Bangkok

We arrived on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. Bangkok International Suvarnabhumi Airport is new and very nice. According to articles we saw later there are some maintenance issues, apparently, but we didn't notice anything untoward. We arrived in the middle of a pack o' planes and immigration was a little jammed up but we still got though in around 20-30 minutes, grabbed our bags and entered the main terminal where representatives from the Sukhothai, our hotel in Bangkok, were waiting to meet us. I'm guessing that they maintain a desk there in the airport as they had two people to take our bags and place them in the car that was waiting outside. When we left a few days later they had someone meet our car when we arrived at the airport and take the bags right into the terminal to the JAL desk. He then stayed with us till we entered Passport Control. That's service.

The trip to the hotel was relaxing enough on the highway, but when we got on the city streets - wow! Bangkok is the most congested city I've ever seen. It's insane. From stuff I've seen, like on Amazing Race, India probably has Bangkok all beat to hell in the congestion sweepstakes, but my depth perception impaired self found Bangkok quite scary enough, thank you very much.

Our hotel, which I'll write up in a little more detail later, was beautiful. Lots of ponds and alcoves with statues and brick tupas or whatever they're called. I liked it a lot. And again the service - weee!

We spent the majority of our time while we were in Bangkok using a local guide service (Trails of Indochina) to take us around. One look at the traffic and the layout of Bangkok and we're pretty happy we did. In essence the guide service gave us our own personal guide and a van with a driver for the two days and an itinerary for both days that hit a lot of highlights in and outside the city.

For instance, the first day we visited the foremost Buddist temple in Bangkok, which as our guide pointed out, was just one of the total of 411 temples, just in the city alone. Don't ask about the country as a whole - it's something in the tens of thousands. Thais do seem to like their temples. After touring a couple or three I can see why. The temples are frequently beautiful, impressive, monumental, outlandish, and usually all of the above. Having a guide along was great as she taught us some basics of how to behave in the temple (drinking beer and rubbing the monks' bald heads, especially if you're a woman, seems to be frowned on - go figure).

After the first temple, there was a second, a third, a fourth, and somewhere around sixty two we begged for mercy. Well, not really. We went to a total of two temples and begged off on a third, not because we didn't want to see it but because at the point at which we were offered the opportunity to see it, the daylight was waning and we'd already lost 20% of our body weight through perspiration. And we were bushed.

After the temples we had lunch, arranged by the tour company at a restaurant on the river somewhere in town. We're not sure where, we were just passengers. From the appearances though I'd say this was a restaurant that had arranged with a fair number of other tour companies to bring their clientele there. The food was considerably toned down, though we told our guide we liked things spicy. It was apparent that she was fairly surprised and not convinced about our ability to handle the real stuff. The lunch was quite flavorful but not nearly as spicy as Thai food we've consumed elsewhere. She compromised and had the restaurant add a spicier beef dish to our lunch, I'm relatively sure in order to test us. We passed. The lunch, by the way, was enormous. Either they looked at us and said - "oh, those people can eat a lot" or they think all Americans can eat a lot. We tried, but even we, tried and true trenchermen that we were, could not eat everything they gave us.

After lunch, groaning in body if not in mind, we toured some markets, specifically flower markets where we watched them making flower garlands called Phuang Malai or something like that. There's lots of other stuff they make too, which was pretty intriguing, at least Mary thought so. I enjoyed it though it's not exactly alligator wrestling.

To top off the day we took a cruise along the Chao Phraya river, the main waterway through the center of Bangkok and back through a lot of the canals, along which live an intriguing collection of people. I'm not sure what the boat we used was called, but they featured prominently in a James Bond movie of my youth, Man With The Golden Gun. Take one river canoe, the shallower the draft the better, and mount a automobile motor on the back using a very long shaft with a propeller on the end to propel the boat. If at all possible, try not to muffle the exhaust too much as this just lessens the effect. It's great! We had a blast shooting up and down the river and back through the canals. Sure we were slightly deaf afterwards, but it was great!

Life along the canals is very emblematic of Bangkok in general. There are tumbledown shacks that seem like they would need only the wake of an boat just fractionally larger than our own to send them crashing down into the canal, side by side with mansions that wouldn't be out of place on a Palm Beach waterway. It's kind of interesting to see it now. I imagine in a decade or two, if the economic trends continue for Asia as they are, many of the hovels will be torn down and replaced with condos. It'll be cleaner but not as interesting.

The second day started with a long drive out to the famous floating markets in Damnoen Saduak. Here again we got our own boat with oversize engine though slightly smaller then the one the previous day - it probably came from a compact car. The use of the large engines bemused us greatly as the canals are narrow enough and wind so much that no one can get any real speed up before they have to throttle down. Though they do sound impressive. It was interesting to see the market with lots of stuff being sold from shops lining the canals (mostly tourist junk) as well as the boats selling foodstuffs and fruits and vegetables. Our guide bought a number of things to sample including bananas (a variety our guide called vitamin bananas) coated with corn starch and flour with sesame seeds and fried - delicious, and I don't even normally like bananas. Mary only got a couple of pieces but that was because she was sitting all the way in the front of the boat, at least a foot and half away. Too bad! We also sampled some fruit of various types that we've mostly never seen before. All were quite good.

