As the Weeks Pass By in Bangkok

Originally, we scheduled a two week stopover in Bangkok on our way to Vietnam; our sojourn in Bangkok is now approaching three months. As the weeks pass by, this extended quarantine translates into plenty of free time to work on my Thai.

The hardest part of learning Thai (written Thai is based on ancient Sanskrit) is accepting that it has absolutely nothing to do with English. There are 44 consonants, 15 vowel symbols that combine into 28 vowel forms and 5 separate tones. If you consider each vowel form a separate letter then they are a whopping 72 letters in the Thai alphabet. 

Contrast this with the Hawaiian language, with its 5 vowels and 7 consonants!

The hardest part of all this is the five possible tones for each possible letter. We have a few tones in English, for example: "Don't you use that tone of voice with me young man!" or say the skeptical tonal enunciation of "OK" by a petulant 12 year old to "OKAAAAY Dad, I got it!"

As English is taught in the school system and with the abundance of of tourists here, many people speak some English. However I make the effort to speak in Thai, which leads to befuddled giggles and baffled WTF looks. Glad I don't take things personally.

Sometimes Lilly will wait outside as I go into a 7-11 and attempt to yuk it up with the clerks while making a small purchase. She might notice the perplexed reaction of the clerks and ask me "what on earth were you saying to those people?"

Speaking of 7-11's, you can't swing a dead cat in Bangkok without hitting one. Sometimes they are two on the same block.

Plenty of time to never miss a chance to make fools of ourselves before Face-timing with someone in distant lands.

Thailand has been on top of Covid. As of this writing, there have been 3040 confirmed cases with 56 deaths in a population of ~69 million. Temperatures are checked everywhere you enter. Hand sanitizer and masks required. All businesses were closed except for grocery stores. Curfew from 10 PM until 4 AM. Social Distancing. There is now an app that you have to scan entering and leaving all public places. The worst response for us however, was the three week ban on all alcohol with no warning. The involuntary detox did us well as we felt awfully good three weeks later.

I read several USA as well as foreign newspapers daily and the response in the US sure seems chaotic and disjointed compared to here, at least from the internet news services.

Kinda makes one ponder about the nature of democracy. One of its fundamentals is that every idiot, every dunce is given a voice. Thailand, on the other end of the spectrum, has a military dictatorship. So when the Thai Royal Police say that there is a curfew, you better damn well heed their, ahem, suggestion. There is a minimum 2 year jail sentence and a 100,000 baht fine for breaking the curfew.

Just try to march on a state capital armed with a AR-15, overweight and dressed in Walmart camouflage in Thailand. Good luck bellowing to the police when you are not wearing a mask "MY BODY MY CHOICE".

(Funny how these dopes don't demonstrate when the see a sign on the door of a store : "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service". These nincompoops sure don't march on the governor's office when they get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt or a fine for not having a fishing licence).

For the past few months we have moved accommodation every ~two weeks. We like to do this because you get to know the little nooks and crannies of the neighborhoods; you get a view out of the different windows that look out on different views of the city; you get to experience other voices, other rooms; you get to know the papaya salad lady well enough to nod at her.

These more or less small plates at this place are 40-55 baht, $1.25-$1.75 each.Thousands of restaurants and so little time....all so delicious and affordable.

Sometimes we want to ensconce hipster local. If you aren't a veteran of this kind of life, you would never guess that there is a too cool for school Airbnb down an alley like this.

When I was wandering around these parts ~40 years ago, decades before the internet and cell phones, my buddy and I would use the fledgling Lonely Planet guidebook to get around. We would  look at argue over a tiny map diagram and then aim for a hostel or the train station. If we looked at a alley like the one above we would surmise that no way was that the right way. We would often surmise incorrectly and have to double back.

Nowadays, I follow Lilly, who in turn follows her iPhone 10 locked onto Google Maps. Interestingly, Google Maps will forgo the main roads that I would have chosen from a map and take these alleys through warrens of dwellings, small work shops and street food carts.

Sometimes Google Maps will suggest a narrow path that squeezes between two buildings in an already cramped situation.
As I might express concern about running the risk of being stuck between the two claustrophobic walls, Lilly will whip out the iPhone and hold it with that bent arm and upturned hand of iPhone users worldwide.... like a compass of yesteryear.

