OK, one more post. Maybe I need to go to Japan next year. I'm currently sitting in the ANA lounge during my layover on the way home and marveling at just how mechanized, automated, efficient, spotlessly clean, and well, just how damn Japanese the Tokyo Narita airport is. There's a fancy machine for dispensing everything from fresh ground coffee to beer on tap. All the doors are automated. All the escalators slow down when people aren't on them to save energy. And there isn't a single speck of dirt in the entire place. It looks like you could eat off the damn floors here, including the ones in the bathroom. And speaking of the bathrooms, I've never seen so much technology go into a toilette. When I fired up my wifi, there were about 15 wifi networks in range, and every single one of them showed a full 5 bars strength. How is that even possible? Surely one of those hotspots is a ways away. I'm now convinced that Japan is magic.
Anyways, I'm going to go help myself to the sake bar. Later.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Bangkok and Finish
So I'm done with my five days in Bangkok. It was a blast. I was able to catch up my second night here with a friend of a friend (thanks Disco!) that took me out and showed me the town a bit. He was out of town the next few days so after that I was on my own. In terms of sights there isn't a particularly large amount to see. The Royal Palace, Wat Pho with the huge reclining Buddha (why doesn't that lazy bastard get off his ass anyways?), and a couple other temples and minor sights are about all that's worth seeing as far as specific sights go. After that I just did a lot of wandering around and exploring the different neighborhoods. It does take a while to knock all the sights off, though, as the town is a complete pain in the balls to get around. The sky train and metro system there is great, but unfortunately it doesn't cover the parts of the city where the major tourist attractions are. Go figure. And traffic is a nightmare. There were several occasions where I got into a cab and asked them to take me somewhere and the cabbie told me to get out of the cab because he wasn't even willing to try getting me there. It's a pretty difficult city to navigate by foot, too, and I spent quite a bit of time searching around for the places I was trying to go. Some of this could maybe have been alleviated by catching more tuk-tuks. However, I had sworn off tuk-tuks within 24 hours of arriving in Bangkok, as I quickly became convinced that every tuk-tuk drive the city is a hustler and I grew pretty weary of dealing with all their bullshit.
That being said, the city is really great. It's got a great energy and there's always something going on. It's very modern, too. Well, parts of it are, at least. One of the highlights was hanging out at Bar Vertigo on the roof of the 59-story Banyan Vines hotel. The skyline view there was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me and I only got some half-ass snaps with my cell phone. I also enjoyed the bar as it was one of only about 4 places I’ve been to on this entire trip that had even half-decent service of wine by the glass. I had to pay out the nose for it, though. My single pour of a humble German QbA Riesling cost me a whopping $19 US. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around long enough to require a second drink.
I also went to the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market. Yes, I guess it is more of a tourist attraction than an actual working market any longer, but it still was an interesting stop and I got some great photos. I took a taxi there at 5:30 in the morning so as to beat the crush of tourists in the tour groups, and it allowed me to have the place pretty much to myself and the locals for about an hour or so.
The most interesting thing I did in Bangkok was catch a Thai boxing match. It was pretty fascinating to watch a couple guys do the traditional dance together before the fight and then beat the living hell out of each other 3 minutes later. It was a pretty colorful spectacle. It was also much humbler place than I anticipated. The stadium I went to was the premier fighting arena in the country, so I figured it would be relatively modern and polished. It’s actually pretty small and modest place. I would guess it only seats about 1500 people, has a corrugated metal ceiling, and hardly any permanent seats. It also doesn’t appear to have dressing rooms for the fighters. I stepped out to go to the bathroom, and as I walked to the back arena saw an open area under the stands with the concession stands to the left, the men’s bathroom to the right, and the fighters and the trainers for the next fights sitting or warming up right in the middle with all the spectators milling around them. You could smell all the menthol on the guys when you walked by. The other really entertaining thing was watching the action in the mezzanine and upper tiers of seating in between rounds. These are the areas where most of the locals sit, with well over half the people in the stadium being seated in the upper level. By sit, I actually mean stand as I don’t think there are any seats provided in the upper level and it’s just plain concrete steps. There was a gambling frenzy going on up there in between rounds, particularly on the good fights. You’d see literally hundreds of guys screaming and frantically flashing hand signals to one another between each round. I didn’t see that much passing of actually cash, but you could definitely tell that there was a lot of money changing hands.
