One Night In Bangkok

Ok, actually make that four nights of haggling, partying, getting massages and hanging around with an Indian business mogul.  Seriously, I don't know how Carol gets paid to do this stuff, but she had to go to Bangkok for work to coordinate a few hours worth of live entertainment for about 500 Indian guests that managed to rent out the ENTIRE Grand Hyatt in Bangkok.  That's 380 5-star hotel rooms.

The event lasted four days and Carol's firm was essentially subcontracted to provide entertainment on Friday night.  That night, she played "band mom" for a few hours (her words, not mine), paid the performers and then we all hit the bar for some top shelf booze poured by three Swedish guys that Carol and I couldn't agree if they looked more like Cary Elwes from the Princess Bride or Val Kilmer from Top Gun.  Maybe the world really is our oyster.

Random birthday parties aside, what an interesting city!  Since Carol's flight and few nights of hotel were covered, we decided it would be fun for me to come up and we'd take a long weekend.  It turned out to be an awesome trip.  My impression of Bangkok and Thailand in general is definitely different than our last trip to Kuala Lumpur.  The most evident difference is the religious culture.  Malaysia is an Islamic state governed by the laws of Islam while Thailand is 95% Buddhist.  The city of Bangkok is absolutely blanketed in statues and symbols of Buddha and numerous Hindu gods that play an important role in Buddhism (Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, etc).  Mosques dot the KL landscape and some are rather impressive in size, but the temples in Bangkok are just amazing.

To set the stage for our trip, we were met at the airport by Ms. Poo (seriously) who was helping run the overall event and arranged a cab for us.  Getting into the miniature cab with Ms. Poo, Carol and I both grabbed for seatbelts and found... no seatbelts.  Yeesh.  This would become a theme.

A Frankenboat

We settled in on Wednesday night and got up early on Thursday morning to do some sight-seeing before Carol had to go check out the venue later that night.  We started our day by going to the nearby river pier from our hotel area in Silom (pronounced see-lohm) with the intent to take a boat up to the area near the Grand Palace.  The river is, well, pretty gross.  It's brown, there's trash mixed with chopped up river weeds floating everywhere and dark smoke billows out of most of the boats.  The smaller boats are actually pretty funny to see - bright rainbow colored cloth tops with huge car engines that have been Frankensteined into boat propellers.

When we arrived at the pier we also got another taste of something else that would become a theme.  We were immediately presented by a tourist station where you can buy a 1 day pass to go along the river for something like 600 baht.  Given that its 30 baht to the dollar, that's about 20 bucks for a day of transportation.  Not great, but not terrible.  Then, we happened to run into a nice local lady who seemed to work for one of the tourist companies that for some strange reason, decided not to try to rip us off.  She actually told us that if we were just going to the palace, we should hop on the public boat with all the local people and go there.  Price? 14 baht.  Now we're talking.

I got on the boat and immediately panicked when I realized my smallest bill was 1000 baht.  Great, now I'm that guy.  I watched her go up and down the boat with each person giving her exact change or maybe a 20 baht bill.  When the lady came to me, I sheepishly showed her the money and gave her my best dumb guilty tourist face.  She took one look and walked away.  She didn't ask us to get off, just walked away.  After the next stop, she ended up coming back and asking again for a ticket, to which I showed her the same bill.  She took it, miraculously made change and even gave me a rather courteous smile!  Surely she saw what an idiot I was and decided to get everyone else's fares so she could make change for me.  Honestly, it was extremely nice of her and not something I would expect from an American or Australian bus driver.  Not sure what it is about people in Thailand, but in our experience, they were either really nice (90%) or complete a-holes (10%).

The Temple of the Emerald Buddha

We arrived at the palace, which contains the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.  It's the site of the royal family of Thailand and has several hundred years of history.  Walking inside, we were absolutely blown away.  I can honestly say the palace and temple are grounds are probably the most unique and fascinating man-made place I've ever seen.  Everything about the grounds has an enormous amount of flair.  The trees are uniquely trimmed, the roofs have spikes, mosiacs and murals cover the walls, spires reach up into the sky, statues of evil spirits guard entryways, statues of Buddhas are absolutely everywhere and to top it all off, real 24k gold covers absolutely everything.  Wow.

I could write forever about the palace and the temple inside, but a few pictures would probably tell a better story.

A guardian spirit

Beautiful mosaics and gold sculpture everywhere

The palace grounds

Crazy trees at the Grand Palace

Carol and I were smart enough to bring sunscreen with us but somehow dumb enough not to put it on that day.  It was about 85 F, muggy, and very sunny.  We got burned.  At the end of our adventure through the palace, we stopped and had a quick water break to find where we wanted to go for lunch.  We scoped out a restaurant district and headed there on a walk that seemed to take forever in the heat.  When we got to the area we were supposed to be, we couldn't seem to find the places we were looking for so we just settled on going into a random little restaurant who didn't have a word of English anywhere.  The lady who served us was very cordial and spoke just enough English that we could point to dishes and tell her shrimp, pork, chicken or beef.  She served up some delicious fare that probably ended up being my favorite Thai food of the trip.  Total bill?  138 baht.  That's an excellent lunch for two for under $5.  Sweeeet.

