It seems as if I have just gotten used to this city when I have to leave it. Coming to Thailand is not like stopping over to your aunt's place for family dinner and watch the kids play. It takes a while to get used to the smells (one part sewage, one part the best damn roasted chicken you've ever smelled), the city streets (there are names for them? Where?), the insane traffic (Rules? Where we're going, we don't need "rules"), and, most importantly, the language.
If you plan on coming to Thailand, be sure you take into consideration one very important piece of advice. Don't listen to the book guides or the friendly in-flight advice video who tell you that there are English speaking tourist spots that will be willing to help you along your misbegotten way... there aren't any. The tourist friendly storefronts you find littered all throughout the city cannot be distinguished from any other scammer out there trying to capitalize on your dumb American ass. They tell you not to take a taxi that doesn't turn on its meter when you get in or without negotiating a price first but, after sitting in a metered taxi for an hour while the legit cabbie tried to make a U-turn onto the main strip in after work traffic, the guy who quoted us a 100 baht and got us to the same destination in less than 15 minutes sure seemed like a pretty stand up guy.
It's very easy to be paranoid in this city. Busy streets crowded with people can thin into dark alleyways where stray dogs eat refuge from the gutters in a very quick step. No one speaks the English or, if they do, it's scary good English (which is usually a scammer). At the Grand Palace the other day, a woman wearing a very nice white cotton shirt with an emblem of the state on it insisted she was an "official" and was trying to get us to come back tomorrow for a guided tour. It was our own fault for stopping to listen to her spiel; ten minutes later, we were walking though the front doors with no need for a tour at all.
But that's how it is here. There's no conceivable way for any sort of authority to crack down on an entire country of people making a buck at the expense of uneducated tourists so the beat goes on. And there's no use being an uppity tourist in these situations; you just try and learn to roll with every punch that gets thrown your way. The truth is, when it comes to Bangkok, the only rules to keeping your shit together is to take only the kind of chances you are willing to take. Whether that means getting out of a taxi that refuses to put its meter down on the side of the road where there is no street lights or trusting that a complete stranger who doesn't understand you will get you where you need to be without taking you into some back alley where his very intimidating friends try to sit you down and sell you Armani patterned suits made to order, well... then so be it.
The biggest example I came to find in the way Bangkok is follows something I noticed today. Everywhere you go, there are pirated copies of DVDs. I mean EVERYWHERE. Thousands of titles, thousands of stores hawking them. There was a store we walked by today where the walls were lined with racks of photocopied slipcases. Yes, these things are "illegal". But who is going to stop them? The cops? They're legitimate business owners. And there are MILLIONS of stores like this. There's no international distributors to drive the illegal business out because they can't compete with the cost. And so, billions of DVDs sold on the streets of Thailand. And some jackass company in America wants you to think that stealing DVDs is like stealing a car so you won't do it. Trust me, no piddly amount of pirated movies in the US swapped between friends with a modem and a DVR can even come close to comparing to the sheer amount of revenue lost per year by those companies to the Asian black market. It's a joke to even think of it. Besides, at the exchange rate of $0.03 to 1 Baht, you are an idiot if you pass up a region 1 PSP at the prices they are offering.
Speaking of things that are weird: I've noticed that almost all of the skin products here come with whitener. So, whereas white folk in the States put an emphasis on cultivating the perfect tan, the tan folks in foreign countries put an emphasis on looking whiter. Odd, yes? Food for thought.
Oh, and another thing! There was a lot of fear on my part about the food and water when I came here. Everyone said "Don't drink anything with ice in it! Avoid fresh fruit! No raw fish!" Well, I gotta say... It's all bullshit. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure there are places in Thailand where it probably wouldn't be the smartest thing in the world to drink the water. The nicer restaurants provide water from the cooled bottles in the back and everyone sells bottled water. And the ice thing? As long as the ice isn't being shaved next to the same place where they gut the fish, you're probably okay. There are plenty of restaurants and popular spots to eat where the drinks are fine with ice. The food here is delicious; the fruit is the most flavorful thing you will ever taste; and the crab with caviar on bread is to die for. If you come to Thailand, do yourself a favor and eat the food. I could subsist on fried eggs over rice with chunks of chicken in brown gravy for the rest of my life and consider myself a happy man. Like all things Bangkok: just use your head... especially when it comes to your stomach.
What else, what else.... hmmm....
Oh yeah! The Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha were exquisite. We spent the whole afternoon getting lost on the ferryboats trying to reach the Grand Palace and it was worth every adventurous second. To see something that big and that intricate can really put you in your place. (As always, I will post pics to my facebook account as soon as I can) Did you know that the Emerald Buddha stayed in Laos for a time period longer than the existence of the United States? Pretty cool.
We leave for Phuket tomorrow where things will be a little quieter, the water will be much clearer, and the people much tanner. It's a resort island so I plan to sit at the pool, maybe snorkel, and sweat a whole lot.
Oh, speaking of sweating I've realized that it's not actually sweat that I'm constantly covered in. It's just that our bodies are so much cooler than our surroundings that it's really just condensation forming on our skin and ruining the wood table beneath us so... do what Mom says and USE A COASTER!
Time for sleep.
-d@n
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