Jiro Dreams Of Sushi Movie Review

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Featuring: Jiro Ono, Yoshikazu Ono, Takashi Ono
Director & cinematographer: David Gelb
Australian release date: May 10, 2012
Review: rolanstein

When I started baking sourdough bread, about 3 years ago now, I was alight with new obsession. I bought bread book after bread book, spent unseemly hours on bread forums, ploughed through many different recipes and techniques, extended my sourdough baking repertoire from breads to panettone, bagels, hot cross buns, stollen, fougasse, Kouign Amann (I’d never heard of it, either)…

Over time, and with the mania of obsession giving way to mere baking compulsion, I’ve begun to understand that repetition, not range, is the key to incremental improvement of all the little subtle elements – the unending minutiae – that separate the able craftsman from the master.

Elderly American-based (Vermont) French baker Gérard Rubaud is one such master. Rubaud has developed a single variety of mixed-grain bread that he repeats endlessly, fresh milling his grain himself for every bake, adjusting and tweaking his leaven and dough like a violin maestro tuning a Stradivarius. His bread is reputedly superb and in great demand from surrounding outlets, but supplies are extremely limited: Rubaud bakes alone, doing everything he can manually and using a traditional wood-fired oven, unwilling to compromise his quest for premium quality bread in any way.

Rubaud has a Japanese kindred spirit in 85-year-old sushi master Jiro Ono. However, Jiro’s obsessive devotion to his culinary craft and to the impossible quest for perfection far exceeds even Rubaud’s uncompromising extremes – for 70 of his 85 years, he has been doing little else but making, eating and yes, dreaming of sushi! There is a Japanese word for a craftsman like Jiro, whose expertise derives from repetition of process over many years: Jiro is a shokunin.

With his eldest son and sushi-meister heir apparent Yoshikazu and a small, select crew of apprentice staff (an apprenticeship spans decades, so exacting are the master’s standards), Jiro runs a modest 10 seat restaurant in a Tokyo subway station called Sukiyabashi Jiro. The establishment has become a site of pilgrimage for sushi lovers the world over since being awarded a 3 star rating – the highest possible – by that Bible of foodies (some would say food snobs), the Michelin Guide. No other sushi establishment has been rated thus.

A 20 course sushi banquet overseen by the master costs $300, is served at stools along a small counter, and is over in 30 minutes! Sukiyabashi Jiro is booked up months in advance. Jiro must be rolling in yen, but he cares not at all for money. His work is his pride, his joy, his meaning in life.

This is never so apparent as when he prepares for his clientele. The seating arrangements along the counter are discussed in detail, reviewed, re-organised according to gender and status. Acclaimed food critics and regulars are awarded pride of place along the counter, seated in the best vantage points from which to watch Jiro watching them!

As he acknowledges, his staff do all the hard work and preparation (eg: massaging an octopus for 40 minutes to ensure its flesh is tender) while he puts the finishing touches to the sushi and fine-tunes the presentation – which is as precise, symmetrical and salivary gland activating as you might imagine, aided and abetted by some tantalising and excruciatingly delectable close-ups. Part of this fine-tuning involves reducing the size of the portions of sushi served to female clients. And a good thing too, I say – leaves more for us blokes.

A note on sushi-eating etiquette for those who might be inspired to head to Tokyo to experience Sukiyabashi Jiro first-hand: apparently, one takes all of an item of sushi into one’s mouth at once – no nibbling, or biting it in half. Oh, and Jiro, not you, determines and applies sauces, wasabi etc and how much is right for each of the 20 different types of sushi he serves up.

As the meal progresses Jiro finesses his presentation and serving performance according to the responses of his devotees. The old master’s poker-faced but intense bespectacled scrutiny of his customers as they load his exquisite minimalist works of culinary art on to their tongues is unsettling. Indeed, one Japanese food critic who is a long-term advocate of Sukiyabashi Jiro confesses that he still feels nervous eating there!

While much of the film centres on the elaborate and entirely fascinating back-of-house preparations at Sukiyabashi Jiro (always overseen by the infinitely fastidious Jiro), there are some equally intriguing glimpses into the early morning activities at the premium fish markets from which Jiro sources his tuna and other seafood. Jiro’s favoured vendors are themselves experts of the highest order.

There are some disturbing observations on the depletion of world fish stocks. Some traditional varieties of sushi are no longer on Jiro’s menu because the types of fish used in their making are no longer commercially available, or are so rare as to be priced out of the market – unaffordable even for Jiro and his elite clientele.

We do not learn much of Jiro’s personal life (perhaps because he is so immersed in making sushi that he doesn’t have one!). We are given some meaningful fragments that assist in sketching a background that might hold some keys to his character and extraordinary life choices. For example, he and his brother were abandoned by their parents in childhood and left to cope for themselves. At 15, Jiro found his way into the world of sushi restaurants, and so discovered his destiny.

Single-minded devotion to a calling has a toll, of course. Jiro has no recreational pursuits, and views holidays as a waste of time that could be far better spent making sushi. We see nothing of his wife. His relationship with his sons is emotionally inexpressive, and he comes across as stern, though not uncaring. When his younger son, Takashi, flies his old man’s famous coop to start his own sushi restaurant, papa gives his paternal blessing but adds that there is no way back. Takashi must succeed or bust. Tough love? Well, perhaps, but in view of Jiro’s experience of abandonment in childhood, perhaps he knows no other way. Being cut loose worked for him – or did it? That is a question that haunted me long after I left the cinema.

Range or repetition? Or is the choice not so black and white?

Whatever, this film is a gentle character study, oblique yet captivating, and free of any sense of judgment. Further, it’s an intriguing glimpse into the zen-like business of creating exquisite sushi. But above all, it is a visual celebration of the sensory delight of fine food that transcends the in-yer-face food porn of TV celeb cooking shows, and will have you rushing to your favourite sushi bar without passing Go! It may be discouraging for those who like to DIY sushi at home, though. Sukiyabashi Jiro severely undermines the truism that nothing beats good ol’ home-made tucker!

Then again, I know that home-made sourdough bread beats the hell out of most bread you can buy, and if mine doesn’t measure up to Gerard Rubaud’s (which it surely doesn’t), well, what’s wrong with having the bar raised high? Gives yer something to aim for! And as every craftsperson knows, it’s the journey that matters most, not the getting there.

I find it gratifying that in this dreary time of trash-populist-culture, rampant materialism and careerism based largely on financial reward there are quietly triumphant craftsmen around like Rubaud and Jiro who have truly answered a calling, and for whom money and material gain are irrelevancies next to the ideals of perfectionism that drive them. Here’s to the shokunin!

For other Boomtown Rap movie reviews, see Movie Review Archives

Matthew Bourne’s SWAN LAKE in 3D Review

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I was fortunate as a child to attend just about every national and international production that made it to His Majesty’s Theatre: musicals, operas, ballet, choral concerts, we missed nothing. I’m ever grateful to my mother for her commitment to exposing her brood to live theatrical events. These childhood experiences were not only magical in themselves, but set up an enduring love of live performance art.