Probably the best thing about the boxing stadium was the food outside. I grabbed some of the best chow I’ve had on this vacation from the street vendors right outside the main gate of the arena. The one thing that was particularly good was the black rice which was cooked in a hollow bamboo log. There must have been some kind of sweetener in it since it almost tasted like a dessert. Kick ass. I’ve generally done much better with food here in Bangkok than I did in Chiang Mai, and I’ve had some really great stuff. Yesterday I got this mushroom soup that had wood ear, enoki, shitake, and straw mushrooms in it that absolutely rocked. In the past few days I’ve also gotten some killer phad thai, some roast duck with sweet soy sauce, some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had, I a few other things which I really couldn’t identify but tasted great. I’ve done better with the restaurant food, too. On Tuesday I had a stir-fried whole crab with a spicy-sweet sauce which was out of this world. The other restaurant stuff I’ve had has generally been pretty good, if not fantastic.
I also took another cooking course. 5 full days in Bangkok was a little more time then I really needed, even at the leisurely pace I was taking it (I was staying up late and sleeping in a lot) so I filled the last afternoon with another cooking course. The only cooking school which had an opening was a pretty fancy place and was awfully expensive by local standards, but I’m glad I went. I got some good experience and was able to fill some gaps on my knowledge of Thai cooking and learn some knew techniques. The food which we made as this restaurant was really fantastic, as well. This was also one of the few places with a decent wine list, and I was able to try a couple Thai wines which they were pouring by the glass. They weren’t exactly complex or well-balanced, as they were super-rich and jammy, almost tasting like some kind of a dry dessert wine. However, they were nevertheless drinkable and I thought went well with the food.
So that wraps up my trip. I’m actually writing this during my flight from Bangkok to Tokyo. Hopefully I can wrap up this post soon while I’m still coherent. I’ve got a business class flight with free wine, and the ANA flight I’m on has 1 sparkling wine, 2 whites, 2 reds, 2 sakes, 1 Japanese whisky, and a plum wine on offer. Since they’re free and since I’m hoping to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Chicago, I’ll need to try every one of them on this segment. So I’ll be pretty bombed in short order here.
It will be nice to be back home, but I’m definitely going to miss:
- Being able to get a reliably good if not downright phenomenal meal for $2 US
- The coconut shakes
- The cheap massages
That being said, there are a few things which I definitely won’t miss, including:
- The pollution and the dirt
- The incessant heat and humidity
- The difficulty in getting a decent glass of wine, and when you can find it having to pay 2-3 times what you would in the states for something of similar quality
- The appearance that everything going on around me is some sort of scam to separate me from my money.
All said and done, it was a great trip. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I’ve got the feeling that I’ve blown the budget for the trip pretty badly. I hadn’t really factored in a private driver and tour guide for Siem Reap, 80-km taxi drive to the floating market and back, $450 in custom-tailored clothing, and $180 bucks in cooking classes into my original estimates. I think I really started to fall off the wagon the last few days in Bangkok, as too much free time on my hands equals too much time spent at the spa getting a massage which relatively speaking isn’t as cheap in the big city. It also didn’t help that the garbage Lonely Planet guidebook I was using was reliably low on costs for just about everything, particularly for accommodations where is many cases it was egregiously low. It was still much cheaper than another trip to Europe would have been, though. But I think I’ll hit another continent before I go back to Asia. Maybe I’ll do Central and South America or Europe again next year. We’ll have to see. I definitely wouldn’t mind coming back to Thailand and Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were great, but I think I’ve covered all the things I was really interested in doing in those countries on this trip. I’d love to be able to do the mountainous north of Vietnam some other time, and I also think a trip to the islands and beaches in Thailand is a must-do at some point.
