The Club on Khao San road, apexing. ©2010 Derek Henry Flood
Bangkok- My last full day in the city was a fairly quiet one. I went out for the day and my Blackberry battery died and kept to myself by getting a rigorous Thai massage trying to exorcise the demons of some old, nagging injuries that affect my locomotion from time to time. While I was getting turned into a pretzel on Khao San road, a bomb detonated at a bus stop in front of a chain supermarket injuring eight or nine Thais and a Burmese woman. I got back to my hotel and finally plugged in my phone to charge and got a text from a friend that read; “Bomb went off, Rathcadamri. Ten injured, some serious. THEY ARE BACK.” By they, I assume my friend was referring to the claims by some violent members of the Red Shirt (Puea Thai) movement that they would bomb downtown Bangkok if the status quo remained unchanged. They made good on their threat and one of the injured died. There was an election today in Bangkok’s far flung 6th district (where I made a fruitless journey the previous day exploring the possibility of doing a story today) that pitted a Red Shirt candidate, currently imprisoned on charges of terrorism, named Korkaew Pikulthong supporting the return of the exiled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, versus the Yellow Shirt (People’s Alliance for Democracy) candidate Panich Vikitsreth, who supports the current pro-army, pro-business establishment PM Abhisit Vejjajiva, who subsequently won.
While all of this was going, I was buying a bus ticket to throw myself into the mellow maelstrom of the “Banana Pancake Trail,” the beyond well-trodden backpacker trail carved out of Southeast Asia by Australians and other assorted Westerners over the last 25 years, epitomized in the famous “Yellow Bible” (aka the Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring). The trailhead begins on the Khao San road, where I crashed in a dingy guesthouse the first few nights, and spirals out eastward into Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam and southward into Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. I’m making my way through the latter, via Krabi. Last night, I went with my friend Patrik of visualtraveling.com to The Club on Khao San (see above photo) and the place was a madhouse with most patrons decked out in the Australian national dress (board shorts, tank top, and flip flops…sorry, thongs) and fully reveling in blasting techno not caring about red or yellow shirts. All hail the Banana Pancake Trail! For more on this subject, you can read the lyrics to the accompanying song “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson.
Typical Thai street food stall. Thong Lo stop off of the sky train. You like spicy??? ©2010 Derek Henry Flood