Football Madness...

Currently Bangkok is holding some of the football matches for the AFC Asian Cup. Somehow somebody managed to convince me that it was a good idea to go watch the Thailand V Australia game. The idea seemed a good one at first; give Nick a chance to watch footie and go support the locals and all that, also any sporting event involving Aussies is usually a laugh. However, when it came to the day of the event and we were trying to work out how to get to this new international stadium, we found that there was no way of getting clear directions of how to get there, no website (including the organizers of the competition) had a map for directions. The only things we did quickly learn was that there was no form of public transport to anywhere in the region of the ground, and that every person you ask or site you search gives you different instructions on how to get there.

After deciding on a route and packing our rain macs we set off under an ominously darkening sky. After a bit of grumbling we managed to convince the first taxi driver that came along that the journey wouldn’t take too long and he should take us all the way. As the sky got darker and the traffic slowed, our driver began to mutter the word ‘traffic’ under his breathe with increasing frequency and started subtly pointing out the benefits and convenience of all the motorbike taxis going past us. It didn't take us long to realize that we’d chosen one of the most congested and roundabout ways we could have gone.

We arrived at the ground nearly two hours later and having paid nearly double the asking amount to the taxi driver for his reasonably quiet grumblings, the skies had well and truly opened and the rain looked set in to stay. It seems that the Thai approach to organization and safety at sporting events is predictably bad. The first gate into the stadium grounds that we walked past was closed and had men, women (many in high heels) and children climbing about 8 feet to get over. There were no officials around and we thought for one moment that perhaps this was the done things and that the gates had been closed early. After wandering around the ground we found the correct way in and then joined a queue to get into the stadium itself. I use the word 'queue' in the loosest sense of the term as it seems that in Asia that queue means that 30% of people stand in what could be called a line and happily ignore the other 70% who stroll straight up to form a widening mass at the front. Now being British and from a nation of expert queuers, I find this highly irritating, more for the fact that no-one else sees fit to stop others from doing this. Following that old 'if you can't beat them join them' rule, we abandoned the queue and walked to the front. We got there just at the point everybody else decided to do the same, the result being that around 200 people were all trying to cram through a gap about half a metre wide. Thanks to Nick we got through just at the point it looked like it was turning into a crush.

Once inside the stadium things were a little better. We quickly realized why our seats were so much cheaper than some of our friends, we had no roof and the rain was still falling. We were sat in the Aussie section but it seemed that there was little segregation between the Thai and Aussie areas, in fact they were pretty much mixed. The Aussie supporters were wearing yellow to match their team, but as it was Monday the Thais were all also wearing yellow even though their team colours are red (more about the yellow obsession some other time). It was hard to tell the supporters apart.

The match was better than we expected and the Thais actually played some pretty good football. It got really exciting in the second half and even though the Aussies were one up it looked like the Thais were going to score. Anyway, after 75 mins we decided to make an early exit to avoid a 2-3 hour journey home. In the last 15 minutes after we left Australia scored 3 more times. Shame we missed the goals, but glad we missed the noisy and rather obnoxious Aussie supporters next to us bragging. Missing the goals was worth it anyway when the journey that took us 2 hours on the way there took us 20 minutes on the way back.