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Published: January 25th 2007
The Good
A building in the Grand Palace compound.Disclaimer: This post is really quite long, sorry about that. I just really like Bangkok and have a lot to say about the place. How about you go and get a drink or use the bathroom before starting out.
The Food
The Good: Well now, everyone who knows me knows that I love to eat food; lots of food. To be honest though, I've been underperforming on that front lately and Jeff seems to be the driving force behind our gluttony, what with him demanding that we eat at least once every hour and a half (which mind you makes it difficult to fit in any sightseeing or massages!). However, considering that we have been staying near Khao San road for the last week the eating has been exceptional. The rule was to never eat at the same place twice so as to get the maximum number of culinary delights out of our stay.
The highlight of the week, the ultimate meal if you will, was an Indian curry. "Really?" I hear you all exclaim, "Matty had a curry?" (for those reading this who don't know me very well you should understand that I am fairly well
The Bad
Alex posing in wild west stylings. addicted to curries). After some length of searching the four of us intrepid curry hunters found a small but incredibly fancy restaurant on the third floor of a guesthouse with a view right along Khao San. An incredibly polite and well-spoken (fluent in English) Indian fellow served us and brought out four of the most wonderful tasting curries I have ever eaten; compared to what we get back home it was nirvana.
The culmination of this story is that on the follow night, as we were aimlessly wandering down Khao San road, the waiter accosted us in the street and tried to bring us into the restaurant. We all looked at him with rather perplexed faces and said, "We ate there last night, don't you remember us?". He took that rather well and fairly instantaneously recognised us. He can be excused though; he didn't know our rule.
The Bad: I've mentioned our rule already, so now I guess that I should tell you that we broke it very quickly. There is a good ice-cream restaurant just near where we have been staying called Swensens (there may be a couple of them in Australia). Being me, I just couldn't
The Ugly
Statuary at the Grand Palace resist the temptation to eat a giant glass full of fudge and ice-cream every morning at 10am, and neither could Alex or Jeff (Mike was very well behaved when it came to watching calorie intake). So there we were, meeting up every morning spending large portions of our budgets on decadent rich-mans food. Also, I think I am addicted to Swensens which is quite a bad thing to be.
The Ugly: On our last night in Bangkok we all went looking for a new place to eat dinner. Something exotic. Something previously un-tasted by us humble Australians. The answer: Israeli food! There is an Israeli guesthouse and restaurant operated by the Thailand Hebrew Association (or something like that) which is always chockers with people.
In an effort to expand our cultural knowledge we intrepidly entered the establishment and found a table. Instantly we noticed that every set of eyes in the restaurant was aimed at us (apart from Alex we all looked very out of place). There was a tension present in the air which is very alien in Bangkok; as Mike described it "it's the only place in Thailand which can sap the smile right off a
The Old
Another building at the Grand Palace. Thai's face". We aren't quite sure why this one small speck on the Bangkok landscape is so different, so weird, but there it was and there we were to make the most of the meal.
I ordered very sedately, not moving too far from the dishes common to us back home (which wasn't very hard as the menu principally consisted of Chicken Schnitzel, burgers, kebabs and falafels). The schnitzel was terrible and the mushroom soup which followed (isn't soup supposed to come first?) was only palatable after the addition of 20mL of soy sauce (stat!). The fare that my friends ate didn't get any favorable reviews either, so due to the combination of anti-ambience and terrible food it was decided that the event was "memorably ugly".
The Sights
The Good: This is the story of the Royal Palace Photography Assault which was undertaken by Alex and I. Two young guys with new swanky cameras should not be allowed into any large historical sights such as the Palace and Wat Pho; we went absolutely stark raving mad running around trying to take the "wankiest" photos. In the end we came out with some fantastic shots, but we
The Sad
Artwork from the Grand Palace depicting the Ramayana. really went overboard. Two other good things did come out of the day however; as happens on any such adventure. Firstly, Alex forgot about the rule of wearing long pants to any Buddhist sight and had to rent a pair of pants for the day. If you look at some of the photos on the side you will see him in his dashing pair of Thai silk pajamas. He claims that they were exceptionally comfortable and breezy though so we both bought a pair for use in Angkor Wat next week.
The second memorable event of the day occurred when we rounded a corner in some small back alleyway of Wat Pho and ran in a full school orchestra minus a conductor facing into a wall. They were just sitting there in the middle of nowhere playing show tunes from the 50's as entertainment for two crows, a frog and a skink. Pointless? I think so, but a funny thing to run into after a long day of sightseeing.
The Bad: In the recent past there was a coup in Thailand, and before arriving here I was not sure as to how strong the military influence was going
The Monkey
Cute, isn't he? to be. Immediately upon arriving at Khao San we noticed the differences: armed troops at either end monitoring the flow of people and police driving motorcycles up and down the street. Further afield, around the large park where I used to watch children flying kites, there were dozens of military personnel with M-16's strapped to their back. Trucks were stationed all through the park and there was some big kind of shin-dig going down that I was too scared to inquire about. The place really has taken on a dark and somewhat frightening countenance since I was last here.
