Bangkok is awesome

How different is Thailand from its neighbour adjacent
Far more considerate, far less complacent
Tourists run rampant, all lacking sobriety
And food on the streets in every variety

BANGKOK, THAILAND

August 4 - 5, 2008

The first thing I notice about Thailand is that people obey traffic lights. Wait, the first thing is that there are traffic lights at all, and the second is that people obey them.

Away from Bangkok, Thailand looks a lot like what I remember of China: trees planted in straight rows, large, well paved roads, and a strange abundance of non-tropical trees. I was a little surprised, because having spent the last two months in Cambodia, I was expecting Thailand to look very similar, but it doesn't at all. Nowhere is this more apparent then in Bangkok, which looks more like an up and coming Western city. Tall buildings, shopping malls.


We had breakfast on the street the first day (REAL NOODLES!!) before taking in the Grand Palance in Bangkok. The Palance was amazing, but even more impressive since I was comparing it with Cambodia's Royal Palace, which pales in comparison. This Palace is much larger, much more decorative (everything is covered in ceramic mosaic), and it all sparkles in the sun.



Truly impressive. It's interesting because the story that Cambodians will tell you is that Thailand was a tribe of practically barbarians who were conquered by the Khmer, bringing to mind a picture of cave-dwellers. However, it seems as though the complete opposite is true, and in fact, what I've seen of Thailand is far more impressive than Cambodia (minus anything from Cambodia's glory Angkor days, of course). I guess that really helps us to understand the tension that pervades Thai-Cambodian culture today, and makes their mutual hatred a little more clear. Perhaps there is jealousy at work.



A little piece of hilarity at the Palace was the changing of the guard. What we saw was not the huge, whole-regiment change, but individual relieving of one another. At one point, Troop 1 was being relieved by Troop 2, and they went through the whole ceremonial movements: slapping their guns, stomping, and all that jazz. As soon as that was over, Troop 1 started adjusting Troop 2's uniform, and they started chatting and laughing. Not sure if that was allowed...but it was funny.


The Palace took so long that it was almost lunchtime when we finished exploring, and we headed straight for Wat Pho, a temple which is also the home of Thailand's premier massage school. So, naturally, I had a massage. 30 minutes of traditional Thai massage: joint-popping, bone-breaking, muscle-kneading, painful chiropractic goodness. They do actually sit on you, kneel on you, and twist you in strange positions. It was so good, but I was left sore for the rest of the day.


The rest of the wat was incredible too, and like the Palace, it was colourful and beautiful: there were four GIANT stupas in the back that were each a different colour.




But was really took the cade was the huge, 50 m long, 10 m tall reclining Buddha in the main sanctuary. Yeah, that's big.


One of the things I'm loving about Thailand is pad thai on the streets. It's a dollar and it's good and you can slather it with chili peppers, fish sauce and peanuts. That was lunch. Eating street pad thai is like eating street meat in Toronto for the first time: you're amazed at how much food you get for a dollar, surprised at how good the food actually is, and overwhelmed at the amount of condiments available.

We headed to Dusit Park, near the current royal residence, next, and braved the crazy public bus system to get there. We did manage to make it, and met a nice monk on the way, but we soon found that the Park is closed on Mondays...so that was a bust. We said goodbye to MonkMan and went to catch the bus in the opposite direction. We waited forever, and when we did get on the bus, the ticket taker couldn't speak English and kept trying to tell us something, which we couldn't understand. Turns out the bus wasn't running the whole line for some reason, and we all got kicked off the bus. Luckily, we met two unversity boys named Poan and Bong Bang who graciously ofered to show us how to get to Wat Saket, our next tourist stop.

There were the nicest people ever. Nice and unassuming, and as my distrust started to bubble and I tried to get them to tell us where they were taking us, but Bong Bang just smiled, pointed at Poan and said, "Follow him." So we did. It turns out that my cautious mistrust was entirely out of place. These two boys were really just trying to be helpful and walked us all the way (even through a political rally protesting the government) to Wat Saket, which was a good 3 km away. They even came up with us to the top of Wat Saket, a golden pagoda on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was really great metting them, they were so genuinely friendly and helpful -- even though one didn't speak English (but knew directions) and the other barely spoke English (but was just really nice).


After Wat Saket, they insisted on walking us to the giant swing, which was just a stupid...structure...and not a swing at all. Thus no pictures. Not worth the digital space. At this point, we said our goodbyes and thank yous and we headed back to our guesthouse. After being in Cambodia, land of unfriendly scammers-cheat-liars, for so long, it was great to have met such nice, friendly people. I like Thai people.

