Letter from Thailand

With Songkran quickly fading to a blurry memory I had two weeks in Southeast Asia to kill before I was due to arrive in Australia as an immigrant. Naturally, money was tight which made my next destination – probably the only livable country in the world where you can buy a beer for 25 cents US – the ideal spot to spent the interval. I visited Cambodia last year and had a torrid time on the notorious 'scam bus', which ferries eager, wide-eyed backpackers from Bangkok to Phnom Penh and squeezes them for cash via an elaborate series of rip-offs every few kilometers, so I opted to make life easy for myself by flying to the capital this time round.

Like practically everything else in Cambodia, transport is extremely cheap. There are virtually no taxis in Phnom Penh, but a lift to practically anywhere in the city in a tuk tuk can be had for about three dollars. Cheaper still, at least until you factor in the cost of an airlift to Bangkok for medical treatment, are the motorbike taxis or 'motodups' which ferry helmetless Cambodians and visitors around town for a dollar or two per trip. I walked away from Cambodia last year satisfied that it was my new favourate country, and my second stay had been planned to within an inch of its life. I had a ton of places I wanted to visit so I opted to go for a transport option ludicrously expensive in practically every other country on the planet but practically free in Cambodia – an eight dollar per-day personal driver.

I approached the first motodup driver I spotted outside my hotel and happily, he turned out to be a gent of a guy who I spent a week knocking around Phnom Penh with. Narun knew where every site I mentioned along with a rake of others I didn't. We went to the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, the Killing Fields and a ton of other enjoyable tourist traps during the day and spun around the nightspots when the sun dipped below the skyline on his battered old motor. Narun was a somewhat shy, unassuming guy and he tended to decline when I asked him in for a beer in the boozers we pulled up outside. Every time I offered he would look at the ground and shake his head with a smile and say, “Nooo. I wait you here!” Phnom Penh is a fun town but I found it difficult to enjoy myself fully when I knew there was a bloke, who was quickly becoming a good mate, sitting outside on his motorbike waiting for me.

As a way of making his evening a little more enjoyable and my conscience less put upon, I would buy an extra beer every now and again, before nipping outside to have a drink with Narun. Pumping your motorbike driver full of beer probably isn't the wisest thing to do, particularly in a country with roads as lethal as Cambodia's, but Narun seemed to really appreciate the gesture. It got to the point where I would spend most of my night sitting outside the bars we had driven half way across the city to check out.

During one of our slightly drunken late night chats Narun told me about what happened to his family during the years of the Khmer Rouge – the genocidal ultra communists who controlled the country in the late 1970s. For no reason he has been able to ascertain, his parents and elder siblings were taken from his home by Khmer Rouge cadres and have never been heard from since. With his family assumed murdered, Narun was alone in the world by the time he was 10 – although in the absence of either documents or older relatives he doesn't know exactly how old he is.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power after ousting the US-backed Lon Nol government in a bloody civil war which culminated in the invasion and evacuation of Phnom Penh, they declared it 'year zero'. The outside world was to be shut out and the past, which was tainted with foreign influence, was to be forgotten. Children therefore, who had no knowledge of the past or the world beyond, made the ideal recruits.

Orphans and other children were rounded up and put into ramshackle countryside camps; Narun among them. Days were spent working on a rice farm or in a rudimentary factory making sandals out of old car tyres and nights were filled with indoctrination classes involved long lectures about the greatness of Angkar and the terrors waiting to overrun their sacred Cambodia from within and without. Food was scarce and disease rampant, and many of the children in Narun's camp joined the estimated two million fatalities of the period.

When the Khmer Rouge was eventually forced into the hills by an invading Vietnamese army, the cadres deserted Narun's camp and the children who had survived were taken to a refugee camp near the Thai border. Happily, Narun is no longer alone in the world – he now has a wife and two young daughters who he gets to see two or three times a week when he has time and money to make it back to his rural home some two hours away. “Would you like to meet them?” he asked as he was dropping me off at my hotel shortly before I was due to leave the city. “You can come and stay with us!” It may have been a suggestion made more out of politeness than anything else, but I intended to take him up on it regardless.

Hangovers and boats are uneasy bedfellows but the wedding I had travelled to the isolated island of Koh Lipe in Thailand's southern-most province for had come to a close and I had to get myself to Bangkok immediately or risk missing the start of the legendary Songkran festival that throws the capital into a frenzy of drunken waterfights for three days every April. Thailand's population mobilises ahead of the celebrations with some returning to their provincial homes to mark the event with families while others hit the capital to mark Songkran where it is at its manic best. This year however, there was a significant increase in the number of people barrelling down the motorways from the impoverished Issarn Province in the northeast to Bangkok – and this year they had a very different agenda to the rest of the revelers.

