Insensitive Charity Act Of The Year 2010

This is a little known but highly sought award that traditionally makes celebrities very competitive.

It was first awarded in 1985, in recognition of Bono’s crassly insensitive Band Aid line, “Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you”.

Bono has done his best to maintain his status since, with several notable wins including his “spend a fortune on designer goods, while tossing a few pennies at an AIDS charity”, Project(RED). He went on to get a lifetime acheivement award by criticising Ireland for not using enough tax income for aid, whilst doing his best to not pay tax.

This year, however, there’s a late entry which could cause upset among the ranks, with Simon Cowell making an unexpected debut at the ceremony.

He is expected to easily walk away with the title by raising money for a destroyed country and a traumatised, devastated people with his Helping Haiti record. The song’s message, that “we all have bad days, so cheer up!” has been hailed as a landmark of inappropriate goodwill.

Insiders have also confirmed that Cowell is hoping the record will raise a mere fraction of his own personal fortune, thought to be a key criteria of the award rules.

The ceremony and dinner takes place at the end of February, in a glittering award ceremony in the picturesque Burmese mountains.

Donate to the DEC Appeal

Weird Pictures

My laptop has a fantastic search function. You just type what you’re looking for into the box and it instantly brings up any matching programs, emails, documents or anything else that’s lurking on your hard drive.

That includes every email I’ve ever sent and received, plus all their attachments.

I was looking for the program that controls my printer, so I searched for ‘HP’. This image was the top hit. I have no recollection of ever seeing it before, but I suppose I must have done. It must be lurking somewhere in my email account, but whether I sent it or received it I don’t know. It struck me as very odd indeed.

Terrifying Lucky Fish

This beautiful lake is in Wat Umong, in Chiang Mai. It’s not a traditional temple but a peaceful, tranquil bit of forest for buddhists and monks to reflect and meditate.

But the lake holds a terrifying secret. Enormous, ugly catfish that, apparently, bring you luck when you feed them. This is what happens with popcorn, imagine them cleaning the flesh from your bones if you happened to fall in…

New Rules for International Travel

1. On flights longer than 6 hours, tickets for children under 5 years of age cost double the adult fare.

2. On day flights, the cabin lights will never be dimmed. Anyone wishing to wake at their home/hotel, go to the airport, sleep through the flight, get to their destination then go to bed because it’s night again should bring an eye mask and sedatives.

3. On night flights, the lights must be dimmed for not less than 90% of the flight duration.

4. When seats are reclined, the personal entertainment system switches off. If you want to sleep, fine. If you want to piss off the person behind you while enjoying a film, tough. Seats automatically return to upright for all meals.

5. Meal trays must be collected within 20 minutes of any passenger finishing their meal. Longer than this and you risk turning forks into offensive weapons.

6. If lights are dimmed, overhead or bulkhead screens turn off. Else it’s like sitting under a strobe light.

7. All armrests are shared on a strict timeshare basis, with mild electric shocks for outstaying your slot.

8. Dreadlocks are banned, you filthy, stinking, hippy bastards.

Oh My God! Pandas!

Chiang Mai has gone panda crazy. Kids wear panda hats, shops sell panda souvenirs and the panda has displaced the elephant on the city’s souvenir t-shirts.

It’s all because of two pandas that arrived at Chiang Mai Zoo earlier this year, and a few months ago had a baby.

It seemed like our ‘last chance to see’ moment: there just isn’t much of an opportunity to see a panda back home, and frankly they’re unlikely to last in the wild for our children to enjoy.

Chiang Mai zoo have built a special temperature-controlled Snow Dome to house them, complete with antispectic precautions on entry and no snow whatsoever. The baby is locked away and only observable by video link, so you don’t give it swine flu. Or panda flu. The enclosure is split into two halves, separating the male and female pandas. But there they both are: two members of one of the most endangered species on the planet, poster children from the conservation movement.

And they’re wonderful. Cuddly-looking, about the size of a man in a panda suit. And if you’d told me they WERE men in panda suits, I would believe you. They have strange human air in the way they sit and how they eat.

The female was lounging back like a bug fluffy teddy bear, munching constantly, splitting wood with her teeth but holding the sticks like a child biting through a stick of rock. She stayed like that for the 40 minutes or so that we were transfixed.

