Travel

The Chao Phraya river winds through most of the oldest parts of Bangkok and has a variety of different boats running on it that one can take. Not only did this seem like an interesting way to see an older side of the city but it was also the quickest way to get back over to where I’d been the day before and join up with the more modern transport system.

The nearest dock was only about a five minute walk from the guest house and boarding the packed passenger ferry was an experience in itself as a small horde of locals and tourists clambered into a space that was already what most people (and safety officers) would call full. The journey along the river was definitely a different side of the city. Once upon a time Bangkok was apparently the “Venice of the East” due to canals everywhere, people living in stilt houses, floating markets (most remaining ones are just tourist attractions.) Most of the canals in Bangkok proper have been filled in, or paved over and turned into roads or in some cases are seemingly the foundation of the modern sky train. On the river proper there are still a few hints of that past as there are a few canal boats puttering about. More common are the various small commercial boats puttering around or the narrow long tail boats running commuter or charter routes around the city.

Along the way to my destination were a couple of great old buildings including the old customs house which is apparently due to be restored after having been let decay really sadly and the legendary Mandarin hotel. The crush of folks on and off at every station and the ear cutting whistle of the dockhand signalling to the driver made it not exactly the most relaxing ride. It was definitely worth trying once but if I was doing it again at the busy time of day (and going to a dock it serviced) I would probably spring for the astronimcal 3x the price commuter boat ticket for less crowds (a whole $1.50.) Not long after that we reached the central pier and I was able to transfer over to the sky train to head to my destination of the weekend market at Chatuchak park.

This market is absolutely insane (and is apparently the world’s largest) with stall after stall after stall as far as the eye can see. I thought Bangkok’s chinatown was overwhelming but this reached an astonishing new level of crazy. Every terrible t-shirt from Khao San, every sort of food you can imagine and all sorts of other nonsense. Sadly it’s also a center for endangered wildlife trading but apparently the worst of that has been pushed underground a bit more.

After poking around in the market for a couple hours and probably seeing at best 20% of it I ended up in the park nearby for a check in with the parents and some Pad Thai. Even pounding back a lot of water the heat was taking a ton out of me so before it got much later I headed back to the big train station via the subway to book my train/bus combo ticket south to Phuket for a few days later.

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Old Bangkok is bizarre on so many levels, particularly the complete personality shift between night and day. Leave your hotel and walk around during the day and you’ll find large chunks of the sidewalk taken up by vendors be it of cooked food, fruit, drinks or even clothes. Come back a few hours later and they’ll all have packed up and many of the vacant looking storefronts they were obscuring are now open and have revealed quirky little bars, noodle shops or elegant little restaurants. So much is hidden where you least expect it. Walk down an alley barely wide enough to squeeze through and at the end you might find a cluster of shops or a hotel that looks nice enough one wonders how they survive being so impossible to find. Honestly it’s fascinating.

I was (gasp) ready for a non-thai meal for dinner that night and asked in the lobby if anything nearby was recommended. The one lobby person who spoke quite good english said woodfired pizza at a place around the corner. While I was upstairs having a shower i took a quick look online and the reviews were pretty decent as well…
…What a mistake. The reviews must have all been from Australians. Rubbery cheese (which I can forgive to a point since good cheese is expensive in Asia) goops of super bland sauce and toppings done as basically a teaspoon sized scoop in the center of every slice. Also I’m not sure they really understand the point of a woodfired oven as the crust tasted as though they were keeping the temp all wrong. Never pizza in asia, should have known better.

Still good things came out of it as I went back via a different alley and found an interesting cocktail van! then ended up checking out a board game cafe I stumbled across and played a couple rounds of King of Tokyo with a very weird welsh couple before heading back and crashing for the night.

The real day one in Bangkok started with a thunderstorm of all things, seriously pounding thunder and lashing rain (at least what could reach my window.) Seemed like a good bet to start things off checking in back home and doing some planning for my days in this wild city. After a while I transfered down to the restaurant and ordered a pineapple pancake with honey, something that became a bit of a tradition (though I did try the stereotypical banana pancake for which the backpacker trail is nicknamed here as well once.)

Sitting in the restaurant overlooking the raindrops falling into the small pool I ate my pancake and tried to plan my day. As I understood it it was rare for rain to last very long as this time of year so I more or less believed the forecast that called for it to clear off within the hour. Much as the birds and flowers seemed to be enjoying it I wanted to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather while I could. For those who haven’t been/don’t know Bangkok is one of the world’s hottest capitals and is rarely less than 32 degrees other than a couple weeks in December apparently.

Truth be told I’d booked this place mostly on the friend recommendation and knowing it was near backpacker central for a cheap start to the trip, but thankfully it was also quite close to some of the sites I was most eager to see. The old city/grand palace area and Wat Pho, the temple with a massive reclining Buddha were all top of my list and I decided to cross them off early not knowing when/if I’d be back at this end of the city in my travels.

First, a world on bangkok traffic: Crazy!

