The encounters of this cruise, some significant some simply enjoyable, have reminded me of the most important encounter of my life. More than fifty years ago I was invited to tea by an Aunt who lived in Fendalton, Christchurch, New Zealand. It was for me to meet a visiting cleric from England. I was fairly recently ordained. I have no idea how my Aunt had met or knew the cleric but she did and I went.

The priest was John V Taylor formerly General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society and later Bishop of Winchester. At the time I knew little about him. While my aunt went to boil the kettle or prepare the tea John Taylor and I talked. I was going through a difficult patch and said to him that I wasn’t at all sure that I was following ‘God’s Plan’ for me. He explained that there wasn’t just one plan and that wherever and however I was there was always a plan, God’s plan, for my fulfilment. That was a help.

I went on to say that I felt as if I was always walking on a tightrope trying to keep my balance and in danger of falling off; that I was neither rich nor poor, right wing nor left wing, Catholic or Protestant, in everything living somewhere in between, nothing one hundred per cent clear or certain, and that at a Church conference in Sweden in 1968 I had been described as ‘Simon Compromise Acland’ and that that was not a compliment. 

He said, “But Simon you are walking on a tight rope. That is life.” 

That was no help. And I complained, “But what if I fall off the tightrope!” And I added, “I don’t believe God is a safety net waiting to catch me.”

“No,” he said. “God is not a safety net.”

“But where is he?”

“He falls off with you.”

I never met John V Taylor again but on this cruise I have chanced to come across a copy of the Order of Service for his funeral at Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford, in 2001. Printed inside the cover is this.

Apart from the bad moments, John believed the Christian promise that personal life goes on beyond death. Yet he felt strongly that our gratitude should not be greedily conditioned by that hope, preferring as an ideal this prayer, enclosed in a letter to Victor Gollancz from a fellow-student just after the outbreak of the First World War, following their last term at Oxford.

‘To have given me self-consciousness but for an hour in a world so breathless with beauty would have been enough. But Thou hast preserved it within me for twenty years now and more, and hast crowned it with the joy of this summer of summers. And so come what may, whether life or death, and, if death, whether bliss unimaginable or nothingness, I thank Thee and bless Thy name.’

From ‘God of a Hundred Names’ by V. Gollancz

Eating alone in public brings with it joys that often have little or nothing to do with the food. While beginning my evening with a gin and tonic at the pavement terrace of a restaurant in the Suriwong Road I was interrupted, happily, by two women of a certain age from California who had arrived in Bangkok two hours earlier on their first ever excursion beyond the United Sates of America. 

They were enthusiastic and charming and full of wonder and curiosity about everything. As part of a tour group they were going to be well looked after in terms of the places to visit but, this being their first night and free of the group, they wanted to experience a little of the ‘real Thailand’.

I think that any experience of anywhere is ‘real’ within its own terms but I didn’t go into the philosophical basis of my ideas on that and after we’d chatted about Thailand its history and culture I pointed them across the road to the food stalls and market of Patpong and reassured them that Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular is remarkably safe. They went happily on their way to encounter this new reality.

Later, while eating at the food market, I had a long conversation with a waitress I’d seen a few times before. She had established that I was a grandfather, eight times over, and was single. She had informed me that she had sons of fourteen and ten and was also single. This evening she told me that she thought we would make a good couple and that she was not interested in any short term arrangement. 

After some conversation  between her delivering beer and bowls of food to various tables we agreed that it probably wasn’t going to work and that we were each ‘good’ people. She also pointed out to me that the braces on her teeth were not to straighten her teeth but were a fashion statement and showed that she could afford to have her teeth straightened if she needed to, which she didn’t.

At a neighbouring table were three young women, Eastern European or Russian I think. The back of one of them, she was naturally beautiful, was covered by a tattoo of a skull with guns behind it. When she turned to take the paper table napkins from my table to theirs I saw that her mouth was disfigured, to my eyes, by over enlargement with Botox. More fashion statements.

Later I was joined at my table by a fifty five year old Saudi man carrying a can of Coca Cola. The place, being very crowded, he had nowhere to sit. I indicated that I was happy for him to join me. Discovering country of origin and age seem to be acceptable ways of beginning a conversation. He was unfazed by my eighty two years and told me he was leaving Bangkok the next day to return home. He wanted to go out on the town and invited me to join him. I regretfully declined on the grounds that it was ten o’clock and past my bedtime. He bade me a fond farewell and went off into the night. 

Altogether a rather ordinary evening of eating alone in public in Bangkok.

I enjoy eating alone. I also enjoy eating with family or friends. It’s a matter of ‘both and’ not ‘either or’. However I know that while some people don’t particularly enjoy eating alone, I do.

This has been the case for a very long time. While I was at boarding school in Christchurch, New Zealand, I used sometimes on a Sunday evening go to the Chinese restaurant in Armagh Street before returning to school and roll call. It was probably the only Chinese restaurant in Christchurch and maybe the only restaurant. 

In those days when we went out for a meal it was to a hotel, usually the United Service Hotel or, if it was lunch, to a department store restaurant, Beaths or Ballantynes. I can’t remember the name of the Chinese restaurant but to have chicken chop suey there on my own was, I thought, the height of sophistication and enjoyment.

