Dazzling Bangkok
After a very short night in Sydney and a long, sleepless flight I arrived in Bangkok exhausted. The airport was huge, modern, and apparently rather efficient. Immigration and customs processed us through pretty quickly. On the flight in and at the airport were considerable warnings about the severity of drug laws here. Obviously not my problem, but some indication of how widespread the problem is. At the other end of the spectrum I saw a surprising number of men in long white robes and skullcaps, apparently Muslims. My guidebook mentions an Arab district and some Arab restaurants, and while I didn’t get the Muslim meal option on the Thai Airways flight from Sydney, the food choices were at least non-pork and may have already been entirely halal.
What little I saw of the city on the day of my arrival was seen from the car between the airport and the hotel. Statues of boddhisatvas line the freeway from the airport for a short while greeting the arrivals, then I noticed some large, impressive mosques, but after a few km, the view of the highway is typical of riding into a large, sprawling city – highrises, large apartment blocks, some new and dazzling, some poor and run down – the main distinguishing feature being the many billboards with pictures of the king. The ones in English said, “Long Live the King,” although they never mentioned his name. The ones in Thai were more verbose. His majesty is in his 80’s and wears big round spectacles. Most of the pictures didn’t look at all recent for an octogenarian, but he already seemed a bit small and frail behind those saucer-like peepers – much more Wally Cox than Yul Brynner.
What I expected to be a brief relaxation in my room turned out to be a bit of work and a bit of a nap and by the time I was ready to go out it was already a bit late to be exploring the city. As I was well fed on the plane food took a low priority, but I did work up a bit of an appetite so I went wandering down the dark alleyway from the hotel in search of food. Outside the hotel were a bunch of guys with motor scooters offering rides. All quite normal and reliable, but the hotel staff assured me there were a number of good restaurants nearby.
“Where you going? Where you going?” The bikers asked hopefully.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged back at them, and walked down the alley, thinking a main street should be close by. It wasn’t. I never got to one. Not too far down I saw a guy grilling cuttlefish over a small charcoal grill, so I ordered one skewer which he dipped into a very tasty, but oh-my-god-HOT sauce that he kindly washed off for me. Between my fumbling abuse of the Thai language and my reaction the hot sauce the cuttlefish man and his friend seemed quite amused, and it was just what I needed to take the edge off so I wandered back to my hotel and slept comfortably.
The Thai language has a complex alphabet with 44 consonants! Add to that 12 vowels and five tones. At first glance a lot of the consonants seem redundant, but may be involved in indicating tones. Sometimes a vowel following a consonant will appear written before the consonant, or it will involve a combination of vowels before and after the consonant. It sounds utterly insane, but remember the final “re” in “theatre” and how the vowel in “bite” differs from “bit.” I don’t expect to get more than a few phrases doped out, and the alphabet may remain largely a mystery. Also, to be polite a lady ends her sentences with “kaa” and a gentleman, to be polite, says, “krap.” Hello is “Sawadtee krap,” Thank you is “kawwp kun krap,” excuse me, please is “kaww toot krap” and so on…
I woke up early, well… early-ish, hoping to catch the 9:30 English language tour at the National Museum. At breakfast some guys told me that the only way to get there on time would be on a motorcycle. A cab would just get stuck in traffic. They also said the motorcyclist would want to charge me 100 baht ($3) but I should only pay 60. The first motorcyclist to show up the door refused the trip altogether. Biker #2 was willing to go, but nearly stormed off in a huff when I said 60B. I didn’t have time to fuss, and it seemed unfairly cheap even to me, not knowing the distance involved. I just asked what he wanted. 200 Baht, about $6, and I figured what the hell.
Day-glo color vests mark the motorcycles for hire. My guy stopped nearby where some pals were hanging out and traded his vest in for a second helmet shortly after he picked me up. I donned the helmet and we tore off. I got my $6 worth and then some, on a zippy little tear through Bangkok, a city very like LA or Tehran in its extensive sprawl. Thank God the driving is saner in Bangkok than in LA, let alone Tehran! I got to see a lot of different architectures from the traditional to the ultra-modern, plenty of street art. (His omnipresent majesty and her quasi-ubiquitous highness in a lot of it. Elephants starred third after the royal couple.) Girls rode side-saddle in their skirts on the back of some of the many bikes ripping along the streets. We passed by old walls (A fortress? old city walls?) and some impressive old buildings that might have been temples or palaces.
No fault of his I could see that 9:30 was flying by and when I got to the ticket desk at the museum, I learned the English language tour wasn’t even being held today anyway.
