Thailand blog: Oh my god this is going to take me forever.
The first day in Bangkok Allie and I got on the bus from Laem Chabang port, about two hours away by drive from Bangkok if there wasn’t too much traffic. I had packed the night before since I didn’t want to wake up ridiculously early just to sit around like we’ve been doing in the last few ports. As usual, SAS pulled into port around 8am and between their disorganization and slow immigration processes, we got on the bus around noon, a full two hours after we were supposed to have gotten on the buses to get to Bangkok. My passport was the next-to-last called too, so Allie and I were just stuck on the boat doing nothing while all of Bangkok waited for us.
Finally we made it to the bus and waited out the drive. We had a CRAZY driver/tour guy who told us all the on bus times were 2pm to go back to the ship from days 1-4 (Allie was going back the 4th, and I the 5th,) which made no sense because everything had the time listed as 8pm, or 2000, since the ship goes by military time. He also made it a point to stress to us exactly where we were getting off the bus – next to the shrines on one side of the enormous central world Bangkok mall thing. By now Allie and I were really hungry since we ate at 8am and it was now after 2.We grabbed some delicious noodles from a street vendor outside the mall and some bubble tea – Allie got green tea and I coconut. It was really interesting too because it was our first (but by no means the last, since we saw it at every meal it seemed) time seeing the ubiquitous little metal boxes filled with chili flakes (far spicier than they look, p.s.), sugar, and peanuts. Allie and I added all of this to our noodles before we really knew what they were, but it was so tasty! And really cheap too; under $1.50 for both of us with drinks and everything.
I was hellbent on getting to the weekend market since I’d only ever heard really interesting and awesome things about it and it was only going to be on that first Sunday there and until 6pm. We only had four hours but we nabbed a taxi driver and spent our first few hours in Thailand in the largest weekend market in the world. With something like 28 acres of stalls and thousands and thousands of vendors we must’ve only seen a teeny-tiny section of the whole place, but it felt like never ending. We saw all kinds of crazy stuff being sold – really everything you could ever possibly think of was being sold there... Because there’s no way I think I could ever really list absolutely everything I got there in order with the vendors I bought them from, I’ll add a little sampling: a photo painting of young monks standing on a grey dock with saffron parasols, milk tea from a stall that pulled and flung the milk through the air in an acrobatic show that made the cold orange tea so cool and frothy I couldn’t think of anything more delicious, a secret present for Erin to congratulate her getting her learners permit – ballin’!, fried quail eggs with soy sauce that I thought were nauseating but Allie loved, a big shell necklace, wooden spiked earrings that I’ve worn nearly everyday since, a handmade tortoise with some kind of tribal stitching that was explained to me and I have subsequently forgotten, and matching purses for Angie and I. OH! And a big ugly red pig/rat? bank that is huge and cumbersome to carry all around Bangkok and caused a lot of stares and trouble. But I liked it and it was only 50 baht and I would’ve given the old lady selling them a dollar 50 change just because she looked like she needed it way more than I did. Allie hated that bank I think. Anyways, it was a good time all around but very hectic.
We decided we’d try to take the skytrain to Sukhimvit where we’d heard of a good hostel, but like many of the skytrain and metro stops in Bangkok, the station is still a little bit of a walk from the places it’s supposed to be near. We asked about a billion people over and over and finally figured out where we were going. For anyone going to Bangkok, the skytrain is ridiculously easy to get around on. There’re only 2 lines with metro connections branching off of those, however that being said, taxis are about the same price if you split it between two people if you can get them to use the meter, so it didn’t always make since for us to take the skytrain. It was about 100 baht, or 3 dollars for an hour long taxi ride, and you can easily spend that each person if going always away on the the skytrain and then connecting to the metro…
Anyways though, we get off on the Nana exit and wander through the now dark station exit. The first thing you notice about Bangkok at night are the prostitutes. It didn’t seem to really make much of a different where we were because they were everywhere. They line up on each side of a street amongst the late-night food and goods vendors, some talking to the people passing by, some just looking really sad and quiet. Allie said she’d never seen a prostitute before so I don’t know if it was particularly strange to her, but it wasn’t as weird to me as I’d thought it’d be. Honestly it didn’t seem all that weird at all – what was weird though was my reaction to male tourists in Bangkok. In my medical ethics class one guy was talking about how after the first night in Bangkok whenever he saw another white male walking around Thailand his immediate response was “You are scum and I’m disgusted with you.” I have to admit I felt the same way. Anytime I saw an older male tourist with a young Thai girl I wanted to throw up. I don’t care if they held hands and their awkward language barrier and giggling looked kind-of genuinely like real flirtation.
