International Away Days With Chonburi
by Tobias Enkel
As a football fan, and someone who enjoys traveling and exploring new countries, international football matches are always something special. You often go to places you normally never thought about and you meet people you would have never met. It always is a small cultural adventure packed around a game of football.
The most memorable season for me was the 2011 AFC Cup, when Chonburi qualified by winning the 2010 Thai FA Cup, against Muangthong. The 2011 AFC Cup had 4 away games for Chonburi; East Bengal from India, Persipura Jayapura from Indonesia, South China from Hong Kong and Nasaf Qarshi from Uzbekistan.
At the end, I could make it to 3 of the 4 away trips. Missing out Jayapura, when the plane ticket would have cost more than a roundtrip ticket to Europe.
After the draw for the group stage I posted on the “Bangkok Shark” message board about my plans to travel to India and Hong Kong for the AFC away matches. While I got a lot of responses from other supporters for the Hong Kong match, I got zero response for the match in Calcutta, India, which was also the first match for Chonburi. And yes, that match and that trip is definitely one to remember.
It was no problem for me to take 2 days leave from work. Also flights and a hotel were easy to find. I just needed to get a visa and was then ready to go. The match was held in the Salt Lake Stadium, which had a capacity of around 100,000. The flight was easy and quick and after some discussions with the local taxi mafiosi, I found a nice lad willing to take me to my hotel. I have been in and around Asia for some time, but Calcutta had something new and interesting and it felt even more chaotic than Bangkok.
Most taxis (a cab!) had that lovely hindustan ambassador style, yet they were missing any kind of interior, except seats and the steering wheel. Also the cars body had a few scratches, here, there and everywhere and it didn’t take me too long to find out why. On the way to the hotel we nearly bumped into a cow crossing the street, nearly bumped into a tram coming straight at us and actually bumped into a bus, which only resulted in a few cursing words and nothing more.
After I arrived at the hotel I had a quick meal and got ready to make my way to the stadium. With its enormous size, I thought it would be easy to find a cab to take me to the stadium, but I was very wrong. I couldn’t figure out if they just didn’t know the place or didn’t want to take me. Public transport was no option for me, as I had no idea how that system worked. Luckily, after a while, I found a driver pretending to know where I wanted to go. He didn’t. We were driving around Calcutta for a while, with the driver asking for directions. After a while, I spotted a big stadium in the distance and told the driver to stop somewhere close, which he did. The final price he was asking was around 10 times more than I expected to pay and was a ridiculous amount, even for India.
Some pedestrian saw us discussing the fee and asked in good English what the problem was. I explained to him where I had started and what the driver was asking for. What then happened, was my first lesson in Indian culture. The guy was was shouting at the taxi driver for at least 1 minute with the taxi driver just keeping quiet. Eventually, he got back in the taxi and drove away, without me having the chance to pay him. The pedestrian told me what he asked from me was more than 20 times the normal fare and that his behaviour is bad for all Indians. He invited me for a cup of tea in a small store nearby and we had a nice talk about football, India and of course, Bollywood.
After a while I made my way to the stadium. It was still early, with around 4 hours until kick off. I already could spot a few red and yellow scarfs, the colours of East Bengal and they recognized that my blue colours must belong to Chonburi. Walking around the stadium I knew that the chance to find some beer was not the highest, but I always stumbled across East Bengal supporters, chatting a bit and taking pictures.
Entering the stadium later, I found out that it was only me, the official staff and players, who had made their way to India. Also with a total attendance of 2,000, the stadium looked rather empty, but all of us witnessed a match to remember. East Bengal took a quick 2-0 lead, with Chonburi coming back to level at 2-2 just before half time. The second half was the exact opposite, with Chonburi going to lead 4-2 and East Bengal coming back to make it 4-4 in the 82nd minute, through a penalty. After the final whistle came, some home fans approached me, shook hands and wished Chonburi all the best for the rest of the season.
Leaving the stadium I met some of the official staff and we started chatting about the match and my journey. As I was the only traveling supporter, they kindly asked me if I want to join the team for dinner at their hotel. As I had no other plans, I agreed, jumped on the team bus and we went off to the hotel. The dinner was a international “Thai style” buffet, but many of them ended up slurping instant noodles from their mama cup. The dinner with the team and staff was a great experience and I could end my long day with an ice cold beer. After the dinner I took a cab back to my hotel without any further incidents. The day after I did a bit sightseeing before taking my flight back to Bangkok, which turned out to be the same flight that the team was taking.
SOUTH CHINA
My second away match (skipping Jayapura), was the third for Chonburi and also the last match of the group stage. I contrast to the match in Calcutta, a lot of Chonburi fans showed interest in seeing the team play in Hong Kong. The city, the people, food and sightseeing might have played a small role in that interest.
