May/June 2008
As the legendary Finnish rockers once claimed: Bangkok shocks, Saigon shakes, Hanoi Rocks… they were right. We’ve been in Bangkok for the past 4 days…if you want to be driven round the twist come here. It’s frustratingly difficult to know who to trust… especially if they’re wearing a uniform and look like the most likely person to be trusted. Coming out of the airport we got offered rides ranging from 900 Baht (£15) to the lowest we could haggle, 500 Baht (£8). Turns out the metered taxis cost 300 Baht.
Our hotel is fabulous, tucked away down Soi Thewet1 on Krungkasem Rd in an area called Bangkhunprom, The Phranakorn-Nornlen is apparently owned by a former Miss China. Loads of character, a bit bonkers, fantastic staff, eccentric rooms, rainfall showers, haphazardly fitting doors and screens and a lush open courtyard with parakeets jumping on you at breakfast. We love it…a paradise hideaway in one of the most frenetic cities in the world. They even have an in-house artist painting beautifully colourful fish on to the breakfast tables. On our first day here we both headed to a hair salon and got tweaked in to something resembling presentable.
We’ve been temple hopping again…first to Wat Phro Kaew (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha) where we watch a buddha statue being layered with gold leaf…each person applying a small square leaf of gold to bring luck. Building of this large complex began in 1783 during the time of Rama I. We’re told it’s the most sacred buddhist temple in Thailand, the nation’s foremost place of worship where annual state and royal ceremonies are held presided over by the King. Mythical figures made from bronze and gilded with gold leaf are half-animal half-human celestial beings which were said to have lived in the the mythical Himavanta forest. Twelve 16 foot tall statues of Yaksha (giants) from the Ramakien epic (a Thai version of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana of good triumphing over evil) hold a mace or gada and guard the temple gates.
In the Phra Nakhon district of the city on Rattanakosin Island we see the 46 metre reclining Buddha at the 16th century Wat Pho Temple. The temple’s official name is Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan…but it’s also known as Wat Po. It’s daunting trying to keep track of all the different names given to the temples. King Rama I rebuilt here on an earlier temple site and this became his main temple and is where some of his ashes are enshrined. It’s said to hold the largest collection of buddha images in Thailand.
The huge buddha with wonderful whorls on his toes has a brick core shaped with plaster and gilded. It represents the entry of Buddha into Nirvana and the end of all reincarnations. The soles of the feet are 3 metres high inlaid with mother of pearl. We walk around it…dazzled, one of the largest statues of Buddha in Thailand, it’s magnificent.
Also at Wat Pho are four 42 metre high stupas known as Phra Maha Chedi Si Rajakarn. I take photos…they stand close to smaller tiled stupas. Beautifully tiled in green blue and yellow mosaics they look like elaborate chess pieces.
Our wrestling match of wits continued despite sticking to metered taxis. Advise your destination be told it’s a very long way, 150 Baht. Request (repeatedly) for the meter to be switched on, threaten to leave the cab…lo and behold it’s 70 Baht and quite close by. We’re constantly approached by tuk-tuk drivers and official looking people claiming to be ‘tourist police’ ‘security chiefs’ or ‘qualified guides’….usually wearing a lemon yellow polo shirt and khakis. Few of them are what they claim to be and all attempt to part us from our cash. They ask where we’re going…we tell them…and are advised that the place is closed. Making our own way there we find it open for business as usual. We got a taxi back to the hotel this evening, the expected inflated price quote, us pressing for the meter to be switched on and once persuaded the driver attempted to take us to a ‘ping pong’ show (if you don’t know what they are then you’re best left ignorant). Despite all this, just come here with a sense of humour (it is pretty amusing)…don’t lose your temper, go with it and laugh a lot…even if when politely declining, you are called a prostitute and tutted at ( I did lose my temper on that occasion!). Basically we don’t trust anyone outside our hotel which is a bit of shame really. Ironic when you’re in a country with so many strict rules. Clothing, personal conduct, greetings…no open toed shoes in temples, always point your feet away from any Buddha image or monks, remove shoes before entering sacred places, never visit a temple with bare shoulders or wearing shorts…BUT you can pop out to a lurid ping pong show afterwards. Loads of Western men here with Asian women; usually overweight balding blokes with gorgeous (way) younger women sequinned in four inch heels…the gorgeous girl could be a ladyboy…equally glamorous with smoother legs.
At Wat Bowon Niwet waterlily flowers were being prepared as offerings to the temple buddha. A golden chedi at the Wat’s shrine holds ashes and relics of Thai royals. I photograph footwear left outside the temple steps, a familiar sight across this part of the world.
They have fantastic VIP cinemas here. We went to see ‘Iron Man’. The standard price is 140 Baht (less than £2) or for seats in a VIP screening room with incredible sound effects and a huge screen, 600 Baht each (£10). They are wild. Around 40 people in the room, seats in pairs tucked behind an upholstered leather semi-circular wall for privacy (canoodling?), fully reclining chairs, gold silk blankets and pillows and waiter service…and surreally (for us) you have to stand for the King’s national anthem before the film begins.
