Bangkok
Bangkok shows much more of the Thai culture than the tourist bubble of Phuket. This was not a surprise, which is why we included both destinations in order to have a blend of vacation and travel. Vacation is when you relax and get massages, and travel is when you learn about new cultures, food, and language. First a little orientation on Thailand.
History: Thailand is the only SE Asian country not to have been colonized. That's pretty impressive. Did they manage it with a massive army? According to my new German boss who lived in Thailand for 10 years, Thai people are unsuspectingly sneaky. On the surface they are very kind and friendly and unthreatening, but he says they are very clever. This is demonstrated by how Thailand avoided being colonized. They played the colonial rivalries and tensions against each other, mostly the British, French, and Germans in such a way as to avoid being colonized. Pretty impressive.
Politically, Thailand became a democracy in 1973 with brief stints of military dictatorship in 1991-1992, 2007-2008, and 2014-present. It's unclear if and when Thailand will return to a democracy, if at all. The Economist is not hopeful that democracy will return to Thailand anytime soon and civic liberties are disappearing under the ruling military junta. Another issue is that the much loved King recently passed away and his son, the new King, was a European-loving playboy prince who the Thais did not see as one of their own. But he is King now and his portrait is all over the city. It is illegal to say anything negative against the royal family. I love the smart, handsome, and fair Thai King.
Other interesting things about Thailand:
- 94% of Thailand is Buddhist
- Thais domestically consume over 100 kg of milled rice per person per year. In the United States it is ~8 kg.
- It is taboo to point the bottom of your feet at Buddah or other people. For this reason, when people go to the temples they sit on their knees with their feet pointed backwards, rather than sitting cross legged or on their butts. Many tourists I observed were blowing this custom.
- Thailand was the most visited country in Southeast Asia
- 49% of Thailand's labor force is employed in agriculture. Also, about 55% of the arable land area is used for rice production so probably 20% of the Thai population is rice farmers. This is crazy. In the United States less than 2% of the population is employed in agriculture. Culture
The Thai culture is emotionally unexpressive and the Thai people avoid direct confrontation at all costs. They aren't charted on the graph below, but I would guess they are in the lower right quadrant. We noticed this difference when Sandra from Spain (upper left quadrant) got into a disagreement with two Thai ladies about wanting a refund because our massage chair was broken. The Thai ladies were extremely uncomfortable the entire conversation and rarely made eye contact. They kept looking at each other and laughing because they were so uncomfortable by someone confronting them and asking for a refund. Thai people have high-context communication which means that context matters more than the actual words used. This is the opposite of American English which is very low-context, hence the saying "I say what I mean and I mean what I say."
One exception to this rule is Thai taxi drivers who gave zero fucks about breaking the rules with regards to running their meter. We actually were never successful in getting a street taxi to run the meter despite stopping over 20 taxis during our stay in Bangkok. The only time we could get a taxi to run the meter is when we used our hotel or a designated taxi pick-up station at a mall or airport. Even then we had a taxi driver refuse once. It was really frustrating. Unfortunately the taxi drivers, as in many other parts of the world, are sowing the seeds of their own demise by offering shitty service. The week we were in Thailand the Singapore startup Grab launched in Thailand. Uber was also already operating in Bangkok. It's a familiar story line. Tourists and locals will prefer the predictability, convenience, and safety of these services over street taxis and will gain strength over time eventually displacing street taxis. Even though the price we would pay for price gouging taxis was approximately $5 when the true price should have been $2, it just felt unfair. It's an interesting question. For example, would you wait an extra 15 minutes to take a metered taxi versus a price-gouging taxi if the difference was $2? Economically, you should not, but we did. Two people waiting 15 minutes to save $2 implies that we value our time at $4/hour per person, well below minimum wage. But sometimes you just don't care as you don't want to give the taxi the satisfaction of screwing you.
Language:
First, here is a nice way of identifying and differentiating different Asian alphabets:
The Thai language is a tonal language and there are different endings for male and female. For example, to say thank you for men it's "Khap" and for females it's "Kah." You hear "Kah" pretty much nonstop when you are in Thailand as it appeared that women used it to mean thank you, ok, and just a period at the end of a sentence. Sometimes, kah was repeated multiple times "Kah, kah, kaaaahhhh."