According to the National Museum (No photos allowed inside the buildings!) Thai history begins about 2,000 years ago and anything before that is considered “pre-historic.” Prehistoric artifacts are dated showing technological development was about keeping pace with much of Europe, and come to think of it, most European lands are really no older and derive their earlier histories from a few Mediterranean and Mesopotamian early starters.
Most of the translated explanations were adequate, although a native Anglophonic editor would help considerably. At least many of the mistakes were consistent and one gets used to kings being “borned” in certain years. The best mistake was about how in the mid-twentieth century they were having “racy problems” with the ethnic Chinese minority. Actually I had some racy problems last night, but let’s not go there!
A few pertinent notes:
Thai history starts with a few early Buddhist nations although with India near to the west and early Khmer culture on the east as a pocket of Hinduism (or “Brahmanism”) the Hindu artistic influence has always been around.
While Thailand alone in the region escaped full-out colonialism it did lose some territory to the colonialists. Parts of what are now Malaysia and Burma were shaved off by the Brits, and France took some pretty good chunks of what are now major parts of Cambodia and Laos, perhaps even a bit of Vietnam. Under the circumstances it may seem reasonable that Thailand tried to stay neutral in WWII. The Japanese didn’t honor that neutrality, though and what was supposed to be simple transit to Burma became occupation. Thai partisans led from exiled groups kept up the fight and the Thai king who had dealt with the Japanese had a strangely convenient heart attack in 1946. The current monarch has reigned since then. All over the city banners designated to commemorate his 80th birthday fly along side the national flag.
When the city of Bangkok was founded (no data given) the city horoscope was sealed inside a pillar marking the foundation.
One case in the collection of arts featured the planetary gods riding various beasts. Some were quite obvious from the point of view of western astrology. Sun on a lion, Venus on an ox. Others were less so. Jupiter on a deer and Mercury on an elephant – I would have switched them. Moon was on a horse, Saturn a tiger, Mars a buffalo, and Rahu (Moon’s north node) on a Garuda (a mythical diving bird with a rather anthropoidal form. I think it’s more common in Indonesian art, though it could be more broadly known in Hindu myth.) “Neptune” was riding a dragon. Actually, the more recently discovered outer planets – Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto – don’t figure in the older Brahmanist/Hindu cosmologies. Elsewhere I would see Pluto and Neptune listed as translations for Rahu and Ketu, which are actually the lunar nodes. The south node is sometimes called the tail of the dragon (The north node is the dragon’s head.) so Ketu riding the dragon is more than appropriate. An adjacent case had ceremonial candle holders – flat fan-like implements each showing a different planetary god on his mount in the same arrangement.
From the Museum I took a river ferry to Wat Po, a huge Buddhist shrine, monastery, and school that includes a dizzying array of stupas and the world’s largest reclining Buddha. If you’re Jewish you have to be very careful saying “stupa” to avoid confusing it with a common Yiddish obscenity. The tourist guide says a stupa is the same as a pagoda. Perhaps in intent they are, but the design features are vastly different, maybe only due to national variations in culture. (A few weeks later a short pagoda at Miyajima, Japan would show me the transitional connection between stupas and pagodas.) Pictures here will spare the trouble of trying to describe these structures which are supposed to contain relics of the Buddha or artistic representations honoring him. This temple has more stupas and Buddhas than I’ve seen in my entire life. The enormous reclining Buddha is in a building barely large enough to house him, making pictures rather difficult, but once you see this giant you’ll know that a “proper” shrine allowing that kind of space would have to be gigantic.
Finding my way home took me through water, air, and earth. The river ferry is a great deal and a fun way to travel. The Sky Train is an elevated train offering amazing views of highrise buildings constructed in pyramidal or curved forms or with imposing futuristic features. The sky train let me off at a shopping mall where I had seafood in coconut milk soup – mostly good, but are you supposed to eat those woody, pungent veggies or are they just there to add flavor?
Finding my way out of the mall, I caught the metro to the station nearest my hotel. The fare machines are easy to use with bi-lingual touch screens. Press on the station you want to go to, put in the requested money and they dispense a non-descript black disk that looks rather like a poker chip. OK…. At the fare gate you touch the chip to a sensor screen, the gate opens, and the screen gives you a cheery welcome. Upon exiting at your destination drop the chip into a slot in the exit gate and it opens with a cheery thank you and farewell appearing on the screen.
