Trip to Bangkok

Thursday Sept 23 to Saturday Sept 25, 2004

Confucius say: Man who walks through turnstile sideways always going to Bangkok.

For a trip to Southeast Asia that involved eating at dirty street-side food carts, riding through Bangkok traffic on a scooter, and rock climbing, you might be surprised to hear that probably the most dangerous part was the shuttle ride to the airport.  The driver seemed to be reacting to things about 5 seconds after they became pertinent, making me cringe with late merges and non-existent cooperative moves.  She was nice, though, even as she made me fear for my life.

My flight out of SeaTac was scheduled for 1:30 AM, Friday morning.  Unfortunately I got to the airport at 10:25 PM, way early.  Naturally the security line only took about 5 minutes… Murphy’s law.  Every time I’ve arrived early there’s been no security wait, and the last time I arrived at a reasonable time there was a security wait that would have caused me to miss my flight, except that I was expedited from the middle of the line and made it.

I flew China Airlines ($730 round trip to Bangkok) and managed to get all 4 middle seats to myself, so I was able to fully stretch out and sleep about half of the 12.5 hour flight to Taipei, Taiwan.  I watched a couple of movies using their on-demand system, which I hadn’t seen before.  Each seat has its own LCD touch-screen and a menu system that lets you watch one of about 8 movies, among other things like recorded news and TV shows.  It was pretty cool.  The movie Dodgeball was pretty funny, even if it was helped by my exhaustion and low expectations. 

The Taipei airport seems to have a pretty strange layout compared to what I’m used to, after quite awhile of walking around I just lucked into the EVA desk, and checked in for my flight to Bangkok.  I had to check in because the China Airlines desk in SeaTac said they couldn’t issue the EVA boarding pass for me.  Maybe that’s part of the dispute between China and Taiwan. China wants to treat flights between the two as domestic flights, and Taiwan wants to treat them as international, so maybe the result is simply lack of cooperation.  Anyway I had plenty of time there so it was no problem.

The new part of the Taipei airport is very nice, much nicer than SeaTac.

Part of the new section of the Taipei Airport.

On the flight to Bangkok I saw the biggest, muddiest river I’ve ever seen (but didn’t take a picture).  I didn’t have any references to compare to, but from 35,000 feet it was about thumb-width at arms length, which I guess is more than a mile wide.  It looked grossly out of scale compared to the rest of the things I’ve seen from that altitude.  I’m guessing it was the Mekong, which starts from the China-Nepal border, runs down by Myanmar and through Laos, along Thailand, and then through Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea, a run of 2,610 miles according to Encarta.  If you grabbed it at both ends and stretched out just a few of the twists that would span the US from coast to coast.  That’s big.

Bill met me at the airport, which was great.  I surely would have been correctly identified as fresh meat to the taxi network, who right from the airport were working hard to extract money from people.  There’s a Taxi Services booth with a big line of Bangkok rookies in it.  One might assume that it’s an official airport booth, and therefore it ascribes to some economic ethic of fair play.  Well, even if it is an official airport booth, there’s no such idea as economic fair play in the Southeast Asian cultures I experienced.  If you get in that line, you wait for 10 minutes and then pay 5 times the meter rate for a taxi.  I didn’t know that at the time, but the second time in Bangkok I walked upstream of the taxi line and caught one for the meter rate in about a minute, though the first two drivers I asked turned me down when I insisted on using the meter.

Another hitch would have been getting to the hotel Bill had booked.  I would have assumed you could just give the taxi driver the hotel name and have no problem, but that’s pretty far from the case.  Bangkok is so large that the odds are pretty low that any driver would know any small place like the A-One Inn where we stayed.  Next I’d think the address would do it, but that’s also not the case, especially for a small road like the one the A-One Inn is on.  And you might assume the drivers speak enough English to get you by, which wasn’t always the case either.  I had taxi drivers that I couldn’t communicate a major Bangkok destination to, such as National Stadium or MBK Center, much less a tiny little motel on a tiny little road somewhere.

The street where the A-One Inn resides.

            The front of the A-One Inn.

The A-One Inn was pretty nice, especially for $12 per night for a double.  It’s in a great central location and near a Sky Train station.  It also has wireless internet connection available in the rooms, which is a key feature for someone as “wired” as Bill.  One other interesting thing about all the places I stayed, they all give you toilet paper at the front desk, presumably on noticing that you’re a westerner.  And almost all had no separate shower.  The whole bathroom was usually waterproof, and the shower head was just on the wall somewhere.  So you can, say, take a leak in the toilet while simultaneously showering.  I could see that design catching on in the time-starved American culture. It’s also pretty space efficient, and having water all over the floor was less of an issue than I originally guessed.

For lunch we found (okay Bill found, with me in tow) a place recommended in the Lonely Planet book that was noted as non-touristy and authentic.  It was.  Bill ended up asking at least a few people how to get there, but eventually we made it.  It’s a little open-air place with a few small tables, and a kind of, well, cheap appearance.  Definitely authentic.  I had Yum Moo Yang, where Moo means pork, unfortunately.  It’d be a lot easier if they’d change Moo to mean beef.  It was great, and extremely cheap.  I don’t remember exactly how much, but I’d guess about $1 per meal.  There had been a bunch of warnings in the Lonely Planet about hygiene, avoiding certain foods, etc, and Bill mentioned it’s a good idea to wipe off silverware at places like that, but after that meal, I pretty much forgot all about those tips.  I never avoided anything based on those rules, including not being very good about mosquito repellant.  The only precautions I did take were not drinking or brushing my teeth with tap water, except in Phnom Penh where the water is apparently safe.  And I forgot and brushed my teeth with tap water a few times in other places too.  I had no health or digestive issues at all the whole trip.

In the afternoon we went to Pan Tip Plaza, which is the biggest set of computer and electronics stores I’ve ever seen, and yes I’ve been to Akihabara.  There are so many that I can’t imagine how they all stay in business… there are only so many computer and electronics things to sell, so there’s huge duplication across all of the stores.  I didn’t see how they differentiated or had any margins on their sales.

That first day was pretty tough, after about 26 hours of traveling on 6 hours of sleep and a 15 hour time difference.  I was having dinner at a time my body was telling me was 5 AM after an all-nighter.  Unfortunately the Mexican restaurant we went to (which was otherwise great) had a really enthusiastic band that night.  They were probably great, but in my condition it was somewhat painful.  Also very tough to talk.  Bill’s friend Marian was in town that night so she was there too, but as we couldn’t talk I’d have to wait until later to get to know her.  Anyway I managed to stay awake and somewhat coherent (as far as I could tell) and got over the jet lag in pretty much just one night, with the help of lots of caffeine.