| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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We said we really wanted a
seelor because there would not be enough room for all of us in a cab.
He assured us it would be a very big cab. It turned out to be a little
compact. The trunk had to be roped down to hold all our luggage. I sat
in front with the driver since I happen to have a wide skeleton and am a
bit wider than the others. (Evelyn constantly confuses having a big
frame with being fat because she has a little wiry frame and does not
fill it out as well as I do.) The other four sat in back. One leaned
forwarded, the next leaned back, in sort of a snaggle formation. Now
the driver really was fat. And on top of that he was on a program to
lose five pounds a week by the clear-your-throat-and-spit method.
We arrived at the Central Guest House. To get to it we pretty much
had to crawl over a trash heap. The place looked very run-down.
Barbara said what I was thinking: 'Have you lost your mind?' The three
guys went up to see the rooms, not expecting much. We didn't see the
rooms; all we saw was the public shower and said, 'Sorry, no.' So here
we were in Bangkok dehydrating ourselves carrying around all our
luggage. We set up a base in an open restaurant, had lunch (I had fried
noodle with beef), and planned what to do next. It turned out we were
right near the Royal Hotel. It was in the moderate range, a little over
1000B a night. Steve and Binayak went off to scout it. At the price
they thought it was okay so we took a taxi and settled into our rooms.
It is a big hotel that was probably very nice once. There were big
mildew stains on the ceiling. The toilet did not completely flush. Our
room was cavernous with a big wooden closet. I turned on the television
to see if I could get some Middle East news. Instead there was some
sort of a martial arts film in which a young man was fighting an old man
who looked like a Chinese version of Takashi Shimura. In spite of leaps
that defied Newtonian physics he was losing, then a book or amulet he
was carrying (I didn't catch which) started acting strangely. It had a
picture of four women in white-face with white tights, red-orange lips,
and matching fright-wigs. They came alive and grew to full size and
started beating up on the old man. At one point the boy was in a pose
with curbed hands and one of the nixies tapped him on the shoulder and
told him to straighten his hand. With five-against-one odds the old man
was quickly trounced. Cut to end title. I must say that martial arts
films don't do much for me.
After a while of getting rested up the five travelers set out for
the T.A.T. (Tourist Authority of Thailand).
I am used to walking around in places in which the drivers are
mild, courteous, and sane--like Manhattan. I guess what is most
unnerving is the speed of the traffic. You really feel you are taking
your life in your hands when you cross a street. On some streets the
crosswalks are controlled by lights that stop the traffic for walkers,
but the cycle is very long and you can stand there a long time if you
don't take the risk. When you do take it, you really have to run across
the street the first gap you get.
Steve stopped to exchange some money at the window of a bank. The
transaction ahead of us took at least fifteen minutes. When Steve got
to the window the teller said, 'Just a minute,' and walked away. After
about another five minutes in the heat we gave up. People seem less
friendly here than in Chiang Mai. Finally we found an ATM that would
accept Steve's card and he got some money. Steve was the only one on
the trip who remembered to bring his Personal Identification Number for
the cash machines. He has found three categories of cash machines.
Some do accept his card, some reject it as if it were a library card
he'd inserted by mistake, and some say, 'Welcome, Steven Goldsmith,' and
then 'Sorry, your card has been damaged.' Steve figures that the
protocol is similar but part of the encoding is different so that they
can read his name but not some of the other information.
The walk to the T.A.T. was a long one in the heat and frankly the
scenery of Bangkok is just not as interesting as that of Chiang Mai,
other than the occasional temple. We see big white buildings that are
hotels and government buildings, and you see a lot of ramshackle
buildings that use corrugated metal a lot. There isn't much exotic
architecture. It is just a big hustling city.
We walked past the Democracy Monument with its four big wing-like
pylons. We also walked over one of the khlongs. Near the center of the
city the smell of a khlong is really pretty bad. It smells of what is
at best garbage and is probably cloaca.
After a great deal of walking we found the T.A.T. in a big
official-looking building, though the T.A.T. itself was just a small
part. We picked up some brochures but didn't really use too much of the
service. Then we went out to walk to a local market. Actually the main
thing we saw in the local market was a huge department store called New
World. The thing is ten stories high built around an empty atrium like
a Hyatt Regency. On one side parallel diagonal escalators take you up,
on the other they take you down. We took the escalators up to the food
court on the ninth floor. There you buy tickets at a ticket booth and
then take them to dozens of stands serving food. You pick the food you
want, pay in tickets, then sit down to eat in areas that give you a
commanding view of Bangkok. The stand with fruit had a line of ants
crawling over it. Where do ants come from nine stories up? We also
tried some of their ice cream, but it wasn't very good. Barbara got a
sundae, but instead of whipped cream it had popcorn to create the right
look. Instead of cherries it had fake cherries made from gelatine. The
latter seems to be a common substitution made in Thailand.