Another thing that we saw was a protest rally walking down Rama IV road, everyone wearing yellow shirts to represent their allegiance to the King. At least there seems to be hope that democracy will return soon.
The Ugly: On a slightly tangential note, Bangkok is actually a lot cleaner now than it was 18 months ago (less Ugly). Not only does it smell less (in some places at least), there are also less rip-offs on sale, less touts trying to sell prostitutes, less pushy tuk-tuk drivers and just generally less things to tick you off. I was quite
Flowers
Simple, elegant, buddhist. surprised to see how much better the backpacker area is looking now; it really is beginning to aim at a different market and will probably be unrecognisable in 20 years. Fear not though fellow backpackers, China Town is still kicking.
The Girls
The Good: No-one can travel to Bangkok and not talk about girls, it is as unavoidable as the smell of rotting rubbish and the ever-present calls from tuk-tuks. If you feel that you don't want to know about the seedy underbelly of the place, feel free to skip ahead to the next section.
Now, Thai girls are beautiful. No, Thai girls are gorgeous. I'm sorry to say that I've been struck down by the Asian Bird Flu (I can't get enough of those Asian Birds) because everywhere you go in Bangkok you are confronted by the sight of beautiful women. I have no idea how they do it, but 5 million locals are dead-set drop-dead perfect to look at. On Khao San you find girls dressed up trying to find dirty old men, on Silom you find girls in business suits walking to their offices, in shopping centers you find store-girls that could sell
Khao San Road
The alternate view which is only seen when a tropical downpour hits in winter. you anything under the sun just be looking at you. Also, less than 1%!o(MISSING)f them are overweight. One wonders if that is a socio-economic issue or a cultural one.
The Bad: Anyway, enough jaw-dropping; on with the stories. By request of Mike, we all took a trip down to the Patpong markets to buy some souvenirs (that was out cover story). At first glance the place was nothing out of the ordinary, just the same dodgy products from Khao San, but then... A girl on the side of the road asks me "Do you want a drink? Only 50 Baht!". That sounded like a very cheap beer to me so I turned to look at the bar. Twenty Thai girls wearing red lingerie looked back at me from atop the bar, hmmm, probably not the best place to have a drink. We moved on about 10 meters and there was another bar, this time the lingerie was white. Further down we found a bar that didn't have a theme for the girls, just anything skimpy. That was the low-brow bar I decided. I had heard of Patpong before, as most people in the western world have, but you
Children's Playground
Would you let your child play here? truly have to walk down the street to appreciate how seedy it is. In the end we returned to Khao San road for our beer and ogled some tourists, much less seedy that way.
The Ugly: On our last night in Bangkok, Mike and I went to a small bar down a side alley towards the river for a quick beer and a chat. Mike left early and I sat around talking to a dirty old Kiwi about Cambodia before heading home to sleep as well. This turned out to be a mistake as when I arrived at the hotel reception the girl behind the desk started chatting with me. Sorry, I must correct myself: the ladyboy behind the desk started chatting with me. She asked me about Alex and Jeff to see if they were ok (having not gone out that night) and then told me that my finger-nails were far too long and that I wouldn't be able to meet nice girls looking like that. To cut a odd story short, I ended up getting a full manicure from her in the reception and only having to pay by giving her a kiss goodnight (on the cheek
I swear!!!!). It would have been perfectly alright had she not cut my nails so short, typing is unpleasant right now.
The Nightlife
Nightlife on Khao San is always fun, you just never know who you will meet or what you will get up to. This section is dedicated to once such night so as to show you just how a single four hour period can be good, bad, ugly and many other things all at once.
The Good: Nina is my example here. She is a Sweedish girl, as many are around here at this time of year (I think it has to do with the weather in Sweeden). What is interesting about Nina is that she seemed totally out of place where we were, an intriguing circumstance. She had only just arrived in Thailand that night (after 24 hours of travel on planes) and had come out with two English guys that were staying at her hotel. Now, going out for a single drink after a long trip is always good, just to wind down, but staying out till 3am is plain silly but that is what Nina did. Secondly, she was dressed incredibly
Fly my pretties!
I had to wait ages to take this photo! well for Khao San (anything more than pluggers and a singlet is over-dressed) and had more mascara on than any tourist I had seen all week. To boot she was very interesting to talk to, being an educated sort. Now, the point of the preceding description is simply to point out how many different cross-sections of society can be found in a single bar on Khao San. Nina was not the only person I met that night, in fact, I met about 15 different people from all over the globe that I could devote an entire page of writing to just by way of description. I absolutely love Khao San and could spend many a night there just meeting people and finding out how the world works, it is truly a microcosm of the whole world.
