There are three sections to our Thailand diary.

Part One covers our trip up from Malaysia, our first time in Bangkok, our journey to the Laos border, and Chiang Mai.

This part covers our week of filming with the BBC Holiday programme in Bangkok, and our journey to the Cambodian border.

Part Three covers three weeks in the South of Thailand, on the islands and beaches.

You can comment on our Thailand film with the BBC here.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Monday, March 15, 2004

Bangkok Filming – Day One

Hmm. Here's a challenge for you – make a factual programme about a family visiting the Bangkok City Palace, without being allowed to film in the Bangkok City Palace. Yup, defeats me too! It turns out that item number one on the schedule was sabotaged by the Thai authorities, who won't allow filming inside the palace except for documentaries – and apparently that means general video shots, without any presenters or anything in it. And we qualify as 'presenters' in Thailand.

So poor old Ginny had to cope with being told that she couldn't film us inside the Palace, but she could take film of tourists milling about etc as long as we weren't the tourists she was filming! So we spent an hour and a half looking round the palace, trying to stay out of camera shot. It was like something out of a satirical movie. (Apparently this is because a company made a 'naughty' film using the Palace, and since then nobody's been allowed to do any commercial filming there). Anyway, we got some nice photos for our photo album, and saw the lovely golden temple.

Click on the left hand photo to find out what Shanghai's answer to David Bailey was photographing... The strangest thing was that lots of Asian tourists wanted to take pictures of the girls – one group of Chinese tourists each wanted a picture like the one on the right – posing with a palace guard and Charlotte and Emily. Maybe we should be doing what the long-necked tribes do in Mae Hong Son – 'One Photo One Dollar'

We finally left the Palace around 1 o'clock (three hours filming anything but us...) and went to lunch. We were all baking from the hours of standing in the sun, so it was a huge relief to get into air conditioning and cool down. Charlotte and Emily were showing signs of tiredeness (they'd woken up at 6:30 this morning, just a bit excited!) but were bouncing with energy after ice-cream.

Then it was off to Wat Po, the home of the reclining Buddha. Even though Sarah and I had seen it before, it can still take your breath away – seemingly an endless gold Buddha lying on his side, housed in an enormous painted temple building.

But before we could see any of that, we had to wait for the filming permissions to be sorted out. Thailand can be quite officious in administrative matters, and we seemed to be sitting on the steps of the temple for an hour before the Tourism Authority man came back with the paperwork stamped (it had all be arranged in advance, but apparently still required the signature of the Abbot of the temple before the camera could go inside). I think we're going to get used to sitting and waiting for things to happen this week.

Anyway, once we were in, it was great, putting gold leaf onto the small Buddha, dropping 100 coins each into the wishing pots – the girls even got to have their fortune told, by shaking fortune sticks from a little tube, and the one that fell out was their fortune – all on camera, repeated three times from different angles. Emily loved this idea – she thought she'd get to pick whichever fortune read best.

Finally I got to collect their fortune sheets, and read them out to them for the benefit of the viewer. Here's Emily's (complete with typos)"Good lucks graduslly approaching. Just like building a bridge, difficelt first but happy later. Your lover is a rich widow and a good match. Health is excellent". I will admit to having some difficulty explaining that to her! Anyway, by the end of all that we were nearly finished for the day, just another two 'walks past camera', and then we took the girls back to the hotel, completely worn out. A combination of heat, waiting, early rising and general apathy, which soon disappeared within sight of the swimming pool.

It was a difficult filming day, because Emily really needed a mid-day sleep, and Charlotte wasn't "into it" in the same way she had been in Canada. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Not getting easier

On our second day of filming, we didn't have much packed down on the agenda, but the traffic in Bangkok makes it so difficult to get around - it takes ages to get between shots. Unfortunately the BBC's hotel is on the other side of town from ours, so we had to set off at 8:15 in a taxi to meet up with the crew at the Holiday Inn, and then hop in the minibus and retrace our steps back to the Snake Farm - it was only a mile, but it took an hour to get there!

