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Misty's Take on Bangkok:Damn, this is long!! I’m writing the summary after the fact and seeing that I’ve gone on and on. Well, what can I say about Bangkok? It’s amazing, strange, beautiful, energetic, a great bargain, friendly, safe, and completely wonderful. We plan on going back in April during Holy Week and working our way from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. If Thailand shows up on my next assignment after Manila it’s definitely high on the list. Chad Note: One of the guys we met over the Bohol weekend trip is posted in Bangkok. He take on the situation is that he goes to work only eight hours a day... The rest of every day he's on vacation! Friday, Feb. 13 After a short 2 1/2 hour flight, we touched down in Bangkok. Unlike Manila, which is set into a large valley, the area around Bangkok was flat. A good early indicator was the lack of choking gray smog hanging over the city. Another good indicator was that the toilets at the airport flushed and there was both toilet paper and soap (these things don't exist at Manila international). We had a package deal with transportation, hotel, and a half day tour and were met by a driver holding a sign with our name on it. He took our bags to the car and we slowly edged our way through rush hour traffic to the hotel. Chad and I quickly noticed the motorcycle cabs - literally a guy driving a small cycle taking passengers on the back - weaving through stopped traffic right up to the light then zoom to the next light. Bangkok's air quality, streets, people, and the city overall is _so_ much cleaner than Manila. It's like the difference between Gary, Indiana times 5 (that's Manila) and say... Westside of Indy by the stinky Chrysler plant. Not great, but better. Our hotel was fabulous. Very Asian chic with a wonderful view. Not ones to linger, we freshened up and hit the streets map in hand. We were on the path of an outdoor buffet place we'd seen about a mile up from the hotel. Along the way we stopped about a hundred times to look at all the street vendor merchandise. Anything from fake Diesel jeans ($15 USD) to fake Burberry purses, mobile phone accessories, shoes, food, carvings, etc. All priced low to begin with, but bargaining is a must. Thai vendors approach with calculator in hand. English skills aren't that great, but the almighty number talks. They punch in their price, hand over the calculator, you type in your price, and then the handoff continues until both are smiling. It's really fun because the Thais aren't as pushy as the Filipinos. You can walk away and they won't follow you down the block. We reach the restaurant which is outdoors and we're the only white people there among about 100 students from the nearby college. We caused quite a stir with people giggling and saying "farong", or "foreigner" quietly. The buffet was 69 baht (38 baht to the U.S. dollar). You sit, point at someone else's beer or water and hold up a finger for how many you want. They bring over this enclosed steel grill with hot coals inside. The top is vented with a lip around the side that's filled with hot water. The fire heats the water where you put soft items like veggies and fish balls. The top gets sizzling hot for cooking meat and fish. Everything's going great until I peeked in the back on the way to the buffet. It was like a car accident - you don't want to look, but you've got to. The dishes were being 'washed' by rubbing the plate with a damp cloth then a quick dunk into a plastic tub that wasn't bubbly with hot water and soap. Oh well, when in Rome... We filled up our plates and went back to the table. I tried to play it off, but Chad knows all my worried looks too well. I was afraid of getting sick for the entire long weekend. Chad ate up, but I left slightly hungry. No, we didn't get sick after all. On the way back we caught a cab and showed the cabbie our plastic card key which was conveniently inscribed with our hotel name/address in English and Thai. We looked in a few more market stalls still going strong at almost midnight and wearily went back to the hotel room. Saturday, Feb. 14th The sun's come up and Chad's snooze-free internal alarm clock keeps ringing. It's barely past 6 and he's peeking out the windows letting all the sun shine in. Sigh. No sleeping in with this hubby of mine. Just before 7 we hit our complementary breakfast. A balance of Japanese and Western style foods waited. We filled our plates with staples like bacon and eggs as well as spicy squid and fried rice. The fruit bar was filled with strange Asian fruits like rose apples (tastes like a pear with apple texture), a whitish kiwi-type thing we still haven't figured out, and yummy papaya and mangos. Our goal for the day was the Chatuchak weekend market. The sky train was a 10 minute walk past some other early morning market stalls, commuters in open air busses, and a couple of Buddhist temples. Nearby, vendors sell little necklaces made of sweet smelling flowers, incense, and food offerings. Also nearby are lottery ticket vendors. It's common practice, after praying for more important matters first of course, to ask for luck with lottery numbers. The weekend market was amazing. I've read there's anywhere from 9,000 to 15,000 different vendor stalls here. Anything from Thai silk, pirated CDs, pets, orchids, spices, hardware - you