This will be my last post for this trip. Thanks for checking in. Hope to hear from everybody soon.
Ryan
That being said, the city is really great. It's got a great energy and there's always something going on. It's very modern, too. Well, parts of it are, at least. One of the highlights was hanging out at Bar Vertigo on the roof of the 59-story Banyan Vines hotel. The skyline view there was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me and I only got some half-ass snaps with my cell phone. I also enjoyed the bar as it was one of only about 4 places I’ve been to on this entire trip that had even half-decent service of wine by the glass. I had to pay out the nose for it, though. My single pour of a humble German QbA Riesling cost me a whopping $19 US. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around long enough to require a second drink.
I also went to the famous Damnoen Saduak floating market. Yes, I guess it is more of a tourist attraction than an actual working market any longer, but it still was an interesting stop and I got some great photos. I took a taxi there at 5:30 in the morning so as to beat the crush of tourists in the tour groups, and it allowed me to have the place pretty much to myself and the locals for about an hour or so.
The most interesting thing I did in Bangkok was catch a Thai boxing match. It was pretty fascinating to watch a couple guys do the traditional dance together before the fight and then beat the living hell out of each other 3 minutes later. It was a pretty colorful spectacle. It was also much humbler place than I anticipated. The stadium I went to was the premier fighting arena in the country, so I figured it would be relatively modern and polished. It’s actually pretty small and modest place. I would guess it only seats about 1500 people, has a corrugated metal ceiling, and hardly any permanent seats. It also doesn’t appear to have dressing rooms for the fighters. I stepped out to go to the bathroom, and as I walked to the back arena saw an open area under the stands with the concession stands to the left, the men’s bathroom to the right, and the fighters and the trainers for the next fights sitting or warming up right in the middle with all the spectators milling around them. You could smell all the menthol on the guys when you walked by. The other really entertaining thing was watching the action in the mezzanine and upper tiers of seating in between rounds. These are the areas where most of the locals sit, with well over half the people in the stadium being seated in the upper level. By sit, I actually mean stand as I don’t think there are any seats provided in the upper level and it’s just plain concrete steps. There was a gambling frenzy going on up there in between rounds, particularly on the good fights. You’d see literally hundreds of guys screaming and frantically flashing hand signals to one another between each round. I didn’t see that much passing of actually cash, but you could definitely tell that there was a lot of money changing hands.
Probably the best thing about the boxing stadium was the food outside. I grabbed some of the best chow I’ve had on this vacation from the street vendors right outside the main gate of the arena. The one thing that was particularly good was the black rice which was cooked in a hollow bamboo log. There must have been some kind of sweetener in it since it almost tasted like a dessert. Kick ass. I’ve generally done much better with food here in Bangkok than I did in Chiang Mai, and I’ve had some really great stuff. Yesterday I got this mushroom soup that had wood ear, enoki, shitake, and straw mushrooms in it that absolutely rocked. In the past few days I’ve also gotten some killer phad thai, some roast duck with sweet soy sauce, some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had, I a few other things which I really couldn’t identify but tasted great. I’ve done better with the restaurant food, too. On Tuesday I had a stir-fried whole crab with a spicy-sweet sauce which was out of this world. The other restaurant stuff I’ve had has generally been pretty good, if not fantastic.