Before we could actually start any filming, we had the usual tedious wait for film permissions to be signed off - this is incredibly infuriating, just sitting around waiting outside the gates, instead of being able to wander around and take a look at the displays like all of the other visitors (after about 20 minutes waiting outside, Charlotte and I just snuck in to look at the snakes in their cages, rather than just sit outside for ever). When the paperwork was finally sorted, we went in to watch the show of snakes - the King Cobra looked scary close up, especially when the snake handler showed us his hand with only 3 fingers on it - the fourth finger had been bitten off by one of the snakes years ago. Then they force fed a baby python, with huge pieces of chicken (it looked so awful, there's no way you'll see that on TV!), and milked a cobra for it's venom.

Emily has been having a daytime sleep all the time that we've been in Asia, because of the exhausting heat, but she falls asleep at different times each day - normally on a bus or when we're moving around, or we go back to our room for a couple of hours while she drifts off. But during the filming it's more of a problem, because the only break is the lunch break, and she's not going to fall asleep while everyone else eats lunch! So today she started lunch in a bad mood, because she needed a sleep, and this carried on all the way through lunch until we caught the boat to Wat Arun. This meant that she was irritable (read: stroppy as anything) getting into the boat, and then fell asleep as we were filming the trip. It obviously created a bit of a problem for Ginny filming it, but that's the downside of working with children, especially in hot climates.

So while we all sat at Wat Arun waiting for the filming permission to be sorted (another 45 minutes...) Emily slept soundly in the shade. In fact, she was still asleep when the crew were ready to film us walking around, so we just had to wait for her to wake up (not a popular decision when you've got a film crew waiting, and a schedule to keep, but we (still) think that's the only thing you can do).

But when we finally got going, we managed to film some of the 'walking around, looking at the temple' shots, and an interview with us on the steps of the temple, and then suddenly 5:30 had arrived - we'd been going for 9 hours, and we were all completely worn out from the heat. When the filming finished, we headed straight back to the guest house for a swim and a cool down, and then a quick dinner and bed. The girls were both flat out by 8 o'clock.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

A long day out to the River Kwai

Today started really early, as we all had to get up at 5:30, to catch a 6:15 taxi to the train station. We were due to catch the 7:45 train out to Kanchanaburi, where the 'Bridge over the River Kwai' was built. But first we had to get through a filmed discussion on the platform. This is when we discovered that Emily can be brutally uncooperative at 7 o'clock in the morning! It took us a good 10 minutes to get her just to sit on a bench and listen. But in the end, we got the shot that Ginny wanted. But it showed the part of Emily's character where she doesn't like to do things when she's told (who can she get that off I wonder?) - she makes it pretty clear she's not prepared to be a performing seal! Fortunately, our tourist board co-ordinator, Oh Oh, has been an immediate hit with Emily, and whenever the camera isn't switched on Emily wants to sit with her, talk to her and play with her. And in return, each morning Emily and Charlotte both get a little treat from her to play with (today: a bendy Robbie the Reindeer for Emily, and a brush set for Charlotte).

The train trip was a joy, with the carriage full of Thai teachers on a trip, singing and clapping away, the windows down and warm air rushing through the carriage. The further westwards we travelled, the further away the coast was, and the warmer it became. By the time we reached Kanchanaburi at midday it was sweltering as the train crept over the bridge, packed full of tourists who'd hopped on at the town station. The story of the construction of the bridge is pretty horrific - allied Prisoners of War were used to build a 250 mile railway from Thailand through to Burma, through horrific forest, infested with malaria. During the construction tens of thousands died, including over 6,000 British prisoners. Today, none off that is evident, save the railway bridge and the line which goes about half the original distance. Instead, it's now a major tourist attraction, with people making the day trip from Bangkok to see it. The Japanese tourists come here to see a bridge 'built by the Japanese during the war', completely oblivious to the horrific way that their countrymen treated the prisoners, and the deaths. And few of the Japanese visit the museums, or war cemeteries, that illustrate the shocking story.

After crossing the bridge on the train, we hopped off the train at the next station, and drove back to the town to film us walking the tracks over the bridge. If you see it on the programme it'll look pretty innocuous, but it was far from it in real life - the wooden planks of the path only covered the centre of the tracks - trip up either side and you could fall between the sleepers into the river below! Fortunately we didn't, so we all made it to lunch safely. We really needed to get into the cool shade, because the heat was unbearable, hovering around 40°C, so lunch on a floating restaurant on the river bank was just the ticket.

