lifeofpri # 7 - Happy Beginnings in Bangkok
Bangkok has a very special place in my life - it’s the first non-Indian city I flew to on business, and the first city I explored all by myself. There’s also something about exploring a place on a time-budget where every tiny experience feels far more exaggerated and memorable - like my first time in Bangkok.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that my husband and I are very different type of travellers, but going to Bangkok with him in 2013 was a wildly different experience compared to the times I’d been there on business.
Travelling through the city as a first time solo traveller in the pre-”smartphone with cheap internet” era really had a charm of its own.
Bangkok in 2011
A Thai airways flight from India to Bangkok makes for a fine anthropological study on the average Indian man. It was the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on WTC. I landed in the Suvarnabhumi International Airport, and noticed that there were two queues at the immigration counter to get a visa on arrival - free and fast track.
Turns out the free line isn’t exactly free - it was still 1000 baht (back in 2011), and another 200 as a token of gratitude for the officer. But the good thing was that the amount was fixed and they were quite open about the bribe.
Bribery is a crime in some countries, but in India, it’s a fundamental part of our existence. You actually start missing it when it doesn’t exist (story for another time).
But what makes bribery painful is the uncertainty around whether a bribe can work in certain cases or not, and what the appropriate amount is. With that being taken out of the equation here, you don’t even realise it’s a bribe.
Except of course, they don’t give you a receipt to expense and the lines are insanely long for a business traveller to be bothered, so I took the fast track.
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When I got out of the airport, the first thing that caught my eye were the brightly coloured taxies - pink, green, yellow, orange and blue. There was also the black taxi which is your limo service, that I’d been pre-warned to avoid.
While the cab from the airport to Sukhumvit (where I was to stay) didn’t cost me much, I’d spent more on surcharges and tolls that we found every 5-10 Kms.
It was a long drive from the airport to the city, but as I entered town in the wee hours of the morning, Bangkok was quite a sight - the pavements were lined with street-vendors selling breakfast to early morning office-goers.
Colourful cut fruits, eggs, meat skewers, fried nibbles, coffees and so much more was being doled out of tiny carts into clear plastic bags for people to take away. The fragrance of the food infused with the humidity of Bangkok was worth waking up to.
There are some cities in the world that are better experienced living there rather than as a tourist, and Bangkok is definitely one of them. In Chris Baker’s A History of Bangkok, you get an understanding of how Bangkok was built over three centuries with migration from various parts of south east Asia and China.
It’s evolved as a service industry full of small and big entrepreneurs, which is how most migrant cities in the world develop. Given its natural landscape and tropical climate, it also makes for a great tourist destination. Although I haven’t travelled extensively across the country, I really wanted to live there the moment I saw it.
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This trip to Bangkok was filled with so many firsts - I didn’t know you needed your room keys to ride some elevators and be taken to your floor, I didn’t know how to operate an espresso machine in a hotel room and I had lugged cup noodles, just in case I wouldn't find something to eat.
So, this trip was truly a coming of age experience for me.
I had a free day at hand, and I decided to consult the lady at the reception for recommendations for my day’s adventure. She handed me a map and marked out a few touristy places. She even called me a cab - a red one this time.
The cabbie asked for 200 baht but like a typical Bangalorean, I insisted on turning the meter on. My cab ride to the Grand Palace was 169 baht, 20 baht for being “radioed in” by the hotel (a platform fee, if you will) and another 45 baht for the expressway toll.
Over time, I’ve learnt that unless you can speak a bit of Thai, it’s better to stick to metered taxies (or Ubers now maybe?) else negotiations can be stressful. I remember being stuck in this massive jam once (the day of the king’s birthday), and our tuk-tuk driver being so angry for making us take him there.
Anyway, back to 2011 - it was 12:30pm when I arrived in Phra Nakhon, the central district of Bangkok. I was just about to enter the Grand Palace, but some random dude at the entrance told me that it wouldn’t open till 3pm.
I’d read somewhere that this is one of the many scams in Bangkok - people telling you that temples are closed due to the full moon, etc. so I walked on without a second thought.
As I kept walking, I found Wat Pho, quite by accident. I entered from the back entrance, so it took a while before I found the shrine. The architecture was such that you could walk in and out of the shrine along the length of the reclining Buddha rather than enter into it in a perpendicular direction like in most Indian temples.
After I exited Wat Pho, I continued walking aimlessly in the hope of finding the market area. You see, I had a physical map but I didn’t know how to read it. Instead, I decided to follow the smell, which was clearly easier than following the map.
I knew instantly when I’d arrived at the market - oh the horrendous smell of rotting fish. I wasn’t a fish eater at that point, so I sprinted through the market. I ended up at a ferry station, and quickly jumped onto a ferry that promised to take me away from the smell faster than my legs could carry me.
Unexpectedly, I had arrived at Wat Arun, or the temple of dawn, across the river. You needed to be appropriately clothed here, although not for religious reasons. You’ve got to climb up this steep and narrow flight of iron stairs to get to the top of the pagoda from where I got the most spectacular view of the Chao Praya river and Bangkok.
