Musings of an Idiot

Lonely Bangkok – Day 8

There were no annoying train staff yelling 'Orange juice' this morning but I woke up early as usual but just lay there in my bunk gazing out of the window. We got to Bangkok on time and I decided to go to the hotel with the rest of the gang and keep my bags there till the afternoon since I couldn't check into the new backpackers anyway before early afternoon and it gave me a little bit more time to hang out with rest of the crew. Amanda & Dan decided to go to the hotel as well since they didn't want to get to the airport 8-10 hours before their check-in time. We left our bags in the security room at New World Lodge Hotel and decided to grab some breakfast before going exploring the city but by that time everyone else in the group split – Alan, Joy & Kelly wanted to do some stuff on their own and so did John & Sylvia. I told Alan, Kelly and Joy that I would catch up for a drink later that evening around 6.30 - after their new intrepid journey team meeting was over. So it was Dan, Amanda and me together for most of the morning and we decided to start off our outing by having breakfast first.

The buffet breakfast was delicious except for the omelette – which incidentally took the chef the longest time to make and I decided to leave it after taking a single bite. While having breakfast I drew up a rough program to first visit Jim Thompson's house and then check out Dusit Palace. Dan and Amanda agreed to the program but our first stop was Khao San Road, so that I could check at the hotel that Lance had moved into – whether he was still living there or not. I couldn't ring him because the roaming on his NZ cellphone number wasn't working and he was using Tai's cellphone and I didn't have the number. At the hotel I found out that he had moved out a couple of days back and when I checked my emails there was no sign of a phone number there either even though there was a note saying that he was still in Bangkok and that I should give him a ring if I wanted to hang out. The best I could do was drop him an email asking for his thailand phone number and hope that he replied back at some point during the day. After the email session the 3 of us caught a tuk-tuk to Siam Square and found our way to Jim Thompson's house.


Jim Thompson was an expatriate American who settled down in Thailand after WW-II after falling in love with Thailand and soon made Thai silk world famous. He had built his house according to Thai tradition and he was also into arts and crafts, so he accumulated some rare artifacts from across the region. They didn't allow photography within the house for whatever reason, so can't share the sense of history within the house - for example there was a buddha statue from 6th century . Thai houses are built on pillars – so as to avoid flooding during rainy season and their main entrance usually faces the river or a canal, so that people can arrive using boats. A couple of features that I noticed that were similar to traditional south indian houses were that the temple or place of worship within the house is on the north east corner as no shadows fall there and the other feature is that the door frames are raised above rest of the flooring – this is done to ward off evil spirits, which are supposed to travel on the ground and having a raised door frame prevents them from entering the room.I would love to have a house like that. :-) After the tour – we were discussing on how to get to Dusit Palace when Dan pointed out that there wasn't enough time since he needed to pick up some clothes he got made and Amanda pointed out that her resources were running out, so we ditched the program to go to Dusit Palace altogether and just pick up Dan's clothes before calling it a day.

Trying to catch a tuk-tuk to that place proved to be a difficult one as the tuk-tuk driver didn't want to go there and asked for an exorbitant price and was then unwilling to negotiate. Dan pointed out that he had similar experiences with tuk-tuk drivers who are discourteous and rude when things don't go there way. Since we couldn't find a tuk-tuk we decided to catch a cab. Amanda and Dan were initially apprehensive because they thought that a cab would be very expensive but it came out to about the same amount as a tuk-tuk and with the added advantage of traveling in an AC car thus avoiding the heat and the pollution. The place where Dan had his clothes stitched was kind of far away from our hotel and was also full of Indians – it was like any Indian clothing shop where there are way more sales people than there are customers. We asked Dan how he managed to find this place and he told us that a tuk-tuk driver kind of forcefully brought him to the place when he had actually wanted to go to a different place. I researched it later and again it seems that tuk-tuk drivers earn a commission to bring tourists to tailors. Dan tried out his shirts and it turned out how he envisioned them, so he was pretty happy with his purchase.

We caught a cab back to the hotel and there I bid a sad but inevitable farewell to Amanda and Dan. From there it was onto my new hotel – Lub'd, which was located in Silom area. It was 1/5th the price of my original hotel because it worked like a backpackers with dorm rooms to minimize on the costs. The hotel itself was awesome and was very slick and neat and tidy plus had a very cool vibe, so I booked a bed in a 8 bed dorm for 2 nights. I unpacked my stuff, had a shower and checked my email {there was free internet at the hotel} to see if there had been any response from Lance about his contact number. There was still no response from him, so I gave Tuan a ring to see if she wanted to catch up but she mentioned that she was studying and that she would be unable to catch up during the day but I was always welcome to come to the bar later in the evening where she usually hangs out. I didn't want to spend another night in Bangkok hanging out at the pub, so I mentioned that I would see how I was going with the rest of the day and I might wander down if mood and time permitted. Tuan then said that she would ring me up tomorrow to do something but to me it already feels like a dead end where she is being nice to me by saying that she wants to hang out but keeps postponing it. I was kind of disappointed as i've had it happen to me before and I don't know what i've done wrong or what I didn't do that has changed the equation to such an extreme. I would really love to know, so I can change that in the future. But then again I might be over reacting and she might actually give me a ring tomorrow.

