Bangkok Day 4

Tuesday Sept 28, 2004

After breakfast I taxi’d out to the airport and dropped my bag of climbing gear in “Left Baggage” so I wouldn’t have to carry it around in Cambodia. I’d be coming back through that airport anyway if I went to Railay.

Then I went to the Khao San road to arrange a bus to Siem Riep, Cambodia. Khao San road is a market area and is very popular with tourists. It has lots of little travel agencies, restaurants, and shops packed into a pretty small area. I purchased bus tickets to Siem Riep (for $13) at the first travel agency I saw, which was just a tiny nook in the side of a building. I did a little shopping at Khao San road, and I think that’s where I picked up a bracelet for my sister Marie.

Khao San road in Bangkok.

Then I had lunch and caught a tuk tuk over to Wat Sakeet, The Golden Mount. It’s a man-made hill with a temple on top that affords a good view of Bangkok.

Some of Bangkok from Wat Sakeet.

Seeing Bangkok from Wat Sakeet made it clear how large the city is… it’s huge. Every direction had buildings as far as I could see. Admittedly I couldn’t see that far because of the pollution, but far enough to make it clear that Bangkok is enormous. Encarta says the city has over 8 million people, and the area is 600 square miles, and the greater metropolitan area has an area of 3000 square miles. Whoa. Seattle proper is 84 square miles.

There are some canals in Bangkok, and they used to be an important feature of the city. Now, however, they are apparently not used much except for sewage dumping. I could usually tell when a canal was within a kilometer or so upwind, from the smell. It’s really too bad that they don’t clean them up, they’d be a great way to travel around the city.

When I came out of Wat Sakeet I found I had no small or even medium sized bills for a tuk tuk or taxi. I’d been told they generally don’t have change, or typically refuse to give it. I looked around for some place to change a 1000B bill, and it took awhile. One place I tried was an appliance store. I held up the bill and asked for change. The clerk didn’t understand so I made the universal “smaller” sign of holding my palms apart from each other and then moving them closer together. He turned and pointed to a really small blender and then raised his eyebrows. Hmm… I smiled and said thanks and left.

It took me about a half hour to an hour of walking around to find a place to get change, which turned out to be a nice big currency exchange bank in Chinatown. It took a few tries to get a taxi driver that would go where I wanted but finally I was off to the Pasteur Institute to see the Snake Farm. That turned out to be mildly interesting but not something you can’t find elsewhere.

A well-loaded moto.

It wasn’t uncommon to see a moto way overloaded with cargo. I didn’t see how the guy in the picture above rode so loaded, but it had to be awkward.

Next up was Pratunam Market, a huge street market that’s apparently grown up around a few city blocks, and completely filled the alleys that run through them. Once inside you’re under canopies or something, so it feels like a big covered maze of shops. It’s less of a tourist market and more of a market for locals. As Bill pointed out, locals go there for everything from wedding dresses to carpets.

Back in the Siam district, Bill and I met his friend Sue (short for Supadra I think) and went to a movie and then dinner. I’m kind of a nervous traveler, checking to see if I’ve lost my passport at least 10 times a day. The possibility, however slight, of being detained somewhere I can’t speak the language or delayed and forfeiting my $400 airplane ticket is enough to raise my basal stress level. So naturally we saw the movie The Terminal, about a guy who has an invalid passport and gets stuck in the airport for 10 years or something. Great.

Dinner was at a place Sue picked out (can’t remember the name) and it was great. I tried to get a sense from her of how life there might be different from life in the US, but we didn’t communicate that well about the topic and I let it go. As far as I got, though, it sounded like life there is not too much different. I suppose the details are significantly different, and in the large it’s much the same.