A Sail Out of Old Siam

It is Chinese New Year in Bangkok. The evening sky is ablaze with fireworks, and in the streets giant paper dragons roar at each other in ritual combat. The entire population of the city, it seems, has poured into the narrow streets of old Chinatown, creating a crush so dense it can barely move. From a thousand sidewalk grills and woks waft the aromas of grilled fish, steamed dumplings and stir-fried noodles as Chinese rock ‘n’ roll blares from a hundred loudspeakers.

But for us there is only tranquillity. We are sailing up the mighty Chao Phraya River on a 50-year-old refurbished rice barge. Outfitted from stem to stern with the most modern amenities, the Manohra Song is a lush concerto of rich teak, mahogany and paduak woods, all so seamlessly carved it feels more like an elegant sculpture than a boat. The deck has spacious lounging and dining areas adorned with colorful hand-dyed silks, tribal cottons, rattan ceilings and creamy porcelain figurines, all creating a superbly Thai environment. At the ship’s bow rests a broad sun deck with where we sit on chaise lounges for hours, drinks in hand, watching the passing river traffic: long-tailed boats, water taxis, dredges, canoe-like skiffs and stout little tugboats improbably pulling long trains of barges loaded with cement, coal and teak logs from Myanmar.

Below deck there are four staterooms, each with private bath. Though not large, they have been cleverly designed to appear quite spacious thanks to high ceilings (rare in ships’ cabins) and sunlight pouring in from large windows. One romantic feature of the cabins is that the queen-size beds rest on elevated platforms that you climb up to. Once reclined, you have a perfectly decadent spot on which to lie in air-conditioned comfort and view the passing scenery at eye level, practically looking inside the stilted Thai houses on the riverbanks.

It’s hard to imagine the Manohra Song’s humble origins. Once it was merely one of countless teak barges sailing up and down the muddy Chao Phraya, hauling rice and other produce to the capital from the fertile fields of Thailand’s central plains. Most of the old barges have been long replaced by modern steel ones, but you can occasionally still see their decaying wooden hulls rotting in the sun along the riverbanks.

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The Manohra Song might have met a similar fate were it not for the chance meeting of some personalities with a Hollywood connection. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Sterling Silliphant, who lived in Thailand before he died, had long admired the stately lines of the old teak barges. Silliphant and fellow expatriate Skip Heinecke, a former Hollywood press agent and personal manager and now a Bangkok hotel executive, hatched a plan to sell a TV series that would be filmed in Bangkok. The hero, a private-eye, would live on a reconverted teak barge docked in front of Trader Vic’s; he would solicit business from the restaurant’s exotic assortment of tourists and international characters. The best part, the pair figured, would be that a TV network would pay all the expenses of reconverting an old hull the pair had bought into a luxury vessel. When it wasn’t being used for filming, it could take tourists on overnight river cruises.

But the series never got off the ground, and the unfinished hull sat in a Bangkok shipyard, where master craftsmen using century-old skills had been painstakingly bringing it back to life--at considerable expense.

To the rescue came Skip Heinecke’s brother Bill, CEO of the Minor Corp., a multimillion-dollar concern that operates more than 100 fast-food outlets throughout Southeast Asia and deals in everything from golf clubs to airplanes. Bill helped finance the project, which by now had ballooned to more than $400,000, almost twice the estimated cost. Skip’s wife, Kathleen, oversaw the design of the boat in and out, and at the end of 1994 the 60-foot-long craft made its debut.

“We wanted to create a glimpse into what Thailand was like at the turn of the century, when the great King Chulalongkorn, who was the son of the monarch made famous by ‘The King and I,’ first opened up Bangkok to foreigners and there was this amazing collision of East and West in art and culture,” Kathleen Heinecke later told me.

Such post-colonial luxury does not come cheap. Our one-night, round-trip voyage last January (during high season) cost an eye-popping $632. It seems even pricier when you consider we were visiting a country where the devalued baht was trading at an all-time high of nearly 50 to the dollar. We slept in deluxe hotel rooms for $65 a night, and dined in the finest restaurants, to the point of exploding, for less than $20 a meal.

But, along with the opposing thumb, the ability to rationalize is what separates us humans from the lower species. So my wife, Nancy, and I greedily calculated that we were saving so much on everything else we could afford to splurge on something that promised to be an experience we would long treasure. Besides, after a week of dealing with Bangkok traffic, so hopelessly gridlocked it could flip out the most serene Angelino, we were delighted to be in anything that guaranteed us forward movement.

For economy’s sake, we signed on for a one-way cruise only, down river from Ayutthaya back to Bangkok. This meant that one morning we met our guide, a sunny young lady named Vaewta Ondej, in the lobby of the Marriott Royal Garden Riverside Hotel, which operates the boat.

Ondej insisted we call her by her nickname “Leky,” which means “small one” in Thai and is a tribute to her being the youngest child in her family. We were ushered into an air-conditioned Mercedes and drove north for two hours to historic Ayutthaya.

Leky was all good cheer, as well as a fountain of knowledge. In between us grilling her about everything from her 3-year-old daughter to what American TV shows are popular here (NBA basketball and the Discovery Channel), she managed to weave a fascinating tale of ancient Siam, where there once existed a kingdom called Sukhothai. Over time, tales of Sukhothai reached legendary proportions, to the point that today it is revered by the Thai people, much like the British revere Camelot.

In 1650, its capital, Ayutthaya, was a great metropolis with a population larger than London or Paris. But in 1767 the city was besieged and sacked by the Burmese. The sad ruins of that conflict are all that remain of that ancient splendor.

