Killing Time in Bangkok
Hello!
I write today, as is clear from the title of this entry, from Bangkok, Thailand. I arrived here from Calcutta on this past Sunday the 19th, and I've spent the last few days taking care of odds and end mixed in with a bit of sightseeing while I've waited for my visa to process. This morning I picked up my waiting passport complete with Chinese visa (a beautiful piece of paper if I ever saw one!), and tonight I will take a take a train to the Laos-Thailand border, probably crossing into Laos tomorrow or the next day. As I mentioned last time I'm meeting Ashley and Sarah in Guiyang, China on April 4, and my plan is to spend as much time as possible in Laos on my way there (thus skipping straight away to Laos from Bangkok). I'm told Laos is just fantastic, and people I've talked to here who have been there recently have reported that as of yet it remains largely unchanged by tourism and tourists (such as myself! to an extent anyhow . . . more on other types of tourists in a bit), at least compared to Thailand. So Laos it is, however briefly.
The arrival itself into Bangkok was something of a shock. Or, perhaps not exactly a shock, but rife with novelty. You see, Bangkok is a thoroughly modern city; none of the Indian cities (nor anywhere else, for that matter) come close. Not even a little bit. (Among the big Indian cities I didn't see Chennai, but I'm confident it isn't an exception to this statement). Calcutta felt the most modern to me, as I noted in the entry I wrote there, but . . . so, so not modern the way Bangkok is. But it wasn't just the 'modernity' of Bangkok that caught my attention; it was also Western-ness of the way things look and feel and function (as opposed to India, where oftentimes they don't). [That said I have my doubts about whether it is worth distinguishing at all between 'modernization' and 'Westernization' (and their various derivatives). Anyhow . . .] Some specific aspects of this include of this include, vaguely in the order that I first encountered them here, lanes on the roads, people using those lanes in shiny Japanese cars, people driving without honking the whole time, raised freeways, more than a few clusters of tall office buildings, people exposing their shoulders and knees in public, the absence of power-cuts, etc. (not to mention Starbucks, ABP, and most the rest of the various American franchises (okay so Starbucks isn't a franchise but once again you get my point I'm sure)). Perhaps if I'd come here before I visited elsewhere in Asia it would have felt hectic, bustling, different; I don't know. But when I first arrived I felt as though I had returned to what had been so familiar to me all my life before I left the States last October (and which, to be sure, will be familiar once again soon enough). Over the past few days, as I've grown used to these things, I've become more able to notice differences here from places I've been thus far. From what I can gather it seems to me the chief difference lies in the culture that gets expression mainly within the confines of the home, which I haven't been exposed to at all besides walking through a few residential neighborhoods.
Perhaps the one bit that was truly shocking was the notorious Khao San Rd., the main backpacker drag in town. The big Indian cities each have their own equivalent, but once again none were anything like this. Khao San is positively overflowing with a type of tourist you just don't find in India outside Goa, and not really there either. I'd say the bulk of them, or at least the most visible, appear to be the same sort of people that go to Cancun on spring break (indeed maybe some of them are on spring break), with very much the same intent. [I suppose I don't actually know their intent, but I'd wager several days' budget that it has a lot to do with "getting wasted".] They're the skimpily-clad,
bleached-blond, "look how much time I've spent in a gym/lying in the sun," type (and their various derivatives) who are here first and foremost to make other people jealous when they tell them how great and exotic it was and if Satan does in fact have minions then I'm sure that these are them. I'd forgotten that people like this actually exist, and perhaps you can discern that I'm disappointed to have been reminded . . . . I'm staying about 10-15 minutes away in a lovely, quiet neighborhood near the river where kids play in the streets; I wouldn't come anywhere near this place except that this is where internet is found and one of my primary intentions for my time here was to get caught up on all the email I'd neglected over the past month and a half. So, I encounter Khao San on a daily basis, but I won't miss it when I'm gone.
The rest of what I've seen of Bangkok I've mostly enjoyed. Some dislike it for being a sprawling, uncentralized mess of an unplanned city (mess isn't the right word but you know what I mean), but-- perhaps growing up amongst the archetypal sprawling, uncentralized mess of an unplanned city has something to do with it-- it doesn't really bother me. Perhaps my favorite thing about the city is that it's a veritable wonderland of traffic-immune public transport, boasting not one but two modern urban train systems (highly modern subway along with the even-moderner SkyTrain (it is a SkyTrain afterall)) as well as, that's right, two forms of boat transport, not to mention the ultra-cheap and well-done bus system. [So this is the place where any comparison to Los Angeles falls apart.] The boats are the best because besides, well, they're boats!! Bangkok has a nice, wide river with frequent ferries running up and down, and these boats are great, but even cooler are the canal boats that run through this one fairly narrow canal that runs right through the heart of the city. Apparently, Bangkok used to be called the "Venice of the East" as it was, like Venice, a town with canals rather than roads. And while there's still more canals than you find in your average town, my feeling is that it's a shame there aren't as many as there once were, because they're wonderful.
The other thing I really like about Bangkok are the 'wats' (Buddhist temples/monasteries) that you find just about every other block here. Many of the big sights in Bangkok are wats with some particular distinction, and I paid a visit to a few of these, mostly yesterday. I really liked
most of what I saw-- I thought the buildings were consistently beautiful, and each one I went to had something distinct and different about it, usually having something to do with the particular Buddha statue inside. I'm having trouble with the downloading of pictures, and I'm pretty much out of time (I am out of time!), but the picture at right is of a wat (Wat Arun) that is quite unlike the others (more of a monument) that I quite liked. But again, this is rather atypical. For what that's worth . . .
Okay, out of time, and said what I've have to say anyhow.