Did you know they drove on the left in Thailand? Somehow I did not until I noticed the cars on the expressway while my plane was landing. Traffic lights? Totally a suggestion. Right turn on red? Sure. Left turn on red? Sure. Barrel straight ahead because you’re on a motorcycle and clearly no laws apply to you? Sure. Oh god the motorcycles. Rare to see anyone in a helmet, people sitting side saddle on the back, infants lightly harnessed to a parent as they swerve in and amongst the traffic in search of a 1 second head start at the next traffic light. Shudder. I’ve been in some crazy traffic cities but Bangkok is definitely the new top of that list.

I was still in the process of discovering that that morning though as I snaked my way through the campus of a technical university on the waterfront knowing vaguely that the old palace was somewhere in that direction and figuring correctly that it would stick out rather obviously. Along the way however I passed the tiniest of alleys filled with tons of old men circulating looking at tables and binders. It wasn’t until later that I realized that this was Bangkok’s “amulet market” a place for people from varying professions to buy talismans to bring them luck or protection. Apparently they can range in price from almost nothing to megabucks for rarer antique ones.

Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace comprise some of the original areas settled when Bangkok was founded. It’s a massive complex of buildings surrounded by a wall and filled with about 8 billion chinese tourists. I’m sure I’m now in the background of thousands of selfie stick taken photos. It’s a pretty expensive admission ($20CAD) by Thailand standards but you get to tour the temple complex as well as the old royal palace (apparently now only slightly used by the King for ceremonial tasks.) The architecture was astounding throughout the temple district with a pretty wide range of styles even to my western eye though the central “Boht” holding the Emerald buddha was probably the highlight.

Almost next door to the complex is another religious complex called Wat Pho. This one most definitely has more of the feeling of a working temple though it also houses a thai massage school due to the cultural protection of the practice. The highlight of the complex is the truly massive reclining golden buddha statue measuring something like 50m long.

Also there were temple kitties everywhere:

In between the two complexes someone asked me for directions (I guess because I looked like I spoke english) thankfully asking me for the one thing I knew how to find.

Once I finished at the temples I still had some energy so I started exploring further east, at first somewhat randomly but then realizing I was close to Bangkok’s chinatown I headed there and began exploring the warren of tunnel like alleys that make up the sizable chunk of town. Stall after stall of textiles, clothes, shoes, aliexpress random stuff mixed in with some pretty incredible street food. In the end I didn’t partake because I had something else in mind for dinner but I may when back in Bangkok. At this point though 85% humidity and 34C were catching up to me so after checking out the train station on the edge of Chinatown for some info on future bookings I hopped a cab back to the guest house for a swim and a shower.

Not going to lie, between the 50 odd degree temp swap in a couple days, lack of sleep and all the walking I gave in an had a brief nap, but I also had the name Hemlock in my head. After stirring and watching some godawful british game show on my flickery tv I found it in my guidebook. A tasty relatively inexpensive thai place with an extensive menu of things you wouldn’t find everywhere, and the reason it was stuck in my head was that it was all of 50 feet down the street. Seemed like an excellent day to end day one.

A different but delicious green curry, some Lahb and some shrimp rolls later I was done from top to bottom.I managed to sit down at a bar nearby and have a Singha as a decent local played some guitar but after about another hour it was all I could do to stagger back to the hotel, grab a couple water bottles for my mini fridge then stumble into bed.

Arriving for an 8:45 departure to a mostly empty Richardson Airport and being able to leisurely go through security at my own pace was one of the last civilized things about the outbound leg of the journey actually that’s probably a bit strong, the first leg (YWG to YVR) wasn’t bad as I had a 2 person side of a row to myself. However, the next leg was the big hop… a twelve hour bounce from Vancouver to Hong Kong that I was happy I’d managed to snag on Cathay Pacific vs. an inferior airline…

…truth be told, it was still better than it could have been. The entertainment options were decent, the legroom adequate by modern airline standards and the plane itself on the newer side and not quite as noisy as the beat up old Air Canada plane I took on my last overseas trip back from rome. Unfortunately I’d been assigned a spot more or less at the back of the plane (only one row between me and the washrooms/kitchen prep area) on the outer aisle with the world’s most annoying seatmate in the middle. I got a bad vibe almost immediately from him as he simply stood next to me wanting to get in without even a gesture, and when I stood to let him in he immediately threw all of his junk on my seat and took roughly five minutes to get settled in as I kept having to dodge the flight attendants. Sadly things didn’t get any better when I sat down.

Now I get that I’m no one’s ideal seat neighbour on a plane. Though most of my ample frame fits in an airline seat well enough my shoulders are definitely too wide for more or less any compact seating arrangement (as anyone that’s sat next to me at GSAC can attest.) As a result I was at first quite happy that a relatively small asian man was next to me. That initial bad vibe was pretty immediately backed up though as my new friend dropped his tray table pre-taxi in order to spread out and read every newspaper he’d been able to grab from the front of the plane. He did not do as most people do on an aircraft and fold the paper so as to be able to read it within the confines of his seat but instead spread it out with his full wingspan so that if it had been in English I could have done the crossword. Eventually the flight attendant managed to get him to settle down a bit for takeoff but that behaviour was only a harbinger of things to come.

