In February 2006 we visited Thailand's capital, Bangkok, on our way to Cambodia and after having walked on the Routeburn track in New Zealand. From gleaming temples to filthy canals, sweet incense to raw sewage, and spicy cuisine to deep-fried locust, Bangkok is a city of contrasts. In the same vein it seems to impart a "love it or leave it" impression on the tourist. First impressions count, and we were left feeling little desire to get better acquainted.
26 February, Sunday
We arrived in Bangkok at 3 am and proceeded to the rather less than regal quarters in the Royal Hotel. The Hotel is located near the Backpacker area of the city, near to the Grand Palace and the Ministry of Defence, and virtually on top of the Royal Square (Grand Park), the epicentre of two days of protests against the Prime Minister.
We began our morning exploration after a substantive multi-cultural breakfast of fried noodles, pancakes, and toast, washed down with mandarin juice laced with E numbers and coffee. The humidity was oppressive and local children made use of the network of canals, cooling off in the muddy water that looked like it contained every micro-organism known to man and capable of killing Westerners on contact. This was to be a public holiday and crowds started gathering on the Royal Square. Along the busy 4-lane streets vendors of food and drinks set up shop, offering such delicacies as freshly sliced pineapple or mango, slush ices in luminescent colours or deep-fried scorpions, beetles and tarantulas. Later on we saw many of them lying on thin mats or even directly on the hot side-walks having a siesta while business was slow. The traffic was relentless; trying to cross the busy streets required nerves of steel, an excellent sense of timing, and nimble feet. "Want Tuk-Tuk?" rang out the shout of the fearless men weaving in and out between speeding cars and buses with their motorbike rickshaws whenever they saw a person using their own two legs.
With just over an hour left before closing time we arrived at the National Museum on the far side of the Royal Square and had a look around its treasures. Most fascinating to us was the style of the buildings with their peaked tiled roofs and long pointed finials signifying Naga, the snake deity protecting the building. The royal funeral carriages filled a hangar-sized building and one could only marvel at the complex designs—artistic as well as mechanical—as they included mechanical contraptions to maneuver the funeral urns on to the platform 5 meters above the base. The place teemed with police and other uniformed units, men and women alike, resting in what little shade there was.
Guards at the National Museum
After the museum closed we walked along one of the highways leading to the Chao Phraya River. It was a major exertion climbing up the steps to the bridge in the midday heat. The river was busy with traffic as well: long slim barges with high-powered motors darting around at high speed; shorter, wider vessels moving more sedately—and yet larger boats gliding along. Buildings, dust and heat in all directions. Time for our own siesta.
In the late afternoon we met up with our group, a truly eclectic mix of travellers congregating from all over the world and the local guide nicknamed "Pork Pie" who was thin as a rake. After the meeting and briefing on the plan for the following day we went for a bit of group bonding and dinner on the backpacker's road, 2 corners and 8 lanes of traffic away. Dinner was an unremarkable affair in a courtyard, sampling the local Bangkok brew and admiring the slender girls advertising "Tiger Beer" in their striped "body sheaths". Outside the street was full of commercial opportunities: T-shirts, shoes, hippy clothing, joss sticks, wooden carvings, tailoring services, cheap jewellery and luggage, hair braiding, Thai massage, food, drink, McDonalds and fried beetles again.
27 February, Monday
The morning saw us trotting through heat and smog to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. On the way, Pok tried to give us some information about the shrines, buildings and sights we passed. Even though there were only 7 of us this was not easy over the continuous din of the traffic and everyone trying to get a photo of something in the opposite direction. We learned about the water goddess, the Royal Family, the orientation of the Ministry of Defence's cannons on the lawn, and later on about the various foods and fruits on offer at the markets. The Temple of the Reclining Buddha is an extensive complex of stupas, pointy tall towers, courtyards, and an ornate building which felt narrow and tight as it was housing the 46 m long reclining Buddha. It is impossible to see this immense statue as a whole as tall pillars carrying the roof are spaced at narrow intervals so that the visitor can only see narrow sections of the figure. Small altars offer business opportunities for vendors of joss sticks and lotus flowers, given as offerings by pious visitors.
