The Long Hitch Home

by Jamie Maslin

  Streaming across the first walkway to my left was a nightmare in action: an enormous pack of wild dogs, the front runners now heading my way at full-pelt along the empty road. And they weren’t happy.

  “Christ!” I said out loud as I began running in a panic back towards the road. My adrenaline hit red alert, taking hold of me as if I’d stuck my hand in a mains socket, jolting me from near-comatose to wide awake in an instant. If the pack reached the middle walkway before I did the road, then I’d be cut off, left with nowhere to run but back into the lot itself, where, as sure as day follows night, they would pursue me. And then I’d be royally fucked. Glancing back towards them as I sprinted, a blurred mass of hideous faces appeared out of the darkness, locking onto me like heat-seeking missiles, diminishing my thin advantage with every bound. One dog powered out in front, closing the gap and growling hideously. I pushed forwards, images of baying teeth flashing rapidly before me while barking rang in my ears. My mouth was dry and heart thundering in my chest as if about to explode.

  I cleared the walkway and stumbled onto the road. Ahead lay a small concrete barrier separating the road from the railway verge.

  Could the dogs scale it?

  I had no idea but there was nowhere else for me to go. I ran possessed towards it, every step feeling paradoxically light yet ridiculously heavy at the same time—like running from danger in a nightmare, where you’re wildly flailing your limbs about, commanding your body to move but it only responds in slow motion.

  The barking was right on top of me.

  I whipped my neck around, catching sight of the lead dog, eyes wild, full of destructive intent and blood lust, now only twenty feet away. With a mighty lunge I launched myself over the wall and stumbled onto the other side, throwing my pack down among the gravel.

  Would the dogs leap after me?

  I sure as hell wanted to dissuade any attempts. Panting like a steam engine, I grabbed the nearest rock to hand and hurled it with every ounce of aggression I could muster towards the closest dog—a powerful-looking Alsatian ready to rip me apart. I aimed to hit but soundly missed. The rock smashed on the ground in front of him, scattering debris across its surface. He didn’t back off but there was hesitation in his posture now and his advance ceased. Suddenly the rest of the pack joined the fray, venturing no further than the first but howling with such ferocity that they practically jumped off the ground with every vicious bark.

  “FUCK OFF!” I yelled back at them, launching a barrage of rocks.

  A few briefly scattered, yelping in response. Others jostled about wildly, feeding off their collective aggression, dynamically poised ready for a counter-attack, barking all the time.

  The wall, it seemed, was enough to hold them off for now. I decided to get the hell out of here. Grabbing my pack I ran along the verge behind the wall, hoping the empty lot was their territory and not beyond, that they wouldn’t follow me and find a way through to the other side, and would slink off instead back into the darkness. It was a theory that thankfully turned out to be correct. They stayed where they were. The aftershock of the encounter reverberated inside me for several minutes, as their vile-sounding cackles echoed in the distance.

  I’d had encounters with wild dogs before when hitching but this one seemed a particularly close call. Had I not spotted the pack when crossing the walkway, I would have plowed deep into their unlit territory, and only realized after it was too late. Once there in the darkness I would have had nowhere to run or hide. The consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

  By now it was 1:35 a.m. and I was utterly exhausted. More than ever I just wanted to sleep, but I was damned if I was going to bed down anywhere like that again. Scarcely anyone was about at this hour. Even the traffic on the nearby elevated highway had all but ceased, so when a solitary pickup truck with a hard cover over its cargo unit began to approach on the minor road next to the verge, I figured it was worth a try. I clambered over the barrier and didn’t really think it would stop, but it did.

  Behind the wheel was a young guy who spoke very little English but somehow managed to convey that he was driving to a hotel he worked at, further up the road. It didn’t sound especially far but any lift in the right direction was a bonus, so I got in. The motion of the drive almost had me asleep. Behind the cab, completely filling the enclosed cargo area, were row upon row of plastic vacuum-packs, filled with hundreds of T-shirts, compressed neatly into orderly bundles of what looked about twenty a pack. Their collective form resembled a mattress, at least in my current state. I asked if I could sleep there. It was a cheeky request for sure, but I was up for trying anything at this stage.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head with a smile as if surely I was joking.

