Welcome to the City of Angels, the Big Mango; Bangkok, Thailand. It's the kind of place you can read about all you want, but you really have to see it to believe it. Incredible.
Unfortunately, before we could get to the good stuff we had to endure yet another hellish journey. Although shorter then some of the others we have recounted, this one was maybe the most acutely painful yet. And since you all seem to enjoy reading about our misery more then our pleasure, I will do my best to indulge you here. This one took the form of an extremely cramped minivan and a deranged lunatic of a driver. The journey started out well enough; 180 baht each and the whole back row to ourselves. Things, however, went down hill from there and I mean in a hurry. Our driver; we shall call him Mario after the Formula One driver whose last name is Andretti, pulled away from the curb with full throttle and little concern for anyone else that happened to be sharing the road. We hadn't gone 2 minutes when G and I looked at each other with panic stricken eyes; I was starting to feel the unmistakable pangs of motion sickness induced nausea and G, well, she just looked terrified. We bounced in the back of the van along the bumpy Thai roads for a few minutes until screeching to a unexpected and sudden halt on the side of the road where another passenger loaded in and, with nowhere else to go, climbed into our back row cramming us further into the corner. "Sweet", we groaned exchanging unhappy glances. On we proceeded down the road. 'Mario' drove like a fricking maniac. He sped, changed lanes erradictly, without signal, rhyme or reason and generally drove the vehicle constantly at it's absolute limits. A few times he swerved back into traffic just in a nick of time to avoid a broken down car that was stopped in the shoulder, where it had every right to be, but which 'Mario' routinely used as a passing lane. Before long, we came to another screeching stop, where we picked up yet another passenger making it 4 in the backseat and leaving Gina and I, by far the tallest of any passengers in the van, squeezed into a space that was...how shall I put it...insufficient.
The journey was supposedly only 2.5 hours, but it stretched to almost 4 after we stopped at what looked like a gas station to fill up on some unknown, but apparently highly demanded substance. I've got no clue: but, in any case, we waited and waited and waited in a huge line that literally spiraled around till we finally had our turn to fill up on whatever the mystery commodity was. All the while, G and I sat, bitter and uncomfortable as could be. Thank God we had a couple podcasts loaded up on the iPad or I'm not sure we would have made it.
At long last we tore back onto the road headed North and we bounced, swerved, weaved and sped our way to Bangkok. Countless times 'Mario' hit a bump with such speed that the shocks directly below us lucky enough to be in the back seat would bottom out violently which would cause a shot of pain to radiate from tailbone to neck. At long last the city started to appear before and around us, and I said a silent thank you.
When we finally arrived at the minivan terminal and peeled ourselves out of the van, my back did not immediately straighten fully and G had numbness and burning in her legs. We limped out to the street and hailed a cab: "Khoa San Road, please." and we sped off towards our accommodation.
Khoa San Road is the infamous and notorious heart of Bangkok's well established backpacker community. It is about 150 yards or so of bars, hotels, restaurants, street food vendors, t-shirt stalls, knock off retail establishments, tailors, etc. They say that you can buy ANYTHING in Bangkok, and while Khoa San Road is not the spot for the seedier elements Thailand is known for, there is certainly quite a lot on offer and it is a site to be seen for sure. Two noteworthy observations: first, across the street a bar whose slogan painted above the door read: 'Strong Drinks. We do NOT check I.D.' and second, in case you hadn't seen that bar and were not of age, were booths set up to print out fake I.D.s. However, these dudes didn't stop there; you could not only buy a California Driver's License, but also a Student I.D. from any university you wanted, PADI Diving license, and could even get a pretty legit looking college diploma. Just goes to show you that you can arrive in Bangkok a scrubby and broke backpacker and leave an Oxford graduate with a custom made suit to boot!
We spent the evening wandering the area directly around Khoa San Rd enjoying all the many sights, sounds, tastes and smells that make this city amoungst the most lively I've ever experienced. Just as we were getting ready to call it a night, G and I finally caved to the constant needling by the millions of massage shops and thus I found my self getting pulled, twisted, rubbed and stepped on...by a dude. It was awesome.
In the morning we headed out for a big day of sight seeing and the like. We started off by walking over to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (the Temple of the Emerald Buddah), the top site in Bangkok. It was pretty spectacular. I had to borrow some awful pants from them as they enforce a strict dress code in the Temple, which were like MC Hammer pants but without the awesome flare.
It's hard to explain the Temple, but basically it is a HUGE complex of several extremely beautiful and ornate buildings. They are all decorated in amazingly detailed and beautiful mosaic and color. The central building is the actual Temple where they house the Emerald Buddah, considered one of the most sacred of the millions of Buddah statues that they have in Thailand. You could spend hours looking at the details in the buildings, statues and paintings that cover this area...we enjoyed it immensely and commented what a nice change of pace it was after all of Europe's churches and cathedrals. Next door is the equally impressive Grand Palace which is where the Royal Family conducts a lot of official business and where many of Thailand's Kings have called home. The grounds are manicured immaculately and the buildings themselves are vast architectural works of art. In short, both the Temple and Palace are awesome and should be a mandatory stop for any visit to Bangkok.