A string of 'yellow shirt' protests ousted a series of prime ministers allied to former Manchester City FC owner Thaksin Shinawatra last year amid claims of corruption. Abhisit Vejjajiva was eventually installed but Thaksin remained popular in the the heavily populated rice bowl province of Issarn and his supporters, clad in red, chose Songkran 2009 as their time to bring one of theirs back to the PM's chair.

I started to come across pieces of information that hinted that a storm might be brewing – groups of red-clad protesters pilling out of a 7-11 with bags of beer and whiskey before jumping onto schools of flatback trucks and heading towards the city centre and brief mentions of clashes with police on BBC World Service. I however, was in holiday mode and was primarily concerned with what type of watergun would leave us best equipped to defend ourselves from water balloon attack by the Thais who would choose to party through the turmoil. On the second night of the festival however, matters worsened as reports came in that the army were on the streets and had opened fire on protesters who had taken to hijacking and burning out vehicles.

A friend of mine from back home who has lived in Bangkok for the past four years emailed me to say that the protesters had taken over the main intersection in the city which his apartment was right next too. Rather than huddle indoors however, Chris decided to go and check out what the fuss was about. He excitably informed me over the phone that he ended up having to hit the deck as a burning bus came hurtling towards a group of soldiers who responded by spraying it with bullets. The vehicle, which was being driven by a brick on the accelerator, eventually came to a stop when it crashed into an electricity post which called a small fire and a localised blackout.

That night we headed to the backpacker Mecca of Koh San Road, a couple of miles from the centre of the city. After a few hours of drinking, partying, dousing random strangers with water and general merriment, we grabbed a taxi towards home. Less than five minutes into the journey the car was locked up in traffic caused by a large group of masked protesters who had torched several more buses. They were in the middle of a tense stand off with nervy looking teenage soldiers and the thought that they might turn their frustrations onto the passing farangs crossed my mind. Happily, we were eventually waved on our way.

The Thais are having a tough year and the smiles were not as quick to flash across their faces as I remembered. That said, the problems there at the moment are very much a domestic and foreigners who keep their heads down are not likely to be dragged into it. The Thais are fully aware of how rapidly the number of people with the cash to go on holidays is shrinking right now and how a tourist getting the slaps for stumbling into a protest would reduce their share of the cake. I half wanted to stick on my journalist hat and get stuck into the middle of things, but I decided against it. Partly because I didn't want to be playing a part in sending negative images and reports around the world about a country that has given me so much. Mainly though, because I was on holiday and my beers were not about to drink themselves.

So there we were – a rag-tag assortment of Carrys and other hangers-on, waiting around on a beach on the southern most tip of the Thai peninsula, close to the Malaysian border. We were gathered there ahead of the marriage of Irish girl, Emma, and Columbian guy, Marlon, who would afterwards return to their home in New Zealand. This stunning example of intercontinental multiculturalism in practice was not without its difficulties – the wedding would have to be registered in four different countries and the location chosen meant many couldn't make it. However, the island was a living postcard and was sure to make for a beautiful ceremony.

The day before we were due to kick off my wandering friend Denis had made it to Koh Lipe after experiencing the horrors of being a foreigner in Thailand with no money. However, while on the ferry he had met two individuals who might well turn what was looking like a quiet couple of days in paradise into something more interesting. Denis had come across two predictably stunning, early 20s Swedish girls who were apparently fixated by the Irish accent, and being without male companionship were hoping we could take them out that night. When our good fortune was revealed to the group some skeptical looks were thrown towards me by various female members of the Carry clan. There was a palpable dread that we would be out all night and end up half dead at the wedding ceremony we had travelled half way round the world for.

"It can't be helped!" I roared, to the delight of the male half of the traveling contingent. "They're Sweeeedish for Jaysus sake!"

Although I quickly forgot their names, the two girls were every bit the tanned, blonde, simpering crackers I was hoping they would be. One of them, who looked like a young Anna Kornikova, appeared to take a particular shine to me and kept getting me to repeat various phrases which emphasised what she felt was my most charming quality – the thick Dublin accent that made me Mr Unpopular in snobbish UCD and which still brings unbelieving looks when I tell a middle or upper class Irish person that I'm a journalist.

We eventually forced ourselves to bid the somewhat confused Swedes an early goodnight – terror struck as we were by the thoughts of facing stressed out Carry women caught in an organisational frenzy with nothing but a hangover and a feeble excuse based on the nationality of our drinking partners to defend ourselves with. They promised to come to the wedding the following day, but I got the feeling that their meeting with what must have been a totally alien experience of temporary rejection meant we had lost our chance.