  I tried again, this time with slightly more conviction and a dash of mendicancy.

  “No. Err, finish four.”

  “Until four?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  Result.

  After driving for a while we reached his hotel, a huge super-expensive-looking venue of the corporate variety, the sort of place that might specialize in holding conferences. We pulled in past two big manned security gates, and arrived in a car-lot on the side of the building. I got out and walked to the rear of the truck with the driver, who opened up the tailgate door. I climbed in.

  “Four,” he said with a wave of the hands and a look that stated, “That’s your lot.”

  I thanked him. He closed up and disappeared. My head near collapsed onto the comfy padding. As my eyes shut I was almost immediately asleep.

  In what seemed a cruelly brief period of time I was shaken awake.

  I couldn’t believe that over two hours had passed—and with good reason; they hadn’t. It was only 2:15 a.m. More than a little confused, I pointed the time out to the vehicle’s owner who was now wearing a bellboy-like hotel uniform. I couldn’t work out why, but there had been some change of plan. I would have to go elsewhere; namely, a little traffic-island security office positioned between the driveway in and the driveway out. Reluctantly, I followed the guy’s lead and trudged off towards it. Inside a glaringly bright lightbulb blazed away. It would have to remain on. Stationed here were two night-guardsmen who were clearly up to speed on the arrangement. With little further ado one of them pointed out where I could crash—the floor. Having been so sublimely comfy only moments ago, this came as a bitter disappointment, but I made the best of it and quickly got my bedroll out. Suddenly it dawned on me that this cloud might very well have a silver lining. Maybe now I could sleep, not, as previously arranged, until 4 a.m., but right through until dawn. I tried to convey as much, doing so with sleeping gestures, some clock pointing and a splattering of monosyllabic dialogue. It seemed to do the trick. I settled in for the night, closing my eyes to a squadron of mosquitoes that did their best to torment me with their high-pitched wails.

  Before I knew it I was being shaken again, this time by one of the guards. He handed me a little note:

  4 o’clock, and good morning. Have a good trip in adventure if you problem in trip to call 085-1557*** My name is Ism. Good Luck.

  It was still completely dark outside. I tried my best to reason with the guards but it was a no-go from the start. They just kept pointing at the piece of paper. I had to leave. As I got up to go I discovered my lower lip had a great big swollen lump on it. A mosquito bite. Or maybe several. It felt like I’d taken a punch from Owen. Heading out the front of the hotel, I plonked myself down on a bench to formulate a plan. Sitting here I couldn’t help but gaze back longingly into the hotel’s wide extravagant lobby area with its multitude of comfy-looking sofas. It was quite the temptation. Could I somehow slip in unnoticed? It looked big enough, and many of the sofas were located far from the reception staff’s gaze. It was worth a crack. Entering the expansive lobby, I headed for some sofas off to one side when, all of a sudden, I felt someone grab a hold of my arm from behind. I turned around and it was Ism; standing there with a look of abject horror on his face. Nex
t to him was a young colleague.

  “What is it that you want?” asked his colleague in good English.

  Was this possibly the author of my note?

  “Err, I just came to say goodbye,” I said.

  A moment of awkward silence hung in the air.

  “Goodbye then,” I said breaking the deadlock, punctuating it with a wave.

  I turned around and left.

  For a while I became better acquainted with the bench outside. Here I stretched out but I couldn’t really sleep, so just mulled things over for a while. Hadn’t Ism said that he finished at 4 a.m.? It had been a good bit after that when I’d seen him in the lobby, so why the urgency to vacate at that time? I didn’t know, and probably spent far too long pondering it. I was outside again, and that was all that mattered. Despite being tired, I was also restless now. I got back on my feet and started walking.