After lunch, and filming the train returning across the bridge, we went to film at the war graves in town, wandering between the ranks of 6,000 Allied prisoners buried in this one patch of ground. The moment was taken away a bit by the inevitable half-hour wait for filming permissions to be sorted, but we managed to get that sorted and get on with the filming. Filming for something like this is a bit peculiar, because we ended up doing the same walk a few times, from different camera angles. After filming, we made a quick visit to the Death Railway museum, where we learnt more about the conditions for the prisoners, and the work that they did, before piling back into the minibus for the trip back to Bangkok.

It wasn't typical of the trip that we'd have done with the children, as the filming schedule meant that we couldn't do the things the girls would have loved, like elephant riding and bamboo rafting down the Kwai, so perhaps we'll come back to Kanchanaburi again if we have time later.

On the way back to town we all learnt more about Martin, the sound man. He is Swiss, but has lived in Thailand for 10 years, and is soon to get married to his Thai girlfriend. As is traditional in Thailand, he will pay the bride's family a dowry for her when they marry, and this week with the BBC will be exactly the right amount. I can imagine the headlines now "BBC cash used to buy beautiful Thai bride". Martin is unlike any Swiss person I've met before - all week he's been smiling away, cracking jokes and joining in with the fun.


By the time we got back to the guest house it was 7:30pm. After getting up at 5:30am, it had been a long, hot day for all of us, and especially for the girls, so we quickly grabbed a snack each and headed for bed, setting the alarm for 5:15(am!) tomorrow morning.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

To market, to market, to buy me a...boat

Another day, another early start. We had to jump out of bed at 5:15, so that we were in a taxi at 6:15, racing across town to get to the BBC's hotel. Then we all piled into the minibus to go to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. There are a number of 'floating markets' around Bangkok, but the one at Damnoen Saduak is a 'real' one - there for the locals - so it is certainly the best place to see the real floating market action. Basically, the market is a pile of vendors, paddling their own boats, selling everything from fruit and veg, to meals, to Chinese-style hats. The trip started at 9 with an exciting speedboat ride through the backwater canals, whizzing past people's front doors. Normally the trip is high-speed all the way, but it was a bit stop-start for us, as we leap-frogged with the camera crew in the boat, alternately being filmed from alongside, in front, behind, whizzing past them, them whizzing past us, etc etc. We didn't get any photo's, but I'm sure you'll see some of it in the programme, because it would make interesting TV.

Then it was a more sedate pace, as a lady paddled us around the market itself, past all of the women trying to sell us pineapples and banana fritters (successful) and fish balls and wooden frogs (unsuccessful). And all the time we were being directed from the shore - "Yes, buy that pineapple on a stick - No, not yet - Okay, now - Do it again, but this time pick it up more quickly - Okay, now eat the pineapple"- at which point we all had to give up, because it is impossible to eat a huge chunk of pineapple in a way that won't put people off when they're sitting down to their tea on a Monday night!. And as you can see, we all got in the boat, crew and all, and paddled around the market some more. Highly entertaining, if not a little cramped and unstable!

Finally, it was all back in the minibus for the two hour drive back to Bangkok, and on to our guest house, where the crew filmed our accommodation, the girls swimming and an interview about the highs and lows of our last 9 months. And then we went round the corner to our local eating place, and had dinner for the camera. I'm sure that when it's all edited together we'll look like total tourists as we were staying in a decent (12-pounds-a-night) guest house, and we didn't have a stitch of tie-dye on all week. We've stayed in some pretty grungy accommodation, and done some awful bus trips, but for a hard week filming in Bangkok, we thought we ought to have somewhere decent to get home too. Still, all the 'rucksack' stuff got edited out last time, and none of it has been filmed this time, so we know what to expect.

After getting up at 5:15, we got an early finish, and we were wrapped up by 7:30 again, ready for the girls to go straight to bed.