The male was much more active, pacing around his half of the enclosure, playing with his tyre swing and rope ladder. His mannerisms were captivating, like a playful bear-sized kitten.

They’re strange and fascinating creatures, not quite what I expected yet as cute and lovable as you’d hope. And I never really thought I would ever see one. The heartbreaking thought while we were watching was that we probably never will again.

The rest of Chiang Mai zoo is rather sad. On the way in, we saw ostriches depressed enough to have each plucked their feathers out. There were skinny looking white tigers, and worst of all a large bull elephant and young calf both on the road for people to gawp at. Neither had access to water or food, and both were nodding and rocking in distress. It was the sort of zoo that had us a little depressed that we’d given them our money.

Weirdly, cars are allowed in and so people drive around the enclosures, ruining the natural savannah experience you’d otherwise get from poorly looked after animals in small, dusty enclosures.

The zoo also has an aquarium, with the world’s longest underwater tunnel. It cost an extra 450 Baht each to enter, which we decided against. This was instantly reduced to 380 each, then 500 for two when we still decided against going in.

The aquarium starts off ok, with some nicely laid out tanks. But the main attraction is entertainlingly disappointing: moving through the world’s longest tunnel is the world’s slowest and most juddery conveyor, which you ride to observe some seriously disappointing fish. It’s split into fresh and salt water, and while everyone knows freshwater fish are a bit dull, you’d expect some life and colour in the salt tank. But nope, the coral is all fake cast concrete and the most colourful thing in there were the two divers feeding the fish while dressed in full fur Santa outfits, complete with beard. All the while, you are serenaded by what must be a cheap porn soundtrack.

Back outside and we saw the highlight: synchronised underwater dance with three western girls dressed in lurid mermaid outfits, performing badly timed moves to Thai pop. Magnificent and it had the biggest crowd of the whole place.

Wow! Real Actual Elephants!

Some kind of pachyderm experience is on every travellers itinerary in Thailand. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to find somewhere where elephants are happy and healthy, are not abused and are not treated simply as commodities to make their owners huge wads of cash. We looked long and hard to find a place where the elephants are cared for, at first assuming that we wouldn’t visit an elephant centre since we couldn’t guarantee their welfare, but the Elephant Nature Park is perfect.

Situated on the mountains an hour out of Chiang Mai, the park houses 34 elephants all rescued from miserable lives in other places. Some are work elephants, such as the one blinded in both eyes by her owner after she refused to work when her baby was killed. Others are rescued from a life begging in city streets, or from performing in shows such as the resident whose back was broken in an accident when she was being forced to stand on two legs. Tyhe centre doesn’t make a profit, all the money earned and donated is spent on the elephant they have or in rescuing new ones.

At the Elephant Nature Park, there are no shows, no amusing painting elephants, no tricks, no rides. Just elephants expressing natural elephant behaviour in a natural setting. Surely this is what tourists would want to see?

Our first encounter up close was morning feeding time. The visitors and volunteers centre is a raised wooden building on the edge of the park, with the elephants roaming around outside. At feeding time they come up to the barrier around the building, just far enough away for their trunks to reach in for bunches of bananas, chunks of pumpkin or bucketfuls of corn cobs. In the wild, of course, elephants would eat sticky currant buns.

I was quite apprehensive at first, as tonnes of elephant reached in for its breakfast, curling the end of its trunk around whatever I was offering to lift it into it’s mouth. Elephant trunks, looked at up close, are really quite strange things. Endlessly agile, they can juggle chunks of food to exactly the right place for tossing into their mouths and had no trouble balancing and keeping hold of two or three corn cobs.

My initial wariness wore off on the next part of the day: bath time. The park has a long bend of river for the elephants to bathe and we were able to get into the river with them and throw buckets of water over them while they wallowed or rolled around. Elephants really like bath time! Of course, the keepers dont force the elephants to do anything (nor is it easy to) and sadly our particular pair didn’t want to stay in the river for long. They were happy to stand on the bank and let us stroke and touch them, though. Elephants feel quite odd too: their skin is rough but not leathery and they have thick bristly hair all over.

