A Taste of Thailand (cont.)

My second day in Bangkok proved to be just as exciting as the first. We headed towards the Grand Palace that was supposed to just be a 20 minute walk straight down the street from our hotel (thanks to the direction of a kind local). Well, as expected we got a bit lost since we couldn't read any of the street signs and because it definitely wasn't a straight shot. So my mom and I sat down at some monument with a strange looking statue of a Thai Government official. With our good luck, another (seemingly helpful) man came up to us and informed us that it was a Buddhist holiday of some sort, so all the temples in the neighboring area of the Grand Palace were free today! He drew all over our map and showed us all the temples that we could see. He also said that the Tuk Tuks were less than a dollar to take you around to all of them for this day only because they were receiving government coupons for gas. Since the palace didn't open for another 3 hours at 1:00 pm, we decided to go on this adventure. And what an adventure it was...
First of all I will let everyone know that a Tuk Tuk is basically an open air cart that seats 4 people comfortably (sometimes we have seen up to 10 crunched inside) and is pulled by a man on a scooter. Quite sketchy, but definitely an experience worth having. So, this TukTuk took us around to these temples, that were really underwhelming and by the 3rd one, our seemingly friendly and nice driver told us he needed us to go into a factory that made custom clothing. He said we needed to stay in for 15 minutes in order for him to get the gas coupon. My mom and I hesitatingly obliged, but then when we came out empty handed, he said we didn't stay long enough for him to get the coupon. He tried to get us to go to another one and this is when we started to understand the scam. My mom and I were so disappointed that we had been so stupid to think that they wouldn't be conning us, even after all the warnings in tour books. We basically had to force him to take us to our actual destination, the Grand Palace.

Once we arrived there we decided to go to the Temple that was next door to the Grand Palace called Wat Pho. This is where the immense, gold reclining Buddha was. It had to be larger than a semi truck. Simply breathtaking. The room that it was in smelled like the musky incense that was burning all around it and the walls were painted murals about the life of Buddha. The other parts of the temple were very neat as well, there were pointy towers made of painted pieces of yellow, blue, red, and orange china. The sides of the buildings also had mosaics of brightly colored mirrors and even more golden Buddhas. One of the highlights of this temple was a tree that was believed to have been grown from a portion of the original Bhodi Tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment. The tree was very large and old and locals had tied strips of sheer colored fabric to the branches and adorned it with incense and statues. The whole temple was quite spiritual.

We walked out side of the temple to hopefully find lunch and stumbled into a dried fish market. The smells were completely overwhelming. There were so many different sorts of fish, squid, sting ray, and a whole bunch that I couldn't even begin to guess. It was pretty sickening to see the lack of sanitation and scum build up. There were trash piles next to the dried goods... Yummy! So of course, my mom and walked right outside to what turned out to be the loading dock for the market and found a place to eat. This area was filled with a handful of vendors, one of which was selling just Pad Thai. I could eat Pad Thai here for every meal of the day =). This particular booth was run by and old woman who just had a cart full of separated ingredients like raw seafood or chicken, a bunch of dried herbs, chilis, and fish, along with fresh veggies and noodles. She threw all of this together on a portable wok that was on top of a gas burner (high tech for Thailand). Again, I will stress that there was very questionable sanitation, the dishes were washed on the street with buckets of recycled water and maybe some soap. The eggs were sitting in the sun and the meat was unrefrigerated. My mom and I had to basically convince ourselves that the ingredients were so fresh that refrigeration wasn't needed (?). Anyways, it turned out to be the most tasty Pad Thai ever! I was truly in heaven. What really made it though was our discovery of coconut juice (not milk).The would Crack open the top of this basketball sized coconut and stick a straw in it, the meat of the coconut was as soft as jello and the juice was deliciously crisp and full to the brim! It was a perfect meal in every way.

After lunch and finishing up a bit of the temple that we had left to see, we made our way over to the palace, realized that it would take way too much time for just the 3 hours it was open for, and decided to do it on our last day at the end of our trip. We walked home through neighborhoods that were mostly shops that sold wood carved goods, mechanic shops, hair salons (barely), and random places that we didn't really know what they sold. The whole experience was enriching, for lack of a better word. The people were very poor, which seems to be the norm in Bangkok. They are living in filth, they are lucky if they have electricity and running water and many are barefoot. Its hard to see people living like that and it truly makes me feel lucky for everything I have. I could never been prepared for the misery and poverty that I am being exposed to.

