So a little while ago we flew to Bangkok. In Thailand. Yeah, you know the one. One Night in Bangkok and all that. Well, turns out, Bangkok is a LONG way from home. Which I guess I knew because we’d been there before and all but I guess not usually straight from home, you know? Like, usually we stop somewhere else first.
Sometimes we came to Bangkok after going to Nepal, usually because in Nepal we were always up in the mountains, freezing cold and eating really crap food and that sort of thing, so going to Bangkok after was always awesome because, you know, first of all, it’s hot. Like, super-hot, pretty much all the time. And humid, sticky almost. Good for the sinuses, I guess. But we do sweat a lot. Pros and cons, I guess.
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But the food! So much food, everywhere you look, and most of it Thai food. Which just happens to be some of our very favourite food. And not just on account of it mostly being noodles, which we really like, even though they can be kinda tough to eat sometimes, especially when they’re really long and slippery and a real pain to deal with, even with a fork. And don’t even get me started on eating noodles with chopsticks. That shit should be an Olympic event. One that I would not do very well at, I don’t think.
Plus, the food is cheap and fast and you can usually eat outside, which is pretty neat, in general, and the people are always super-friendly, too, although that’s a whole different thing we like about Thailand so I should stop getting distracted and get back to the main point. Which was… I’m not sure now, but have you ever had pad see ew? With the thick noodles and thin gravy and all that? Amazing. Oh, now I remember. We had a really long flight. Like, 13 and a half hours. From Vancouver to Manila. And those weren’t even the places where we started or ended, which meant we had other flights, too. It was a looong day, I guess is what I’m saying.
The nice thing about really long flights, though, is you get to sleep a lot. Sometimes because we’re just really tired and the flight leaves at, like, 1 am like this one did. And sometimes because they just turn out the lights and it’s basically, like, hey people, take the hint. And sometimes because we took sleeping pills because, you know, we always travel with sleeping pills, basically because we hate dealing with jet lag and we like to sleep and the pills, well, they make it way easier to do both. Even if your mouth tastes a bit funny when you wake up. But my mouth already usually tastes funny when I wake up, what with those funky plane meals and all, so it isn’t really too big of a deal.
Anyway, Bangkok. Right. In case you don’t know, it’s a REALLY big city. Like, hard to get your head around big. Or make-you-question-the-sustainability-of-the-entire-human-race kind of big. Thousands of 7-11s big, that kind of big.
And it’s always hot. And humid. And most of the time it kind of stinks, but in a familiar kind of way, like your favourite old comforter when it’s way overdue for a wash. In Bangkok, though, it smells mostly like car exhaust, but also spicy food, and dank puddles and urine. Some animal urine, probably, but mostly people urine, I think. There are some flowers around too, though, which kind of help, and people smoking weed everywhere now, which doesn’t necessarily smell good or bad, just noticeable, you know.
Or maybe it’s not really everywhere, just more in the specific places we hang out, the backpacker areas. Because it seems like a lot of backpackers like smoking weed. Plus a lot of other travellers who aren’t necessarily backpackers. Like, even the ones with little rollie luggage that are wearing brand new pants with elephant designs and a Chang beer hat, a lot of them like smoking weed, too.
Khao San Road is a famous backpacker street full of bars and shops and food stalls and touts and drugs and loud music and ambiguous massage places and buckets of water full of fish that want to eat your foot skin and all that sort of stuff. And whenever we come to Bangkok we stay near Khao San Road. Not right on it, because that’s crazy, way too busy, way too loud. But nearby, so it’s easy to just pop over for a big 100-baht happy hour beer or a super-cheap tailored suit, you know, if the need arises. It never has for me but, man, those dudes selling suits seem convinced I’m going to need one real soon. Maybe not the last dozen times I walked past their shop but, hey, maybe the next time’s the charm.
So, anyway, usually at least once every time we visit Bangkok we like to spend a night just kind of bar hopping on Khao San Road, or NEAR Khao San Road, we mix it up now and then, see, and we usually look for the most casual places. So, like, first of all they have to have cheap beer, the big ones because, hey, how can I settle for a small beer when I know the big ones are back there too?
We also try looking for the places with the cheap plastic chairs, or maybe decent chairs looking out onto the street but still with cheap beer, or maybe just normal chairs but a real social kind of vibe, like at a ball tournament beer garden, or maybe when a bunch of cars are stuck waiting for road construction and people get out and start wandering around, chatting. Mostly about how long the wait will be.
Anyway, there are still some of those places around but, yeah, not nearly as many. A lot of them are cannabis places now. Usually with even more loungey kind of chairs, for more serious relaxing, probably. I guess now that pot is legal a lot of people want to just hang out and chill and get high instead of just hanging out out and chilling and getting drunk. It’s a whole new world, man. A world where it’s just a little bit harder to find the perfect beer stop.