I don’t know if I’ll ever really be able to process it into a coherent thought, but I guess it boils down to something like this: Thailand is really, really cool. That doesn’t really mean anything, but the whole city of Bangkok was so incredibly interesting, the people so raw and gorgeous, and despite all the gritty dirty aspects that I guess inevitably accompany any major city, I felt safer here than most other ports. The people were friendly and curious in a genuine way, they were sad and sweet in the best and worst of ways. I felt like despite the serious cultural differences, I connected with the spirit of the city, that maybe I understood Bangkok a little more than an average tourist… And this is exactly why the idea of multitudes of balding, sweaty, paunched, older white men flooding this city that I came to know and love, just for sex tourism upset me so much. Someone told me 60% of Thailand’s tourism is just based on sex. That’s a strange thought. A kingdom with such incredible people, history, language, religion, sites, sounds, and smells shouldn’t be simplified into the one-stop seedy fantasy of a person who is willing to objectify such a great city into their own morally derelict playground.
I don’t know. Obviously it’s a complicated issue and not one easily fixed or even addressed it seems. Thais love their King. A lot, a lot. Billboards, stickers, posters, and the like are everywhere, and it’s not some creepy Chairman Mao style propaganda either; they put this all up of their own accord and assumedly on their own meager paycheck. When we were leaving the weekend market they played the national anthem and instead of turning towards a flag, ALL of the market, police officers, children, and vendors all stopped talking and stood facing the giant portrait of the king and sang along. Traffic stopped and no one spoke out of turn. It was kind of amazing.
Anyways, back to the hostel. We got a little lost but eventually made our way to Sukhamvit Soi 1 guesthouse (Sukhamvit is a major street and every soi is a off branching street with a number instead of a name – sois are on every street.) The manager Dave showed us around the cool hostel and we packed up our backpacks and headed out once more. We went and got dinner at a little tented food market on the corner of Soi 1. We had noodles and beer, pet baby elephants wandering the city (no joke), and eventually went out to Patpong (the most popular red-light district in Bangkok) at Dave’s suggestion. Allie and I’d talked about going to the red-light district and seeing a pingpong show way before we’d ever docked in Thailand.
I won’t write about all of it here because honestly that’s a little weird, but I will say a little something. Okay family who are assuredly reading this, here it goes: I decided a while ago before I even got on the ship in the Bahamas that I wanted to see as much as possible. I wanted to see everything – the good and bad. Whether I or Thailand’s ministry of tourism wants to see or talk about it; this is a major part of the tourism of Thailand, and Bangkok in particular. For better or worse, whether I see it or ignore it, it continues to exist with or without any interference from me. I figure the best I can do – the most honest way to travel – is to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut until I’ve seen everything. Then I’ll process it and post some comments here – try to sort it all out in the context of my own familiar culture; so that’s what I’m working on. I’ll write up a separate little entry on the more sordid stuff I’ve seen in Bangkok and if you want to read it and see exactly how I felt about it, just email me and I’ll send it to you privately.
The second day in Bangkok Allie and I headed out to see the temple of the Emerald Buddha and the grand palace. GORGEOUS. The place is fantastically beautiful and I’ll let the pictures I’ll hopefully get to upload soon speak for themselves. Also, a note here: Thailand was painfully hot and there are quite a few photos of me looking exhausted and overheated and just generally haggard looking. I was. Don’t judge. Oh! And that reminds me, while I’m at mentioning things to not judge me about; I forgot my debit card on the ship. This means I had nothing but my credit card that I can’t use to get money out of via atm for 5 days in Thailand; 2 hours away from where the ship was. Allie lent me money the first day until I made it to a bank with my passport and convinced them to give me a cash advance and charge my credit card to the bank. What a pain.