  Not far up the road and I arrived opposite somewhere that would have been the perfect place to sleep, had I known about it earlier—a giant airport terminal, situated just beyond the elevated highway. (Although I had no idea where I was at the time, I learned later that this was Don Muang Airport, one of two international airports serving Bangkok). At nearly 5 a.m., it hardly seemed worth it now. The sky was beginning to show the first signs of getting light so I trundled on. Eventually I found what I was looking for—a feasible place to hitch onto the highway. I decided to crash here until dawn, doing so on a stretch of gravel by the roadside.

  * * *

  It was only noon but already the day felt long advanced. I was drenched in sweat from the terrific heat that grew greater by the minute and seemed to suck the strength right out of me. I hiked up a long straight road that dissected the heart of a crowded unknown town. I couldn’t say with any certainty exactly where I was, but my general direction and rough whereabouts were clear enough. I was relatively close to an attraction I really wanted to visit, the ancient Khmer temple, Phimai. Afterwards I planned to continue north to the border with Laos where tomorrow I intended to go to the Chinese consulate to apply for a visa—the first “proper” one required thus far. (For Australia I’d got an electronic one before leaving England; in Indonesia I’d got one on arrival; as a Brit I didn’t require one for Malaysia; at Thailand I’d got one at the border; and I planned to do the same for Laos). Instead of going to Laos, I’d flirted with the notion of heading east into Cambodia then traveling north through Vietnam but it just seemed too much of a detour off route. Back on Koh Samui I had consulted Owen, who’d traveled practically everywhere in Southeast Asia, as to the main attractions in neighboring Cambodia.

  “Angkor Wat, obviously. Or you can hire an AK-47 and blow away a cow.”

  “Do people really do that?” I asked, appalled, incredulous, but nevertheless intrigued.

  “Apparently very popular with the Yanks. Rumor has it you can also do it with an RPG.” (Rocket Propelled Grenade).

  That sure as hell didn’t appeal, but the famous Khmer temple, Angkor Wat, certainly did. In a sense, today’s planned destination, Phimai, was to make up for missing out on this. Phimai was Thailand’s largest Khmer temple and although not as big as Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, it was older and in the same style. For the temple of Angkor Wat, think the film Tomb Raider, where much of it was shot.

  As I walked through the town, I cast my trusty upward thumb into the waters of the thronging approaching traffic, but despite a few nibble-like inquisitive glances, none pulled over for the full bite, except several local buses known as “bemos”—little vans with pew-like internal benches stretching along their rear length—that I waved off. I continued up the road, convinced that I could get a free ride. I hadn’t succumbed to catching a bus through a town or city yet (with the exception of Darwin where I caught one to the yacht club) so was determined to only do so if absolutely necessary. It was a fair size place, heaving with vehicles and people, plenty of whom stared my way, but from what I could see of it, it didn’t appear so big as to preclude crossing it on foot. Eventually, after about forty minutes’ slog, I got another ride. This time from a young guy who dropped me on the town’s outskirts.

  Once there, getting on the move again proved a formality, with two middle-aged women picking me up. Both were caked in make-up and wore glitzy stick-on nails. After little in the way of introductions, the driver asked me—rather strangely to my mind—to guess her age.

  “Err, thirty-five?” I said, lying through my teeth.

  “I am fifty-two,” she boasted.

  “Goodness. You don’t look it,” I said. Again lying.

  Her clone in the passenger seat sat with two rolled up laminated posters on her lap, which she proudly unraveled for me. Both were of the Thai king.

  “In Thailand we love our king,” she said dreamily.

  From the glove compartment she produced a CD of songs recorded by none other than His Royal Highness, the King of Thailand.

  “Would you like to hear?”

  It was super-bland and eminently forgettable.

  It proved an odd ride, but it took me to the turning for Phimai, a small but bustling town that had grown up around the temple, which I arrived at after a long walk, and a short lift on the back of a pickup truck.

