My Thai

We arrived safe and sound in Bangkok a few days ago and have been thoroughly enjoying Thai hospitality ever since. The people here are so friendly and open, it’s easy to see why so many foreigners decide to settle here and live out their years on the beach. We spent our first few days in Bangkok, which is a huge, sprawling city, and rather difficult to navigate owing to the impossible traffic and indistinct neighborhoods. We finally got the hang of it right as we were leaving, so perhaps the next time we pass through we’ll feel like experts.

Once we’d arrived at our hostel, we decided to get online and check email. Literally one second after I clicked on the free wi-fi network detected by our laptop, the screen shuttered, a red skull appeared as the desktop, and a message popped up requesting that we reload Windows from a CD. What the hell?!? A red skull. It was such a cliché, our computer instantly hacked and destroyed by a laughing red skull, just like in a cheesy movie scene.

We both had a momentary panic, and then Ben, who had had the foresight to actually bring along the backup CDs that no one ever thinks they’ll need, pulled them out and started reloading our computer’s entire brain. It took hours, but piece by piece we overwrote the hard drive and reinstalled everything we’d had on it. Luckily we hadn’t been storing photos on the computer, so we didn’t lose anything important except for an afternoon in Bangkok.

Once we’d recovered from the stress of nursing our precious laptop back to health, we set out to look for dinner and explore Khao San, well known as the backpacker ghetto. The one strip teems with tanned westerners, tattoo parlors, Pad Thai street carts, used book shops, and bars, one of which was showing the Tour de France live, so at Ben’s insistence we stopped there and had a drink. The street food in Bangkok is absolutely amazing in its variety and quality, and we’ve restricted most of our meals to what can be found cooking on the sidewalk for about $0.30. After dinner, we found a blues bar playing decent live music, had a couple glasses of wine, and headed to bed.

The next day we went to the train station to try to figure out how to get to the beaches down south. Trying to save money, we tried taking the bus, which of course we boarded in the wrong direction, depending on the non-English-speaking onboard fare collector to sort us out. The correct bus eventually got us there, and once we’d arrived at the train station, in typical Thai fashion, an extremely friendly woman helped us immediately, explaining the train schedule and prices and connecting us with a tourist office that did all the work for us, seemingly for no commission! Oh, if only we’d had such help in India! We got ourselves booked in for the next day, and then explored a bit of New Bangkok, full of traffic, shiny shopping malls, and the ubiquitous street food. One thing I’ve fallen in love with is Thai writing - I can’t decipher a word, of course, but the loops and curls of the alphabet are so beautiful, I just love looking at all the signs.

While in the area, we stopped by the Jim Thompson house, now a museum but formerly the home of an American CIA agent who became a champion of Thai silk and disappeared mysteriously in Malaysia in 1967. The house is known to be an example of Thai architecture, all dark teak wood and steeply pitched roofs, and it contains Thompson’s collection of Asian art, including dozens of Buddhas. I learned that Buddha can never be depicted showing any evidence of muscle or bone, presumably to portray him as more divine than human, which explained to me while he always looks a bit pudgy. Also on the compound is a spirit house, one of which appears outside almost every home in Thailand, a mini house where the spirits get stopped before they can enter the actual home and where Thais leave offerings of food, water, and flowers to keep the spirits happy. I find the style of Buddhism here so interesting, combining textbook, Chinese-style Buddhism with ancient Thai traditional beliefs involving spirits, amulets, and astrology. We explored the several rooms and lush gardens of the Thompson house, browsed the gorgeous silk accessories at the luxury gift shop, and took off.

For our evening’s entertainment, I decided a trip to Bangkok’s Red Light District would be a must - it’s what Bangkok is famous for, after all. The Patpong area has the reputation of containing the most interesting debauchery, so we asked a cab to take us there. About an hour later, the taxi dropped us off on a very dark street and told us we had arrived. It didn’t look right, but we believed him, hopped out, and began to wander through a sleepy residential neighborhood. We walked around in circles and asked the few open shopkeepers for directions, which they tried to give us but we clearly failed to comprehend. We passed by armed guards protecting some kind of military installation, and when they unbelievably let us pass through we continued through the silent streets, cursing our cab driver and certain we were nowhere near the red lights and sex shows. Finally we reached civilization in the form of a strip mall and gas station, and found another cab who agreed to take us to our destination. We have no idea where we’d been exploring for the previous hour, but at the end of the second ride we were unmistakably in Hookerville.

Unfortunately, our Red Light adventures didn’t turn out to be as exciting as we’d hoped. Rather than flamboyant lady-boys wandering the streets, there were instead a bunch of Western families(!) and groups of bored-looking prostitutes lining the walkways. We browsed the counterfeit branded accessories and Bangkok T-shirts while hawkers tried to convince us to go to a “show“. Finally, we realized that despite Ben’s having lived in Amsterdam for 6 months and my having been to several Mexican border towns over the years, neither one of us had ever been to such a show and maybe it was time to remedy that. We relented to one of the hawkers and lasted about 5 minutes inside the nightclub before deciding it was definitely not our scene, although we were impressed by the balloon popping abilities of the girl onstage. Rather than calling the night a total loss we watched a truly terrible band sing out of tune dance hits before heading home.

In an effort to sneak in some culture that didn’t involve the sex trade, the next morning we got up and walked straight to Wat Pho, a Buddhist Temple famous for its huge reclining Buddha. The temple buildings were gorgeous, topped with steeply tapered spires covered with painted tiles and gold plating. There are several small buildings that comprise the temple, the main central one containing an enormous gilt shrine covered in Buddhas large and small and ringed with flower garlands. We took in the sight and scents and wandered around the gardens for a little while, donating a few Baht and signing a tile that will be used in renovations, forever leaving our stamp on Wat Pho. Then we finished up our tour at the reclining Buddha, a massive gold figure lying serenely on his side, with mother of pearl swirling designs on the bottoms of his feet. The sculpture is 43 meters from head to toe, dwarfing all who come to see him, and yet his reclined position makes the figure familiar and comforting, rather than imposing. It’s a beautiful, peaceful religious sight.

That evening, it was time to leave Bangkok, so we began the journey to our beach paradise, which involved:

1) A cab to the train station
2) An overnight train to Surat Thani
3) A bus to Don Sak
4) A ferry to Thong Sala pier on Ko Pha-Ngan
5) A sawngthaew (a kind of pick-up truck taxi) to Ao Chalok Lam
6) A long tail boat to Hat Khuat, a.k.a Bottle Beach…

where we are now. 19 hours total, but well worth the trip! Traffic and bars have been replaced with sand and palm trees, and as Ben will post about next, we have finally learned how to relax. Ahhhhh.