Needless to say I was extremely tense and stressed out so Allie and I headed down soi 5 or 7 (I don’t really remember) after and got massages. For 7 dollars each we both got an hour-long traditional Thai massage. The place was slightly ghetto but that only adds to the experience. Amongst posters of baby kittens and bowls of fruit tacked to peeling wallpaper we had our first experiences with Thai massage. Traditional Thai massage (not to be confused with its creepy counterpart, happy ending Thai massage…) for those who don’t know, is intense. At one point whilst my masseuse was slamming her balled fists into my hipbones – I looked over to Allie across the room and she had her arms locked behind her and her forehead touching her toes in a painful-looking pretzel fashion. My masseuse then flipped me over, sat on the back of my thighs, and kneaded my butt. It was all very surreal and not totally pleasant. Feeling very much assaulted and taken-advantage of, we then moved next door and got manicures and pedicures. For another 7 dollars we spent two and a half hours laying down and getting our nails done and drinking coffee. It’s a hard life we poor college students lead.
We went back to the hostel and changed to go out to dinner. We went to a restaurant I’d read about called Cabbages and Condoms on a higher numbered soi (11 maybe?) off of Sukhimvit also. It was really nice. Lights streaming down from trees overlooking the open courtyard where we ate – lamps made out of condoms. Very romantic. The whole place is run by the largest NGO in Thailand that promotes safe sex and population control – portions of each meal go to aids awareness programs and instead of getting an after-dinner mint you get a condom. It was really cute and both Allie and I had some good food. Including mango and sticky rice which Allie is now obsessed with. We then went shopping along the way back to the hostel and bought flowers carved out of soap and a cute outfit for Aiden with Muay Thai fighters.
Allie wanted to go out but I was so exhausted from not sleeping well at the hostel the night before – the place has incredibly rickety beds that make really loud noises whenever anyone shifts the tiniest bit in bed, and a couple of the people there had spent a late night partying in the common room until 4 or 5 am. So I suggested we see a movie instead. In true college fashion we stopped by a 7-11 (yes, a 7-11, they were all over Bangkok!) and found exotic bitch beers like lychee Bacardi. So we bought a bunch of those, headed to Siam on the skytrain, and went to the Paragon Theater. We got there late, at like 11, and there were only two movies playing, one of them in English with Thai subtitles so that’s the one we saw. It was called The Outlander and it was the most ridiculous movie I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t know if it actually made it to the box office in the US (I have no idea what is happening back home anymore) but it was insane. Here’s the basic premise: soldier from the far far future in space lands in ancient Norway to fight a dragon/alien that destroys whole towns, as it did with his space colony – driven by revenge for his slain wife and son, we finds unpredictable love in the chief’s daughter Freya. I told you it was ridiculous. It was just right for the night though. Oh and it should be noted on the way back we found the sneakiest driver ever! His English wasn’t great so I wasn’t totally sure he knew where we were going and when we turned into a hospital I started getting worried we’d have to walk around and find another driver at like 3 am – but then he went out the other side of the hospital, cutting through the whole place, only to end up right on our street! The whole drive was 1/3 of what we’d usually paid because he was so sneaky! I was in awe for the rest of the night of this man.