Till next time,
--Josh
I write today, as is clear from the title of this entry, from Bangkok, Thailand. I arrived here from Calcutta on this past Sunday the 19th, and I've spent the last few days taking care of odds and end mixed in with a bit of sightseeing while I've waited for my visa to process. This morning I picked up my waiting passport complete with Chinese visa (a beautiful piece of paper if I ever saw one!), and tonight I will take a take a train to the Laos-Thailand border, probably crossing into Laos tomorrow or the next day. As I mentioned last time I'm meeting Ashley and Sarah in Guiyang, China on April 4, and my plan is to spend as much time as possible in Laos on my way there (thus skipping straight away to Laos from Bangkok). I'm told Laos is just fantastic, and people I've talked to here who have been there recently have reported that as of yet it remains largely unchanged by tourism and tourists (such as myself! to an extent anyhow . . . more on other types of tourists in a bit), at least compared to Thailand. So Laos it is, however briefly.
The arrival itself into Bangkok was something of a shock. Or, perhaps not exactly a shock, but rife with novelty. You see, Bangkok is a thoroughly modern city; none of the Indian cities (nor anywhere else, for that matter) come close. Not even a little bit. (Among the big Indian cities I didn't see Chennai, but I'm confident it isn't an exception to this statement). Calcutta felt the most modern to me, as I noted in the entry I wrote there, but . . . so, so not modern the way Bangkok is. But it wasn't just the 'modernity' of Bangkok that caught my attention; it was also Western-ness of the way things look and feel and function (as opposed to India, where oftentimes they don't). [That said I have my doubts about whether it is worth distinguishing at all between 'modernization' and 'Westernization' (and their various derivatives). Anyhow . . .] Some specific aspects of this include of this include, vaguely in the order that I first encountered them here, lanes on the roads, people using those lanes in shiny Japanese cars, people driving without honking the whole time, raised freeways, more than a few clusters of tall office buildings, people exposing their shoulders and knees in public, the absence of power-cuts, etc. (not to mention Starbucks, ABP, and most the rest of the various American franchises (okay so Starbucks isn't a franchise but once again you get my point I'm sure)). Perhaps if I'd come here before I visited elsewhere in Asia it would have felt hectic, bustling, different; I don't know. But when I first arrived I felt as though I had returned to what had been so familiar to me all my life before I left the States last October (and which, to be sure, will be familiar once again soon enough). Over the past few days, as I've grown used to these things, I've become more able to notice differences here from places I've been thus far. From what I can gather it seems to me the chief difference lies in the culture that gets expression mainly within the confines of the home, which I haven't been exposed to at all besides walking through a few residential neighborhoods.
Perhaps the one bit that was truly shocking was the notorious Khao San Rd., the main backpacker drag in town. The big Indian cities each have their own equivalent, but once again none were anything like this. Khao San is positively overflowing with a type of tourist you just don't find in India outside Goa, and not really there either. I'd say the bulk of them, or at least the most visible, appear to be the same sort of people that go to Cancun on spring break (indeed maybe some of them are on spring break), with very much the same intent. [I suppose I don't actually know their intent, but I'd wager several days' budget that it has a lot to do with "getting wasted".] They're the skimpily-clad,
bleached-blond, "look how much time I've spent in a gym/lying in the sun," type (and their various derivatives) who are here first and foremost to make other people jealous when they tell them how great and exotic it was and if Satan does in fact have minions then I'm sure that these are them. I'd forgotten that people like this actually exist, and perhaps you can discern that I'm disappointed to have been reminded . . . . I'm staying about 10-15 minutes away in a lovely, quiet neighborhood near the river where kids play in the streets; I wouldn't come anywhere near this place except that this is where internet is found and one of my primary intentions for my time here was to get caught up on all the email I'd neglected over the past month and a half. So, I encounter Khao San on a daily basis, but I won't miss it when I'm gone.The rest of what I've seen of Bangkok I've mostly enjoyed. Some dislike it for being a sprawling, uncentralized mess of an unplanned city (mess isn't the right word but you know what I mean), but-- perhaps growing up amongst the archetypal sprawling, uncentralized mess of an unplanned city has something to do with it-- it doesn't really bother me. Perhaps my favorite thing about the city is that it's a veritable wonderland of traffic-immune public transport, boasting not one but two modern urban train systems (highly modern subway along with the even-moderner SkyTrain (it is a SkyTrain afterall)) as well as, that's right, two forms of boat transport, not to mention the ultra-cheap and well-done bus system. [So this is the place where any comparison to Los Angeles falls apart.] The boats are the best because besides, well, they're boats!! Bangkok has a nice, wide river with frequent ferries running up and down, and these boats are great, but even cooler are the canal boats that run through this one fairly narrow canal that runs right through the heart of the city. Apparently, Bangkok used to be called the "Venice of the East" as it was, like Venice, a town with canals rather than roads. And while there's still more canals than you find in your average town, my feeling is that it's a shame there aren't as many as there once were, because they're wonderful.
The other thing I really like about Bangkok are the 'wats' (Buddhist temples/monasteries) that you find just about every other block here. Many of the big sights in Bangkok are wats with some particular distinction, and I paid a visit to a few of these, mostly yesterday. I really liked
most of what I saw-- I thought the buildings were consistently beautiful, and each one I went to had something distinct and different about it, usually having something to do with the particular Buddha statue inside. I'm having trouble with the downloading of pictures, and I'm pretty much out of time (I am out of time!), but the picture at right is of a wat (Wat Arun) that is quite unlike the others (more of a monument) that I quite liked. But again, this is rather atypical. For what that's worth . . .Okay, out of time, and said what I've have to say anyhow.
Till next time,
--Josh
posted by Josh at 3:48 PM
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