A postcard from 1980

I am going through boxes and boxes of old letters, post cards and memorabilia at the moment and just found this written on the back of a post card from Chiang Rai, in Northern Thailand from April 1980, written by myself, not eaxctly sure to whom.

Well, it has happened - a fate almost as bad as *****. I am on a 3 day tour of the jungle and the hill tribes with only 3 very dull pig-ignorant, peasant-like French people and a Thai guide, who provides immensely better conversation than 'les autres'. I am afraid that dull is the only word fit for all teh French people here. In fact, this is the only place that I have really come across many French tourists ever and to some extent they have ruined the fine time I have been having. There is also an Aussie who we have coem across frequently on this tour who believes that because the aborigines came over to Australia 30,000 years ago and killed the natives*, they are just as much immigrant as white Australians. He also reackons that 2 years ago about 200 blacks hid under a bridge in Portobello Road, London and then beat up and stripped hundreds of Londoners and says he saw it himself! The hill tribe people here are also the most unfriendly non-French people I have ever met. The Thai guide, Boon, is the only civilised and sensible person around and he very rightly sees France as being directly reseponsible, along with the Americans for the problems in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The French do not agree.

Amazing! And to think that the main things I can remember from this trip was the great friendship I made with Boon, with whom I corresponded for a number of years, paddling up the river in a dug-out canoe and getting very excited when the Iranians kidnappd a number of Americans and shot down some of their helicopters (I think?).

But funnily enough, 26 years later..... I can still say that I have hardly ever come across French tourists, despite all the travelling I have done. And, I suppose... the ones I have seen have been odd. Hmmmmmm.....