Bangkok Layover

A group of Thai students who interviewed me for their English Language class

As I said a couple posts ago, I ended up in Bangkok for about 36 hours. I spent a day wandering around the city, and was very impressed by a few things. The first is that the city, or where I was anyways, was quite clean and prosperous, especially in comparison to Bangladesh. The other is that Bangkok is a giant tourist eating machine. The entire city is well organized and coordinated to get every last penny out of tourists. The Bangkok people have figured out that the best way to get things from tourists is to make spending money as convenient as possible while at the same time trying to rip them off at every turn.

I was not expecting to have an extra night in Bangkok so I had to book a hotel from the airport. There was a booth just for that purpose that helped me get set up with a nice hotel in the "night life" part of town. She told me that I should pay about 400Baht (about 13 dollars) to get into the city. Yet as soon as I walked away from the desk a taxi service told me that they would drive me for 900. When I said no way, 400 or nothing, he told me that 600 was the cheapest I would find. Well, I just walked away and eventually he took me for 400 Baht.

A similar thing happened later when I was walking down the street outside the Grand Palace. A tuk-tuk driver stopped me and asked if I had been to these Buddhist sites in the area as that day was the second Saturday of the new year. He said that he would take me to three of these sites for only 20 Baht. This worked out to about 30 cents a spot, so I was all for it. We drove to a Buddhist Temple a little out of the way where I met a person going to worship. It was a really nice and calming experience, and I believed that my driver was really hooking me up.

He then told me that he wanted to take me to a tailor and to a jewelry expo center because they had good deals. I wasn't really in the mood but thought I would at least check out the tailor as Bangkok is famous for cheap tailored goods. I soon realized that the driver was getting a coupon for gas for bringing in a tourist. He basically wanted to take me to all the places that would give him coupons, and was charging me so little because the gas was paid for. He acted very disappointed when I didn't want to go to the jewelry place or the kings residence, both places with coupons, and ended up taking me to the pier to ride the ferry back down to my hotel before showing me the third Buddhist temple. By the time he dropped me off I no longer felt like I was getting a great view of the city from a man celebrating his religion, and more like a foolish foreigner letting himself get taken for a ride.

To travel around the city, I took a ferry up river from the Silom area of my hotel to the Grand Palace. The ferry was only about 30 cents and was a great way to catch a view of the riverside hotels and shanties. The proximity of these palatial tourist buildings and the tin roofed homes was a bit surprising.
The Grand Palace was quite beautiful with intricate mosaics of precious stones lining the columns of the buildings. Built in the 1700s, the grounds houses both the grand palace and the famed Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of Jade). The grounds were relatively quiet and it was a gorgeous sunny day. It was touristy, but ultimately quite beautiful.

That night I went out in the city looking for a last hurrah before going on to alcohol-free Dhaka. Much to my chagrin, the Bangkok was DRY for the 36 hours before the Thai elections. No restaurants or bars were serving alcohol and so I could only find some beer at a food stall on a side street. At least I got some great Phad Kee Mao and had a nice conversation with a British couple named Phil and Jill (actually I can't remember his name but he was the spitting image of Phil Mickelson).

All in all, I think that Bangkok would be a great place to be for a few days, especially if one were looking to go out and have fun at night. From what I've heard from people around school, the real thing to do is go out to the beaches. The atmosphere of the city is a little annoying, hawkers are everywhere and quite standardized. I felt like I kept hearing the same calls and phrases in attempts to lure my attention and money. On the other hand, Bangkok is relatively safe and clean and definitely worth seeing... I just wouldn't plan to spend two weeks there.













Also I got to see this awesome elephant on the street: