Bangkok and waiting for Indian visa

It is only 2 and a half weeks since our last blog but so much seems to have happened in the interim. We have been completing arrangements for our trip to India for Jean's hip surgery.
We've been preparing the boat for another period of enforced inactivity. This has involved much more than the usual preparation because we have had a visitation from bed bugs which are hell and all to eradicate from a boat. Bad enough in a house but it has not been fun. On top of that the pain in Jean's hips has been getting worse and she has had that to contend with as well. We strongly suspect that the bed bugs came from the Udomlalp guesthouse where we lived for the last month of the Tiare's refit. We won't bore you with all the details but we have been using the last of a spray we had bought in Malaysia just in case and how glad we were that we had it. There does not appear to be anything comparable in Thailand so we have been also using surgical spirit sprayed with gay abandon and Dettol which is also supposed to be effective. Certainly towards the date of our departure from Krabi we were noticing a much lessened degree of symptoms (bites!!) so we are hopeful that when we get back in 2 months or so the problem might be resolved. Popeye and A in particular are looking after the boat while we're away so she is in good hands - albeit no doubt straining at the leash after her refit. However, there's another problem with the freezer and Popeye are going to raise the level of the cockpit sole now that there is a resident carpenter. So still a few things to sort out.
Popeye has brought a 6 metre racing yacht more than 90 years old from Europe for restoration on behalf of her owner. 6 metres were an Olympic class for many years - mainly in the 1920's - and are a much sought after classic these days. She is basically the same construction as our old girl and it has been fascinating to see work progressing. The lead keel and keelson have both been removed from the boat in 3-4 days. In France it was stated that this could not be done but here in Thailand they just get on with it and do it. There is huge potential for wooden boat restorations such as this at a fraction of the cost of doing the same thing in western (higher cost) countries and the skill level in Thailand is absolutely the equal, if not superior. They have many years of wooden boat building experience and also the necessary materials. The various timbers available here are equal to the best in the world.
We flew from Krabi to Bangkok on the 10/08 and ensconced ourselves at the Mermaid Hotel (Soi 29, Sukhumvit), which we had booked on the internet at a very good price. The hotel is fairly new and is a medium size boutique type. It has a salt water pool which is great for some exercise, especially for Jean as walking any distance is becoming more and more of a problem. It is also close to IVS Global who are the agents for the Bangkok Indian Embassy's consular services. We went there on the 11th. which fortunately wasn't a public holiday. It turns out that the 12th. was because it was the Thai Queen's birthday so we just scraped in before this. They have told us that the issuance of visas takes between 6-8 working days so we're cutting it fine ahead of our planned departure on the 22nd. Anyway, the experience at IVS could have been worse but was nevertheless an exercise in mindless bureaucracy. The whole process took about 3 hours shuttling back and forth between counters and dealing with the limited understanding of English by the Thai people manning them. But the one issue that took the cake was that we had standard size passport photos and these had been glued to our visa application forms by said Thai workers. Then at another counter we were informed that the photos were too small - despite them being standard size passport photos. So, they had to be "unglued" and we had to have new photos taken with the IVS on-site machine - at additional cost of course. The new photos were awful quality and would never have met the strict standards for a NZ passport but they satisfied these bureaucrats. Exasperating and ridiculous but one just has to go with the flow. The British certainly taught the Indians well in the bureaucratic dark arts! Now we just have to hope that there is no last minute glitch (such as photo size or quality) with the visa issuances because we have no time latitude.
On the positive side, we have been enjoying the enforced stay in Bangkok (especially at the Mermaid) as we wait for our visas. The hotel is very centrally situated in the Sukhumvit district with heaps of cheap eateries around and a small supermarket where we have been buying snack type foods to keep us going!! There seems to be building activity everywhere - either new buildings or older ones being gutted and modernised. The traffic doesn't seem as chaotic as we had been led to expect but it's certainly heavy with all the usual Thai disregard for road rules - if indeed there are any. Unlike India, one could drive here but without knowing how to get from A to B it would be a stressful experience which we don't need. The area reminds us somewhat of Ponsonby Rd. in Auckland with its eclectic mix of establishments, albeit with a definite Thai flavour including massage joints seemingly every 2-3 shops as you walk along. Some of the more respectable kind but others definitely more questionable of the "happy ending" kind!! Might be an interesting experience...........
Along Sukhumvit Rd. there runs an overhead commuter railway which we have used a couple of times. Similar in operation to Singapore's but not as extensive or as clean. Having said that though, at least around here the city does appear quite clean and litter free. You have to wonder in all the endless debate in Auckland about the merits of commuter rail, why overhead structures are not talked about. Monorail in particular is the least intrusive, the least costly and the best thing about it is that it can use existing transport corridors as they have obviously done here in Bangkok.
We have been in touch with Neil on "Galatea" in Phuket but it appears that we will miss seeing him as he will be gone again by the time we get back from India. However, his daughter Bailey and a girlfriend are arriving in Thailand in a few days to join Neil on the boat but flying into Bangkok initially. So, we have been in touch and it will be great to catch up with Bailey again after all these months.
A few days ago we went on a river cruise which was interesting but we've probably seen our fill of Asian waterways for a while. It just emphasised again the huge gap between extreme wealth and extreme poverty which seems to be the norm in Asia. Hotels where you pay thousands of Baht per night just to look at a muddy river and hovels that look as though at any moment they would collapse into the river! And then one can look at the back page of a recent Bangkok Post which has advertisements from 3 car dealerships - Porsche, Bentley and Aston Martin! And the streets are well populated with BMW's and Mercedes Benz.
Then yesterday we went on a tour of the Royal Palace here in Bangkok, except that the King and Queen no longer live there. Our guide interestingly told us that the 2nd. film entitled "The King and I" with Julie Andrews and Yul Brynner had been banned in Thailand because it was an inaccurate portrayal of palace life at the time, although there was a period where there was an English governess employed to educate the royal children. But there must have been real conflict with a liberally minded Englishwoman on the one hand and the local repressive attitudes to women on the other. Even today female children of the royal line can only marry Thai men of high (royal) birth. Apparently one royal daughter did marry an American and was banished from the country. She subsequently divorced and has been allowed back but takes no part in the Royal Family's activities.
There's the Emerald Bhudda temple just adjacent to the palace which we went inside but no photos permitted inside. All lavishly decorated with gold paint, tiny gold tiles and bits of coloured glass - very spectacular. The Emerald Bhudda itself is situated up high on a very lavish altar similarly decorated and is said to be coated with real gold and emeralds. Maybe that's why it's up so high! It was disappointing that we couldn't get inside the palace as you would think they'd allow that as their majesties are no longer in permanent residence. The buildings were very European in appearance (mostly Georgian) but with typical heavily decorated Thai roofs. An interesting combination which actually combines well.
The name Thailand means "freeland" and was part of a rebranding of Thailand (from Siam) in 1939 including a flag redesign. Thailand was a partially reluctant ally of Japan during WWII and interestingly New Zealand declared war on Thailand in January 1942. There was only one day of fighting in Thailand when Japan invaded (hours before the attack on Pearl Harbour) in December 1941, following which the occupation was more or less peaceful, except for a growing Thai resistance movement as the war progressed. Japan's interest in Thailand was mainly as a logistical and supply base for it's invasions of British Malaya and Burma.
Tomorrow we are leaving Bangkok for the day at 0630 for Kanchanaburi which is where the bridge immortalised as "The Bridge over the River Kwai" is. More about this in due course but briefly the story as portrayed in the film was nothing like the reality. The railway, otherwise known as the "Death Railway", extended from Bangkok, through Hellfire Pass on the Thailand/Burma border (where most of the 16,000 Allied prisoner of war loss of life occurred) to Moulmein in Burma.
As this is being written it is early afternoon on Sunday 17th. and the sun has started shining again. We look out of our bedroom window at the Bangkok skyline and the Sukhumvit Skytrain where trains pass by every 5 minutes or so. Just across the road workers were re-roofing an old 2 story building and worked until late last night under very inadequate floodlights. OSH would have a fit!! One other thing we must mention is the casual method of stringing high tension power lines. We first noticed it in Krabi where it is common to see them running under shop verandahs and here near a construction site great coils were hanging easily within reach. NZ takes safety concerns to ridiculous levels whereas here and in Asia generally not much heed is paid.
Before ending this diatribe, and on the subject of NZ, we must make mention of the appalling dirty political tricks perpetrated by some really nasty people on the right recently exposed by the left wing activist, Nicky Hager and his book "Dirty Politics". One of these people actually worked in the Prime Minister's office while illegally hacking into the Labour Party website looking for potentially embarrassing material. And all the while being paid by the taxpayer! The reaction from the right which includes the vicious and vindictive Justice Minister, Judith Collins, not to mention the awful extreme right wing blogger, Cameron Slater, is typically devoid of argument and only resorts to more personal attack and denigration. Although we are not really left leaning, we hope that the revelations are enough for most New Zealanders to see the present government for what it really is and vote for an alternative coalition next month. Otherwise all that remains of our state assets will be sold and we will be totally sold down the river via the secretively negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Lotsaluv from us.......
Jim and Jean
Hotel Mermaid
Sukhumvit 29
Bangkok
Thailand.

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