Bangkok

If I had written a blog entry every ten minutes today, I still wouldn't remember everything I wanted to put down. If I wrote a hundred entries on today alone, I still wouldn't be able to convey everything I wanted to convey.

I thought early in the day that I wish I had a video camera, because no text and no photographs can get across what it's like to be in Bangkok. But even a video camera wouldn't be good enough, there's not only the sights and sounds, but the smells and the feel of the place. And the tastes, but I'll get to that. We got here last night and the first that struck me once I got out of the airport was the sheer amount of exhaust. Cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, buses, tuktuks, every vehicle imaginable is on these streets, and you can SMELL it. This morning was similar, but then you start to notice other smells. The food cooking all around you, most of it unidentifiable, the occasional cigarette, the antiseptic smell of a clean store you walk past. Did I mention how much food was on the street? This place makes NYC look like a podunk hillbilly town with its street vendors alone. It's absolutely amazing, not just food and drink, but art, chotschkes, shoes, sunglasses, wallets and purses, and a million other things I've already forgotten were out there. Sure, those items can be found on the street in the US too, but not to this amazing level of abundance. We walked for a bit this morning, being overwhelmed by the busy-ness of the city. It's not just all those vehicles I mentioned earlier, it's the pedestrians, it's the tuktuks and motorcycles squeezing their way through the pedestrians, it's the pedestrians walking around the cars and vans to cross the street, it's the trucks dropping off goods for vendors while motorcycles and pedestrians both try to get around them. Eventually, after asking directions a couple of times, we got to the river. It's a pretty wide river, fairly choppy at times but mostly calm, and extremely busy with boat traffic, both commercial and private. Then we got on our first of many boats of the day, and it's interesting, because the pier is floating too. You have to watch your step. Took that boat to Wat Pho, an absolutely enormous temple complex and one of Bangkok's three big Wats. It may be the most beautiful place I've been in my entire life. The Reclining Buddha in the main building is on a scale that I can't describe, and unfortunately my camera was being finicky, too. That reminds me, I should mention, Johnny B. taught me a little bit of more advanced camera stuff today. Nothing fancy, just the basics of shutter speed and aperture control, but in the day of auto settings on digital cameras fewer and fewer people are using that kind of thing. I didn't play with the aperture at all, but moving the shutter speed around really helped some of my pictures. So I wandered this absolutely gorgeous temple complex taking pictures, looking at the cats (one or two had lost parts of their tails, poor things), noting the amazing amount of detail in the art, the literally dozens (hundreds?) of golden Buddhas... there's no way to describe it. The pictures aren't NEARLY enough, and the text obviously isn't going to match up. Suffice to say it was absolutely amazing. In the main building, with the Reclining Buddha, I paid 20 baht (60some cents) for a donation and dropped coins into the pots as I walked along. I wasn't really sure what the proper procedure was, so I just tried to mimic the people around me and prayed (as much as I ever do) in my head to myself. All over the complex there were people praying and prostrating, but not being sure of the etiquette I just stayed out of the way. I regret that I can't explain better what it was like, but wow. I also stopped at the gift store to see if I could get a foo lion to match Alex's back home, but no such luck. (Yeah, they had foo lions and dogs on the temples in Thailand. It was interesting throughout the day, seeing the Japanese influence, Chinese influence, Western influence, and the native Thai stuff mixed in. The Prang – you'll see later on – was even influenced by Cambodia). From there we headed back towards the boats and just near the pier Denny let us loose to get lunch. John, Vicente and I got pork, rice and veggies from one of the vendors there, John even got a picture with him. 30 baht, so about a dollar, plus another 30 for a sprite (John had a beer, I had a sip, it was alright, nothing special). VERY good pork and rice, though. Absolutely delicious. We walked around a bit more, I had a fish ball from Anh (weird texture, but tasty once I got used to it), picked up a small leather pouch for 169 (in retrospect I should have haggled, but then again it was still cheap), Allen got a... well, let's call it a “fertility totem.” Yeah, we'll go with that. Then it was time to get on another boat