My plan was to visit Macau before heading over to Hong Kong and posted that idea in the Bangkok Shark message board. I found some people who wanted to join me and arranged flights and hotels for a group of 6. In Macau we spent our time doing a lot of sightseeing, finding food and losing some money playing on the slot machine or baccarat, before catching the ferry to Hong Kong. The time in Hong Kong also was dominated by a lot of sightseeing, from Lantau to the Peak. Here and there we met some other groups of Chonburi supporters who had made their way to Hong Kong. That is always something I enjoy on away trips, meeting “your” people.
On the matchday a fair amount of Chonburi supporters gathered in the away section, which was in the main stand of the Hong Kong stadium. The first half ended with a semi-interesting 0:0, but Chonburi stepped up a gear in the second half and scored 3 goals within 15 minutes, for a 3-0 win. With that win, Chonburi could also end the group stage on top of the table, which would mean a home match in the round of 16.
The day ended with some jersey swaps with Hong Kong supporters and a couple of beers from the local supermarket. Overall it was good trip, yet the most unspectacular one, probably because I have been to Hong Kong and Macau a couple of times before. The next destination would bring something completely new.
NASAF QARSHI
Qarshi? Uzbekistan? These were 2 questions my friend Daniel asked me, when I told him about Chonburi's opponents in the quarter finals. We already had a plan to visit the quarter final and we knew that it would bring us most likely somewhere west, so we just booked tickets to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan and extended the trip to include some sightseeing. All of that without having done any research about Uzbekistan.
The first problem was that we would need a visa. Luckily I lived very close to the Uzbek embassy in Bangkok and when I went there they were slightly irritated that a German wants to go to Uzbekistan to watch a Thai team play. However, in the end that was no problem at all and I picked up my passports with the visa, a few days later.
After we did some more research we found out that Uzbekistan might be a very interesting country and we wouldn’t be disappointed. We planned our trip from arriving in Tashkent, going up northwest to Bukhara, Samarkand and then to Qarshi. Then from Qarshi somehow back to Tashkent. Daniel arrived half a day earlier, coming from Austria and I had a nice direct flight with Uzbekistan Airways from Bangkok. We chose our hotel in Tashkent wisely by checking the bad reviews on tripadvisor. ‘The host is always drunk and is trying to make you drunk with Vodka’ and ‘The reception area looks like a living room where old Uzbek man are drinking non stop’. This made it easy to chose this for our first stop, and the reviews were correct.
In Uzbekistan, every tourist needs to get registered at every hotel he stays. Unfortunately that hotel lost it’s license some time ago and wasn’t even an official hotel anymore, so we had to ‘check in’ at the cheapest available official hotel, which was at the train station. We checked into the $1.50 room, got our registration and left that hotel for good. On the way back we needed to change some money and $200 gave us 2 plastic bagfulls of nice and fresh Uzbek money. People here don’t have wallets, they literally wear money bags.
The days and nights in Tashkent were a mix of sightseeing and daydrinking with old Uzbek man in the living-room-reception area, which also had a nice 24 hours adult program on TV, a christmas tree and a statue of the owner, Ali. Leaving Tashkent and going to Urgench, Bukhara and Samarkand brought us to a new world. Unbelievable architecture, awesome food and lots of beer and vodka, and of course super friendly people everywhere. It always felt like being on a movie set. If anyone is looking for a holiday destination, I definitely can recommend Uzbekistan.
The last stop of our journey was then Qarshi, home of Chonburi's opponent, Nasaf Qarshi. Compared to the other cities, it was pretty boring. We ended up being the only ‘tourists’ and people seemed to wonder, what we were doing there. Apart from watching a football match,there wasn’t much to see so we focused on the culinary specialties of Qarshi and met, by accident, an official of Nasaf Qarshi. He was very surprised and honored, that we had traveled from Thailand and Austria to see this match and told us we were the first away fans ever to come to an international match. He invited us for dinner and also helped us get plane tickets back to Tashkent, because we couldn’t find anywhere to book them online.
The day before the match, we went to the training session of Chonburi and immediately got spotted by some of their officials, who already knew that we would be there. We had some small talk and they invited us to come to their hotel, which turned out to be just open for the team in time for the match and is only opened for special occasions.
On the matchday we went early to the stadium. We knew there were a lot of beer options around, as well as some locals to chit chat. All of them were extremely friendly and welcoming. When we were entering the stadium we got escorted to the VIP area. Nasaf Qarshi wanted to make sure that their guests were well received. We started singing and calling the players names and half of the VIP crowd seemed to be irritated, while the other half were clapping their hands for us.
Chonburi had lost the 1st leg at home, 1:0, and we didn’t expect too much from this match, but we saw a fighting Chonburi side get a 1:0 win in 90 minutes, but then losing after penalties against the eventual winners of the competition.
After the match we got invited to join the team for dinner and, while most of the Thai players had their mama cup, we were taking over the lamb BBQ kebabs paired with wine and beer. The evening ended late and also our unforgettable trip was nearly over.
Trips like this make me love football.
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