Bangkok

Bangkok is everything I expected it to be.. hot, busy and crazy. Koh San Road is a mad house. It’s almost like going to the carnival. A street full of neon signs, food carts, and tons of stalls of tourist crap. Last night we had a great meal at a place down by the river that is popular with local Thai people. It was mostly seafood. (yuck). I ordered some spicy beef thing and it was so spicy my lips were on fire for like 15 minutes. Seriously, it easily rivaled the spiciest food I’ve ever eaten (Wilfred’s home made salsa, yum). They have over 40 varieties of chillies in Thailand and you can get some very spicy food. But not everything is spicy. We ordered family style and shared our dishes and for the most part it was really good. I even tried mushrooms, but they were gross, just like I expected, lol. I didn’t try the squid, no way!
The group I’m with for this 2 week bit is definitely an older crowd. I’m the baby, but that’s ok. My roommate, Anne, is close to my age and is a school teacher from MEL. I’m so glad she is here! Our guide, goes by the nickname of Yo, and is a local Thai woman, who seems like she is going to be really great. There is an older couple from MEL, who are very well traveled and very nice. There are older twin sisters from Hobart, who are a little clueless but also very nice. Then there are these 2 middle aged couples from America (PHX and BWI) and they are pretty annoying. I can’t figure out why they are on this trip. Instead of going sightseeing with us today they went straight to the nicest tailor in BKK to get suits made. As soon as we got on the train they busted out the big bottle of Grey Goose. All of this would be totally fine and great with me, except that they are always arguing and snapping at each other and putting each other down. (Makes me never want to get married, that’s for sure!) Why is it that married people are so hard on each other? They will show each other, their partner, their love in life, less respect that they would their friend or neighbor. Why? That makes no sense to me. Is it because they are around each other so much that all they see are each other’s faults, instead of the good things? Do they resent the other person so much for all they’ve had to sacrifice and give up and so they only see the negative and they can’t let it go? Are the mad that their partner isn’t perfect? Cause I thought it was common knowledge that none of us are. It’s like most married people I know act like they have forgotten why they got married in the first place. They lost site of the endearing, positive things about each other and just sit around an harp on each other all day. What’s the freakin’ point of that, other than to just make each other miserable?! What happen to “honor and cherish, till death do we part”? Ha, yeah right! It’s so rare (does it even exist?) that you see two married people who honestly still cherish each other and who still adore each other after say, oh I don’t know 7-10 years. It seems to me like marriage only leads to resentment and disappointment. Why is that? Why is it so easy to lose site of the good in the people closest to us? It’s like marriage gives one license to just take their partner for granted because I guess you just figure they’ll always be there, no matter how poorly you treat them. But that just seems sad to me. Sorry, forgive my marriage rant! But these couples are basically your typical obnoxious Americans. Arguing about the fundamentals of Buddhism vs Christianity at a volume that no one can ignore, in their drunken slurred speech, making nearly no sense at all. I’m just so freakin’ glad I have my ipod so I can just drown these fools out! At least our group is only 10 and we have lots of time on our own to do our own thing. I don’t like this group way of traveling so much, but it’s better than being all by myself. If I was traveling with other friends I would do it differently, though.
I wonder if Buddhist’s have the same marriage issues as American’s seem to. Probably. So I learned a little more about the Buddhist Monks. Any man can become a monk, and most do for some period in their lifetime. They can be a monk for as long or as short as they choose. It is a way to honor their parents and it is something that all Thai men should do before they get married so that they can learn how to lead a good family life. For Thai people Buddhism is almost more of a cultural tradition than it is a religion, I think. Kids, once they can read and write and are able to learn, can become like monks in training and they are called Novices. A real Monk has 26 principles that he is to uphold and demonstrate in his daily life. And female monk (although, I don’t think they exist in the type of Buddhism practiced in Thailand, but they do exist in other Buddhist societies) have 10 principles to uphold. The Novices have 8. (or maybe those two are switched around, I can’t remember) and the lay person has 5 principles to uphold in their daily life. The 5 principles are: no killing, no lying, no stealing, no adultery and no alcoholism. The last one is the one most people have problems with and Thailand has like the 5 highest rate of alcoholism in Asia. They say they only drink on 2 days a week, the sunny days and the rainy days. Buddhists basically believe that there is suffering in the world, that there is a cause to the suffering (mainly materialism) and that there is an end to suffering (enlightenment) and that there is a mean to the end (meditation and leading a good life). I hope I’m not totally butchering their religion right now, but I think that’s pretty much the gist of it. They also believe in reincarnation and that if you lead a good life you will be reborn into a favorable situation, and if you lead a bad life you will be reborn into a bad situation, which is also their way of explaining the disparity in the world today. They also believe that you can be reborn as an animal, and so they try not to kill any living thing, because it has a soul, so that means ants, bugs, nothing can be killed. That is also why during the rainy season, from Aug. – Oct., the monks stay in or around the Temple. Because in the old days they used to go out in the rice paddies to teach the people, but in the rainy season they would accidentally step on a bunch of bugs and hurt the rice plants, and so they decided it’s better for them to stay put so that they don’t harm any living thing. Although they believe in reincarnation, they also believe that there is a way to escape the cycle of rebirth, and that is the ultimate goal. To that you must sort of climb the cosmic ladder, until in your human life you reach enlightenment. Then I think you finally make it into heaven. Yikes, again, if there are any expert Buddhist’s out there, and I’m totally over-simplifying and getting things wrong please forgive me. I’m just trying to give people who might not have any idea, some idea.