So that was the second day. The third Allie and I changed hotels to one in Silom – a totally different section of town. We kept it fairly low-key for the beginning of the day, went for lunch (Thai curry, sweet noodles with pork and tofu, Thai tea, and mango and sticky rice.) Oh and another caveat – it took me two days to figure this out, but surprise surprise, in Thailand it’s not called Thai tea. There it’s called just iced tea. As you can imagine, this was very confusing for me. Anyways, we then went to a Muay Thai championship at Lumpinee boxing stadium. It was kind of hectic figuring out what ticket to buy since the box officers don’t really speak much English, instead little Thai women in silk jackets run up to all the white people and badger them into buying ringside tickets for 2,000 baht, or about 60 dollars. Neither Allie nor I even brought that much since we’d been told second-class tickets were only 800. The women kept telling us the prices had changed though and the cheapest ticket we could buy was 3rd class which meant no picture taking (lies), that we’d have to stand the whole time from 6 to 11pm (lies), and that we couldn’t leave and come back in (lies again.) We bought the 3rd class tickets anyways, which were really pretty close after all that, and had seats. We bought some beer and steamed pork buns and had a great time. That sport is so bloody and serious. I don’t think there are many rules if any, but it was so cool to see a real match of Thailand’s national sport.
Allie and I bet on who would win, either the red or blue corners, for steamed buns, and sat amongst the locals (who I’m sure paid significantly less since they went to a separate counter and had different colored tickets…) We even met two cute traveling Americans who’d just graduated and were spending 4 months all around Asia. We went to the night market next door with them for a bit before wandering around on our own some. We took a cab back to the hostel and decided to check out some of the dance clubs nearby Patpong. After the first night though we were all-kinds of over the hassling creepy parts of Patpong and when we discovered the clubs were a little empty and like everything else in Bangkok, had a cover charge, we moved on. It was St. Patrick’s day and we desperately wanted to find an Irish pub that’d be sure to celebrate, so we asked around, held a morbidly obese baby of a prostitute? (photos are coming, I swear) and wandered some more. We eventually found a street without any of the cat-calling and pestering pimps of Patpong, and were told there was a show happening across the street. We weren’t all that interested in what we figured the “show” would entail, but as we were about to leave they told us it was singing and dancing and that it’d be starting in 15 minutes and that 100 baht (or about 3 dollars) would be both cover charge and a free drink. We went across the street and had a 50 baht pint of draft Leo brand beer each – we remarked how cute all the waiters were in their tight shirts, and that’s when we realized… All the people at the tables outside were men. All our waiters were men. That’s right kids, we’d wandered into gay Patpong.
It gets better though. We finish our beers and go back to the show/club place and realize our 100 baht bought us red bull and vodka (Allie) and a rum and coke for me – in a drag show! Thai drag queens! How did this even happen? I have no idea but it was wonderful. At the ends of the sets the ladies are doing some kind of stand up or something, I’m not really sure because it’s all in Thai, when one of them notices me. She starts shrieking and asking me all these questions in broken English/speedy Thai. I’m so confused. And another queen says she says I’m gorgeous and something something something. I figure they’re talking about my breasts (long, involved story, the gist of which comes to the fact that I guess large breasts are rare amongst tiny Thai women and they loved to bring this up and try to make a grab for them. This is really awkward no matter what country you’re in.) No one will translate for me really and I’m so confused.
Some Italian guy who’s been living in Thailand comes over at the very end and gives me his card and a rose and is wearing all black and looking thoroughly Italian and a little – I don’t know, sketchy isn’t the right word. Out of his element and off his game maybe? He seemed nice but not even a little bit kind of like my type and too old. Allie and I go outside with the intention of getting a few more cheap beers and seeing if anything is heating up back at the clubs we’d seen earlier, but John, the Italian invites us to Spicy, an expensive club that stays open until 4am. Most clubs in Bangkok shut down around 1 and it was already 12 so Allie and I decide to go with him and some of his friends. His French buddy (whose English is about as good as my French = confusion), his Thai girlfriend Noi, her mother Linda, and a hilarious gay man named Visky from the club, and Allie and I all pile into his truck and head to Spicy.
In retrospect this might not have been the absolute best idea, but they all were really nice and I didn’t want to pay to get into Spicy. It was really fun but the best part of the night was meeting Visky, who was so much fun, a fabulous dancer, and made us laugh all night. We took a cab back to the hotel (and sang-along to some terrible Mick Jagger 90’s song much to the – I’m sure - delight of our poor cab driver.) We slept in a little bit until I woke up around 9:30 and asked the hotel to cash advance me a little more money for my last few days. Thailand is very cash based and credit cards don’t get you very far anywhere there.