I felt bad for myself for about 10-15 minutes but then I figured that's what life is about – dealing with disappointments and taking them in your stride, so I got out my Lonely Planet guide and marked the places I wanted to check out and then got out of the hotel. I walked over to Oriental Pier to see if I could catch a ferry to experience the city from the Chao Phraya river since it is an important part of the city and connects everything. There were no proper instructions at the ferry terminal and I was pointed in one direction to wait there. I was kind of restless, so I didn't wait around and walked out of the terminal as I had seen some people trying to sell a river tour. I walked over to their stall and I asked them how much it would cost for a river tour in the long boat. The original price quoted was 900 baht and after much negotiation it came down to 600 baht – I knew it was a little on the higher side but decided to go with it hoping that it would be a nice experience plus I had the whole boat to myself instead of sharing it with 8 people. After settling the price – the guy took me through some back roads and streets to a separate pier and from there he indicated to a long boat on the other side of the river and it started over and came over to our side but once it parked – the driver wasn't keen on the ride since he wanted a higher amount at which point the guy who sold me the tour scolded him and indicated to another long boat to come over. I was pretty annoyed at the whole thing and I asked for my money back but the guy asked me to wait for another 5 minutes and as I kept hassling him, an old man who was sitting by the pier got up and walked over to me and patted me on my shoulder and said '5 minutes'. The manner in which he did it was a way of telling me to be patient, so I decided to wait for the next long boat to park alongside and went on the tour.

The tour ride was rocky to start with as I was getting used to a man at the back of the boat controlling it by putting a motor at the end of a long metal steering rod - in and out of the water. We waited at the entrance on the other side of the river for the barrage door to open, so we could go into the smaller canals and it was an experience in itself – as a lot of tourist long boats rushed out from the other end and it was only after they had dispersed that we got our turn to go in. Luckily none of the boats coming out came too close to our boat, so there was no water splashing into our boat. Once we got into the canal system- it was an altogether different way of looking at Bangkok – your perspective of the city changes completely. You soon understand why Bangkok is called 'Venice of the East'. A lot of school kids hang out by the canals and it seemed like it was a social thing to do plus there were others who were swimming in the water.


At one point there was this boat peddler who was trying to sell touristy items which I wasn't interested in and I didn't buy anything either however entrepreneurial it seemed. As soon as her boat passed us by I started thinking that I would buy BBQ meat if someone sold that to me on the boat but then I thought – it would be a fire hazard lighting a fire on a wooden boat, so no wonder they wouldn't do such a thing but man was I wrong. About 5 minutes later there was a boat peddler selling BBQ meat to some school kids hanging out by the canal. An hour into the journey I was pretty much over sight seeing by boat and I wanted to explore the city on foot and luckily for me the tour was finished in another 5 minutes because I decided not to stop at the Snake Farm.


From that point on I decided to walk everywhere for rest of the day. I first walked over to Khao San Road to check my mails again but there was still no sign of any contact from Lance and Tai, so I gave up on any chance of hanging out with them for rest of the day and started exploring the various streets in that area. I wandered around some more before I went towards New World Lodge Hotel to catch up with Joy, Alan & Kelly but I got there by 5.30 and I wasn't in a mood to wait around for another hour, so I left them a farewell cum sorry note and decided to check out an eating joint recommended in LP guide. It was located in Chinatown and since I hadn't checked out that part of the town I decided to walk there.


The walk was long and fascinating – I never met another foreigner walking in either direction and I met a fair few curious stares but people just assumed that I must be a local or something. An hour into the walk I lost my way since none of the street signs were in English – all of them were in Thai and I was soon disoriented. Instead of panicking – I kept walking till I came to a major roundabout and then checked my 2 city maps and figured out where I was. I took a few turns and I was soon on the main stretch of Chinatown.


Chinatown is crowded and buzzing with energy and there are street side food stalls and vendors selling their wares. There are a lot of restaurants selling seafood and for a few of them the selling point was shark fin soup – I made a mental note not to ever try any of them. The traffic at that point was also super heavy and it was just controlled chaos. I tried searching for the particular eating joint I wanted to find but after an hour of walking around I gave up on it and had some yummy duck dish from a road side stall. At that point I had been walking to close to 4 hours and was feeling a little tired, so I decided to catch a tuk-tuk to my hotel instead of walking there. It turned out to be a wise decision as it would've taken me another hour or so easily had I decided to walk there. As soon as I got to the hotel I crashed into my bed and was away sleeping within minutes.

Tomorrow the main program of the day is the half day cooking course and after that I'll play it by the ear or at the least I'll try and cross out the main things to do when in Bangkok from my LP guide.

That's me for now,
Amit

Labels: Thailand, Travel

posted by Amit @ 11:36 AM