Three Nights in Bangkok

Right now, all I can do is sit here and sweat. When I was told, or rather when I read about the humidity, I thought, pshaw, I lived in New York in the summer and had to commute by subway with pants on. David Letterman did a skit that summer where he fried an egg on the subway platform. How much hotter could it be than that?

After three days here, I am longiing for the wind tunnels the large NY buildings created on those humid days. Not only is it humid, but the air is very still. Add to that the thick, soupy smog and the commerce on every street and it is quite hard to breathe.


(We saw this during a walk around our neighborhood. It made me laugh and it was really cool looking.)

We arrived early in the morning after an 11-hour flight from Athens through Bahrain to Bangkok. Bahrain was an absolute trip. It is a small island country in the Persian Gulf just off the east coast of Saudi Arabia. During our hop through the Middle East the in-flight tracker showed us flying over Syria, and Lebanon, just missing the west border of Iraq. They would show us our flight speed and altitude and how many miles we were from our destination. Then at the end they had a picture of our plane with what looked like a little bug moving on the screen. It turned out they were showing us where we were in relation to Mecca.

We landed in Bahrain and had about 2 hours to kill before we flew to Thailand. Everyone was dressed in traditional middle-eastern garments and the few English-looking people we saw stood out as the minorty. Coming from Europe, we were so used to blending in that this served as a solid wake-up call that we were transitioning to another culture, another world.

We arrived in Bangkok in a daze. We took some sleeping pills on the flight and they didn’t really knock us out, but rather made us unable to complete thoughts or sentences. We arrived at our hotel in Bangkok and we had a nice room with a king size bed, air conditioning and our own bathroom for $15: our cheapest room yet on the trip. Andy couldn’t take the heat and needed sleep. I felt the need to walk around a bit to get my bearings. I got a nice yummy lunch as the sweating began. I went back to the room and then collapsed for a few hours.

That night we walked around our neighborhood of Kao San Road, the backpacker traveler center. The bars and street vendors and tuk tuk drivers all wanted our money. We were hungry and decided, after much searching, to go to the first restaurant we encountered on our initial exploratory walk. We have decided to eat as vegetarians here to avoid unknown meats. Andy got a pad thai veggie and I got stir fry veggie with a side of rice. For dessert we got mango with sticky rice and coconut milk. It was pure heaven! Coming from the heavy meats and cheeses and bread of Europe, this was a huge delight. When our bill came we owed 130 Baht, the equivalent of about $5. More so than the food, the price was right.

After dinner we walked around Kao San Road and as Andy perused the inexpensive clothing, I stood on the street to soak it all in. Within a matter of 15 seconds of standing alone, I was offered a sex show where the woman shoots a ping-pong ball out of her… well, you know where. I declined, but mulled that decision longer than I probably should have. I mean, how often do you get a chance to see that? We walked home afterwards and again passed out due to the jet lag.


(The craziness that is Kao San Road. Anyone up for a game of ping pong?)

The next day we woke up at 1 p.m. and slowly ate breakfast ($3 for two egg breakfasts and two yummy smoothies). It was really too hot to do anything so we went into the air conditioned Internet café and caught our breath. Before we knew it, the day had passed and it was time for dinner again. We decided to walk to Chinatown for a meal and despite the sun already being down, the heat was oppresive. We kept getting lost because our map would randomely leave out street names. We knew we were headed in the right direction but we were walking, more or less, aimlessly. We happened upon a surreal sight in a park in the city. There was a man on a platform leading close to 200 people in a heart pumping aerobics session. Hanson, the now defunct pop trio that in my opinion really had potential in their heydey, was being played over the speakers, sped up like an Alvin and Chipmunks version. We joined in but I began to sweat profusely within 2 minutes. Andy did her best to keep up, but she too began to drip uncontrollably. We laughed, took a few pictures and moved on.

After bumbling through the city, we found Chinatown and it was hectic and exhausting, just like Lonely Planet said it would be. We found a restaurant and had an overpriced (for Thailand standards) yet delicious meal. We walked around a bit more and then decided we needed the comforts of our hotel room, away from the chaos. We hailed a tuk tuk driver and haggled for a price to get us home as quickly as possible. During this trip in the three-wheeled, open-air motorcycle taxi we realized just how smoggy Bangkok was. We were choking as we sat in traffic, discussing emmission standards, global warming and life expectancy in this city.


(I bought a pair of cool, thailand traveler pants. The lady helped me wrap them around for the first time. It was like a diaper.)

The next day, upon Andy’s urging, we went out seeking The Reclining Buddha housed in one of the many Wats (temples) scattered throughout the city. During this exhaustive walk we were accosted by three different smooth talking Thais who wanted to take us on a sight seeing tour of the city. They all told us the Wat was closed and that they would take us to the other Buddhas for $1. Andy almost fell for it. I held my ground and demanded we see for ourselves that the Wat was closed. Lo and behold it was open to all and we avoided being scammed. That was one of the best feelings I’ve had on this trip. I avoided being a stupid tourist. Go us!

We arrived at The Reclining Buddha and were amazed at the size and beauty of the idol. The pictures don’t do it justice. It was a purely spectacular sight, jaw dropping in fact. Apparently the reclining nature of the Buddha was supposed to portray his moment of enlightenment. After wandering around the statues and other temples in the Wat, we snagged a tuk tuk back to our neighborhood and decided what we needed most was to cool down. Our hotel has a pool for a small extra fee and we went for it. They could have charged us $20 a person to use it and we would have. Luckily it was only $1 each so we were in heaven. We swam for an hour and cooled our bodies down considerably. I have never seen Andy sweat so much. She prides herself on her lack of sweat build up. She bowed to the power that was Bangkok.


(That's one big buddha!)


(Worth two shots. Although the size is kinda hard to represent. Somethings you just gotta see for yourself.)

After a late lunch of pad thai and stir-fried rice at one of the numerous street vendor stalls, we decided to both get massages. Ahh, it was so relaxing to be treated to this Thai delight for only $5 a person. (Can you tell I’m hung up on how much things cost here?) Afterwards, we had a couple of drinks and went back to our room for a long, well-deserved sleep.

On Saturday, October 21, 2006, we headed for Koh Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. We are booked on a 14-hour bus trip that leaves Bangkok at 6 p.m. and arrives Sunday at 10:30 a.m. As we leave the city we are left with some wonderful memories of uncontrollable sweat, cheap eats, amazing temples, sketchy tuk tuk drivers and a wonderful air-conditioned room. (Thanks Dean!) Our plan is to trip around the south for about ten days and then head to Chang Mai in Northern Thailand to begin our adventure up there. After exploring Thailand of the north, we are headed to Laos for a few weeks and then to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Our first few days in Southeast Asia were a whirlwind of activity and it is preparing us for what lays ahead. Upno writing this, we are only three days removed from Europe and it seems so calm and peaceful in comparison to where we are now. As time progresses we are sure to feel comfortable here at some point. But right now it is overwhelmingly foreign.