A Night in Bangkok (or two)

March 1, 2007
So the first thing I noticed when I got off the place here is the oppressive HUMID heat!! All I could think is "my Dad must have DIED when he was here" (he handles heat with the grace I would expect from a St. Bernard dog). My bags arrived safely and I exchanged some USD to Baht and shared a cab with a young kid from Calgary to Khao San Rd, the main tourist/hostel area. It was about 1am when we arrived and I headed straight into a net cafe to see if there was a message from my friend Ken who was concurrently in Bangkok; I had conveniently received an email from him saying he would wait for me at the 7/11 on Khao San rd at 1am for 10 minutes or else I could meet him later at his hostel. What serendipitous timing!! (Or according to Carl Jung, simple syncronicity :-) Oh and PS I heard a rumour that there are over 5400 7/11's in Bangkok ALONE, they are literally EVERWHERE, even more prevalent than Starbucks in Vancouver!!! We hurried over to meet Ken and sure enough he was standing there amidst the chaos! He has the EXACT same haircut as Sandy right now which is pretty funny- Sandy dropped me off at the start of the trip, and a Sandy-look-alike met me at the end! It was pretty cool and wierd to be seeing my friend from home so soon after arriving, but I also havent really felt like i'm travelling or away from home yet since I've been with him ever since I got here yesterday and he really knows his way around so I haven't had to think too hard. Most of the hostels were full when we got here so Ken let me have his bed and he slept on my yoga mat on the floor of his guesthouse- what a guy!! ( oh yeah it's mostly guesthouses here in Asia where you get your own room with a bed as opposed to hostels where there are bunks and many people in one room). We stayed up late catching up since I haven't seen him since he left for travelling in June and I don't think my body had any idea what time it was anyways.

We met up with some of Ken's other aquaintainces from Vancouver today for lunch and then toured the Grand Palace where the royal family lives as well as many famous works including the Emerald Buddha; the Palace contains incredibly detailed art and architechture. My favorite aspect of the Emerald Buddha is that he is very deceiving- he's actually made of Jade (not Emerald) and by the way everyone admires him you expect to see a HUGE statue, but he's actually about two feet tall sitting on a tower of gold and statues that is easily two stories tall beneath him! What a joker, that Emerald Buddha :-).

People are selling things EVERYWHERE in Bangkok including fruits, smoothies, pad thai and fried rice, corn on the cob, and all kinds of questionable looking street meats and things, but apparently it is all quite safe! One thing I've heard time and time again is to "eat where the locals eat" because you know it's likely to be safe, even if a bit harder on the Western digestion. If you go to a place that tries to specialize in Western food (ie hamburgers), you are more likely to run into trouble.

Tonight we splurged and went to a "Baller" restaurant in downtown Bangkok. It is a top rated vegetarian restaurant called the Tamarind Cafe and F-Stop Gallery (amazing photographic art to say the least, Phil would have been thoroughly impressed :-). The restaurant is the 3rd of the same name opened in South East Asia by a French woman and her Taiwanese partner, creating an obvious European/Chinese fusion in the fare. The food was tremendous, I wish I had written down the names of the dishes (including malaysian quesedillas with peanut sauce, spinach falafel rolled in sesame seeds, etc etc) but the experience, as my dad would say in fine culinary form, was orgasmic. The location was also prime, including a third story roof top garden overlooking Sukhumvit road (central Bangkok). For appetizers, entrees, and dessert (a three tiered chocolate waffle tower layered with rosemary infused dark chocolate ice cream), we each paid a grand total of about $15 Canadian. Well worth the splurge!!!

Travelling through REAL Bangkok (as opposed to tourist central at Khao San Rd) has helped me to appreciate the lure to come and live/work/do business here. There is SO much going on at so many levels (physical levels in terms of vertical space); it kind of feels like warping into the land of the Jetsons, but with the jungle of the ghetto city still going on at ground level. I was really expecting to see flying cars whizz by overhead. Downtown Bangkok is ritzy, flashy, colorful, yet laid back and down to earth at the same time. Seeing this side of Bangkok was my first real experience of the stark contrasts that epitomize Thailand; observing these contrasts has become a central theme to my voyage thus far.