After the market we drove back to town to visit two famous sites, the Teak Palace and the Jim Thompson house. The Palace was a residence of the Thai royal family built early in the last century using European architectural techniques and Thai materials. It's quite attractive and because it's almost entirely made of wood, more interesting than a lot of the stone edifices that European royalty like to build for themselves. As a change of pace anyhow.

The Jim Thompson house was the abode of an American ex-OSS officer who came back and settled in Thailand after WWII. He became enamored with the Thai silk industry and from the accounts pretty much singlehandedly renovated the industry and made the products popular throughout the rest of the world. Along with that he also liked Thai art and sculpture and he took a number of Thai teak houses and combined them in Bangkok to make a singular residence for himself. The effect is quite stunning. When he disappeared during a trip to Malaysia during the Sixties his house and art collection were saved by a organization that preserved them and put them on display for greasy palmed tourists like ourselves. The gardens, the houses and the art works were certainly one of the highlights of the whole trip to Bangkok.

After we finished the Teak Palace tour we adjourned to a lunch counter for our noontime repast. We had told our guide that we would love to try some Thai street food but I think she was a little scared that we'd either contract something intestinal and highly resistant to antibiotics or that we were still making it up about liking spicy food. Or possibly she thought that what we ate in America that was called authentic Thai food was the same as calling KFC authentic pan fried chicken. So she compromised by taking us to something where we could sit down inside but the clientele was all Thai - no tourists. Then just to make sure she apparently told the cooks to go lightly on the peppers and stuff. Even so it was mighty spicy. So spicy that I did a real numbskull thing. Mary and I each ordered a dish. Mine turned out to be a bit spicier than hers but I was enjoying it. A lot. Then our guide brought a couple of other dishes for us to try, still convinced that because of our size, we would be ravenous if we did not eat the equivalent of a side of beef at each meal, and we might take it out by devouring the guide or something. In any case, when she brought the second set of dishes I looked over and said to myself - hmm, more food and ignored what she was saying about the dishes, specifically that the minced pork salad was really spicy. All I could see was a fresh, green, crisp salad with a tart dressing and some small pieces of pork. Perfect, I thought - something to cool the burning sensation I was experiencing after eating my first dish. But try as I might, no matter how much salad I ate, the burning didn't diminish: indeed, it got hotter and hotter. I drank my whole bottle of water. I drank a whole glass of iced coffee and coconut milk. I drank Mary's water. I was sweating profusely. When I pointed out to Mary that I just couldn't seem to cool my taste buds off she noted that it was no wonder. The salad that I was bolting down was incredibly spicy. My mouth was so cauterized that I didn't realize that each bite was increasing the pain and not giving me cooling relief. It took about an hour or so till my mouth quit feeling like the fiery pits of hell. But it all tasted very, very good.

Other observations about our time in Bangkok. The people seem to be genuinely pleasant and friendly. The food is very hot. Don't even think about driving in Bangkok, the traffic is insane. Basically one sits at an intersection until someone in the cross traffic leaves just the smallest hole in the flow and then the whole line of traffic you're in just bull their way into the street. Weirdly enough for a place with the densest and most incredibly volatile traffic I've ever seen there's little honking nor shouting, screaming or cursing. Maybe they keep it all inside.

We did use a tuk-tuk at one point which is a motorized trike which was cool. Though the benefits of them are marginal - they use up almost as much space as a compact car. One can get around using motorcycle taxis. They're basically motorcyclists that belong to one or more taxi companies (you can recognize them as they all wear orange vests) that will take passengers from point to point. You just get on the back of the bike and hold on. Pretty useful as the bikes and their riders have no discernible sense of fear nor mortality and they dart through and around and possibly over traffic everywhere. Mary wouldn't agree to try one as she seems to have this unreasonable fear of death or at least dismemberment, so maybe next time.

Bangkok as a tourist destination - wonderful. We suspected that we'd have a good time but I have to say we were bowled over by the amount of things to do and the food, and the scenery. We were less bowled over by the climate, hot and sticky 365 days a year seems to be the rule. And to be perfectly honest, the city is an amazing conglomeration of ultra-modern and ramshackle ruin side by side. As a matter of fact, one needs to understand that Bangkok is completely chaotic, pretty dirty, possibly somewhat insane, and utterly amazing. I'd encourage anyone to go and give it a go. And from the looks of it a lot of European tourists are doing just that.

We had a late flight out our last day so we opted for a late check out and then hung around the hotel and relaxed. Mary got a massage and pronounced it good. I had a few beers and a cigar in the bar and pronounced it good also. As we were wandering around the property Mary noticed that there was a YWCA next door. This coupled with the YMCA next to the Peninsula at our last stop leaves us wondering. We're not sure what we're wondering, but wondering we are.