The Unbearable Lightness of Aimlessness

---

Saturday, April 12, 2009

I really have nothing specific to do here. The only reason I’m here is because I booked a flight online a few days ago when I was in Laos to Bali from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. My flight is on Monday, April 14, 2009, two days away from now. I got here early for precautionary reasons, in case something went totally awry, so that I would have enough margin for a contingency plan and prevent my itinerary from totally going out of whack. I always hate it when things don’t go according to my plan. That’s why I have a backup plan and leave enough time in case I have to execute it. It’s incomprehensible to me how some people could be so happy go lucky and not get irritated when they miss a bus, boat, train, plane, or automobile in some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no one to assist you and so you end up all alone and angry and hungry and agitated so you scream at the top of your lungs hoping that doing so will alleviate some of your irritation and discomfort but the only thing it brings you is a sore throat in the end so you collapse from your screaming exhaustion in the bushes for god knows how long when suddenly a torrential downpour of monsoonic proportion comes raining down heavily like there’s no tomorrow on your so very sorry soul and with no shelter to shield you from the elements and no food to sustain your vitality you catch pneumonia or malaria or whatever the hell it is that’s prevalent in these parts of the world so you end up sick and lying on a puddle of your sickness day by muthafuckin’ day, week by ‘m effin’ week, month by month, and if you’re lucky, year by year, but you won’t be so lucky because you’re just a poor sap of a backpacker who will not even make it past the first week because you’re all worthless and weak - drop down and gimme twenty - and so you lay dying on a puddle of your sickness with no one to help you because you’re just a happy go lucky sonovagun with no care in the world at all whatsoever and that’s why you end up missing your bus, boat, train, plane, or automobile which caused you to end up in this predicament in the first place.

So far I haven’t been in such predicament. The worst has not come upon me because I do everything I can in my power to make sure that I will not miss my bus, boat, train, plane, or automobile and if I do I usually have a contingency plan so that I won’t end up in the worst of circumstances although you can never be too sure because nothing is ever totally one hundred percent failsafe and crazy things can happen which you will never be prepared for. Crazy things have happened before to me actually and crazy things can happen again at any moment in our lives especially when we’re not expecting it but if we spent time thinking about every crazy possibility that could occur every time we went out and thinking of ways to prevent those crazy possibilities from affecting our plans we’ll never get out of the house. With that said, I expect the worst to happen so I prepare for it. I don’t spend an enormous amount of time thinking of every crazy possibility, I just think of the worst thing that could happen because I’m a responsible human being, which makes me boring to the many people out there who value spontaneity and unpredictability and irresponsibility.

The Asia Hotel in Bangkok is a place for stable and responsible people like myself. All around me I see the same type of stable and responsible people just like me. They have got to be the most boring people on the face of this here planet Earth. Any sort of discomfort is anathema to these people. This is not a five star hotel. Its rating is in between three to four stars. This is not a place for high falutin’ big spending jet setting sons of a sailor’s whore. It’s for the lower classes, the not so abundantly wealthy casual traveler who prefer a little more comfort and reassurance than your usual cockroach infested hole on the wall guesthouse in the Khao San. That’s the reason I’m here. I’m part of this ridiculous crowd who stay in places like the Asia Hotel in Bangkok. But something about the Khao San drags me there, and that irritates me to no end because the place represents everything I am virtually against of and stand for; a place full of western backpackers behaving poorly. The Khao San is where a mob of ridiculous tourists, pretenders, wannabes, and other such undesirables descend to this short stretch of an alley for the security of being with their own kind. In my own pretentious way I try as much as I can to avoid the Khao San because I don’t want to be just like those people.

A long time ago, the very first time I ever set foot in the Kingdom of Thailand and the first time I visited Bangkok the Khao San was known mainly by the Lonely Planet crowd, the backpacking mostly Euro-type and maybe some Australian but very few American kids looking for a cheap place to hang out and dropout and smoke dope in between trips up north or down south before going back to their ordinary average boring lives. Laos wasn’t even open to the outside world yet. There was no “Tubing in Vang Vieng” to be had, no Luang Praban World Heritage Site pilgrimages for intruders to trample on the quiet countryside of northern Indochina. So they trampled on the northern mountains of Thailand and the southern beaches of Ko Samui and Ko Phangan. The big fat German guys went to Phuket and Pattaya. It seemed to me back then that the place was full of scam artists of every variety, wannabes of every persuasion, and pretenders of the highest order. I was clinging to my wallet the whole time because the scam artists, the wannabes, and the pretenders who circled around me assured me that they didn’t want my money. They only wanted to be my friend and to show me a good time. Now, when desperate looking people act real friendly and accommodating to you and tell you that money is the last thing they’re interested in you can bet your bottom dollar that money is most definitely the very reason why they act cordial and accommodating to you and tell you that they don’t want your money.

So here I am sitting in the restaurant inside the Asia Hotel drinking coffee and finishing up my breakfast and contemplating curiously about the Khao San. I wondered what has changed about it. Everyone has heard of it by now thanks to Alex Garland’s The Beach and the movie version of it starring Leonardo Dicaprio. For all the things I hate about it there is something perversely interesting about the place that’s hard to define, at least for me. Perhaps because it’s not as seedy as the red light districts of Bangkok. There’s hanky panky going on every minute everywhere in Bangkok, that you can count on, but it’s not as blatant and sleazy and not as outrageous as the main red light districts in Sukhumvit and Patpong. That’s the place for massive sex tourism where the casual sex tourists go. The hard core sex tourists find their bacchanal in places I don’t even want to know, it’s so perverse beyond the realm of the human imagination. The Khao San is where the bratpacker goes. The enterprising local Thais have made the place an enclave for the western bratpackers who can’t afford the decadence of Patpong. Everything in the Khao San is catered for these financially challenged, if I may be forgiven for jumping on the bandwagon of such challenged clichés, Vang Vieng tubing huge pack on the back lugging peripathetics, misspelling intended. Perhaps it is the bazaar, or bizarre, depending on your point of view, atmosphere of this little street at night where almost everything you can think of on the face of this here planet Earth is available, is what draws me to the Khao San. Whatever it is, I hate myself for being drawn into this place willingly against my will, if that makes any sense at all to anyone else out there besides me. I didn’t wanna go to the Khao San. My plan was simply to just walk around and wander aimlessly about town, and that’s exactly what I was gonna do as soon as I finished my breakfast.