Then we get a confused signal or perhaps no signal at all, which then draws out the Nosy Nellies or merely curious neighbors. Just what are those two obviously lost farangs looking for?

They are usually trying to be helpful but often don't speak a word of English. So it is time to break out my newly learned on You Tube Thai traveler's phrases, which in turn bewilders them even more.

Durian for sale on a Bangkok street. I first tried Durian in Hawaii. A local farmer or someone in the Permaculture Department would bring a few into the kitchen and people in the know would go absolutely bonkers.

The problem is the fruit smells like pig shit, vomit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. (Most hotels and taxis here don't allow it to enter).

They would crack open the thorny beasts, take out the small pods of custard like fruit and give everyone a taste.

It was a strange combination of savory, sweet and creamy all at once. Hints of chives mixed with powdered sugar; diced garlic and caramel poured into whipped cream.

When some co-worker would notice my hesitancy, they would say "relax Ted.... and just let the cacophony of flavors blow you away."

Anyhoo, it is a big deal here in Thailand. When a farmer pulls his truck off the side of a highway and starts selling his load, there is always a line. It is expensive and people debate the characteristics of the thirty or so varieties like fine wine. 

We have stayed in several neighborhoods throughout Bangkok: Ekkamai (twice), Nana, Sathorn, Bang Na, Bang Rak, Sribumphen, Khet Phra Nakhon come to mind. Here is a view from our balcony from a guesthouse in Sribumphen. Sit there a while and you get to know the schedules of the neighborhood cats. 

Out of the back window of this Airbnb is a view of The Malaysia Hotel. As the Vietnam war began to escalate in 1965, the Thai economy began to boil with American dollars and in 1967 the Hotel Malaysia began welcoming American GIs for a little *rest and recreation*.

In 1973 Tony Wheeler and his wife, founders of the Lonely Planet guidebook series, wrote part of Across Asia on the Cheap in a 60 baht room in the hotel. In 1975, they followed up that success with Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. It was an immense success. As the American soldiers cycled back home, they were replaced by the what the locals called "Cheap Charlies". As such Soi Ngam Duphli became ground zero for people looking for a place to disappear.

And one Charles Sobhraj was just the man to help them disappear. French Vietnamese Charles Sobhraj was an outrageous psychopath, thief, fraudster and serial killer that preyed upon Western tourists, mainly beatniks and hippies on the Southeast Asia Hippie Trail in the 1970's. He was devilishly handsome and charming and used this to his advantage to further his criminal career. During the time of his murders in Thailand (he murdered, drugged, raped and robbed in many other countries as well) he stayed at the Hotel Malaysia and later had an apartment near by where he committed all sorts of dastardly deeds.

He was in jail in India when I was passing through in ~1982 but our fellow travelers on the circuit at the time knew all about him. There are several books out there about him that detail his flamboyant and fearless crimes, both in and out of prison, that continue up to 2020. He is currently serving a life sentence in Kathmandu.

Robin Williams shot a scene at the Hotel Malaysia in 1987 for the movie Good Morning Vietnam.

Of course Southeast Asia on a Shoestring was our bible traveling around this neighborhood in ~1982.

If Tony Wheeler recommended it, we stayed there. As aboriginal Lonely Planet morphed into Instagram and FOMO, the backpackers moved on to Khao San Road and the area today is quiet, if a little forlorn. 

It also looks like senior citizens like me, that haunted the area back in the day and don't want are too old for the circus of the tourist ghetto of Khao San Road, nostalgically trickle back as retirees either on extended or permanent stay.

However there are those that say Tony Wheeler and his Lonely Planet empire were the grandfathers of encouraging over-tourism and ecological degradation. Tony may have started the trend to ruin places like Bali, and islands in south Thailand but The Beach, the 2000 movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio took it to a new level. The producers bulldozed a beach on Koh Phi Phi to make "the beach" more "paradise-like," infuriating the Thais. Koh Phi Phi was actually closed indefinitely in 2019 due to the damaging foot traffic to the dunes and coral reefs by The Beach wanna-bees. 

