The worst part of the day was getting up. This was at 4.30, and after breakfast of cold water and fruit, I raced down to Bangkok town to meet Pong outside the offices of the Thai Electric Company. He was ready and waiting, but I had arrived before Achit, who was coming with us, and who had been the Chief Engineer at the Paper Factory in the time when we were released and roaming Kamburi as newly-freed men. At 6.15 Achit arrived running, and the bus, a converted giant jeep with a blue and yellow flag with Pong’s initials on it flapping wildly before us, careered out of the town, over the temporarily repaired sector of the Rama VI bridge, and out onto the Nakorn Patom Road.

For the first time since returning to Siam, I soon felt that I was back in the country I once had known so well, for the trickery and futility and vitality of Bangkok was behind us, and we were almost immediately hurling along in peasant country. The road was of earth, and the bridges narrow, and although this was the bus’s maiden trip in its new role, we drove at a steady 50 kilometres an hour.

After about an hour we reached a ferry. We got out and lit cigarettes, and were told that they were repairing one of the ferry’s floats on the far bank. No mention of ‘time’ was given, of course; but Pong suggested we go across ourselves, and the bus would follow soon. We took his advice, and I found myself drinking tea and coffee simultaneously in a little atap shack, just like any canteen or Thai shed that we’d seen anywhere up the line in 42 to 45. The same smells, the same Chinese owners of the shack, the same filthy floor, the same pi-dogs [pariah dogs] round our legs: it was just like coming home.

We cut a long wait short, we were held up for two hours, and in order to persuade the coolies to do anything other than smoke and gossip, Pong and I went slowly over and tried to embarrass them by watching them. Otherwise we’d have been there all day.

The road to Nokorn Patom was vile. Though there were patches of mud, the ruts were generally deep and dry, and the hardness made the driver more cautious, and the journey more painful. We passed many Thai-type buses, skips or vegetables drunkenly packed on top of them stuck wretchedly in the mire. Our own vehicle was ex-U.S. Army, and inspite of its rough handling, and the fact that our driver had to fight and coax his steering wheel, we got through all right, and after roughly forty minutes we saw the tip of the pagoda of Nakorn Patom above the rain trees that bordered the dusty road.