On the Road Again

I walked out of the Asia Hotel lobby’s front doors and turned left on Phayathai Street going north. Up above the bustling traffic of Phayathai is the latest infrastructural upgrade that the Thai government has been undergoing for the last fifteen years, the elevated rails of the Skytrain. That wasn’t there before eons ago when I first visited Thailand. There’s an escalator to take you up to the Ratchathewi Skytrain station from the street level just a few steps away from the main lobby of the Asia Hotel. There’s even a direct connection from the station above to the hotel’s second level mezzanine where there are jewelry shops, restaurants, travel agencies, and other retail outlets, a very convenient facility indeed. Perhaps some sort of graft and connivance between the government of the Kingdom of Thailand and some members of the board of the investment corporation who owns a majority position of the Asia Hotel Public Company Limited has made this convenient facility possible. Perhaps not. Perhaps they’re simply lucky to have landed such a covetous position in the Bangkok Mass Transit Skytrain route. My cynical common sense tells me otherwise. Whatever the heavens have heaped upon their lucky stars surely benefited their patrons and investors alike and put a big wide grin on their faces.

It was not time to take the Skytrain yet. There’s plenty enough time for that later on. I kept walking north and after about one hundred yards or so I turned left on Phetchaburi Road. I had no maps, no guidebooks, no nothing. I just turned left because I felt like it. All I had with me was my backpack with the bare essentials that I carry around with me; a pen, a little notebook, a hand towel for wiping off my sweat from this suffocating humidity, a few loose articles of no great importance, and my cheap point and click digital camera for taking snapshots of anything that looks even remotely interesting to me. I kept my money, my driver’s license, and a credit card in a very thin wallet hidden in a secret pocket in my shorts for security. If I lose everything I have on me my world will not collapse because I kept all my other important documents and backup reserves locked up in a safe at the hotel. I expect the worst. That’s how responsible and boring I am. I’m not sexy. I’m simply secured. So I roll along the way in my blissful security going west on Phetchaburi Road. Phetchaburi is a wide four lane boulevard with many overpasses and viaducts to optimize the flow of traffic, I think, although I’m not sure because I don’t see any kind of optimization at all whatsoever anywhere near Phetchaburi. The lanes are still jam packed with all sorts of motorized vehicles and the traffic looks to me like it’s flowing at a snail’s pace. I have no idea why the major thoroughfares are designed this way in Bangkok to be honest with you. I am only making and educated guess. It’s very logical to suppose that going through all the trouble of making overpasses, underpasses, and viaducts is intended to unclog the arteries of the streets of Bangkok. They could’ve gone through all this trouble for aesthetic reasons. If that was their intention then they have failed miserably because there is nothing more unsightly than an incongruous web of humungous gray concrete slabs of elevated highways and byways. I’ve always hated the complicated designs of urban highway networks with their many underpasses and overflow lanes. I’m no expert on the subject. I simply want an aesthetically pleasing blocks of straight uncomplicated uniformed roads with no circles, no curving around to get to a freeway, no on ramps in the middle of traffic, no off ramps smack dab in the middle of a business district, and no tunnels and bridges in a major thoroughfare. There’s got to be a more elegant and sustainable way to maintain a smooth flow of traffic with an infrastructure that is pleasing to the eye. Now, that’s a lot to ask for but somehow there’s got to be a better way, just like Bill McKay. Cab drivers, tuk-tuk operators, and other mass transit system workers have to navigate through an accessible but maybe complicated web of highways, byways, and city streets so that they can put food on the table and feed their families. They need to be able dash in and out of the major arteries to earn their livelihood, even if that means gouging unsuspecting tourists 150 Baht for a ride around the block. They’re about as bad as the cyclo rip off artists in Vietnam.

About half a mile away from the intersection of Phaythai and Phetchaburi is another one of those elevated expressway of some sort which seems to stretch out for miles in the south-north direction and overpasses the traffic of the city limits down below. It is the very structure that is aesthetically unappealing to my visual senses. The gray and gloomy concrete structures of spider web like in-flow and out-flow ramps comes circling around in incongruous directions, and the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road here in Thailand magnifies the incongruity even more. In the world of traffic there are only two sides of the road to drive on; the right side and the wrong side! The United States of America drives on the right side. Always have! Always have! Everyone else who doesn’t drives on the wrong side. Thailand drives on the wrong side. So do the British folks, the Australians, the Indians, the Malaysians, the Singaporeans, and the Indonesians. These countries are wrongheaded when it comes to driving. The hell with them. They can take their wrong side of the road and stick it up their part of the anatomy where fully digested food gets discharged.

It’s hard for me to see where the entrance and exits are of this incongruous expressway. I see buses and taxis going around in circles just to get to the freeway. It looks very confusing to me. I am so confused beyond belief about this whole mess, which causes me to pause and grab the hand towel that I took with me from the hotel’s bathroom so that I can wipe the sweat off of my forehead, face, arms and neck. Then I realized that the directions on the road, the exits and one-way signs and such, are written in Thai, which exacerbates my confusion of this spider web of an urban network even though translations in the Latin (Roman) alphabet are provided. I kept walking on Phetchaburi underneath the expressway. Touts and hawkers loitering underneath the expressway pitched all kinds of services at me. One guy said “Hey you, Brooomm! Brooommmmm!” and made a motion of his hands revving up the gas of a motorcycle’s handlebars. I said no, I’m walking, pointing to my shoes. He nodded and chuckled. Up ahead is an intersection that looks even more complicated than the expressway I just walked under. What’s even more confusing about the streets in Bangkok is that the little side streets and alleys have similar names to the major thoroughfares it’s connected to. For example, an alley off Phetchaburi might be called Phetchaburi 7, a small street off Rama IV might be called Rama IV Soi 29, and so on and so forth. All this means absolutely nothing to me or my current state of affairs. I am simply fulfilling my desire to wander aimlessly in Bangkok.

