One week in Bangkok

On the 30th January Sally and I flew to Bangkok to meet Jodie and Paul who had freshly arrived from Europe the day before. As the title suggested, I have been in this crazy city for a week after we zoomed through the Islands in just five days. There is something about the frantic atmosphere of being in a city that makes my head spin just a little bit more than I am comfortable with. There are so many options whirling round, so many distractions, so many things to do and people to meet. So much train, boat and bus travel, so many things to buy and things to taste. There is something in the water here that has had me rushing and busy doing

It’s a strange thing for me to be alone. Last night was my first night in seemingly forever that I had a room to myself. The hotel room I reserved in the old city was not available when I arrived. The subsequent hotels I looked at were reminiscent of horror films and crawling with slimy goggle eyed western sex tourists. I met some friendly American grandmothers in a veggie restaurant who looked after my computer and luggage while I darted around the backstreets (I’m noticing a trend here of trusting vegetarians!). I quickly found the cutest room I have stayed in thus far, decorated in pink and purple with satin curtains. It was meant to be, fit for a princess, it was revoltingly feminine. The place is manned by two aging ga-toi (lady boys) with black roots and blonde extensions, they neither speak or write English so I had to check myself in and complete all their paperwork. Hilarious! And just around the corner from three vegetarian restaurants. Perfection.

Jodie and Paul left Australia just a week before me to travel around Europe. Thailand is their first stop in Asia. While I was traipsing around India Jodie and Paul have seen some of the more breathtaking sights of Europe. Cinque Terre is now on my list. Our youth hostel was amazing, so clean and beautiful, people young and old from around the world, a roof top patio with daybeds, there is not much more we could have asked for to stage a reunion and it was great.

While reviving in Bangkok we have done some major sightseeing in the hectic heat of this city. First up were the Chatuchak Weekend Markets. They are huge, the guidebook says that you will find things at this market that you won’t even know you needed, and true to its word, I found a stapler size sewing machine that I had to have. For 50 Baht I had myself the world’s smallest clothing repair device. I was so blown away by the plastic technology that I momentarily forgot that I can hand sew and that my clothes are not in need of repair. Other unforgettable souvenirs for sale were blobs of goo that splattered into recognizable forms when thrown at the ground, so funny! There were so many beautiful clothes that I couldn’t restrain, and once again my backpack is bulging. The regular purges of my belongings are beginning to get rather brutal. Yesterday I threw out a dress, my swimmers, most of my toiletries, all of my mosquito repelling devices (for someone who doesn’t get bitten by mozzies I had coils, an electric plug device, a mozzie repelling bangle, repelling wipes and cream). I also threw out a pack of cards I took around Asia last time, the pint sized sewing machine (it didn’t work properly once it came home) and a bin full of other bits and pieces that I would prefer to forget I have thrown away lest I need them. On the ‘to bin’ list are my scuba booties (which would be tragic because I love them) and lots of other clothes. I promise myself that I will be more restrained from now on.

For me, the Grand Palace is all about visual pollution (maybe that’s a bit harsh?). There is so much to look at and everything is intricate and mind-blowingly decadent. It is so beautiful but hard to photograph because there is so much going on. It is virtually impossible to take a picture a temple without catching a bit of another temple, or a statue of a dragon that looks like a dog. I took great pleasure in taking re-make photos of the ones I took here last time. It’s amazing to think we only took a handful of photos with the old film cameras, I love digital!

There are a zillion statues of Buddha, all covered in gold. On some you can see the gold leaf peeling off, on others you can repair the gold leaf yourself. I still don’t understand how Buddhist temples can be so decadent. My understanding of Buddhism is a little more gentle and simple than any of the temples I have been to visit. Down the road from the Grand Palace is the Reclining Buddha, a humongous Thai Buddha lying on his side resting his head in the palm of his hand. It is ridiculously monstrous, and I wonder the significance is of having a monument so big. I wonder how Buddha would feel about all of this fuss.

Khao San Rd is as I remember it from my trip here with Mitchell in 2002, shirtless poms and lots of drinking. Street stalls selling backpacker delights at inflated prices. Hill tribe women selling friendship bracelets, Mr Men shirts with Jihad designs on them, bootleg DVDs, computer programs, fake IDs – even a NSW driver’s license. Last time I stayed here we stayed in a different hotel on Khao San Rd every night as the previous one was always too unbearable to return to.

 

Today I finally went to my Vegan cooking class after having a fitful sleep in my pink palace. I arrived late after mistakenly going to the May Kadee Restaurant rather than the cooking school, and amazingly, instead of shouting at me in Thai and pointing in the right direction, they walked me down the street, flagged me a tuk-tuk and went with me all the way to the kitchen. They even paid the fare! I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not in India anymore.

There will be a Thai feast when I come home… either this year or next, let’s just say when I have a kitchen I’ll whip up some incredibly tasty fresher than fresh Thai goodness. Mmmm.

