So the flood waters have not yet reached our hotel, but as a precaution we are being "evacuated"....to a beach resort. Yeah, I'll take evacuation any day over the strange, smelly mess that is Bangkok any day.
As someone who has always thought that jet lag was little more than a whiny theory, I am here, four days after landing on the opposite side of the world, to say emphatically that jet lag is legit. I'm still not certain that I'm over it since I was falling asleep in my noodles around 8pm today, and anyone who knows anything about me would feel comfortable with my analysis that the only possible way for me to wake up without an alarm clock at 6am three days in a row is due to severe jet lag. Turns out an eleven hour time difference is serious stuff, yo.
I landed at the Bangkok airport around 11:30 local time on October 21 and by some stroke of serendipitous luck ran into a girl at passport control who ended up in the hotel room down the hall from me. Her name is Jenna. Let's take a moment to count the unusually high number of people in my life with "Jen" as the first three letters of their name? Maybe I should call Guinness, 'cause Ima thinking we've got ourselves a record.
The hotel the group has called home for these past four days is the Louis Tavern, and is situated in a fringe-y area of Bangkok that does not appear on the ordinary tourist map. So ask me where exactly I am in Bangkok, and you'll get no real response.
I've explored the city a bit with various groups of new friends, but not too much since we've got a tightly packed schedule full of seminars and classes and the like which doesn't leave much room for sightseeing. I've heard it called "Beautiful Bangkok," but trust me when I say that a good portion of the capital is downright gross. Don't get me wrong though, I'm definitely happy to be experiencing a city that is so vastly different than any city in America save for maybe Hooverville, circa 1932. It's eye-opening and fascinating all at once.
Street vendors are a huge part of Thai culture, and you can hardly walk three feet without bumping into one after the other, each serving something completely different than the next. If you can get past the pungent sewage odor permeating every square inch of the city, and the fact that you are eating food served by a sweaty man with a cotton candy cart, the food is actually quite tasty. Some of it identifiable as noodles with chicken, or curried things on sticks, while others are totally unrecognizable and you must rely only on smell to tell you whether to give it a shot or run far away. There are stray dogs everywhere. Everywhere. And I'm finding it difficult to distinguish what is a real store and what is just a storage room for the giant vat of oil used to fry up the plantains on the corner.
Side note: a huge bag of freshly fried plantains for 20 baht (translation: approximately 64 cents) is fantastic! And my delicious dinner tonight was $3. Can't beat that!
There are three 7-Elevens on the barely half mile stretch of road in front of the hotel. Why 7-Eleven, you ask? No idea, but if you're looking for bottled water, y'ain't gonna find it there. Floods have caused a lot of panic buying, and even the Thais won't drink the water so we've got to find it elsewhere.
I've had noodles and chicken in some sort of broth from another cart on the street, and it was ten times better than anything we've gotten to eat from the hotel. My roommate and I got it as take-away to eat back in our room and in a break from the traditional American Styrofoam take-out containers, or even the cardboard Chinese boxes, this food was given to us in clear plastic bags. Yes, bags. One bag with the noodles, chicken and some sort of crunchy stick things; one bag for the scalding hot broth; two little bags gumband-ed together each with salt and chilies for seasoning. It's an assemble-yourself kind of meal. Barely a pinch of the chilies made the stuff so hot that I couldn't imagine what kind of death I would have been in for had I chosen to add the whole bag.
Traffic signs and lane markers are merely an ignored suggestion here, and it's not uncommon to see a motorbike flying down the shoulder of the road. Crossing the street is a whole new kind of danger. And its best to keep your eyes off the view out the front windshield on a taxi ride lest you get the distinct feeling you and your driver will soon be closely acquainted with the tailpipe of the van in front of you.
We took a trip to the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha the other day. Our tour guide had a voice so soft that even as I watched her lips move, I had no clue what she was telling us. The heat and humidity were off the charts, and it was all we could do to find the next little bit of shade before we melted into little puddles of white-people-ill-suited-for-tropical-weather.
Here's what I learned:
* "Wat" means "temple."
* The whole shebang is one big tourist trap and walking through is like being part of herd of cattle. I half expected someone to yell "mooooo!" I shoulda done it. Woulda been legendary....okay, maybe not legendary, but at least marginally amusing.
* It was quite beautiful, with lots of intricate glass- and tile-work lining the walls of each building.
* Pants = no admittance to certain areas. I couldn't actually get in to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (which is technically jade, not emerald) since I was wearing pants. I was told it was pretty much the same thing as the other temple that I was able to get into in that there was a million people and it smelled overwhelmingly of feet (you had to take off your shoes before entering). Pictures are coming soon.
Tomorrow morning will be the end of the road for us in Bangkok (or Krungthep as it is called here....look up the full Thai word for Bangkok and tell me you don't wonder why that's necessary) as tomorrow we are packing up and heading to a beach resort on Chon Buri a day earlier than planned on account of unpredictable flooding.
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