Among many highlights, my most vivid memories include:

  • Marcel Marceau’s entrancing mimed depiction of Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of claustrophobic terror, The Cask of Amontillado
  • A local Italian opera singer (way too corpulent for his role as the romantic male lead) at the tragic climax of Bizet’s magnificent Carmen – still my favourite opera – dropping to his knees and with arms outstretched sobbing a rolled-’r’ lament: “Carrrrmen! Carrrrrrrmen!” I’d never encountered anything so dramatic, so impassioned, so overwhelmingly affecting. I still tear up recounting that scene.
  • The wondrously poetic and enchanting Swan Lake – Tchaikovsky’s musical score, the gorgeously costumed ballerinas who seemed the very epitome of female grace and beauty, the distracting and giggle-inducing lewdness of the male dancers’ tights… And that most poignant of endings! The dance of the dying swan is up there with “Carrrrmen! Carrrrrrrmen!” as one of the unforgettable highlights of those wonderful childhood outings to His Majesty’s. Just the culture for a budding melancholic…

Since Swan Lake – the classical version – is special for me, I was slightly apprehensive about Matthew Bourne’s reinterpretation. I’d caught the trailer, which featured a flock of ferocious-looking, bare-chested, sweaty male swans with black diamond stripes like warpaint dividing their foreheads. Something’s going on here and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr Jones?

Clearly, I deduced, Bourne’s Swan Lake was a radical contemporisation. I’m not a fan of contemporised classics, generally. Detested Buzz Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet, for example.

Then there was the 3D aspect. An enhancement, or a distracting gimmick?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, forget about your biases and expectations. Apart from the musical score, which is comfortingly familiar, this is Swan Lake deconstructed, re-conceived and reassembled beyond recognition. It is way beyond ‘interpretation’. Far more radical than, say, Sid Vicious’ junked punk version of Sinatra’s standard, My Way. And while it is subversive (and indeed, not far removed from the spirit of punk) in all sorts of ways, to label it so is to sell it short.

This is my problem here: how to critique this stunning piece without hanging labels on it that might foster off-putting assumptions on the part of the reader. A contemporised Swan Lake that replaces the female swan contingent with a battery of aggressive male dancers in feathery trousers? If I was reading this critique, I’d be going pah to that – not interested! A psycho-dramatic reworking of Swan Lake dealing with oppressed sexuality and high society homophobia? Pah again! An angry satirical statement in dance unrecognisably mutated from Swan Lake that comically and savagely references the British Royal Family via a crass Fergie-like commoner character and a snobbish, maternally cold, controlling queen who emasculates her son? Gimme a break!

My task is an impossible one. Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is all of the above, but much, much more, and so extraordinary that no label fits.

I’ll just cut to the chase. This is truly awe-inspiring stuff that works brilliantly on a multitude of levels. There is a gripping narrative venturing into a twilight zone where swan and human fall sexually, spiritually and ultimately tragically in love – not so different from the classical narrative, except that the lovers are male. And that makes all the difference! The traditional male-female love story bursts out of its mould and blooms like a dark flower wakening unto a much larger world that resists literal interpretation.

Symbolism is suddenly everywhere, psycho-analytic readings are invited if not implored (mein Gott, Freud would be rejoicing at the richness of this material), and issues of homosexual repression and homophobia beg larger, universally compelling considerations of the dualities and paradoxes of human sexuality, of parent-child relationships, of love in its many guises, of the struggle for self-actualisation in a society that preserves itself through enforcing the status quo, smothers individuality, marginalises The Other, yet allows the powerful all manner of hypocrisies and transgressions.

But that sounds all so complex. This is what matters: Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is impassioned, sensual, erotically charged, thought-provoking, powerfully affecting and very beautiful kinetic performance art of the highest order. It is wondrous that so much should be articulated wordlessly, through music and dance alone.

Well, not quite alone. There is the direction, camera work, lighting, sets, costuming. All combine, along with the musicians and performers, to create something artistically stupendous that is far greater than the sum of its parts (yes, I plead guilty to cliche – simply unavoidable I’m afraid).

And then there is the mesmerising Richard Winsor, who is a tour de force as the lead Swan/stranger. I’m no ballet aficionado, but you don’t need to be to recognise a performance as phenomenal and as powerful as this. Worth many times the price of admission. I’ll leave it at that.

And what of the 3D? Filmed staged live performance is a format that often falls short, although with today’s technology the gap between live and filmed live is narrowing (anyone who has attended the National Theatre Live screenings will support that contention). I suspect this magnificent work of Bourne’s would have stood up almost as well in conventional 2D, but 3D undoubtedly adds something special to dance through creating the illusion of space. Add to that the use of close-ups and other cinematographic dramatic enhancements, and I’d argue that the filmgoer is no longer ceding a live performance audience much at all.

Nothing can replace the sense of occasion and community of live theatre: the dressing up, the expectant murmuring of the crowd pre curtain-call, the tuning up of the orchestra, the luminescence of a lit stage. But in terms of visual acuity, of getting up close and personal to the performers, and indeed, of immersement in the performance, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake in 3D was superior to any live performance I’ve attended. It’s an experience as magical and moving as any I had in my childhood at His Majesty’s. I can’t wax any more lyrical than that.

No more superlatives. If you’re a ballet fan – just go! If you’re not, go anyway.

For the doubters, I’m going to resort to a dirty manipulative sales tactic: fear of loss. Miss this and you’ll have missed something very, very special. Why would you wilfully deprive yourself thus?

Showing at Cinema Paradiso (for Perthites) and across Australia this weekend only. Bloody GO, damn you!

The Way Movie Review

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Director/screenwriter: Emilio Estevez
Featuring: Martin Sheen, Yorick van Wageningen, James Nesbitt, Deborah Kara Unger, Emilio Estevez
Review: rolanstein

There’s a new demographic in town (well, outta town, actually): the middle-aged backpacker.

The boomer backpacker phenomenon seems to have erupted out of nowhere, almost overnight. When my partner and I travelled through Lombok in our forties – 15 years ago now – we came across few other backpackers of our vintage. Very few. Not too many about in Malaysia only 5 years ago, either. But when we went to Vietnam last year, there were greys lumping backpacks everywhere! A few weeks ago we encountered more of the same in Thailand.

Hollywood tapped into the demographic with Eat Pray Love (and, it might be argued, added to its momentum – Julia Roberts has a lot to answer for, going by reports on the escalation in gentrification of Ubud since the release of the movie).

The cynics in our midst – and lawd forbid that I be tarred with that bitter brush – might suggest that this latest old fart backpacker movie, The Way, is driven primarily by a boomer-targeted marketing strategy. Eat Pray Love was a big winner at the box office. You can bet Hollywood will be hopping on the boomer-in-mid-life-crisis-does-a-geographical bandwagon until the wheels fall off.

Thing is, The Way is a heart-felt effort from director/screenwriter Emilio Estevez, too earnest to be dismissed as mere bandwagon hopping. Alas, good intentions are not enough to save the movie.

The set-up has promise. Thomas Avery (Martin Sheen) and his 30-something son Daniel (Emilio Estevez) have a bristly relationship arising from their sharply contrasting attitudes to life. The father prioritises career and comfort, the son adventure and challenging himself. Thomas’s stable suburban world is rocked when he receives a phone call from a French gendarme informing him that Daniel has been killed while hiking in the Pyrenees. He flies to France to bring home his son’s ashes, and makes an impulsive decision to complete the trek his son was attempting when killed.