Next, we walked down the street to visit another famous though much less crowded temple, Wat Pho. This is the home of the famous "Reclining Buddah" statue which is a whopping 46m long and 15m tall. It's impressive. We found this whole complex to be quiet and peaceful compared to the hectic and crowded business we'd just witnessed up the street.
We continued south until we crossed one street and all of the sudden found ourselves in Chinatown. We wandered through the narrow lanes, alleyways, sidewalks and streets all of which form one huge market. There is more stuff for sale within the square mile of Bangkok's Chinatown then I can say I've ever seen; it's just that dense and there are that many people. An experience, that's for sure.
By this point it was getting on towards late afternoon and one of THE things to do in Bangkok is to have a sunset drink at one of the roof top bars that overlook the river and city. We figured out which one was featured in Hangover 2 and steered for it. It seemed appropriate considering my Zack Galafanakis beard and shaved head style. Turns out you can't trust everything you see in movies, while those dudes rolled in looking filthy, bloody and scrubby; we were denied entry because I was wearing shorts. Bogus. All good though, I wasn't really looking forward to shelling out for a $20 cocktail...especially in a city where $1 drinks are the norm. We made a feeble attempt to find another rooftop then threw in the towel, admitted defeat and hailed a cab back to our digs.
That night we went and ate dinner at a little open air/ stall restaurant we had spied the night before. The food was cheap, cheap and pretty good although not great. The real draw to this spot was the location (perfect people watching and within earshot of the band at the bar across the way) and the host/waiter. 'Max' is a smooth talking dude who hustles people off the street and into his plastic tables but whose real passion is magic. Not the gothic, dork card game, but real, you know, magic. He puts on a pretty sweet little show: card tricks, of course, but also some other cool ones including one that involved fire and a wallet. His finale was putting a 5 Baht coin into and then removing it from a beer bottle. Sounds easy enough except that a 5 Baht coin is too large to fit in the opening. Yeah, like I said...'magic'. After the show we cruised around and checked out another few spots including the funky Hippie De Bar and even stopped in for one at our friends across the way who serve "Strong drinks & we don't check I.D" just to say we did.
The next morning G ran out to check internet and grab a bite and literally ran into zee Germans. Not just any Germans, God knows there are a million of them in Thailand...but these were ZEE Germans. The one's that we couldn't shake on the islands and who snaked our bungalow on Lipe. What are the odds. Strangely, this time they were super chatty and kept G for a 20 minute stop-and-chat at least.
Having gotten most of the hard core tourist stuff knocked out the previous day, we were set to pretty much just cruise and check out a few odds and ends. One thing that G had read about and had peaked her interest was the 'Forensic Science Museum' which houses all sorts of gory stuff including the fully embalmed body of a famous Thai serial murderer. Lonely Planet warns against visiting "with a full stomach" as it's not for the queezy. So we set out having just eaten to test our nerves and intestinal fortitude. It was across the river so we had to find the ferry dock to take us across. And in our search we came across our first real encounter with the flooding that has devastated parts of Bangkok and Northern Thailand. The markets along the river and by the boat docks were under water, but not, as you'd expect abandoned. Business was going on per usual. Some people stood on make shift stools or scaffolds to stay above the water. Other's just went for it and were just standing in the water as they sold their nic-nac's and other oddities. We navigated an improvised bridge that somebody had put up as the main thorough fair. I got some photos but, as usual, not sure they do it justice.
Long story short we found the ferry across and even found the museum in the middle of a huge hospital and it was closed for a month due to the flooding. (It wasn't itself affected, but they had it closed nonetheless.) G was devastated. We went back and took the ferry down the river where we were able to cover the same distance that had taken us all day on foot the day before in about 20 minutes. We got down to the Silom district and walked the main drag to some markets we wanted to check out. They were closed too. It clearly wasn't our day and so decided to call it. A quick ride back to our hotel to grab our stuff then we flagged a cab and negotiated a decent cab price out to our accommodation for that night which was way out by the airport. See, we had an early flight out in the morning for our very Singaporean Thanksgiving so it made sense to be out that way. G had picked it online because it said they had a gym; the idea being we'd get a little work out in before dinner and maybe even in the morning too. The cab ride ended up taking almost 90 minutes due to rush hour traffic and when we got there we discovered that there was no gym. Strike 3. G was not pleased with the woman. OK, let's go get some dinner. We decided we wanted non Thai if possible (it's been a month straight of Thai food!) and G said she wanted "a place with walls". We walked and walked and although we found several charming food stalls with tables right next to rusty barbed wire fences we found no restaurants with actual walls. We finally went into the closest we could find and the meal was unmemorable except for two things: first, it was way more expensive then it should have been considering its crap location and lack of deliciousness, and second; our waiter was a particularly unsavory looking, although pleasant enough, lady-boy. It was clearly just one of those days so we headed home and only hesitated for a quick wander through the night market stalls to have one last glance and whiff of Thailand before we bid farewell the next morning.
The next morning at the airport, we had a few minutes to kill and I found myself pondering the following thought:
So THAT'S what it's like to spend 4 weeks in Thailand with 3.5 of them being at the beach.
Awesome!!!