Chao Praya is the lifeline of Thailand, around which several cities, including Ayutthaya, some of them were abandoned as the river changed its course over the last few centuries. This river is a unifying force of Thailand that helped consolidate the north with the coastal region that was increasingly flourishing from trade 17th century onwards.
I was back in the market I’d escaped just an hour earlier, where I ended up splurging on souvenirs. Some of these markets in Thailand, especially the Chatuchak market, are so tempting, even people like me who hate shopping, succumb to the pressure.
Also, this was among my first few trips abroad so I still had that weird desi pressure to lug back presents for everyone. I’ve never understood why it’s such a big deal especially in the post 90s India. Ridding myself of this guilt over the years, has really elevated my travel experiences. I focus on bringing back memories now.
Having filled my bag to the brim, I was ready to call it a day and head back to my hotel, except I had a whole adventure ahead of me.
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I caught a ferry back to the mainland, and walked to Wat Pho to catch a taxi back to my hotel. But I didn’t have much luck. I found a bus stop nearby. I asked a lady sitting at the stop if I could get a bus from there to my hotel.
Instead, the dude next to her got all enthusiastic to help me out. He pointed to a spot on the map from where I can take a ferry all the way close to my hotel, but I’d have to take a tuk tuk to the ferry station. He even kindly stopped a tuk tuk for me, and negotiated a 40 baht fare in Thai.
Just before I hopped on, he said he’d even negotiated a nice deal for me which included a visit to the black buddha temple (which is auspicious to visit on the full moon) and to a Thai expo (since it was the last day) before I am dropped off to my ferry station.
At this point, I grew a little uncomfortable and suggested that I was fine to walk on and take another tuk tuk further along. He decided to guilt trip me by saying how he’d negotiated a great deal just for me so I reluctantly accepted his unwanted hospitality.
The tuk tuk man took me to this black Buddha temple, and it was a rather nondescript place in a shady looking neighbourhood. I went in, took one look at it and was about to head out when one more helpful dude emerged.
He tried chatting me up asking where I came from, where I was headed, how long I was in Bangkok, etc. I faked not being able to speak English and walked out.
When I came back to my tuk-tuk, the guy asked me where I wanted to head next. I was exhausted by this point, so I asked him to take me to the ferry station. But he was adamant on taking me the exhibition. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I told him I’d get off and pay for my ride right here.
He laughed on my face, said “do what you want” and drove off. He didn’t even take money from me, which was rather bizarre. A few years later, I saw this documentary about tourist scams in Bangkok, which then explained the whole thing.
I was a little creeped out at this point, because he left me stranded in an empty alley. I had no clue where I was and I still sucked at reading the map. I started walking in a direction that I thought would lead me to a main road.
I found a tiny shop, where I asked the lady in there how I could get to my hotel from where we were. She drew the way to a bus stop that would take me close to a hotel. After a 20 minute wait, I got a bus - with AC and three flatscreen TVs.
I got dropped off at the Asoke station, and miraculously found my way back to the hotel after a 5 minute walk.
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I had some time before dinner, so I decided to treat myself to an in-room massage. A short plump middle-aged woman arrived 20 minutes after I’d called. She gave me a massage on the bed. I had all my clothes on.
I was generally feeling quite relaxed after my adventurous baby’s day out until the woman started acting a bit strange. She told me that I am very curvy and that she likes the shape of my body. I’d heard about happy endings from colleagues before, so I assumed it must be a dance to get me to pay for one?
She asked if I was living alone in the room, and that’s when I slightly panicked trying to remember if I’d put all my valuables away in the safe or not. Then I decided to sleep off and enjoy the massage rather than engage in this pointless banter that all salon and spa ladies want to engage in.
When I woke up at the end of the hour, my body had been renewed for the evening.
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My colleague and I headed out for an evening stroll and dinner. We walked to Soi Cowboy, which is basically this street full of go-go bars. As soon as you enter the street, the lights, the people and the whole ambience hits you like gaudy make up.
There’s nothing subtle about it.
Plenty of fully naked women stand on the street and try to lure you into their establishments. But they’re also a bit racist, because their level of enthusiasm is directly proportional to the colour of your skin.
While I was amused by the experience, it was remotely not sexually arousing. I was reminded of Mulakkaram in Travancore, and how propstitues were among the few women excepted from paying the breast tax.
Temptation > Full exposure?
After walking the length of the street, my colleague and I settled down at an outdoorsy bar with a view. The waiters there did not seem happy to serve us. We drank and ate typical tourist nibbles - fried and nondescript.
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The rest of the trip was filled with more local food, and the food tasted nothing like I’d eaten at Benjarong in Bangalore. Another upside to a business trip, as I’d mentioned in my piece about Vietnam is being “taken care of” by colleagues and enjoying an authentic local fare without having to speak the language.
When I travelled there with the husband after a couple of years, we definitely had a few memorable meals - once by the Chao Praya river, a Mediterranean dinner at Seven Spoons, another time at a humble working-class canteen and a post-lunch fried banana snack off the street.
But if I had to sign off with a post-card memory of Bangkok for me - its buying cold coffee from this really well-dressed and well-made-up middle-aged lady who was selling coffee in a cart. Everyone is so well-dressed, it’s hard to tell what anyone does for a living in that city.