Bangin’ Out Bangkok
Today was our day to spend an entire tour bangin’ out the sites of Bangkok. Unlike the last time I was here, many years ago, Tuk-Tuks and mopeds no longer dominate the streets the way they used to. There are still two types of Tuk-Tuks in Bangkok, the kind that the common working people of Bangkok might use as an economical way to get places where public transportation can’t get them, and then the kind that hang around the fancy hotels like our hotel, waiting to prey on unsuspecting tourists. In that way, Bangkok and New York are not so different anymore since Pedicabs have come on the scene in New York lately and they are just as much of a traffic nuisance there as Tuk-Tuks are here. Let’s face it the days of the rickshaw are past and now almost all urban transportation around the world has become modernized.
We were once again picked up this morning by our Tours by Locals guide, who’s name was Nathan. He came with his trusty sidekick, Pui, who had an equally fancy van as we had enjoyed yesterday. We started our day by driving to the flower market where Nathan gave us all a jasmine bracelets. We got to see the full array of Thai flora on display for sale and then Mike and I gave our bracelets to our wives, who were still oohing and ahhing about the lovely smell.
The next stop was the Royal Palace where the King of Siam, and now Thailand have resided since the capital of Thailand was moved to Bangkok in 1782 when King Rama I moved the capital from Ayutthaya. Technically, in between those moves, the capital was located on the West Bank of the Chao Phraya River, where now the new Capital is now on the East Bank. In any case Rama I thought it would be good to replicate the Royal Palace from Ayutthaya in his new home city of Bangkok. It was these palace grounds that we visited and saw the various buildings which included temples, residences, and presumably armories, since kings in this part of the world have a tendency to come under attack on a regular basis. The ornate architecture is distinctly Thai with its colorful figures and spiked and bedazzled peaked roofs. You are never far from some serious gold leaf anywhere in these Palace grounds. I guess the King of Siam or Thailand are no different than kings anywhere, they all have to show how important they are through their display of opulence. It all does at least give the modern tourist a chance to feel that he’s getting his money worth looking at special places that are very unlike anything he sees in his home town.
From the palace, we walked directly to the side of the river, and boarded a private canal boat with something like a 1000cc engine to propel it through the choppy waters of the Chao Phraya River. Getting into and out of boats has never been my strong suit as I always have visions of my knee buckling underneath me as the swell of a passing wave throws me off balance, but I managed to get in the boat, and we all sat in this long, narrow, boat and tooled up several of the canals, looking at multiple temples and homes along the canal as we went. Bangkok is called the city of canals. This was presumably a mainstay mode of transportation to get people and goods around town in days gone by. I doubt much commerce moves this way anymore, but these canals are part of the city now and the tourist and leisure activity on them still renders them an interesting part of the city. In fact, it does more to show you the normal side of the city, than driving around the streets these days. at one point we stopped and bought a couple of packages of cheap bread which we broke up and threw into the river into the feeding frenzy of the local good-sized catfish population..
Nathan convinced us that we should eat in the vicinity of the Palace and canal depot, since where we were headed to next didn’t have an appropriate restaurant. He had a very nice and a bit fancy Thai restaurant picked out for us which makes me think that like all good tour guides, Nathan has multiple revenue streams to care for, including bringing his charges for the day to restaurants that have agreed to kick back into his income stream. Food here in Thailand is mighty inexpensive (even though this was a Michelin rated restaurant), so it’s hardly worth worrying about and indeed the menu at this particular restaurant was very good and we enjoyed a very pleasant lunch that ended with mango sticky rice, which Melisa and Kim had a particular penchant to try.
We were planning to do a walk-through of the Chinatown market, which is said to be the largest Chinatown outside of China. This makes sense given the dominance of Chinese immigrants to Thailand over the last two millennia. However, Nathan‘s GPS was telling him that we really only had time on our tour tickets to do either Chinatown or the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is in the north part of the city and which Faraj and Yasuko really wanted to visit. Faraj and Yasuko are such quiet and respectful people that when they do have a particular agenda item, I think it’s fair to say that we all want to accommodate it. I myself am happily choosing to stay in the air-conditioned van and dictate this story of the day, and I sense that Mike would have been willing to do the same but felt the tour guide obligation to go in and make sure that his clients (Faraj and Yasuko), were happy.
Since we leave Bangkok tomorrow, I feel the need to summarize my impression of the city and just say it feels more like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur than I thought it would. Whatever quaintness it had, or whatever developing world crush of urban sprawl it suffered from, that seems to all changed over the last quarter century. I should’ve expected that given that by any standard, Thailand qualifies as an Asian Tiger that has moved forward with the rest of the world, and offers the majority of its citizens, the same opportunities and the same technology that we all enjoy in the rest of of the developed world.. Our tour yesterday of the rural areas to the west near the Myanmar border were still the Thailand I remember from many years ago and the Siam of the King and I, but the big city of Bangkok seems to have shed its backward ways, and even seems to have shed its red light district reputation from the Vietnam War days. It now seems like any other SE Asia big city except with more Thai food and more pointy peaked temples all over the place. I feel we did a reasonable job of bangin’ out Bangkok in one day, but I sense that Kim has at least one more visit to the nearby floating market in her before she is ready to close-out on this burg.