It was about 11:30 PM local time when we arrived in Bangkok, and the impending culture shock was palpable. Plenty of days in Oklahoma can be described as hot and humid, but in Thailand the climate permeates your skin from the moment you arrive. Nothing but experience can prepare someone’s body for entering a new stasis of being. I’ll just be upfront with you - if Thailand were Florida I would have put my tail between my legs and come home by now. I hate humidity. But in my haste to inform you on my feelings about the weather I’ve skipped a small part of our journey, so let’s rewind a minute.
In the mid-afternoon of July 6th we left San Francisco International on a nearly 12 hour flight to Seoul, South Korea. Korean Air made this experience as bearable as it could be. Even in Economy class the service was friendly, the in-flight meals (two of them!) were quality, and the seats were comfortable. If we were able to rest our heads in Seoul it might’ve been a good experience. But after only a one hour layover, we were on another six hour flight to Bangkok. Twenty minutes into round 2 and we were down for the count. Headaches, nausea, and sleeplessness were all becoming good friends. By the end of our 18 hour ordeal we had been awake for over 24. We cleared immigration, breezed through customs, and made our way to the booth that sold prepaid data SIM cards for our cell phones. For about $15 USD (549 THB) each we have 4G unlimited data for 30 days. Not bad. From there we were able to hail a driver to take us to our apartment.
We slept for a surprisingly short amount of time on Thursday night. We were up again with the sun on Friday and made our way around the neighborhood and out to Lumphini Park. This green oasis in crowded and hectic Bangkok was a great place to spend a morning breathing in the new way of living happening all around us. We then headed back into our neighborhood and found an interesting restaurant, The Corner. This place is a fusion of French and Thai cuisine run by a French expatriate. We spent “too much money for Thailand” here but had some great Spanish wine, a meat and cheese spread, and of course excellent Thai food.
As a relatively fit person, I can walk in Chicago or New York or San Francisco for 30 minutes to an hour or so without sweating it much. In Bangkok, the sweat is you. You are the sweat. You become one with the sweat. Walking anywhere - as first pointed out by our Airbnb host, is a futile exercise. It’s just too hot, and there are no sidewalks. I’m ignorant to the history of why there are no sidewalks here in Bangkok, but I imagine as soon as the internal combustion engine made it’s way here, Thai society gave up on the idea of ever needing sidewalks because it’s just so damn hot. Just between the relatively close destinations of Lumphini Park, our neighborhood, and The Corner, we walked for about an hour. That was enough walking in the heat for jet lag to whip its tail back at us and put us back to bed for the next 12 hours.
Saturday, we explored the two sides of Bangkok through the lens of shopping. In the morning, we took a taxi from our apartment to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. I read online that this place was pretty large and had quite a few shops, but when we arrived there we easily circled the place in about 15 minutes. At this point, less than half of the shops were even open. Then we walked inside. Chatuchak turned out to be a true labyrinth with over 8000 stalls throughout the twisting and winding hallways that make up the interior. You can find everything from clothing and hand-made leather goods to candles, plants, and soaps. And the food. The market has numerous food shops. Here is where I first tried Tom Yum Goong - a delicious shrimp soup. We also picked up our first sample of Coconut Ice Cream - a welcome reprieve from the heat. After a few hours there, we wrapped up our time at Chatuchak and hopped on the BTS Skytrain.
The Skytrain was our first introduction into the new, modern Bangkok. Built in a desperate attempt to alleviate vehicle congestion, the Skytrain travels to major points within the city with stops along the way. I don’t think Bangkok will win any awards for public transit integration with this thing, but it is pretty cool riding above the city like you’re at Disney World. The Skytrain dropped us off right onto the other side of the Bangkok coin: Siam Paragon. Probably the most luxurious shopping mall I’ve ever stepped foot in, this place allows you to see a movie at a first rate cinema, pick up some budget t-shirts from H&M, and custom order your Maserati all in the same building. To stay out of the heat and see for ourselves this first rate cinema, we copped a few tickets to Finding Dory. The good news is Dory’s reunification story turns out well (even though we’ve seen “Dorryfish” on a couple menus in Thailand), the bad news is I may now have certain loyalties to the King of Thailand after having followed the social convention of standing for the royal anthem with my fellow moviegoers.