name it and it's there. But where to find it? Items are segregated by type into locations, but we returned on Sunday to buy items we didn't on Saturday and got completely turned around. Chad _hates_ shopping, but when you add bargaining into the mix, he's unstoppable. We got some presents to send to the U.S. and some presents to take home for ourselves. It was a madhouse when we left at 4PM, so it's best to arrive while everyone is setting up. Tired after spending our hard-earned baht, took a motorcycle cab back to the hotel. That was probably the most fun I’d had in 5 minutes in my life. My courtesy helmet was entirely too big and I would have died had we crashed, but it was great zipping around cars and making our way to the front of the line. Chad took the dorkiest picture of me because he called my name and snapped it with me having a surprised look and my helmet looked like a 5-year-old wearing an adult helmet. Oh well, damn vanity! We ate a late Valentine's dinner at the hotel, and then took a quick swing around the neighborhood to check out the scenery. Chatuchak info: http://www.into-asia.com/bangkok/markets/chatuchak.php Sunday, Feb. 15th Well, we're officially addicts. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we were off to Chatuchak again. We had to make it quick because we were scheduled for a tour and due back at the hotel at 12:20. The sky train was packed with people headed to the market when we were heading back at 11:30. Suckas, you gotta get there by 9 or spend most of your time looking at the backs of other shopper's heads. Our tour was upriver on a long thin boat holding about 20 passengers. For about one hour we slowly traveled out of Bangkok and into the suburbs. The waterways and canals serve as streets and we were greeted by smiling and waving Thais as we passed by. Homes are built on stilts with one end normally attached to land, the other hanging over the river bank. There was a great variety of styles of homes for all budgets. These are not low-rent districts, but a mix of low, middle, and upper class areas. The most expensive homes are built of teak which is durable in the waterlogged, humid climate. Most had at least a few rooms that were air conditioned, with other rooms having ceiling fans to draw in the cooler river breezes. Many people had built homemade temples sitting on a stand attached to a pole that had been submerged in the riverbank. From the simple to the ornate temples alike, passersby on boat left offerings. We paused to visit a Buddhist temple and were invited to feed the huge catfish that come to feed along the river. These things were monsters! Since it was at the hottest point of the day, many of the monks were taking a little Buddhist siesta on the temple floor, so we were asked to be very quiet. The temple interior was very ornate with gild and a huge golden Buddha statue inside. Not the big, fat laughing tourist statue Buddha, but a more austere thin Buddha. On the way back we switched boats to a large converted wooden rice barge. Even these formerly utilitarian boats were decorated and sparkling clean. Thailand must be the place to go if you're into woodworking. The selection of routers has to be incredible...I bet there's some at the weekend market. Off topic and maybe next time. So, OK. We got free food and free drink on the way back. There was a little old man (and I mean little – small for an Asian man) who kept pushing the fact that we’d already paid for the trip and it would be one hour “Wohn ow-ah. You all weddy pay. Eat. Drink.” Well, OK, if you insist. And the lady’s little grilled rice puddings, the fresh pineapple, rice brittle with peanuts (tastes better than it sounds) and local rice whiskey flowed. See, I think the key to world peace are the following items: a rice barge, a warm tropical climate, exotic scenery, Buddhist temples everywhere- how you gonna fight in front of a Buddhist monk? – Yummy food, and free rice whiskey. Barely anyone spoke English, and for one hour, Germans, Australians, Americans, Koreans, and Chinese got along like nobody’s business. On the way back we passed the King’s barge garage. Not as cheesy as it sounds. The Singha beer factory complete with multi-story mock beer can, loaded down barges being pulled by tiny tugboats (nothing that would make any U.S. safety standard!), more houses on stilts, people swimming and doing laundry along the river, a lady washing her dog, temples, and more temples. That night, we walked the neighborhood streets until late. The market stalls were completely different from the previous two nights. We walked around tired but determined to use up every minute we had left in Bangkok and were sad to leave it. Chad bought a Chelsea, England away team soccer jersey for $2 USD. A fake complete with official stamp. A friend of ours went to Singapore the same weekend and saw the same fake for $70 USD. Monday, Feb. 16th Sigh. We had to go back to dirty old Manila. Oh well, the work there pays for weekend trips away from there. We had packed the night before and sat down for our last breakfast at the hotel. Since it was Monday, the hotel was full of retirees and oddly enough the Qatar national soccer team, and a bunch of ultra cool Japanese skateboarder guys. I just love Asia! We were picked up at 8AM by a sweet silver Mercedes and driven to the airport. There we waited for the dreaded flight back. |