Advertisement
Published: February 7th 2012
English follows
Y’a la Thaïlande, le pays avec ses habitants, ses rues, ses façons de vivre, de manger, d’éduquer ses enfants, ses manières d’interagir avec ses compagnons. Et y’a la Thaï-land, avec sa façade de pays exotique, la seule qui puisse être aperçue par les touristes, du moins pour les touristes-touristes.
Je dois admettre ici, même si je déteste ça, que c’est ce que nous sommes : des touristes. Il faut accepter notre rôle, car qu’on le veuille ou non, nous sommes pour la plupart des gens venus d’ailleurs pour visiter les beaux palais, prendre des photos, manger « local » et repartir. Bref, contribuer à l’économie du pays.
Et c’est comme ça dans beaucoup de pays pas trop riches, pour qui le tourisme est une grosse partie du revenu national. Les habitants y voient les opportunités de s’enrichir, en profitent, et c’est bien. Ils usent de tous les moyens (gentillesse, sourires, humilité, mais aussi manigances, mensonges, culpabilisation) pour vous faire dépenser. Et ils y sont très bons. Et ils sont solidaires en plus, ce qui fait que lorsque tu t’embarques avec un conducteur de tuk tuk, tu t’embarques aussi avec tous ses amis qu’il te fera gentiment
visiter. Et si tu restes quelques minutes dans leur magasin, ton chauffeur de tuk tuk reçoit de son ami un montant d’argent. Tout le monde est connecté, et c’est efficace.
Cependant, parfois, j’aimerais voir ce qui se passe derrière leur kiosques, après les heures de fermeture de leur magasin ou restaurant, quand ils redeviennent eux-mêmes avec leur famille et leurs amis. Connaître leurs angoisses, leurs bonheur et leurs valeurs. Quelque chose de plus intéressant, plus vrai anthropologiquement... Mais même ça, est-ce que ce n’est pas une attitude condescendante, influencée par mon origine occidentale et ma position de nantie? C’est une attitude différente face au tourisme certes, mais est-ce que c’est mieux? Parce que marcher dans les petites ruelles et s’intéresser aux endroits moins touristiques, plus thaïlandais, ça veut aussi dire dépenser moins, donc moins contribuer au pays. Reste que néanmoins, c’est tellement rafraîchissant et satisfaisant quand on prend le temps de se débrouiller par soi-même et qu’on réalise que non seulement y’a moyen de sortir du trajet typique touristique, mais aussi que c’est beaucoup plus intéressant et relaxant.
Pour résumer nos quatre premières journées : Bangkok. Les tonnes de gens, de marché, la chaleur, le café froid thaï
(meilleur que le vietnamien), le poulet le porc les crevettes, le contraste modernité/tradition qui on dirait fait quelques discordances entre les jeunes et les plus vieux, l’air climatisé, un quartier chinois digne d’un bazar extérieur sur des kilomètres dans des rues larges comme ma chambre, buddha doré buddha blanc et happy buddha, la déférence humble et touchante des thaïs pour leur roi, et le plus beau site historique et archéologique qu’il m’ait jamais été donné de voir.
Mélanie
--------------------------------------------------------
Leaving Montreal (GMT -5) in the evening, we reached Zurich in the early morning (GMT +1) for a 6 hour transit. We left the airport via the train and went downtown for a stroll of old Zurich at Dawn. As the shops opened up we got some cheese bread and charcuterie (yum!) then made our way back to the airport. I think what ended up being an all-nighter for us in Zurich (because of the time difference) actually helped for the jet lag as we got to sleep on the plane before arriving again in the early morning this time in Bangkok (GMT +7).
Bangkok – a lot of people, a lot of noise and a lot
Zurich Cinema 1
Mel thought the Cinema sign was cute...of traffic, but all in all surprisingly clean for a city that size (8 million). Bangkok offers different landscapes: towering skyscrapers, public transit on express boats along the Chao Phraya, high tech metros and sky trains, bustling markets in narrow streets, busy commercial boulevards, long stretches of green in well maintained parks, cozy massage studios, and haven’s peace in those temples that are not crowded by tourist.
