So! Our first day! Holy moly! We. Are. In. Thailand!!!! There are fresh orchids in the room. (They were there last night, no one ninja’d flowers into our room or anything) and bananas. We opened our blinds to see a vast skyline with the skytrain running right down below, views of “Thairung Trendy!” hotel, “Times Square” shopping center, The King 7 I massage and spa!, Starbucks!
It is a lot like New York. Every inch of the sidewalks are covered in people hawking t-shirts, dvd’s, shoes, silk, jewelry, and especially food. The stalls are everywhere cooking up amazing smelling stuff. We have no idea how trustworthy it is, a lot of chicken and fish sitting out in the heat all day, but boy does it smell good. People sitting on crates under umbrellas rescued from everywhere (anything from Au Bon Pain umbrellas to Pepsi to Thai massage parlors) and chowing down. We are gonna eat that stuff, but we aren’t quite brave enough yet.
We started the day in our room connecting to the internet for pretty steep (western hotel, western prices) and doing some research for the day. Happily the stachow’s were on Skype so we got to do a little visit and show them the view and everything. Ween sent out an email saying we were safe and sound. I looked up the best cheap massage place (with no happy ending), the best breakfast spots, and how to get to the Grand Palace and the Jade Buddha. Sadly my phone doesn’t seem able to find any free wi-fi so far which is a serious blech, since we had been hoping to rely on it fairly heavily for mapping etc. Luckily we brought Ween’s compy so we’re fine. All the rest of our hotels have internet as well so we’ll be good from here on in. There’s our day! So out we go, wearing our finest linens (pictured left).
It is hot. And humid. And sticky. But despite this it doesn’t stink outside like I’d somehow imagined it would. Its less stinky than New York despite the fact there are no real public garbage cans and there are people cooking food every two steps. Sesame balls, noodle soups, chicken wings, curries. On every table (or crate) are four sauces, sweet salty hot and bitter, and you are supposed to add them yourself to anything you get. An ideal Thai dish contains all of them which is why Pad Thai has nuts and chili’s and cilantro and sweet sauce etc. There are also generally little cups with green onions, sprouts and other greenery you can add. We’ll go to one of the really busy places tomorrow I think.
We are out looking for Sukhumvit Soy 12. Now the trick here is that we are on Sukhumvit road, and we are looking for sukhumvit road. We wandered in the wrong direction for quite a long time, down a street we thought was the right one, past more and more street food, past hotels with their guards out front, past massage parlors (all traditional, not happy happy fuzzy tingle times), and then down an alley, and then back up towards Sukhumvit. We were lost. Not lost like where are we, but lost like where are we going. Suddenly we saw a couple who were our doppelgangers. Two nice looking US types from California who seemed just as lost as we were. We asked them if they knew where we were, they didn’t, but were very polite. So let’s keep trucking! We found sukhumvit road and headed back towards the hotel slightly defeated but exhilarated by all the sights and sounds. Men calling you over for tuk tuk rides (only 20 baht!) (only 200 baht!) (only 50 baht!). People offering you all kinds of goods. My phone continued to be no help so we ducked into a starbucks hoping they had wi-fi. Nopers. But they did have iced coffee. Stepping out of the bucks I noticed that across the street there were even numbered street signs. Then I figured it out. The entire address system. Sukhumvit road is the main road through this section of Bangkok. In fact, it is one of the longest roads in the entire world. There are no crosswalks as it is wall to wall traffic all day long but the sky train track travels up above the street about three stories and you can use stairs and cross just under that to get to the other side. Branching off of Sukhumvit road on either side are its “soy”’s or streets, soy 11, soy 9 etc. The odds go off on the side we were on, the evens off the other. Our hotel was on soy 19, if you walked in one direction the soy’s got higher, the other lower. If you crossed the street then you would be at the even numbered soy’s. So once this unlocked in our brain we had it figured! We crossed the street, found soy 12 and down it we went. Now these soy’s aren’t giant major streets with lights or even sidewalks, they are generally more like little alley’s. Everything is paved and both sides are fully developed with houses and hotels and restaurants etc, but the roads are quite teeny, like a car and a half wide which is interesting as the cabs and hundreds of thousands of scooters and motorbikes buzz to and fro down them.