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The food stalls were mostly arranged around outdoor seating in large plazas offering rock and roll singers as entertainment, and the stalls were largely cheap tourist crap. T-shirts were largely familiar, or very touristic. The only political ones I noticed were very anti-Bush. One showed him holding a pistol to his temples, urging him to do the world a favor and pull the trigger. Another showed Hitler over a swastika, Bush over a US flag and the caption, “Same S---, Different Asshole”
After a dish of pad thai I went back and found my masseuse who jumped in adolescent glee that I’d really kept my promise and returned. She did a pretty good job on me for a fully dressed (from the ankles up) foot and body rub. Actually for the $9 I paid for a full hour (including the tip) it was spectacular! A motorcycle took me back to the hotel and after a nice soak I slept quite well.
And I even learned to recognize a few of the Thai letters!
On the next day I figured I could walk down to the station. On the way I recognized a couple of guys from my hotel and we started chatting. Tony and Pedro are from Portugal and this is their last full day after a couple of weeks in Thailand. A taxi came by and asked if we needed a ride. To my happy surprise Tony and Pedro knew that the 200 baht fare requested by the driver was way above the metered rate which turned out to be 45B. Even solo it would have cost little more than the metro and sky train. Divided by 3 it was a bargain. We all went to the main palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The main palace was closed off for mourning and lying in state ceremonies. Seems her semi-ubiquitous highness is not the queen, but the recently deceased sister of the king. I’d been noticing all the civil servants wearing black, but figured it was a uniform. Nope. It’s all mourning. After seeing the Temple of the Emerald Buddha I don’t feel like I missed a thing. As the royal Temple it has Wat Po beat hands down for ornate opulence. The Buddha, by the way, is not emerald, but jade. The story goes that the monk who first scraped the plaster off of the stone thought it was emerald, and the notion of an emerald Buddha stuck. I could tell the difference at 20 yards. Still, it’s pretty amazing, especially given the surroundings. The Buddha has different outfits for each of the three seasons, and the King changes the statue’s dress in special ceremonies. Gold Buddhas and other gilt decorations frame the jade/”emerald” centerpiece. A giant gilt stupa with other ornate constructions fill out the temple complex. There are enough amazing details to demand fastidious scrutiny, but the opulence of it all does become overwhelming. Mosaic patterns with colored glass make window frames, door frames, sometimes entire structures glisten brilliantly. A long arcade painted with religious stories, some of the figures also touched with gilt paint show the strong Hindu influence in what is supposedly a Buddhist shrine. Garudas, Yakshas, Hanuman, and other Hindu figures were all over the walls. In all that splendour I got separated from Tony and Pedro and ended up crossing the river myself, finding lunch on the way and – having caught the wrong cross-river ferry – got very lost and found in what became a long walk in horrible heat and sun to the Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn.
The stupa of the temple is conspicuous from far and wide. Only when I got there did I realize one could climb the thing. The staircases were horribly steep but the views from the higher levels were wonderful! And there I ran into Tony and Pedro! We came back together in a frighteningly overcrowded river ferry and a tuk-tuk driven by a man who wanted a bit too much money but we were too tired to argue. The three of us jammed into the back of the motorized tricycle, and noticed that for a headwrap the driver was wearing a t-shirt featuring Osama bin Laden whose face, moonily distorted being pulled down over the back of the driver’s head, goggled up at us. Glad to be back in the hotel for a relaxing evening after another long, tough, and utterly amazing day.
Sunday was a bit anti-climactic. People at the hotel were telling me that I absolutely must go to Chinatown, a warren of narrow alleys and shopping stalls, a bargain-hunter’s heaven. Trouble is, I’m not really shopping for stuff, and as far as shopping in congested alleyways goes, this was nothing compared to the medina of Fez. Doing the ethnic thing I went first to the Arab neighborhood which was small, but with signage in Arabic, Lebanese restaurants, guys in djellabas, women in veils (not unusual in Bangkok, but especially common in this district). It felt somehow familiar and made me realize how homesick I am, but still, the familiarity of the Arabic satisfied my homesickness in a small, odd way.
I then crossed town to find a mosque that was listed in the guidebook, and having seen it, I’m not sure why it was in the guidebook. A sheikh was instructing small children so I refrained from going in to pray as it would have disturbed them. Had a nice lunch at a stall down the street and headed over to Chinatown. Ben there, done that!
Last day in Bangkok was drizzly. Went out to get some much needed postcards and a few other necessities. Had a seafood noodle mystery soup in a stall near Wat Po, took a few photos and back to the hotel to write postcards and to relax. Tomorrow I fly into Cambodia!
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