When I was first ordained an English family friend gave me as a present the possibility of eating at a good restaurant, wherever I happen to be, at her expense, once a week. She said that she wouldn’t give me money because she was sure I would give it to the poor. I hope she was right. She knew that I loved food and going out to restaurants so this was her gift. 

So as a curate in Manchester I would go once a week to the Midland Hotel and sit at what became my regular table in the dining room observing life around me enjoying the food, on my own.

At home in London I’m not particularly interested in breakfast or lunch but to plan what I will have for my evening meal, prepare a tray, cook the food and then to eat perhaps in front of the television or listening to music is a matter of total enjoyment.

Here in Bangkok whether it’s at the street market in Patpong or the rather smart French restaurant, Indigo, I love the food, the atmosphere, and observing and being part of the world around me.

I am convinced that if the ingredients of what I am eating are the same and the manner of cooking identical and the temperature at which it is cooked is consistent to a degree, despite everything being exactly the same the food tastes different even as the setting is different. Not better or worse, different, and enjoyable, even when eaten alone.

On Saturday I attended the blessing of an apartment block and being in Bangkok it was performed by Buddhist monks. I understand that the blessing happens every year. Monks are invited from the local temple to perform the rite and are given food and other offerings including money in envelopes. I don’t know how much.

I arrived after the five monks who were to perform the ritual. They were sitting cross legged on mats in a ground floor room of the block with sliding doors open to the apartment’s forecourt. There were rows of chairs outside. I sat outside next to a charming retired professor of French at Thammasat university. She had an apartment in the block as did the friend who had invited me.

While we waited for the ceremony to begin the professor and I had the usual ‘organ recital’ that seems common among the elderly – her knees were the primary problem – and then she talked about her studies in Paris and in Montpellier as well as her work as a translator. I gathered later that she was considered quite formidable in the university. That didn’t particularly come across. Her charm did.

She and I took part in the ceremony from outside. Others from the apartment block were inside also sitting on the floor. Our participation consisted chiefly of maintaining a prayerful attitude, hands together in front of us rather as I was taught to pray as a child, while the monks chanted. After this part of the ceremony the monks were offered quantities of food. The sliding doors were then closed to enable them to have their lunch in air conditioned privacy. It was about eleven in the morning. Buddhist monks don’t eat after midday.

When the monks had finished eating the residents cleared away the food remaining for us to eat later and there was more chanting. For this I went into the room and managed to get down on the floor to an appropriate position when in the presence of monks. My position was not altogether orthodox, I can’t sit cross legged, but I could manage with my legs tucked to one side.

There was the offering of gifts some of which I offered but hadn’t actually given – it didn’t seem to matter – and there was a blessing including sprinkling of water and more prayers. It was not particularly intense or demanding and I found it rather moving. We then all relaxed to chat.

The senior monk, who told me he was 74 years old had good English, seemed chiefly interested in what football club I supported. I said Chelsea because my son-in-law and English grandson support Chelsea. The monk was not impressed. He was an Arsenal supporter. 

We covered a fair range of subjects none of them deeply theological and he asked me how much Thai I could speak. I gave him my limited vocabulary which includes the words for ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, ‘thank you’, ‘cheers’, ‘go straight’, ‘turn left’, ‘turn right’, and that was about it. 

He said, “But you are in Thailand. You don’t know the most important word!” 

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Money!” he said and laughed. 

When the monks got up to leave in the temple minivan as he passed me he smiled, shook his head, and said, “Money!” And chuckled to himself.

Materialism is not the prerogative of the West it seems. 

There is nothing wrong with a generalisation as long as it is recognised for what it is – true in general but not necessarily in the particular. I was always taught that while one could argue a case from the general to the particular one could never do so from the the particular to the general.

Be all that as it may it is great to be a New Zealander when travelling. It seems that people of other nationalities know that New Zealand is beautiful and New Zealanders are friendly – in general that is.  Thais by the same token are helpful and polite. This generalisation I have found to be so true that sometimes when asking a Thai directions they will seem to know the answer when actually they don’t but they don’t wish to be impolite by not being helpful. It can lead to confusion. 

Sitting in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok a few evenings ago I could not help but be aware of a group of visitors who were loud and inappropriately dressed. There is a dress code for the lobby of the Oriental. The group were of a nationality which I would say are generally noisy and aggressive tourists with little awareness of their surroundings or the customs of the country they are in. After the group had moved on the atmosphere in the lobby returned to its usual quiet and calm. Some guests exchanged glances of agreement and relief.

But what interested me was the memory of some nearly fifty years ago sitting in the lobby of the same hotel observing a group of tourists who were loud, inappropriately dressed and had little awareness of their surroundings or the customs of Thailand. The behaviour was the same. The nationality different.

My observation would now be that American tourists are generally friendly, aware and interested in the country they’re visiting and respect the customs they encounter.

I’ve realised that national characteristics among groups of tourists as well as in individual human beings can change for the better. At least I hope it works that way. And that I must not hold onto past held generalisations. Long may New Zealand tourists, I among them, continue to enhance our reputation. I wouldn’t like it at all if we New Zealanders were ever generally considered rude.