine it turns into delicious fluff, giant barbecued prawns with Thai basil and red chili, followed by juicy mangosteens and hairy rambutans.
This time on Koh Samui I could afford to enjoy more of what the island had to offer. We went snorkelling in the national marine park where limestone boulders thrust out of the depths of the sea, some as small as upended cars, others big enough to be islands in their own right, topped with dense jungle.
We swam among shoals of fish, darting in unison in one direction then the next like silvered arrows. We ventured into caverns lit with an eerie glow from holes in the rock above where brown brain coral grew among filigreelace white fronds and next to large, pink funnelshaped corals with soft gaping mouths.
Our hotel was built in traditional style with bright silks set against dark teak, and each room had a panoramic view of the sea and a terrace from which to enjoy it.
To step back to the Thailand of my youth took half an hour and a short trip across the sea to the island of Koh Pha-ngan. It’s famous — or notorious — for full moon parties attended by thousands of foreign ravers. In our hotel’s motorboat, we could speed beyond the party beach to peaceful coves with small wooden huts built into the rock, linked by winding boardwalks. These were the kind of places I’d once stayed in and I was thrilled to find they still existed. I tried to persuade the children of the charm of living with just the sea, sun, sand and books for entertainment, one basic delicious beach cafe for all meals, no mains electricity and no internet connection. And that’s where I lost them. No internet? For the whole holiday? I looked at this unspoilt island and realised you can never really go back. I might have longed to recreate the carefree experience of my youth, but now realised I didn’t want it either. I’ve become too soft, too used to luxuries such as an en-suite bathroom, air con, clean sheets and breakfast in bed if I fancy it. How could Thailand be the same when I’m no longer the same person? I needed to see this magical country all over again through new eyes and, thanks to my children, I did.
Now I can appreciate it for what it has become, and I will be back to rediscover it all over again.