We were headed for Crepes & Co, what seemed like a lovely brunch. We passed the famous Thai restaurant Cabbages and Condoms (yes, you read that right) on our way, which was great since we wanted to eat there later. Eventually we found the lovely little restaurant. You stepped off the soy into a beautiful little garden path that led to the restaurant, all dark woods, it seemed very fancy. The servers all wore Marcel Marceau like striped shirts and tams. We were led to our seats, they offered us menu’s, and we sat and ordered. We couldn’t remember if you’re supposed to drink the water and our thai guidebook wasn’t much help, but we didn’t want the water anyway. We ordered something that is fairly famous in Thailand, the banana milkshake. Oh brother! Light and frothy and a little icy, almost like a creamier orange Julius.
It reminded me of “Banana Delight” that Mom used to get at the grocery store and you mixed it with ice. It was in little packets at the end of the produce section? Anyhow, it was like that, only with fresh bananas. We ordered a couple savory crepes and the lovely beurre sucre (butter sugar) crepe for dessert. So, milkshake, two entrees, dessert? 18 dollars including tip and tax. That’s pretty steep for here but well worth it. I’ve eaten at MacDonalds for a lot more than that. Of course, I do have a slight problem, but that’s beside the point.
We practiced the one thing we would say the rest of our time here in Thailand, “Thank you”. Its tricky here because you say it differently, as with most things in Thai, if you are a man than if you are a woman. Rather than changing masculine or feminine based on the person you are speaking to, you change it for who you are yourself. So I say “Korp Kuhn” meaning thank you, but I have to add “Khrap” which means I am a boy saying thank you. Weena has to say “Korp Kuhn Kah” meaning I am a girl saying thank you. Its tough to remember and I always feel slightly silly saying crap to people, so I kind of mumble that part, but we’re figuring it out.
We planned on hitting up the massage places next but realized we would run out of time for the Palace which closes at 3:30. We stopped at our hotel, put on our nice clothes (no shorts or bare arms when visiting a temple) and stepped outside to hail a cab. First of all, there are at least as many cabs here as in New York. Second, I keep thinking they already have someone in them because there is someone in the passenger seat, but that’s the driver! Third, I’m always on the wrong side of the street to hail one and its very confusing since they are on the other side of the road here. Fourth, you don’t put your hand up to hail them, you must keep your palm facing down. Facing up is how you call animals, palm down, arm extended straight out or down around your waist is the polite way to do it. So we got all that right, hopped in a cab and met a very friendly guy who would happily take us to the Grand Palace and also give us other advice on our long drive. Now, I am a cautious traveler to begin with, and I know particularly in poorer countries that I am just some white dude with a nice camera that is basically just a cash machine to most people here, so I’m starting out wary of anybody. Especially as I’ve got a tourist map unfolded half the time and my wife has a giant Thailand guide in the other hand, but this guy actually was a sweety.
Of course he wanted to sell us a tour all over the Bangkok area that he would take us on, which we expressed interest in maybe for tomorrow, but then he explained to us a few Thai phrases, gave us his phone number, told us who to be wary of when we got to the palace. You have to be careful when you get in a cab here that they turn on the meter or that you agree on a price first. It is a bartering culture here, pretty much everything is bartered, the main phrases in the guide books are “how much for that” “That’s too expensive” and “can you lower the price at all?”. But this was a metered cab. With traffic in Bangkok being what it is, the millions of bikes and tuk tuks and buses and cars flowing around you and past you like you’re stranded in a river, it takes forever to get anywhere. It took us about forty five minutes to finally get to the Grand Palace. That’s a forty five minute cab ride. It was 120 baht. That’s $3.40. Crazy. As we pulled up to the front of the walled Grand Palace he warned us that people would keep offering us tickets to inside and to be our guides and we just say No and keep walking. Only buy tickets from the government. Everyone else wants your money! We exchanged our thank yous and smiles and popped out. Instantly accosted by three different people each with clipboards and different tags and lanyards all offering official guided tours etc. No no no and we headed through the gates, past the armed military folks, onto the grounds. Four more guides offering us help. Four more no’s and off to the ticket line up. I didn’t know if this ticket line up was a scam or not so I walked to the actual entrance and asked to be sure. We went and got our tickets, 350 baht each, around ten bucks a person, and headed for the entrance.
