Thursday, January 7, 2010

Christmas 09 con't: Bangkok, Thailand

Lots of people who travel to Southeast Asia hate Bangkok; I've heard more than once that "I promised myself I would never go back there." Lonely Planet rather poetically calls it "a monster that feeds on concrete, shopping malls and diesel exhaust," a description that somewhat calls into question how much they like it.


Love it or hate it, Bangkok does seem to me to be Southeast Asia in microcosm. It offers up a slice -- if not two of three -- of all the good and all the bad. Except, because this is Bangkok, it's bigger and shinier and grittier than anywhere else.


Of the many reasons for my love affair with the region is the prevalence and unfailing character of...


Markets. We landed around 10 and found a hotel by about 12; after lunch, we decided to head out to Chatuchak Weekend Market. As the name suggests, it is only open on the weekends and so we had to go that day in order to go at all, but it was perhaps a bit overwhelming as an introduction to Bangkok.


It is the truest kind of market: not a tourist-funded collection of stalls with cheap souvenirs, but a madhouse where tourists are welcome but are treated mostly the same as the locals buying everything from clothing to school supplies, heavy machinery to dining room sets, cookware to animals (alive and dead) to put in the cookware or keep as pets.


We were there for about two hours; we saw the smallest fraction of what was available. The place is immense, bigger by far than the average American mall. When we crossed the road via a raised pedestrian footbridge, the tin roofs stretched so far that I couldn't fit them into my camera's viewfinder to get a decent photo.


However, should you prefer that your t-shirt come with a recognizable label, you can head to one of the...


Enormous glitzy shopping malls. We found them in Manila too, and there as well I found unsettling the sharp contrast between the people buying overpriced designer clothing and the people living in poverty on the streets.


Incidentally, we spent one afternoon seeing Avatar. Before all movies in Thailand, everyone stands for the national anthem (which is long!) -- and they play a saccharine movie about the wonder that is the Thai royal family. These movies are also shown on public transportation, and are often not actually about the royals but about how the public (should) take courage from their example and buckle down to any number of unpleasant tasks/life crises.


Speaking of unpleasant tasks, I'm sure you've heard that Bangkok has more than it's fair share of a...


Red light district. One day, we decided to try to find a neighborhood called Little Arabia. We took a wrong turn. Five minutes later, Kaleb called us all to a halt. "So... we are in prostitute land. We need to get out of here before we have to sell Jenn."


In some ways, I was glad it was mid-afternoon. I don’t do well with situations of latent danger. But it was certainly a depressing time to be there, with the women lined up at discreet distances along the sidewalks, eyeing everyone for potential interest.


And interest they found, thanks to Thailand’s stream of...


Really disgusting foreign tourists. The sex tourists are the worst, of course. As we wandered the streets, I kept thinking that I was seeing the same guy over and over. It was not the same guy, but it might as well have been. For future reference, sex tourists have: a sunburn, a beer belly, a thick gold necklace, a probably-offensive t-shirt, and one hand on their conquest at all times as though afraid that she/he will run away given half the chance.


However, our lodgings deep in the backpackers’/cheap-hotel enclave provided plenty of other opportunities to observe the way frat boys behave when they go on vacation. And I just want to say that it is not only the Americans. I have also met thoroughly unpleasant Brits, Australians, Greeks, Koreans, and French. (However, I never met a Canadian I didn’t like until Sapporo -- but that’s a different story.)


Most of the truly revolting specimens spend their nights drinking themselves into a stupor requiring the next fourteen hours to sleep off in order to begin again. Unfortunately, some do feel obligated to make their way to...


Big shiny things. And does Bangkok have a lot of them. Perhaps the most spectacular is the Grand Palace, which also houses the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. For reasons of respect, they demand at the entrance that you be properly dressed: if your pants are deemed to be too short, they will lend you a long skirt to put over them.


But it's worth wearing layers in 90-degree heat. It's worth spending the equivalent of a night's lodging on admission fees. It's even worth battling the crowds. It defies description. I didn’t even know that places like this still existed. I certainly didn’t know that they exist with this level of maintenance. I can’t imagine that it was any more impressive, or more visually exhausting, on the day it was built in 1782.


There is good reason for keeping it in working (and shiny) order: although the royal family no longer lives here, it is still used multiple times per year for various ceremonies, celebrations, and functions. Much like Buddhist temples and monasteries throughout Asia (Japan included) they very sensibly make their money off the tourists (Thais get in for free, probably because they are still paying for its construction, let alone its upkeep), while barring certain other areas from all but those involved in the rituals and ceremonies.


The other famous Big Shiny Thing is the Reclining Buddha in Wat Pho. The travel guides tout it as the biggest in the world, at 46 meters long and 15 meters tall at the highest point. And of course it's all plated in very shiny gold, although my favorite part was the mother-of-pearl inlay showing scenes from the life of the Buddha -- on the bottoms of the feet!


Along the back side (the boring side), both Thais and clearly-clueless foreigners were buying cups of small metal discs that they dropped one by one into a row of metal buckets along the wall. I am not sure what the religious significance of such an act would be, but whatever it was, I must say it was lessened somewhat when I noticed a wat employee about midway through the lineup of worshippers removing all the coins to sell them to the next person!


The rest of the Wat, largely ignored by the bus tour groups, is quiet and lovely and filled with stupas. It feels like a monastery, not a tourist site. I'm told their massage school is quite famous.


Presumably, a massage parlor on the grounds of a Wat would be safe; however, it is well known to watch yourself in Bangkok. The streets teem with...


Scams. There was a sign in our guesthouse urging us to ignore any tuk-tuk drivers claiming that X tourist site was closed today, and/or offering to take us to any kind of gem sale or other limited-time opportunity. Similar signs were posted in various restaurants, as well as Lonely Planet. And yet, as we walked down the main street towards the Royal Palace, not one but three guys appeared to inform us that "It's closed, it's closed!" Dudes, find a new scam. Seriously, if anyone falls for it anymore, I feel they deserve what they get.


We managed to avoid all such offers. We did, however, take advantage of the...


Unusual modes of transportation. Of course, Thailand is the "Land of a Thousand Elephants." You can ride them if you go out closer to the jungles; there are even ways to do so that are ethical and elephant-friendly. [Really, who would get on the back of an elephant that they could see was being mistreated? It just seems like too big a risk that it would choose the fifteen minutes of your ride to decide it'd had enough.]


We also turned down the multitudes of tuk-tuk drivers (who usually want about US$5-10 to ferry you about) in favor of taking the local buses (about 7 cents, or 18 if you want air-conditioning).


I did, however, insist upon taking a ride on the River Taxi. (Which is called that only by tourists.) According to Lonely Planet, Bangkok used to be nicknamed "The Venice of the East" because of its reliance on the various rivers and canals that criss-cross the old heart of the city: the Royal Palace, for example, as well as Wat Pho, are actually on a small island. As the city has spread away from the rivers, water transportation has become less and less a part of daily life.


But the city does still run a public boat that operates like a bus, with scheduled stops at various points. It is cheap (about 25 cents), cooler than the buses, and [this would probably be mostly a tourist's incentive] offers completely alternative views of Bangkok.


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