  Although mainly obscured by trees and foliage of a surrounding parkland, Phimai Temple revealed tantalizing glimpses of her ragged splendor from the sidewalk skirting this green exterior. Milling around outside the main entrance was a large exuberant group of school kids whose teacher was having a frightful time trying to marshal the little urchins into an orderly line. By the entranceway congregated a bunch of tourists, Thais and Westerners alike, the latter comprising a small tour group of senior-aged vacationers, several of whom wore matching ill-fitting baseball caps. Also present, cloaked in yellow robes, were about a dozen Buddhist monks. Buying a ticket for 100 Baht (about three dollars) I entered the park, and in so doing stepped back in time.

  Ancient paving led through ordered greenery towards a distant row of rusty-colored stone buildings, decorated along their façade with gaping stone windows and elegant columns. Behind this prelude lay the main event; three towers, two shaped like arrowheads, the third crumbled into a decrepit remnant of its former glory. Between here and there were smoky-gray pillars and multiple sunken stone beds—mysterious indents in the ground resembling lavish drained swimming pools. I stepped into a cavernous entranceway and proceeded though a shady alley to a wide open sanctuary behind. Here the magnificence of the site became apparent. The best preserved of the three towers stood centrally, dominating the surroundings. It was a triumph of layered complexity, bedaubed and emboldened with countless pointed protrusions, rising from its extremities like little flames licking at the sky. Multiple stairways led up into the towers and their adjourning buildings, but for now I chose to remain outside.

  Phimai temple was constructed by the mighty Khmer Empire around the tenth and eleventh centuries, making it a century older than its more famous cousin Angkor Wat, the two once marking different ends of the ancient Khmer Highway, an important trade and pilgrimage route that stretched 140 miles between the two sites. Although the Khmer were Hindu, Phimai was built as a Mahayana Buddhist temple, making it unique among other Khmer temples of the same period, which, although closely related architecturally, were built as Hindu sanctuaries.

  Eventually I moved on to the largest tower, climbing a set of well-worn stone stairs and stepping into the structure’s shady heart. It was far less spacious than I imagined, and less embellished too, just a simple main chamber of basic stone-block walls and flooring, contrasting with the intricacies of outside. Providing interest in this plain interior was a large solitary statue of the Buddha, regarding the world from the lotus position, hands cupped upwards holding a bouquet of orange Chrysanthemums. Several visitors congregated in the cool interior, but all moved about with quiet respect. After a good look around, I explored a sort of cloistered walkway adorned along much of its length with beaded columns, then headed onto t
he smaller of the two intact towers. Inside was another Buddha in similar surroundings to the first, except here the light streaming though the tower’s open doorway cast the inner chamber a warm honey color, imbuing it with a faint glow.

  I spent a good long while exploring the rest of the site, delving into every nook and cranny, and soaking in its grandeur. When the sun had descended in the sky, and long shadows stretched across the ruins, I decided to get on the move again.

  One ride got me back onto the main road heading north, and another to a T-junction about fifteen minutes further on. It was a good spot to wait, and although already late afternoon, I was confident I could reach Laos, and hopefully its capital just beyond the border, by tonight. Thirty minutes of being stared at like an alien from outer space by passing motorists followed, but eventually a double-cab pickup that had just driven past began reversing towards me. Inside sat two girls in their twenties.

  “Where are you going?” asked the driver, a petite and pretty girl wearing big “celebrity” sunglasses.

  “Khon Kaen,” I said, naming the next town on my map, so as to at least “lock in” a short ride. “What about you?”

  “We are going to That Phanom.”

  I scanned my Google Maps print off but couldn’t see it, so asked where it was near.

  “It is just across the border from Laos.”

  I was chuffed, absolutely delighted, and promptly got in.

  “I am Mao,” said the driver. “And this is my friend, Mai.”

  “Jamie.”

  We all shook hands and promptly got moving. Mao spoke quite good English, whereas Mai—an arty-looking girl with a haircut that rose up in a central point—spoke none.

  A few typical ice-breakers flowed between us including each other’s occupations.