Welcome to Thailand: hello, change of scenery

Paul, Henry, and I arrived in Bangkok mid-afternoon on December 6th by way of Nairobi. Flying into Bangkok was a bit of a head trip. For one, we could see a bit of the evidence of the recent flooding on the outskirts of town. I read that Bangkok was spared most of the damage of the flooding because the government diverted the water and flooded a lot of suburbs and cities nearby instead. We didn’t see too much water and, to be honest, some of that could easily have just been rice farms, but whatever the case I saw a lot more water around a huge metropolitan city than I would have expected somewhere else.

On that subject of huge metropolitan cities: Bangkok is gigantic. I’m not sure of the exact population but it might be the biggest city I’ve ever been to—and I’m including New York in that list. It’s like a mixture of the tall buildings everywhere from New York mixed with the spread-out-ness and car culture of LA, all wrapped with an Asian flair. Oh yeah, and they drive on the left side of the street too. Who still does that?!

Anyway, the three of us arrived and waited around near the baggage claim for Patrick who was on a different flight from Addis Ababa which arrived only a short while after us. We met up with him and then took the sky train into the heart of town. It was when we were on the sky train that the level of development really hit home for me. We were flying through at speeds of probably close to 100 km/h and from the windows we saw ten-lane highways, huge condominiums, shopping malls seemingly every twenty seconds, and (my personal favorite) Manchester United billboards all over the place. (MU has a big following in Asia and many companies are official sponsors so they use MU logos and images in their ads.)

Well, we got to the heart of town and rather than try to figure out the elevated train, we decided to walk what looked on the map to be just a few blocks. Well, it was a bit more than a few blocks but we made it and found a hotel to check in to. Patrick went and bought a SIM card for his cell phone and we ate our first Thai dishes. I got a Pad Thai (a bit cliché, I know) and it was fantastic. I had a few more Pad Thais from this women over the next couple weeks but this was definitely the best one. I think it was so good because it was my first meal in Thailand as well as my first taste of Thai food in about two and a half years.

After we ate, we decided to walk around some and retraced our steps a bit back towards the sky train as we’d seen some cool eateries and bars near a canal that was a few blocks that way. Well, we got there and the food stand was just that: a little stand with some ingredients, a few tables, and a few coolers filled with soda and beer. Well, we pulled a table out behind the stand near the canal. We ordered another plate of food, a few beers, and started playing some euker (a card game I picked up from other PCVs in Cameroon). Well, the light was getting pretty dim so we moved back closer to the stand and snagged a table there under a light. We saw an older white man sitting at another table chatting with the women there in Thai and sipping on a beer himself.

Well, we continued our game of euker and the woman from the stand came over at one point and looked on a little incredulously. Then, she started laughing and rattled something off in Thai towards us and went back to cooking. The white dude behind us laughed a bit and told us that she thought we were gambling. We asked him to explain to her that we weren’t gambling but merely playing a game. He shrugged it off and said it didn’t really matter because the police wouldn’t bother this woman. I did a bit of a double-take and asked something like, “Why would the police care if we played cards?” To which he responded, “Well, gambling is illegal here and if the police wanted to they could come up and arrest you or extort a big bribe from you for gambling because how are you going to prove you weren’t?” He really shrugged it off when we asked if we should quit playing or not which later made me wonder if playing cards was really such a big offense. (Note, however, I still have not seen anyone else playing cards in Thailand—foreigner or otherwise.)

About that time my buddy Joey from college called Patrick’s phone (I’d left the number at the hotel) telling me he was waiting for me at the hotel. Sweet! Joey has been travelling for over a year now and was most recently in India. I told him a while back that I’d be in Thailand in December so he decided to meet up with us for a bit. Well, he dropped his stuff off in Paul’s and my room and then we headed back to the bar/eaterie. By the time we got back the white guy was sitting at our table (stole my seat!) and was giving Paul and Patrick loads of advice and tips about Thai culture, customs, laws, etc. I found out his name was John and he was Australian, but he’d been living in Thailand for a very long time, he wouldn’t really say how long, only that he was on his third Thai wife. Some of his advice for us was pretty bizarre, though. For example, “don’t insult a ladybody, she’s much more beautiful and stronger than you are,” and “don’t rip, throw, or kick the Thai money, because the king’s face is on it!” Well shucks, I sure do love just kicking money.

After a while of talking with John we decided to head back to the hotel and turn in for the night. Paul and I split a room with Joey crashing on our floor and then Patrick and Henry split the other room.

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The next day, I was the first awake at about 10. Jet lag will do that to you but luckily this was about the worst we got of it. We ate some grub and then went to the Citibank Bangkok office because Henry needed to pick up his new ATM card which he’d arranged to have sent there for him. Well, it wasn’t there and they just told him to call the US hotline and ask what to do. So we walked around a bit and I was incredibly tempted to hit up a Starbucks, though it was on the other side of the 8-lane street. Passed. We found a really cool outdoor market and basically sport-ate our way through it. Some of the things I remember eating: sushi, Thai sausages, grilled chicken, mangoes. We wandered around this sprawling market for a while, got lost, and when we came out the other side we just kept on walking. I think we walked for a ways through one of the financial districts before finding some noodle soup to snack on.

Eventually we found our way back to the elevated train and took it back to the hotel where we grabbed a couple beers, played some Settlers of Catan and relaxed. We started chatting with a French guy named Julian who was also staying at the hotel and he was at the tail end of a month-long trip that took him through Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.

After chilling for a while we started hearing a faint cheering sound which was to be the main part of our night’s entertainment: Thai boxing. At one of the mall’s near our hotel they set up a rink and have Thai boxing matches every Wednesday. So we walked over and looked down on it from the platform of the elevated train. It was some pretty cool stuff and an American woman was even one of the participants. She lost, though, I think she took a few too many kicks to the guy. We started getting bets going about who would win each match: either the red trunks or the blue trunks. We also stipulated that we had to chose our corner before the match actually started, so we were basing the majority of our judgment on physical appearance, coolness of name, and how well they performed their dance before the match. Oh yeah, I had it down to a science as the players I supported won almost every time.

After a bit of that, we walked around and found some more food. I was being restless and kept looking for different food and ended up walking quite a ways. Finally we found a place that looked decent but as soon as we approached these shirtless guys sitting outside near our table were trying to get us to buy the food there. We kept asking them how much the dishes were and the prices were fluctuating incredibly. I mean, c’mon. If you’re going to scam us, at least be smart and consistent about it. We ended up leaving and going back towards the hotel and found something to eat around there. We talked with Julian a bit more and then found out that he had to wake up at 4 to catch a cab to the airport. Well, it was almost 1 at this point so we all decided it’d be a good idea to crash. (Un?)Fortunately, Joey and I weren’t that tired so we decided it’d be a good idea to call a bunch of our friends from back in Seattle and Phoenix using Gmail Call (1 cent a minute!). Eventually ,we got tired enough to go to sleep and Patrick told us the next day that they’d heard us giggling from the next room until about 3 am. It’s still hard for me to tell whether this was jetlag or just Joey and I whenever we get together. Probably both.