Around the city images of the King are everywhere. At a local market we meet a heavily tattooed man with dragon flames for eyebrows who is more than happy to pose for me, street performers in elaborately detailed costumes are playful and engaging and there’s more stalls creating and selling flower offerings for the temples.
I went to a local coin-op down our road to do laundry today; rather a stinky, dimly lit place but reasonably clean. I sat for an hour and read my book (Riding The Iron Rooster: by train through China by Paul Theroux, an excellent read) whilst the agitator style washing machine sloshed about erratically but painfully slowly, put a few new holes in our clothing and went in to such a pathetically slow spin cycle that I thought the machine was going to need resuscitation. I guess I could have left the washing with someone to do, but invariably when you hand over a bag of 15 items…only 9 or 10 items come back. Our hotel is obviously wise to this and doesn’t offer laundry service to avoid the agro. I shared the hour with an oversized gasping fish in an undersized fish tank, a flickering strip light and a bloody huge rat that kept scuttling in and out from behind one of the machines. I kept my feet up on the chair and concentrated on my book.
Day 4 in Bangkok (May 21) we had a run around town with Michael, an Australian guy staying at our hotel whose girlfriend Georgie was arriving later that afternoon. I cobbled together an itinerary and our first stop was a snake farm based at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute in the Silom/Lumphini area. Originally built in 1923 the snake farm was only the second of its kind in the world (the first was in Brazil). Apparently there are 60 different poisonous snakes in Thailand and this institute which is also a hospital, prepares anti-venom for snake bite victims. We went to see a venom milking at 11am; one of the handlers struggled to placate an agitated cobra before he could milk it by holding it behind the head and pressing its fangs into a plastic sealed jar. It’s pretty freaky how much venom comes out…we had no idea.
A short cab drive away we jumped out on a bridge to seek Wat Saket and The Golden Mount. Built on a former collapsed chedi (due to soft soil) during King Rama III’s reign…it’s situated on top of the man-made hill created from the collapse of rubble. We asked directions of a local man…what fools…”Sorry that’s not open until later this afternoon…you can’t go there now as the monks are chanting, but here let me show you lots of other things on your map.” (things we’ve never found evidence of; the black Buddha and the lucky Buddha). It takes a minute or two to twig on because he really is deviously convincing. But…because his salesman patter exactly resembled that of a man we talked to on Monday we cottoned on to the potential scam and found the Golden Mount ourselves…a 5 minute walk around the corner…open as we expected.
We climbed around 400 steps to the summit where shoes have to be removed as is custom before entering most monuments…then hopped and limped across a blistering enducing scorching hot rooftop. Sheltering our feet under benches in small patches of shade when we wanted to stop, we looked out across views of the city whilst standing at the foot of the impressive sparkling golden mount. Between the reigns of Rama I and Rama V, Wat Saket was used for cremations as it stood outside the city walls. In the 1800s cholera outbreaks resulted in thousands of bodies being brought to the site, the number overwhelming the ability for all to be cremated…resulting in many being left out for the vultures to devour…something I believe is still practiced in India by the Zoroastrians. I have no issue with this method of corpse removal…environmentally it must be cleaner than most alternative options.
Another cab ride…now we’re wise to it each trip costs around £1; it’s too hot attempting to walk everywhere. To a local outdoor market for something to eat before wandering in to the Amulet market where monks, cab drivers and people in dangerous professions come to buy amulets and lucky charms. You see these hanging around necks and rear view taxi cab mirrors all over Bangkok. I reckon the tuk-tuks, cab drivers and so-called tourist police must have the most dangerous professions. They surely hold the highest quotient of people wanting to punch them out of frustration. We’re not tempted by the man hoping to sell us a pair of used false teeth.
Michael left us here to head off to the airport to meet Georgie. Dave and I hopped in to another cab to the pier and took a quick ferry trip across the river to Wat Arun, also known as The Temple of Dawn. It has an 82 metre high ‘prang’ (Khmer style tower) with very steep steps. I made it about half way because the steps got so steep I could barely get my legs in to a position needed to climb any further. The tower is covered in mosaics of ornate pieces of broken Chinese porcelain; apparently used a lot in the 19th century during the Ratanakosin period when Chinese ships docking at the port of Bangkok used tonnes of old porcelain as ballast…my guidebook is coming in handy.
Yesterday Dave, Georgie, Michael and I booked the hotel’s mini-bus and travelled 104 kilometres south of Bangkok to the floating markets at Damnoen Saduak, between Nakhon Pathom and Samut Songkhram. Travelling through the canal system by boat through a market which isn’t all floating…rather you float through on your boat asking the boat driver to stop if you want to look at anything. In some cases a wily shopkeeper will reach out with a long handled crook, catch your boat and pull you in to dock at her shop. There’s a lot of tourist tat for sale but the food section was fabulous; fresh fruit and vegetables, people cooking traditional food on their boats which we pulled up alongside to buy from or jumped off to sit on the quay to buy and eat from boats pulling in to us.
