We Were Wrong About Bangkok

...It's actually a pretty nice place to visit now that we have our heads on straight. It was a smooth ride back from Kanchanaburi except for the horribly smelly Dutch hippies that sat in front of us, carrying their lice. Dropped off near Khao San we managed to find the River Guest House about an hour later tucked down some twisty side streets near Rama VIII Bridge, which was a real sight. And what a difference a few blocks makes: we are completely separated from all the noise and chaos of backpacker central, with the added benefit of rooms as cheap as any other city we've visited outside of the capitol. The cutest little grandma runs the place, and they keep the front gate locked after 3pm to ward off the unsavory types from down the road. When we arrived it was after three, and after ringing the buzzer we hear her from above and over the roof came a key on a fishing line. Once we had unlocked the door she reeled it back in and came down inside to greet us. It would really set the theme for our time in that place, and apart from the dogs and roosters every morning at sun-up we would sleep well.

Our fire extinguisher at the guest house, which doubles as a plant waterer

Rama VIII Bridge

An elephant near the Grand Palace

More elephants on a bridge over a canal somewhere

A corner in Banghlamphu in the evening, near our guest house

For the first couple of days in BKK we played around with public transportation and went to a couple of tourist spots. The malls in Siam Square are huge and all right next to each other on the two sides of Rama I, the equally huge and busy main road in central Bangkok. There's even an aquarium and accompanying IMAX theater in the basement of one, and plenty of movie theaters throughout all of them. We came to really like the MBK mall, which felt the most like home and was cheapest. There are plenty of western movies playing with Thai subtitles, and even plenty of Thai movies playing with English subs. We saw Jumper by the way, which was totally awesome and worth doing for the equivalent of $3US.

Leaving Siam Square, there were still endless shopping possibilities. We took the SkyTrain to the Victory Monument(right), surrounded by a huge traffic circle lined with street markets of food, clothes and everything else. It was here that we found a pretty neat Jazz/Blues bar called Saxophone which apparently has live music nightly. We caught the tail end of a Thai guy playing engrish acoustic covers of bluesy Dylan and Beatles songs, followed by a talented blues cover band which Jenny absolutely loved. and how could she not, they started their set with Sweet Home Chicago. Unfortunately drinks were very expensive there, but we considered it payment for the live music. It's a lot better than the bunch of blind people always singing at the markets. Speaking of which, we took a bus to Jatujak Weekend Market which was full of both Thais and farang shopping for deals on everything under the sun. The place covers 35 acres and even with our detailed map we could barely keep track of where we were. It was a madhouse, especially for someone who is already having trouble fitting down normal hallways. Apart from the overpriced food there was a lot of deal-making, and we came home with a shirt for the dog, a jade piggy and some cute salt/pepper shakers. Not a lot but it was a fun experience partaking in the madness and our first successful BKK bus trip. There would not be many more.

Bangkok traffic at the giant roundabout

Much more successful than our attempts at bus travel was the river taxi, which is a wonderful way to move around the city. While there isn't much mass transit on the canals that are left in the city, moving up and down the Chao Phraya is a really cheap and pleasant way to travel. That is, unless you pick the wrong spot like Jenny and eat a wave from a passing boat. But aside from getting wet once, it's a good time. There's shade and a cool breeze from the water, rather than sweating on a bus with car exhaust filling your nose and we wish the river went to more places of interest so we could take it everywhere. One of my favorite things here in BKK is the markets surrounding the less touristy docks. There's all kinds of great local food items, seafood and produce that I haven't really seen anywhere else. The best we've seen was Pier 15 which not only had rows and rows of buckets with all kinds of eels and fish, but also little baby turtles crawling around which I haven't seen before. I'm not sure how they're generally prepared but I'm going to be keeping an eye out now. Then right on the end of the pier were vendors selling bags of stale bread and crusts. Wondering why Thais would need to make such massive amounts of breadcrumbs, we saw the throngs of (mostly cat-)fish all flopping around right beneath the dock, going crazy for the bits of bread people threw in. Really, it was a great way to kill 15 minutes waiting for the boat to get there. The way I reason it, there are so many fish there only because you'd have to be crazy to eat anything from the horribly polluted water of that river. Welcome to southeast Asia, where there is no concern for the environment at all.

Crazy damn fishes

Buddhist Temples

Luckily the river taxis run right down from our guest house to the Phra Nakhon district, which seems to be pretty much the Mecca of Theravada Buddhism. We made the obligatory visit to the Grand Palace for way too much money to see the emerald Buddha and some coins. Really, I'm sorry to say it but we're not knowledgeable enough about the history or significance of anything there to make seeing the place worth half of our normal daily expenditure. As obligatory as the visit to the Palace and Temple was the run-in with well-dressed English-speaking men trying to scam us into going somewhere else, telling us the Palace is closed, which kind of taints the experience. Much more interesting however was Wat Po right down the street, home to the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand and the most Buddha figures of any one temple. That was something to look at. There was a lot of really neat architecture and Chinese-derived statues besides the huuuuuge 50m-long Buddha laying down in his own hall. Also for those with the disposable income there is a massage school on the temple grounds, where you can let students practice on you for twice as much as you would anywhere else. But if you consider it a donation to the temple or school, perhaps it would seem like a good idea.

Just Reclinging Buddha being Reclining Buddha, panorama style

For a sense of scale

More Buddha

Don't know who this is. Cthulu? Davey Jones?

An artist touching up a wall at Wat Po

Chedis at Wat Po

Hey there

A diagram of something

A Buddha for every day of the week. We gave to Tuesday-Buddha

A macro shot of some ginormous wall painting

Chinatown is Chinatown is Chinatown

Really the last thing we did here was take the river taxis(right) to go exploring the markets in Chinatown, and that was a good time just to feel like we were back in New York, because I'm pretty sure Chinatown is the same no matter what country it's in: Dim sum, noodles, restaurant equipment, tools, massage and bad air quality. I've been watching massage prices everywhere we've been and Bangkok is often double the prices we saw in Kanchanaburi, but Chinatown is there with the good deal just like home. We happened upon a mall and upon entry decided to go for some foot massage and it was a great time. They brought us tea and a blanket, washed our feet(filthy from walking in BKK!), and then rubbed us with some lotions and stuff for an hour before finishing with a quick shoulder, neck and head rub. Of course there was more tea at the end, and then we were on our way to dinner a few blocks away. I hadn't thought of it beforehand but we wound up walking down a Soi which seemed to have nothing but shark-fin and bird's-nest (bird spit) restaurants, both of these Chinese delicacies which I've never had the opportunity to eat since they're very expensive back home. Lucky for me bird's nests come from Thailand, where I happen to be staying. I had a small bowl of hot bird's nest soup for something like $3US and it was memorable more for trying something special than for the taste sensations. To give a review though, it tasted like a sweetened, oaty minced-vermicelli soup. Pleasant but not ground-breaking, although it's supposed to raise my libido, which is always a plus.

So we were wrong about Bangkok. There's a ton to do that we didn't write about once you're comfortable dodging touts and scam artists, like eat bugs on Khao San(the grubs were the only tasty one)(right), visit the National Library(could not find any English books but it's a nice break from the heat) and even get a full-service haircut and shave for like 5 bucks(my face is so smooooth). We'll be sad to say goodbye in a couple of days, but our tourist visas run out soon and we need to head south to make it to Malaysia for our next adventure.