The first sign of trouble ahead, filmically speaking, comes when Thomas meets the gendarme who broke the news of Daniel’s death. The gendarme states vaguely that Daniel perished during a storm while walking the Camino de Santiago, a Catholic pilgrimage route to Galicia, Spain, also known as the Way of St. James (‘The Way’). Incredibly, Thomas seeks no further details on his son’s death, yet listens attentively as the gendarme launches into a detailed rundown on The Way and its history that sounds like an excerpt from a travel guide book. This is the clumsiest and most amateurish instance of exposition I have come across in a movie in years.

It becomes apparent soon after Thomas hauls on his backpack and sets off on his trek that The Way is veritably packed with ‘pilgrims’. Narrative logic pedants like me can’t help but to wonder how poor Daniel managed to die out there as a result of exposure to severe weather with so much human traffic around, and dorms and other accommodation regularly spaced along the trail. Just damned unlucky, it seems (especially since the weather is benign for the rest of the movie!).

By and by, Thomas links up – reluctantly at first – with three other trekkers on personal quests: “Joost from Amsterdam” (as he routinely introduces himself), a chain-smoking Canadian biatch named Sarah, and Jack, an Irish poet with writer’s block.

Joost (Yorick van Wageningen) is the most successful of these characters. His simple aim in walking The Way is to lose weight. He wants to slim down for his brother’s coming wedding, but his primary motivation is that his wife won’t sleep with him unless he loses the flab (maybe he’d be better off losing the wife). He’s an endearing character, full of bon homie, and slightly Falstaffian in his irreverence and excesses. He flings himself on every tasty regional speciality that presents itself, and whips out a joint and offers it round at the slightest opportunity. Well, he’s Dutch, innee! National stereotyping, blatantly, but sorta forgivable if you can bring yourself to be charitable about it…and you can in Joost’s case.

Not so, Jack the Irishman (James Nesbitt – who else?). I have to admit to being heartily sick of this bloke, an Irish everyman whose acting range seems to me very limited. His opening scene here is an embarrassingly overacted and intensely irritating soliloquy that goes on interminably and establishes his character as – guess what – an eccentric, hard-drinkin’ Irish bohemian with a gripe against the Catholic church. Is there any cliché left out of that mix?

Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger) starts off with a bang, identifying her target, Thomas, as “Boomer” and sledging him and his generation off with an unprovoked volley of putdowns and accusations (self-centred, indulgent, quasi-spiritual, youth-coveting, young-chick-seeking blah blah). She’s no spring chicken herself, which rather diminishes the force of her generation-based attack. While her unoriginal critique of the Boomers is not without substance, it seems odd here, tacked on. It’s as if the screenwriter, not the character, has a generational score to settle and is proud of the rave, which he’s bloody well keeping in the script whether it fits or not.

An Amazonian Joni Mitchell with big thrusting tits and spray-on jeans, Sarah’s appearance is slightly distracting, and at odds with her manner and personal history. She’s supposed to be a victim of spousal abuse, but lookin’ at this gal you can imagine her decking any guy who laid a hand on her. Indeed, in a later scene that lacks any credibility, she reflexively socks poor old Thomas in the jaw. This aside, she’s an insubstantial character who runs out of puff after her strong introduction.

The clichés don’t stop with the characters. There is drinking and revelry at night – obligatory and fun on the road, but not so gripping filmed. Eccentric characters along the way, natch (those crazy colourful Continentals!), including one that is cartoonish in his silliness – an innkeeper who conducts a party with himself, switching chairs to take on different roles. OK in Monty Python, way outta place here.

There are panoramic shots of the four backpackers trudging along in single file profiled against the sky – quite a few of them. Wide shots of the four against sweeping rural backdrops. Etc. While the landscape is cinematically irresistible and its inclusion integral to the travel theme of the movie, there is not enough of substance going on in the human world. Too much travelogue, not enough narrative or character development.

The most dramatic scene of the movie is not a fictional construct but an excerpt from the real-life theatre of the Catholic church (now there’s an institution that knows how to work an audience). In the cathedral in Galicia that marks the end of The Way, a battery of clergy hoists a massive and lethally heavy thurible high into the vaults via a series of ropes and pulleys; it swings in massive arcs, swooping over the heads of the pilgrims, plumes of incense describing its dangerous trajectory. Jaw-dropping stuff, and wonderfully filmed.

The ending was always headed for anti-climax, since the characters are not well fleshed out and we don’t care enough about any of them, and coming after the cathedral scene a miserable fizzling out is assured. A last ditch attempt is made to save the characters’ inevitable respective transformations from cliché by denying each the objective they set out in quest of, but this uniform perverseness is too neat and obvious a strategy, and all too late.

Redeeming features? The cinematography is fine throughout. And Martin Sheen is as good as ever, giving his all to his lead role. But the woodpile is built hollow. Far more thought needed to be invested in the script, and perhaps more talent. I’m not sure Estevez has the goods as a writer to do the job solo. I’d be surprised if this turkey lasts long on the big screens before going to Blu-ray and video.

For other Boomtown Rap movie reviews, see Movie Review Archives

This Must Be The Place Movie Review

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Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Featuring: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, David Byrne, Judd Hirsch, Harry Dean Stanton
Review: Boomtown Rap guest reviewer, Karen
Other reviews by Karen: The Artist

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that not swinging one’s arms while walking is indicative of some mental health issue. Google suggests it’s autism; Sean Penn, in his characterisation of the superannuated rock star Cheyenne, may have had the same thing in mind as he slowly, with hunched shoulders and immobile arms, tiptoe-loped through the long, weird, disjointed road movie, This Must Be the Place.

The Cheyenne character spans the ages from Voltaire’s wise-child Candide to the Beatles’ fool on the hill. Modelled, apparently, on Robert Smith of The Cure, Penn’s Cheyenne speaks high in pitch and low in volume, like Michael Jackson, lives in an Irish country mansion with his capable, upbeat wife Jane (Frances McDormand), and calls none to mind so much as Ozzy Osbourne.

The film spends way too much time establishing the facts of his current existence, while simultaneously failing to explain said facts. We get pretty rapidly that he is retired from an iconic rock career; that he’s either bored or depressed (he thinks the latter, his wife suggests the former); that he feels responsible for some deaths (of fans); that he’s childless but connected in some way to a young woman, Mary, and her mother. All of this is presented in a fairly piecemeal way that’s at odds with the extraordinary camerawork that swoops, tracks, travels and dollies in long scenes that plain camerawork fans like me will find amazing and intrusive in equal measure.

A storyline that seems to be about the artistic value or musicianship of Cheyenne’s body of work is introduced early, never to resurface, and Cheyenne’s own doubts about his worth are revisited later in a gratuitous scene with David Byrne, who collaborated on the music for the film, and who appears in a brilliant but largely irrelevant set-piece that features more of the previously mentioned extraordinary camerawork. (In this case a wide shot of a stage travels back to encompass a band, then its audience, and pans, turning, to zoom in to a close up of Cheyenne at the back of the crowd. The stage mechanics in this scene are worth the price of admission alone; it’s a pretty speccy scene – but one that arguably did not belong in this story.)

