Days 15/16 - Bangkok

Goodbye KL, hello Bangkok!  Both T and I were very excited to come to Bangkok and had done lots of hypothesizing prior to coming. Suffice to say, non of it prepared us for the reality.  One might even say grim reality--at first.

This is a hard city.  Gritty.  Humid.  Wide streets with double and triple lanes in each direction. Traffic--apparently there is a Thai saying that children grow up in the car.  Hucksters and solicitors, maybe of every kind.

After we arrived, we decided to visit the Jim Thompson house, knowing we had a full two days of guided tours lined up for the following two days.  T just recently read the Jim Thopmson biography, having picked it up in a moment of sheer weakness (kinda like reading "Zodiac" after overlooking the best view in Angwin).  Storyline as follows: American goes "native" after serving here in WWII.  "Discovers" Thai silk craft, and creates a brand out of it as only an American can.  Makes money and collects a bunch of national treasures like Buddha statues. Disappears into thin air.  May have worked for CAI? May have attained enlightenment? May have fallen into a pit in the jungle? ehhh...

So we join a tour group full of American retirees.  

Maybe from Pennsylvania. Lots of "Eh? Can we take a picture? What'd she say? No picture?"  Two ole ladies in particular-- I think they enjoyed the entire tour from the view behind their digital camera display screens.  

We apparently met our first huckster just after our tour, as we were studying our map trying to figure out our next step.  Lesson No 1: Don't study your maps.  This says, "please come and con us into parting with our money."  But we didn't know this, so a nice professional looking middle age man approaches us to ask - where you going?  

Lesson No 2: If you are desperate enough to accept their help interpreting your map, don't tell them where you are going.  This says "I am not savvy enough to ignore you, and therefore you may be able to hustle us over to a crony's tuk-tuk."  The weird thing is that upon finding out where you want to go, they will tell you that it isn't open.  Upon doing that you are putty in their hands.  A la "Now what are we going to do?"  

Lesson No 3: When being asked what you'd like to do - movie, atm, money exchange - try to be as non-committal as possible and find an exit.  Like when a work associate you don't really like says "Oh!  Lets get dinner some time.  You and your wife/husband." The skills you honed in this scenario works really well here. This is the part where the crony's tuk-tuk would take you to the "best" tailor/silk house/massage/sex-change surgeon in town, with both the friendly professional and the driver taking a piece of the (american) pie.

So we were off to a rough start.  Back on our heels really.  Feeling a bit cowed.  So we did like any sensible cowed tourist would do and we ate in the hotel restaurant.  Food was fantastic-spicy and herbaceous.  Rice paper wrapped spring rolls with crispy fish and Thai basil.  Green curry and Garoupa fish, with tiny, pea-like eggplants that have a bitter bite.  Wok fried beef, with hottest damn pepper I've ever eaten.  No slow dancing here.

But I am happy to say that I have a whole new outlook on Bangkok after today.  Not that the grit and grime and hardness was gone.  We had a tour guide all day, and I felt that she helped to take the fearsomeness from the equation.  I let go of the doubt and of the hesitation.  And apparently, so did T.

   For example, at 8:45 in the morning as we are walking through the flower market, my husband bellies up to a steaming bowl of intestines. Its all in there - liver, stomach, intestines.  Fresh from a street vendor, topped with bean sprouts, some chilies and scallions.  T wisely leaves an especially pinched looking morsel in the bowl.  I ask him--am I supposed to kiss you with those lips? 

Thus fortified, we did a million things--th went to the Grand Palace, we toured the Wats Arun and Po (the Temples of Dawn of the Reclining Buddha), we saw the Royal Barges and the Largest Jewelry Store in the World  (did you know that Thailand was famous for its sapphires and rubies?  Neither did I, but leave it to one of the many enterprising Chinese to have made a business out of it, and park a Rolls Royce and a Mercedes out in front of it.  Apparently the RR cost 60 Million Baht.  His license plate with the auspicious 88888 is rumored to have cost $1M Baht alone.)  

We egregiously pointed our feet at the most sacred image of the Buddha in Thailand--the Emerald Buddha.  I managed to desecrate a monk by touching some silky thing, upon which I was supposed to place our donation. But it wasn't all bad and I think we stocked up on some good karma while we were at it (Don't worry.  I can say that, because Thais are really polytheists too).  

List of Auspicious/Merit-Making/Thanksgiving Activities

1) Making an offering to the Emerald Buddha (lotus flowers, candles and incense)

2) Making an offering at the Reclining Buddha, mindfully dropping a coin into each of the 108 offering bowls, after the 108 auspicious signs of the Buddha

3) Dipping a lotus into blessed water, after which we touched our head with the flower 3 times

4) Making a donation of random household goods to a buddhist monk.  Apparently monks must subsist entirely from the donations of the community, and it is considered an opportunity for the community to "make merit" by doing so.  Symbiosis?  Hegemony?  Not sure yet...        All I know is that we chanted Sanskrit for about 3 minutes over a

shrink-wrapped tub including crackers, noodles, toothbrush and toothpaste, soap and dish detergent.  Righto!

5) Donation to a monastery in exchange for bread, which we then (also mindfully) fed to a now-writhing knot of catfish in the klong (canal) behind the temple

Not too bad, for a long sweaty day that started with Poop Soup.