A Taste of Thailand

Well, I guess I will start off this page with my first impressions of Bangkok. I don't think my mom and I were prepared for such an intense level of culture shock. We planned our vacation around the Study Abroad that my school offered. It turned out to be way cheaper to just do it on our own. Our first two days of the trip were spent in Bangkok. Right off the bat, we were slightly conned by a taxi driver from the airport, he didn't give us the correct change because we didn't know how much coins were worth. Trust me when I say that this was the beginning of our growth as hardened travelers, it was one of may times that a driver tried to rip us off.

Even thogugh we arrived at 1:00 am Bangkok time, the weather was dully warm and sticky.As we entered the city via our hot pink taxi, we were suprised to see that the streets were bustling with action. The food carts that we have been seeing all over Thailand have no refrigeration (just the occasional blocks of ice) and no electricity. They make all sorts of food on these carts, Fried fish balls that are cooked over a charcol fire, grilled bananas, grilled meats and fish (most of which are unidentifiable to the foriegn tourist, and much more. They also offer drinks in a bag, now this is something that I desperately wanted to try but the ice is pretty risky to consume if you don't have a built up immune system like the locals. These drinks in a bag come in all sorts of variety, Chrysanthimum tea, Tamirind tea, some sort of green vegitable juice, and of course Thai Iced Tea.

Later on in the morning after we had taken a cat nap at our hotel, we walked the streets in search of a pharmacy because we didn't bring much in the way of bathroom supplies. My mom and I only brought one backpack each, small enough to carry anywhere comfortably and to use as our only carry on. We do laundry every night because we only have about 2 or 3 sets of clothes for our 3 week trip. As we were dodging hot carts of food and being completely bombarded by the locals trying to sell factory produced clothing, we were laughing at the sheer crazyness. The street booths (just metal frames that they hang merchandise on) next to the river are set up long before dawn for shopping. We had to be the only white/ non-local people on the whole strech of street.

Since it was Sunday we gradually made our way to a portion of town that housed the Chatuchak Market, 35 acres of market stalls all of which where crunched together. They sold all sorts of things, beautifuly rich colored cloth and clothing, cheap Thai souveniers, jewlery, little figurines of buddhas (some of which involved penises? weird and amusing to my mom and I ... they said that it represented fertility). The other main streets of the Market offered fresh produce which consisted mostly of fruits and vegitables of intensly bright colors that would never be found in America, little carts that served full meals to the individuals that wanted to sit on plastic furniture and wobbly tables. We of course found the one with the most locals and had quite a time ordering food. The Australian girls next to us who were thai had to order for us because they kept bringing us the wrong food. One of the things we discovered was that the best food is usually found in these carts. I had a wonderful shrip Pad Thai and my mom had Fish ball soup. The flavors were exotic and it was even better because the dishes only cost about 2 dollars each.

After having a complete sensory overload at the market we tried to ride the train back to our hotel to rest a bit. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your perspective) a young Thai man started chatting with us about what we planned to do the rest of the day. We told him our feet were killing us so we were trying to get back to our hotel, Cirus (the helpful Thai man) told us to just keep going and not go to our hotel, but rather go see a traditional Thai Puppet show. He said that on our way there we must also get a Thai Foot massage. We didn't really have a choice because he told us he would ride the train there with us. When we finally got there, we walked by a Foot massage place that had about 15 women outside trying to get us to come in, we asked them for directions and a tall woman stepped foward and directed us there. The more I looked at here though, the more I realized that she was really a he. She/him was beautiful, perfectly applied eyeliner and loosly curled hair, she was simply a vison of beauty. My mom and I giggling as we walked to get our tickets, decided that my mom would get "shim" as her foot masseuese.

When we went back to the Foot massage place, the women all laughed at my mom for requesting Shim as a masseuese. The massage was unbearably tickling for me but the way they did it was very neat. They used a black stick to do accupressure on points of our feet and they also would basically do handstands on our thighs to loosen our hip joints. To our horror afterwards (thanks to my keen observations) none of the towels used during the massage were cleaned and rotated after they were used and the people didnt' wash their hands between cilents. Hmmm. This all registered when we arrived in Cambodia 2 days later with feet that smelled absolutely foul and had a dull itch. Again, we had a few learning experiences, this was one of them.

The puppet show was wonderful, the instruments that were used were eerie and inchanting. The puppets themselves were about half the size of a person and had to be opperated by three people. All of it was quite good, but after having been up since 5 am, it took every ounce of strenght to stay awake.