Advertisement
Published: March 1st 2009
Friday was a lovely day for us. After sleeping in a bit and getting started at a leisurely pace, Jaz and I had breakfast together for the first time since arriving. I suppose “together” ought to be qualified by pointing out that we were sitting at the same table at the same time, though we were both engrossed in our laptops at the time. While we’re aleep at night, people back home are going about their day, so we often have email or Facebook updates to read when we get up in the morning. It makes for a nice breakfast ritual. I would feel bad about the lack of breakfast table conversation except that since we’re together 24 hours a day, we’re not really missing a social opportunity with each other.
We decided to head out and take a walk to the river, with the goal of hiring a longtail boat for a
khlong (canal) tour. Along the way, we passed by countless vendors selling clothing, food, and various household items. We saw men who had vintage Singer sewing machines set up on tables on the sidewalk, ready to mend your clothing, and others with shoe repair stands. We went
past several watch shops, so I finally broke down and bought a watch for a few dollars. It claims to be water-resistant, but I’m not terribly confident. It will probably hold up as well as the $6 “Prada” sunglasses I bought on Khao San Rd the other day, which had a scratch on the right lens within hours of purchase, despite my careful handling.
Scratched lens or not, I was glad to have sunglasses. The glare from the smog-filtered sun is intense, as is the heat as we walked along busy streets teeming with taxis, buses, tuktuks, and cars. I love the colorful taxis here - they all appear to be the same make and model (though I keep forgetting to notice which, I’m guessing it’s a Camry), and come in bright candy-colored shades of green, pink, yellow, blue, orange and red, along with a a yellow and green two-tone version. When you see a cluster of them, it evokes an image of a spilled bag of M&Ms. The cars here are all relatively small (though we do see midsized cars and pick-up trucks, and even one ancient Lincoln Continental!) and clean - no coating of salt or mud,
and no rust. We see a lot of cars like mine, the Honda Fit, though here they still retain their original (and better) name, the Honda Jazz.
We eventually got to the river and were quickly greeted by a Thai man with good English who offered us just what we were looking for: an hour-long boat hire to take us through some of the
khlongs and drop us off downriver at Wat Arun. The price was more than I had expected, but seemed to be standard based on the other ads we had seen along the way for the same service.
Jaz and I climbed aboard our own longtail boat that would easily hold 20 people and settled in for the ride. We crossed the
Chao Praya River and headed into a smaller canal, enjoying the strong breeze and splashing generated by the boat smacking into waves along the way.
Once in the canal, the boatman (captain?) slowed down and we were quickly approached by a woman on a small boat, grinning widely and offering up all sorts of souvenirs and drinks for sale. She immediately leaned into our boat and put jasmine flower garlands around each
of our necks - the Thai version of a welcome
lei, I suppose. “You want fan? Look, you want drinks, cold drinks? See, nice fan - is hat and fan, hat
and fan! See?” She was particularly determined to sell Jaz this flowery red collapsible hat, and put it on Jaz’s head more than once, making admiring sounds as she did so. But Jaz was not so interested in the hat-and-fan, despite the woman’s flattery and enthusisasm. Jaz did put her bargaining skills to work and bartered the price for a set of keychains from 300 baht to 120 baht. Later she looked at them, wondering what had made her buy such an odd item, and acknowledged that in part she was seduced by her own successful bartering skills and couldn’t back out after the price dropped so much. The woman also offered me a cold beer, which sounded like it would hit the spot exactly, so when I agreed, she held out another, gesturing to the boatman and saying, “One for him.” I remembered this exact exchange from last year’s trip when my mother took a similar ride, and wondered how many beers these guys end up with on
a good day. At this point, it got a little sticky, as she wanted me to pay 400 baht for the whole package - garlands, keychains, and 2 beers - which was probably three times what it was all worth. I offered 200 baht - “Oh, no!” she laughed. “400 baht!” I pulled out some bills that added up to 220 baht and insisted that was all I could spend, but she was clever enough to spot the purplish bill still in my wallet and she knew it was a 1000-baht note. “You have big money. I change for you!” she insisted with a grin. I insisted, she insisted, and eventually she settled on the 220 baht and took back one of the beers. The entire exchange was conducted with smiles and no obvious rancor - though it did include the traditional laugh at my first offer. You gotta love the entrepreneurial spirit of those who cater to tourists!
