Bangkok to Singapore - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 76

Chapter Seven
Bangkok to Singapore
T HE last time I was in Bangkok, several years ago, I accidentally stumbled onto a cockfight. A bunch of
shouting men were betting money on the outcome. The roosters viciously pecked at each other's necks. I
considered laying down a few baht on the larger rooster (he had the look of a champion about him) but in
the end refrained out of a vague moral discomfort.
Bangkok still has its share of developing-world nuttiness. The knockoff street markets sell “Beebok” run-
ning shoes. The shanty-towns in the vacant lots feature small-scale animal husbandry. There's an entire sex
district catering specifically to Japanese men.
Having just come from Phnom Penh, though, Bangkok feels like Denver. Its grimier scenes are mostly
hidden behind sleek new shopping malls and office towers. You might glimpse them from far above, as you
whoosh by on an elevated light-rail line.
Given its plush environs and speedy broadband, Bangkok makes a perfect base for plotting the next legs
of our trip. There's been no need to plan too far ahead when we're moving on dry land—since frequent train
and bus services cover most of our route, and we could always rent a car in a pinch. The problem is, we're
about to run out of land.
We can push another thousand miles south on terra firma—down to the bottom of the Malaysian penin-
sula. We can then cross a bridge to the island of Singapore. But there, all roads and railways end. We'll need
to find ourselves a conveyance that floats.
We log on and start searching. It turns out that several shipping company websites track current locations
and planned ports of call for active cargo freighters—a sort of digital edition of the shipping news. Sifting
through them, we can identify most of the container ships scheduled to pass through Singapore's harbor in
the next few months.
Very few of these freighters are equipped, or permitted, to handle civilian passengers. (Most online ship-
ping sites are designed to help you send a container full of knitwear, not send yourself.) But we manage to
find a freighter called the Theodor Storm that has welcomed aboard passengers in the past and will be sailing
out of Singapore in a couple of weeks, bound for Brisbane, Australia. We send off an e-mail to Hamburg
Süd, the 140-year-old German shipping line that operates the Theodor Storm , and request a cabin.
Next we look around for a ship that could take us onward from Australia. We spot a French freighter called
the Matisse —operated by CMA CGM, the world's third-largest shipping company—that's sailing from Bris-
bane to Auckland. It seems remiss not to include a stop in New Zealand, which we've always wanted to see.
We contact CMA CGM's head office in Marseille and book ourselves a cabin.
Once this French freighter has hopscotched us the fifteen hundred miles from Australia to New Zealand,
we'll be nearly to the international date line (roughly the midpoint of the Pacific Ocean). But here things
will get more complicated. New Zealand has less than one-quarter the population of Australia, and nowhere
near the industrial output that moves through Singapore. As a result, it sees a relatively meager amount of
container ship traffic. We'll be in a remote corner of the Pacific, and it'll be tough to find a freighter headed
our way.
As for passenger liners: There aren't any useful eastbound ferries that depart from Auckland. Because
where would they go? There's no bustling demand for a commuter service to, say, the tiny Pacific island of
Rarotonga.