Tall Thai Tales
Part One
Rear Window
I knew by the time the plane had landed at Penang airport thirty minutes late that a dash across the city to catch the train to Bangkok would be futile, and so I happily resigned myself to a night on the Malaysian island, partaking of its delicious cuisine and glugging back a few bottles of Tiger. I would catch the overnight train tomorrow from Butterworth and be in Bangkok by the following morning, travelling first-class and paying extra for a cabin to myself. I've always wanted to travel in a first-class compartment on a train; possibly watched one or two Hitchcock films a few too many times.
I would take dinner in the restaurant car where a beautiful femme fatale would join me at my table. She would be distracted and aloof with a hint of danger, she would smoke lavishly and not be impervious to my charms. After a bottle of wine we would retire to my compartment at the same moment that the train entered a tunnel, ejaculating a screech of steam. The screeching would merge into a scream and by morning the mysterious lady would have disappeared. The Gestapo would board the train at the next station, questioning passengers about my previous night's conquest who had been found dead next to the tracks, many miles back. Aware of my tricky predicament I would climb out of the window and... well, another time eh?
There's a very good hospital in Penang that I visit when on the island. I save up all of my ailments for it rather than subject myself to the rather inadequate Indonesian health industry. I'd been suffering from a slightly painful abdomen for a couple of months and thought that I'd pop in and see what they thought about it before embarking on a gastronomic tour of the food stalls and restaurants.
I was seen almost immediately by the doctor in the gastroenterology department who briskly and efficiently examined and questioned me.
“Hmm. Not sure. We'll have to do a colonoscopy tomorrow.”
“Camera up the arse?! But I'm catching a train to Thailand at two.”
“Not a problem, we'll get you in as early as you like. Seven?”
“B-b-b-ut...”
“The nurse will give you some laxatives and you shouldn't eat anything from...” he glanced at the clock, “six this evening until the operation.”
“But that's only ten minutes away,”
“Yes, there's a bakery down the corridor,” he announced cheerfully. “White bread only. Nothing else.”
I trudged out of the hospital disconsolately clutching two sachets of laxatives and chewing on a stodgy, sweet white loaf. I wandered the streets, past the food vendors where spiced chicken grilled aromatically on smoky barbecues and found a hotel with en-suite rooms. There I took my medicine and spent the following twelve hours making full and frequent use of the attached bathroom.
By nine the next morning I had already taken a drug-distorted journey up through the cavernous tunnels of my colon, slept off the remainder of the anaesthetic and heard the doctor's less than encouraging report.
“It's either worms, an infection or Inflammatory Bowel Disease which would mean taking drugs for the rest of your life. We won't know until we get the results back. In the meantime, here's some worming tablets and two sets of antibiotics that you must take for one week and avoid alcohol. Have a happy holiday.”
I
seized the prescription form his hands and rammed it down his throat,
shoulder-barged the nurse and outran security to the gates where I
hijacked a car and sped off into the distance, swigging on my bottle
of duty-free single malt and cackling hideously. Avoid alcohol my
arse!
Part Two
This was not my first attempt to travel first-class on a train, nor my first failure. In fact I've never actually managed it, and so when I was informed that all tickets other than second class bunks were sold-out I was not surprised, just a little disappointed.
My section of second-class was populated by a group of Tanzanian and Kenyan students on a drunken binge out of KL. They carried about them a festive air of jolly bewilderment, as if they couldn't work out what they were doing on this train but were determined to enjoy themselves anyway. Despite having been drunk for over twenty-fours, as they informed me, they were also very respectful and polite. They were insistent with their whisky and I'm a pushover, so they joined me and gave accounts of their surprise at the ease with which they were able to sleep with Malaysian women.
One of them, whose grin grew in inverse proportion to his conversation as the evening went on, punctuated every pause in conversation with, “You should go to East Africa, man,” and nodded sagely, while I would express my heartfelt wishes to go there. Much later, he gave me a softly incredulous stare and asked, in a gently reproachful and peacefully plaintive tone, “Why won't you go to East Africa, man?” Giving up on insisting that I did want to go, I told him that it was because I hadn't been invited. He sat back contentedly in his seat, as if I had solved some imponderable universal mystery for him,and spent the rest of the evening, whenever I happened to catch his eye, nodding and winking at me as though we shared a blood-binding secret together.
By the time our bunks were pulled down, and beds made up by the stewards, I was about ready to sleep. The Africans were still chattering and laughing away amongst themselves until a Thai lady leaned out from behind her curtain and said, very nicely, “It's quite late now, you know.” Immediately abashed and appalled at their own behaviour, they gathered up their bottles, glasses and cigarettes before quietly tip-toeing down the aisle so that they could talk and drink in the open space between carriages.
I think I will go to East Africa y'know.