It is impossible to describe. We took a bunch of photos but I do not have enough knowledge of the architecture and religion here to put it into words. Giant carved statues of demons in armor guarding various Wat’s (or temples). The place was like ten different wats, one totally gold, one a miniature version of a giant temple done in sand, one held up by rooster like monk statues. Everything is gilded in gold covered in colored glass, gold, turqoise, jade, marble. Unlike anything we’d ever imagined.
We headed all over, took a bunch of pics and some video. Then headed to the central wat, home to jade Buddha. You had to take your shoes off before stepping up onto the marble courtyard surrounding the temple. There are very strict rules here. No photos, no video, no shorts etc. The most important one, never, ever ever ever point your feet towards the Buddha. In Thai culture the body is hierarchical with the top of the head being the best and the feet being the worst. That’s why bowing is so respectful. Top of my head to ya! If you show someone the bottom of your foot here it is the equivalent of giving the finger. If you tie your shoes to your backpack and they brush someone it is a grave insult. So the best way to sit in the presence of Buddha, and you must sit in his presence, no standing in there, is to sit mermaid style, feet to the side, or to kneel and sit on your feet.
Inside there is a gigantic shrine made of gold. It was reminiscent of a treasure pile in an old Pirate tale to me. On the very top in a teeny temple was the Jade Buddha. Carved entirely out of jade, wearing bejeweled golden clothes. He was about the size of a cabbage patch kid if I had to guess. Celina and I crept in and sat near the back. People were packed in, praying, bowing, just plain gaping. We both felt this immediate sense of calm after all the hectic craziness of travel and getting used to the big city. The hushed respect in that room was really something to feel. Along the front some monks in their bright orange robes we kneeling in silence, praying to the Buddha, and along the walls of this three or four story high temple was painted in immaculate detail scenes of mountains and villages and temples and rivers with monks and villagers and boats everywhere, all done in black and gold. They are renovating right now so there was a gentleman sitting on an upturned bucket with a fluorescent light beside him painting over the golden sections. It is so intricate he was using the teeniest brush imaginable, maybe one hair sticking out the end, just to get the patterns right. Looking at that tiny brush and imagining having to do the entire temples walls, every inch covered in art, was mind boggling to us. You could see the sections he’d already gone over, shimmering gold against the slightly duller background.
We wandered out and past the Royal Palace itself and then headed for the exit. Our cabbie had recommended we walk down a street to find Wat Pho, another lovely temple. We headed in that direction and passed by the Ministry of Defence with cannons and machine guns and armed soldiers in front. Realizing this was maybe not the safest place for tourists to be so soon after all the political unrest we started to do a u turn when a friendly gentleman with an umbrella joined us on our walk and struck up a conversation. We shouldn’t go to Wat Pho, it is closed for a ceremony today, there are a bunch of free temples you can see. He marked them all down on our map, the sitting Buddha temple, this temple that temple, all free this week for a promotion the government was putting on after the upheaval to attract guests back to the country. We could take a tuk tuk for very cheap to see all these places. How helpful of this total stranger! Then a tuk tuk pulled up that very second, saw us with this guy and a map and asked if we wanted a ride, we declined, said we’d still go see Wat Pho and just take pictures of the outside. Fine fine, and off he went. We crossed the street and saw the guy sitting behind a little desk, he said he was from the information bureau which was why he was so helpful to us. We thanked him again and kept right on walking. A bunch of guys just sitting on the grass jumped up and told us not to keep walking toward Wat Pho, there was a protest taking place over there, so we turned around and headed the other direction past info man again. He had us take out our map and marked more and more free things we just had to see. 20 baht for a tuk tuk to take us everywhere. We were starting to feel a little uncomfortable so we just said no and kept moving, the same tuk tuk driver was with info man and he too was offering us everything under the sun, no and no and no, and they left us alone. We wandered through some shops, went into a 7-11 which are everywhere here, and got a 7-up and some fruity lemony green tea drink and some coconut covered peanut candies that Celina’s guido used to eat which were just awesome. 