After dinner we went up to the top floor which was supposedly an
amusement park. They had two movie theaters, a tiny zoo, a pet store, a
toy store, some penny arcade sorts of concessions, etc. Saddest sight I
saw was a rabbit cage in the pet store. There were two rabbits. One
was dead and lying with his eyes open, the other shocked and perhaps
sick backed into a corner of the cage. On the way down I stopped at the
complete working supermarket and I bought a little candy. It is a
Japanese brand popular in Thailand. Superlemon is lemon candy covered
in a citric acid powder that makes it taste very sour. There seems to
be an international mix of brands that show up on the shelves here,
though United States and Japanese seem to predominate. This store has a
big market for their numerous stands of Dunkin' Donuts.
By this point it was past dark so we went back to the room to
freshen up a bit. The television was showing a Thai cartoon of how the
Wright Brothers invented the airplane. The Thai vision of Dayton, Ohio,
made it look a bit like a town in China. I used to live in Dayton and
it did not look like the Thai cartoon artist thought, even given the
time difference.
A little later we all got together in the bar for a drink. The
service was very slow. Rather than a drink I got baked Alaska, never
having had it before and being pretty sure that I would never see it so
cheap again. There was live music with about seven different women
signers taking turns. Five were mediocre. One was actually very bad
and one was really very good. The good one wore a mini-skirt she didn't
really need and gyrated to songs in an artificial way, but she also
really belted the songs and while the songs were all in Thai for each of
the singers, hers had the most interesting melodies that changed meter
and were the most interesting to listen to.
October 14, 1990: Binayak, who'd been in Thailand a couple of
years before, had a recommendation for breakfast, a restaurant across
from the hotel he had stayed in. They turned out to have only Western
breakfast and I had a roll, juice, and 'lassie,' which I usually see
spelled 'lassi.' It is an Indian yogurt drink.
Not too surprisingly our first stop was to be the Grand Palace. We
started walking, became unsure of where we were, started drifting, and
all packed into a tuk-tuk. That's like a motorcycle converted to be a
cab. It is one of the styles of samlor (literally, three-wheeler; a
seelor is a four-wheeler).
Walking in the front a guide offered to take us around for 300B.
That isn't cheap for an hour or so of work, but the group agreed.
Our first stop was the coin museum on the grounds that also gave us
a thumbnail history of Thailand and the two great kings, Rama IV (born
Mongkut) and Rama V (born Chulalongkorn). Prior to the rules of this
father and son, Thailand wished to be left alone to do things her own
way. Rama IV understood as no king before that the West was going to
come to Siam and things would be very different. The West knows him
best for hiring an English governess, Anna Leonowens, to teach his
children and himself about the West. Leonowens turned around and wrote
a one-sided book about her experiences, taking credit for many of
Mongkut's improvements. This, of course, is Anna and the King of Siam,
which was filmed with Rex Harrison as Mongkut, then was adapted into the
Broadway play The King and I which was also filmed. The films have
never been shown in Thailand because of their vast inaccuracies.
The two kings brought in bold reforms, but stopped short of
democracy. In 1932 a bloodless coup ended absolute monarchy and turned
Thailand into a democracy. Siam was renamed Thailand. Thailand
nominally sided with Japan in World War II to regain lost territory the
French and English took. They, however, did not take an active part in
the war and the Americans in return treated them as an occupied country.
The whole political situation is still in some ferment with military and
civilian politicians running the country with some democratic reforms.
The King is now a sort of figurehead ruler of the country and of
Thailand's Buddhists. He was born in the far-off land of Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He is a jazz musician and composer, an award-winning
yachtsman, and still does work for the country. One of his daughters
gave up her title to marry a commoner from Puerto Rico whom she met
going to school in Southern California.
The coin museum has coins from Thai history, weapons, vestments for
the Emerald Buddha, etc. Curiously, the windows are sealed with sealing
wax that is stamped with the Royal Seal. My guess is that this is to
foil attempts to break in and replace items with counterfeits. If an
item is missing you wouldn't need a broken seal to tell you. From there
you go into the wat area. The first thing you see are fifteen-foot
statues of Yaks, Indian demons from the Ramayana (here called the
Ramakien).
The Temple of the Emerald Buddha was built in 1783 by Rama I and
houses a Buddha made of jade. Among the other sights are murals
depicting scenes from the Ramakien. One shows a demon sleeping in a
place where he is damming up a river. A heroic demon fights him in the
next mural and we see the water flowing by. Later we saw buildings done
in a more European style. They really stand out as not being as
interesting as the classic Thai styles. In the palace there are Nagas
on the edges of the roofs and at the peak is a point supposedly
representing 'a phoenix,' according to one guide, but I suspect it was
really another bird.
When the tour was over we went on to the National Museum. This is
actually a fair-sized museum by Asian standards. You begin be seeing
exhibits of Thai pre-history. Included are nice dioramas of incidents
of Thai history. There is a portrait of Mongkut, who looks nothing at
all like Rex Harrison or Yul Brynner. He is a thin wizened-looking man.
B&B decided that was all they wanted to see and the other three of us
went on to see the main museum. First there was a viharn containing an
image of the Buddha and with the complete story of the Buddha told in
paintings on the walls. Out front there are guards that look to be part
man and part rooster. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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