Michael Portillo tackles a cobra and rides Thailand’s “Death Railway” on his latest adventure
Michael Portillo recently found himself clutching the anus of a 3m-long king cobra in Thailand. While learning about the life-saving work of an institute in Bangkok that extracts venom from snakes to make anti-venom, he assisted in an operation on a cobra. “I asked the doctor if it was a deadly snake,” says Portillo, “and he said, ‘No, this is a very deadly snake’
“As the fellow operated, I was holding the writhing snake’s anus in case it defecated on us. Then they realised there was no way to get it back into its hutch… I must say, at this point I was really, really frightened.”
Two assistants managed to wrestle the cobra into a basket, and that’s when Portillo saw that the surgeon had a deformed hand. “It turned out that he’d been bitten by a cobra and the venom had rotted his flesh. After being close to death and having eight months off work, he went back to working with snakes. I’m not keen to.”
The former Conservative MP was in Thailand to film his latest train odyssey. In Great Asian Journeys, he discovers the railways and history of Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The Thai leg of his journey began in Northern Thailand’s largest city, Chiang Mai, which has more than 300 temples and an atmospheric old town.
“Chiang Mai’s old quarter is very picturesque,” says Portillo. “It’s entirely square with a wall and moat around it. Chiang Mai was the capital of Lanna Kingdom and it was only at the end of the 19th century that Siam – as Thailand used to be – absorbed Lanna, so it has different traditions. Whereas present-day Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia were all colonised by European powers, Thailand was never colonised thanks to the statecraft of the Thai royal family, which was always outmanoeuvring the French and British.
“They had to give enormous concessions to the British. The area around Chiang Mai is teak forest and the British were very interested in getting their hands on the teak. The Thai made that possible, but managed to continue to be selfgoverning. There are gorgeous railway journeys in Thailand and the journey south from Chiang Mai takes you through teak forests – it’s superb.”
From Chiang Mai, Portillo chugged south to Kanchanaburi on the River Kwai and rode on the notorious “Death Railway”, which is estimated to have cost the lives of over 100,000 forced labourers and Allied soldiers in the Second World War. Much of the line was dismantled after the war, but passenger trains still run along the Bangkok section and cross its famous bridge, immortalised in the 1957 war film The Bridge on the River Kwai.
“The bridge is not the bridge you expect to see if you’ve seen the movie. It turns out that the prisoners were forced to build two bridges. The first was a temporary bridge made out of wood that they could put up quickly, so supplies could get through. It was always intended that they’d build alongside that a concrete and steel bridge, which they did, and then the first bridge was demolished because it was no longer needed. The Allies managed to destroy two spans of the bridge and you can clearly see the repair because the design is different.
“The Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is very close by and has the graves of about 7,000 Allied troops – mostly British, Dutch and Australian. It’s beautifully tended and extremely moving as well: long rows of identical headstones recording each name and the pitifully young ages at which they died.”
The towering ruined temples and palaces of Siam ’sold capital, Ayutthaya, are also a must for anyone interested in pre-20th-century history. “Ayuttahya was overrun by the Burmese in the 18th century to the extent that the city was never rebuilt. You get the idea of a very beautiful capital. It’s kind of like a Pompeii. One of those cities that suffered a catastrophe from which it never recovered.”
Michael Portillo recently found himself clutching the anus of a 3m-long king cobra in Thailand. While learning about the life-saving work of an institute in Bangkok that extracts venom from snakes to make anti-venom, he assisted in an operation on a cobra. “I asked the doctor if it was a deadly snake,” says Portillo, “and he said, ‘No, this is a very deadly snake’
“As the fellow operated, I was holding the writhing snake’s anus in case it defecated on us. Then they realised there was no way to get it back into its hutch… I must say, at this point I was really, really frightened.”
Two assistants managed to wrestle the cobra into a basket, and that’s when Portillo saw that the surgeon had a deformed hand. “It turned out that he’d been bitten by a cobra and the venom had rotted his flesh. After being close to death and having eight months off work, he went back to working with snakes. I’m not keen to.”
The former Conservative MP was in Thailand to film his latest train odyssey. In Great Asian Journeys, he discovers the railways and history of Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The Thai leg of his journey began in Northern Thailand’s largest city, Chiang Mai, which has more than 300 temples and an atmospheric old town.
“Chiang Mai’s old quarter is very picturesque,” says Portillo. “It’s entirely square with a wall and moat around it. Chiang Mai was the capital of Lanna Kingdom and it was only at the end of the 19th century that Siam – as Thailand used to be – absorbed Lanna, so it has different traditions. Whereas present-day Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia were all colonised by European powers, Thailand was never colonised thanks to the statecraft of the Thai royal family, which was always outmanoeuvring the French and British.
“They had to give enormous concessions to the British. The area around Chiang Mai is teak forest and the British were very interested in getting their hands on the teak. The Thai made that possible, but managed to continue to be selfgoverning. There are gorgeous railway journeys in Thailand and the journey south from Chiang Mai takes you through teak forests – it’s superb.”
From Chiang Mai, Portillo chugged south to Kanchanaburi on the River Kwai and rode on the notorious “Death Railway”, which is estimated to have cost the lives of over 100,000 forced labourers and Allied soldiers in the Second World War. Much of the line was dismantled after the war, but passenger trains still run along the Bangkok section and cross its famous bridge, immortalised in the 1957 war film The Bridge on the River Kwai.
“The bridge is not the bridge you expect to see if you’ve seen the movie. It turns out that the prisoners were forced to build two bridges. The first was a temporary bridge made out of wood that they could put up quickly, so supplies could get through. It was always intended that they’d build alongside that a concrete and steel bridge, which they did, and then the first bridge was demolished because it was no longer needed. The Allies managed to destroy two spans of the bridge and you can clearly see the repair because the design is different.
“The Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is very close by and has the graves of about 7,000 Allied troops – mostly British, Dutch and Australian. It’s beautifully tended and extremely moving as well: long rows of identical headstones recording each name and the pitifully young ages at which they died.”
The towering ruined temples and palaces of Siam ’sold capital, Ayutthaya, are also a must for anyone interested in pre-20th-century history. “Ayuttahya was overrun by the Burmese in the 18th century to the extent that the city was never rebuilt. You get the idea of a very beautiful capital. It’s kind of like a Pompeii. One of those cities that suffered a catastrophe from which it never recovered.”