The gigantic Reclining Budda, Wat Pho
Nearby courtyards housed hundreds of standing gilded Buddha statues, protected behind glass from smog and impious hands. Other open galleries showed paintings of acupuncture points on human figures. Every now and then the bright orange robes of Buddhist monks could be spotted among the international tourist crowds. Some monks clearly embraced the 21st century, sporting mobile phones and digital cameras. Invariably they ended up as the focal point for somebody's photo: Monks at the Temple, Monks admiring the architecture, monks on the road, monks on the phone.
Lunchtime saw us in a small air-conditioned restaurant near a fruit market: there we tried a variety of fruit that most of us had neither tasted nor seen before: rambutans, longans and mangosteens; all in the class of food recommended by the cautious traveller: peel it, cook it or forget it.
After lunch we embarked on a boat trip along the canals of Bangkok. But lo, forget any ideas of quietly and sedately gliding past historic builidings à la Venice. These boats meant business: at a guess about 10 metres long and maximum 2 metres wide decorated with colourful—and definitely essential—awnings, baubles, trimmings and tassles mainly in bright pinks and yellows. They are powered by outboard motors on steroids looking like those long handled food processors frothing up the dirty waterways. Houses were built on the banks of the canals and sometimes balanced precariously on stilts and promontories. Some buildings were hardly larger than a garden shed, built out of driftwood, tinsheets and whatever other flotsam may have come within reach of the builder. Others were veritable palaces in styles both modern and traditional, all sharing the same prime access to the canals. Even the smallest dwellings had potplants either set out on decking areas or attached to some other part of the building in old paint tins and such like. Clean washing was hung out everywhere and left me wondering what industrial strength washing powder might be needed to get the whites white.
Canal life: the poor
Everywhere you look the sacred and the profane mix and share: temples and small shrines are everywhere to be seen, sometimes with schools attached and the children looking out of their classrooms at life on the canal. Next door might be a floating shop, a veritable supermarket on stilts dealing in Coca-Cola, food staples, hardware and kerosene. There were people swimming in the sludgy waters, doing their laundry and even "laundry barges" could be seen.
Canal life: the middle class
We only saw two forms of animal life along the busy canals: enormous shoals of carp-like catfish which are protected and fed by locals and tourists, congregating around feeding stations where, for a few baht, white bread loaves can be bought to feed the hungry mouths. This made me feel quite uncomfortable, as those loaves certainly seemed more than fit for human consumption and it seemed a waste to dish them out to the slimy bottom dwellers in the face of human misery. But maybe it is the other way around and making and selling those loaves for the fish may generate income for people who may not otherwise have anything. We also saw 2 enormously large iguana lizards, at least 2 m in length. One was basking on a ledge and initally we did not even notice it, until it moved. It looked very much like a crocodile but made a quick escape when our boatman tried to reverse back to it to allow for some photography. From then on we knew to keep our eyes peeled and indeed managed to spot another scrambling along the bank in a neglected looking area. Soon after we were out again on the river and crossing over to the other bank where the Grand Palace awaited us.
Canal life: the wealthy
What is there to say about the Grand Palace? More golden towers and stupas, meeting halls, throne rooms, buddhas, demons and monkey gods, animal guardians, topiary, traditional buildings and buildings mixing Western with local styles. I particularly liked the use of metal chimes hanging from the roofs to scare away the birds from the open temple structures. Nothing here is truly old, though. At most 100–200 years old, it all feels as if it should be older. Despite all the outward splendour and the structurally intact buildings it did not grasp me in the way that Roman ruins do, or in the way that seeing the Angkor temples would only two days later. Is it all a bit too alien? I don't know. I suppose it is still important to come and look as you can't find out how you react by just seeing pictures.
Demons and monkey, Grand Palace
The heat and humidity took their toll and soon we returned past new groups of demonstrating people to the hotel area. The nearby air-conditioned 7–11 shop lets you forget the heat outside and provides every conceivable international drink and snack; sanitized hot dogs instead of crudely chopped raw chicken pieces in the sweltering heat. A small restaurant round the corner provided us with another non-descript meal. The ATM next to it did work, had an English menu (which is almost more than could be said of the restaurant) and returned both money and card without incident. After some more wandering around the backpacker district and honing our "street-crossing skills" we returned to the hotel for our final night in Bangkok, only to find the place packed with at least one large wedding party and thousands of protesters marching and gathering in front of the hotel. Speeches and shouting continued well into the night and after only a few short hours of sleep it was time to make our way to the airport and our "real" destination: Cambodia.
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