Loud booming music is beaming out of a set of speakers from a retail outlet nearby selling stereos and sound systems. It was a familiar tune from the 80s called The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats, a silly, mostly synthesized and electronically drummed up type of Euro-fag dance music. The one thing I hate about silly Euro-fag dance music is that it can be catchy and clever at times. You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friend behind, because your friend don’t dance and if they don’t dance well, they’re no friends of mine. And so I danced, to the safety dance. And I wiggled my ass and hopped my steps and the locals laughed at me as I danced my way to the A&W Restaurant nearby. I wasn’t hungry. I just ate breakfast not more than half an hour ago. I simply wanted an ice cold drink to help me cool off from the heat and humidity. So I got me a big supersizeme cup of A&W root beer.

It’s been awhile since I drank soda pop of any kind. I can’t remember the last time I had a coke. Same with fast food. The last time I had a McDonald’s burger was probably five or ten years ago or somewhere in between. The last fast food burger I’ve eaten was probably three years ago from In n’ Out burger. I have nothing against fast food in general. As a matter of fact I love McDonald’s fries. They’re called Freedom Fries in the United States of America. They used to be called French Fries but since the French are such an indignant and ungrateful bunch of horse manure, a law was passed in congress back in 2003 or 2004 to ban the name French Fries from lexicon of the American consciousness and replace it instead with the more patriotically friendly Freedom Fries. But McDonald’s burger taste terrible. It’s sloppy and slimy and full of things not good for your body. If I’m gonna eat a burger that’s not good for my body I’m gonna eat one that taste good. No sense in clogging your arteries with food that taste like it was cooked out of a microwave. That’s why I prefer In n’ Out burger. And if I’m gonna eat Freedom Fries I’ll eat McDonald’s Freedom Fries. Imagine going to a McDonald’s in France, walking up to the counter, and saying

Excuse me pa’dner, I don’t Parlayz vu France Say, but I’d like to order me some Freedom Fries please!

I don’t hate the French. I just like making fun of them. It’s the American way.
Armed with my supersizeme cup of A&W root beer I walked west along Phetchaburi towards the massive confusion of a five way intersection. There are on ramps and off ramps chock full of cars, buses, and tuk-tuks of every size and condition. Pink colored taxis. Red colored buses. At the railroad crossing in the middle of the intersection a truck full of Red Shirt protestors with placards of slogans and chanting them into their bullhorns for amplification passed us by to the delight of some of the locals. I paid no attention to the Red Shirts at the time because they seemed harmless then, if not annoying. So far they haven’t brought the city to its knees. I was more concerned about the railroad tracks I was about to cross. I remembered while riding the midnight express that the trains had no sanitary tanks on board to store the human wastes of the passengers. Instead passengers dumped their waste on the little open hole on the floor and directly down to the ground in between the rails of the tracks. I knew what was in the middle of the tracks; shit. Even though there was no brown stoogie of a human waste visible in the between the rails of the crossing I hesitated to step in between the tracks out of disgust. The mere thought of it made me sick to my stomach. So I long jumped over it. I barely made it. My right ankle landed on the edge of the rail on the other side. My knees buckled as I stumbled and almost fell to the ground but I recovered and regained my balance just in time to avoid getting hit by one of the oncoming pink colored taxis from behind. Then I came to a fork on the road. As you veer to the right on Phetchaburi it turns into Phitsanulok Road while veering to the left it turns into Lan Luang Road. Where to go, where to go. My quest of wandering aimlessly has forced me to make a decision, which defeats the purpose of aimless wandering. I shouldn’t have to choose. The road should choose for me. And so it did because the flow of traffic naturally guided me towards the path of least resistance. Lan Luang is a one way boulevard going southwest where the traffic flows naturally from Phetchaburi and the off ramp of the elevated highway while Phitsanulok requires a little more effort to get to for the pedestrian; you have to walk across the heavy traffic of the five way intersection which doesn’t seem be pedestrian friendly. Thus it was only natural to keep on walking towards Lan Luang, and I let myself be led that way.

The skies are turning grayer by the minute. It wasn’t that long ago when I walked out the lobby’s front doors of the Asia Hotel that the skies were only partly cloudy. Cumulus clouds hung above the skies giving patches of blue and white everywhere while the Sun beamed down with tropical intensity. Now the cumulus clouds have thickened and the patches of blue are disappearing. As I walk past a footbridge the wind blows slightly and comfortably. I feel intermittent droplets of rain fall on my head and arms. It’s about to rain some more but I keep walking because the climate becomes delightful. The temperature is still in the mid 80s Fahrenheit but the heat and humidity is no longer unbearable. I stop sweating profusely. The somewhat cool summery breeze helps to dry me off from my sweat. It’s not exactly cool but it’s relatively comfortable compared to what it’s normally like around here.