The Bad: The bad part of the night was the Jeff was not there to celebrate with us. He had been feeling rather under the weather most of the week and I eventually decided to see just how sick he was. We went down to a local hospital (an Adventist Missionary version where they have large painting depicting Jesus doing the doctors work
How to Pose as a Suit Model
Jeff shows off his gangster threads. for them, lazy slackers) and got Jeff looked over. When I say looked over, I mean that three Thai nurses gave him every non-invasive test known to man in about three minutes flat. Then the doctor took a look at him and started asking questions: "Do you have a runny nose?", "Do you have a headache?". Jeff quickly tired of this and just opened his mouth. The doctor instantly recoiled recognising the ailment as "severe tonsillitis", which we could have told him beforehand and thus saved him (or Jesus) all the effort. All in all though, it was the best hospital I have ever seen, we were in and out of there in 15 minutes and the costs weren't even close to astronomical. I say to anyone out there looking for plastic surgery that Bangkok is A-Ok.
Additionally, we saw the Thai king drive past us as we were leaving. Yay for us!
The Ugly: This night continued into the wee hours of the morning as the English guys were quite into the revelry. The point where it went bad is when Alex slumped into his chair and sat there in a moderately comatose state. He didn't say
much, he claimed that he was feeling perfectly alright, but he stayed motionless for about half and hour. Then it turned ugly. I had to drag him across about three blocks to the hotel while he was in this motionless state. I don't claim to be a strong-man, in actuality I'm getting awfully flabby already on this holiday, but somehow I managed to get him home in one piece. What's more, neither of us got pickpocketted. Alex, you owe me!
The People
The Good: I have a firm belief that no matter where you go in the world you can take a five minute walk and be totally away from all the touristy junk. Even in Bangkok you can find places that have a truly local feel, almost untouched by modernity in the last 100 years, only 5 minutes from Khao San road. Alex and I found such a place en-route to a museum by walking around to the back door. Almost as soon as we stepped off the main road we were met by true locals, children ran up to us yelling the few english words they knew; "hello, hello, good morning". The fact that it
Beard Diary, week 2
Almost, one more week and he'll be scruffy! was clearly afternoon was unimportant to them as just seeing us was exciting. In a cosmopolitan metropolis such as Bangkok it is a rare occasion when you find someone so keen to see you without having any sales pitch to follow. It is times like these that I truly enjoy travelling.
The Bad: Mike and massages. There, I've said it all. If ever a man was an addict than it would be Mike. He had more massages in his first day in Bangkok than I had in a week, and don't get me wrong, I love a massage too. Thai massage, foot massage, reflexology, Sweedish massage (Nina couldn't explain what that meant in Sweeden for me); Mike had them all, and then had them all again. What intrigues me is this: is he addicted to the massages, or to the masseuses? Only kidding Mike.
The Ugly: Ok, this isn't really ugly, just very weird. One day we went to the MBK shopping plaza to get our Swensens fix and we were confronted by 100 or so Thai students dressed in red and black dancing in the street. There was some kind of techno music playing and one guy was shouting in Thai through a megaphone. One inside the plaza we found a second group, this time in a fetching pink outfit, standing on the 7th floor balcony making a similar scene. Furthermore, there was a group wearing yellow running around the shops. We still have absolutely no idea what was going on. Weird huh?
The Weird
The Good: In one shopping complex we saw a collection of fine cars for sale; ferraris, porches, audis, lexus. Just like in any other shop there were touts out the front trying to sell the vehicles but for some reason they didn't approach us (and I thought I looked suave and sophisticated). What is weird is that no sane person would own such a car in Bangkok. Furthermore, I have never seen such expensive cars on Bangkok streets before. Can there really be a market for these machines?
The Bad: On our second night in Thailand Jeff returned to our hotel early and found that someone had left a message for him. One Erin Johnson said that she would like to follow us around on the following day if we didn't mind and that she would meet us in the lobby at 7:30 the next morning. Well, that's all well and good, or it would have been had we known who Erin Johnson was. However, our interest had been tweaked so we diligently made our way to the lobby at 7:30 only to find that she wasn't there. We searched around town for her but never found out who she was, apart from a login on a computer using her name. Does anyone know who she is? Does she exist at all? We were just disappointed that we never solved the mystery.
The Ugly: Earlier I mentioned that most of the rip-off products had been removed from Khao San. Well, we found them all in Patpong markets as we happened to arrive precisely when the police were beginning to patrol the street. You could see the word spread through the market as every fourth or fifth stall owner started cleaning off all of their products: watches and jewellery mostly. That made it really easy to find out which products were legitimate, they were the ones which didn't get removed. It was quite an eye-opener.
So there you have it. Bangkok examined in detail from three different perspectives. The only question which remains is this: which of the perspectives will remain in my memory forever and which ones will be overshadowed?
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Lindsay
non-member comment
Sweden. It's spelt S-w-e-d-e-n.
Seriously. Ice cream and ladyboys? I'm beginning to worry about you, Matty.