Today's Email from Bangkok

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Today in Bangkok, I was on a mission, to get the SIM card for the work cell phone. It turned out to be harder than I thought, so I decided to head to see some sights and worry about it later. The concierge was less than forthcoming about how to get around, so I just started walking in the direction of what seemed to be the skyrail from my 19th floor view.

Locating the skyrail, I hopped on the skyrail and rode over to the central boat terminal to take the boat taxis down the Chao Praya river to some of the sights. I found out that I get a little queasy on boat rides. That never was a problem when I was younger, but I wasn't feeling it today. After disembarking at the place of the big buddha, the colossal reclining buddha. It is located in Wat Pho. To get to Wat Pho you have to walk through the boat dock and all of it's little stalls and vendors and then get into the Wat Pho location. Feeling a little queasy, I'm embarrassed to admit that the sights of fish piled up everywhere almost did me in. But more to that later.

I check out the enormous reclining buddha, www.watpho.com if you want to check it out. I then looked around all the little temples, etc. and the schools and all sorts of things that were going on inside of the walls. I then decide to head off to find the Grand Palace. I walk and walk and walk, not really, but the heat here is like something you can't even imagine. I get in to the Grand Palace and realize that I just can't do it today ( www.palaces.thai.net) and decide to head back toward the hotel because I'm just whipped from the heat and jet lag. And it is painful to me to give up that easily, but I was suffering.

I head back to the boat dock and take off on another water taxi. I get off at the wrong dock, so decide to look around. Shamefully, I couldn't do it, so I rolled back to the dock. I took off again back to the main dock, back to the skytrain, and decide to try and find this huge, I don't know what it is, a mall or something, for cell phones. In any case, I hop off the skytrain and try to figure out where I am.

I see a big mall in front of me, but it looks really fancy, like Hermes, Armani, Gucci, etc. I decide to go in and look and see if there is a store for the phone. While I'm there, I start to feel really yucky. So, in true tourist fashion, I eat at some ritzy euro gastropub, but I was the only whitey there, which I guess makes it better. I couldn't face the thought of anything but something really plain. So I had a really good salad and some buttery noodles.

Then I looked around the mall, super ritzy and the floors are divided by topic, like haute couture, IT/Mobile phones, home furnishings, etc. I finally get the SIM card, but the phone is broken, so they send me off to the place I was originally looking for. Another mall, but not really, it reminded me of Peru, just a bunch of stalls on floor after floor.

I find the mobile phone floor and it looks very intimidating, stall after stall of cell phone vendors. The first one tells me 600 bhat to fix it. I decline and move on. The second stall I circle and finally go up to fixes it for free and gets my SIM card all set up. By then I've really decided to head back to the hotel. So I hop on the skytrain and head back to the hotel. Now I'm pondering a quick nap or a dip in the pool. I'm afraid the nap will really throw me off, though.

The odd thing about the sky train is that regular Thais can't afford it, so it's really just a bunch of tourists and business-y looking Thai people. At least on the water taxis regular Thais were on it.

But enough about the boring stuff, I want to talk about the yellow polo shirt cult. Everyone here, and I mean just about every single Thai person on every single street is wearing a yellow shirt with an insignia of what I guess is the royal Thai crest. I thought maybe it was for government workers, but then I saw a store in the second mall that sells only yellow polo shirts. Some say "long live the king" in English and some have stuff in Thai with hearts. All I know is that they love some King of Thailand. His picture is absolutely everywhere and I mean absolutely.

Hopefully more later, and interesting things, when my brain isn't frazzled and incoherent.

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