The three quarters of a mile stretch of Thanon Lan Luang is a fairly unremarkable piece of real estate with many local shops, national banks, Wats, a Christian Seventh Adventist church, autoshops, and other establishments of commerce. It’s not a street popular with tourists. There are no groups of backpackers strolling along for the sheer enjoyment of the beauty of Thanon Lan Luang. Thanon means road, I think, although I’m not sure because I have absolutely zero understanding of the Thai language. I see structures that could pass for a school or some sort of institution of higher learning but then again it could be a casino for all I know. I don’t even know if gambling establishments are legal in Bangkok. Quite frankly I don’t care because I don’t gamble. I see buildings that look like offices for a commercial enterprise but then again it could be offices for the department of motor vehicles in Bangkok, if such an institution exists. One thing that I do notice about the streets of Bangkok now compared to what it was like fifteen years ago is its cleanliness. The last time I was in Bangkok I found the streets to be filthy and grimy. They’re much cleaner now compared to how I remembered it, and less chaotic. Perhaps they haven’t changed at all, it’s just a different perception than my first impression. I have traveled more since then and my experienced eyes and other senses have possibly freed me from the timidity and irritability of anything unfamiliar or out of the ordinary, which is a common reaction with novice travelers, and perhaps the sights of filth and chaos no longer stir horror deep into my soul. Perhaps the streets of Bangkok have always been what they are now but my views have changed and my senses have been desensitized to these types of environment. I’ll never really know, no one will ever really know because we can’t go back in time and reassess our views and feelings at first impression.

Lan Luang ends where Ratchadamnoen Klang begins in another confusing eight way intersection buffered by a short by but broad bridge. And if you think Ratchadamnoen Klang is one helluva name for a Bangkok street, just try pronouncing the sucker without stammering, then say it three times without pause once you’ve mastered its proper pronunciation. You’ll be tongue-tied and twisted just an Earth bound misfit, I, if you’re learning to fly with Pink Floyd. Pink is the color of the many taxis and buses here in Bangkok although yellow is the official color of Thailand for some reason. A yellow tuk-tuk was parked at the side of a narrow street by the eight street intersection buffered by a short but broad bridge. A small green colored creek flows freely underneath the bridge. As I walk on the bridge a tout came up to me and asked me who I was, where I’m from, and where I’m going. They were merely antecedents for a consummation of a scam deal that he was to pitch to me.
“Yes, lying Buddha. You see?” he asked.
“Yes I’ve seen it. Many times.” I lied. He seems to ignore my lie.
“Today only. One o’clock. Free! You ride my tuk-tuk. 20 Baht only.”
“I have to be somewhere” I lied some more.
“Where? I take you. 20 Baht only.”
At this moment the intermittent droplets of rain that spat on my forehead earlier while I was walking on Lan Luang is now becoming a steady downpour. The tout and I ran to a big tree by the bridge along the greenish creek for shelter. I knew what this was all about. I have been pitched the same scam deals before many years ago. They tell you it’s only fifty or twenty Baht or so for a tour around the city but you invariably end up paying much more in the end through some form of finagling, subtle arm twisting, or outright intimidating. I played along long enough for my own amusement but I wasn’t biting.
“I take you to lying Buddha. I take you to Wat. Only 20 Baht.”
I had to come up with better lies. I said I was meeting friends somewhere. I had no friends to meet. I don’t know a soul in all of Thailand.
“We go to your friends. I wait. 20 Baht only.”
If I had said my friends lived on Mars he probably would have said “I take you to Mars in tuk-tuk. 20 Baht only!” The tree that we were hunched under no longer provided us with adequate shelter as the rain turned into a heavy torrential downpour. It started to rain hard, really hard, and pretty soon it rained like there was no tomorrow. I ran like hell and the tout ran back to his tuk-tuk then he followed me and motioned for me to get on his tuk-tuk. I waved him away. He tried again. I wasn’t getting on his tuk-tuk. I ignored him. He finally gave up and went on his way to find other saps to scam. I had to stop running at the pedestrian crossing (Ped Xing) because of traffic. There were too many cars in the hard driving rain to jaywalk. I was heavily drenched. Once the light turned green I walked normally like I always do if there was no rain instead of running for cover. There was no use as I was wet from head to toe. But I stopped to take shelter at the little pavilion in front of Wat Ratchanatdaram Worawihan where a group of people were huddled underneath the canopy. It poured nonstop heavily for the next several minutes. I’ve always been enthralled by the sight of torrential downpour in Southeast Asia. I have never seen rain this heavy anywhere else in the world. The closest that comes to mind is Orlando, Florida but the monsoon of Southeast Asia tops that by six orders of magnitude in intensity and ferocity. When it rains here, it really rains.

After twenty minutes the rain turned into a light drizzle but it never really completely stopped. When it turned into a trickle the group of people huddled around with me under the canopy started to go on their way to whatever it was they were doing before the heavy downpour came down. I too went on my way on Ratchadamnoen Klang towards the Chao Phraya River. My aimless wandering has led me to a familiar sight, the independence monument or democracy monument of Thailand. This is an odd sight to say the least because Thailand has never been colonized by a European or Western power nor has it ever held a democratic form of government in its history until very recently. They have always been a monarchy if not by deed then by spirit. A military coup in 1932 allowed for the formation of a more dictatorial form of government through a military junta. This is what this monument is all for. The very first time Thailand ever held a free election for a seat in its government was in 1997, a little over eleven years ago, and quite frankly they are having a helluva time coping with democracy and free elections. There was a coup in 2006. That brought back a military junta as the ruling party for a couple of years or so. That was followed by a puppet regime put up by the military junta under the guise of democracy. Now the Red Shirts are marching the streets in protest. They want the new president out and the old president back into the fold. The puppet regime is getting antsy because they are beholden to the military cadre who overthrew the old president.

