An Excerpt From Don't Die in Bed: The Brief, Intense Life of Richard Halliburton.

TAPLEE, IN THE JUNGLE

Almost losing his life, he treks across the Malay Peninsula from the Andaman Sea to what was then called the Gulf of Siam.

As the dugout moved upriver, as the river narrowed, the sky became lost under dense canopies of mangrove.  Richard swatted at mosquitoes and flies.  Crocodiles slipped silently into the water as the boat approached.  Parrots screeched somewhere in the jungle and the men heard monkeys chatter.  Fish leaped out of the water to gulp a mosquito.  Deer timidly approached the bank to drink, eyes out for crocodiles.  Elephants drank from the other bank.  Cranes and herons reeled into flight upon seeing the boat.  Orangutans peered through underbrush at the men.  The men could smell rafflesia, a parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat.

That same year, in 1922 in the familiar world, people sat outside Parisian cafés discussing James Joyce’s new book, Ulysses.  In Vatican Square the faithful gathered under the third floor window of the papal apartments to pay homage to Pius XI, the new Pope.  Reporters stood around Warren G. Harding as the President listened to the first radio in the White House.  History was still in the making.

A boa constrictor hung from a tree.  Scorpions scampered across the forest floor, passing an anteater. Upon seeing the men in the sampan, a Sumatran rhino crashed away through the undergrowth.  Chattering Gibbons clambered up trees to look at them.  On the jungle floor a cobra, hood swollen, reared to strike its venom into an unsuspecting young Gibbon.


At Taplee, a village deep in the jungle, the boatmen banked the dugout.  Richard stepped off into the mud and walked toward the village in the clearing.

The boatmen ate food offered by the villagers then said goodbye and knew they would have an easier time of it on the return, for the downstream would float them effortlessly sixty-five miles, past the sea port of Victoria Point to Ainsworth’s island.  Richard watched them shove off from the bank.  He waved at them as the current swept them away, down the Pukchan River.  He knew he had only one course left, to the Gulf of Siam on the other side of the jungle.

On a map, the Isthmus of Kra seemed a likely place for Halliburton to walk from the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Siam.  It looked very easy on paper.  From Victoria Point to the East coast it was forty miles, a distance pedaled by a bicyclist in a morning.  If Halliburton had a bicycle and if he could ride it through the jungle.  Instead, even walking was difficult, with the jungle thick, its dangers many, its heat stifling, its trail obscure, lost to mud, and covered by underbrush.  The Isthmus is pelted by monsoons and after the clouds clear the sun shines brilliantly on the wet jungle, filling the air with steam rising above the trees.

The two coasts are so close yet so far away.  Mindful of the canal across Panama, in our day the Thai and Myanmar governments have discussed digging across the Isthmus at its narrowest point, from the head of the Pukchan River to the Gulf.  In Richard’s day the river separated Siam from Burma.  In our day the names Siam and Burma have been changed to Thailand and Myanamar but the separation remains the same.

Richard had no jungle sense but was determined to cross the gap.  Somebody would show him the way.  Before the boatmen left him in the village, one of them translated in Malay to the village chief for him. Richard wanted an elephant but was told it cost six dollars and could not be had because the monsoon flooded rivers and streams.  After the boatmen left, communication became a problem as the chief bemusedly watched his gestures.  They eventually reached an understanding that Richard wanted to trek through the jungle to Chumphon on the East coast.  They sat in silence.  Richard waited.

The chief explained it was impossible.  The old man pantomimed water up to his neck, meaning it was not safe.  Richard already knew it was not safe, which was why he wanted to do it.  Finally Richard did succeed. He wrote home, “I got a coolie for a guide across.  I spent that night on a mat in the second story of the house, with mosquitoes eating me and lizards playing tag all over me.  Next morning, my coolie and I started on the trail, a semi-invisible path.”  Looking back on the trek, he added, “It’s still a nightmare.”

He loitered a day or so in the village, watching rain pelt the river, hearing parrots screech in the distance.  He took relief in playing with the village children.  He talked to the village men and women, the males wearing chawats, or loincloths, the women with sarongs.  In the morning the guide said goodbye to his wife and children.   Rains flooded the sky while Richard thanked the village chief, and then the two men walked out of the clearing as the villagers watched them disappear into the jungle.

The guide had agreed to a fee of three dollars, a princely sum if he could find a place in the jungle to spend it.  In his narrative of the trek, Richard praises the man’s sure-footedness and understanding of jungle lore but the man’s expertise did not do much to diminish the danger.  The danger of the experience lingered with Halliburton long after it was over.