Bangkok: People

Here is a collection of images of the people of Bangkok, taken while on our wanderings around the city. My overall impression of the Thais is that they are a friendly, hard-working, devoutly religious people. Obviously, I only came into contact with people whose occupation or situation put them in the path of the tourist, so my view is not as well-rounded as I'd like it bo be, however I did witness a very strong work ethic on display, with shops and market stalls always open for business and proprietors eager to get my business. This is a pleasing change from Riyadh, where the majority of shop staff couldn't care less whether you buy from them or not, but it did also have it's irritating side in that you are constantly being badgered to eat at this restaurant, go for a ride in that tuk-tuk, order a suit from this tailor, go into that parlour for a foot massage, etc.

A girl with hand-made flower garlands for sale and a tramp sharing a piece of pavement (taken from a taxi while waiting at yet another red traffic light).

More flower sellers, this time outside a Buddhist temple. You buy a flower and some josticks from them, then present them in the temple as an offering.

In addition to the many beautiful temples in Bangkok (more in next posting), there are also small shrines throughout the city where people stop to pray.

Another woman presenting offerings at a shrine. Note that most of the people are wearing yellow shirts. These are special commemorative shirts to honour King Rama IX's 60th anniversary on the throne.

Meet Eddie: our guide on the temple tour (story coming soon). Boy, he loves to talk!

A Buddhist monk, teaching

Another stationary taxi shot. Look closely and you'll see the woman riding pillion has a small baby in her arms!

Vagrant or just a siesta? You decide (photo taken mid-morning on the bank of the river).

"Street cuisine" at its finest.

Woman on her way somewhere, watched over by a cellophane-sealed Buddha in a storefront

Man selling prints of the Royal Family past and present, but mostly past.

I bought this print of a hand-coloured b/w photo of King Rama V and his sons in exchange for the previous photo.

This woman was positioned at the entrance to a temple and was selling plastic bags full of live fish and toads. We didn't buy any.

A blind busker on the way to MBK, playing a home-made stringed instrument. I wish I could remember how it sounded, but I gave him some money for the photo anyway. Note the judicious use of the omni-present plastic garden furniture.

...what working at MBK does to you.

Bangkok: Shopping

The morning after our dinner at Samboon Dee, and I'm still smarting from being hoodwinked by that taxi driver into paying more for dinner than I ever should have in Bangkok, and at a restaurant I would in other circumstances have crossed the street to avoid. “Right, this morning we're definitely going shopping at MBK Centre: no detours, no changes of plan, and NO taxis!”
There are many, many places for shopping shopping here, but MBK has taken centre stage in our consciousness; the guidebook says that everyone goes there and this is backed up by most taxi drivers' opening gambit: “You want go MBK?” I'm in the market for a new digital camera, so it also helped that I knew MBK has its share of “gadget shops”. We've decided to boycott the Bangkok taxi service this morning to punish them for last night, so instead we book ourselves a place on the hotel's hourly free shuttle to the nearest Skytrain station.
The shuttle is an old but thankfully air-conditioned minibus and we join three other people on the 1 mile, 30 minute journey to the Skytrain which, being a monorail, runs above street level and is therefore reached by climbing stairs to the station. It takes us a few minutes to work out which of the two lines we are on, which station we're at, and which one we need to go to for the MBK Centre, but we're soon on the platform, clutching our machine-vended tickets, and the train appears almost immediately. Our clean, air-conditioned train ride is brief – only three stops to the Siam Centre then walk the rest of the way. The correct route would have been to change lines at Siam Centre and take a second train one stop to the National Stadium station, which is right outside MBK, but I decided against that because I wanted to spend more time walking and taking in the atmosphere of street life. Come to think of it I didn't even enquire whether the rest of the family felt the same way, I just said, “This way” and they duly followed. As it turned out, going on to the next train stop would have saved us quite a bit of time and shoe leather, so I guess we should have discussed it at least, but I was on a mission to find the place “my way” and that was that; I do feel sorry for my family sometimes!
MBK is either a large shopping mall that was once invaded by an occupying army of market traders, or it's a purpose-built eight-floor indoor market that has been infiltrated by a few “proper” shops. Either way it's a fascinating hybrid where independent market stalls compete with retail chains for your attention, and your hard-earned cash. I was taken aback by the sheer scale of it: eight floors (and they're very large floors!), each one kind of themed.