Friday, March 19, 2004

Tuk-Tuk-to-Tuk-Tuk, One More Time

We had a late start this morning, as the crew came to us for 10 o'clock! So we had time to sit down to breakfast, and read the paper. The Bangkok Post's Quote of the Day, on the front page, was a rather prescient quotation from Albert Einstein - "Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Although we didn't know it at the time, it rather summed up the day!

We headed off towards the Grand Palace, to do some filming of a tuk tuk trip. These are evil little three-wheeled motorbikes, which you can see all over Bangkok, whizzing through the traffic and leaving a trail of grey smoke behind them. Most of the ones around Khao San Road seem to be driven by scam-merchants, wanting to either take you to a jewellery shop, or asking three times the fare that you'd pay in an air-conditioned taxi. But there are good tuk tuk drivers, if you look hard enough, and Oh Oh found two for us to film with.

We spent the next hour going 1) in circles 2) mad and 3) round the bend! While the crew filmed our tuk tuk weaving through traffic, and mowing down pedestrians, we all kept smiling out of the sides of the vehicle "Oh look, there's the Grand Palace - again". Each time we got to the end of the shot, our driver would start to slow down until Ginny gave a commanding wave onward, and bellowed the words "One More Time" across three lanes of traffic! By the ninth time, we were all dizzy, and nearly unconscious from the exhaust fumes, and the driver was starting to wonder whether he'd make it home that night. Every time we went round the block, he'd yell out to his mates - a huge stream of Thai, with the words "One More Time" embedded in the middle.

The afternoon started with a boat trip down the klongs (the narrow canals that form the backstreets of parts of Bangkok), when the two previous 14-hour days caught up with the girls, and they fell asleep. But after a delicious, and very posh, lunch they perked up, just in time for Charlotte to do her closing interview for the camera. Set against the background of the river and Grand Palace, she waxed lyrical about squat toilets, street food and sharing a bedroom with all of us for the last 9 months.

We then had our final interview, and while all of this was happening Oh Oh played with Emily - brushing the hair of the Barbies, and learning the Emily Rules of Uno. By the time we'd finished, half of the staff of the restaurant seemed to be playing Uno and Barbies too!

We'd reached the end of our filming week, and Ginny rounded it off with a thank you meal for everybody.

Monday, March 22, 2004

The longest bus trip in the world

Well, we can't say that we weren't warned - we did know that the overland trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap would be terrible. But we also knew we had no choice - we really, really wanted to see Angkor Wat, and our budget couldn't stretch to 500 pounds for us to all fly there and back. So instead of the 1 hour flight, we endured the worst bus trip we've done as a family. We had a 7am start at Bangkok, where the bus picked us up outside our accommodation - even at that time in the morning, it was obvious that the air-conditioning was nearly dead, and the thousand mozzies in the bus made a meal of us all. But this was a backpacker-special, and we've noticed that tour operators can get away with things that the Thais would never put up with. The trip towards the border was slow - we were overtaken by everything, including a dustcart - and every few minutes we were passed by a coachload of cold Thais, while we sweated away in our sauna-bus. Finally, after 180 miles on motorways and highways, and 6hours, we pulled into the lunch spot, 6 miles from the border. Basically the trip is run by a bunch of people who want to get every penny possible out of you, so the stop was designed to get people to pay them to collect their Cambodia visas in advance. We didn't bother, because we knew we could get it instantly at the border, and for a lot less than we were being charged - but we still had to wait for 2 hours anyway. The finally, at 3 o'clock we were piled into another minibus and driven to the border.

The crossing was easy, and the visas issued quickly. We had to walk across the dusty bridge and road between the two countries, past the swish casinos that sit in no-mans-land. At the other side we our bus chap collected us, and got us into a tuk-tuk to go to their office for the minibus - and then got us back out of the tuk-tuk because the minibus had come to us! But that only went 300 yards, before dropping us at their office. And then we waited while everybody was sorted into different minibuses. Finally, at 4 o'clock we were off, in a jam packed midi-bus. The story ended at 11pm, when we arrived in Siem Reap, dusty and exhausted. For the full sotry of the trip, and our time in Cambodia, read our Cambodia diary

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Read Part Three which covers three weeks in the South of Thailand, on the islands and beaches.