I arrived in Bangkok around 5pm local time on Friday after a largely uneventful flight… the only major incident was the two hours I invested in Goal 2 – Living The Dream… Unfortunately it was more like living the nightmare and I can completely understand why this has not had a widespread cinematic release yet… it’s pants.
Got into my cab at the airport surprised to see drizzle and the temperature gauge only showing 24 degrees… I learnt two important things from cabbie… One – that going anywhere that isn’t a 15 minute walk takes around an hour by cab. Two- that I should expect rain at around 5pm every night during the wet season.
Not that you want to be taking too many 15 minute walks… the pavements are so uneven that I looked like I was taking my first tentative steps onto a bouncy castle and I fully expected to appear at the AFC Hotel to pick up my media pass looking like I’d just played a full lunchtime in the school playground with grazed knees and sprained wrist from one too many concrete tumbles. I arrived in one piece though and after a short false start I was issued my pass and headed over to the Aussie team hotel for their last press conference… both Dukes and Arnie appeared in good spirits and relaxed and handled the press conference with a few laughs for good measure… Dukes having to stress he was joining to the Singaporean journalist after saying the boys were out clubbing the previous night. Bangkok really is the assault on the senses that the guide books tell you and there's never a dull moment with us seeing a bike almost collected by a car with both riders thrown off avoiding the collision... only to see the next bike to weave through the mess a father with his three young children perched at various angles on a moped none of them sporting helmets... crazy stuff!
I then dropped into Green & Gold Army HQ at the Arnoma hotel where they have a sports bar as base camp complete with barmaid wearing a fake Socceroos kit. After sharing a few quiet and very pleasant beers with some of the BWB I left before they turned into a few more loud ones (the beers not the BWB) and tried (unsuccessfully) to pick up my match tickets from the Ticketmaster office… I have real fears for the scenes later today when thousands in the same boat as me are queuing for their tickets at the stadium with kick off fast approaching... it really is a little ridiculous that you can’t pick up tickets for next weekend’s games in the city if you pre-ordered yet could quite easily have bought tickets there and then for the same games and walked away with them.
I then returned to my hotel with every intention of re-joining the GGA for their 5pm reception but as my cabbie had so rightly warned me 24 hours previous at 4.45 precisely a massive monsoon swept through for a good couple of hours so I decided to go straight to the Kho San road to meet up with some of the Cove contingent who had chosen Gullivers as the venue to watch the opening game….after my perilous cab ride there in torrential rain (it took an hour naturally) I was relieved to be finally seeing some football… bar a few Nikon flags around the place there are very visible signs there’s a major football tournament going on here… certainly the city didn’t stop for the host nation…with 80,000 cabs on the road it’s difficult to comprehend anything that could make Bangkok stop. The crowd was smaller than expected… maybe the locals know the weather patterns too well and we saw none of the opening ceremony as ESPN didn’t cover it but I’m guessing it was a pretty soggy affair. The game showed us that thankfully the Rajamangala stadium clearly has fantastic drainage with the pitch showing no real signs of the deluge that preceded the game and secondly we leant that Graham Arnold was probably right when he said earlier that Oman may be the toughest test of the group stages. Neither Thailand nor Iraq would have instilled any fear in the Socceroos although Iraq did show promised in patches particularly in the first half. Thailand for all their second half possession and promising situations really didn’t have the final ball delivery or cutting edge up front to worry anyone on the group. Two other lessons I learnt last night were that Chang beer is 7% and waiter service bars get you drunk quicker.
It’s now Sunday morning and if I have two hopes for today… the monsoon takes Sunday’s off and that a healthy contingent of Thai Ticketmaster staff at the stadium don’t.
Time will tell…
Asian Cup Cult Hero - Contender #1 - The Jack-in-The-Box Thai Goalkeeper with the Jaggeresque rock star haircut - further investigation reveals his name to be... Kosin HATHAIRattanakool. You couldn't make it up!
Got into my cab at the airport surprised to see drizzle and the temperature gauge only showing 24 degrees… I learnt two important things from cabbie… One – that going anywhere that isn’t a 15 minute walk takes around an hour by cab. Two- that I should expect rain at around 5pm every night during the wet season.
Not that you want to be taking too many 15 minute walks… the pavements are so uneven that I looked like I was taking my first tentative steps onto a bouncy castle and I fully expected to appear at the AFC Hotel to pick up my media pass looking like I’d just played a full lunchtime in the school playground with grazed knees and sprained wrist from one too many concrete tumbles. I arrived in one piece though and after a short false start I was issued my pass and headed over to the Aussie team hotel for their last press conference… both Dukes and Arnie appeared in good spirits and relaxed and handled the press conference with a few laughs for good measure… Dukes having to stress he was joining to the Singaporean journalist after saying the boys were out clubbing the previous night. Bangkok really is the assault on the senses that the guide books tell you and there's never a dull moment with us seeing a bike almost collected by a car with both riders thrown off avoiding the collision... only to see the next bike to weave through the mess a father with his three young children perched at various angles on a moped none of them sporting helmets... crazy stuff!
I then dropped into Green & Gold Army HQ at the Arnoma hotel where they have a sports bar as base camp complete with barmaid wearing a fake Socceroos kit. After sharing a few quiet and very pleasant beers with some of the BWB I left before they turned into a few more loud ones (the beers not the BWB) and tried (unsuccessfully) to pick up my match tickets from the Ticketmaster office… I have real fears for the scenes later today when thousands in the same boat as me are queuing for their tickets at the stadium with kick off fast approaching... it really is a little ridiculous that you can’t pick up tickets for next weekend’s games in the city if you pre-ordered yet could quite easily have bought tickets there and then for the same games and walked away with them.
I then returned to my hotel with every intention of re-joining the GGA for their 5pm reception but as my cabbie had so rightly warned me 24 hours previous at 4.45 precisely a massive monsoon swept through for a good couple of hours so I decided to go straight to the Kho San road to meet up with some of the Cove contingent who had chosen Gullivers as the venue to watch the opening game….after my perilous cab ride there in torrential rain (it took an hour naturally) I was relieved to be finally seeing some football… bar a few Nikon flags around the place there are very visible signs there’s a major football tournament going on here… certainly the city didn’t stop for the host nation…with 80,000 cabs on the road it’s difficult to comprehend anything that could make Bangkok stop. The crowd was smaller than expected… maybe the locals know the weather patterns too well and we saw none of the opening ceremony as ESPN didn’t cover it but I’m guessing it was a pretty soggy affair. The game showed us that thankfully the Rajamangala stadium clearly has fantastic drainage with the pitch showing no real signs of the deluge that preceded the game and secondly we leant that Graham Arnold was probably right when he said earlier that Oman may be the toughest test of the group stages. Neither Thailand nor Iraq would have instilled any fear in the Socceroos although Iraq did show promised in patches particularly in the first half. Thailand for all their second half possession and promising situations really didn’t have the final ball delivery or cutting edge up front to worry anyone on the group. Two other lessons I learnt last night were that Chang beer is 7% and waiter service bars get you drunk quicker.
It’s now Sunday morning and if I have two hopes for today… the monsoon takes Sunday’s off and that a healthy contingent of Thai Ticketmaster staff at the stadium don’t.
Time will tell…
Asian Cup Cult Hero - Contender #1 - The Jack-in-The-Box Thai Goalkeeper with the Jaggeresque rock star haircut - further investigation reveals his name to be... Kosin HATHAIRattanakool. You couldn't make it up!
