Another Lost Souls WriteUp

ADORNED OR THRUSTED OMELETTE???

Delayed for nearly an hour, having had to order a second bus and cram it to the gunwales with visitors from Vientiane and Udorn, BH3 still makes it to the Karaoke Palace in Klang (name rings a bell?) where further throngs from Pattaya Hash are already ensconced. Entertained and suitably drained by the sirens so kindly arranged by the Hares, the convoy makes its less-than-stately way to the doors of the Eastern Hotel, where more hordes from Phuket, Songkhla and even KL are trembling in anticipation of another Lavoie/Slater classic.

Ah, the Eastern Hotel! Eschewed by a minority of our more picky members, it remains its quaint and tawdry self. The menu is a delight. Who could resist the lure of ‘Adorned or Thrusted Omelette’, or perhaps ‘Freud Chiken Kneecap’?

During the course of the Great Day, yet more arrive from Pattaya with Ringworm and the Big-Nosed Bastard, and Pitak's welcome beer truck is not far behind. Another four cases are purchased and loaded, and the beer truck follows a bevy of songtaews into the unknown. Roads grow worse, vegetation denser and we arrive at ‘A’, possibly somewhere in Cambodia.

The run starts in now traditional manner. Those who had crouched behind the legendary Franklin's Wall a year ago, have ensured the Big-Nosed Bastard leads the attempted initial sniff. (Little incentive needed as ‘A’ is a girl’s school). As he disappears into the middle distance, the pack dives behind a suitable replacement wall while the BNB romps around calculating whether he has the bus fare back to Chantaburi.

On the subject of BNB, he tells me that a few weeks ago he found himself sitting next to a visitor on a boat. While lacing his shoes, he hears the visitor turn to him and enquire ‘What’s your Hash name then?’ ‘Big-Nosed Bastard’ he truthfully replies, then glances up to find himself looking at a disconcerted face incorporating the largest olfactory appendage this side of Cyrano de Bergerac. If ever an expression could convey ‘Are you taking the piss?’, this was it, BNB maintains. Perhaps we should rechristen him the Big-Nosed Pretender or the NPBNB (Not Particularly Big-Nosed Bastard).

Anyway, revenons a nos moutons as the Quebecois half of the Dream Team would say. Maintaining tradition again, Brian ‘Barnacle’ Barwick, whose suicide attempt last year involved flaying himself alive on razor-sharp rocks, goes for an early exit by garrotting himself on a taut throat-high wire in an orchard at the first check. First blood to the Hares!

As last year, the run is a revelation. Each new twist and turn reveals something entirely different. Orchards, paddy, saltfarms, fishfarms, sandy wastes, scrub and grassland. Sundrenched open spaces alternating with dark arboreal tunnels. Birdsong and the chugging of irrigation pumps. So many shades of green, then suddenly primary-coloured wats spire-capped with proud Khmer faces.

At one point in this glorious landscape the Sweeper Slater, who has mindfully shepherded his flock from the rear, is called upon to solve a particularly difficult check which threatens to eat into the evening. He can’t. We are all lost for a while, but we don’t care. This is champagne hashing.

The other Hare keeps popping up with refreshment at odd points on the run. Much to his surprise, it is an Old Fart ex-GM who is frequently first to greet him after a fluke string of three out of four check solutions. Living proof that legs and lungs are no substitute for a mature hashing brain. (No points for guessing who wrote this drivel).

A mazy run through parched fishponds leads to one of those joke bridges sadistic Hares revel in chucking in as a conversation piece. Rickety and coated in red ants, it does indeed encourage conversation of an unprintable ilk. Worse is to come as the next stretch of water affords no bridge at all. A spot of compulsory wading and the sodden pack hits tarmac. BNB and Maid Marion are surprised by a not particularly impressive cobra (Coccus Flaccidus Bushmani), before veering towards a mangrove-clad inlet where rudimentary fishing boats await us.

From this green jewel, we emerge into a vast estuarial pool across which tanned Khmer beauties are drying fish in the sun. Joost disappears again. He keeps doing this - before, during and after the run. What is he doing, we wonder? The Hares will later attempt to solve the mystery in a typically juvenile incident involving toothbrushes, doorknobs and much micturition on the Eastern Hotel's already dubiously soggy carpeting.

A quick final canter brings us to the sea. The circle venue offers one of those defining Amazing Thailand moments which the TAT can only parody. The dying sun reflected in the Gulf, the drowsy wash of waves glimpsed through feathery casuarinas, the scratch and boom of cicadas and bullfrogs - the remoteness and sheer unspoiledness of it all.

As ranking member, Maid Marion struts his stuff, making a good fist of controlling a circle of such diameter. But then, what's this cacophony of horsepower disrupting our littoral idyll? The hare's piece de resistance of course! Buoyed by the profusion of visitors fees, hasty arrangements have been made for the ultimate in On On Ons. A flotilla of boats moors offshore. Coloured balls are drawn from a sack. White for fishing boats, silver for banana boats, gold for parasailing, and off we fly to yet another hidden cove where a feast of seafood awaits us. Voluptuous wenches handpicked by the Hares from the exotic watering holes of downtown Chantaburi are there to serve us. I am handfed great chunks of crab and lobster plucked by the deft fingers of these dusky maidens. All washed down with an award-wining Ozzie Riesling looted from the cellars of Chantaburi's sole importer.

A great decision Hares to blow the visitors fees on wine, women and song. Sod all this anally retentive hoarding of funds.

We sing and intone (Black Pudding) our way back to town. The night is still young (and so is Barwick's). More sudden disappearances from the Dutch Maestro. Lavoie, the only individual who can do a passable imitation of a milling crowd, is everywhere. Tapping into local knowledge he leads a fortunate minority to Chantaburi's best luk tung venue, where I gape in wonder at his chat-up routine. Delivered in tortured Thai it goes something like ‘Fancy coming back for some pizza and a bonk? No? You don't like pizza?’ Or alternatively, ‘Those clothes would look great in a crumpled heap in the corner of my room’. And later, ‘I’m sorry. I though that was a Braille name-tag. Let me just feel it again’.

I have to leave. Only to spot him again disappearing up some dark stairwell at 3.00 a.m.

All who went last year, bar the extraordinary Stall and Sinister who found the Eastern ‘too seedy’ (sic), agreed it was Run of the Year. And so it is once more prime candidate. Please guys, do it again. It is, to quote a more desirable Turner than the turncoat of the Alternative Run, ‘Simply The Best’!

On On!