MBK in full swing

One floor is all clothing and souvenir market, another is full of music and DVD shops. One houses the food court (Yes mr. taxi driver – MBK IS also good for eating eating!), another is full of hairdressers and massage parlours, and yet another (my favourite), electronics. These are joined by chains of criss-crossing escalators all grouped together in a vast central atrium, so while you're ascending or descending to the next level you can see everyone else travelling to every other floor, with a big basement-to-glass roof hole in the middle. Imagine a giant 3D game of snakes 'n' ladders and you get the picture.
First order of business, new digital camera! There are loads of camera shops in MBK but we only needed to look at three. The first was a market stall and the price was good but, as the second shop (Sunny Camera) explained, the market stall sells grey imports that don't come with an international guarantee. Their price (for the genuine article) was higher, so I went to a third shop for a ... erm... third opinion.
There's a great catchphrase in Bangkok that you hear regularly in a sales situation when the seller doesn't have quite what the buyer wants to buy, but he REALLY wants the buyer to buy what he has. And that phrase is, “Same same, but different.” They don't have what you want but they don't want to put you off by introducing a negative atmosphere into the negotiation, so saying, “No” is out. Instead they want you to believe that what they have is the same (or same same) as what you came in for, only of course it isn't, so in order to remain honest the, “...but different” has to be tagged on to the end.
The third shop didn't have the Nikon D70S that I was looking for, so they tried instead to sell me a Canon EOS 350d saying – altogether now - , “Same same, but different!”

My new toy :-)

Same same, but different

I went back to Sunny Camera and paid the slightly higher price for a Nikon D70S plus two zoom lenses, but got a full international guarantee and a VAT Refund form so I could claim 7% back at the airport at the end of the holiday. Even so, the camera was still around £150 cheaper than in either Saudi or UK, so... bargain! The pictures you will see from the next post onwards will have been taken with the new love of my life, my D70S :-)

Next we went to the market area on Level 3; lane after lane of tightly packed, fluorescent-lit, brightly coloured stalls selling everything from T-shirts to chopsticks.

Abigail with two new friends

They even had T-shirts with “SAME SAME” written on the front and “BUT DIFFERENT” on the back; so of course I bought one.







After an hour or so in this area we were feeling a little tired, with aching feet. We went down to Level 2 found one of several massage parlours, each with about twenty masseurs all in uniform, giving shoulder and foot massages en masse to a similar number of customers, all in full view of passers-by. Our aching feet were screaming for some relief by now so I negotiated a special price of 1000 Baht for all four of us to get a foot massage together (1000 Baht is about £15, for which we got four foot massages lasting a full hour). So we went in and lay down on beds, and so became part of the show, watched by the passing shoppers.

Aaahh... that's better!

A Thai foot massage is a pleasant though sometimes uncomfortable experience. They include reflexology techniques designed to treat the whole body, which means they finish off with a shoulder/head massage to balance you out (good), but also go to work on the ends of your toes with a sharp stick (bad).

Ouch! Watch what you're doing with that stick!

Suitably refreshed foot-wise it was then time for eating eating which, contrary to local taxi driver advice, IS possible in MBK at any time. Lots of food choices as usual, but we chose The Fifth, a designer food court on Level 5 where you can eat any kind of Asian & European food while listening to a mix of Asian pop and sophisticated fusion music.

Eating eating at The Fifth

After an excellent (and good value) lunch it was back to the hotel to freshen up in time for our next evening jaunt.
I wanted to get a couple of accessories for the new camera, so while Karen and Abigail were getting ready Elliot and I nipped out to another nearby shopping marvel: Pantip Plaza.

So many gadgets, so little time!

This time only five levels and on a smaller scale from MBK, but ALL electronics stores. Everything from cameras to PCs, video games, and every kind of pirate software you could want.


Yet again an amazing place that I wished I'd had more time to explore. I did, of course, have enough time in Pantip Plaza to find my new camera at a lower price! >:0

Bangkok: Eating

You know you're in for a unique holiday culinary experience when, instead of shortbread fingers, your hotel room snack tray consists of two Pot Noodles and a few packets of foil-wrapped, fish-flavoured seaweed.

No need to go hungry in your room at The Baiyoke Sky!

Eating – or, to give it it's proper Thai-pigeon-English name, “eating eating” - will never be the same again. Why “eating eating”? It's an amusing verbal tic among those Thais whose English isn't very good to say certain keywords twice in quick succession, as if the second utterance confirms the first (“...eating. See? I told you I meant eating!”).

