Run:- 2093, 5 February 2024
Location:- Taling Chan, Wat Pradu
Hares:-Boobalube assisted by Retard

My first time back in Bangkok in four years. Must go Monday Hashing again. OMG! KC is the hare, probably going to be 13 km and lost in the bush after dark, great fun, just like the old days!

Easy to get to run site, train to Bang Wa and taxi to Soi Intrawat 23, not even an hour, arrive early at 3:45 - 35 degrees Celsius, hot n humid in February, whatever happened to "Cool Season" in Thailand?

Must. Find. Beer. Fortunately a nice little beer shop down the road about 100 meters, my first Bia Chang in over 4 years, nicely cools down the afternoon !

Hashers assembling around 5 pm, great to see old friends again - Maverick, Spinning Dwarf, Cap’n Eric, Shaggy and City Girl, Boobalube himself, I get a mild scolding from Nibbles for being out of touch for so long and never writing, then a big hug to say Welcome Back!

GM Maverick cracks the whip and calls everyone together, the usual confusing and rambling instructions from the hare and off we go into the wilds of Taling Chan…

A very enjoyable run with a surprising amount of green space still available. A nice early jog through a small banana palm plantation. Turd Burglar, Tom Yum Kung and Always Cums Last are continual FRBs, if I can just keep them barely in sight then I am hopefully still on the trail…

All the usual features of an excellent Hash run - multiple checks keeping the pack fairly close together, some forward and some back, some easy and some harder, so various Hashers temporarily rotating out front until the FRBs fly past everybody yet again; a bridge well guarded by a pack of ferocious-looking dogs, but who just stare at us; meandering cement walkways along foul-smelling khlongs; a clever back check as we emerge out onto a major road, seems to mark the far outer point of the run.

A nice long meander in the general direction back towards the start, enlightening discussions with Shaggy explaining how screwed up the American political system is, how much more dangerous Myanmar is than Iraq these days, and all the other silly problems of the world….

One final little twist at an apparent dead end, to climb over a low cement wall without falling into the khlong and On In! Happily exhausted and sweating to death, but quickly restored with beer and water and outstanding nibbles, including a selection of various delicious cheeses from Tom Yum Kung!

The Circle gathers and the GM calls in hare and co-hare, visitors and returners - Slumdog and his daughter from Bombay, myself and Shaggy and City Girl. Shaggy takes over as stand-in RA and multiple sins, both real and imaginary, are punished in appropriate fashion - the hare for allegedly setting the run by taxi and many, many others, but they all blur together now in my haze of beer consumption…. Tickler wanders in from the wrong direction and in the dark, just before we have Boobalube send out search parties…

"In the best tradition of Thai democracy" as Shaggy puts it, POTW is a pre-arranged and foregone conclusion - I knew it before I ever arrived!

There are a few other frivolous nominees, but I am nominated for apparently multiple offenses - mainly for being ageist and implying Always Cums Last might be older than she is, or must have been Hashing before she was born, twenty-some years ago; also for resembling Imran Khan in some odd way… I am voted in by acclamation and they have me don the apparatus, which seems more to resemble a large middle finger these days!

The Circle concludes in good cheer and most everybody wanders across the road and through Wat Pradu, across the khlong to a fine little restaurant where food and beer and wine flow freely, and a great time is had by all.

The final bill is insanely cheap, probably because the hare secretly subsidized most of it in advance, may Allah bless him with many sons and many herds of goats (a common Iraqi blessing…)!

A great run and a fun evening, many thanks to the hare, a very happy return to Bangkok Hashing!