The encounter with David Byrne happens in America, where Cheyenne has travelled by ocean liner to attend the death of his father. News of his father’s illness has arrived via a red telephone in the house of Mary’s mother – one of a few red telephones whose significance escaped me, along with the nature of his relationship to Mary’s mother.

The film does a sharp turn for its second half: now we discover that Cheyenne has come from a traditional Jewish family, from whom he has been estranged, and that his father, a Holocaust survivor, has spent his life tracking down his Auschwitz persecutor, one Aloise Lange, now resident in the US and possibly still alive. Improbably, Cheyenne takes up the hunt, and what has been a character study turns into a road movie, complete with chance encounters, transformative brief relationships, and ultimately growth and redemption.

This is a really enjoyable film to watch, intriguing, puzzling, funny and unsatisfactory in turn. It’s not an artistic success, I don’t think: too many events simply don’t cohere (eg: there’s a character who lends his car to Cheyenne – who seems to be the least likely person in the entire universe to have a driver’s licence and to take on the task of driving around America – and who is never seen again, except in flashback when the car, again improbably, goes up in flames).

Further, the Holocaust theme is too big for the brief showing it gets, and the idea of the beauty of vengeance expounded by Lange in the climactic scenes, while huge and worthy of examination (in another film, perhaps), is completely separate from the experience that Cheyenne has had, the understanding he reaches, and the punishment he imposes.

And then the ending: come on! Resolve the central issue of your life, and give up on your hair dye and eyeliner. Yeah, right. I just didn’t buy it, and I still didn’t get who Mary’s mother was, and why she would be interested in the fact that Richard – whoever he was (yes, we met him in Brooklyn, or Queens, or wherever, but who was he?) – had grown into a fine handsome man. Or why an ageing rocker would think it was a good idea to fix up his young friend Mary with a guy who listened to Mariah Carey!

All of these reservations aside, I reckon it’s a film worth seeing: for the performance of Sean Penn, for the luminous Frances McDormand, for the extras from Freak Central Casting, for the show-off camerawork (eat your heart out, Antonioni!), for the low-key hero’s journey and the funky music track.

For other Boomtown Rap movie reviews, see Movie Review Archives

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 3

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We didn’t do any sightseeing as such (temples etc) for some days into our time at PKK. We were content to just absorb the sights in our immediate surrounds.

After ‘breakfast’ (ie: 10.30am or later), we might wander along the seafront promenade and look out on that irresistible bay, in between sizing up the restaurants in advance of lunch or dinner. We’d rarely last long traipsing about out in the sun before retreating to a premises with fans or aircon for a cold(ish) Singha. At 70 baht per 650ml bottle (53 in the supermarkets – about $1.75), other choices of beverage didn’t seem like choices at all.

Or we would amble uptown to change money, taking in the routines of the town as we went. You had to amble. It was too bloody hot to do otherwise. The heat is intruding on my recollections, just as it intruded on our days in PKK! Although the temperature was only low-mid 30s, it was a glaring sun and a relentless, humid and enervating heat. In the afternoons, a breeze would arrive to stir the soup but it was too warm to give much relief, apart from fanning sweat-soaked clothes and glistening necks and faces.

The breeze drops with the sun, leaving evenings still and balmy. Al fresco BBQ seafood restaurants set up chairs and tables along the promenade towards dark. Interestingly, the great majority of the clientele are local Thais – couples and family groups – with only a smattering of international tourists.

We’d wait for the crowd to disperse a little and eat late. It was peaceful, almost meditative, sipping at a cold beer waiting the 30 minutes or so it takes to barbecue a whole snapper in foil, gazing out at the comforting chain of green lights from small squid boats stretching between the northern and southern headlands that mark the extremities of Prachuap bay.

The fish is barbecued in foil with lemongrass, oyster sauce, chilli, garlic and kaffir lime leaves. This was a large fish, enough for two hungry people, and cost about 300 baht ($10).

There is a good variety of fresh local seafood at these simple little BBQ restaurants:
Not much flesh on these little blue swimmers, but o so sweet and delicate when you managed to get to it!

Battered squid with dipping sauce: 90 baht ($3)

A few things surprised us. Firstly, Prachuap is a very clean town, uncommonly so for SE Asia. There is little litter in the streets, and the long, wide seafront promenade is kept spotless. The beige sandy beach below, which is all but reclaimed by the sea at high tide, looks pristine, but no bathers are to be seen, other than an occasional fisherman wading to or from his anchored boat. According to the owner of our hotel, the water is polluted with oil and detritus from the fleets of local fishing boats.

By day, cuttlefish, squid and fish sit drying in the sun on the promenade, meticulously arranged on racks, an intense fishiness pervading the air. Some might call it a stink. I like it – it says nuts to any tourists who turn their noses up. The drying racks are part of everyday life in PKK. Take it or leave it. Curiously, incidentally, no cats or flies are drawn to the slowly desiccating seafood.

Prachuap is remarkable for its unassertiveness as a tourist spot. In fact, it hardly qualifies as such. It’s a Thai town first, and a tourist destination a long way second. Long may it remain so.

There are only a few guesthouses and hotels, and no big luxe 4 or 5 star jobs. There are no discos, no girly bars, no happening pubs (unless you count karaoke night at the Hadthong Hotel – probably featuring mostly Thai pop songs!). Nothing for the partying backpacker crowd, then. Or the old fart farangs on the hunt for young Thai trophies. Hua Hin, 100K north, takes good care of that demographic.

Tourism is on the creep in PKK, however. In my pre-trip research, I came across a couple of blogs from around 5 years ago warning that it was hard to find food after 9pm – certainly not the case now, although the restaurants that stay open late are all on the seafront. There is also a night market with a good array of hawker stalls, but the town itself shuts up shop very early, apart from a couple of small 24 hour supermarkets.

The local tourist trade picks up noticeably in the weekends; Bangkok folk after a breather begin rolling in by the busload on Friday night. Otherwise, there is a steady trickle of Caucasians, mostly middle-aged like us. The great majority are Scandinavian. Unlike us, most stayed only a couple of days. Perhaps they were just dropping in for a look on their way to a town 30K or so south solely comprising retired Swedes living off their generous super payments. We were told by a local Thai that the street signs are in Swedish and the shops are stocked with Swedish food and goods. Very annoying and a blight as far as I’m concerned. Evidently the Thais don’t agree – these ghettos of foreign retirees are scattered throughout Thailand and growing as the word spreads that living is easy on a decent pension, effectively fencing off some of the most pleasant areas.

The good news for PKK, at least from my perspective, is that the potential for tourist development is restricted because much of the surrounding land is owned by the military. The nearest swimming beach, Ao Manao, is accessible only via army land. Visitors are required to sign in and out at a check post as they travel to and from the beach. We saw no Western families at Ao Manao, but the Thais flock there in the weekends. The men lounge around on deckchairs among the mangroves sipping whiskey and water, while the women chat, watch the kids on the beach, and order frequent snacks like this from the nearby food courts:

Som tam – Thailand’s famous firey green papaya salad. This looks better than it was. No chilli kick and not much flavour.