As well as getting close to them, the joy of the day was just watching. There are two playful babies, 5 and 7 months old, that had a brilliant time trotting and sliding in the mud hole. By afternoon feeding time, I was totally awed and in love with the elephants, and Penny and I spent a happy half hour feeding our elephant and patting her trunk as she scooped huge amounts of pumpkin out of our hands.

Sadly, the depressing reality of domestic elephants in Thailand was brought home in a documentary we were shown. The unseen truth is that to domesticate an elephant, it is broken in a horrific ritual. The elephant is immobilised in a wooden frame for up to seven days, while it is repeatedly beaten with sticks that have iron nails sticking out. It’s legs are hauled up so it learns to accept commands. As well as the beating, it is not given food or allowed to sleep. Once released, the torture continues as it is forced to learn to obey.

Forget the tourist sales pitch. ALL domestic elephants in Thailand have gone through this.

The Elephant Nature Park’s owner is a sparky local woman called Lex, who believes that elephants should be free and those who are domesticated can be trained in non-cruel ways. She set up the centre to show how it should be done and has trained elephants using positive reenforcement instead of torture.

If you’re on holiday in Thailand, or anywhere else:
DON’T ride an elephant
DON’T go to an elephant show
DON’T give money to street elephants in the city

These elephants have been and continue to be abused.

And if you’re in Chiang Mai, do visit Elephant Nature Park to get close to these fascinating, beautiful, gentle and powerful creatures who deserve our respect and protection. It was a privilege to see these magnificent creatures in a way that doesn’t exploit them.

Bangkok

Bangkok is not an attractive city. I don’t mean that to sound rude, but you’d be hard pushed to find a panorama suitable for a postcard. Little scenes, stunning temples, individual buildings – yes. But there’s no great skyline and no chance of awestruck rich people taking sightseeing helicopter flights over the river.

The city is massive and yet still ludicrously crammed together. It’s like someone got a big bag of skyscrapers, motorways, blocks of flats, shops, houses, restaurants and everything else and poured them into a box. And then added more. There’s no discernable centre, no one area for visitors to wander around, so everything you might want to see needs a taxi, tuk-tuk or skytrain ride. And being Bangkok, this will take you an hour longer than you think. The traffic is legendary and easily the worst I’ve ever seen. If a snapshot was viewed from above it would be hard to tell which vehicle was in which lane, or where it was headed. Cars jostle for space, filling every inch, and then motorbikes and tuk-tuks weave inbetween. One kilometre can take you half an hour.

Tuk-tuks are fastest and the locals’ preferred choice, but tourists get quoted twice the fare so a taxi is the best option. No-one walks in Bangkok, the heat and humidity get you within a block, with the smog not far behind.

So you might think I didn’t like it. But you’d be wrong. It’s hard to say I loved it, capital cities are too big and impersonal to love but it’s a welcoming and enjoyable city. In most countries the combination of heat, smog and traffic frays tempers, but not in Thailand. The Thai sense of patience and civility wins out to make it a friendly and curteous place. Hawkers and shop keepers don’t shout out at you and then mutter choice local obscenities if you ignore them, and I rarely heard a car horn and never a raised voice.

Jim Thompson’s house is a triangle of serenity in the downtown skyscraper district, hidden down a narrow lane under the concrete skytrain. Jim Thompson was an American ex-pat who was solely responsible for creating the export market for Thai silk, turning a dying cottage craft into a multi-million dollar industry. So he’s a bit of a hero here. His house is made up of 200 year old dark teak houses transported down river from Ayutthia, with all the correct Buddhist features for warding off evil. The rooms are impeccibly decorated and furnished with antique (and fake but beautiful) pieces from around the country. The buildings border a small garden that is the epitome of Asian calm. Our demure and impeccably polite guide was kind enough to point out my large ears, a sure sign under Buddhism of a long life.

It’s wonderful to see such care and love put into a home. It’s a humbling and relaxing afternoon that should be on every visitor’s itinerary.

