Bangkok Part II

Well I’m back at Driftwood with some 绿奶茶 (green milk tea), The Carpenter’s Superstar playing on the radio, and Simba sprawled out on the floor next to me with a new American flag bandana wrapped around his mane of a neck. All ready to blog.

So when I left off we were heading back to Bangkok from Cambodia. This was another 6 hour train ride. We left around 2pm so we didn’t get into Bangkok until around 8/8:30ish at which point it took us almost an hour to find a taxi to take us to our hostel. This was not for want of taxis, but in Thailand there is this unfortunate practice of taxis being unwilling to use the meter for foreigners. I think this largely stems from the fact that many tourists are not informed of how taxis operate in Thailand and so when a driver gives a set price for whatever destination you give many tourists just assume this is a fair price and so they pay it. But it is almost always a grossly exaggerated price. Take for example our attempt to get a taxi that night. We had no idea where our hostel was in respect to the train station so after an hour of lugging our baggage up and down the street, flagging down every taxi that would stop for us, we were about ready to accept the 150 or 200 baht we were being most commonly offered for a ride (some taxis were asking for 300 or 350 even!) Luckily, we finally found a driver willing to take us and the hostel turned out to be just a 10 minute drive away and only about 80 baht. Now when this is converted to US Dollars it is only a little under 3 dollars, as opposed to the 5 or 7 dollars for the taxis trying to rip us off—not an incredibly offensive sum. But it is more the principle of the thing. The whole concept of the taxi goes hand in hand with the meter system, providing a fair fare for a ride based on the distance covered. This frustrating process of finding taxis that would use the meter to take us places pervaded our whole time in Thailand. Probably my least favorite part of the place.

Katie was still travelling with us at this point, however she was only staying for one more day with us in Bangkok before heading back to Munich. We got to our hostel and had a fairly fitful night of sleep since there was no air conditioning in the hostel. This wasn’t usually a problem for us on the trip because most of the hostels with no air-con had strong fans right above the bed to help with the stifling heat. Unfortunately, this hostel only had a weak, standing, floor fan, and our room was all the way up on the 5^th floor. But we got free breakfast at the hostel which made up for the lack of comfortable sleep. We met up with Becca the next day, another American English teacher in Wuhan with Nathan and I. We caught up for a little bit and then took a bus about 2 hours to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market in Ratchaburi, just outside Bangkok. We all piled into one long canoe-like motor boat with a friendly Thai man situated at the back to steer us along. We went in the afternoon so everything was a lot more peaceful than it usually is in the mornings, which is the prime tourist time. The whole village is built on stilts along a winding river. As we passed different shops our driver would pull up next to them and we would barter and buy while still sitting in our boat. In addition to these shops there were many old women paddling around in boats full of fruits, drinks, and ingredients to make papaya salads or fried bananas. Though it would have been neat to see the market bustling with activity during its busiest hours, I very much enjoyed our tranquil ride through the village with only a few stops at the remaining open shops. Also, since it wasn’t super busy our boat driver took us to a temple that usually tourists have to pay extra to visit.

We bought papaya salad from this woman...

...and mangosteens from her!

Many shrines lined the river

That night we wanted to go out to a nice dinner for Katie’s last night so we got a restaurant suggestion from our hostel owner. Unfortunately, the place ended up to not have very good food, at least by our standards. My meal tasted very fishy (even though it was supposed to be just vegetables), and Katie’s dish that was supposed to just be sautéed kale turned out to be deep fried. After that disappointment we walked back to our hostel and then another about ten minutes down the street to Khao San Road, the major bar road for tourists in Bangkok. It was a crazy street, filled with tourists and vendors and bars and clubs. Thai women walked around selling plates of scorpions for tourists to drunkenly challenge each other to eat (we actually met a Canadian guy who had done this—eww), and the open-air bars seemed to be competing with one another to see who could play louder music. It was a good night though, and a fun way to send Katie off.

The next day we moved onto our next hostel, which was only a few minutes down the street and just laid low, making plans for the next day. We ended up booking a tour to go to the bridge over the river Kwai, an elephant reserve, and spend time at a beautiful, local waterfall. We set off early in the morning and stopped first the river Kwai. The bridge itself is still functioning as a railway, and at one point we had to step off the tracks to make way for an incoming train. Along the tracks we ran into a Thai street violinist who, as soon as we walked by, starting playing Lady Gaga. We laughed and threw him a few baht and kept going. But when we passed him again on our way back he put down his violin and asked us where we were from. We told him America and he said he loved Americans (something we aren’t particularly used to hearing) and started showing us different places on the bridge where you can see bullet holes and the damage from bombs during the war. It was cool to get those little bits of information, especially since none of us would have noticed those details otherwise.

The River Kwai

The Bridge Over the River Kwai

The bump in between the bolts is damage from a grenade 

After the bridge we went to the elephant reserve, where we rode down the river on bamboo rafts before climbing up on top of the elephants to go for a short ride. Compared with the elephants I saw while in Ghana, Asian elephants are much smaller, though still massive creatures. Nathan and I were on the elephant leading the group, and he often had to nudge his fellow elephants on since they very much enjoyed taking lengthy breaks to snack on passing trees and bushes. It must take a lot of food and energy to operate such a large body. After the ride we had the opportunity to buy plantains to feed to them, which of course I did. We didn’t even need to peel the plantains—either the elephants did that themselves in their mouths or they just digested the peel. Regardless, they were incredibly excited for this sweet treat, knocking each other’s trunks out of the way and snatching them up out of our hands. One of the elephants even barked at us and then opened her mouth for us to throw the plantains in.

Becca (on the right) and another tourist riding 

Snack break!

plantains!

No more, but he had to check anyway.

On the way out of the reserve we stopped for a quick lunch and then drove on to the waterfall. The place itself wasn’t terribly large, but it was a beautiful little sanctuary, perfectly suited for relaxing on a hot afternoon. The stones surrounding it were smooth from wear, but had been grown over with moss which provided us with the necessary traction. In front of the waterfall was a large pool area with a large stone with a tree located in the middle, and Thai children jumped and swam excitedly here. There were weathered down stones that formed their own kind of staircase up to a higher terrace where the water from the waterfall came pouring down. It was all so naturally well-arranged I couldn’t help but see it as the original inspiration for our modern-day waterparks. I would have loved to grow up with such a place in my backyard.

After drying off from the waterfall we all piled into the buses and made our way back to Bangkok, which took more like 4 hours this time with the terrible evening traffic. We enjoyed a another night out on Khao San Road and relaxed the next day before heading to the Asiatique market in Bangkok for the Calypso show our last night. It is advertised as a cabaret show, but I’m not entirely sure that’s what I would call it. It was all lip-syncing, which I guess is understandable since they took a tour through all sorts of foreign genres—from Broadway to Vaudeville, to traditional Thai, Korean, and Japanese pieces, to some Spanish inspired and some unidentifiable sources of inspiration. The show was a little over an hour and as weird and trippy as most of the costumes and performances were it was a very enjoyable last night in SE Asia. 

We woke up at 3am the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Hong Kong. I’ll write the final installment of this vacation series next time on our last leg of the trip in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Until then!