The rest of the ride was relatively commerce-free. We puttered along, admiring canal houses of all shapes and sizes. There were weather-beaten stilted homes listing alarmingly to one side, beautiful multi-story homes set back behind wrought iron fences and lush
gardens, and everything in between. We saw dogs, who always seemed to be in small packs of at least three or four together, sometimes sitting at the end of wooden docks watching the passing boat traffc, and sometimes just stretched out snoozing under a canal-side tree, but always hanging out together, never alone. We saw laundry of all shapes and sizes hanging out to dry, newspaper boxes that suggest that the paper is delivered by boat, satellite dishes, potted plants, dozens of spirit houses, and occasionally people fishing or swimming in the canal.
The boat stopped at a spot where we could buy “Lucky Bread for Fish.” A plastic bucket with loaves of bread came flying out to the boat along a rope strung to shore, and we exchanged 20 baht for a loaf of fluffy white bread, which we broke into pieces and threw into the water. The water practically boiled with shiny silvery-grey catfish (I think), clamoring for the bread and coming partly out of the water to get to it first. There were so many and they were so close to the boat that we could reach out and touch them, sliding our hands along their
sleek, liver-like bodies as they writhed and flopped over each other.
After an hour on the boat, as promised, we were dropped off at
Wat Arun, an amazingly tall and majestic looking wat covered in mosaics of ceramic shards. I really can’t do it justice in words, but we had a lovely time trying to take pictures that would illustrate its size. (I’m not sure we succeeded.) We climbed incredibly steep stairs to the upper levels and enjoyed the stronger breeze and the views of Bangkok across the river. Eventually we came down and rewarded ourselves for our efforts by buying ice cream.
After leaving
Wat Arun, we took a 3-baht ferry ride back across the river, and due to our degree of sweatiness and exhaustion, we opted for tuktuk ride back to the hotel - well worth the price considering how far it turned out to be. Because our hotel is so tricky to find, and it appears that no taxi or tuktuk drivers actually know how to read a map, we usually ask to be dropped off at the Democracy Monuiment and walk the last 3-4 blocks, which we did today. Along the way we stopped
for cold drinks at the 7-11 and our favorite protein source: meat-on-a-stick!
A couple of hours in our air-conditioned room revived us a bit, and then we were off on our usual afternoon expedition to Khao San Road. Jaz had spotted a Subway sandwich shop there and just couldn’t resist an opportunity to compare the Thai version to those at home. (It turned out to please her palate quite nicely, except for the overly sweet Asian version of mayonnaise.) I passed on Subway, and on anything else at this point. My stomach was feeling a bit unsettled - nothing that doesn’t happen at home from time to time, so I can’t necessarily blame it on something I ate, but a queasy stomach combined with 97-degree heat and the olfactory overload that is Bangkok is not a pleasant combination. I was happy to retreat again to air-conditioned comfort when we returned to the hotel, and even dozed for a bit.
When we walk around the neighborhood in the afternoons, the streets are full of teenage Thai schoolgirls in their dark blue skirts and white blouses, black flats and white ankle socks. There must be a girls’ school in the
neighborhood, and after school it appears that they congregate around the food stalls and street vendors, buying snacks and chatting with each other. It looks like it may be a Bangkok version of suburban kids hanging out at the mall after school.
Jaz spent the evening watching the rest of Season One of Dexter on DVD, while I uploaded photos and composed email. The wifi doesn’t work reliably in our room, and the common area of the hotel doesn’t cool down enough until the sun has set and the breeze picks up, so much of our time actually connected to the internet is in the later evening. Jaz headed for bed around 8:45 and I spent another couple of hours downstairs, reading and writing. Just as I was about to pack up and go to bed, the telltale sounds of a Skype call came from the laptop. Steve’s still in Portland for a few more days and the time difference means that he tends to call when he first rolls out of bed in the morning, which is usually just as I’m about to call it a day. It’s always good to chat, though I look forward to his return to Vermont, which will make the timing a little easier. I do feel a little silly, sitting in the hotel lobby with a headset on, looking like I’m talking out loud to my computer, but I suppose most people here have seen such crazy things before.
We’re looking forward to getting to Cambodia tomorrow, to settling into some long-term accommodations and beginning to figure out what the next few weeks will look like. I expect the trip there to be a bit of an adventure, and we'll be sure to report in again when we get settled.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.208s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0872s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Tom Whitney
non-member comment
Just loving the story
Jess and Jaz It is almost like being there. Your descriptions are fun to read and I love the pictures. Those portraits of each other are nice also. I like how you are able to put the pictures throughout the story. I'll have to figure out how to do that with regular email. Things in Hawaii are cool - in the low fifties - and rainy during the month of February. Nothing like the cold Vermont temperatures. Continue to have fun tom and betsy