We met with Taulee's godmother's niece for dinner, since she lives in Bangkok. She took us to a great local restaurant where we got to try really good Thai food: green vegetables, mussels and clams, the biggest shrimp I've ever seen in my life, crab, squid, and my favourite, fried fish in lime, chili and peanut sauce. It was all really yummy, and the cousin was nice enough to drive us around after to see some of the sights: Hualompong trainstation, China town, Patpong Market (more on this later), Siam Centre malls, and of course, her bakery in Thonburi, the part of Bangkok on the other side of the river.

I was exhausted when she dropped us off at Khao San Road, but not to exhausted to have a look around. I got some fresh pineapple to eat, sold on the streets amid the mountains of Pad Thai for sale, and we watched some of the buskers put on a show.


This tourist ghetto street is crazy at night, and crawling with foreigners and shops and vendors and bars. And then we called it a night: I could barely keep my eyes open.


***

On Tuesday, we finally made it to Dusit Park in the morning. It didn't end up being all that exciting, but it was worth seeing, and our tickets from the royal palace got us in for free anyways.

The highlights were the Teak Mansion of King Rama VI, a huge mansion made entirely of wood, decorated with over the top furniture. And this was despite the mandatory tour that we had to take, which was AWFUL. There was also the exhibition of national treasures in Coronation Hall, given to the King for his 80th birthday and teh queen for her 60th. The golden palanquins, thrones, carvings were just ridiculously ornate. It's crazy that a place like this, where there are still people living in poverty, will waste so much money on needless opulence for a useless figurehead monarchy.


This is a good segue to some royalty talk I guess. The Thai people are in love with their king. Thye LOVE him. They don't just approve of or like him, they actually love him. His picture is everywhere around Bangkok.

Historically, kings of Thailand used to have colour themes for each day of the week. Yellow for Monday, pink for Tuesday, blue for Wednesday, and so on. When we were walking around Bangkok on Monday, everyone, at least every 4 of 5 people, was wearing yellow. And on Tuesday, 2 of 5 were dressed in pink. The people wear these colours ot show their love of their king. How crazy in that? It must be the strangest thing to be so loved by so many strangers. It's insane.

We braved public transit again to get to the eastern part of Bangkok, where all the malls are, to check out the shopping and grab some lunch in the food courts. THe food courts were awesome and rminded me of the Wang Fu Jing food court in Beijing, except a little smaller. There are probably about 40 or so options at the food court, all really different things from lunch to drinks to desserts to snacks. It's like eating at a night market but much cleaner.

There were so many malls in such a small area, but one, Siam Paragon, stood out. It was super high end: it had a Chanel, Jimmy Choo, Hermes, and lots of jewellery stores, but crazy enough, it also had a Sea World in the basement (the BASEMENT!) and an Imax theatre on the top floor. And on the second floor, there was a BMW dealership, sandwiched between a Ferrai and a Maserati dealership. In the MALL. Crazy.


It was also home to a huge supermarket in the basement where I treated myself to Oreos and a chocolate bar, and there was a whole section full of dried fruit -- which were on sample: mango, pineapple, figs, dates, apricots, oranges, apples, blueberries, strawberries, dragonfruit, kiwi, papaya, pomello peel and tonnes of others. We were in that store for an hour...and it was so confusing. There was *so much* there. Not like them damned Cambodia nothing-stores.

And then it was snack time, and while I sat down to eat the lychee yogurt that I bought at the super market, Taulee picked up a hot Thai dessert from Siam Paragon's food court. It was full of bananas and taro, swimming in a sea of coconut milk. Really cool dessert: you pick the stuff you want, and they drizzle it with coconut milk. Yummy but super sweet. All in all, once we had wandered around the mall alittle longer, we had spent a total of 7 hours there.


We took a sky train ride to legendary Patpong Market, home to lady boys, bars, clubs, brothers, and Ping Pong Shows (where they shoot ping pongs and darts at things...and they don't use their hands to shoot...). Patpoint was a little (a lot) disappointing, for all I've heard about it. I only saw a couple of lady boys and it was all pretty tame, though I didn't go in to any ping pong shows...and wouldn't, given a second chance.

Getting home was a bit of a problem, since we had a lot of trouble finding our bus stop. Pad Thai on the street near the mall for dinner to break up the long long walk to find the bus station...and it was G-O-O-D.

And then...sleep, at our ghetto guesthouse.