We had a complimentary breakfast of grapefruit (much sweeter and actually actually appetizing in Thailand), bacon, and eggs with tea and coffee, and headed out to see if we could get on a longboat water taxi for relatively cheap. Bangkok is a little like Venice in that there are waterways that connect the different sections of the city and for 20 baht you can ride one way anywhere up and down the river. They wanted us to buy a day pass style touristy thing once there though for over 1,000 baht, which we weren’t about to do, so we convinced him we’d rather do the 20 baht per way version (we only knew this was an option because of the awesome hotel manager at our place – La Residence.) But once we were on the longboat I guess everyone assumed since we were white we’d paid for the day ticket because no one ever collected money from us. We rode for free all day but since we didn’t have a map of each stop we just got off at a random stop lots of people left for.
We walked around, drank from dragon fruit juice, took photos and talked to locals. I wore a shirt that day that I’d bought in the weekend market that says “I heart… Bangkok” except that Bangkok is written in Thai and uses the Thai name (which I can’t remember and probably wouldn’t be able to spell even if I did) – this was a HUGE hit with the locals. Guys would yell, “YOU LUH BAN-KOK? AH LUH YOUUUU.” Haha. So we wander around and come across another Wat (Thai Buddhist Temple) – it looks kind of small on the outside but I wanted to check it out. Since Allie was in shorts though, she waited outside while I said I’d just run in an out. It was a lot less here than the temple of the emerald Buddha too so I figured there wouldn’t be much to see, but once inside I realized the complex was pretty huge. It was the temple of the reclining Buddha! This was a major Wat of Bangkok and we’d just wandered in somehow! There’s an enormous gold Buddha laying down – later I found out in Religion class this actually symbolized the Buddha’s death, and that his elongated elf-like ears were supposed to be a symbol of beauty and good-luck. One good thing about this ship’s classes is that occasionally they really do have incredibly relevant information that explain lots of stuff locals don’t necessarily know the English or I the Thai to talk about.
We got back on the boat and got off at another random stop for a quick lunch – on the way out though we found a bunch of really cool painted and gold-foiled masks. When we asked the shop owner who it was we were looking at he said Hanuman – one of my favorite Hindu gods! So Allie and I bought one; it’s light since it’s made out of coconut wood and not too enormous – and we bargained him way down, from 750 baht to 200, and he threw in little Thai Buddhas – the skinny ascetic ones specific to Thailand. I ate some rice and Chinese veggies with crispy pork and Thai tea and we wandered some more. After a few minutes we found ourselves on Khao San rd. where all the backpackers stay. That was were I figured we’d stay if we couldn’t find rooms available on Sukhimvit. I thought Khao San rd. was really cool and very, very cheap, but it was all young tourists. There were no locals at all it seemed, just crunchy young white hippies. Allie had a last meal of fried rice and chicken, mango and sticky rice, and I had another Thai tea (my third for the day – I was determined to never sleep apparently.) We walked down some random streets while it drizzled and cooled everything off. We walked into a dead-end street where there was a Muay Thai training school that we watched for a little bit, then walked to find a taxi back to the hotel to pick up our incredibly heavy backpacks that we’d left there for the day.
We drove through miles and miles of Chinatown – we were told it’s the biggest in the world outside of China, and finally made it back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and walked to the skytrain to get back to Siam station, nearby where Allie was supposed to meet the bus and I had to transfer to get back to Nana station (p.s. I wish I had recorded how the skytrain announcer lady pronounced Nana on the train. It was like this long, drawn out, baby-voiced, soothing kind of “Naaaaaah-naaaaaaah….” I’ll miss it. I walked back to the hostel and put my stuff back in lockers – thankful not to have the responsibility of carrying my passport around everywhere. Should I have lost or had my passport stolen I would’ve sat on the boat the whole time my mom was supposed to meet me in China since my visa would be lost forever. I don’t even want to think about it.