There are still a lot of tattoo shops, too, obviously, what with tattoos really picking up steam these days. Especially face and head tattoos, it seems. I mean, I guess if you’re going to be bald anyway, why not make use of that space, right? And all that blank forehead room? Go ahead and get creative with it, man, I trust you! I mean, it’s a face tattoo, after all, it’s not like people are expecting something profound or clever. It’s kind of like those billboards that basically just say “made you look!” and you’re like, shit, you got me, I DID look. You win this round, I guess.
Oh, rad na! That’s the one with the thick noodles in thick gravy sauce. It’s a good one, too. And pad thai, of course. Everyone knows about pad thai. Not a huge fan of the nuts, I have to say, but the rest is generally pretty top-notch.
So… you can still get a pretty decent hotel room in Bangkok for cheap. We stayed at the Rambuttri Village Plaza and had a private bathroom, air-conditioning, mini-fridge, breakfast buffet for, like $40-50 Canadian dollars. So, pretty cheap, basically. There are downsides, still, like, the shower and toilet are all mixed up together for some reason, so the water ends up, like, everywhere. And the walls are thin, so thin you can almost always hear somebody speaking German, basically any time of day.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, the place we stayed this time even had a rooftop pool. Nothing fancy, but the views over the city were not too shabby and the water was nice and shallow so you could just stand up if you weren’t a good swimmer, like the Thai girls those white dudes were teaching to swim. Not teaching professionally, I don’t think, because it all seemed a bit too friendly, you know, not so strict and disciplined like those lessons I took in the freezing water at Waskesiu as a kid.
On the other hand, the loungers are really hard and they were covered by those shade things, the ones that don’t really stop the sun, they just sort of make you think they do but pretty soon you figure out, nope, they aren’t stopping it at ALL, I’m definitely getting red now. And there is a vending machine that sells beer but it was out of order so there’s just all those beer in there, just kind of sitting there taunting us, right next to a sign that says “No outside alcohol!”. I don’t know, man, seems like something’s gotta give there.
We always like taking river trips in Bangkok. The Chao Phraya river, to be specific. I mean, there are loads of rivers and canals and ponds and gross sewage streams and stuff all over Bangkok so it’s hard to keep track of what’s what. But Chao Phraya is a pretty important one, with lots of boats you can take and lots of temples and stuff to see. The views are pretty good, too, even though the water doesn’t look so great. Not greasy, like you might expect, just really… brown. And not a good, coffee brown or something like that. More like that gross light brown, like really cheap Easter chocolate, the kind the hollow bunnies are always made of. Not ideal.
Over the years we passed by Wat Arun loads of times. A “wat” is a sort of temple, and “arun” is just a name, I think, but you get the idea. But this time we decided to actually stop in. Pretty neat, it turns out. A lot of detailed carvings and stuff that you don’t really notice until you get up close. Way more detail than I would have done if it was me building it. But nobody’s ever accused me of being a superstar temple builder or anything, and that might be why.
Anyway, we hadn’t seen all that many tourists around Bangkok yet, except the usual drunks and backpackers and tour groups on Khao San Road, but, boy oh boy, we saw plenty at Wat Arun. And a totally different kind of tourist, too. The kind that really go for broke when it comes to dressing up in traditional clothing to look the part in photos, that kind.
To give you an idea what I mean, picture me on the one side. Pants, shirt, hat, that sort of thing. Then picture hundreds of Asian girls completely decked out in beautiful silk dresses, fancy scarves and wild head ornaments. Pretty different, eh? Yeah, that’s how it felt to us, too. I mean, seriously, we admire the commitment.
And not just the clothes, but the posing. My word, so much posing, in so many different spots. Exhausting even to watch, honestly. But I bet every now and then they’d really hit the jackpot and get one where it seemed like maybe they really were 17th century royalty, or some such thing. Except for the sneakers, though, those were always the giveaway. No way an ancient princess would be caught wearing Adidas Sambas, I don’t think. Actually, who knows? They are pretty popular these days.
Then we went to Icon Siam, this uber-modern mall with tall glass towers, impressive lights, cool fountain shows, fancy shops like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and H&M, and this insane food court set up like a traditional Thai floating market except instead of little old ladies in little wooden boats selling flowers and fish and stuff, it was just, like, hundreds of restaurants that are totally fine with it if you want to pay with a credit card instead of cash.
Then when we got back to the hotel there was this guy going up the stairs in front of us, a real friendly type, the kind who stopped to talk to everyone coming down the stairs, moving out of the way really fast, like, faster than really necessary, then saying stuff like “Go ahead! I’ve got time! Nothing but time! Ha ha!” He said that, and then more stuff sort of like that. Then when he got to his floor he kind of lurched off down the hall and it was kind of fascinating, to be honest, we couldn’t help watching to see what would happen. A couple steps left, a couple steps right, a bit of a stumble, caught himself!, a bit left again, oh no, a bit more, here comes the wall! Is he going to catch himself? Oh! Yes, I think he will… no! Dammit! Right into the wall! Valiant effort, dude, you nearly pulled it off.
Then in the morning we got up and flew to Nepal.
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