So, after checking in and unpacking (and taking a photo of Pot Noodles & seaweed), we venture out of the hotel to explore downtown Bangkok – without the aid of a safety net. As I've said before, the first thing that hits you on the streets, apart from the heat and humidity, is the noise; the cacophony of voices, car horns (although, curiously, never a police siren), tuk-tuk engines, music. And one of the most striking sights is the abundance of street vendors offering cooked food for sale. Pork noodles, chicken satay, duck fried rice, deep-fried banana, barbecued salted fish (salted and barbecued while still alive, I should add), and every possible way of serving shrimp. Food is everywhere.
In a refreshing departure from the usual guidebook advice to “avoid buying food from a street vendor like the plague”, Bangkok guidebooks (we used the Lonely Planet one) positively encourage it for, while it's true that the ramshackle wheeled cart that serves as mobile kitchen, the hammered- aluminium “mess tins” you eat out of, and the chef's broken-toothed smile do not exactly whet one's appetite, the food itself is made from good ingredients, expertly cooked under difficult conditions, and delicious.
For our first “go” we pick a man selling spicy pork noodles on a busy main road just down from our hotel.

"What ARE we doing??"

He stands behind his cart, barely visible through the billowing cloud of savoury-smelling steam bubbling up from the large pot from which he ladles a generous helping of noodles, pork, spring onions, and little dumplings of tofu (all swimming in a light-grey “soup”), into a dented aluminium bowl, while we wait in anticipation, seated on brightly-coloured miniature plastic garden stools at a folding camp table. He serves us the bowl (one bowl between four because we're not sure we'll like it) and we tuck in while trying to avoid inhaling the traffic fumes on our one side, and to not get in the way of the steady stream of pedestrians flowing past on the other, and after the first spoonful wishing we'd ordered a bowl each.

YUMMY!

The first evening, and time to indulge in Bangkok's second-most popular past-time after eating eating; shopping shopping. Our guidebook tells of the Mahboonkrong – or MBK – centre being a must-see place, so we negotiate a fare of 200Baht for our taxi driver to take us to MBK (before getting in the taxi of course). Once in the taxi and on our way (crawling along in first gear), it begins...
“You want nice restaurant?”
“We'd just like to go to MBK please”
“You want shopping shopping, or eating eating?”
“Erm, well, both really.”
“Oh, MBK just shopping. No good for eating eating. Also is closed now. You want go nice Thai restaurant? Very good seafood!”
“Umm, well, we just wanted to look around the shops at MBK and get something to eat nearby.”
“No shop tonight. Tomorrow better for shopping shopping. Tonight good for eating eating.”
At this point I gave up and let him take us to a “nice restaurant he knows”, which turns out to be a long Portakabin-like structure a bit off the beaten track, wedged between a major road artery and a railway line and reached via a long, dark alleyway. Karen and I exchange worried, “we've been had” looks, but decide to make the best of it; it's getting late, it took about 45 minutes to get here, and we're all starving. I pay the taxi driver without saying thank you, and we walk under a kind of car-port of corrugated plastic roof panels to be greeted by “mine host”, who promptly thrusts plastic baskets into our hands and guides us to a row of large algae-dimmed glass tanks along the right-hand side so that we can pick our main course – nice!
Elliot and Abigail draw the line at this, neither being a huge seafood fan, but Karen chooses the least sorry-looking sea bass from a sorry-looking bunch and I choose the smallest lobster I could find. Choosing a live lobster from a tank for my dinner was a life experience still on my “yet-to-do” list, and I think this was one of the main reasons we didn't jump straight into the next taxi and retreat to “civilization”.

My dinner: before...

Inside, the long dining room of Samboon Dee (I gleaned the name of the establishment from the back of the staffs' T-shirts) was almost empty - just two other tables occupied. We choose a table about half-way down on the right and settle down in the plastic garden chairs to listen to our dinner background music - by Led Zeppelin, Oasis, and AC/DC. Elliot commented that the playlist could have come from my iPod.
Dinner arrives, looking very different from fifteen minutes earlier. My lobster (which I'd ordered stir-fried in sweet and sour sauce) has turned bright red from its original bluey-grey colouring (you would too if you'd been boiled alive) and Karen's sea bass is nicely presented on an oval metal tray, having been poached in an onion and garlic broth.

...and after.

