SOUTHEAST ASIA 1: THREE DAYS IN BANGKOK

Thailand was a very different experience for me, compared to my usual travels. We had five nights and three full days in Bangkok, followed by a week at Tonsai Beach Resort in Krabi. We had decided on three days as the time necessary to recover from jet lag after flying half way around the world. Our Airbnb in Bangkok was located in the heart of the tourist district, near famous temples, and restaurants that all catered to the experience that tourists want to have while visiting the city. Smoothies, fancy coffee drinks, and massages were abundantly available, and most everyone spoke at least a little bit of English. There was not much wandering off the beaten path during these three days, but in the little that we did do, the only things that I can note here are that smoothies are not so widely available once you leave the tourist district, and all those beautiful clean streets can take a very dramatic shift just a few streets away.

We managed to squeeze a lot into those three days, starting with a long walk across the city on the day we arrived—from the end of the train line we rode from the airport to our Airbnb in the tourist district. It was only about four miles, but it frames my experience of Bangkok.

When we popped off the train at the end of the line, we exited through a sparkly mall area offering cafe snacks, coffee, and smoothies. We were given our smoothie [in a to-go cup] in a plastic bag to carry it. No one was eating or drinking their goods, just going on about their way with little plastic bags in hand with food or drink cups in them. Everything was so sparkling clean I thought perhaps we weren’t allowed to consume our drinks inside. We walked down some steps, around a corner, and down a path on the side of some other train tracks. This is where the sparkling clean ended and I felt free to drink my fresh coconut smoothie. The tracks started out lined with people selling things: carts offering street food, a few clothing racks, and trinkets. And then it all changed very quickly to little shanty shacks, where people lived, as far down the tracks as I could see. We continued all the way until a cross street finally opened an exit path. It remains my most vivid memory from my time in Bangkok. I of course took no photos here, but these images remain branded in memory: a half naked elderly man with a missing tooth sitting in his entryway (there was no door), a young child in torn clothes nibbling on a piece of candy, and trash blowing around the broken concrete planks that shifted while we walked upon them. All this only one street over from sparkling clean. A contrast that is not unique to Thailand. It is a crisis of humanity in a modern world—removed from the land which once provided for our every need.

During our three days, we visited Benchakitti Park, Lumpini Park, Wat Pho, Wat Arun, and the Bangkok Museum of Contemporary Art. We rode on a small ferry, in trains, tuk-tuks, and impatient taxis. I ate so much curry! Smoothies, remembering to ask for “no sugar”, accompanied my every meal. I woke up starving everyday at one a.m. And it wasn’t until the morning of our departure on day four that my nights and days and hunger windows finally started to line up with the time zone in Thailand.

On my first night, waking at one a.m., there was a message from a fellow adventurer, Fidget, whom we had first met in Tulcan, Ecuador when she and her hiking partner were hiking north from Tierra del Fuego, and we were cycling south on the Trans Ecuador Mountain bike Trail. Our paths have crossed a few times, and by coincidence we just happened to be in Bangkok at the same time. We decided to meet up in Benchakitti Park and walk the elevated “Green Mile” over to Lumpini Park. Benchakitti park is a beautiful, more wild, park with elevated walking paths through tall trees and over small ponds, contrasted by views of shiny skyscrapers in the distance. The Green Mile is an elevated walkway that connects the two parks. And as you guessed it is about a mile in length. It passes high over the streets below and along a canal closer to Benchakitti Park, and is another place to view the contrasts from one street to the next, from old wooden houses in a neighborhood to shiny skyscrapers in the distance. Lumpini Park is more of a traditional city park with manicured paths, gazebos, and an area with food vendors. But it is also a great place to watch water monitors stretched out in the sun at the edge of a canal.

On day two we visited Wat Pho and Wat Arun and took a small ferry across the Chao Phraya River between them. For those of you that don’t know, “Wat” means “temple” in the Thai language. Wat Pho is one of Bangkok’s oldest temples thought to have been built in the late 1600’s. While once considered to be the first public university of Thailand teaching science, religion, and literature, it is now (as of 1955) a school for Thai massage and traditional Thai medicine. It is also home to the reclining buddha, one of the largest buddha statues in Thailand at 15 meters high and 46 meters long.

Wat Arun with its prang (spire) sits prominently on the West Bank of the Chao Phraya River, its overall shape not all too different from that of the Eiffel Tower. I can’t help but contemplate the similarities between temples, pyramids, and mountains—and the human affection for them—all spiring into the clouds in a grand erectness as if to touch the heavens. Wat Arun was my favorite temple—it is a site to behold, with its decorated facade, completely covered in carvings and tile work from its base to its spire.

On our last day, we visited the Bangkok Museum of Contemporary Art. One thing that stood out to me was the figurative work painted in a traditional Thai style, featuring buddhas, chakras, a dancing female figures wearing traditional Thai outfits all adorned with pointy headwear. During the second part of our time in Thailand, while wandering the beaches of Tonsai and Railay I started noticing spiraling sea shells that came to a point, and I wondered if this was the inspiration for the pointy headwear on the figures in the paintings.