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