11/24/01 - Bangkok, Oriental City
So, I'm sitting here in an internet cafe in Thailand - Ayuthaya Thailand - with no shoes.
That's the crux of the difference between Bangkok and the rest of Thailand, it seems - in Bangkok you only take your shoes off when you go in to temples while every other city, you take them off whenever you go indoors. Bangkok is a game of SIM City gone awry. An urban sprawl that couldn't have been planned wortse. A tightly packed organic cauldron that peeters out into shanty-towns and rice fields. I've never experienced such a difficult city. You can't walk through it, around it, or under it. The buses make little sense and the public transportation stops when the heart of the city begins. Imagine the A train headed south stopping at 125th, or the F stoppping at 59th.
Not only does it never sleep, but it doesn't even rest for a moment to catch it's breath. When the seeming constant construction stops at 9 PM, the bars start to fill - every day. That goes on till about 6 AM when the jackhammers are awoken from their nap. (Building a building in Bangkok is probably very cheap, it occured to me. No unions and about $5/day per guy) And amidst this all, glinting and glimmering in the sun are some of the most beautiful temples I've seen. I don't know what they make them out of, but they are covered in red and blue and gold mosaic that litterally sparkles. Inside orange robes monks hang out with big Buddha's and worshippers from around they globe get on their knees and go through a ritual bowing and praying ceremony.
(The Asian chasers among you would love the little genuflecting schoolgirls in their black and white uniforms - speaking of, probably the most bizarre experience to date was as I was walking the street, when the light changed, a cadre of women all dressed in cheerleading like costumes popped into the street and started dancing to some cheesy Orient-pop to advertise some brand of peanut. They were giving free samples; they weren't that good.)
I went to Chinatown one day - imagine New York's Chinatown crossed with a souk, and the posh part of downtown the next - imagine the stereotypical Asian cosmopolitan metropolis shopping center.
The nightlife was pretty good with the Thai bars becoming my booze-joint of choice over the expatriate backpacker places. The Thai bars are filled with young kids dancing, again, to crappy Orie-pop, but we got big smiles when when I said "Khawp Kuhn Khrap" (thank you).
"We?" you ask. I somehow saddled myself with a hanger within minutes of getting to the airport who was pretty clingy. I felt pretty tied down - guilty when we got lost, at fault for the wheather, embarrassed to take pictures, but it was nice to have company too at times. Now alone, I am loving the liberty I now have to swelter in the heat with my backpack as I look for the right hostel and have noone to blame if I miss closing time.
Before I forget... when I've traveled before, answering New York to the question of where I'm from got a certain response - something to the effect of "that's #1" or "NY rules" to which I'd give a smile or thumbs up - now I get a shimmying of hands representing the WTC coming down. I just shrug. I wonder if that will be the lasting repuation for years to come.
The food has been interesting. Sometimes I just go with the comfort of pat thai, but I've also had some pretty wacky things. Cuttle fish, (hey - they're spraying the floor with lysol right now - that's pretty funny), some other things I can't even remember. Tonight's dinner (Thanksigiving no less) was the most exciting. I walked up and down a night market filled with food stalls and just winged it. My mouth is still a little tingly, like I put vaseline on on the inside.
Ayuthaya is a former capital and is filled with ruins of ancient - well, not so ancient - glory. Looks like I missed the night time tour, but I'm not too worried - I predict with Mistress Clio-like-accuracy that they're'll be plenty of ruins in my near future. Getting to Ayuthaya involved taking a little ferry across a river from the train station. And by little, I mean that Jesus could have taken a couple of sidesteps to get across this thing. I'm not sure why they don't have a bridge, but it probably has to do with not wanting to lose the 1 baht charge for each person (1 baht = 2.5 cents). Canals were all over Bangkok and Ayuthaya. Little seafaring vessels are a popular mode of transport somewhere above bus, but below taxi.
Thus far, the most interesting people I've met was a women who was part of a group tasked with weeding the temples here in Ayuthaya and a monk at one of the temples. Oh, and this one taxi driver made a crack about my replenishment of malaria pills being viagara.
Meeting strangers in Bangkok was like peeling a rotten banana. Pretty hard to do, and not worth it in the end (unless you wanted to buy something).
One last thing - hygene here is horrible.
That's all for now. All my best and I'll talk to you soon.
Write me any news from the home front - I feel pretty disconnected what with being 12 time zones away and all.
