A Weekend in Bangkok...

When I talk to people about traveling, I find that what often amuses them most are not the typical tales of travel, like the temples, or even the beaches. What they seem to find more amusing are the accidental experiences, the oddities, the things they couldn’t imagine happening at home. So, in honor of that I will henceforth entitle the following travel report ‘Stepping into Bangkok... Amongst Other things.’

It’s a rainy Monday night in KL, and I’ve just returned home from a few days in Bangkok hanging out with my dear old friend Greg. Arriving Thursday night, my gracious host met me at the airport, despite the log cab ride there and back. We hung out and ate delicious Thai food... and here I began my search for the best Pad Thai in the city...

My first full day in Bangkok I was on my own, and having been there a couple times before had a fairly short list of things in the city I wanted to do. Top of the list? Head to Wat Po to see the reclining Buddha, and more importantly, to get a traditional Thai massage at the massage school there. I wandered around the complex for awhile and found myself in one of the temples after awhile. After removing my shoes, I went in and sat. It was such a serene reprieve from the chaos going on outside, that I found myself sitting there for almost an hour, enjoying the calming energy of the place and watching the various people come in and out. There were tourists, but also devout locals who came in and performed their daily rituals in the midst of the picture snapping and wandering foreigners. After awhile I uprooted myself and headed over for that massage. Thai massage (at least the kind that I get) is similar to Shiatsu, the form of massage that I practice, in that it is done fully clothed and involves direct, deep pressure, and a lot of stretching. Upon paying my 300 Baht (roughly $8 USD) I was led into a small room filled with mats, side by side. There were probably 40 people getting worked on at the same time as me, with the person nearest me close enough to touch. It mattered little once I closed my eyes and let the massage therapist go to work. An hour later I had been kneaded, stretched, kneed, elbowed, and walked on by a girl half my size, and I was more relaxed than I’ve been in months. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking around the city, noting the changed and unchanged since I last visited. Tuk-tuk drivers offered me rides every five feet, people asked me ‘Where you go now miss?’, and the smell of delicious Thai concoctions wafted up from the food stalls along the street. Not too far from Wat Po and the Grand Palace is good old Khao Sarn Road, known to backpackers everywhere as the road where anything is possible. Khao Sarn is backpacker counter culture at it’s ugliest and most fascinating. If you’ve ever seen ‘The Beach’ then you’ve seen it depicted in a rather unflattering light too. Luckily, most backpackers are not what you see on Khao Sarn, most of them are just young people out to see a little bit of the world before the ‘real world’ sucks them in. Personally, I’d recommend it to anyone. But then, you knew that already.

I have to admit I got a little lazy the rest of the weekend. Greg doesn’t often get a day off, with work during the week and school on the weekends, so I didn’t want to drag him too far, and it was nice to just relax and catch up. Saturday night we did go out with the two Jims. One Jim, Greg’s date, (a woman) and the other Jim, a great sport of a guy who came along so I wouldn’t feel like the fifth wheel, and really, graciously ended up being our host for the evening (introducing us to both the restaurant and later the bar we went to). It was a fun evening, that included a dinner of delicious Thai food, lots of blue drinks, and fun music by an expat blues band in Patpong. This however, is where my above mentioned theme comes into play. There were a few recurrent themes throughout the evening. Blue drinks; starting with Blue Margaritas at the restaurant and Blue Hawaii’s at the bar, men that looked like women (NOT Greg and Jim), and liquids finding their way onto my skirt. First, at the bar, a tipsy man accidentally swept three of our drinks off of our table whilst engaging in a rather animated conversation with his friends. Said drinks landed squarely in my lap. But, I went upstairs and cleaned up and all was fine. A short time later, as I was getting into the cab going home, I managed to step into a knee deep puddle of what can only be described as the worst smelling liquid I’ve ever touched. Unfortunately, because I was wearing an ankle length skirt, I was soaked in the stuff. This is what I meant by stepping in it. The cab ride home was perhaps the longest 10 minutes of our lives as we all struggled not to gag from the smell emanating from my skirt and soaked shoes. Greg certainly gave me a wide berth when we got back to the house. And though it may seem like an odd topic to write on... I assure you, it was THAT memorable. I’ll never know exactly what was in that puddle, but rest assured I will be watching where I’m going from now on a little more carefully and probably visit a doctor this week, just to be safe.

Sunday was supposed to be a trip to Ayuttya, a few miles outside of Bangkok. However, given the nights festivities, including the shower, and washing my clothes on at 3 am, an early morning trip to the train station just didn’t seem like as good of an idea as it had the night before. So instead we relaxed around the house, with me burying my nose in a book about an English woman who spent eight years in jail for drug trafficking in Thailand. Quite a story. Had she been in Malaysia, she would’ve gotten the death penalty, end of story. But definitely a good deterrant for anyone stupid enough to consider the idea in the first place. A bit later Greg attempted to take me to one of his favorite restaurants, which just happens to be located in the … um… red light district (one of them). Just like you often find the best food in the middle of the worst parts of American cities (South Tucson for example), that is often the case in this part of the world too. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed, for good, it appeared. But I got to see a part of Bangkok I probably wouldn't have found on my own.

And so… once again we return to our regularly scheduled reality. Back to school tomorrow. I really love visiting Thailand, in all of it’s beauty, serenity, and insanity (from a writers perspective, it makes great subject matter…), but I must say, it was really nice to come home to cleaner, and dare I say quieter (just as the dueling karaoke bars downstairs warm up for the evening) KL. It was 35 degrees Celsius when the plane landed today, with somewhere near 90% humidity… perhaps not the most comfortable weather… but it could be worse. It could be snowing.