Sunday continued our recovery from jetlag. We did make time to eat some excellent Gyoza (pan fried dumplings) at a restaurant in the neighborhood before taking a few hours at another local place to read, write, and complete some work online. That day, having finally made our peace with the heat, Lexi and I had “me” time. The culture shock up to this point had been pretty overwhelming. Once we found a slice of Bangkok for ourselves and were able to truly sit back and enjoy it, this trip finally felt like it was taking on some purpose. At our corner place, a Russian (read: functioning alcoholic) named Tim introduced himself and sat with us while we discussed our lives, Thailand, Russia, and the U.S. Tim was a slightly obnoxious (read: functioning alcoholic) but overall nice and friendly guy, though he was somewhat concerned with our neighborhood being “very gay.” Eventually, Tim’s serious-looking associate pulled up in a brand new, black, sleek sedan and beckoned a reluctant Tim into it. I can only assume some skulls were cracked and vodka was consumed shortly thereafter.
Monday we finally felt rested enough to tackle some of the major attractions of Bangkok. We arrived early to Wat Pho, a large Buddhist temple near the river on the city. This is the home of Thailand’s largest reclining Buddha. Truly massive, the whole Wat Pho complex and the reclining Buddha are a testament to Thailand's predominant faith. The Wat is in the middle of the city, but when you step inside it’s very quiet and peaceful. It’s also a place where history and Asian cultural influences have meshed. The buildings at the Wat have roofs of varying color. For instance, when a king would commission an addition to the Wat, he would color the roof yellow - a lucky color in Chinese culture. There’s a lot of detail like this that goes into the entire composition of the complex, making it even more impressive. We stopped at the nearby Royal Palace following Wat Pho, but we were able to see much of it from outside and the cattle herd of tourists waiting to get in made it seem a lot less worth it. Instead, we walked across the street and found a hole in the wall place which made great Pad Thai. We then headed back to rest up and get as fancy as we possibly could’ve packed for in order to have drinks at the Moon Bar atop the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel. Bangkok is so fast-paced, and disjointed that it’s hard to step back and realize that you’re in a city of eight million residents. From the Moon Bar, this is easier to see. Once up there, we watched the sun dip below the clouds and had a few drinks before grabbing some food and retiring for the night.
Our final day in Bangkok was a more local experience. We paid a total of 30 BHT ($0.86 USD) to ride an express boat all the way up the Chao Phraya River. It was an interesting way to experience a side of the city that’s hard to see from the back of a taxi and on the street. When our boat reached its last stop, we walked through a local market and picked up some pork on a stick. Pork on a stick is awesome. It’s juicy, fresh off the grill, kind of fatty, and cheap. My eyes light up when I walk by the vendors selling pork on a stick. After riding the boat back to its origin, I had my introduction to spicy Thai curry. Spicy curry is the Stockholm Syndrome of foods: it’s hurt you before, maybe even in the middle of the night, but it’s too delicious to quit. So wonderfully flavorful, let’s just say it was spicy enough to leave some exit wounds. Once all of the curry had made it’s temporary home in my stomach, we made our way back to our apartment to pack up and prepare ourselves for the night train journey to Koh Samui.
Bangkok is a strange and interesting place. Saturday’s markets and malls revealed the stark contrast between the wealthy and poor, the modern way and the old way. The tour of the Wat on Monday drew the line between the secular and the religious. Sunday revealed a distinct quality of Bangkok as a place. Everything here moves very quickly and is constantly in motion, but there are thousands of little slices of solitude and peace that you can step into at any one time. The world of Bangkok moves like a swift current that’s simultaneously dragging and pushing people and things along with it. At face value, it is a very hectic place. The climate, the traffic, the disjointed and sprawling way in which it’s constructed can all overwhelm the senses. But down every alley and on every corner there’s a place to be relieved of all of this and truly enjoy oneself. I had a thought that Bangkok is like a city run by libertarians. Any person can haul in their $1 food cart and set it up on the slab of a non-existent building. Less than a mile a way you can pick up your $100,000 sports car. The roads and transportation, the zoning and construction of new places, often make very little sense. There’s a very permissive social culture here despite the private religiosity most people still seem to have. Bangkok has been a cultural and economic focus point for the Asian world since the 1700s, and those forces push in on each other to create this bustling mess. I can’t say it has been my favorite place thus far, but it is maybe the perfect place to be introduced to life in the modern (yet still somewhat ancient) Thailand.
-Zach