A study trip to Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok, 10 May 2006
The moment I step out of the internet café is the moment I step onto a cockroach. My first one - that is - after 3 days. And I just sent an email saying that I haven’t seen any yet neither grilled nor alive. I jinxed it! This is my third day in Bangkok and I meant to write down my adventures every day, but as always no luck on that. The first time I inhaled the Bangkok air I nearly choked. It was hot. It was humid and it stunk! One gets used to a lot and today I don’t smell it anymore. My first day in Bangkok I spend window shopping. The hotel staff sent us to Siam Centre and we explore one shopping centre after the other. They have my favourite Esprit store and my would-be-favourite-if-wallet-was-thicker store Chanel and Dior. The top-end shopping centre was – not surprisingly – empty. On average, Thais don’t earn a lot of money. We learned that a factory worker earns about 6,000-8,000 Thai Bhat (~$160-$210) a month. Our dinner consists of Thai food with a typical Thai dessert: sticky rice with black beans and coconut sauce (yes, it does taste like it sounds). I also have a freshly squeezed carrot juice and the whole dinner costs me $4. Back at the hotel, we explore the swimming pool. Not many cute guys around, so we give up after an hour. Plans for the evening are the night bazaar and dinner. We have dinner close to the bazaar and try further Thai delicacies like fried flowers. Hhhmmm… The bazaar – Suan Lum Night Bazaar – is packed and sells everything but grilled cockroaches. After going on the big ferries wheel we find a beer garden right there that would put German beer gardens to shame. There is a stage and we are drawn to a version of Madonna’s Hung Up over which we can’t decide whether to cry or to laugh out loud. We decide to order beer and watch a number of different singers and groups perform Thai and non-Thai pop songs. This is actually quite good.
Bangkok, 14 May 2006
I can’t keep up with writing. There is so little time and so much to see. Really, we only have three full days to explore the city and those three days are just behind me. Today, I saw a grilled cockroach! By now I learned that they are not a Thai delicacy, but a Chinese one and that’s why I found it on the Chinese Market. But I am getting ahead of myself here. The weekend started early on Thursday afternoon. We decide to go shopping, buy a few t-shirts (as we are using up more than anticipated) and have dinner in an authentic Thai diner. It’s hilarious, it’s like an American diner “in Thai” with old records, a jukebox, but Thai decoration, no fries but Thai food. The other people in here are all young local people, so we figure it’s a good place. The food is great, we try four different dishes and they are all good. When we get kicked out because they are closing early, we stroll along the new posh mall that has all the designer stores. That reminds me… I bought a “genuine fake” designer handbag, a pink Chanel bag, in a dodgy place. Our tour guide took us to a shop where we went upstairs through the hidden back door. Very dodgy… Back to Thursday night. The posh shopping mall also kicks us out and we go for another authentic Thai experience: a movie night. We watch “Poseidon” with a very cute Josh Lucas. One thing that is very different to my past cinema experience is that the Thai anthem (I suppose) is being played right before the movie starts and everyone stands up in the cinema. It’s amazing!
On Friday, we do a little sightseeing. We visit the Grand Palace, temples and see the Emerald Buddha. Actually, this day is a holiday and a lot of Thai people go to the temples to worship. I feel like I am intruding their private prayers. I am not that comfortable with that. Afterwards, we go for lunch and confuse the waiter as six people do not eat seafood at a seafood restaurant. We continue our day’s journey on the canal where we do a boat trip to the snake farm which I am giving a miss today. On our boat trip we see a number of huge lizards; they look more like little crocodiles, actually not that little at all. In the evening we go to the night bazaar again where we load up on souvenirs and practice our haggling skills. Another fake bag later we try to go to a bar at the beer garden, but it’s Buddha Day today, so no alcohol is being sold.
On plane Tokyo-Detroit, 17 May 2006
I have definitely been using my time most efficiently on this trip to see as much of Bangkok as possible during our free time outside company visits. Therefore, my writing has been less than hoped. Tuesday night we say farewell to Bangkok in style. After our company visits, we meet up with Thai MSU alumni at a patio/garden restaurant right at the river. It is rehearsal day for the King’s 60th coronation anniversary. So we see boats on the river in the royal colours and we see the King’s boat which looks like it has a little house on the top. The people on the boat – not quite sure who they are – are dressed in green or yellow garments and are chanting and rowing in perfect union. I heard that on the 60th coronation anniversary celebration the King will actually not be on a boat but watch the parade from the river bank. After we say our good-bye to the Thai alumni, we go to the Sky Hotel – a walk away from our hotel – and go up to the 84th floor to the observation deck – revolving! It’s a great view over Bangkok! I wish we had found this place before and could have seen Bangkok from the top in daylight. The 83rd floor holds a bar with live music and we have cocktails and enjoy the view. This is the perfect good-bye to an exciting trip. To round it up, we all have the Sky Scraper cocktail and get a souvenir glass. Robbie Williams’ “Feel” becomes my Bangkok theme song.