I also took another cooking course. 5 full days in Bangkok was a little more time then I really needed, even at the leisurely pace I was taking it (I was staying up late and sleeping in a lot) so I filled the last afternoon with another cooking course. The only cooking school which had an opening was a pretty fancy place and was awfully expensive by local standards, but I’m glad I went. I got some good experience and was able to fill some gaps on my knowledge of Thai cooking and learn some knew techniques. The food which we made as this restaurant was really fantastic, as well. This was also one of the few places with a decent wine list, and I was able to try a couple Thai wines which they were pouring by the glass. They weren’t exactly complex or well-balanced, as they were super-rich and jammy, almost tasting like some kind of a dry dessert wine. However, they were nevertheless drinkable and I thought went well with the food.
So that wraps up my trip. I’m actually writing this during my flight from Bangkok to Tokyo. Hopefully I can wrap up this post soon while I’m still coherent. I’ve got a business class flight with free wine, and the ANA flight I’m on has 1 sparkling wine, 2 whites, 2 reds, 2 sakes, 1 Japanese whisky, and a plum wine on offer. Since they’re free and since I’m hoping to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Chicago, I’ll need to try every one of them on this segment. So I’ll be pretty bombed in short order here.
It will be nice to be back home, but I’m definitely going to miss:
- Being able to get a reliably good if not downright phenomenal meal for $2 US
- The coconut shakes
- The cheap massages
That being said, there are a few things which I definitely won’t miss, including:
- The pollution and the dirt
- The incessant heat and humidity
- The difficulty in getting a decent glass of wine, and when you can find it having to pay 2-3 times what you would in the states for something of similar quality
- The appearance that everything going on around me is some sort of scam to separate me from my money.
All said and done, it was a great trip. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I’ve got the feeling that I’ve blown the budget for the trip pretty badly. I hadn’t really factored in a private driver and tour guide for Siem Reap, 80-km taxi drive to the floating market and back, $450 in custom-tailored clothing, and $180 bucks in cooking classes into my original estimates. I think I really started to fall off the wagon the last few days in Bangkok, as too much free time on my hands equals too much time spent at the spa getting a massage which relatively speaking isn’t as cheap in the big city. It also didn’t help that the garbage Lonely Planet guidebook I was using was reliably low on costs for just about everything, particularly for accommodations where is many cases it was egregiously low. It was still much cheaper than another trip to Europe would have been, though. But I think I’ll hit another continent before I go back to Asia. Maybe I’ll do Central and South America or Europe again next year. We’ll have to see. I definitely wouldn’t mind coming back to Thailand and Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were great, but I think I’ve covered all the things I was really interested in doing in those countries on this trip. I’d love to be able to do the mountainous north of Vietnam some other time, and I also think a trip to the islands and beaches in Thailand is a must-do at some point.
This will be my last post for this trip. Thanks for checking in. Hope to hear from everybody soon.
Ryan
Monday, March 2, 2009
Chiang Mai and Sukhothai
So I've hit my first couple spots in Thailand. Chiang Mai was pretty cool. After a while, I was getting templed out, but the markets were interesting and there was a really good cooking school that I took a couple of classes as. I also took a long day tour of the Golden Triangle area where Thailand, Lao, and Myanmar all meet. During the tour we stopped at a couple ethnic villages, although that was pretty commercialized. It's obvious that these villages now see tourism as their primary way of living instead of agriculture. A bunch of the villagers were dressed up in their traditional dress as if it was Halloween and when you took a photo of them they'd come up to you and say "5 baht, money, 5 baht". A bunch of the kids came begging for money, too. And of course there were little shops and stands selling tourist trinkets everywhere. This included not just things made in the village, but a lot of items purchased in the Chiang Rai market for re-sell. I'm glad I was able to see some more genuine small ethnic villages in Laos where tourism has not played such a corrupting influence on the daily lives of people there.
Other than that, Chiang Mai is about what you'd expect for Thailand. Lots of prostitues. Lots of massage parlors. I've found it's pretty hard to distinguish between the legit places and the spots where you get what I call the massage-plus treatment. I walked by a place on my second day there that was inside a big fancy high-rise hotel that marketed itself as a spa and also provided facials and body wraps and such, and also charged about double what most places do. So I figured that's a place where you can just get a really good massage (a massage-minus). So I go in, and about two thirds of the way through I'm being asked "Do you want extra special massage?". Hhhhmmmn, let me think about it.
