Bangkok, Thailand

Days 32-33, August 17-18, 2008 (No Malaria)

As I write this, I am in the airport leaving Bangkok and headed for Chang Mai, Thailand. Chang Mai is supposedly the cultural center of Thailand. I am looking forward to exploring it a little. Right now, there are some TVs that have the Olympics playing. I haven’t got to watch a second of them so I was kind of excited until I realized that the only sport on right now is synchronized swimming. I hate this sport. The girls frighten me and I am always waiting for their makeup to run off into the water like the ink from a squid. It never does and I am a little disturbed that it is so plastered to their faces. Also, Bangkok just plain has me in a bad mood.

I am going to try to keep this short because I don’t want to dwell on the negative.

If the Orient has a dirty, smelly, rotten armpit, it is Bangkok. I am sad that I have to waste any more of my life here between connecting flights. I know that many people find it a charming, beautiful city but I find nothing redeeming about it. That’s coming from someone who generally sees the glass half full and gives everyone and every situation the benefit of the doubt.

I could look beyond the filth, expense, depravity, congestion, and hell-like climate if the people were welcoming and friendly. Honestly, in the last two days, I think I encountered ONE person that I didn’t feel was trying to rip me off or scam me. Now I realize that everywhere I go, there are local prices and foreigner prices. I realize that taxis charge an extra few cents when a westerner enters. I understand and accept that. In Bangkok, however, I couldn’t get a taxi or tuk-tuk to take me anywhere without a scam afoot. Most of the scams are gem scams. The tuk-tuk diver makes a short stop at a location that only he knows is giving great deals on jewelry that day…no tax, no duty, no real gems. The deal could also be on suits or anything really. The drivers get a commission for bring in a mark so they would rather do that than take you where you want to go. It was amusing at first but really got on my nerves after the 7th or 8th time.

Some of the scams are pretty intricate. One driver told me that he was going to take me to an interesting temple called the Black Buddha. When I arrived, a Thai man sitting inside told me that there were monks meditating and we would have to wait a little while to go into the main sanctuary. Ok, there are monks meditating everywhere and that isn’t too out of the ordinary. The man tells me that his brother is one of the monks, he works for the Thai consulate in San Francisco, and is back in Thailand for a month on holiday. Then he starts chatting me up trying to build trust.

“How long are you in Bangkok?”

“What have you seen?”

“What else were you hoping to do?”

Then he starts to tell me that it’s my lucky day. When anybody in Bangkok tells you that it’s your lucky day, what they really mean to say is, “I think you are an idiot and are going to fall for whatever crap comes out of my mouth.” He then tells me a long story about the Thai “gem expo,” how this is the last day a foreigner can buy special gems without luxury tax, and he knows the jeweler that can sell me quality gems. In fact, he writes a name down for me. As he is pushing me to go, a French guy walks up and the Thai “Ambassador” starts to give him the same wrap. As coincidence would have it, the Frenchman buys gems here every year and sells them back home to finance his trips. Now these two random “strangers” are both telling me how great it is to buy gems from the expo all the while waiting for the monks to finish meditating so they can have their own deeply moving spiritual awakenings. I decide it’s time for me to leave and, sure enough, when I get to the tuk-tuk, the driver takes me, unwillingly, to a “traditional Thai jewelry expo.” Who else is waiting for me there but the man whose name is written on a piece of paper in my pocket.

There were at least four people, probably more, involved in this potential scam and this happened all day long. I think traveling alone didn’t do me any favors in Bangkok as it made me stand out from the crowd.

I met a couple soon after I got to Chang Mai that told me they missed their flight to Chang Mai from Bangkok because they couldn’t get a taxi to take them directly to the airport. It’s a terrible place.

That afternoon, I noticed on my map that I was near the Bangkok Zoo. I love zoos and thought this would be a good place to relax for a few minutes, cool off (physically and mentally), and regroup before I tried to get back to my hotel. Unfortunately, the Bangkok zoo could be the most godforsaken collection of animals on the planet. Actually, there are more animals outside the zoo than inside the zoo. I am pretty sure that the pheasant cages were full of pigeons and the monkeys were plucked from their happy lives roaming Bangkok and incarcerated in cages that haven’t been cleaned since the Vietnam War. They had a lot of pictures and statues (elephants and dolphins) of animals but very few “live” animals. At one point, I was sitting in front of the chimpanzee pen (also disgusting and depressing). The chimps are usually one of my favorite exhibits. These chimps all looked like they wish they had a rope and a tall branch. There was one old chimp that had lost or pulled out most of his hair. He looked completely miserable. I was going to take a photo of him for the blog but somehow convinced myself that maybe he would regain a little dignity (and grow a little hair back) if I just let him be.

I left the zoo in a worse state of mind than when I arrived.

The only redeeming thing that happened in Bangkok is that I met a girl from Israel who is going to school in Jerusalem. I told her that I was going to be in Jerusalem in a few months, we traded emails, and she is going to get me some info and show me around when I am there. It will be nice to know another friendly face in another unfamiliar place.

I was supposed to spend another day in Bangkok at the end of this week but I changed my flights to spend an extra day in Chang Mai instead. The dregs of Bangkok society can find someone else to annoy.