So, I'm sitting here in an internet cafe in Thailand - Ayuthaya Thailand - with no shoes.
That's the crux of the difference between Bangkok and the rest of Thailand, it seems - in Bangkok you only take your shoes off when you go in to temples while every other city, you take them off whenever you go indoors. Bangkok is a game of SIM City gone awry. An urban sprawl that couldn't have been planned wortse. A tightly packed organic cauldron that peeters out into shanty-towns and rice fields. I've never experienced such a difficult city. You can't walk through it, around it, or under it. The buses make little sense and the public transportation stops when the heart of the city begins. Imagine the A train headed south stopping at 125th, or the F stoppping at 59th.
Not only does it never sleep, but it doesn't even rest for a moment to catch it's breath. When the seeming constant construction stops at 9 PM, the bars start to fill - every day. That goes on till about 6 AM when the jackhammers are awoken from their nap. (Building a building in Bangkok is probably very cheap, it occured to me. No unions and about $5/day per guy) And amidst this all, glinting and glimmering in the sun are some of the most beautiful temples I've seen. I don't know what they make them out of, but they are covered in red and blue and gold mosaic that litterally sparkles. Inside orange robes monks hang out with big Buddha's and worshippers from around they globe get on their knees and go through a ritual bowing and praying ceremony.
(The Asian chasers among you would love the little genuflecting schoolgirls in their black and white uniforms - speaking of, probably the most bizarre experience to date was as I was walking the street, when the light changed, a cadre of women all dressed in cheerleading like costumes popped into the street and started dancing to some cheesy Orient-pop to advertise some brand of peanut. They were giving free samples; they weren't that good.)
I went to Chinatown one day - imagine New York's Chinatown crossed with a souk, and the posh part of downtown the next - imagine the stereotypical Asian cosmopolitan metropolis shopping center.
The nightlife was pretty good with the Thai bars becoming my booze-joint of choice over the expatriate backpacker places. The Thai bars are filled with young kids dancing, again, to crappy Orie-pop, but we got big smiles when when I said "Khawp Kuhn Khrap" (thank you).
"We?" you ask. I somehow saddled myself with a hanger within minutes of getting to the airport who was pretty clingy. I felt pretty tied down - guilty when we got lost, at fault for the wheather, embarrassed to take pictures, but it was nice to have company too at times. Now alone, I am loving the liberty I now have to swelter in the heat with my backpack as I look for the right hostel and have noone to blame if I miss closing time.
Before I forget... when I've traveled before, answering New York to the question of where I'm from got a certain response - something to the effect of "that's #1" or "NY rules" to which I'd give a smile or thumbs up - now I get a shimmying of hands representing the WTC coming down. I just shrug. I wonder if that will be the lasting repuation for years to come.
The food has been interesting. Sometimes I just go with the comfort of pat thai, but I've also had some pretty wacky things. Cuttle fish, (hey - they're spraying the floor with lysol right now - that's pretty funny), some other things I can't even remember. Tonight's dinner (Thanksigiving no less) was the most exciting. I walked up and down a night market filled with food stalls and just winged it. My mouth is still a little tingly, like I put vaseline on on the inside.
Ayuthaya is a former capital and is filled with ruins of ancient - well, not so ancient - glory. Looks like I missed the night time tour, but I'm not too worried - I predict with Mistress Clio-like-accuracy that they're'll be plenty of ruins in my near future. Getting to Ayuthaya involved taking a little ferry across a river from the train station. And by little, I mean that Jesus could have taken a couple of sidesteps to get across this thing. I'm not sure why they don't have a bridge, but it probably has to do with not wanting to lose the 1 baht charge for each person (1 baht = 2.5 cents). Canals were all over Bangkok and Ayuthaya. Little seafaring vessels are a popular mode of transport somewhere above bus, but below taxi.
Thus far, the most interesting people I've met was a women who was part of a group tasked with weeding the temples here in Ayuthaya and a monk at one of the temples. Oh, and this one taxi driver made a crack about my replenishment of malaria pills being viagara.
Meeting strangers in Bangkok was like peeling a rotten banana. Pretty hard to do, and not worth it in the end (unless you wanted to buy something).
One last thing - hygene here is horrible.
That's all for now. All my best and I'll talk to you soon.
Write me any news from the home front - I feel pretty disconnected what with being 12 time zones away and all.
posted by mettle at
3:33 PM