The Red Shirts with their placards of slogans and their bullhorns are shouting in protest in the rain on Ratchadamnoen Klang. The torrential downpour is back in full force and I take shelter on the sidewalk under the shade of the entrance to some Thai national bank. From the looks of the skies above it appears that this is gonna be a downpour that was gonna last for an eternity. There is absolutely no patch of blue anywhere in sight at the skies above. Tour buses full of packaged tourists of the geriatric variety chugged along slowly under the hard driving rain. Cars and pedestrians alike tried to fight the rain but the rain fought back with abandon and pretty soon there was not a dry soul in the world to been seen. Everybody is drenched to the bone. Umbrellas and raincoats proved to be no match for the rain man. It went on like this for a solid fifteen minutes before the heavy downpour finally subsided. I went on my way towards the Khao San just a block from the main boulevard of Ratchadamnoen Klang once the rain was back to a trickle again. Somehow I always knew I was gonna end up here.

The Khao San

My plan of wandering aimlessly has led me back to a place I thought I was trying to avoid. But I wondered if I was really trying to avoid it. Maybe subconsciously this was where I had intended to go in the first place either out of curiosity or the security of knowing I’ll find kindred souls here. The thought of me as just like one of these bratpacking sons of a sailor’s whore is disconcerting to me. I don’t want to be like them. I absolutely despise these people. Yet here I am at the Khao San, a narrow little alley in a world of its own. The place is not as grimy and dirty like the slum hole I remembered it to be way back when. The only familiar sights I recognize are the narrowness of the street, the multidinous array of shops, vendors, and guesthouses, the bratpackers who inhabit the place, and the money changing kiosks all over the dadgum place. These are its general features. I don’t recognize anything specific. I don’t recognize nor have any recollection of the guesthouse I once stayed in or the hole in the wall restaurant I used to eat at regularly. In that sense it feels like it’s the first time I’ve been here. This narrow strip of a bratpacking ghetto is only about a quarter of a mile long. But it is the only quarter of a mile long stretch of narrow lane in the world with the highest concentration of pretenders, wannabes, and scam artists all jam packed together in their holy matrimony under the church and the institution of The Lonely Planet. Scam artists, pretenders, wannabes, and bratpackers all need each other to survive. This polygamic arrangement is strictly out of necessity and not for any love of one another because deep down they all despise each other. And thus the Khao San thrives amidst this symbiotic and incestuous existence and produces even more of these dysfunctional types because this place, its institution, feeds on itself.
The enterprise that is the Khao San, not the street itself but the church that is part of The Lonely Planet institution with many bratpacking followers the world over, has expanded. The neighboring streets of Tani and Rambuttri Roads on the adjacent blocks due north is generally regarded as part of the Khao San proper. Anywhere within walking distance from the Khao San in the Banglamphu district is considered part of the Khao San. I strolled and browsed the many shops around the Khao San. I wasn’t really interested in buying anything. I’m not much of a shopper. I’m more of a browser. I’ve never bought anything impulsively. Some people will buy a Mercedes Benz on the spot on impulse. Others will buy clothes, mobile phones, shoes, golf clubs, laptops, and other electronic gadgets on a whim. Not me. If I’m going to buy something it will have been planned and well thought out way ahead of time. I’ll buy something based on need and affordability. If I can’t afford it I won’t buy it. I don’t travel on impulse either. I plan way ahead of time, at least six to seven months ahead, making sure that I have the vacation time and the money to do it. I won’t sacrifice my financial future just to travel. I travel because I know that I’ve put enough money for the future, paid all my bills, paid all my other fiduciary obligation, and have enough to fly over to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand or wherever and wander aimlessly to my heart’s desire. Money is not everything but it’s very important to have enough to keep your sanity. Money is the source of all evil. Having too much of it can corrupt. Having too little of it or none at all can make a person do things they would rather not do. I had enough money on me for miscellaneous spending as I wander aimlessly in the streets of Bangkok. So I looked around the many money changers on Khao San for a good deal. Most of the money changers were selling 35.10 Baht per US$1 and buying 36.50 Baht for US$1. That’s a huge margin. Imagine making millions worth of transactions like this each day and profits can be staggering. I exchanged twenty dollars worth to give me about 700 Baht of spending money. I walked the length of Khao San Road, past budget guesthouses, bars, and restaurants. No wonder bratpackers love it here so much. They’ve got everything here. You need footwear? There are tons of slippers, shoes, and sandals to choose from at all price levels, the fancier the more expensive. Lost your shoe laces while tubing in Vang Vieng? An enterprising local will not only find you an adequate replacement, he will find you those very same shoe laces with the exact same color and length and probably the same DNA strand imprint. Need a passport photo? No problem, step right into that little cubbyhole down yonder my friend and smile for your mug shot in a jiffy. Need a passport to go along with that photo?

There are tons of travel agencies catering to the budget traveler. Just be careful though. There are scam artists galore. Whatever you want you can get in the Khao San. A little Purple Thai? You betcha! Got’m right here baby! The Khao San used to be known only to The Lonely Planet bratpacker crowd. Then Alex Garland’s The Beach hit the bookstores. Then Leonardo Dicaprio stars in a movie version. All of a sudden its popularity soared by six orders of magnitude. Housewives from Georgia want to see the place where Leonardo drank snake wine. They all think he’s just soooooooo adorable. That’s the reason why the Khao San has expanded from the quarter of a mile stretch it once was out to its neighboring streets. So that people from Alabama and housewives from Georgia can come over and party like Leonardo Dicaprio did in that movie The Beach.

The three to four blocks that include Soi Damnoen Klang Nua, Khao San, and all the way up north to Kraisi Road near the little circle and bordered by Chakrabongse to the west and Tanao to the east is considered part of the Khao San proper. I came to the west end of Khao San Road and turned left on Chakrabongse. More of the same. Shops, food stalls, and touring bratpackers. Across the street is a Buddhist temple, the Wat Chana Songkhram Rachawora Mahiwiharan. That’s one helluva name for a Wat. I hope I spelled that correctly. I wouldn’t want to anger people by misspelling the name of their favorite Wat. I’ve received hate mail in the past for such things. I suppose a Wat is a Buddhist temple. That much I know. Last year when I was in Cambodia I had no idea what a Wat was. For all I knew a Wat could’ve been the name of a rock ‘n roll band like Was (Not Was). But now that I am a worldly and seasoned traveler I now understand what Wat means. A Masjid is a Mosque. A Pagoda is another thing altogether although it is related in some ways to a place of worship like a Wat.