Likewise, a trip on a long-tail boats around the khlongs (canals) on the opposite side of the river sends you to another, rather nicer, world away from the buzz of the city. I had a picture in my mind of Thailand, and the wooden houses running right up to and occassionally over the water didn’t disappoint. The 90 minute trip had to be dragged out somewhat, due to our refusal to get off at the floating market, which didn’t appear to be floating at all and seemed mostly to peddle tat. But it was much cooler and rather pleasant, drifting along the khlongs, passing temples where you could feed bread to huge, black lucky fish.

No trip to Bangkok would be complete without visiting the Grand Palace: a glittering, gaudy, almost tacky multi-coloured mirror tile and gold riot of Thai temple, and the most revered site in the country. It’s home to the Emerald Buddha, a 60cm tall sculpture found in a crack in the ground (apparently) when Thailand was founded. As a result it’s hugely important to both Buddhists and the deeply proud Thai people.

The temple is sited in a courtyard of stunning frescos of Thai and Buddhist mythology with stunning gold leaf detail the seems to be in a state of constant restoration to keep it gleaming.

The importance of the site to both Thais and tourists is clear from the huge number of pilgrims and photographers forming a scrum in the stupendously hot courtyard.

Personally, I preferred Wat Po across the road. It’s quieter, cooler and much more peaceful with similar intricately decorated temples and brightly coloured conical chedis. Inside one temple is a statue of the Reclining Buddha. I’m told it’s famous, but I was unprepared and didn’t even think about what to expect. It’s massive. Seriously massive. About 45 metres long and 10 metres high in glossy, gleaming gold. It’s a really, really massive Buddha. From now on, it’s the benchmark for Buddha size, smaller ranging from big to large, bigger being gigantic.

Sadly, the spread-out nature of the city and the less than frenetic pace of traffic meant there were things we didn’t quite have time for. But Bangkok is good fun, if a little daunting.

You should also be aware that motorbikes weave around the cars in traffic doing what we might call ‘undertaking’, which would be most unexpected in the UK. For example, if the taxi you’re in has stopped, a motorbike might still nip up between you and the kerb and so if you should open the door this might well cause an accident, which would be entirely your fault. And if this should happen you might need a handy member of the Tourist Police to mediate while you negotiate to pay off the injured driver and his broken bike. I estimate such a pay off to be around £65, which is cheaper than involving the real police or getting lynched by an angry mob. The only lighter moment in such a situation might come if the motorbike driver had already lost a finger or two, causing you to at first glance believe with horror that you had just done something terrible.

I should also mention Patpong, the notorious red light and gogo bar area that is one of the most depressing sights on Earth, with dead-eyed whores gyrating while lonely bastards look on. We didn’t pop into any of the bars, but did get offered rather seedy ‘menus’ of what the girls would do. Pussy Ping Pong and Cigarette Smoking were present and incorrect. But does anyone know what “Change Water” might be? I dread to think…

Wat A Disaster

Our day trip out of Bangkok took us on a 90 minute train journey north, to the old Thai capital of Ayutthaya. Built on an island formed by three rivers, the city was made up of dozens of temples and palaces so decorated with gold that in its 17th and 18th century heyday it was said to dazzle from 3 miles away.

The Cambodians and Burmese in turn ransacked the city, and now what remains are said to be the magical and beautiful ruins of temples dotted right across a fairly mundane and rather unattractive modern town. I say “said to be” because despite spending a day there I have yet to see them.

The guidebook suggests three ways to explore the city:

1. By guided tour from Bangkok. The expensive option and you’re likely to be herded around with a bunch of Australians, and no-one wants that.

2. By tuk-tuk from the station. On reflection the best option, if you’re in town do this.

3. By bicycle. This sounded fun!

A short walk from the station and we found a place to hire bikes for the princely sum of 40 Baht – just 80 of your earth pence for a day. No gears but a very handy basket.

After negotiating the bikes onto a passenger boat to cross the river into the city, we were off! The plan was to cycle down the main street, stopping off for a drink and a snack and to consult the map to plan a route. The main street didn’t turn up anywhere that looked half decent (all were empty – a bad sign) and suddenly we were cycling down a busy, two lane road through the middle of town with only the vaguest idea of the direction we should be going in and a vaguer sense of where we were…

I should say that cycling around Ayutthaya is easy. The drivers are curteous and give you plenty of space, even in the two dual carriageways that bisect the city. Finding temples, however, is not easy.