More disturbingly, there are lots of she-males here. On a couple of occasions I'd be thinking to myself "Hey, that's a nice piece of....WHOA HOLD ON A SECOND THAT'S A DUDE!". I’d then go home and take a shower to symbolically cleanse myself of my thought crime.
I ended up getting some bespoke-tailored clothing in Chiang Mai. I was a little leery of custom tailoring after my experience in Hoi An. I was cruising around temples with some ex investment banker from NY I met (this was the 3rd newly unemployed investment banker that is now traveling the world for an extended period that I met on this trip), and we started a conversation with this guy from Singapore. He had flown in with his wife to visit this one particular tailor, which he said he does every 6 months or so. According to this dude, Chiang Mai has supplanted Bangkok as the custom-tailoring capital of Asia. He was the second guy that day that told me to go there, we figured we might as well check it out. We go, and it seems like they really know what they are talking about, so I order up a sport coat. The next day I go back in for my first fitting, and he's got the base of the jacket laid out with no arms and unfinished lapels, and aside from needing just a tad more space in the arm holes it feels perfect. I come back in on day 2 and the thing fits like a glove, and looks great. So I ended up having him put together an overcoat for me, too. I'm pretty happy with how both turned out. I do regret my choice in fabric on the sport coat a little, though. I was hoping I would get something that would be good for both work and casual, but I think it's not going to be that versatile. It will still be a nice item to have, though. I think that's probably the one limitation of the whole process, is that you have to pick your own fabrics and they have pretty standard suit materials on-hand that don’t work as well for casual clothing. If you want just basic stuff, that's fine, but if you want something more fashion-forward I think you'll need to show up with your own cloth.
Sukhothai was pretty nice. The historic park was really interesting. I rented a bike and tooled around for about 4 hours, in which I was able to cover about everything worth seeing. It worked out well as I was able to get an early start, get back to the hotel and clean up, and catch a long bus ride to Bangkok, which I'm on right now (and being subjected to a painfully bad Thai movie, by the way). This will give me just shy of 5 full days in Bangkok before I have to catch my flight home on Saturday night. This is probably 1 more than I need, but I suppose it will give me ample time to explore the night life and give me some incentive to hook up with some other travelers I can party with.
The food has been good here in Thailand, but it hasn't blown my mind. I've actually preferred much of the Thai food that I've had at home. Maybe that means I'm used to more Americanized stuff. Some of the stuff has been a bit hard on my stomach, too. It's not been uncommon for me to have a mild stomach ache after eating at nice restaurants. I think that it's just the ingredients, not the fact that the food has made me ill. Don't get me wrong, that's happened too. I've spent another few days crapping my guts out and I'm on my second Z-pack and box of immodium for this trip. It's the cost of doing business, as far as I'm concerned. As with Vietnam and Laos, all the best stuff I've had has been street food. To skip out on street food would defeat the point of coming here. Sukhothai has a really vibrant night market, so I hit that last night. I got some unidenfitied pork thing with sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and some stir-fried frog with garlic and pepper. Alas, the frog was not as tasty as the ribbit dished I had in Cambodia, but the pork was pretty good. And dessert was off the hook. I went to this little Thai-style crepe stand where they were making sweet crepes with condensed milk drizzled all over it. Killer.
However, there are definitely some things I won't touch. Since I didn't see the deep-fried hairy spiders that are supposedly so common in Cambodia, Thailand appears to be the winner for wierdest food I've seen. Check out the photo of all the deep-fried worms for sale. Eewww.