Bangkok is situated on a few rivers (I think, or maybe just one big one) and a bunch of canals. It is really disorienting and I don’t have a proper map, so I’m still totally lost. We started out the day with a boat ride through the canals just sort of looking at people’s little canal side houses, some of them on stilts and stuff and got a little glimps into daily life. There sure are some interesting smells in Bangkok! We walked by a whole sale market for dried seafood, yuck city! You can smell people’s cooking from the street and sometimes it’s a spicy smell, or a sweet smell, or like a BBQ grilled smell. And then of course there’s the traffic and exhaust that you can’t escape. The traffic here is much more civilized than it is in Egypt. There are cross walks and people obey the lights. There are a ton of scooters and it strikes me as odd/dangerous that people ride them in flip flops, and often whole families on one scooter, weaving in and out of traffic. Insanity, if you ask me. And the pollution is bad, but I guess not as bad as I thought it might be. I didn’t have black boogers or anything. Although, I tried to spend as little time out in it as possible. You would see the people who sell things in the street or right by the side of the road all wore surgical masks. They know what’s up. Oh yeah, and on Monday’s almost everybody wears yellow. This is seen as a way to honor the King and the fact that he has been on the thrown for 60 years now. In Thailand each day of the week has a color and Monday’s color is yellow, and the King was born on a Monday. I think that’s the connection. Anyway, it makes everyone look like they are wearing some sort of uniform. It’s weird.
Today we visited Wat Po, which is a big temple complex that houses a huge reclining Buddha. It’s really really big. I took photos but they hardly do it justice. We saw lots of monks and we made sure to stay out of their way, lol. After that the twins and I went to the Grand Palace, which used to be the home and administration offices for the Royal Family, until not that long ago. We didn’t have a guide and it was too hot to try to do the full audio tour, so we just kind of wandered around and I really didn’t have much of a clue what we were looking at. But the architecture was pretty amazing, and we did see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I feel like I saw about a million Buddha statues today, and it was so hot that at a certain point it was like ok, no more, I don’t care if it’s Emerald, Happy, Black, Gold, Reclining, whatever, I just wanna get out of here and find something cold to drink. We got over charged for our taxi ride, but whatever it’s basically, like $1 US. I’m learning it’s often better to just let it go than to let it get you upset. Last night one of the ladies from the US tried to get a cab by herself to a bookstore and got “kidnapped” as she says, and taken on a 3.5 hour cab ride to a bunch of different stores and tailors. I think she just must not have been assertive enough. I’ve learned that you ask if they have a meter and will they turn it on. You make sure they know where you want to go, and then you make sure to say “no stopping, I’m in a really big hurry.” Sometimes, they’ll add like 50 baht, for the no stopping part, but it’s worth it. And that stuff only really happens when you get picked up outside of a super touristy place. Most cabs in the regular part of town are fine and super cheap. And you have to remember not to get mad, because they are just trying to make a living. Commissions and kick backs are a way of life here, but it is annoying to always feel like the mark. But you’ve just got to have your wits about you, I think.
When I couldn’t take the heat anymore, I went back to our hotel for lunch and a Thai massage. I got my Thai massage in a nice, dim, air conditioned little room with just a mat and a pillow in it. The first thing the lady did was turn on a TV. I thought that was really weird, and I wasn’t sure if she was doing it for my benefit or hers, but soon I realized it was definitely for hers. She was watching a Thai soap opera I think, but granted, 2 hours is a long time for a massage, and I guess if that’s what you did all day you’d get pretty bored. It didn’t bother me. I was so drained, I just closed my eyes and went to a happy place. The massage was fantastic! You put on these loose baggy pants so that she could stretch and bend you every which way. She started at your feet and ended at your head and got everything in between. It seemed like the majority of the time was spent on my legs and feet, which was great. My feet were a little bit sore from my long walks on the beach in Phuket so it felt soooo good. And the lady cracked my back, which I needed desperately. Every time I’d open my eyes, she’d say, “Is it OK?” and I’d say yes, and then she’d giggle. At the end it was just “OK, tip,” which I gladly gave her. She used her arms, feet and it seemed like it was actually probably quite a work out for her. (And Pavel, it was a million times better than the Grover Beach experience! I still feel bad about that, by the way.)
So after my Thai massage, I had about 15 min. to change clothes and wash my face before we went to the train station to catch our 6pm train to Chang Mai. We have first class sleeper accommodations, so it shouldn’t be too hard to sleep. (I hope!)