After we arrived, Leky guided us around massive Phra Nakhon Sri Ayuttaya Historic Park, which has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It’s a powerful experience and, as we strolled among the crumbling chedi towers and beheaded statues, we could tell by the pinched tones in Leky’s voice that the carnage wrought here more than 200 years ago is still painfully fresh to many Thais.

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Other stops took us to the magnificent Bang Pa-In summer palace, with its gracious grounds and collection of opulent Italian, Victorian and Chinese mansions; then to Wat Phra Si Samphret, a temple with a 50-foot bronze statue of the seated Buddha. The temple was clogged with the faithful making offerings commemorating the Chinese New Year. The most dramatic moment came with the unfurling of long, yellow silken banners that were passed through the crowd so each worshiper could touch one as it fluttered over their heads before being hoisted up by cables and draped across the huge Buddha.

Finally, after a brief stop at a floating restaurant--for one of the few mediocre meals we had in Thailand--we were at last delivered, hot and tired, to the Manohra Song and the smiling visage of our steward, Nopporn Kuntawang, who offered us cocktails and freshly cut fruit.

Although the Manohra Song can carry eight people, we were fortunate enough to have to share the boat with just one other couple, a Norwegian computer software executive and his girlfriend, who was on break from her graduate studies in Australia. They had not seen each other for months, and were hoping for a romantic interlude.

They were the perfect companions for this trip. Friendly and chatty, with serviceable English, Ulrik and Ragnhild were fine dinner company, but not shy about letting us know that they were eager to spend time alone. Over hors’ d’oeuvres the four of us talked about everything from Bangkok’s unspeakable air pollution to the Asian economic crisis to the ongoing White House sex scandals. But somehow, watching the red ball of the sun etch pink flames on the river’s surface, feeling the soft wind in our faces and hearing the faint tinkling of temple bells in our ears, such weighty problems seemed distant.

Our candlelight dinner on the main deck was a multi-course feast. It began with yam som-o, a cool, citrusy pomelo salad mixed with warm shrimp and pork. This was followed by tom yam kung, Thailand’s popular sweet and sour soup, flavored with prawns and button mushrooms. Next came a hearty sweet-and-sour sea bass and chicken in a spicy green curry sauce. For dessert, we were offered tropical fruit and coconut jelly cakes with green guava pulp.

After hoisting a toast to our inventive chef, who doubled as the ship’s pilot, and his capable crew of two, we watched our boat slide gracefully into its nighttime berth alongside a remote temple.

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The next morning, Nancy chose to sleep in. But I woke early and was escorted by Kuntawang, the steward, for a visit to the Wat Bang Na, the temple where we had docked.

More than a guided tour, this was an opportunity to visit a working monastery that’s been in continuous service for 227 years. It was also a chance to participate in a “merit-making” ceremony, in which the monks give their blessings in return for offerings. Kuntawang had put together a wrapped package of food and kitchen items that he and I presented to the chief monk. I put my palms together and bowed as the kindly monk accepted our gift and thanked us on behalf of the poor that this food would nourish.

Kuntawang later explained that he had said a prayer for me, wishing me long life and many returns to this river. As we left, walking through the morning mist, past clusters of saffron-robed monks and trees filled with rare open-billed storks, I hoped his prayer would be answered.

Back on board ship, my fellow passengers were enjoying breakfast as the Manohra Song began the last leg of our journey. Only 20 miles upriver from congested Bangkok, we were still able to soak up the quiet, timeless life along the Chao Phraya. Our barge plowed through islands of floating hyacinths so thick that the captain had to repeatedly stop and reverse engines to free the propellers.

As the sun reached it’s noon zenith we began to see stilted houses and fishing sampans. Down river a bit more, these sights were replaced with lumber yards, concrete factories and huge Pepsi Cola bottling plants. The azure sky began to tint, then thicken with noxious greens and grays, and the only floating flora now were vast armadas of teak logs.

This had been a calming, restful cruise, and judging by the body language of our Norwegian friends, highly romantic. The four of us had to strain to come up with small negatives: the hors d’oeuvres were too Western (ham and olive on a cube of white bread) and, at these prices, perhaps it was a trifle chintzy to charge for soft drinks and club soda. It has been said that in life we are often judged by our entrances and exits. If that’s true, there can be no finer way to enter a city like Bangkok than gliding slowly in upon a vessel like the Manohra Song. We sailed past the opulent Grand Palace, the soaring splendor of Wat Arun and the legendary Oriental Hotel where, we imagined, the ghosts of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham looked up from their high-back wicker chairs and raised their gin and tonics in salute.

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GUIDEBOOK

Rice Barge Deluxe

Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from LAX to Bangkok, but Thai Airways and United have direct service (one stop, no change of planes), and Northwest, JAL, Korean, Cathay Pacific, Singapore, China Air and Eva Airways have connecting flights. Round-trip fares begin at $771, including tax.

Cruising on the Manohra Song: During high season, Jan. 1 to March 31, a two-day, one-night, one-way cruise up or down the Chao Phraya River is $316 per person, double occupancy ($400 for a single). The two-night, round-trip cruise is $632 per person ($800 per single). Prices include all meals, tours, guides and transfers. April 1 to Sept. 30, the one-way rate drops to $308 per person; a second night is discounted 50%. Contact Manohra Cruises at the Marriot Royal Garden Riverside Hotel, 257/1-3 Charoen Nakorn Road, Thonburi, Bangkok 10600, Thailand; telephone 011-66-2-476-0021-2, fax 011-66-2-460-1805 or 476-1120.

For more information: Tourism Authority of Thailand, 611 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004; tel. (800) THAILAND or (213) 461-9814, fax (213) 461-9834.