Having a Mai Tai on the Rocks

According to Cocktails and Dreams, (a website for cocktail drinks), you need a shaker and some ice, besides the Thai whiskey, rum, oranges and other ingredients to make a good Mai Tai. With our recent off-road trip in the jungles around the Thailand province of Kanchanaburi during the Jeep Adventure 2006, the shaker would have been redundant while the ice would have been great greatly appreciated after the drive.

Not that we were sore after our off-road excursion, on the contrary, we really had a blast and enjoyed ourselves immensely. But we could have made Mai Tai cocktails without using the shaker because of the shaking we got during the rough-and-tumble ride-and-drive. And, of course, the ice was to make the celebratory drinks, whiskey, rum or oranges, more refreshing. But that’s getting ahead of my story…

It all started when I was trying to borrow a Chrysler 300C for a weekend test drive from Andros Villaraza, the Senior Manager for Marketing Communications of CATS Motors, the Philippine distributor of DaimlerChrysler products. DaimlerChrysler’s product portfolio includes Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Smart automobiles but unfortunately, during that time, CATS couldn’t lend me one because they had a sales campaign during the weekends.

After trying for a couple of weeks to no avail, I got a surprising call from Andros in the middle of October. "Lester, are you free on the 28th to the 1st of November?" Andros asked me. "Because if you are available during those days, can I send you to Thailand to join the Jeep Adventure at the River Kwai?" Would I drive a Jeep instead of a Chrysler 300C? And in right-hand drive Thailand, no less. "Yes, of course!" was my immediate answer. I have never refused a new adventure.

Off to Thailand

On the 28th, I flew to Thailand with Top Gear Philippines Off-Road Editor Robbie Consunji and The Philippine STAR motoring columnist and Motoring Today producer and host Ray Butch Gamboa and then met up with Jeep enthusiast and classic Mercedes-Benz collector Alex Wongchuking at the Suvarnabhumi Airport. We were driven to the Amari Waterfront Hotel in Bangkok, where we spent the night billeted in the ultra-luxurious VIP rooms. As I savored the luxury, I began to worry if the VIP treatment was a "last treat" before we roughed it out in the Thai jungle during our off-road excursion. After all, the Jeep Adventure 2006 brochure had "What bridge?" as its catch phrase and I’m not the type who’d camp out in some remote wilderness because we got stuck there.

The next day, we were fetched from the Amari Waterfront by a representative from the River Kwai Village Resort, who we only knew as "Pinky" because we couldn’t remember her Thai name. We traveled around 190 kilometers from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, and then took a boat ride on the Kwai Noi River, where the infamous "Bridge on River Kwai" was supposedly built, to reach the resort. There, we were welcomed on a floating restaurant by Joanne Lim of DaimlerChrysler Southeast Asia and Webber "Webb" Arnold, a professional off-road consultant who would be our trainer and overall leader during the adventure. We were billeted in the adjoining "Raftel" which are a train of hotel rooms on top of floating pontoons securely latched to the river bank. The accommodations suited me very well and helped erase any thoughts of camping in the boondocks. Or being treated like a POW, as depicted in that old war movie.

Off-Road School

Monday morning found us huffing and puffing for our breakfast because the restaurant was about six stories up a flight of stairs from the river bank. After our morning "exercise", we rode in our assigned Jeeps — Butch and Alex drove the lead Jeep Wrangler with the 4.0-liter inline-six while Robbie and I took the Jeep Cherokee Sport with the V6, which is known as the Jeep Liberty in North American markets. We drove to the ATV grounds of the resort where Webb and his team of Thai off-road enthusiasts taught us how to properly attach a tow strap around a tree without hurting it and how to "winch" our vehicle out of a mud trap.

After everyone got their turns winching, we drove to another clearing where Webb and his group set two obstacle courses for us to drive on. He divided our group of twelve participants into two sets and our Philippine group got to do the "blindfold" drive first. Here, the driver gets blindfolded while his co-driver navigates for them as they are timed while driving around the course which has obstacles composed of small wooden stubs that act as the pylons. When the vehicle runs over a wooden pylon, a penalty of 10 seconds is added to the driver’s time and after the first drive, the driver and the co-driver trade places. The combined time of both drivers will be their team score. Robbie and I handily won this contest because of our excellent communication during the "blind" drive.

The second course looked easy at first because it was a basic off-road obstacle course and we were wondering why the participants were having a hard time negotiating it. It was only when we started driving the Jeep Wrangler that we found out why this was not as easy as it seems — the vehicle would go the opposite way of the direction you’re steering it into after the Thai technicians flipped the steering box linkage by 180-degrees. Since it would go left when you’re steering right and vice versa, it took a lot of mental reprogramming to drive it because, as Webb said later, you need to steer towards an obstacle or a danger to turn the vehicle away from it. It runs contrary to our personal built-in self-preservation program but it showed how mental alertness is needed during off-roading. Robbie and I were also good at this contest that we were "disqualified" to give others a chance. Butch and Alex outdid themselves and came out in second. The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around other obstacle courses (where mud traps and marshes required us to get muddy to winch our vehicle) and driving through a short but technical jungle course around the resort.

The Real McCoy

After Webb determined that we were ready for the real thing, we drove out of the River Kwai Village Resort on Tuesday, the 31st to run on 60 kilometers of rugged terrain to a Ranger Station deep in the jungles of Kanchanaburi near the border between Thailand and Burma. The trail was a mix of paved roads, rough terrain, fallen bamboo trees, river crossings, hill climbs and a predetermined mud trap where our winching lessons came into good use. We also swapped vehicles several times so we can sample other Jeep models in the convoy like the previous Jeep Grand Cherokee with CRDi Diesel engine and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee with the 4.7-liter V8 engine.

We had lunch when we reached the Ranger Station and then headed out the same way we drove in — through the narrow jungle path that is just wide enough to accommodate our Jeeps. We were able to test the off-road capabilities of each model in our convoy and became impressed with their inherent toughness on the trail and their uncommon civility on paved roads. We got out of the jungle and back to town earlier than anticipated prompting Webb to declare that our group is one of the "better" groups to take the Jeep Adventure 2006 gauntlet and pass without a scratch.

That night being our last before we flew back home, we had a "cowboy" party celebration complete with hats, costumes and Western food. Executives from DaimlerChrysler offices in Singapore and Thailand joined us in the merry-making as we were handed our certificates for completing the Adventure. It was really a memorable evening to cap an exciting adventure that showed how tough the Jeep vehicles are in real world off-road situations. DaimlerChrysler, especially Joanne Lim, and CATS Motors deserve kudos for giving us the opportunity us to drive the Jeeps in a no-hold-barred, rough-and-tumble, shaker of a ride. It’s time to bring out the Mai Tai to celebrate My Thai adventure!