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The South of Siam

I had only been in Thailand for five days when we arrived in Phuket and it felt like ( have been here for weeks. Far from the traveler trail I have landed in tourist paradise with all the comforts of home imaginable available on every corner. I have bought a new wardrobe of summer clothes that I will have to send home, it’s so easy to forget when you are on the Islands that there is a dress-code in the rest of south east Asia.

We arrived in Phuket (like poo-ket) at lunch time and the heat was horrendous. I’ve come to realize that from eleven to two each day I have a melt down and I cannot function. My hands get clammy and swollen, my brain over heats and everything gets to difficult. Phuket was no different. In search of a refuge, and equipped with the travel warnings of Phuket being both the most expensive place in Thailand, and the most difficult to get public transport without spending a packet, we headed to a recommended ‘tree house’ style café. It sounded perfect.

The streets of Phuket’s Old Town were great, Chinese style shop houses that looked like the terrace houses I where I used to live in Sydney. There were also great fabric shops that made me yearn to start cutting and stitching (I have to keep telling myself that what I am doing is more fun than sewing…) and then we found it. A vegetarian restaurant. We hadn’t even arrived at the place we were aiming at but the discovery of a vegetarian restaurant is like, I can’t even think of a good enough comparison. It’s like finding a needle in a hay stack while eating a really good mango. Nothing gets much better than getting to eat at a place that gets it, really gets it, and this place really got it. While we ate the local people and staff watched us giggling and pointing. When Sal couldn’t handle the spicy noodles they laughed with her good naturedly and brought her an amazing miso style soup that was cooling and delicious. A few people approached us asking if we were half vegetarian or full vegetarian. We explained that we are proper vegetarians and they couldn’t have been more excited. A taxi driver approached us and asked if he could sit down. I couldn’t have been less impressed with the idea of having lunch with an irritating taxi driver! He asked us about being vegetarians and then he invited us to come with him to his Tao temple, free of charge. Although dubious, we went with him, he seemed nice enough, his car had AC and he was a vegetarian after all. We spent the afternoon with him and some other Tao Buddhists. It was lovely! Our day of divine intervention in Phuket ended up at the Tree house restaurant we had been aiming for. We drank lemongrass and passionfruit punch in the outdoors amidst orchids and ferns on the fourth level of an old Chinese shop house. It was a beautiful day, my soul was replenished.

Koh Phi Phi - like 'pee-pee'

I think there must be five times as many foreigners as locals in Koh Phi Phi. Maybe more, we arrived there shortly before full moon so most of the tourists were in Koh Pha-ngan on the east coast at Full Moon Parties, it still seemed pretty busy to me! The town here is situated on a narrow band of land in the middle of the island between two beaches. The buildings are really close together and if it wasn’t for the sunshine and the bikinis I may have got the labrynth of shops confused with the alleyway networks of Varanasi.

Koh Phi Phi is just a tiny island and it was hit by the Tsunami in December 2004. Virtually all the buildings and infrastructure on the island were wiped out by the waves. I met a lady on our snorkeling trip who was there when it hit. She said she clung onto a palm tree and somehow she survived. She left the island for a few years to work and save enough to build up a boat ticket business again.

I’m amazed that people would stay, or even come back after such a disaster. This was my first trip to Koh Phi Phi and it seems the general consensus is that things have changed, for better or worse I’m not sure. What I can say is that this is a serious tourist town, and they have their business down pat. Prices on this island are virtually fixed because it is so small, and the touts were out in force. We didn’t know when we arrived that there are no roads on the island, no cars and very few motor bikes. We hired a ‘taxi’ to get us to our hostel. This turned out to be a wheel barrow that our ‘driver’ threw our bags into and we walked behind! There are loads of white people working here in the tourism industry - selling boat tickets, dancing on tables, working in bars, dive shops, everywhere really. Maybe I will never have to come home after all?

The snorkeling and sight-seeing trip around Koh Phi Phi Don and Koh Phi Phi Leh was my highlight. Phi Phi Leh is the smaller of the two islands and it is protected as a national park. It’s also where they filmed the movie The Beach (fabulous book by the way). The trip was great and I swam with some amazing fish, again, fish I haven’t seen before. I also discovered that if you listen you can hear the fish underwater. I have never noticed that before, and once I did I couldn’t believe I had missed it. I was watching these huge parrot fish (probably about 20cm long) chomping away at the coral and I could hear them using their hard little mouths to get whatever it was that they were eating. It was awesome. Then I started hearing the chomping sounds before I could see the fish… I love it under there. We watched the sun go down surrounded by the legendary limestone cliffs that come jutting out of the water around the island.

We spent the evening watching muscled Thai boys fire twirling on the beach, eating and drinking and talking to nice people we met on the trip. By the time we left our Rastafarian waiter was far more pissed than we were, sitting with his friends at the next table asking us occasionally if we were ‘don’t worry be happy?’ This is one funny town.