I have trouble sleeping on planes to begin with. I have to be very tired to begin with and even then mostly drop off only to wake up quickly again after a minute or two. I’d really prepped for this one though. The flight was late (taking off around 2am home time) and I’d purposely not slept in at all that day in hopes of being just zonked when I got on the plane. Mission accomplished on that, but I didn’t plan for Mr. Middleseat. We’d just finished the dinner they rather bizarrely served on reaching cruising altitude (at everyone’s relative 1:30am or later time?) which I’d eaten mostly for not knowing how long it would be til more food and most people were settling in to try and grab some sleep. We both stood to let the window seat woman out for a pee (and in the end we all went) before settling back in for what I hoped was a few hours of peace. Not so much, he took off the preposterously heavy jacket he was wearing and jammed it down between us rather than putting it under the seat or in the surprisingly empty overhead bin then proceeded to turn up his video system to the brightest possible level and volume and watch a kung fu movie with so many random flashing action scenes it was a good thing we didn’t have epileptics behind us. He snorted about every five minutes until I just knew I was going to get sick(er as I was already recovering from a cold.) I’m not sure where he was from especially as he was a wizened older dude but though he clearly read the cantonese on the menu as he’d point to things but then yelled at the attendants seemingly not understanding them so I’m guessing it was not his first language.

He jammed his elbows into me at every opportunity, had his foot down inside the well of the seat in front of me for a good half hour until I finally “accidentally” kick him hard enough he got the message. I’d recoiled enough from him that unfortunately it just meant that every time a flight attendant or bathroom person came by they’d bump hard into my shoulder and wake me up. Not that it really mattered in any case as he felt absolutely no shame in stretching and just random shoving his shoulder hard into my personal space (or the window lady as he once knocked her glasses clean off.) My only moment of hope came about 4 hours into the flight, his movie had ended and he was scrolling through the options for another before seemingly giving up and was facing enough in the other direction that his spasms were mostly missing me. I managed to fall asleep for about fifteen minutes (based on the songs that had gone on my soft playlist on the noise cancelling headphones) when suddenly I was smacked by a flight attendant yelling NOODLES! Yes folks apparently Cathay Pacific randomly serves hot chicken noodles on the plane, which is cool and all but honest to god it’s the middle of the night, can’t we save the hot food a bit longer and just gently toss people some pretzels or cookies if they have middle of the night munchies? I did not partake being still full from late night dinner but MiddleMan did of course, with as little courtesy as before, his elbows flying out so far that if I’d gotten noodles on my tray they would have been on my lap or the cabin floor.

He decided to up the ante after his snack and pulled out an ipad (full brightness of course) on which he proceeded to watch what I think was the previous movie in the series that he watched on the in flight entertainment system while still leaving the other screen on in full brightness as well. I had a movie on in low brightness mode which was easily the equal of most tvs in picture quality in the darkened cabin so there was no reason for it but alas. Sleep efforts were further hampered about an hour later by a woman bringing her screaming toddler to the back of the plane presumably so she could walk him around and wake up everyone back there rather than her husband in the equally uncramped midplane potty area.

Suffice it to say by the time we finally landed in a rainy/foggy Hong Kong both of us wanted to kill the man. I let him out of the row ahead of me to leave and window seat woman and I shared the weariest expression, but no words. At this point I’d probably managed about an hour’s sleep mostly in five minute increments over the previous 29ish hours and my head was feeling about as foggy as the view outside. Unfortunately of course I was only in Hong Kong and had a layover/flight left to go. Hong Kong International helpfully puts a giant “immigration paper” desk right next to the transfer doorway so there was a giant cloud of us buzzing around for a while before making it through the renewed security checkpoint (I don’t really understand why I need to be metal detected again.) Once into the terminal I was honestly very worried about sleeping through the flight so I plonked myself down right at the gate and didn’t move. As usual in a multiflight itinerary where you have ample layover time built in both the previous flights had arrived slightly early to extend the layover then the final flight departed and arrived late because otherwise it would be convenient.

Bangkok airport arrivals were further confusing though to be fair that might have been sleepybrain talking. You are pointed to “visa on arrival” which requires filling out a form and paying money etc. Now academically I knew Canadians didn’t require a visa for a shorter stay but there was no sign making it clear where to go otherwise. Thankfully while I was standing there trying to find my pen a nice airport official came up and directed me to standard immigration/customs. Thankfully the rest was a breeze, relatively quick customs line, easy baggage retrieval and a quick pick up of a sim card later I was on the freeway in a cab heading for my guest house and getting my first taste of the insanity of Bangkok traffic (much more to come on that.)

The guest house itself was recommended as cheap/clean/quiet by my friend Jodi (and Chris) and was as advertised, thankfully they were ready for me to check in and after a quick shower and a bottle of water I was snug in bed at 2pm for a solid solid nap before waking up for a quickie bite in the restaurant/walk and back to bed for a good twelve hours of sleep. I’ll save the initial impressions of this wild city for the next post.