Some extol Ao Manao as a wonderful swimming site, but I wasn’t greatly impressed. For me, as a spoilt Aussie, crystal-clear water and fine white sand are essential prerequisites of a great beach. The sand at Ao Manao is greyish and although the water seems clean, it’s very shallow. Waders a couple of hundred metres out were still only waist deep.

There’s a bonus on the way to Ao Manao, if you’re lucky – a small isolated colony of Spectacled Lemur living in a patch of jungle off the side of the road. We happened past at feeding time. An unexpected treat.

No funny business going on with Mum – baby Spectacled Lemur change colour as they mature.

Military possession of available land aside, unlike many other seaside locations in Thailand, PKK doesn’t need a thriving tourist industry. These guys are doing fine as they are. A bit more tourist traffic would no doubt be welcome, but I think the locals know they’ve got a good thing going in their charming little town, and will want to keep it that way.

The standard of living is obviously pretty good. We didn’t see a single beggar during our 7 day stay. Almost unheard of in SE Asia. I doubt anyone goes short of food in PKK. In fact, there’s a fair proportion of overweight folk among the locals. There are lots of fatties among the uniformed schoolkids who during recess descend on strategically positioned food carts and stalls serving Thai snack food. My partner, who travelled extensively in Thailand in the 80s and 90s, remarked that this was a notable change. Back then, to be overweight as a child – or an adult, for that matter – was to stand out, automatically qualifying for imaginative nicknames like “Owen” (translation: fat).

As the days of doing not much melded, we became agitated. Something was niggling at us. In previous trips we’d stayed switched to travelling mode, even when spending several days in one place. There was always at least a vague itinerary, a list of Essential Destinations, and you’d consider yourself a travelling failure to miss any of them. No matter how fascinating, pleasant, stimulating, or just plain fun a particular locale might be, we’d always pace ourselves, calculating how long we dared to indulge in mere holidaying before upping stumps and resuming the join the dots game. This time, the switch kept shutting off.

The guilt began to gnaw, the self-accusations fly. Lazy! Pathetic! 3 days in PKK, and you’ve hardly been anywhere. 4 days! 5! Get off your arse and see the temples, the fishermen’s village, the national park! Then pack the hell up and move on. Reclaim the right to call yourself a Traveller!

Then came the counter arguments. We like to be where the crowd ain’t. We like it quiet. And clean. And pretty. With character. Authentic. All boxes ticked. So why not stand still in a place like PKK, and let it reveal itself to you? Stationary travelling, man. Let’s call it that.

If only we’d gotten as clear as that during our stay in PKK, but alas the notion of stationary travelling came to me in hindsight, way too late to save us from our angst.

See, we weren’t really wasting time. We just thought we were. Staying in PKK without a sightseeing agenda, blatantly doing nothing for days on end when we should have been ‘travelling’, opened access to little things that might otherwise have slipped past as incidentals unworthy of note. Sometimes, you learn more about a place standing still than rushing about picking off the ‘sights.’

The old guy at the Chinese noodle soup place a couple of doors down from our hotel, eternally standing over a steaming pot, impassively stirring. He was there when I went past in the mornings, with a full house of customers slurping over their bowls. Still there in the afternoon, although closed for business. And late one night, when I was making a dash to the 24 hour Seven Eleven for some beer, there he was again. Tireless, a man who’d found his place as keeper of the pot.

A petite young woman with a portable coffee and drink stall set up on the footpath outside the bus ticket office, deftly serving up a steady stream of regulars with panache that would do any snooty cafe barista proud. I stood off to the side and watched her, unobtrusively I hoped, for quite a while. She never stopped. When she was not serving up espressos, iced coffees, or nimbly tying up plastic bags of takeaway beverages, she was wiping down her tiny working surface. She was doing very well indeed from her little business on wheels. Occasionally, she flashed me a shy smile. I think she knew I was admiring of her work and the pride she took in it.

Then there was the stunning ballbreaker prowling panther-like about her fruit and vege stall at the busy central market, hair piled high like Billie Holiday on one of her album covers. There was something of the mythical American South about this fierce and fascinating creature, a sense of rebellious, unshackled liberation, although she was probably born and bred PKK. She had a haughty aura about her, a withering authority she took for granted. As well she might, strutting around with her knockout figure, shapely hips a-swingin’ in tight jeans, eye-popping cleavage on huge and brazen display, midriff exposed as she stretched for the bananas. Her husband, you just knew, was to be envied and pitied.

When I asked about some oranges, she sized me up contemptuously, impatient at having to waste time working out what this stupid farang wanted. She shot a volley of Thai at me, relishing my uncomprehension, then shoved the oranges I had asked for into a bag and barked out the price. A couple of visits later, a softness came over her – I had paid my dues – and she went to some trouble to fetch me a papaya from deep in a pile, the ripest and smallest she had. Perfect for two people for breakfast, and just what I would have asked for if I’d had the language. “Kob khun krap” I ventured, beaming. “Ka”, she replied with the air of a queen nodding to a bowing subject, then dismissed me and returned to her wares. What a woman!

And so it went. These are the rewards – a gradually building mosaic of town life – that await the stationary traveller. It’s probably the same in any Thai town not ravaged by tourism, but my bet is that few are as downright pleasant to hang in as PKK.

On our sixth day, we hired a tuk-tuk driver and finally got around to some sightseeing:

Fearsome 9-headed cobras guard a temple on the way to the fishermen’s village.

Fishermen’s village

Another pic taken from the fishermen’s village. Looks picturesque, but the area is strewn with garbage. Our driver told us the fisherfolk make their habitat as unattractive as possible to discourage tourists!

On Day 7, we reluctantly called time on PKK. We could have stayed days longer, but were booked in that night at a hotel in Bangkok and with our visa time running out, had to work out which border to cross, and where.

There was one last treat in store. Years ago, when working as an ESL teacher, I had heard my Thai students raving about mango and sticky rice pudding. I was determined to track some down for this last breakfast in PKK. Tum, our hotel host, had mentioned that it was mango season, and that there was no better time or place to try the famous pudding. She directed me to a stall a couple of streets away. She anticipated that I wouldn’t find it, and when I returned predictably empty-handed, presented me with a takeaway pack. She had sent her staff out for it, and wouldn’t hear of me paying.

Madame J and I shared Tum’s gift with much oohing and ahhing. What a send-off!

Not much of a pic, but quite simply, mango and sticky rice is one of the most delicious combinations imaginable, perfectly finished off with the most exquisite coconut sauce topping (in bag to left).

As we sat at the bus office, three thirties-something Russians, two male and one female, slopped past swigging out of cans of Chang. Not something I’d seen any locals doing. It seemed disrespectful. Their whole attitude seemed disrespectful. Then again, what do you expect from fucking Russians?

We sat in silence. By and by, a pretty local girl in smart office attire sitting next to us got up, sauntered to the roadside and flobbed into the gutter.

