Finally taking some time to sit down and write my blog for one last time on the subject of my glorious adventure to Singapore this semester. Not exactly going in chronological order, I'll just start with my trip to Bangkok, since that is fairly recent. And holy cow that's a ton of pictures... towards the end my camera actually ran out of battery, so you're seeing only about 3/4 of the trip to Bangkok.
I really wish there was no unwritten society rule that tourists are only supposed to take pictures of the touristy stuff, such as in Bangkok the temples, palaces, ruins, etc. I wanted to take pictures of the homeless with pet birds and rabbits on the streets, the lady-boys, the jewelry scammers trapping tourists in their "one in a lifetime sale events", the mysterious policeman who went into a jewelry store and handed over some pieces to the clerk for inspection (stolen?), the old white men walking around with sweet "thai candy" hanging on their arms (both girls and boys)... but I think taking out my camera in these cases would have earned me some unfavorable responses. I should have done it anyway, I'm such a wuss.
But anyway, got some good photos nevertheless to remind me of the town. Kanit Jaimun, a Thai local who lived in California for a while and who also has a really good blog with much better pictures than mine <<http://kanizworld.multiply.com/>>, kindly showed me around some of the city while I was there. I also met some NUS groups while I was there. During the evenings I tended to wander alone, around the dark alleys, the "soi"s, in Silom and Patpong, where most of the foreigners congregate to do the stereotypical tourist activities in Bangkok: massages, buy clothing and jewelry, sex shows (including the infamous "ping pong" show), bars, more sex, more drugs and alcohol, and don't forget, riding a tuk-tuk. I actually liked to pretend I was not a tourist, and since I've been told I could sometimes pass for a Thai, I did my best to wander around appearing as Thai as possible, and even followed some random people just to see where they go and what they do. I wanted to see what kind of human behavior takes place here. Nothing too exciting, I'm pretty jaded at this point I think. Thought about active participation, but decided against it. I just explored the clean, daylight side of Bangkok; I'm such a good boy :)
Anyway I'm very glad I got in touch with a local there, because it made figuring out the local public transport much easier, as well as finding good places to eat and what to order. I had some typical Thai foods, as well as some other great deals like an US$8 all-you-can-eat-within-1hour-and-10min sushi and hotpot buffet. It was a good buffet, with salmon sashimi, lots of meat, fish, clams, etc. A very good deal, never seen a sushi buffet like that in the US, and if one was to exist like that I'm sure it would be at least $30 a head here.
Transport was also unbelievably cheap. The train from Bangkok to Ayuthaya was 2 hours long and only cost about 60 cents, which was also the cost of the meal on the train, which was some egg and meat rice mix that was actually pretty tasty. But it was also raining like hell most of the time, especially at Ayuthaya where you have to walk around a lot to see all the ruins. That's also when my camera ran out of battery... shit. So I took only a few photos of the place. I've had my share of Southeast Asian ruins though, so at least we got that out of my system.
The only form of transport that I had trouble with were the boats. Fortunately those were really cheap too, so I could afford to make a lot of mistakes, which I did. Going up and down the river from Silom to the Old Town was especially confusing. It should only take 1 boat ride to get there, but I ended up getting of about 4 different boats... some of them look like they go down the river but they really just CROSS the river. Oh well I made it in once piece after all.
There's no real story here that I can narrate, so I'm just going to try now to tell you the images in my head at the moment that I remember of Bangkok. There's a fat white lady smoking a cigarette, talking with a fat Thai guy with a Bluetooth in his ear, and they seem to be talking about some nearby sale of something. There's some tall hotels, with balconies overflowing with lush bougainvilleas, overlooking the river, the slums, the temples. The skytrain, the MRT. Pink taxis and tuk-tuks buzzing on the streets. There are some cute Thai girls behind a coconut ice cream stand in Chinatown, from which I bought some ice cream, and flirted with them a bit :) Just a bit! "Hey, how are you... could I get a refill, since I can never get enough coconut here?" Corny stuff like that. There's a sidewalk where some massage girls are sitting on outside a parlor, and an old homeless woman with a sign and a cute little bunny rabbit tied to a string in her hand. There was this old grizzly white man sitting in front of me on the boat, with a young Thai boy-toy in feminine looking clothes sitting next to him (reminded me of Titan haha). Spicy Tom-yam soup (considered very mild by Thai standards) in a big, fancy mall, followed by jelly ice dessert. There's a Ronald McDonald statue outside McDonald's, doing the "wai" gesture to people entering. A man on the train with big, dirty bags and no shoes, who couldn't keep smiling or giggling to himself, and who spent a long time in the bathroom when the conductor came by to check our tickets. A woman in a fancy coat and pants, sitting next to who I assumed was her daughter, in a school uniform and reading a book teaching Chinese. A man outside one of the Ayuthaya ruins, who saw me getting drenched in the rain and pointed to his hat, gesturing that I should get one too. A giant orange millipede on one of the ruins statues, and a huge monitor lizard (at least 2 meters long, and fat) that was swimming down the river and got out of the water to hide in the tall grass while a huge dog barked at it. Eating crispy fried crabs on the floor of my hostel room. Meeting Kanit after he was done with work, still wearing dress shirt and tie, at a nice pizza place where I ate a ton of pizza. The salt stains on the back and shoulders of my shirt from sweating so much in the afternoon heat. Oh yeah and 10 Baht (about 30 cents) for a bubble tea at Victory Monument (the huge roundabout where all the buses go)! That's all I can rack my brain for now.
Oh but before I forget, there was this tour group at the grand-palace that I accidentally followed around thinking it was the free tour that the grounds offered, but was approached eventually by one of the guides to tell me to fuck off because it was a private tour, oops. I joined the free public tour after that, but the private tour was admittedly better. I don't know if the guide actually knew what she was talking about, she could have just been making it all up and none of the foreigners would know any better, but they were good stories. One story was about the demons and monkeys. At the temple you see statues and paintings of demons and monkeys everywhere. They look similar except the demons wear shoes and the monkeys almost always have their mouths open, as if screaming or ready to bite someone. Demons are also usually riding chariots and leading armies. And they are always fighting. Over a woman usually. This is what life is like in the City of Angels.
No comments:
Post a Comment