Other than that, Chiang Mai is about what you'd expect for Thailand. Lots of prostitues. Lots of massage parlors. I've found it's pretty hard to distinguish between the legit places and the spots where you get what I call the massage-plus treatment. I walked by a place on my second day there that was inside a big fancy high-rise hotel that marketed itself as a spa and also provided facials and body wraps and such, and also charged about double what most places do. So I figured that's a place where you can just get a really good massage (a massage-minus). So I go in, and about two thirds of the way through I'm being asked "Do you want extra special massage?". Hhhhmmmn, let me think about it.
More disturbingly, there are lots of she-males here. On a couple of occasions I'd be thinking to myself "Hey, that's a nice piece of....WHOA HOLD ON A SECOND THAT'S A DUDE!". I’d then go home and take a shower to symbolically cleanse myself of my thought crime.
I ended up getting some bespoke-tailored clothing in Chiang Mai. I was a little leery of custom tailoring after my experience in Hoi An. I was cruising around temples with some ex investment banker from NY I met (this was the 3rd newly unemployed investment banker that is now traveling the world for an extended period that I met on this trip), and we started a conversation with this guy from Singapore. He had flown in with his wife to visit this one particular tailor, which he said he does every 6 months or so. According to this dude, Chiang Mai has supplanted Bangkok as the custom-tailoring capital of Asia. He was the second guy that day that told me to go there, we figured we might as well check it out. We go, and it seems like they really know what they are talking about, so I order up a sport coat. The next day I go back in for my first fitting, and he's got the base of the jacket laid out with no arms and unfinished lapels, and aside from needing just a tad more space in the arm holes it feels perfect. I come back in on day 2 and the thing fits like a glove, and looks great. So I ended up having him put together an overcoat for me, too. I'm pretty happy with how both turned out. I do regret my choice in fabric on the sport coat a little, though. I was hoping I would get something that would be good for both work and casual, but I think it's not going to be that versatile. It will still be a nice item to have, though. I think that's probably the one limitation of the whole process, is that you have to pick your own fabrics and they have pretty standard suit materials on-hand that don’t work as well for casual clothing. If you want just basic stuff, that's fine, but if you want something more fashion-forward I think you'll need to show up with your own cloth.
Sukhothai was pretty nice. The historic park was really interesting. I rented a bike and tooled around for about 4 hours, in which I was able to cover about everything worth seeing. It worked out well as I was able to get an early start, get back to the hotel and clean up, and catch a long bus ride to Bangkok, which I'm on right now (and being subjected to a painfully bad Thai movie, by the way). This will give me just shy of 5 full days in Bangkok before I have to catch my flight home on Saturday night. This is probably 1 more than I need, but I suppose it will give me ample time to explore the night life and give me some incentive to hook up with some other travelers I can party with.
The food has been good here in Thailand, but it hasn't blown my mind. I've actually preferred much of the Thai food that I've had at home. Maybe that means I'm used to more Americanized stuff. Some of the stuff has been a bit hard on my stomach, too. It's not been uncommon for me to have a mild stomach ache after eating at nice restaurants. I think that it's just the ingredients, not the fact that the food has made me ill. Don't get me wrong, that's happened too. I've spent another few days crapping my guts out and I'm on my second Z-pack and box of immodium for this trip. It's the cost of doing business, as far as I'm concerned. As with Vietnam and Laos, all the best stuff I've had has been street food. To skip out on street food would defeat the point of coming here. Sukhothai has a really vibrant night market, so I hit that last night. I got some unidenfitied pork thing with sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and some stir-fried frog with garlic and pepper. Alas, the frog was not as tasty as the ribbit dished I had in Cambodia, but the pork was pretty good. And dessert was off the hook. I went to this little Thai-style crepe stand where they were making sweet crepes with condensed milk drizzled all over it. Killer.
However, there are definitely some things I won't touch. Since I didn't see the deep-fried hairy spiders that are supposedly so common in Cambodia, Thailand appears to be the winner for wierdest food I've seen. Check out the photo of all the deep-fried worms for sale. Eewww.
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