The bus came and we got on. There was an unsettling sense that our usual travel rhythm was out of whack. The call of the road seemed suddenly tiresome, which was no big deal – we were no strangers to travel fatigue. Thing is, this was the beginning of our trip, not the end! I cheered up when a 60s American hippy relic seated adjacent to us leaned over and said: “This must be the old long-haired farang section of the bus.”

He subsequently introduced himself as Steve. He was travelling with his deaf girlfriend, Andrea.

Turned out we had much in common. Conversation turned to Vietnam, where Madame J and I had travelled the year before, then to the war. Steve had missed out being conscripted due to a fortunate combination of circumstances. “Lucky for the army and me” he said. “I hate guns. Never even picked one up, never will. And I resent all forms of authority.”

I laughed out loud. It was good to be among like-minded folk. 5 hours from Bangkok, and all was well.

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 2012: Part 2

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“Prachuap Khiri Khan.” The very name fires the imagination! Its utterance rhythmic, musical, skipping off the palate. Its resonance mysterious, sensual, like an intimate phrase of endearment in an exotic tongue. But it’s just a fishing town in southern Thailand. And I’m a man overboard, floundering in nostalgia.

Travelling is so subjective. Take no notice of me. I don’t do travel advice. This is simply a personal piece I’m banging out to preserve memories I want to hold on to. Disingenuous? Of course. Who could make such a claim of a piece that is to be posted to the web? Do you need more proof that I cannot be trusted?

We had no reason to suspect we would be charmed as we were. TripAdvisor ‘experts’, including a Thai lady resident in Bangkok, had cautioned against spending more than a day or two in PKK. Someone else suggested a day trip from Hua Hin would suffice. “Nice, but quiet and nothing to do” sums up the advice. Knowing that we generally like to take things slower than most, we planned on 3 or 4 days.

But we quickly adapted to PKK time, which is, shall we say, unhurried, and before we knew it we were 4 days in. We ended up staying for 7, and would have extended further if we hadn’t had that bloody 14 day visa deadline hanging over our heads.

A couple of easy days to begin with set up a rather lazy pattern. We would rise late, go downstairs to the airy and extremely pleasant hotel sitting area, and sip coffee gazing out at the always beautiful bay across the road. Sometimes a few of the tables were occupied by other guests, but often we had the area to ourselves. Wunderbar!

We’d put off confronting the glare and heat outside as long as we could contain our guilt. The delightful owner of our hotel, Tum (“like the sound of a drum”) was always up for a chat, innocently abetting our avoidance tactics. Eventually, we’d venture out in search of a late breakfast.

Forget Western notions of breakfasty fare. As with other SE Asian cultures, Thais eat the same sort of things for breakfast as they have for lunch and dinner. We were hoping to track down banana pancakes or something egg-based, but nothing doing. Few of the seafront restaurants in PKK are ready for business before lunchtime, so our choice was limited.

A short but hot and sweaty walk along the seafront took us to a modest little place selling traditional Thai food. A steady stream of locals dropped in on motorbikes to take away plastic bags of curries and noodles (yes, noodles, not rice) to their workplaces. There were a few tables for those who wished to eat at the premises.

The pots you see on the countertop contained the curries, which began the day hot, just cooked, and gradually cooled. A very basic operation, but read on…

The owners and staff spoke little English, but were welcoming of the two uncertain farangs gawking about trying to nut out how the ordering worked. Simple enough: point to what you wanted, and the stout cheery lady in charge would ladle it out on top of a bowl of noodles. Weirdly, we thought, the locals were selecting three or more curries and mixing them together. We decided to maintain the integrity of the dish and select just one: green chicken curry (yes, unadventurous, but it seemed reasonable to start with the familiar – which didn’t actually look all that familiar). It took a while for the serving lady to accept that we didn’t want to mix and match.

We sat down with our bowls, upon which pickled vegetables, condiments, sprouted peas and a huge plate of herbs and fresh greens were brought to the table. Everything was so fresh! And our green chicken curries with tiny round eggplants were superb! Bursting with aromatics, zinging with enough chilli to bring out a sweat while allowing the tantalising and perfectly balanced flavours full expression! One of the best meals we were to have in Thailand as it transpired. Total cost: 60 baht ($2) – for both of us.

We were on a high! PKK was delivering, Thailand was delivering, and this was only the start. How quickly the mood can change when travelling!

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand, 2012: Part 1

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Researching Thailand as a travel destination was disturbing. So many accounts online gave the impression that the place was ruined, literally overrun by tourists. I knew that was the case in Phuket, which is why I’ve never bothered going there, but the entire country? Surely not.

Of course, there would be many towns, many places, with nary a farang in sight – probably because there was nothing much to see. Yes, we were after a glimpse beneath the bonnet of Thai society (and no traveller gets more than a glimpse, to which anyone who has lived in a foreign country initially travelled through will attest). But we’re not anthropologists! We wanted to do our glimpsing in locales with more going for them than mere ‘authenticity’! A gorgeous coastal town, perhaps. Sites of historical interest. Regions famed for speciality dishes. The usual tourist stuff, in other words – but without hordes of tourists.

Mission impossible? Well, it began to seem so. Then we came across a reference to a little place that sounded promising: Prachuap Khiri Khan, a “typical small Thai town” (whatever that means) set on a picturesque bay 100K or so south of Hua Hin. A fishing town and administrative centre of the province of Prachuap Khiri Khan from which it takes its name, it was too sleepy for most tourists, claimed our source. As a result, accommodation was far cheaper than in Hua Hin, as was the seafood, locally caught and as fresh as it gets. OKaaaay…

PKK presented as an ideal first stop: an opportunity to experience a little of Thai life in microcosm, and a quiet, relaxing prelude before the clamour and chaos of our next destination, monstrous Bangkok.

You’ll recall I had emerged from the train at Hua Hin sick as a baited dog, had a heave next to the platform on a fenced-off patch of lawn that my partner suspects signified something culturally special, then we took a mini-bus straight to Prachuap Khiri Khan. It dropped us in the centre of town.

We declined offers from the tuk-tuk drivers to take us to our hotel, which was on the seafront, just two blocks away. Easy walking distance. Or so my partner thought. I would have accepted a ride if the hotel had been only 50 metres away, but I figured she had the right to inflict a bit of punishment on me for coming down so sick and useless right at the beginning of the trip.

We grabbed our gear, and with the searing mid-afternoon sun ratcheting up my headache to yet another level, my entire purpose in life came down to placing one foot after the other in simple trust that we would make it to our hotel before I collapsed.

The two blocks to the seafront seemed to take an age. To the right, a few hundred metres ahead, was our hotel. I really doubted I could make it. Madame J marched ahead without a backward glance, fancying, perhaps, that she was dragging me along in her slipstream. Prachuap Khiri Khan bay lurched past in my periphery, and even in the blurred glare of that trial of endurance I noted that it was lovely. Not that I cared less at the time. I was fully engaged in resenting the uncaring figure striding out in front and wallowing in bounteous self-pity.

Hours later, having showered and slept a while after managing to keep down a cup of tea and biscuit and drop a couple of painkillers, I came to in greatly improved condition, and the view from the hotel room window revealed itself in all its splendour. Throwing open the blinds to that luscious tropical panorama was to become a daily ritual to treasure – a marvellous start to the day.

