Low life
Nearly nirvana
Jeffrey Bernard
Bangkok
think I've cracked it. I may have found the end of the rainbow. It's a village called Bangpar-In on the banks of the river Chaophya 70 kilometres north of Bang- kok. In the midst of the usual cluster of riverside houses that look to be floating on water-weeds the boat sets you down at a small jetty and from there it is a step to the one road that the village consists of.
It isn't a lot to look at. The road is very dusty. There are three or four vegetable and fruit stalls, and a few children can hardly be bothered to sell straw hats and postcards to passing tourists in the heat of the afternoon sun. Even the dogs are too exhausted to do anything more than raise an eyebrow at passing strangers. And there it is in the middle of all that, the best bar I have come across in years. I knew at a glance from the outside that it would be. You can sniff out a place like that if you have the nose for it. Mine twitched like a pointer's.
It is a simple oblong room with lazy overhead fans, four large, round teak tables, the circular centres of which revolve to pass the condiments. Each of these tables seats about six people, so it is a case of drinkers and eaters mucking in. There are two big fish tanks. One contains giant prawns and the other very juicy-looking river fish. The door to the kitchen is always open and the smells and the noises of cooking seep into the bar. It smacks of something in an old Hollywood western. It is ageless and yet beneath those old ceiling fans there are two enormous stainless steel refrigerators loaded with all you could want. An old woman wreathed in beatific smiles sits by the door, but her two ravishing daughters do the work. They stretch out like yawning cats when they are not serving and when they are beckoned they slide over the floor to you in their silks, their eyes full of messages.
The tourists went off to see the ruins and I stayed with the coach driver to drink and watch him eat lunch. He had a prawn and vegetable soup, and the lumps of prawn were the size of dumplings. Would you believe 35p? People came and went and one man, having just finished work, sat down with us and drank half a bottle of Thai whisky in ten minutes. A benign fool.
Close to this bar there are a few river houses to rent. There are also regular buses to and from Bangkok. I can see it. Breakfast, a potter about in the garden and tending the indoor plants, a possible para- graph or two and then lunch and dalliance in the bar. My description does not do it justice but never have I come across such ambience. The storks on the river and the birds in the palms scream away and the only other noise is the sizzling of woks and the laughter and, of course, the tinkling of ice in your glass.
Back in Bangkok the next day, I found the other end of the rainbow in a back street off the main business area. Bangkok is blessed with delightful hidden gardens and beautiful houses in the backwaters away from the concrete. I was asked to a lunch party by a Thai interior designer who went to Harrow of all places. We sat in a lovely octagonal open-sided summerhouse by a pond in a lush little garden. Two girls cooked endless bowls of Thai food and Mozart accompanied us (there is an excess of awful pop music here).
The house is a cool, white stone building with teak parquet floors and oddly like one that I know in Elm Park Gardens. The host hardly moves out of it. Fruit and veget- ables are delivered every day and with that garden and those cooks there is nothing to go out for. I would like to lie down there and just wait for it.
Previous page