30 baht altogether, that’s 87 cents. We hopped in a cab to head off for a massage adventure and the guy said it would be 350 baht to go back. I said no way. He said how much you pay? I said it was only 120 to get here. He said, traffic and different roads to get back, listed off the route, said it would be 350. We said screw it and Celina hopped out and I scooched out after her. We knocked on another cab window, leaned in, again tried to explain the whereabouts of the hotel (for one of the most famous hotels in Bangkok no cabbies seem to know where it is), again I tried to use the address but what he needed was the Soy the hotel was on, 19, which unfortunately my translator didn’t have. It didn’t even have zero so I couldn’t say 20. I just said one two, thinking that it was right across the street from our hotel, that would be close enough. Our massage place was on Soy 20 so we’d just walk from there. It would be like a five minute walk. He said, 150? Fine! And off we went. This was a much longer cab ride, traffice was crazy and in trying to avoid Sukhumvit, the busiest street of all, we zipped all over. I was able to maintain my sense of direction so I knew we weren’t going in circles, that old scam, and we’d decided on the price anyway so it was no big deal. We had our drinks and snacks and watched the craziness whirl by outside. The snake zoo. Huge shopping centers. Video screens advertising the latest Thai horror film, Tsunami!! I read the thai guide book as we drove and found a section on scams. Apparently the most famous scam in Thailand is one where people tell you that wherever you are headed is closed for some reason and offer you better options. The drivers get a commission for bringing you to other places. Often they take you where they told you they would go, but stop often at shops where they can get you a good discount from a friend. Its all just to sell you jazz and collect commission from the shop owners. That’s why the super cheap 20 baht ride. Scam! We dodged a classic! Nice!
Eventually in the guide book we found the number twenty, soy yii-sip. We told the fella and he dropped us right by where we were gonna get our massages! It was maybe an hour cab ride, 160 baht on the meter, which we happily paid. 4 bucks. We wandered down the street looking for the massage place but it seemed like it was closed. No more Phunnee Massage, in its place (as far as we could tell, not understanding what 9/1 sukhumvit soy 20 actually means as far as specific address means) was Lisa’s Massage and Spa. There are massage places literally every fifteen steps. Here, massage is considered an important part of your health, more than the gym. In this neighborhood they can be anywhere from 4000 baht to 400 depending on how fancy the building is. All places offer foot massage, traditional thai (which is dry, no oil), oil massage which is more like what we know, and a variety of skin and beauty treatments. Some don’t have a menu outside so we avoided those. Lisa’s however did, and it was a great price. 300 baht for one hour Thai massage! That’s like eight bucks. It was more than the website we went to said but I realized I didn’t check the date of that site so it could have been old tips and prices. In we went, sure! Why not! How bad could any massage be? Reminds me of an old dirty joke which I will clean up for you. Did I ever tell you about the worst massage I ever got? …it was awesome! We took off our shoes outside because there were shoes all over and we wanted to be respectful. Generally if there are shoes outside you should take your shoes off. It’s a rule often overlooked by foreigners and we want to be polite. Beautiful hardwood floors in a teeny waiting room which we skipped past entirely. There were about ten teeny thai women of different ages all wearing their red Lisa’s t-shirts. We were led past the foot massage chairs, into a teeny hallway where we were given sandals, then out the back door of this hallway into just like an alley connecting different businesses, through a different door into the back room of a restaurant where some people were sitting, through another little glass door into some random converted banquet room with sliding doors into little private massage sections. It was pretty low rent and quite frankly I was a little nervous we were gonna get jumped or sexed at, but nopers. We were given some traditional thai clothes to wear, giant roomy linen pants tied at the waist and a loose linen button up shirt. We were led into a teeny raised room with five twin sized mattresses on the floor, pillows at the end, and we were told to lie down on our backs. We did. I was nervous too because I hadn’t seen any other people back there. But we were together, our stuff was within sight, so how bad could it be? The two ladies turned the lights down to basically off, and started our treatments. Whoa. Like triple amazing whoa! Thai Massage is like a combination of guided stretching, extremely