I got up the next morning, changed into my crumpled wedding outfit and headed off to establish where we were in terms of getting the show on the road. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the beach in front of our resort had been decked out with floral arches, rose petal pathways and various other wedding-esque paraphernalia by the Thai staff. Amazingly, the resort manager had somehow secured the services of a pair of Irish-American musicians who were hanging around with guitar, bodhran, fiddle and whistle at the ready. A crew of Buddhist monks were scheduled to arrive and bless the ceremony any minute so I skipped breakfast and went to have a chat with my sister during her last few moments as a Carry. Given the fact that she had to get ready in a beach bungalow and the hair and make up girls she hired were dismissed before having their work restarted by Emma and her bridesmaid, she looked amazing – if somewhat stressed by her determination to get everything right.

Eventually, the three monks arrived on the back of a single moped and it was time to get going. In the absence of my father who died last year it fell to me to give my sister away to her fiancé Marlon who I had met for the first time the previous day. I didn't know the bloke I was giving her too so my role was primarily aesthetic, but I was happy to trust Emma's instincts on the matter and skipped the clichéd, brotherly hurt-my-sister-and-you're-a-dead-man chat some feel are a necessary part of any wedding celebration. The fact that Marlon is a 15-stone martial arts expert who doesn't really speak English made this decision the obvious one, but he also seems like a nice lad.

The Swedish girls, predictably, made their excuses early on and left the wedding party to eat what was by far the best wedding meal I've had. We sat on the beach and listened to the two musicians, one guy and one gal, gently bicker with each other between songs in what threatened to spill over into a full blown domestic as the drink flowed. An Irish wedding used to be a very different affair, but with travel becoming ever cheaper and peoples' horizons broadening with every generation, I get the feeling that celebrations along these lines will soon become more the norm than the exception.

My travel companion on my trip to my sister's wedding had inexplicably failed to meet me on a connection flight from Bangkok too the southern Thai city of Hat Yai but with my sister having asked me to give her away I had little choice but to go without him rather than delay and risk missing the ceremony. I arrived in Hat Yai after a fretful flight and checked into the twin room we booked. I sat on my bed and looked at the empty one opposite. I had been traveling for 20 hours at this stage, but had to find out what was happening.

I headed outside just in time for a heroic downpour that had Thai's scattering from the darkened streets in search of shelter. I approached a motorbike taxi driver, a somewhat elderly gentleman with a kindly face, and asked him to take me to the nearest Internet cafe. "I know it!" he said with a smile. "But the rain! I have no rain coat," he continued as his expression sagged tragically.

"OK, I'll give you a tip so you can buy a raincoat," I said, getting the hint. With that we were off into the torrent which at times almost whipped the bike out from under us. We weren't helped by the late hour and it took us some time to find a working connection. When we did find one it was in a games shop – an Asian phenomenon involving rows of teenagers who cannot afford a games console of their own transfixed by online games they play on computers they rent by the hour. I'm sure I cut a bizarre figure in that rarely-visited southern city, walking into a games shop looking like I'd been dredged up from the bottom of the Mekong and begging the boss to let me check my emails in broken Thai.

“Of course,” he said in perfect English with a look of extreme concern.

I logged into my email and there it was – the Mr Beanesque reason behind my friend's inexplicable disappearance. You see, Denis had made a series of blunders that in isolation might have been problematic but which collectively were bound to prove nothing short of catastrophic. First off, after I booked my flight to Hat Yai from Bangkok I emailed him the flight confirmation so he could book himself onto the same flight. Somehow, he got the origin, destination, time and even the date right – but he screwed up the month and booked onto a flight in April rather than March. He discovered this when he arrived in Bangkok and tried to check in. No big deal – internal flights are cheap, the flight wasn't fully booked and he had his credit card. He could just buy another ticket. Except he didn't have his credit card. He lost it somewhere between Dublin and Bangkok. Worse still, he had practically no cash. I would love to see the security video taken in Bangkok Airport that day because I can just picture his disorientated, panicked wanderings from one end of the departure hall to the other. His condition was such that he didn't think to wait for me where we had arranged so that I could get him another ticket and instead opted to approach the tourist police who rather unhelpfully suggested he go to the international departure lounge, find other Irish travellers and attempt to beg money from them. He took this advice and after several hours found three Irish girls. Sadly, they refused to give him enough money to buy a bottle of water. When asked, he told me, they turned their backs and walked away. Eventually a Scottish guy overheard a subsequent discussion with the tourist police and gave him 1,000 Baht - or the equivalent of just over E20.

Reading his tragic tale, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed. I sat there soaking wet surrounded by spotty Thai teenagers and laughed my arse off. Then, I booked him onto the first flight the next day and called a friend of mine in Bangkok who went to the airport and collected him. The next day he was in Hat Yai looking like someone had picked him up by the hair in Bangkok, swung him around a few times and then thrown him to the southern city. Happily, we were both in time for the wedding which was due to take place the next day and what's more, the young man had accomplished something that looked like it might nullify his previous calamities.