We headed to the far side town and into a park that apparently had various ruins, and after an hours pleasant trundling we happened across two crumbling 17th century brick wats, both very nice, both with nice buddha images and neither of any particular importance or real merit to the traveller. It was time to consult the map, find out the main sites and plan a route.

But could we find the biggest, best preserved and most impressive? Could we bum. We followed the main ring road, turned right over the canal and found instead a lovely but very new wat. We went back a little and followed the canal, and found another resolutely un-ruined wat. We retraced oursteps back along the canal and – lo! – a road sign for wat we were seeking! It said straight on. Straight on was a T-junction, left to the new wat and right back over the canal. We knew it was this side of the canal, so went back to the new wat and carried on past, onto a road leading through houses and out of town. The strange looks the locals were giving us indicated that wat-ever was this way was not the wat what we wanted.

We headed back over the canal but it was after 2pm. We’d been cycling for about 3 hours in 35 degree heat and we were flagging. And so we decided to go back to town, grab lunch, return the bikes and then see about getting a tuk-tuk. Rather than hauling the bikes onto the boat again, we decided to ride them back over a bridge further down river. We huffed a rather long way up the rather steep incline of the bridge, little realising that the dual-carriageway that runs over the river quickly becomes a motorway on the other side.

I know I said cycling was easy and felt very safe but I doubt that stretches to the Thai motorway system. Luckily, it does stretch to going the wrong way up the slip road.

By 3pm, with our train back at 4.25pm, we didn’t fancy taking a tuk-tuk back out into town.

So, if you do go to Ayutthaya please take some photos for us. And get a tuk-tuk.

Thai Custard Bun

Picking up some water at the local 7-Eleven here in Bangkok presented a whole new world of delicious treats. Sheets of chilli seaweed(?), a packet of fish based protein snacks, a whole rack of slowly rotating, deathly looking hot dogs (with cheese already inside) and a shelf full of pre-packed sandwiches and cakes that make your local newsagent’s selection look like Gordon Ramsey’s lunchbox.

Being me, I was drawn to the cakes. One in particular was the Thai Custard Bun. I LOVE custard! The lurid green packet looked ok, though the depiction of a bowl of green goo less so. But for 6 Baht (about 12p), you really can’t leave it on the shelf.

Opening the packet let forth a heady, sweet and yeasty aroma of cheap bread. Cutting into my bun of delight revealed the bread to be soft and airy with a filling of Thai custard the colour of lime peel. The consistency was more akin to a paste than a custard but it certainly didn’t look as bad as, well… as bad as it tasted actually.

That’s unfair of me. It doesn’t taste bad. Just sweet. Cloyingly, sickly sweet. A sweetness that fills your skull and sticks to your pallette. Remarkably, the worst bit wasn’t the custard, it was the bread. The custard itself appeared to be nut-based, either almond or pistachio, I couldn’t quite tell over the all-pervading sweetness.

I’m afraid the bun went largely uneaten. Maybe the purple swiss roll will be better.

Rail Refund Rip-Off

We already know our rail system is owned and run by a bunch of theiving bastards who’d fine a dying pensioner if their corpse landed in first class, but this takes the piss…

I have Brighton to London annual gold card. But I wanted to go from London to Eastbourne instead so bought a single extension ticket for £12.55. This wasn’t a special offer or supersaveadvanceapexmegasaver ticket with 361 separate terms and conditions attached. No, just a walk-up single off-peak fare which I happened to buy the day before my journey to save queuing in London during rush hour.

Then it turned out I didn’t want to go from London to Eastbourne at all. I would be starting out in Brighton.

So, when buying my Brighton to Eastbourne ticket, I asked for a refund on the unused ticket. Yes, of course I could have a refund but there’d be a £10 ‘admin fee’.

TEN POUNDS!

It’s not like they’d lose out by not being able to resell the journey. There isn’t a limited number of tickets for sale, and don’t I know it when we’re crammed in like illegally transported pigs to the overcrowded slaughter.

They made ten quid pure profit on not providing a service on a journey I didn’t take.

To be fair, they do attempt to create a few quids worth of admin by taking various details and filling in forms, but that just means they took a tenner of my money as well as 12 minutes of my time.