brigade.
We probably underestimated the jet lag. Or is it city burnout? A week in New York, nine days in London, 5 days in Bangkok. Poor dears, we’re fried from jubilating.
This town feels a bit like a Phillip K. Dick novel, with its constant videos everywhere, large and small. In the sparkling subway, a professional tourist assistant, labeled as such, stands in front of a screen with an ad for something colorful, fast and undecipherable. Above the street, moving billboards explode as we exit the speedy elevated train Skytrain.
There’s also a blade runner vibe in Bangkok, the rundown future, dimly lit, poorly built. Or it is the 95 degree weather and full humidity? Do I see a a Graham Green character, a smart talking dude in a rumpled linen suit stumbling into the bar?
A girl sits in the Skytrain in full, traditional Thai-wear with killer make up. Her hair’s bound up in a tall pointy ornament. When she stands to walk off the train, her skirt is so tight she has to take tiny steps. She’s a 9th grader going to her school performance, Tommy assures me, not a prostitute.
Food and temples. This town smells of fumes and Thai food. I follow the food, grazing in a food court filled with every kind of skewered meat, marinated and grilled for 15 baht each (42 cents). A salad bar morphs all others into food slums, with its springy greens and sprouts, freshly shaved chunks of corn off the cob, seaweed salads and roasted ginkgo nuts (who knew?). What kind of a country has fresh pomegranate and orange juice waiting as we exit the subway? Piles of fresh fruit are everywhere.
Oh yes, there are tourists everywhere too, but this town can take them on the way New York and London can, absorbing them into the framework of their daily rhythm. Well, maybe not always. This we learn after a mistake trip to a floating market, more a floating tourist trap. There must have been a time when floating markets served their purpose, and likely they were charming as hell, but I don’t like touts touching me, and I’m uninterested in shopping for crap souvenirs, thank you very much. And the floating tourists outnumber the vendors 10 to 1.
I almost took the photo op, hanging a live boa around my neck for our daughter, Emma. But the joke — finally got you that pet snake you wanted — wasn’t good enough to get that close. (She begged for a smaller boa when she was young, but I couldn’t bear the idea of feeding it frozen mice.)
All that said, our floating market vanmates, who also had skipped what promised to be a ride on a maltreated elephant, were a gang of cheerful Portuguese nurses. They sang their hearts out, song after song.
And as always looking, I’m looking for food, but so tired from the time change. And so we go to Northeast, a restaurant featuring Thai food from yep, Northeast Thailand. Check out this petite peppercorn branch below. It was part of an Isaan meal so spicy that Bangkok mentor Dick Lopez says it shot hot water out of his hair follicles.
Say yes to melt in your mouth pork in peppercorn sauce, where I found this branch. It’s a distant cousin of steak au poivre, but more my kinda thing. Also loved the stirfried morning glory greens. Heaven is wokked greens everywhere I go. We share a noodle dish that was good enough, and our limeade had touch of salt, which I loved and Tommy hated.
All this for $10.50, with rice, of course, including farang (foreigner) friendly service and photos of each dish. And as we exit I spot their outdoor kitchen. Will they teach me how? I’m ready to learn …but where could I possibly get this pepper?
On our second day we decided to pick up our Thai Sim phone card at the mall. Mall food? We hunkered down on two titillating dishes: lump meat chock-full-o-crab curry and stirfried chayote leaf — my beloved greens once more —while the waitress constantly refreshed my oolong tea.
As my family will tell ya, I’m not a mall rat, as I get simultaneously jumpy and fuzzy-brained when I have to shop in one. But five floors of everything from a Maserati under glass to a cafeteria brimming diced and sliced produce ready to wok, all topped off with the cooling air conditioning for Tom, made the trip a rich anthropological experience. Did I mention the biggest aquarium in SE Asia is in the Basement? Next time.
And on the 5th floor, a killer movie theater. We like to go to movies when we travel. For the movies, sure, but mostly for ambiance. In London, we saw one movie in an uninteresting theatre that had a cool fuzzy toothbrush dispenser (see below).
A few days later, museum-weary, we visited another theater for its keen sense of style, as well as for tea and treats, even though there was nothing we wanted to see. “Ah”, she said, luxuriating in her pink deco chair, while sipping English Breakfast tea, enjoying the crumb on her chocolate Guinness cake.
Oh, did I warn you this is in no particular order? On the way back from the Wat Pho temple, a young monk in a saffron-colored robe stood on the ferry, the river behind him as we motored to the landing, Bangkok on either side. The boat was so jammed with tourists that I almost missed the Buddhist nun, with close-cropped grey hair and a filmy white outfit, as she passed easily through the crowd.
And did I mention the HUGE influx of Chinese tourists in Thailand, a major topic here? In our little world at the hotel breakfast buffet, the contrast between the Thai visitors and a busload of Chinese tourists was evident. A cliche, so it may or may not be true in general, but the Chinese sounded much like my relatives, a raucous group, often laughing, while the Thai were more demure, the head waiter shushing a table of boisterous Chinese women.
We know we’re simply sputtering along the surface here. Bangkok is a complex vigorous city: a sprawling fast-moving mix that baffled us. We only began to get a small handle on it after 4 days, right before we left. It grabbed us though, so we’ll be back in late February, at the end of our Asia trip.