and head to Wat Arun, another one of Bangkok's big Wats, and one that Denny hadn't been to yet. It was smaller, but also gorgeous. A lot more white in the buildings. Also, here we learned a lesson. There were some of those stick-your-head-in-the-hole-take-a-picture things. Allen did so, and only found out afterwards it was 40 baht. “So, Allen, what did we learn today?” “Don't do ANYTHING in Thailand, it costs money.” Worth it for the humor though. Wat Arun used a lot of broken pottery in the designs, gorgeous effects and really interesting. We climbed a Prang, this massive tower with probably the steepest steps I've ever been on. Easy after Haleakala, but still impressive steps. Again I was struck by the sheer level of detail, taking pictures of the surrounding towers every square inch had some intricate design or small statue or something. Went down (carefully) and explored the ground level some more, saw some interesting ants, beautiful stuff with plants, rocks, and water, again, just gorgeous all around. Nikki bought a display case with some beetles, a true bug and a scorpion, which was amusing. From there it was back to the boats, this time to a longer, narrower boat (which was not nearly as easy to get into or sit in) which took us on a tour. Bangkok's very interesting, there will be a string of poor-looking houses with a rich one stuck in the middle. I'm sure there's neighborhoods and lower-class areas and upper-class areas, but there also seem to be some outliers. We could really tell on this boat trip how much the locals rely on the river, too, the houses have their mailbox on the river, every house seemed to have its own boat (and many had a “driveway” of sorts), kids played in the river and jumped down from bridges into it, plants grew floating on the top of the water, people fed the staggering amount of fish. We stopped at the Royal Barge Museum, I was the only one who paid the 100 Baht fee to be allowed to take pictures. These barges were absolutely huge, amazingly ornate, with beautiful figureheads (including a multi-headed dragon with heads growing out of its heads. I'm not kidding.). The lighting was poor and the subjects ENORMOUS, but I took the best pictures I could. That took maybe 20-30 minutes, it wasn't very large, maybe just over half a dozen boats. Then we got back into our longboat and headed into more “back alley” canals, seeing lots of local dwellings, some restaurants and bars, some sort of dance studio/martial arts school that tried to show us an exhibition, but we declined. At some point along the river, our engine stalled. The next boat passing us stopped and gave us a jump. In the middle of the river. I'm not kidding. Allen got some pictures, too, it was awesome. So after that we went along, though the boat stuttered a bit. Around that time my camera batteries finally died too, so sadly no more pictures for the rest of the ride. It was truly striking how lush the riverside was, even in the middle of the city there was practically a jungle growing. It must be a beautiful place to live. We got off that boat, thanked our pilot, and were set free. A group of us explored for a bit, constantly considering dinner but never getting around to it. If anyone bought anything, I didn't notice. Again, the traffic, the weaving, the smells... oh, I forgot to talk about the feels of the city. See, Bangkok's crowded. Not only crowded, but humid. I mean, humid. Very humid. It's just one more layer of the experience that I can't explain to someone who hasn't been here. It's so muggy, the sky is incredibly smoggy: in fact, I just saw the sun for the first time today. (Oh yeah, it rained briefly when were at Wat Pho. Forgot to mention). I almost bought some juice, and the fruit looks OH SO DELICIOUS – but we're not supposed to buy anything we can't peel, so I had to pass on some fantastic looking strawberries, grapes and cherries, which was very depressing. Eventually we made our way back to the hotel, I raced Nate up the stairs and started this blog entry because I have so much to say and am afraid I've forgotten half of today anyway.

This is what David would say the journey is all about: experiencing the other. Encounter with a capital E. Something truly different. I think after this, Western Europe's going to feel like Cleveland Heights.

Saturday, January 23rd, roughly 5:15-5:40 PM local time

PS, roughly 5:45 PM local time

I forgot to mention the dogs. Bangkok's fully of dogs: shaggy dogs, skinny dogs, puppies, old dogs. Mostly adorable. Our hotel has two small guys, I'm not sure of the breed, in fact. At Wot Aran, there were two puppies playing, biting each others faces lightly, digging for food, it was ADORABLE. Kaoz, you would have loved it. On our walk back we saw a woman selling puppies too, they were playing at first but then sleeping all in a pile in a dolly basket. Also adorable.