I continued my way on Chakrabongse in the northeasterly direction against the one-way traffic past stalls of knick knack vendors, garment dealers, tailors, travel agents, and food stalls; past Rambuttir Road and past more tourist traps and candy stores. Then I turned right on Tani Road where there you’ll see more of the same shops, restaurants, travel agents, tailor shops, designer knock off clothes, guesthouses, and knick knack vendors that you just saw on Khao San Road. I pass by a group of bratpackers just of the jet careening through the crowded alley of Tani Road lugging unbelievably huge sacks of their backs. They look fresh, wild eyed, and excited. The look on their faces says “Gonna have fun tonight!” even though the skies are so gray and gloomy. If I was home instead of traveling on the road my mood would be at its most disagreeable worst. But nothing can dampen my spirits while I’m on the road and in Thailand at that, just like these giggly bratpackers.

The rain is starting to come down hard again. I hopped from one sidewalk vendor awning to another to shield myself from the heavy downpour. It is now three o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve been walking around aimlessly for about three hours now. Half of it has been spent under shelter from the on-again off-again cycle of this torrential downpour. I am a little wet and a little hungry. I had to find a place to eat so I hopped some more from awning to awning hoping to find some hole on the wall eatery for some good Thai curry and I found just the place on Tani Road near the circle where Tani, Rambuttri, and Tanao Roads collide. The place was hidden behind a tailor shop on the sidewalk right in front of it. A very narrow covered walkway next to the tailor shop led to a dining area where this eatery is located. It’s kind of difficult to find unless you’re looking for it. I wasn’t looking for it. I was showed it by someone at the tailor shop. The dining area had about fifteen tables or so. It’s one of those places where you just point to the readymade food that you want to eat. The choices were curry beef, curry chicken, curry mutton, deep fried chicken, stir fried shrimp, and deep fried fish. There was an array of vegetarian dishes on display as well. I picked curry chicken and plain white rice. They didn’t serve alcohol for some reason so I settled for Pepsi. The rain was pouring even harder outside. You could hear it splatter like a continuous stream of gunfire on the flimsy roof above. The roof was starting to give way and near the edge of collapse. Water was dripping from the leaks of the flimsy roof above and it started to flood the concrete floor on the ground. There were about twenty people in the eatery’s dining area, all of them Thai. They were neither alarmed nor bothered by the hard driving rain and the imminent flooding taking place. They just kept eating. I, on the other hand, feared for my life. I ate my food and looked around to see if there was any kind of like reaction from the other diners but there were none at all. The food was delicious. I still feared for my life. It’s hard to enjoy this delicious food when the thought of Noah’s Ark pops up in your mind. This is how extreme this rain is becoming. The water level on the ground is rising. I put my backpack on top of an empty chair right next to mine. It became unbalanced and fell down to the flooded ground and splashed bits of water on the girl nearby. I apologized profusely. She didn’t seem at all bothered by it. She even wiped off some of the water on my backpack. An old lady sitting across the table told me to put it on top of the table so that it won’t fall down to the ground. She didn’t really say those exact words. What she did was point to her handbag on the table. I got the point. I left the bag on the chair next to me, unbalanced and about to fall off again. She poked me in the arm and pointed to her handbag on the table again, all the while mumbling something in Thai. Before my backpack could fall off the chair again and grabbed it and put it on the table. The old lady nodded in agreement and smiled at me after I did that. She was grateful that I didn’t just dismiss her, that I paid attention to her prodding.

I’d like to think that Thai people are the most gentle people in the world but every time I proclaim such and such people are the most so and so they always end up disappointing me. Something always happens to spoil my positive opinion of people. People are crazy. Someone of questionable character, antithesis to the qualities I just ascribed to such and such people, always gets in your face. This is especially true when you’re a stranger in a strange land. Thus I have been disabused of such naiveté. It’s good and bad everywhere. People are good and bad everywhere without exception. But the bad is always accentuated when you’re traveling because inevitably you’ll run into touts, hawkers, and scam artists, most of whom are out to drain every penny of your dollar in your pocket. This is why sitting here in this hole in the wall eatery in the Khao San with the hard driving rain splattering the flimsy rooftop up above like a barrage of 16 millimeter gun turret and fearing for my life because the water level on the ground is rising and pretty soon we may have to swim out of here, is so refreshing. I’m sitting with a bunch of ordinary average folks who aren’t trying to scam me. They are only curious about me. The old lady asked me where I was from. She asked me all kinds of personal questions. I answered them all honestly. I didn’t feel she was intruding on my personal life. The young lady sitting nearby, the one who got splashed on by my falling backpack, glanced over out of curiosity and pretty she joined in on the conversation. Pretty soon a group of six to seven people were gathered around our table and questions of every variety were directed at me. What did I do for a living? Am I looking for a wife? They have the right girl just for me they said. It was kind of embarrassing. I was the one who was supposed to ask the questions, not them. Things were getting a little uncomfortable so I wiggled my way of this jam. I got up and paid my bill, 35 Baht, and waved them all goodbye and a happy Songkarn holiday.