As usual I am getting ahead of myself. I still haven’t finished writing about the weekend. Saturday we go on a day trip to the ancient city where we see ruins which setup resemble Roman ruins – lots of columns and towers – but the style of stone used is different. The columns look like they consist of piled up slices of stone. We are spending a while walking around and on top of the ruins. It is hot! Outside the ruins Thai vendors dry fish and sell dried fish of all sorts. It’s freaky! It looks disgusting. You can still see the eyes of the fish and it seems they are looking at you. Good job I don’t eat fish. We continue our sightseeing to see a huge reclining Buddha. There is another temple that hosts a collection of Buddhas – I think it is the place with the most Buddhas. Our next stop is the summer residence of the King which is massive, looks awesome, beautifully manicured lawn, bushes that have been cut to look like animals: elephants, rabbits, deer, etc. The main building somehow looks similar to Nymphenburg Castle in Munich with its white and yellow colour and windows with little triangular “roofs”. The guest’s residence is a Japanese style house. It’s also beautiful. We go inside and see the King’s living room and study. Beautiful design, a lot more simple than British royal rooms, less ornaments, but with beautifully carved furniture. From here we go on a 4-hour boat cruise back to Bangkok. As it has been so hot all day, we stay inside in air-conditioned dinner rooms and take a power nap. We learned to take them wherever and whenever we get them as we are averaging 5 hours of sleep only each night. It also starts to rain, another good excuse to stay inside the boat. Unlike the canal tour the previous day, we do not see much wildlife. No lizards inside or outside the water. Some very nice mansions on the river bank (though next to slum-like huts). In the evening we are trying our second attempt to go to see Thai boxing, but we end up staying too long in the Japanese restaurant.
Sunday, six of us book a tour to the floating market. This turns out to be one of the best days on the trip. We start early in the morning and our first stop is a coconut plantation where we get to see and try coconut oil candy. Our next stop is at some salt fields where we see Thai people doing something with salt? Turn it? I don’t know. I am distracted as on the way we notice that the motorway has been closed in the opposite direction. Our tour guide suggests that a member of the royal family, possibly the King, is going to pass by. We are excited. So as we stop on the salt fields, 4 police cars drive past followed by the royal car where we see members of the royal family in their uniform. We are sure it’s the King. From our next stop we take a long-tail boat to the floating market. The boat speeds along the canal like it’s on a motorway. The canal and surroundings are beautiful. The houses do not look as run down as the ones along the canal in Bangkok. There is a beautiful temple. We see banana trees. The floating market exceeds my expectations. Thai women sit in boats full of fruit and sell their merchandise. The boats go up and down the market area. The women stop to sell or just to chat to one another. Other boats are moored at the sides of the canal and women cook deliciously smelling food – we are not brave enough to try it. On the sides other stalls sell souvenirs to the tourists. We continue on to get lunch and see a Thai culture show which is a little cheesy but the costumes are awesomely beautiful in style and colour.
After we arrive back home, we head out to Chinatown which is packed with food stalls. We are not really tempted to eat anything. The crabs are still moving and blinking their eyes. Dead ducks lie in the back of a pick-up truck. One grill hosts a lonely cockroach on a skewer. On the way to Chinatown we take a tuk-tuk. As there are six of us, we actually take 2 and after strong negotiations with the drivers we head off. The tuk-tuk drivers think it’s a race and we speed through the city in-between cars, busses, trucks. It’s scary! One tuk-tuk overtakes the other in a curve! Bravely, we take another tuk-tuk to the flower market which is not quite what I expected, but it’s still neat. Vendors sell flowers along the sides of the street and you can see all colours imaginable. Back at the hotel our group splits and two of us head out to dinner to a restaurant called “The Ninth Café” which is now our favourite pushing the Thai diner into second place. The food in general has been better whenever we explored restaurants by ourselves than the food we got as part of our various tours.
After 3 days of sightseeing it’s back to work on Monday and the business clothes feel all wrong. However, we have great visits of two production plants. At night we are brave and head out to Potpang market in the seedy part of town which sex show bars all around. You can look inside and the young (very young!) girls dancing around poles and bar owners try to get us their places. We decline. We buy souvenirs and barter hard-heartedly. But we are not brave enough to eat in this area as we are not sure what awaits us inside the restaurants and we fear the services offered are more than what we are after. The next day is Tuesday our final day of the trip and you may wonder why you didn’t hear about the “study” part of the trip, the company visits. Well, they were great and gave us some insights into Thai business life, but let’s just say that the reporting on those are part of another paper. A great memorable trip wanting me to return to Thailand to see more. I’d say mission accomplished!
