To be honest, as someone who loves travelling, I have to admit I kind of dislike the whole actual ‘travelling’ part of the process. Being in new places is brilliant. Exploring broken down temples, bustling urban metropolises; awesome! I love every minute. But, the humdrum reality of actually getting there, not so much!

It’s probably because deep down I dislike flying, It’s not the actual flying through the air that gets me; more accurately it’s the entire palaver of commercial air travel.  It is my contention that it is the single most unpleasant, tiresome and uncomfortable way to travel long distance that has ever existed. Compared to any other form of travel designed to shift your sorry behind from A to B flying, is in my opinion, undoubtedly the worst. Even in the days when it took a boat 3 months to steam to Australia via a bout of malaria and bit of scurvy, you at least had fresh air, a breeze and room to lie down. Perhaps it’s the crowded confines of a plane, with your neighbours fat flabs rolling gelatinously over the arm rest, or the air, thin and stale like drying room in a youth hostel, or the constant hum and vibration that seems to get under your skin and deny all attempts at sleep, or the seats that never quite recline enough to ever be comfortable but just enough so that the guy behind you’s knees thump into your kidneys whenever he so much as fidgets, or bad movies on screens so dark that you’d be better off watching the radio adaption. I dislike it all, and I especially hate the desultory clapping that accompanies the end of every flight, the unspoken meaning of which is always ‘hooray, we didn’t all perish in an enormous fireball as planes are sometime prone to do. Thank goodness for that!’ Travel is not meant to be like this.

Take bus travel for example. Nobody claims bus travel is particularly comfortable. Nobody gets a Megabus super saver ticket because their love the romance of the road and the picturesque sights like Birmingham’s central bus station. In foreign climes there is always a frisson of danger knowing your bus is as likely to plough headfirst into oncoming traffic or get up close and personal with each scenic view by veering off a cliff towards them as to actually reach your destination. But such adversity is acknowledged, embraced even. It breeds a sort of comradely togetherness, a blitz spirit of ‘we’re all in this together’ of the sort that inspires out of tune sing-a-longs and mass games of I Spy. When was the last time you had a sing-a-long on a plane? If nothing else at least on a bus you can stop at a service station every few hours, for a bit of leg stretch and a lukewarm pasty or if lucky enough to be travelling in Thailand, a satay style skewer of lizard chunks or shrink-wrapped packs of  sun-dried squid tentacles. The only place to stretch your legs on an aeroplane, is to loiter up near the toilets whilst the air stewardesses watch you suspiciously just in case you’re thinking of going for the exit in sudden claustrophobic panic or even worse, attempt to purloin another bread roll from the kitchen trolleys. 

Given the choice of train, boat or automobile over the sterile environs of a passenger plane I’d take the former options every time, barring the pressing need for great urgency, vast distance or a free upgrade to business class. So I’m happy to say that the flight to Thailand, was all things considered, alright. The hum, the air, the confined seats all were present and correct but tolerable, my neighbour not obese but merely an amiable Kuwaiti who clearly felt the same as I do about flying because he started on the beers the moment the first drinks trolley came round and didn’t stop till Bangkok; where upon staggering out the plane trying to fill in his immigration card upside down, he promptly crashed sideways through a set fabric barriers guiding us away from the gate. The stopover at Abu Dhabi was fine, short, delay free and the passenger hub had more than enough seating underneath its rounded concrete roof, designed to look like a bedouin tent decorated with gigantic opalescent and turquoise hexagons; a complete contrast to some other middle eastern airports where the architects seemed to have viewed passenger seating as a visual distraction from the minimalist steel and glass ultramodern aesthetic and thus attempted to eliminate it entirely. In fact there was even a rather pretty moment just as we were starting our descent into Bangkok. The sun was setting just as we passed through a storm, the enormous thunderheads turned briefly into a neon shade of bright pink, even as they were lit up internally by streaks of lightning. The effect was that for a few minutes, it was if the plane was sinking into an enormous bowl of electrified and glowing strawberry ice cream. And if that’s not a good omen of things to come I don’t know what is.

But Bangkok is Bangkok, all noise and heat and traffic. The taxi to Khao San road overpriced as usual. The immediate beseigement by hawkers trying to sell everything from limousine rides to three piece suits. It’s Thailand, but not the Thailand I love. And the heat. You forget the temperature here every time you come. It’s not just hot, like in England on summer’s day, but properly hot. The air is like liquid heat that rolls over you, down into your lungs when you breathe. It has weight to it that sticks your clothes to your skin with more than just sweat. A few minutes of hauling bags through streets made hotter by throngs of tourists and merchants, street vendors roasting everything from kebabs and burgers to spiders and crickets to be sold by the bag on open coals. By the time I reach my hotel, down a sidestreet called a soi here in Thailand but in truth is closer to a tunnel than an alley, I’m soaked to the skin in less than five minutes outside the air-conditioned confines of the cab. It’s all I can do to stagger up to what is possibly the first floor but the ramshackle hotel is built higgled-de-piggedly enough it’s difficult to tell, to my room that has no sets of parallel walls at all, including the floor and ceiling, and stand under a shower almost hot enough to be uncomfortable with nothing but the residual heat from the rooftop water-butt.

But the by the morning you notice the heat less and all the strange contradictions of visiting Thailand come flooding back. Like why the Thai’s seem content to wear jeans and t-shirt yet half the westerners feel the need to wear balloon-like fishermans pants and billowing batique patterned shirts, or the old guy selling fake ID’s, passports and driving licenses in full view of the local police station. Some things have changed. An internet cafe that was distinguished by both its cheap pricing and full air conditioning, replaced by a swanky new guesthouse with wireless internet but no public air con. On many of the clothes stalls for the first time there are prices, no haggling allowed just a straight up amount written plain as day. There’s a new KFC and a subway too, but both are packed with local Thai’s rather than westerners and there are more locals on the streets too than I remember, and not the sort offering discount tailoring or tie-dye hammocks but real Thai’s come for a visit and a drink and browse through the tourist markets, like the place is becoming a sort of Westerntown, a place to get a taste of farang culture and food, like Chinatown in Soho or San Francisco. A weird mismash of everything that isn’t reflective of either parent culture but something else in its own right, all dressed up and proclaimed as authentic. Whether thai or western is up for debate. All it needs is some ornate gates at the end of the road topped with a naga wearing a cowboy hat or something and the transformation from what is was when I first came five years ago, all street vendors selling buckets of whiskey, hookers and strip bars will be complete.

But I have time to burn on little differences today. I’ve seen the Grand Palace and the History museum before, the river boats are too pricey. I spend the time wandering up and down, without any money to spend, perfecting the local Thai way of saying ‘just looking’ which wonderfully turns out to be something like “doo doo, doo doo”. Look is definitely doo according to the dictionary, but I still can’t help wonder if someone is winding me up anyway. I’ve promised to return in six months and buy a suit from 5 different tailors including the same guy twice, told some local tuk tuk drivers angling for a fare by being buddy buddy, the footy team I support is variably Man U, Tottenham, Doncaster and just for kicks Harchester United, which I’m pretty sure is the fictional one from Sky 1’s Dream Team. A long lunch watching The Hurtlocker in badly subtitled chinese, before hopping online to write this in cafe distinctly lacking in air conditioning.

So I’m waiting for evening and a lengthy ride down to Koh Tao. My usual island hopping method of choice the Lomprayah Catamaran is fully booked today so I’m going the long way round, via overnight bus to Surat Thani and the conventional ferry in the morning. Ten hours of bus ride and further three on a boat. Who’d want to fly instead of experiencing that? Not me; I’m looking forward to the lizard sticks…