The heavy rains still haven’t let up when I went outside. It’s been raining heavily for the last forty minutes. The streets of the Khao San are literally flooded to almost knee level high in some places. Roaches and rats the size of cats came out of their holes and started running on the sidewalk. Tourists and locals alike were screaming in horror and disgust at the sight of these ghastly beasts. There was not a dry unpuddled pavement on the road for the taxis and tuk-tuks to drop off their passengers. The poor drainage system in the district has turned the whole Khao San proper into one giant cesspool. I couldn’t go anywhere without walking into ankle deep water. So I stayed underneath the awning of the tailor shop next to the restaurant I just ate at until the rain stopped. It took another hour before the rains finally started to slow down from hard to moderate to light to drizzle and all the way down to a trickle until the very last drop, during which I was comfortable enough to walk down on Tanao Road tip-toeing and skip jumping over the flood and onto the dry sidewalk. The Khao San Road was where the flooding was at its worst. The whole strip was flooded up to shin level. The vendors on the road and the sidewalk had to evacuate their goods. Leather wallets and rubber slippers were floating in the flood. So were huge dead cockroaches and rats. It was a disgusting sight.

I went up to Ratchadamnoen Klang and waited for a bus at the Bus Stop. I wasn’t gonna walk back to the Asia Hotel in this weather. No one knew if the torrential downpour was coming back again. The skies above have seemed to lighten up quite a bit but you can never tell if there are more heavy clouds coming over the horizon, not in Southeast Asia. A squall can come around the corner in a second. I have seen that many times before. I had no idea which bus to take, there are so many of them. All I was looking for was a sign that says Siam Square. From there I can either walk back to the hotel or take the Skytrain. Tourists and locals alike were standing by at the Bus Stop with me. A tall lanky European type was walking barefooted in the rain. Even the local Thais don’t walk around barefooted in Bangkok, at least not anymore, not even the monks. What was this guy trying to prove anyhow? I just wonder about some people sometimes. To each his own and to hell with some of them.

A red and white non-air conditioned bus came along bearing Siam Square on the side as one of its many destinations. I got on the bus with several other people. A lady with an eight year old daughter stood up to let an older lady sit. The older lady summoned the young daughter to come sit on the empty seat next to her. She wouldn’t. Maybe she was shy, maybe she just wanted to be closer to her mother. The old lady summoned her again to come and sit. The young girl hid behind her mother’s skirt. The look of forlorn on her face told me that the old lady felt rejected. I sat on the empty seat next to her. She was threading purple Orchid looking flowers with a needle to form a lei. She had a bag full of Orchids sitting on her lap. “She won’t sit next to me.” She said this to me. The young girl and the mother walked up to the front of the bus. I said maybe they’re getting out at the next stop. The bus stopped at the next stop. People came on board and the bus went on its way again. The old lady looked up and saw that the young girl and her mother are still in the bus. “They didn’t get off” the old lady said to me. “Maybe she’s afraid of me.” “How much is the bus fare?” I asked the old. She said it used to be 15 Baht but now it’s free. “It’s for the people” she said to me. I didn’t realize at the time that these red and white non-air conditioned buses were a concession to the local citizenry, intended for the poor, in order to sway their vote in the last election. Tourists aren’t supposed to get these buses. I felt like an idiot when I found that out later but I didn’t know about it now.

I got off at the Siam shopping mall on Rama I and took the Skytrain to Ratchathewi near the Asia Hotel. It’s a short ride and I could’ve walked the short distance but I was curious about the Skytrain. It’s not a monorail like the one in Kuala Lumpur. It’s an elevated railway system but it’s much newer than the other MRT systems in Southeast Asia. I got off and went to my hotel room to clean myself up from the mess of the pouring rain. The night was early yet, even for me. The Sun hasn’t even set yet but the effects of the rain and the thick patch of clouds leftover in the skies above has turned the whole world into a shimmering dark purplish hue. After a long hot shower and a little self pampering for two hours I went out again in the purple twilight and got on the Skytrain to Silom. Silom has one of several red light districts in Bangkok, the roads Patpong 1 and 2. I thought there might have been a third Patpong but I wasn’t sure. I got off at the Sala Daeng station and down to the street of vendors up the yin-yang. The sidewalks were literally covered with booths and stalls of custom T-shirts, specialized items, porno magazines and DVDs, Zippo lighters, and all kinds of merchandizes you can think under the Sun. Think it and it they got it. It seems like this was just another extension of the Khao San. The crowds here are a little bit different though. I had thought that the crowd was gonna be mostly sex tourist types. I was wrong. There are couples with children browsing on the sidewalks of Silom and Patpong. I don’t remember this kind of bazaar atmosphere in Patpong. I came here mainly to see if the place is still as raunchy as it ever was. There’s still that element of Patpong that’s thriving with the girl shows and the Go-Go bars but it’s not as dangerous as it used to be. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Patpong. After I circled the two roads I left and went back to the Ratchathewi Skytrain station to look for a place to eat near my hotel. I decided to sample the street food underneath the Skytrain. I ordered a beef Satay and Pad Thai with shrimp and bought my beer at a 7-Eleven nearby. All of it, including the beer, cost 62 Baht. The beer at the 7-Eleven was the most expensive item I bought.

The Songkarn Water Festival

Sunday, April 13, 2009

The next day brought me back to the Khao San again. I heard about the Songkarn Festival the day before so I went there on purpose and not out of some serendipitous landing from aimless wandering. I wanted to see what all this Songkarn business was all about. On the way there people at street corners were dumping buckets of water at tuk-tuks and other automobiles. When I arrived in the Khao San all the roads in Khao San proper were blocked off from traffic; Khao San, Rambuttri, Tani, and the rest. It was already full of people splashing each other. At first I just walked around to take some pictures. People were shooting me with their waterguns. I didn’t resist. I let them splash me and shoot me. Pretty soon I was wet all over. My backpack was wet all over. I shrouded my camera with waterproof rubber tubing to prevent it from getting damaged. It was just local Thais spraying and splashing either. As a matter of fact the majority of the participants were the bratpacking tourists. They were all over the place. Some had waterguns the size of a bazooka and with a water pressure of a fire hose. A local TV crew was filming the action. Nothing gets people more excited and acting crazy than when a TV camera is pointed directly at them. I was only ten o’clock in the morning and the festival was already on full blast. There was a little parade and pageantry of some sort where decals were handed out. It said Songkarn Festival, A Nonalcoholic Event. But there was alcohol all over the places. Drunken mayhem and poor behavior in general was the order of the day. Actually there were many well behaved bratpackers but then again there’s always that ten percent that spoils everything for everybody. There were families as well joining in on the fun. I couldn’t walk three yards without getting shot at by one of those humungous bazookas but I didn’t mind because it was all in good fun.

