Some people, I'm convinced, find themselves in Trat because they didn't spring for the up-to-date guidebook. A few years ago, to get to the island of Koh Chang, or to cross into Cambodia, a traveler had to pass through Trat. Now, buses run direct from Bangkok to the ferry docks and the border crossing. The newest Lonely Planet, or Frommers, or Fodors, or whatever travel guide you have, will tell you as much. They do recommend spending a night in Trat --time permiting --but they let you know that there is not much to do.
I suppose that the guidebooks, in their infinite wisdom, are right; there isn't much to do here. Trat is a quiet town, and not very big. And yet, I never find myself lacking for anything to do. If you can pull yourself out of, not the traveler's mentality, but of the guidebook mentality, you will find plenty to see and do in Trat. The reward of stumbling upon a surprising destination is immeasurably greater than arriving to find it just as your guidebook promised.
One road leads out of Trat and runs alongside the river for a few kilometers. The whole way is lined with piers, and late in the afternoon the fishing boats return from sea, and they unload their catch. The haul, staring up at you from huge piles of twitching fins and shimmering scales, is sorted, weighed and packed. Women sit atop piles of green netting, mending, laughing, and chattering the time away. The fishermen drink beers around the back of pickup trucks and they look purposeful, but they don't say much. Towering over everything, big fishing boats painted in bright blues, reds and greens sit in dry dock, their rigging silhoutted against the afternoon sky.
It is not a museum, or even an attraction. It is not a static scene that thousands gather to view in parodied form. It is life, and much different from our own. When you are there, you are a part of it. You can influence the scene, and you inevitably do. Streams of Thai reach your ears and you pick up "farang, farang" (foreigner) over and over. Looks of confusion and curiosity meet your eyes, but immediately turn into wide grins, if only you smile at them. It is a unique scene, the kind that can't conform to the guidebook format, but it is the very reason we travel.
In any direction going out from Trat you can find similar (but of course not identical) scenes. Further down the same river but along a different road, it meets the sea in a dramatic estuary of dense mangrove forest. Tangles of small tidal channels weave in and out of the twisted roots and green canopy as the river fans out, wider and wider into the sea. A small town south of Trat has built a nice walkway through the Mangroves, and it's a nice afternoon walk in the shade. In the evening, troops of monkeys emerge to play around you. The walkway is nice, but the town is stunning. It's the sort of place that you think the tourism beaureau put there for your viewing pleasure, but didn't tell anybody else about. Along the main channel of the river, colorful fishing boats bob at their moorings. Much of the town is built over tidal mangrove forest, and rickety walkways of bamboo and driftwood connect houses to the newer elevated concrete walkways that wind between houses and shops. An old mosque's minaret reflects in the still water with the purple evening sky and the first stars. A sign on the mosque assures you that it is 200 years old, but it is to see how everybody gets along, Buddhist and Muslim, side by side, that tells you how much a part of the village that the mosque is.
You don't have to go too far out of Trat before things start to get, well, podunky. Thai country music (which is excellent) and monster ballads (not so much) blare from giant speakers in the beds of pickup trucks. Anyone who can afford more than a motorbike drives a pickup here. And they drink large amounts of lao kao -- rice whiskey. They're a friendly lot, these country folk. Many are farmers, as Trat grows a lot of rubber and fruit.
One evening while out for a drive with a friend, I had a tire blowout. We were on a back country road, stranded with a motorbike on one tire, miles from anything, and darkness was falling. Back in the States, this scenario would have had a best case outcome of having to spend a lot of time and money dealing with it, and a worst case of, "squeal like a pig, boy." But we both just laughed, not out of a sense of futility or resignation, but because we knew it was an easily resolved situation. We listened to the frogs croak and the crickets chirp for about ten minutes, then waved down a passing pickup. The middle-aged couple driving helped us load the bike into the bed and tie it in, and twenty minutes later we were unloading it at a mechanic. A lot of charades, smiles and laughs later, plus three bucks to them for gas, three more to the mechanic for a new innertube, and we were on our way.
They are equally friendly back in Trat. You're constantly invited to join a table of Thais and offered a glass of lao kao. People are infinitely curious about you and want to know what you think of Thai food, whiskey, beer, women, and sometimes politics. They want to practice their English and hear your Thai. Many people find it hillarious if you try to speak Thai. Some of this is due to Westerner's mispronunciations of the slight differences in pitch in the tonal language, but often, the better you speak, the funnier it is to them. You can gauge your week-to-week linguistic progress by their laughter. You're in what often seems like another world. There is so much lost in the cultural and linguistic gulf between you and them; things often seem so foreign and so strange that they can't be explained by culture alone. Yet sometimes you find that a mere smile, your eyes connected with a total stranger's, can build a bridge over that gulf wide enough to drive a truck over. In these moments all of humanity and the differences within it seem small enough to exist right there in the few feet between you.
Thailand in general, and Trat it seems especially, are the perfect place to cast yourself into the traveler's mentality. It is safe, there is little crime, and there really aren't many people out to hustle you. Most will go far out of their way to help you, if you only smile a little. Here you really can and should bury your Lonely Planet, and go out and lose yourself in it all. It is easy, and so much more rewarding. Of course guidebooks, as is true with any advice, can be helpful, especially when you don't speak the language or know the culture. But you always have to remember that, like a stripper who tells her old regular that he's her favorite, your guidebook probably tells all the guys the same thing that it whispers to you late at night on the lumpy mattress in your crappy guest house.
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