Touting
Upon arriving at our hotel via a taxi, we were recruited by the greeter to go for a ride with his friend to a tourist information centre while we waited for our room. It quickly became obvious that this was a tout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tout), but it was helpful in the end as we booked a relatively cheap tour with the tourist centre to go to the Floating Market the next day (or as I like to call it the Floating Dollarama).
Touting is relatively persistent in Bangkok, in fact even our tour included stops at a handcraft shop, a snake show and a gem retailer. In the end all of these were relatively cheap or free to visit – it also offered an interesting look into
Zurich Cinema 2
... she liked it less from this angle! the networks behind this fast pace tourist industry. As we latter learned tuk tuk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw) are given gas tickets to bring tourist to specific locations. Having an army of tuk tuk referring your shop is a great strategy but it also seems to spring perverse incentives. One tuk tuk asked us to go into two different locations to pretend we were interested so he could get his tickets. We were feeling generous and the fare he was charging to get us to two different temples and back was ridiculously cheap (a tourist police had hailed him for us and had set the price) – so we went along with this little game.
After the first two we felt he was stretching it a little when he asked for a third and we only accepted reluctantly and somewhat annoyed. They often do this thing where it’s almost impossible to negotiate. They become passively persistent by simply repeating the same argument no matter what you say while making it look like it’s just because they have trouble with English. Anyway it just becomes easier to go along with the tout then to go on pretending that he doesn’t understand
“no” (they do). Apparently some of the businesses themselves are trying to curb these strategies. The second visit of faked interest was in a gem retailer and this one had a sign that asked us to inform them if a tuk tuk had coerced us to come there – we did not find it in our heart to stool on our driver who later dropped us off at the National Museum as intended.
Touting is an annoyance more than anything else, buts it can also be a major inconvenience as it makes reliable information gathering almost impossible: “can you tell us how to get to the bus terminal? (Where it only costs us 50b to get to our destination)” – Responses: “You want to book a tour?”
“You want buy? Ok?”
The constant hassle to buy useless stuff is not nearly as bad as it can be in other major tourist locations, but it’s definitely there. It seems to be mostly tuk tuk and motor-taxies that are desperate to bring you somewhere for way more baht than an actual meter-taxi. The floating Market however is something else... think of it as a boat ride through
Bangkok skyscrapers
View from garden roof of our hotel. the aisle of a Dollarama with people on the shelves literally using hooks to pull your boat to them.
“Oh no pirates! Watch out they want to sell us a pack of florescent pouches with elephants sowed on them!”
---------------------
All in all Thailand has been an interesting trip so far. The economics of the place is mindboggling if not confusing, but once you get use to understanding the relative price of things and the good deal from the bad, you can start getting a feel of what’s what. Labour seems fairly cheap compared to material (A foot massage with oil is more expensive than a full body massage, and one small Seven-eleven can have up to 4 employees at once). Western or processed food is more expensive than local cooking (so a hamburger or a pack of sliced processed cheese is more expensive than a delicious pad Thai with shrimp). You can do an 85km bus ride in a government subsidized air conditioned travel bus for under 2$ (about the price of a tuk tuk for a few blocks in Bangkok), get a full meal for under 3$, a large 1L and pretty good beer
for 3$, and a one hour massage for 7$, but a hamburger is almost 5$.
One thing I really like here is how you often have to take off your shoes in many shops and establishments and always in temples. In Canada we have signs that say you can’t come in without shoes, here it’s the other way around. It may be a little annoying at first, but it’s so nice to be able to take off your sandals in a restaurant and relax!
Right now my feet are in the sand as I write from the waterfront lounge of our bungalow resort on Koh Tao Island. We had a scuba dive refresh course in coral reefs yesterday and we are thinking of renting a snorkel for 50 baht and make our way to the beach when we are done writing this. Tomorrow we are going diving again. They tell us that where we dived yesterday was not really impressive (but it was), I can’t wait to see what they mean by that. But we will fill you guys in on Koh Tao another time...
Julien
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0387s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Laurence
non-member comment
Hahaha..... Julien, attention « winter is coming »...