OK, Blogger sucks at photos and now so does Facebook. Photo sharing is becoming more frustrating than it should be. I'm behind on blogging so here is day 2:
So it turns out that the tuk-tuk yesterday was a scam (no, really?). However, I didn’t really buy anything so it worked out great for me. More on that later.
I got out pretty early, intent on walking today. I cut to the left from my hotel where I came across a noodle cart and had breakfast. The soup I had was flavored with peanut and cilantro, with wide noodles, meatballs, and bean sprouts. Basically, the only thing that is kept warm is the broth. The vendor then puts everything in a basket, dunks it in the broth a few times to heat it up, and then tosses everything in a bowl with more broth. It was quite good and again, rather inexpensive.
As I was eating I looked around at the other tourists walking by. It seems that our area is basically a backpacker’s paradise. (Warning - highly critical portion follows). While backpacking is a great way to see a country, would it kill you to shower, or maybe just comb your hair? Most of the people around me looked like they had not rolled out of bed but off the sidewalk. Some didn’t have shoes, which after parasitology and learning about the fun little geohelminths (ascaris in particular comes to mind, but more likely ancylostoma and the other skin-penetrating parasites are what they should worry about) was to me just asking for a geohelminth infection. Anyway, highly critical portion ends (I think so anyway).
I started walking, eventually finding myself on Khaosan Street. Khaosan is where the producers of WALL-E must have gotten the idea for the Axiom. Everywhere you look is sign upon sign, advertising whatever business is crammed into the multi-story buildings lining the road. In the road itself are hundreds of vendors with wares covered by either tarps or umbrellas. I picked up a dish of pad thai from a vendor and sat in a silver market to eat it.
I continued to walk, coming to the end of Khaosan and to the National Gallery of Art. I normally don’t really care about art (especially if I have to pay, I’m a philistine), but I had time to kill. Nothing inside the gallery was particularly striking – there were some paintings by the various kings, as well as old traditional Thai paintings depicting various portions of Buddha’s life. In the courtyard of the museum is a really great statue. It was called “Coyote Dance” by Manop Suwanpinta. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take a picture and there’s nothing on Google that matches (and don’t search for it as the results are generally NSFW) . Basically it was a large bronze statue of four women who had their torsos hollowed out and their faces replaced with the skulls of snakes, cattle, or gharials. At their feet were their brains, mouths, noses, and ears – all of the senses had been discarded in favor of whatever the artist was trying to condemn. It was quite good.
After the gallery, I continued to walk and ducked into a Thai supermarket. For some reason I like to go into regular stores whenever I travel overseas, and it turns out that this one was a smaller version of Super H. I went through and found a couple of things that I needed, but it turned out that they didn’t take non-Thai credit cards. Hence I spent about twenty minutes looking for an ATM that didn’t power off when I put my card in. I returned with money as the cashier and security guard were about to start a bet as to whether I was coming back or not.
Walking out again I bought some peanut cookies from a vendor and reached Pom Phrasumen Pier. Along with the pier is a small park with a large white structure built next to it. Along with a couple of monks was an expat doing yoga on the grass. At this point, I had made a big-ass circle and was down the street from my hotel, but I didn’t know that and was feeling pretty good about myself. I spent some time sitting there plotting my next move, although I wasn’t really sure where I was. While I was doing this, I overheard an expat making “arrangements” for a tourist over his cell phone. It was a bizarre conversation to hear, especially since I was only hearing one side.
I made for the pier and decided to walk along the river walk. It turns out that the Chao Phra Ya has large clumps of some sort of aquatic plant. It is a very active river and seems to be used heavily by tugs and barges. It is ridiculous to see a small boat about thirty or forty feet long towing three or four barges that are each easily twenty times its size. The walk itself is pretty well-maintained, and even contains a strip similar to what you find on Metro for the visually handicapped. During straights, the bumps are elongated, while during turns and corners they become circular, alerting walkers to change direction.
My interest in the river was suddenly broken by a sign to my left saying “United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.” Realizing that that was across the street from the hotel and that the bridge ahead was down the street from the alley upon which the hotel faced, I may or may not have been rather profane towards myself and my navigation abilities. I looped back onto the road and walked back towards Pom Phrasumen.
This is where the scam from the day before came in handy. I decided to take a tuk-tuk to the Grand Palace, but each driver demanded 100 baht (then down to 30 when I walked away). Deciding to stand for the principle of the 10 baht ride, I started walking. When I reached Pom Phrasumen, a tuk-tuk driver honked at me. It turned out to be Ot, the driver from the day before. I asked him if he would take me to the Palace for 10 baht and he agreed.
The Grand Palace is further down along the Chao Phra Ya. Admission is 350 baht. One can either get a tour guide for an additional fee or an audio guided tour, although this requires a deposit of a credit card or passport (don’t be a moron, don’t give up your passport to anyone). I paid and went in, and as luck would have it, a free English tour was starting at that point. Our tour guide was an energetic middle-aged Thai woman with a large blue golf umbrella who referred to us by our countries of origin (I was the only American). She took us through the outer and middle palaces, including the funeral home, coronation hall, temple of the Emerald Buddha (there was some legend involving lightning and a monkey I think), and a scale model of Angkor Wat.
Many of the walls of the palace courtyard depicted scenes from the Ramayana. Turns out that Thailand’s version of Hinduism is somewhat different from Indian (actual?) Hinduism. For one, Hanuman has a wife and kid (the kid is half-monkey and half-fish, don’t ask). Ravan’s image is also predominant not only in these freizes but in the architecture surrounding many of the temples. In short, let’s hope the BJP or Shiv Sena never visit Thailand.
Once the palace tour was done I started walking again. Taking a route through the flower market, I ended up in a part of town that was considerably messier than the rest of the parts I had been. Walking through this market was like being forced into a narrow tunnel which had only two possible directions – forward and back. One had no choice but to either brush next to people coming the opposite direction or get out of their way to let them pass. The market reeked of marigolds, although other flowers, such as lotus buds, were also being sold. Trash was strewn in the streets without much regard, increasing in volume until I got to the river, where it formed a gigantic pile. Finding two bridges next to each other, I sat down and tried to figure out where I was and what direction I should go in. I apparently forgot about the compass that was sitting in one of my pant’s pockets, so instead, I noticed that the map had 7-11’s marked on it. I realized that one was the one that I had passed, so I started off in that direction, back through the flower market.
Some may navigate by the stars, others by moss on the trees; I instead use convenience stores.
Counting Kwik-e-marts worked quite well until I got to the big park next to the bridge. Here, I hung a hairpin instead of a left, Walking relatively quickly as I wanted to get home and get showered, I was paced by a Thai woman who tried to make small talk. Unsure of what her angle was, I eventually got the NRS# spiel. It was at this point that I started wondering if I was going in the wrong direction. My first clue was seeing the Grand Palace and mentally cursing myself. I ended up buying a salak drink and sitting at the park for an hour. It was strange as after a little while, I somewhat forgot where I was and felt like I was sitting on the Mall.
Eventually, the sun threatened to go down on me completely, so I got up and started hiking back to the hotel. I probably was about a mile or a mile and a half away, so it didn’t take that long. Getting in, I showered and noticed that I had a message from Carolina, a girl in my group. This was the first actual contact that I had made with a person in my group. Since neither of us had eaten dinner, we walked around looking for a restaurant, eventually settling on the restaurant across the alley where we had a rather non-Thai meal (chicken and fish). I’m finding that if I’m sitting down, I don’t usually want Thai food, but if I’m walking I want to try what’s on the street. I am not sure what this means, other than that I’m probably a cheap bastard.
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