MY WORLD CUP QUEST: KHAO SAN ROAD IS THE CENTRE OF THE BACKPACKING ...

16/32 WORLD CUP TEAMS COMPLETED

GOOD LUCK, BAD LUCK, RITUAL AND JINXES

There was quite a few stepping stones to cross in getting to Argentina. I had asked Entrepreneur to put me in touch with someone Polish to watch the game with. While we spoke Entrepreneur mentioned an Argentinian friend of his. I talked to him over Facebook and he was very friendly. However he was not keen to meet me for the first game. He told me he had a ritual to conduct with his close friend regarding the match. Argentina drew the first game 1-1 with Iceland. When I contacted him for the second time he again declined to meet me as he and his friend had a ritual to perform that they needed privacy for. The poor result in the first game meant that they were taking it very seriously for the second game. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked friends what this mysterious ritual could be. After recently watching the TV show Treme, all I could thing about was a chicken being sacrificed. Google revealed to me that ritually slaughtering a chicken is not just a part of New Orleans witchcraft. It is a worldwide phenomenon from Jewish sinners to Taiwanese courts. (Google with caution).

Having exhausted my chicken revelation to death, I soon returned to Argentinian superstitions. My Facebook friend was not alone in his behaviour. Pilot informed me that it is quite common for Argentinian fans to have a ritual to prepare for watching or playing football. During the last World Cup the hashtag #cabalamundial (WorldCupRitual) was trending on Twitter. In 1990, the goalkeeper for the Argentinian football team urinated on the pitch in the World Cup to have a little luck swing his way. It worked. He saved numerous penalties. Superstition is serious business.

I thought I might need to start my own ritual when Ritual Man got back to me. He suggested that I should contact a hostel in Khao San Road that was run by Argentinians. He also put me in touch with Connector. Connector was planning to go to the same hostel to watch the game. At last I had an Argentinian to sit with and a venue to go to and no chickens had been slaughtered for the purpose.

LOST IN SPACE

Khao San Road is a unique place and its development as a backpacker mecca reflects the chameleon nature of Bangkok as a whole. The street was once a quiet inner city street not unlike 10,000 others in Bangkok. But its proximity to Thailand's most famous historical buildings made it a perfect location for savvy locals to house pioneering backpackers in the 70's and 80's as Thailand opened itself up in the post Vietnam War world. By the 90's the street had become a place where adventurous Thai students came to gape at black skinned or blue eyed or blonde-haired foreigners. By the turn of the century what was once a Thai street with the occasional intrepid tourist was now becoming a street of foreigners sprinkled with the occasional Thai tourist. Backpackers now flock to this 400 metre long street in record numbers. Khao San Road the street has has become Khao San Road the area as the guesthouses, bars, tattoo parlours, t-shirt stalls and pad thai hawkers have mushroomed out into the greater Banglamphu area. If you actually want to sleep on Khao San road for a night then you better bring some earplugs. The street is fully pedestrianised on most nights. It can be a struggle to walk through the carnival of life that is Khao San on a Saturday night.

I arrived on Khao San a few minutes before the Argentina game was due to start. I wandered through the crowd of scantily clad tourists and felt old. I first step foot on Khao San Road as a 25 year old. I felt old then too. In the centre of Khao San road two bars opposite one another were colliding like galaxies and merging in the middle ground. There was whiskey-filled buckets swinging overhead and minor collisions between those that had started drinking at 2pm and and those that had started at 8pm. The crowd moved erratically like choppy waves. It was like a silent disco without the silence. There was multiple blaring speakers sitting mere metres from each other playing different music to the same people. I was in the centre of it but felt more like a black hole than a shining sun. I was plucked from the noisy turmoil by Connector.

SHE KNOWS A PLACE WHERE NO CARS GO

We were soon in a gloriously quiet lane about two metres wide and narrowing as we walked. If she was leading me to my death at least my ears would die in peace. We didn't so much pop out somewhere as arrive at a place hidden from the chaos. The alleyway was dark but peaceful. No cars are ever going here in one piece. The small hostel with a glass entrance allowed me to see a throng of people scrunched inside. There were more than thirty pairs of shoes scattered around the wooden benches on the small veranda. Connector introduced me as The Irishman. An ironic cheer went up from the room as I tried to say hello to 30 strangers in one sheepish sway of the hand. I was happy to be a satellite in this cosy solar system. This room made sense. Everyone except I on the periphery was Argentinian. They all faced the same direction. They all sang as one. They moved to the ups and downs of the game as a group. Ripples rather than splashes. Before I started this quest, this was the atmosphere I had imagined as ideal. Everyone from a country in one location. Deadly silences followed by dramatic yelps. Outpourings of grief followed by well timed jokes. The ideal location is to watch a game in a place that looks as though it has been plucked from the homeland and laid down on the swampy soil of Bangkok. This was it. This was Argentina in Khao San. I was the welcome tourist.

LUCK OUT

Argentina's World Cup hopes began to fall apart as the game wore on. Connector asked me at half time if I am bad luck. I thought I was rumbled. Had she read about my horrible run of luck in the opening week here? https://steemit.com/sports/@highselfesteem/my-world-cup-quest-crushing-minnows-one-at-a-time

Maybe she was just being a superstitious Argentinian wary of a disturbance in her rituals. She grilled me until I told her that not all the teams I had seen had lost. I'm not sure I convinced her with my technically correct truth. Not all taxis in Bangkok are yellow, just most of them. She seemed happy to hear I would be watching the next game with an Icelander.