Fresh spring rolls cooked to order on a boat and delicious small dumpling like pancakes filled with greens. Traditional hats protected most of the vendors (mainly female) from the sun. An elderly lady with a wonderful smile reached up to serve us a spongy cake-like bread wrapped in banana leaf…adding extra flavour as well as doubling as a plate.
We saw more golden leafed buddhas at a temple on our return from the market and back at the boat landing we met the car, where we politely declined the souvenir plastic plates with our digital photo portraits glued to the centre. We headed for the Rose Gardens. To be honest if we had known more about this we would have given it a miss. It’s a purpose built tourist area filled with orchids and roses, expensive restaurants, performing elephants and an hour long show we had to endure about Thai culture performed by dancers and Thai kick boxers…it was simply too touristy. Meanwhile back in the car Michael told us stories… when he was 6 his Dad was a clown and he was his assistant and they worked as Carnies at the circus. His uncle meanwhile had something to do with the first moon landing and Michael is a distant relative of Michael Collins. Do I believe it all? It was more entertaining than the Thai culture show. We laughed a lot.
Our last full day in Bangkok today…we fly tomorrow to the beach in Ko Tao where we’ve got a low season deal on a private villa and pool. There’s a limit to how many more temples we want to see and Northern Thailand is mostly about trekking…we’re not ready to battle with leeches and hiking boots. It’s May 23rd…we went to see Indiana Jones with Michael and Georgie at the VIP cinema. We stood on ceremony for the National anthem and short movie of the King. Amusingly when it happened randomly outside in the street, Georgie was the first to recognise the anthem being piped out of a tannoy above a hairdressers. Everyone came to an immediate standstill completely silent. Oblivious, Michael carried on wandering until we grabbed him. It’s taken extremely seriously and we don’t want to discover the repercussions if we ignore it…though we do feel like we’re in the kids game called ‘Statues’. We have evening dinner at a restaurant on the river called Sam So Sen Sin. Excellent food with a great view of the bridge and passing gaudy river boats lit up with slogans such as ‘We love the King’. The sky illuminated with flashes of lightning which didn’t seem ominous until the minute we left the restaurant and it turned in to a monsoon downpour. Huddled together laughing under a foot wide overhang wedged between a metal-grilled building and a car, the rain sluiced down the street and up to our ankles. An elderly man shutting his shop kindly loaned us his umbrella and Michael headed in to lashing rain returning with a taxi…who we gratefully overpaid for rescuing us.
Koh Tao Island. For once I’m able to blog in real time. We’re sitting right now at the very attractive tiny Koh Samui airport catching up. We’ve just got off the ferry from Koh Tao (Dave pointing out Koh Phangan island on our way from Koh Tao to Koh Samui) and we’re waiting to board our flight back to Bangkok. We’ll spend another two nights there at Phranakorn-Nornlen before we fly to Singapore on 6th June to see Hil, Mark and their two boys, Hunter and new arrival baby Austin.
Here’s some photos of our 10 days on Koh Tao. We stayed at the private villa for a week. Beautiful place with a main living area, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, an extra guest bedroom, a deck outside our large bedroom, another off the lounge both overlooking the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Thailand. Located on top of a steep rocky hill with views unblocked by other properties we also had a small private pool overlooking the sea.
Georgie and Mike turned up towards the end of our stay, spent a night or two at the villa with us then we all decamped next door to the Thipwimarn Hotel Resort where the infinity pool was bigger and we could get served mango shakes whilst lazing around. A room with a private deck and a balcony…and no haggling with anyone over prices.
Chai was our waiter at breakfast every morning at Thipwimarn. 17 years old he used to live on Koh Phangan…but he kept going to the infamous full moon parties so his mum moved him to Koh Tao! He’s a big Chelsea football fan, kept telling us his haircut is just like that of Chelsea player ‘Choko’. Lost in translation we were scratching our heads…ahhhh…Joe Cole. Peter is Burmese, 22 years old and the other waiter we talked to the most. A year ago he left his family behind in Burma to work in Thailand so he could send enough money back for his two younger brothers to go to university. We have a lot of respect for what he’s doing…the two of them make our stay here a lot of fun.
On Wednesday 4th June we left for Bangkok. Relaxing at breakfast, Georgie and Mike got up early to say goodbye. We’ve enjoyed our time decompressing on this island, ready to head off for the next leg of our travels. Dave’s enjoyed being an action man…driving around on a quad bike and taking a couple of days diving to refresh his skills, he qualified for his PADI open water certificate in Zanzibar a few years ago. He saw loads of different fish, Barracuda and amazing coral. The 4 of us went snorkeling at a place called (of all things) ‘Sharks Bay’. Dave still hasn’t fulfilled his wish to see a shark though apparently there’s a lot of them around Koh Tao. We’ve seen spectacular sunsets and a dramatic lightning storm one night from the villa deck…flashes of it zig-zagging across the sky horizontally. We’ll miss Georgie and Mike but know we’ll see them again one day…but now to Singapore to re-connect with old friends.
The Travel Diarist 