deep massage and a little chiropractic thrown in for fun. Most of it is while you are on your back. They manipulate you all over the place, opening up your muscles in new ways so they can really massage deeply in there. The mattress pad things are right on the floor, and they crawl all around you, bending one knee, placing your foot against their hip, lifting your leg way up in the air, massaging every muscle in your body (within reason). They are not shy either, they massage your inner thigh for real (avoiding your wedding vegetables) and your butt (but not the hole part). They move you all over the place. It is completely unique. When mine started I was a little nervous. It started with a pretty gentle foot massage and I was thinking, great, an hour of massage I can barely feel. This is a teeny thai woman, what did I expect? Well they use their feet, their elbows and their vice like hands and holy crap, on four separate occasions I was in some insane crazy pain. Like the worst of my entire life. About five minutes in, once she went from the lighter stuff to the stretching and massaging, I looked over at Weena and said, “Honey? Two hours?” “Let’s do it” so we asked the ladies if we could do two hours instead of one. One hour, 300 baht. Two hour, 400 baht. So like almost twelve dollars for a two hour massage better than any massage I had ever received in my life!!!!! She massaged my stomach, my belly button, I could feel my butt almost fall off, the pain of having your guts massaged was literally the most intense I’ve ever felt, but she had some English, knew pain or no pain, good or no good. She was also extremely good at telling I had an injured back and tried to work through all that. I must say, once she’d worked my hamstrings and hips for at least forty minutes my lower back didn’t hurt anymore. I said to Weena it was the first time that I could remember not having back pain. I guess all those doctors, physios and chiro’s I’ve been to were right. Stretching my hamstrings would help. Bah, what do they know? So that was that. Two hours of bliss (fifteen minutes of blinding pain) and we were back out in the street, 22 dollars poorer and already planning tomorrow’s massage.
We were starving even though it was only 5:30. We headed to our hotel for some cold towels and refreshing water, and then hit the street to go to the world famous Cabbages and Condoms. This is a Thai restaurant and is a real magnet for tourists and ex-pats but the richer Thai’s eat there too. It gets its name because all proceeds from the restaurant go to promoting safe sex in the rural areas and distributing condoms. We chose to sit outside, a
idea what with the humidity, but as night was falling it was cooling a little, maybe only 90 degrees now, and they had fans and it was beautiful so why not. We sat up on a roof patio, which overlooked the outside patio downstairs. The entire place was like a lush garden with strings of twinkly lights everywhere. All the fans blew the leaves and plants this way and that. You couldn’t really see the city out there because of how lush the plant life was. Broad wood beams, a peaked roof the underside of which was completely covered in a tartan patterned fabric. With the fans, the vegetation, the style of the building, it was like being in some remote jungle just before a storm. It felt electric and relaxing at the same time. It
really reminded me of the movie Volunteers, when Tom Hanks has that nice place all to himself and Getty Watanabe is serving ice cold cokes. Anywho, we ordered a pitcher of ice cold beer, the crispy duck and papaya salad, the “morning glory” a favorite dish in Thailand of spinach and some green that is
like a green onion but without the oniony taste, all in a light broth. That tasted like the sizzling street meat smells, it tasted the way food that makes your mouth water smells. It was a vegetarian dish. Then we finished with Pad Thai. Traditional Pad Thai comes served under a giant thin omelette. Underneath though, man, it made me understand why Western thai food was aiming at and also where it failed. All the light fixtures were wire with thousands upon thousands of condoms covering them in various
patterns and shapes. There were giant statues made out of condoms, art made out of condoms, and of course with our bill (18 dollars), no mints, rather two condoms. I do not know if they were mint flavored.
After all that food, the crazy massages, the heat, the beer, I was almost completely unconscious. We wandered down to the internet bar underneath cabbages and condoms, wandered through a department store, and then straight to bed. At 8. How lame. But seriously, after being up for over 30 hours the day before I think we deserve some rest.
2 comments:
Josh! You finally have some squishie boots of your very own.
As with your journal pages while shooting pilots this is so great. Thanks for taking us with you.
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