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SE ASIA 2000/01
Jets to Bangkok
A Low Xmas
Smoking Monks &
Slow Boats in Cambodia
The Seventy-Five Cent
Saigon Crewcut
Sortie Inevitable
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Bangkok / Thailand
16 - 21 Dec 2000
After two days of flying and an afternoon in Paris, I arrive in Bangkok, Thailand. The heat is stifling. I cross the airport and catch the open air train to downtown. It's about a forty-five minute trip. Upon deposit at the train station, despite much research and reading beforehand I have so very little idea where I am or how to get anywhere. Eyeing the maps I decide to walk through the massive Chinatown downtown on my way to a hotel I've picked out. What follows is a two hour sweat through an extremely congested, noisy and crowded centre.
Bangkok tuk-tuk scooter taxis. Downtown.
Endless blocks of people washing pots and pans in the gutters, skinny cats crawling around, machine shops belching smoke and dust into the street, motorbikes in all states of disrepair or ability-- dozens ripping past me, dozens more under repair in the myriad of shops. Tuk-Tuk scooter taxi's weaving through the traffic. I've got all my bags and am stumbling down the sidewalks heatstroked and hungry.
I find the hotel, a cheap high-rise, looks like an army barrack inside. Simple clean room on the 7th floor, with private bath and overactive airconditioner- $8 for the night. I check in and purchase a bottled water, then head back out to the streets.
On a walking mission, I am still dumbfounded by the amount of traffic and the chaos of it all. Having been in China and in Africa, chaotic in themselves, I thought I would be prepared for this. Nothing could have prepared me for this except this itself. I'm having trouble figuring out how to streets. This will take me another week or two to learn properly. I keep trying to find things but keep getting "lost" but being lost always finds me with something else interesting or bizarre. I've found food by this time, and make some plans and ideas for the next few days. As night falls I decide to go see for myself the infamous western-overrun traveler's ghetto of Khao San road.
Your author with a cart of dried fishies.
Upon arriving it's certainly like nothing I have ever seen. (This is the theme of the entire trip, as I will find- being blown away.) So many white faces, I don't understand it. In China I could go hours, sometimes days, without seeing another of european descent. Here it is like someone turned on the magnet. Most of the people look like sunburnt college students off on a beach holiday. Very few americans. I find that most are canadians or australians or british. References from Garland's "The Beach" start making sense. This is the launch pad for Asian backpacker adventures. So many cheap guesthouses and amazing street vendors-- especially the food-- much of the hawked junk doesn't interest me. I'm not here for fake Rolexes, but somehow I submit to buying a few bootleg t-shirts reminiscent of teenage skateboarding years. The Pad Thai Pak for 20 cents is a oft repeated meal. I'm eating six to eight times a day. It's like a dream; but I can't determine if it's good or bad.
Thai hipsters with cheap beers and a mod'ed-out Vespa 150.
You can find virtually anything here. Internet access is everywhere and pennies a minute. Vintage scooters of all conditions parked or driving everywhere. Carts roll by with vendors selling stir-fried candied insects, dried fishes, fresh cut exotic fruits. I find a great Nepalese restaurant tucked into an upstairs lodge. Trying to find places not blaring hollywood movies or drunk, blubbering tourists is difficult. By the next night I am relocated to Th Khao San, against my better inclinations-- but I am traveling alone and realize that social context is lacking locked away in Chinatown's sooty streets.
Th Khao San: Stir-fried candied insects.
In the days I see the temples, Wat Pho, the largest and most famous, and visit a Monk's Bowl Village (which is only discernable by its signs-- I see no bowls being made, and few monks.) On a templewalk, I meet a young monk anxious to practice his english. I am sitting in the shade watching a litter of small scrawny kittens, an orange robed young man addresses me, telling me he is on his way to the library momentarily but that he would like to show me around. I wait. Then we embark on a two hour mediative walk and talk-- we sit in the park of a different cross town Wat and he shows me how to meditate Theravada style. This includes walking Buddha, breathing Buddha, sitting Buddha, and the whole 108 yards. His english wasn't perfect, but it's a decade ahead of my Thai. I had to keep correcting his english when he was trying to dictate some of the buddhist injunctions and precepts. This man was so holy, he had trouble even saying 'sexual intercourse.' We sat on the grass, with our shoes off, and for thirty minutes I tried to imagine a more spiritual, less swindling and violent world. It's the most relaxed I'd been since arriving.
He no Bangkok. Theravada monk (& kitty.)
As a follow-up to my sanctifying afternoon, one night I headed to the infamous Patpong redlight district. I'd read about this. The market clogs the street; goods market that is, not flesh market. That's mostly tucked indoors. One place I've heard of catches my eye-- I've heard of the "shows"- Queen's Castle 2. For the price of a $2 beer (twice what they usually are.) I sit through a bizarre display of exhibitionist femininity, fighting off the bar girls anxious to abscond with me to a $20 hotel visit. Why I'm here I can't quite figure other than I've heard of it, figure I'll regret it if I don't see what it is.. and besides I've read enough Henry Miller to have a substantial curiousity about all this. The tuk-tuk ride home (alone, yes) the young driver keeps having engine problems. It's one a.m. and I jump out and run to another tuk-tuk. The Khao San dive seems colder and staler than before. The mental images of the young Thai girls haunting my attempts at sleep.
Floating Market. Careful composition w/ no tourists.
I have to wake early in the morning to go to the Damnoen Saduak floating market. It should be called the Floating Tourist Market, because despite descriptions that this is a far less touristed affair than the other markets, this is outrageous. Most of the boats have women selling hats and t-shirts, not fruit or produce. On the trip I meet a young couple from Minneapolis. The highlight of the day was meeting a Japanese tour guide, probably 45 years old and dressed in a sharp crisp suit. The Minneapolis couple and I all have our smattering of tattoos slipping out of the bottoms of shirt sleeves. Japanese tour guide, seeing his group a safe distance away, walks over to us. He pulls back his collar, his sleeves, lifts his pants legs-- revealing a perfect full-undersuit of tattoo work. I'm imagining the saucy stories of a probable gangster past... and I'm trying to count the number of complete fingers he has. He motions to his lips to keep it quiet. Can't blow his straight cover to the tour group, can he?
Fruits, Meats, Noodles... and souvenir hats.
After I have had my three days worth of Bangkok, and Xmas getting closer, I get a mini-bus to take me to the islands in the gulf of Thailand. Sites set on Ko Chang-- Elephant Island.
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