I took a break from all the fun to eat lunch in another hole in wall place but the food was mediocre. The roads around the Khao San were jam packed with cars and trucks trying to join in on the revelry. After lunch I decided to pack my camera and join in on the fun myself. I bought me a watergun big enough to fight back for 99 Baht. It had enough power to shoot from a distance of thirty feet but anything beyond that is out of range. I started shooting back at people who shot at me. Guys were walking around shirtless. Women were wearing bikini tops. Kids and adults alike were warring against one another armed with H2O. Things seemed to be in good order. Bars on both sides of Khao San Road were blasting loud music. Then by one o’clock in the afternoon Khao San Road was complete blocked off from all traffic, motorized and pedestrian alike. People were still water fighting but they did it from the sidewalk, not out in the middle of the street of Khao San Road. They blocked it out in preparation for the evening festivities.
It was that long ago, yesterday in fact, that this whole street was completely flooded. The weather the day before had been mostly a hard driving torrential downpour. Today it’s been quite the opposite. The skies have been clear most of the day there’s no sign at all in the streets from the flooding the day before. I remembered looking at dead rats the size of cats in disgust floating in the deep dirty and slimy puddle of water and thought that it would leave a debris of filth all over the place once it dried up. But none of that is visible anywhere on Khao San Road now. They did pretty good job of cleaning up the place.

I went to a little bar at the edge of Khao San Road to take a break from the water fight. I sat down on a table inside the bar and drinking a huge bottle of Singha beer while watching the action taking place ten feet away from me out in the open patio. There were bratpackers and tourists alike just off the jet towing luggage and lugging packs and recoiling in surprise at the jet stream of water directed at them. Some took it all in good fun. Others not so well. Women especially got real bitchy about the whole affair. “I told you not to do that you… scum of the Earth!” was one mild form of admonishment from a statuesque blonde in tight jeans and black halter top to a drunken rambunctious water Rambo. Others reacted more profoundly. Strong words, stronger than scum of the Earth, were often used, and often not in English. French, German, the Scandinavian languages, whatever profanity commonly used in whatever language were brought out in full force out of frustration. Inside the bar tension was getting a little tight as well. A European gentleman in blue shorts and white T-shirt bearing some emblem that I didn’t recognize walked into the bar and ordered something hard, like vodka on the rocks or something ridiculous like that. He looked harmless enough at first and was soft spoken from what I can gather. I didn’t pay much attention to him then because he hadn’t caused any trouble to anyone in the bar. I thought at first that he was meeting up with some friend. I heard voices and laughter in the back so I thought he was just having a cheerful conversation with his friend and the Thai girl that was with his supposed friend. Then all of a sudden the voices became louder and confrontational instead of friendly. There was some pushing and shoving going on and the bartender had to intervene. Things quieted down for a minute when I turned around to see what was going on. The guy in blue shorts and white shirt drinking vodka or whatever the hell he was drinking started saying something like “I am from Latvia, I not from Russia” or something along those lines. “You want to fight? Huh? I beat you” was the next thing he said. The bartender told them all to quiet down or leave. Then all of a sudden they were at it again, the Latvian guy and his “friend”, tangled up and going at each other on the ground ripping their shirts off and banging their faces on the chairs and tables nearby but with no real punches actually landing or being thrown forcefully at one another. The Latvian guy got his face banged up on the post near the bar and got all bloodied up. He started screaming all kinds of obscenities and then he ran away shirtless into the street with his shorts hanging down almost below his butt. I followed him outside to see what was going to happen next. People were screaming in fear as he ran out into the street with a bloody cut below one eye and practically half naked. A group of Thais, part of the security force for the Songkarn Festival, intercepted him at the gates of Khao San Road. They grabbed him. One guy showed him the fist and a mean angry face, threatening to give him a good beating. The Latvian guy tried to getaway. He got himself untangled, yelled something like “I go home!” and ran away like a caged animal who just escaped. He ran smack dab in the middle of traffic and almost got run over by a Mack truck. Thankfully he made it safely back to his guesthouse, I think, although I’m not sure.

Epilogue

Monday, April 14, 2009

I took a taxi to the Suvarnabhumi International Airport the next day for my flight to Bali. It was still eight o’clock in the morning when Thai military personnel with shields marched along the streets of Rama I armed with batons, automatic rifles, teargas, and other weapons designed to beat the living crap out of anyone who look even remotely disobedient. The look on their faces too told a very prophetic story. These people mean business. There was no such thing as unnecessary force. When I arrived in Bali three hours later the news at the top of the hour on CNN, BBC, and all the other alphabet soup cable channels was all about the Red Shirts being subdued by the military force of Thailand.

---

Photos

Phetchaburi Road
Gloomy skies up ahead

Democary Monument
There's nothing democratic about it

Torrential Downpour
It rained like there's no tomorrow

Tour bus
Like the cable car for tourist in Frisco

The Khao San
The whole place was flooded

MBK Center
Near Siam Square

Siam Square
Taken from the Skytrain

Rambo
Songkarn water festival

Lunar New Year
Tourist join in on the fun

Songkarn Galore
Getting wet and wild

Street Party
People stood around in the middle of the street and splashed each other

Party Central
Shirtless guys and bikini clad women

The Khao San
The street gets blocked off completely

Comments

[EdVallance]

Great blog
Funny, interesting, unusual and you sure do know how to rant!