Life in Covid Bangkok

The next stop after the lethargy in Goa was Vietnam. When I was in these parts in ~1982 Vietnam was still closed to Americans. Born a Boomer, the controversy of the Vietnam War was the soundtrack to my teenage years. 

I was looking forward to going to the battlefields that were portrayed in so many books and movies, James Bond Beach and finally visiting the home of Pho, a dish that I have savored for many moons on several continents.

The grueling flight itinerary was to be Goa-Bangalore-Bangkok-Saigon. Instead we decided to break it up with two weeks in Bangkok.

Vietnam was not to be and stopping in Bangkok turned out to be an auspicious decision. 

Anybody out there heard of Covid-19?

After several months in India, it was nice to be in a clean, well run modern city. For a while it was business as usual.

Things were good for 10 days or so. 90 minute Thai massages for under 10 bucks. You better be flexible for a real Thai Yoga massage (nuat phaen thai) because these ladies are folding, bending and stretching you in unique ways, sometimes standing up with a knee in your back placed just so. Lilly just calls it yoga for lazy people.

The food in Thailand is obviously a benefit.

Plenty of toilet paper in calm fully stocked grocery stores. At least for now.

Thai Buddhism is practiced by ~94% of the population. It is based on Theravada Buddhism, the oldest and some say the purest, extant school of Buddhism, a few local folk religions as well as some Chinese religions.

 Iced coconuts for a buck

This family style restaurant down an alley had beef noodle soup also for a buck. Although due to their portion size I had to have several of these $1.00 meal deals.

The gigantic Lumphini Park, which offers a rare public space, was still open for recreation

Khao San Road. The backpacker and traveler tourist ghetto. Nothing historical here; just the usual hustlers hustling young hooligans from everywhere, people shoving menus in your face. Same-same but the same. We spent a hour here wandering around and then went to another neighborhood to eat local food that was cheaper and better.

Since we didn't ever get to see any tigers in Nepal, we went on safari looking for Tiger King. Found a streak of them living behind a table full of Viagra and vibrators.

Some neighborhoods have these cooling areas that spray mist on intrepid Safari people.

 After two weeks it was time to fly to Saigon (we had originally planned to start in Hanoi, but decided it was too close to the Chinese border) to meet up with our Kalani friend Karrie. The only problem was that all hell had broken loose all over the world.

We got to Suvarnabhumi Airport at 5:00 AM and presented our $180 visa that we had secured several months ago. The flight check in desk told us that we would have to go back into Bangkok and discuss the visa with the Vietnamese Embassy. After an expensive taxi ride back into Bangkok, we waited for hours out on the street with all of our luggage with many other foreigners.

When dealing with Communist countries like Vietnam, proclaiming that "your website says this" or "I want to see your supervisor" is a good way to end up in a far less desirable place than a plastic chair in a waiting room.

One young clerk with limited English skills tried valiantly, however fecklessly, to deal with complicated immigration issues affecting panicked travelers from all over. 

To wit: Sitting next to us was a British couple visiting their 19 year old son, who had been teaching English in Vietnam for a year. The parents felt that since their son lived in Vietnam, it was not really a vacation for him so they offered him a week vacation in Thailand. As they were checking out of Thailand, they were told that Vietnam was closed to everyone from the UK. It was a study in futility for the son to try to explain to the clerk that he has permanent Vietnamese residency, although a UK passport. The parents had all their luggage back at the son's apartment in Vietnam and were due to fly home to the UK in a few days from there. Not sure how their story ended.

The clerk told us to call some number, the son said we would only regret entering Vietnam and Karrie texted that there was an eerie vibe that was starting to descend over the country. That was enough for us to abort and Karrie flew to hang with us in Bangkok instead.

Which led us to the Thailand Immigration Office, located in a brand new gigantic marble mall in the ex-burbs of Bangkok.

Uh, we weren't the only customers.

Mainland Chinese make up 80% of the tourists that visit Thailand.
Thailand is very strict on tourist visas and it is advised not to overstay your time.
So we waited.

And waited.
We started at number 180 and it was two hours until we got to 207. We were #448. Sixteen hours from when we left for the airport, we gleefully left with a 30 day extension in our passport. If we didn't contract Covid after all this, then we are immune.

Which was cause for a celebration at, where else?  A Hooter's

Karrie and I met at the Kalani campground in 2013. Our first sojourn into Hawaiian life involved the opening of a coconut. As neither of us had ever opened a fresh coconut before, we were disappointed to learn that if you smash one with a rock, all the water drains into the ground and you will never rip the shattered husk by hand to obtain the meat. Might scrape the shit out of your hand though.

This failure led me to a You Tube how-to video on the proper way to open a coconut, which led to the purchase of a machete for the express purpose of opening coconuts that I kept for years.

View from the bar at Hooter's. That afternoon, Bangkok had shut down almost all businesses, including bars and restaurants and Hooter's was hanging on, before the police arrived, for one last night of income. As this was in one of Bangkok's red light districts, I imagine it was a buyer's market and a deeply discounted price could have been negotiated with the about to be furloughed working girls out in front of Nana Plaza.

My, what fool would pay anything to get involved in an already decidedly fraught transaction in the time of Corona? Maybe we should call it Darwin's Boomer Removal.

Chef Ted would be remiss not to link what Rudyard Kipling, in 1889, referred to as "the most ancient profession in the world" and Thailand.

Prostitution has been common in Thailand since at least from the Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351-1767), which managed and taxed the state run brothels. The modern situation was exacerbated by the Japanese occupation in WWII and the extensive use of Thailand as a *rest and recreation* facility during the Vietnam War Era. Prostitution was legalized in Thailand in 1960.

A few of the reasons: poverty, tacit support from a school of Thai Buddhism, organized crime, corrupt police and politicians....blah blah blah.

Today, Thailand is an international hub of sexual tourism. In certain red light areas and there are many, you find karaoke bars, go-go bars, gay bars, lady-boy bars, beer bars, saunas, massage parlors, ping pong shows, strip shows and so on.

That Hooter's bar above faces the now closed Nana Plaza Three stories of eye-popping adult themed activity.

What the formerly bustling Patpong red light district looks like in the time of Covid.

 So what now? Where can wanderers and ponderers find shelter on this quarantined planet, with the news changing by the hour?

We take it day by day just like everybody else in the world and we are grateful that we have each other while locked down in room 405 at the 42 Residence Hotel, Ekkamai, Bangkok and not in a 10,000 person quarantine camp in Vietnam.

How cool is it that our new Airbnb for the next two weeks HAS ITS OWN QUARANTINE ROOM!

(I found out later that these glass partitions are used in Asian urban apartments to cut down on air-conditioning costs. We certainly did not seek it out, but wherever you go there you are). 

Pandemics are certainly nothing new in the human experience. If past is prologue gentle reader, then may I suggest a couple of books to take your mind off your place of quarantine: Albert Camus The Plague 1947 and my favorite, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera 1985.

Thanks for stopping by