So I went back to the food market stalls off of Soi 1 and had a last dinner of wide glass noodles, sweet pork, and some kind of dark green leafy veggies. And more thai tea. I’m an addict. I bought a newspaper and wandered back to little Arabia, where Allie and I ended up the first night in Bangkok for a bit. I bought a sticker of the kind with Thai flags to put on my waterbottle and a bigger one just because I thought it was so cool. There were African immigrants everywhere – though not being carted away in huge trucks by the immigration police like Allie and I saw the first time we were there… I bought some coconut water and ramen to bring back on the ship, and headed back to the hostel for a few beers and bad t.v. with the other people staying there. We watched Beverly Hills Ninja which was awwwful and listened to some guys talk about their happy ending massages and late-night escapades in Bangkok. Met another American (there weren’t a ton of us in Thailand it seemed, mostly Aussies and Canadians – I heard from a kid we met on Khao San rd. that it’s only $250 dollars to get to Thailand from Australia, which is kind of cool.
I was about to go to bed when I asked David about a flower market I wanted to see the next morning and he suggested I instead see the huge food market Khlong Toei ( later I found pronounced “KhhhLong – TOYEEEEEE” – that caused some confusion. Dave said it was crazy and kind of dirty but that I’d be seeing a part of the heart of Thailand that tourists never see – which was enough for me. It was 15 minutes until midnight, when the skytrain closed down, but I left to go anyways. I changed at Asok station and got on the metro, and walked the rest of the way. It was now about 12:30 at night at what seemed like the edge of the city and there weren’t any signs but I kept walking and occasionally asked someone if I was still headed in the right direction. I knew it once I was there.
It was crazy for sure – there were sections where young girls were cutting apart snails and flinging the shells into the street, frogs cut open and their guts pulled looking up with baleful eyes out so that blood would keep circulating and they wouldn’t go bad, but they were in no condition to hop away. There were what looked like pig masks, where the whole face of a pig had been skinned off paper-thin. Vegetables and spices everywhere, fishes of all kinds. It was also extremely crowded and when I started sliding around everywhere in my normal sneakers (thanks for the warning David. Not.) I didn’t realize it was because of the inches of blood and entrails on the ground because of all the people crowded around me. Young boys were running up and down little alleys between the stalls with huge barrels of pig and fish, blood all over them – no aprons. I swear to God I was the only white person to have ever stepped foot in that place judging by the stares I got there. I’m so glad I went.
My last morning in Bangkok was far more low-key. Since I didn’t get back until like 3am I slept in and left the hostel around 11. I stocked up on delicious coconut water and some ramen and headed towards the meeting point for the bus that would take us back to the ship. I got there about an hour early and just sat there but I never really saw any other SAS kids – it was about 15 minutes until we were scheduled to leave when an old Thai man came up to me and asked if I was a student on the ship university. I told him I was and he asked me why I wasn’t on the boat with everyone else – apparently the buses had been parked on the other side of the mall beside a hotel. They never announced this to anyone because – well let’s face it, SAS couldn’t get their shit together if their life depended on it. I ran to the bus in the last 15 minutes and made it just in time. Once inside I asked everyone if they’d had similar experiences and everyone said they’d only found out about the changed meeting point from either word of mouth from other students or from that one older man. The thing is, stuff like this happens all the time. Either SAS corrals everyone and is hyper protective of them in a big cloistering, sir conditioned charter bus kind of way, or they completely drop you in a big pile of crap and leave you to fiend for yourself. And I know you’re reading this SAS higher-ups; it’s all over the ship about the people whose blogs you’ve been monitoring, of how you all are updated when anything new with “semester at sea” is created, and how you’ve called in students giving SAS a bad name is stories of drinking escapades and the like.
Oh, it’s also been brought to my attention that there are lots of random students whose parents are reading my blog? One girl was telling a story to a group of my friends about how her mom had read about Tyler’s time with us in Mauritius and how crazy it got, even though I ‘d never met her kid. It’s weird to think more than just family and friends read this, so to all those anonymous people out there reading: say hello! Leave some constructive criticism? Anything you want to know about ship life? Gossip? I don’t want this to begin to sound just like diary entries over and over and it’s nice to know people are reading it.
Next up: Viet Nam.