In many ways, Bangkok reminded me of Mexico City, perhaps because this is the emerging economy city I know best. The familiar characteristics are:
1) Lack of street lights making for dark streets
2) Non-uniform sidewalks
3) Stray dogs and cats walking around
4) Metal pull-down doors on storefronts at night
5) Lots of street food carts
Interesting Thai sport that is a cross between badmitton, volleyball and soccer. It's basically volleyball with your feet on a badmitton height net. Sepak takraw
Wat Arun
Grand Palace
Our intelligent and handsome King in front of Wat Arun
Wat Pho "What foh", aka the laying Buddha that is 40 meters long and 15 meters high. Yes, we made lots of jokes about the name.
- "Don't forget to pack a rain jacket."
- "Why, what fo?"
All the temples required women to be covered on the shoulders and long pants. We discovered that not even leggings were sufficient to meet this requirement.
Khaosan Road in Bangkok. It's the place where all the backpackers go.
Traffic in Bangkok is terrible so it can often be much faster to take water taxis and these canal boats. This canal boat cost 10 baht or US$0.30 and took us about 2 miles. The ride was nuts. The boat was going full speed down a narrow canal and creating a wake that would bounce off the walls of the canal and come straight back at the boat creating huge swells. At each stop the boat would pull along side the dock but not actually tie off or dock. When we were trying to get off, the boat floated 3 feet away from the dock and we had to pull it in with our arms for all the members of our group to disembark. Highly recommended to take this canal boat either to or from the Jim Thompson house.
House along the Chao Phraya River ("Chow pry-ya")
Traffic
One of the go-to routines we discovered was to use Trip Advisor to find restaurants whenever we were hungry as our itinerary was fairly improvised which made planning beforehand difficult.
New method for tourism: General plan + phone data + Trip Advisor = flexibility
This day the highest rated restaurant was called "Maidreamin." We didn't think much of it as this method had worked several times and the restaurant was 4.5 stars and $$. When we got to the restaurant, we realized that it was not a regular restaurant, it was a Japanese anime restaurant. We wasted little time in adapting to our surroundings:
When the food came out they would draw on your plate in ketchup. I requested to have a pig face added to my dish with little pig paws on the outside and my name written. Every time that a drink was brought to the table, or a plate was delivered/removed from the table, the waitresses would lead the group in a "spell" that went something like this:
"Delicious delicious! (while drawing the outline of a heart in the air with your pointer finger)
Nyam nyam! (while doing a crying face and raising your fists to your eyes)
Beeeeeeaaaammmm!!!!" (making a heart shape with both hands and looking through the heart at the item delivered)
It was definitely over the top. In order to call over the waitress to your table, everyone had to say "Nyam nyam" in unison. We did this twice. At the end of the meal you were allowed 1 picture with the waitress doing the Beeaaaam hand sign.
Guide explaining different Thai peppers at the Flower Market
Squeezing bike through a narrow section of the back streets of Chinatown in Bangkok.
We rode our bikes over to the old Thai capital on the other side of the river
Snacks on the bike ride. Some countries are dog countries (like the United States) and others are cat countries. Thailand is definitely a cat country. They are everywhere and no one cares. For example, during our lunch on Phi Phi Island every table had what seemed like a designated cat who would patiently beg for food scraps. This cat did something similar as he probably gets food from each bike tour that comes through for the day.
So artsy...
On the dock waiting for our ferry to take us home
What we imagined...
What we actually got...
After the bike tour, we decided to spend our last night having dinner overlooking Bangkok on the river. This place was a recommendation from our tour guide called River Vibe and it did not disappoint. Highly recommended.
The last supper before returning home to 10 degree (Fahrenheit) weather on the East Coast.
This concludes my first real trip into Asia (can't count 4 days in Hong Kong). It was very different from anywhere else I had traveled before and makes me want to try new cultures beyond the familiar Latin America/Europe. I would classify it as a top three trip along with my first time to Europe and first trip to Argentina. I think my next trips have to take me to new regions. My current ideas are:
1) Japan, Korea, Taiwan
2) South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya
3) India/Bangladesh
4) Middle East: Lebanon, Dubai, Jerusalem, Turkey (after it calms down)
Comments