Things were on the up, and not before time. I had resigned myself to not eating much, if anything, that night, but suddenly I had an appetite. Sunset was approaching, the restaurants and the night market only a walk away, and all that recently harvested local seafood just waiting…

So began our love affair with PKK.

Sleeper Train Butterworth To Hua Hin, 2012

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I thought I liked train travel. Not that I’ve done a lot. But I have good memories of ploughing through nocturnal Italy, watching villagers feasting and dancing in a bright-lit square somewhere en-route from Naples to Rome. Or was it Brindisi to Naples? No matter.

I remember the southern French accent of the train driver announcing arrival in Marseilles: “Marsaya”.

Then there was the epic journey from Cochin to Delhi. Sitting up all the way, jammed into a hot third-class carriage with good-humoured Indians, looking out on the parched plains of central India and wondering how or why people lived there. I don’t suppose I’d take a journey like that too well now, but it was great back then.

When we floated the idea of going into Thailand by train instead of flying in as most people do, it gained immediate traction, especially coupled with 3 days in Penang to kick off with. Seemed sorta romantic.

Neither my partner nor I have ever been able to sleep in transit, but we imagined a sleeper train would be different. Unlike in a bus or plane, we’d be on bunks, fully prone. The hypnotic rhythm of the wheels on the tracks would surely lull us, and before we knew it morning would break and we’d emerge fresh and rested at Hua Hin, where we were due to arrive at 6.29am.

6.29. Not 6.30. The precision of that arrival time suggested an accuracy about the train schedule that filled us with confidence. We planned to have breakfast as soon as the nearby restaurants opened, then walk around checking out Hua Hin. Mid-morning, we’d catch a mini-bus to Prachuap Khiri Khan, and by the time we’d checked into our hotel and showered, it would be lunchtime!

Cut to my first view of Hua Hin: a spot of lawn at the side of the platform I stumbled on to sleepless and ill after alighting from our Butterworth sleeper train 9 hours late. Yes, 9 hours. Near blinded by a thumping headache, salivating dangerously and about to chuck – again – I decided the lawn was a better place than the platform for whatever horrid contents my convulsing stomach was about to deliver. I made it just in time.

Oblivious to an audience that my partner later assured me was not inconsiderable, I planted my feet wide apart and herked a stream of yellow-green bile on to that diligently manicured Hua Hin lawn. I noted with some relief that the lawn absorbed its putrid offering. Right decision. After all, Hua Hin’s station is reputedly the most beautiful in Thailand, people coming from all around just to photograph it. Not the sort of place to greet with a herby projectile vomit.

A nice Thai guy my partner had befriended on the train took pity on me and kindly gave us a lift to the Clocktower, from whence mini-vans depart to Prachuap Khiri Khan. My partner changed some money as I sat uselessly cradling my pulsing head, and a short while later we were on our way, none the wiser about Hua Hin.

The mini-van driver drove like a maniac with a death wish, but I willed him on ever faster, praying I would not vomit again and massaging the back of my neck in a vain attempt to ease the headache. Somehow, I hung on until the 1.5 hour journey ended in PKK.

And by the way, modern trains – if that’s how you’d categorise the Thailand sleeper we were on – do not have that rhythmic beat I’d associated with my European and Indian train experiences. Maybe they don’t space track gaps as they used do? Whatever, there’s no regularity to the track percussion. It’s messy and random and noisy and NOT conducive to sleep. The passengers snoring loudly all around would not agree. But that’s my truth and I’m sticking to it.

Travels In Thailand 2012: Introduction

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I’ve just returned from a month in Thailand and Malaysia. We were dogged with problems, which can be traced back to the planning stages of the trip. In the fond hope that others may learn from our errors, lemme tell ya what happened.

I don’t much like planning travelling stints. We keep it very broad-outline: that is, decide on a few places we definitely want to see, and book accommodation for the first couple of nights only. Whatever happens in between is determined by who we meet, what we hear and how we feel. More or less. We’re not always so spontaneous. Sometimes we decide on the road where we’ll be when, and where we want to stay, and book ahead via the web.

This strategy went out the window this time. It quickly became evident that unlike our previous SE Asian destinations Thailand is inundated with tourists. Further, there are so many people now using TripAdvisor to determine their choice of hotels/guesthouses that most of the ones with great reviews need to be booked weeks – if not months – in advance of arrival. So much for spontaneity. Leave it to the last moment and you risk being left with only the cruddy accommodation options.

We’re not talking 4 star hotels here. Way out of our budget range. We aim for small, good value places asking less than $30 per night (or a bit more in big cities). They’ve got to be reasonably clean – we’re past dossing down in cockroach-infested dives. Been there, done that, and have no call to do it again this incarnation. A good location is essential. And an en suite bathroom is a distinct plus, although not a deal-breaker.

Seems a hell of a lot of other travellers have similar criteria to ours, going by the scant availability of most well-reviewed accommodation at the budget value end of the spectrum. This is the first time we have encountered this. I guess the combination of cheap airfares and the convenience of internet bookings have unleashed massive numbers of new travellers (a great proportion of them heading for Thailand!). Also, it seems people who used to book fly-and-flop packages through travel agents have made a relatively recent seismic shift to web-assisted DIY travel of the type we’ve been doing for years. I suppose it was always just a matter of time before the masses caught on. But it’s annoying. Very fucking annoying.

With some slightly lateral thinking and a tactic I will not divulge here, we managed to set ourselves up with our chosen accommodation for the first three stops of the trip: Penang, Prachuap Khiri Khan and Bangkok. After Bangkok – well, we didn’t know where we’d go from there anyway.

We had scored a very cheap return fare to KL with Air Asia, and it occurred to us that a few days in Penang might be a nice way to kick off the trip, rather than flying straight from KL to Bangkok. We had a soft spot for Penang, which had been a highlight of our travels in Malaysia 5 years previously. Besides, we were keen to reacquaint ourselves with train travel, which we remembered with affection from our (separate) sojourns through Europe and India in our twenties. Butterworth (20 minutes ferry ride from Penang) was an ideal train departure point to Thailand. The sleeper train left at 2.40pm. Very convenient. When we grabbed an Air Asia deal from KL to Penang for only $30, the die was cast and there was no going back as far as I was concerned.

Warning Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

In becoming set on the Penang/train option from the outset, I had compromised one of our core values when travelling – to remain flexible and retain the possibility of spontaneity. When ‘Wrong Way, Go Back’ signs started popping up, I was loathe to heed them.

Firstly, the sleeper train didn’t stop at PKK. We would have to get off in Hua Hin, which we weren’t much interested in, then take a mini-bus to PKK. Not really a problem, we decided. Arrival in Hua Hin was at 6.29am. Just in time for breakfast and a look around. If we bussed it to PKK mid-morning, we would check into our hotel, clean up, and then it would be time to head out for lunch. Perfect!

Not quite.

