Qudos to ABB and his henchmen in BKK for organising a highly enjoyable outstation run across the Chao Praya in the middle of nowhere. Meet up at Red Planet was on time and Poo managed to convince Alice and Scooby to pay Male Hash membership fees too. The BTS journey to Bang Wa was not without its funny moments:certain CNX identities struggling to understand the cash for coins windows and how to put their ticket in the barrier. One sickly Antipodean took three minutes, two machines and one schoolgirl to accomplish the task of passing the barrier. Couldn’t go under it…
Once arrived at Bang Na, Mr Squirlyface was there to meet us and sort us into passing taxis for the short ride to the pier. On the motocy ferry across the wide Chao Praya where Noriega and ABB were waiting.
Water was bought, hare brief simple, and we were off, running on white strips and checks were circles on small yellow notelets with a few yellow strips to pull off and scatter.
Down the road we went and into the little communities on the isthmus, running on elevated concrete boardwalks above the primeval swamp and soon through some lower lying jungly bits. HRA, Jungle Chim and Pigshit seemed to be doing the FRB work but never got far ahead as the circles were sometimes tricky and other parts seemed to lack a strip or five of paper. Walking with Sticky and Scooby to start with, Noriga and Mr Squirlyface joined us and then Scooby dropped back and the locals with him. Plan seemed to be if SD died, he’d phone ABB and Noriega would tell a motorcycle guy where to take the stiff.
Some of the jungle trails started to cross slimy creeks and soon most hashers had soaking shoes and dark oozing shit up their legs. The 3 foot transition from jungle to boardwalk and vice versa was extremely trying with my groin/lower tummy strain issues but walking at a fair luck and even slow jogging seemed OK.
After about 5 km we came out of the jungly bit onto a raid and voila, a beer stop manned by the inimitable Virginia Slim aka Vagina Slime.
Everyone headed back towards the swamp despite an opt out easy option. Everyone apart from Sticky’s phone, who decided to take an unknown trail and was never seen again. Here we got stuck. It was getting dark, the trail crossed a creek to a circle. Ahead Piggee found a terrible pole bridge over water but no paper. Everywhere else was just shiggy, no obvious paths.
Tension rose, the hare was dissed and Piggee called the Canuck tormenter for advice. Back and left into thick jungle we went and over some horrid grass or reed covered path, hacked through shiggy with nasty hidden drops under the greenery. The VC would have been proud of this section. I was not really enjoying this bit, we were all tired, it was dusk, gloomy and we’d chugged a Tiger. Along an invisible path thru bushes above a stream we continued until some welcome signs of civilisation, lights, concrete sleepers to run on and then a road. Finally the end.
Cold beer in coolers, some recovery time, Dunkin Donuts suddenly joined us having run the whole trail 30 mins behind us, and into a tiny dragontail fully laden with ten, to cross back over the wide, dark river to Klong Toey.
A lively and good humoured circle in the Sanitation Dept’s yard, followed by tasty local fayre at the IMF restaurant back in the market area. Further details of the night’s activities are unavailable. Qudos to ABB, Noriega/go/gay, Mr Squirlyface, Virginia Slim and DD. An excellent outstation run although numbers were down on last year. And there was no tee shirt. A great reintroduction to H3 in LoS. Taste buds whetted.