Despite the threatening ambience and seen-better-days décor, dinner was very good, but also very expensive by Bangkok standards (that's whole lobsters for you). We sat in the taxi back to the hotel wondering how much commission the first taxi driver got paid for persuading us to visit his “sponsor”.

Bangkok: Traffic

I guess every large city has its own particular traffic problems and unique features, but in Central Bangkok the traffic seems to dominate one's experience. From the various interesting vehicle types to the complex junctions with their technical-looking roadsigns,

from the noise and the fumes to the ever-present chance that – even walking through a crowded street market – you could be nudged out of the way by a family, baby and all, on a motor scooter: you can't ignore the traffic.

Watch out mate!

For the tourist there are several ways to get around: there's apparently a metro system, although I never saw any evidence of it. There are buses, but I don't know if tourists ever use them – we didn't. We did, however, use the Skytrain – a modern monorail system that, while efficient and good value for money, disappoints due to poor coverage - there are only two lines and they seem pretty short. I may be doing it an injustice because we only used it once and I didn't research it thoroughly, but the fact that the hotel lays on a free shuttle service to the nearest station tells you that it's not the most comprehensive mass transit system.
The two most commonly used forms of transport are the taxi and it's cheekier, smaller brother, the tuk-tuk.

Tuk-tuks look better at night, with their many, multicoloured rear lights

Tuk-tuks are motorized three-wheelers with a roof; kind of a modern-day rikshaw. The driver sits up front and has motorcycle-style handlebars and car-style pedals, and the single bench seat in the back can take three adults quite comfortably, although I did see a couple of tuk-tuks laden with four and even five people. The taxis themselves are regular saloon cars, but what's striking about them is the variety of colours available. Very bright, day-glo reds, pinks, purples, greens and yellows make taxis hard to miss.

The hotel warns you not to use either taxis or tuk-tuks on the basis that the drivers' motives are less than honourable, but we didn't have much choice if we wanted to get around town so we chanced it with the taxis, drawing the line at tuk-tuks.

The main thing to know when using a Bangkok taxi is to ignore the sign on the roof saying, “TAXI-METER”, because very few of them actually bother using their meters. What you need to do is tell them where you want to go and negotiate a fixed price for the journey before you get in, otherwise you'll get a nasty shock at journey's end when the drivers tries to overcharge you. This is actually a good thing, since even short journeys can take half an hour or more due to the congestion, and a metered trip could work out quite expensive.

Roads near the King's Palace were brightly decorated with royal tributes; the Thais really love their royal family. Note the sticky tape holding the windscreen together!

The other thing you need to remember is, once you've told the driver where you want to go, stick to it and don't let him talk you into going somewhere else, which he will try to do. We fell for that trick on our first night, which I'll tell you about in the next posting.

Bangkok: Cityscape

Bangkok is full, like an overstuffed suitcase.

Everywhere you look, the space is fully occupied, with humanity spilling out over the edge into the street. Look up, and the skyscrapers, shopping malls and Skytrain rails compete for their own piece of skyline.

Look down, and you need a verbal machete of “excuse me”'s and “sorry”'s to hack your way through the jungle of narrow streets, pavement food vendors, three-deep market stalls and their non-stop throng of customers.

Looking down from our 67th-floor room at the Baiyoke Sky hotel it's almost like studying an ant farm.

See the Johnnie Walker ad on the tower? Our room was about at the end of JW's coat-tails

Being behind the ad picture, city photos taken from our window were a bit fuzzy.

What seems at first a static vista becomes, on closer inspection, a labyrinth of hustle and bustle with tiny dots scurrying back and forth, hurrying as if to meet some anonymously imposed scurry quota.
Just being here is tiring.

Another striking image is all the wires. Some eccentric city planner seems long ago to have had the bright idea of stringing all the power cables and telephone wires along the street, about ten feet off the ground. So between the undergrowth of human jungle and the soaring canopy of concrete towers, you have this tangled nervous system of black lines pumping conversations, light, and information around, like a network of veins protruding from the skin of this monster city.


When the Thai people have had enough of jostling for position on the pavements, they jump into or onto a vehicle and do battle on the roads. When we first arrived I saw many buildings along the streets that were soot-blackened, like scarred victims of a long-extinguished fire, but the soot is from the incessant belching of thousands of exhaust pipes as they pass by or, more often, stand in gridlock waiting their turn to creep forward another few feet.
But more of traffic another time.