The giant Buddha's head

Next stop was the Wat Pho, a temple that holds several records including the most Buddha statues in a single place and the largest reclining Buddha in the world.  The big reclining Buddha is about 150 feet long and barely fits in his building.


There were so many Buddhas everywhere!  Big Buddhas, small Buddhas, standing Buddhas, seated Buddhas, reclining Buddhas, Buddhas under trees, and Buddhas kneeling to even bigger Buddhas.  Some of the Buddhas were being repainted in an initial layer of black and then covered with gold, of course.

The reclining Buddha

More Buddhas

We took a cab back to the hotel, which had seatbelts this time but no buckles.  Cabs are stupid cheap in Bangkok, 35 baht for the first kilometer and something like 8 baht for each kilometer after that.

That night we met Ms. Poo again, who took us to see the setup at the Grand Hyatt and then out for a local Thai dinner.  Again, great food.  At this point I should probably mention that traffic in Bangkok is horrendous around rush hour.  Our hotels are exactly 5k apart (3.1 miles) and it took us about 45 minutes to get there.  Good thing we had a nice cushy conversion van with, you guessed it, no seatbelts.

Friday was pretty slow in the morning but we had the party in the evening.  Carol was busy with the entertainment for most of the afternoon.  While she was working, I did a little shopping and got a 90 minute Thai massage from a reputable looking place for 450 baht ($15).  Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with the awkward 'happy ending' question.  If you've never had a Thai massage from a real Thai woman, I suggest you stretch before the massage and make sure you aren't on a full stomach.  My massage was on a mat on the floor and for good reason.  I'm pretty sure it was more like 90 minutes of WCW Raw than a nice relaxing massage.  She seemed to put me in all sorts of crazy tap-out positions and definitely stretched muscles that probably haven't been stretched like that since the day I was born.  I actually felt very good when I was done and I didn't have that gross oily feeling since Thai massage doesn't use any oils.

I grabbed a quick dinner and met Carol for the birthday bash.  To make a long story short, we watched the entertainment, had some top shelf cocktails and then stayed drinking with the band until about 4am.  Somehow, the 70 years young birthday boy and about 50 of his elderly friends managed to still be partying and watching traditional Indian dancers when we left.  Apparently this isn't abnormal for this kind of function.  My hats off to Indian birthday parties.

The band in their best 70s getups

Getting the band back to the hotel turned out to be quite a chore.  The bassist and drummer were absolutely smashed.  To make matters worse, half the band still had equipment on the stage behind the performers and we had to restrain the bassist from attempting to dry hump the belly dancer.  We got the band back to the hotel around 4am, helped two of singers with their room key and put everyone in bed, about 45 minutes before they had to get up again to go catch their early morning flight.  We did not envy the headaches they must have had on their nine hour flight back to Melbourne.

Saturday morning came around and we went to the Weekend Market that is just north of town.  I have never in my life seen a market like this.  It has some 15,000 stalls.  We spent an entire afternoon there and I don't think we saw more than 20% of the stalls.  Clothes, decorations, kitchen items, ceramics, beads, jewelry and tons of food.  We ate, we shopped, we haggled.  It really was fantastic - I just wish we had brought our camera!

That night we had dinner at a nice little local restaurant and got ourselves a 60 minute foot massage from the same reputable place for $300 baht.  I specifically say reputable because 1) some places offer 2 hour massages for 200 baht - that's just sketchy 2) some of the massage places look like the cure for cancer is on their floor, 3) I've heard numerous stories about being offered a 'happy ending', even at hotels.  The only time I honestly felt unsafe in Bangkok was during our massage - not because of anything the masseuses did but because we heard loud cracking sounds coming from outside.  It was election night I had completely forgot about the insurrection that had happened just a few months before.  The loud sounds stopped after about 5 minutes and I still have no idea what they were, but it turned out to be nothing.

Sunday flew by.  We visited a temple in the morning, the Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn).  It's big, it's pointy, and it has ludicrously steep stairs.

Wat Arun

Find Carol!

View from the bottom of the steep stairs

Carol hitting the gong on Golden Mountain

After that, our sightseeing was complete with a trip to a final temple at Golden Mountain, a man-made hill with wonderful views of Bangkok.  The temples really are spectacular and there's something about taking off your shoes and sitting in front of Buddha with both travelers and local Thai people that really makes you feel a common sense of purpose.

View from the top of Golden Mountain

 
We spent most of the afternoon throwing back beers and eating well at a western style Thai restaurant near our hotel before heading back to the airport.  My only advice on things to avoid would be the Patpong Market in Chinatown or any other tourist market.  Initial prices are astronomical and the quality of nearly all the goods is absolute crap.  If I could recommend two things to do while in Bangkok they would be 1) the Grand Temple and 2) the Weekend Market.  The city really left a positive impression on me and there are tons of fun things to do, but just make sure you don't miss those two.