Never rely on the scheduling of Thai trains. Ours was delayed an hour in Butterworth, then in the middle of the night came to a halt between stations at some God-forsaken wilderness in the south of Thailand. We sat there unmoving for 8 bloody hours. News filtered through that a truck had collided with a train further up the track. Some experienced train travellers on board expressed doubt, claiming that Thai trains were notoriously erratic in their schedules, prone to lengthy delays. But 8 hours? Whatever, our 6.29am arrival in Hua Hin had blown out to mid-afternoon. So much for breakfast and a look around.

Delays like that can’t be anticipated. Can’t be too hard on ourselves there. But there was another complication that really should have prompted us to change our Penang/train plan.

I refer to Thailand’s visa policy. The standard visa stay is 30 days, which was perfect for us, since we were to be away 28 days, 23 of which were to be spent in Thailand. We’d be well covered. But what was this? They gave you only 15 days if you entered the country overland? Further, the inconvenience factor is high for travellers, since you’re only allowed to cross the border at a few points, none of which are geographically close to Bangkok. Couldn’t be right, surely!

It’s true, folks. The policy came into effect a couple of years ago. Lawd knows why. It doesn’t make sense! They’re costing themselves tourist bucks. If overland travellers have to do a visa run after a mere 15 days, odds are many of them are going to cross the border to Burma, Laos or Cambodia and keep on going, rather than hopping straight back to Thailand.

Not us. This trip belonged to Thailand. We’d stay loyal. When our 15 days was up, we planned to cross the border into Laos for a few days in Vientiane eating, drinking the cheap and apparently excellent Lao beer, and maybe taking in a sight or two in between resting up. Then back to Thailand to explore a stretch of Isaan north along the Mekong that had been described to us in lyrical terms by an incredibly helpful and knowledgeable Canadian guy my partner had been corresponding with after ‘meeting’ him on one of the travel sites.

Hassle antennae a-quiver, my partner suggested we buy a longer Thailand visa at the Thai embassy in Penang. According to reports online, the application could take the best part of a day to process. I brought the gamel of firm dissent down on that proposal. Why waste one of our three days in Penang on bureaucratic crap?

How about abandoning Penang and flying to Bangkok from KL, then? That way we’d be granted 30 days on entry to Thailand. But I was attached to our original plan. This 14 day visa hassle could be turned to our advantage, I ‘reasoned’. What’s wrong with sampling a bit of Laos, then checking out Isaan? Forces us off the beaten track, doesn’t it? Always a good thing!

Well, not always. After PKK we made it to Bangkok as planned, and with our 14 day visa expiry approaching, discovered that the sleeper trains to all the allowed border crossing destinations were booked out for days ahead. We hadn’t reckoned on that!

After much confused and lengthy debate, we ended up taking a 15 hour overnight bus journey to Satun, and from there a ferry to the Malaysian island of Langkawi. Not so bad, but we found it impossible to sleep on the bus and didn’t get to Langkawi until late afternoon the next day, grimy and exhausted. Hard not to be resentful that the trip had been forced on us by ridiculous visa requirements. And by the time we’d spent a few days on Langkawi, we had no real desire to make our way back to Thailand, deciding instead to go back to Penang, and perhaps finish in Melaka (that didn’t eventuate). Our Thai trip was thus cut in half and comprised only two destinations, PKK and Bangkok. Not what we had intended at all.

The trip was still worthwhile, but was not anything close to that we had envisaged with great excitement during the planning stages. The 14 day visa had been a pain in the arse. I came to curse myself for my recalcitrance, my closed-mindedness to all options other than our original Penang idea. And I have to say, our romantic notions about train travel have been dispelled by the reality.

We imagined we’d sleep soundly and wake at our destination fresh and raring to go, with the cost of a night’s accommodation saved. Wishful thinking! The bunks were uncomfortable, and neither of us slept. Then there was that bloody 8 hour delay. And there’s a little more to this sorry tale that’s worth another post. Coming up.

Carnage Movie Review

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Two kids have an altercation in a park, one cops a smack in the mouth and requires dental treatment, and the parents – Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster) and Alan and Nancy Cowan (Christoph Walz, Kate Winslet) – meet up at the Longstreet’s Manhattan apartment to discuss how best to address the situation.

Both couples are determinedly civil and conciliatory initially, but when the meeting is drawn out due to Alan’s mobile phone compulsion and Nancy falling ill and vomiting spectacularly all over the living room, cracks appear in the polite facades. A bottle of Scotch is added to the equation, and the evening degenerates into petty squabbling and point-scoring, with all four characters at each others’ throats as alliances change and marital resentments surface. What began as a très ‘adult’ interchange ends up as a childish shitfight far worse than the bingle between the boys that brought the warring parties together in the first place.

Directed and co-written by Roman Polanski, and based on French playwright Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, this is a funny, savagely satirical look at middle-class political correctness, the ineptness of contemporary parenting that borrows heavily from pop culture ‘wisdom’, and the hypocrisies that lurk beneath the surface of polite society.

In a sense, it’s curious that Polanski has been drawn to this essentially theatrical strategy of throwing a group of conflicted characters into a confined space, turning up the heat, and letting the pressure cooker environment wreak havoc. It’s a time-tested and dramatically fertile setup, of course, but imposes all sorts of obvious restraints filmically.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine Polanski finding such a challenge appealing. Then there is the freedom that comes with a small budget production like this – what price artistic liberation?

Indeed, this may have been the bait that attracted the fine cast. The opportunity to work with Polanski on a claustrophobic one-room (mostly) set where there is no space to hide must have been an exquisitely terrifying prospect. All the performers are in the glare of the spotlight throughout; the success or failure of the film rests squarely with them and the material they have to work with.

Happily, both are up to the task. In fact, the actors delight in their roles. And well they might – the script is witty, scathing in its underlying commentary, psychologically astute, and – o joy of joys – adheres strictly to Aristotle’s unity of dramatic time. More than strictly, actually. Unusually these days, dramatic time is live time in this piece.

I’m known to lament to those who will listen (not many, and decreasing by the conversation) that many movies today would work far better if filmmakers paid at least some heed to the Aristotelian unities. It’s a trifle disconcerting for me, then, to report that in this instance live dramatic time did pose a small problem: the characters got drunk too fast. Easy to forgive, however, when the humour and satire works as well as it does here.

So, what did Polanski bring to this as a film? Could it have succeeded as well or better on stage? Well, the second question is academic, really. I enjoyed the movie immensely, and that’s all that matters.

I’m a Polanski fan. Take that as a disclaimer if you will. I like the way he crafts his movies. He doesn’t strive to put his mark on his work; everything he does is in the service of the piece. So it is here.

The camerawork is not intrusive, leaving the actors to get on with their stuff, yet is mercilessly claustrophobic, honing in on the minutiae of the adults’ communications and their underlying sub-agendas, and hemming in the action within the walls of the living room. By contrast, there are a couple of telling long external shots at the beginning and end of the movie that feature the kids in a park, which have the effect of simplifying the goings on between them. It’s a profound contrast.

Precious petal PC parents of today will probably find plenty to object to in this movie. Good, I say. They deserve to feel attacked. If you’re not one of ‘them’, go along and have a good belly laugh. Don’t feel too smug, though – you’ll probably see aspects of yourself as the characters fall, nay crash, from grace.

For other Boomtown Rap movie reviews, see Movie Review Archives