Khao San Road, like many of the bucket-lists stops on the Banana Pancake Trail or the Gringo Trail in Central America are small areas where you can observe the interactions of such disparate characters as un-educated young Westerners on extended leave from affluent society, gap year travelers, Israelis fresh out of military service, young Japanese in rite-of-passage attire, students in language schools, volunteers from do-gooder organizations and ordinary senior citizen merrymakers.

As I wander around the old neighborhood, I cannot for the life of me remember where we stayed. It was near by, but was certainly not the Hotel Malaysia (it cost too much even in the day). 

I did stumble upon this hovel called Wong's Place. It opened after my time but was known as a true dive where people went when the other bars had closed and they thought that they had not had enough to drink at 4:00 AM. Stories abound of people crawling, literally crawling, out of Wong's at 9:00 AM, perhaps regretting the decision to have just one more at Wong's Place (I am sure it seemed like a good idea at the time).

Evidently Wong is/was a raging, aggressive alkie that bellowed at customers that they were't drinking fast enough. Maybe the customers of 2020 don't find that as endearing as they did in the 80's. Maybe it is just closed because of Covid.

Sometimes we stay in hotels. This one was in the Bang Na suburb. I am gonna guess that it had ~200 rooms and there were maybe 5 guests. Really just us and the full staff. Anybody ever seen the movie The Shining?

We would sit at the pool (always the only guests) and watch the staff re-clean the same areas that were immaculately clean the day before. The problem with hotels in the Covid era is that there is almost no extracurricular human contact.

Whereas in the guesthouses you have contact with the neighborhood vibe. This vegetable lady worked this stall by herself. She did a booming business with the after work crowd. You would fill a basket with veggies and she wouldn't weigh it, she would just eyeball it and give you a price, usually less than 5 dollars.

Our Airbnb backs up to a large modern apartment building

These streets and alleys of these old neighborhoods are buttressed right up against the most trendy and modern of 100 story apartment buildings. So maybe a 1000 people could potentially live in just one building. After work, many of them hit the markets or eat dinner at the hundreds of places.

Everybody in the world is glued to their phones. Maybe these guys were checking their Facebook feed?

At times, Covid life here in Bangkok has been like being dropped in the middle of an episode of The Twilight Zone.  Here I am walking a bridge over the Chao Phraya River in central Bangkok. Normally this bridge is clogged with traffic. Normally the river is super busy with river taxis and tourist boats.

However, today, it's just us.

 Never a problem with toilet paper in Bangkok though.

These Monitor Lizards as seen here in Lumphini Park, where they number in the hundreds, are supposed to not be dangerous to humans, although anecdotal stories report that they attack and eat large turtles and puppies. This one looks to be about 60 pounds and the first time I saw one I mistook the motherfucker for a crocodile. Egad! I thought.

I found their approach a tad disconcerting and wasn't gonna hang around to see if they were dangerous or not.

Another industry in Thailand is medical tourism. I have one leg slightly longer than the other and it started bothering me doing all this wandering about. I went to a podiatrist for a diagnosis. The doctor and more than a few assistants measured and probed and eventually made a foam insert for my shoe.
Cost?
Hip X-ray $12.55 Doctor's fee and cost of the insole $125.45.

It makes you wonder what is going on with medical costs in the USA. For example, the cost of my prescription medicine, the cost of dental work here are a fraction of the cost of what they are in America.
Imagine getting a hip X-ray in the USA for $12.55? More like $1255.00.

As I write this, Bangkok is slowly re-opening. We went to Chinatown one evening and it seemed to be up to ~30% of what it was pre-Covid,

Many of the restaurants in Chinatown specialize in Shark's Fin Soup. It is a reputed delicacy and like a lot of these sorts of things, some Chinese Medicine adherents say it cures everything. It also requires the killing of ~100 million sharks a year.

The large bowl here is 10,000 baht or $313.00. There is plenty of imitation/counterfeit shark fin soup out there, so Caveat Emptor.
You might want to also try Bird's Nest Soup, which is also abundantly offered. It is made from dried bird saliva and also cures everything. Caveat Emptor on that too.

River taxis are running but kinda empty.

I ponder if I should I have roast duck tonight?

They have re-opened some of the smaller restaurants. I wonder if this flimsy screen and two feet of social distancing really does anything. While eating, no one wears a mask.

The Buddha in the time of Covid

Thanks for stopping by