Day 2 - Part Two
[sorry to break up my thailand trip blogging so erratically. someone bet that i wont finish it -_- so i will, just to prove him wrong. and also cos i really want to, time and memory permitting.]
So. After we alighted from the river taxi (what an unromantic name for such a delightful n scenic mode of trnasport), we went looking for the bus station, which, being bangkok, was a parking lot with a few solitary buses. we wanted a loo break so we wandered around the place a little; it was a small town in the middle of the nowhere part of bangkok, but it was more authentically foreign, really. i mean, it was thailand as it is for the people who live there; not a glitzy show put up for the people who come snooping on sporadic visits and judge from the little they see(or are shown). wait, that sounds familiar..
basically there was only a market, some small shops, the aforementioned bus station, another market looking row of buildings opposite the highway which we didn't go to, shops n stalls along the road selling everything from phonecards to dried fish. and the ubiquitious 7-11, of course. there was nothing to see and nowhere to go; much like your typical street in oh, say, joo chiat / geylang area. i still liked it though. damn, does this mean i'm a true blue boring singaporean at heart? i dunno. maybe small towns just attract me with their laid back aura of restfulness.
soon we got on the bus, slept or talked the hour plus journey back, and got to the Southern Bus Terminal before dinnertime. this time i made a beeline for Dunkin Donuts, which i'd seen before we left but didn't manage to visit owing to the goose hunt for J's missing colleague & her friends. i bought a couple of doughnut balls; yummy but almost sickeningly sweet (did i mention i saw a bee buzzing in the glass case of donuts? i went and bought it anyway cos it wasn't a fly; bees are clean, right? hmm.)
off to the train station to buy tickets. the station was s'posed to be interesting, being art-deco, but it wasn't very amazing to me. but i liked trains so by association i liked the train station. a sign caught my eye - there's a praying hall.. i'd missed quite a few prayers so i made a mental note to try visit the hall n catch up.
tickets were expensive, about S$20-30 for a six hour sleepeer train to sukothai, depending on the class and whether you sleep on top or below. they didn't have a lot of choices left, so we took it. next was our regular bout of almost getting conned by tourist savvy thais; some agency tried to persuade us to pre-book hotel n car in sukothai.. we got away, luckily. maybe it wasn't a con but i dunno, i just don't like it when people try too hard to sell me something, u noe? if it's something i want i'd buy it without u shoving it down my throat.
soon we made our way by train to the central area. now i have to say, the subway or train lines at bangkok were very modern, better than ours in fact. u bought tokens like little black coins, not very expensive but there weren't too many stations - the line is not extensive. the changing of stations was also quite confusing, sometimes u had to backtrack to switch trains to get to where u want. to get to centre world(it used to be called world trade centre), i think we went to mo chit station.
my first glimpse of modern bangkok in the thick of the city was bewildering. it didn't gel at all with the picture of exotic bangkok that i'd painted for myself before coming. basically it was orchard road and chinatown and oh, bugis and city hall combined, with all the crowd and clutter and vehicles it entails. it was a mass.. mess. then again it lent a busy vibe to the air, busy with what i duno, shopping, probably, for tourists, and busy earning money off us tourists, for the locals. we saw a few malls including centre world and gaysorn, a high class mall filled with boutique luxury brands and very little people (their washrooms are a dream, very clean and pretty). We also spent quite a long time at the famous Erawan shrine, like a huge spirit house built to appease angry spirits that held up construction of the Erawan Hotel until the shrine was built (so the story goes). i took lots of pictures of the dancers for hire, who performed short bouts of traditional dance accompanied by traditional musicians, whenever someone paid them a sum, in order to get merit. i gathered that a lot of the buddhism practise in thailand was based on accruing merit; a useful concept if it entailed doing good deeds.
but not so useful when it combined less than desirable practices... as we were leaving the shrine, which is just right smack in the middle of all the buildings, almost into the road intersection; i saw a lady sitting in front of the shrine's gate, with a few small red wooden cages stacked beside her. in the cages were a blur of movement and strange sounds, so i went closer to investigate. i was appalled to see the cages filled to bursting with tiny, tiny brown birds - about half the size fo your normal sparrow. they were piled in masses three and five deep, just clinging to the sides of the cage or stepping on each other's heads for lack of space. remember the ad in india with richard gear paying to let all the birds loose for the little indian girl? as i wasn't richard gere, nor with a credit card like his, i couldn't do anything; but as i stole the tip of a finger in to stroke the soft heads of the birds, i wished i had money to pay to set them all free.
anyway, we went on to centre world shopping centre after that, but the main areas of interest were actually outside the centre - the rows of makeshift stalls, more like a flea market than stalls, just wares spread out on low tables or even the floor on some covering; the long area of food stalls stretching several feet along the pavement next to the road, where people ate at crowded tables inches from road dust but with every apparent enjoyment, just like we would throughout the whole trip; and the enormous beer gardens, beer tents really, filled with merrrymakers and with blasting shows on stages up front to entertain the drinkers. rather like a wedding party, with no brides and no food - just beer.
starving, we decided to eat first, and the one thing that we kept seeing was this utterly grotesque fish, all white and crusted with salt, with a bunch of sticks? herbs, stuffing its mouth. it looked like pieces of brick coated with cement, to give an idea of how unappetising it felt. it didn't help that it was called serpent's head. i couldn't look at it without shuddering, but the guys decided to be adventurous and ordered it anyway. along with tomyum soup and vege and some other stuff, i forgot. surprisingly the fish was quite alright; a little bit oily and strong smelling, but it was firm and sweetish and we picked it clean.
shopping time. as the shopping centre was almost closed, we only visited the washroom in it before heading out again. WC & I were on a roll as we stopped at every other stall to browse and buy, and for the next hour we felt bad cos the guys were basically just standing around waiting. but when we told them to go ahead, they said they were OK chatting, so we left them alone and continued to shop.
after finishing the stretch, we went ahead to the famous patpong area in a cab.
to be continued..
So. After we alighted from the river taxi (what an unromantic name for such a delightful n scenic mode of trnasport), we went looking for the bus station, which, being bangkok, was a parking lot with a few solitary buses. we wanted a loo break so we wandered around the place a little; it was a small town in the middle of the nowhere part of bangkok, but it was more authentically foreign, really. i mean, it was thailand as it is for the people who live there; not a glitzy show put up for the people who come snooping on sporadic visits and judge from the little they see(or are shown). wait, that sounds familiar..
basically there was only a market, some small shops, the aforementioned bus station, another market looking row of buildings opposite the highway which we didn't go to, shops n stalls along the road selling everything from phonecards to dried fish. and the ubiquitious 7-11, of course. there was nothing to see and nowhere to go; much like your typical street in oh, say, joo chiat / geylang area. i still liked it though. damn, does this mean i'm a true blue boring singaporean at heart? i dunno. maybe small towns just attract me with their laid back aura of restfulness.
soon we got on the bus, slept or talked the hour plus journey back, and got to the Southern Bus Terminal before dinnertime. this time i made a beeline for Dunkin Donuts, which i'd seen before we left but didn't manage to visit owing to the goose hunt for J's missing colleague & her friends. i bought a couple of doughnut balls; yummy but almost sickeningly sweet (did i mention i saw a bee buzzing in the glass case of donuts? i went and bought it anyway cos it wasn't a fly; bees are clean, right? hmm.)
off to the train station to buy tickets. the station was s'posed to be interesting, being art-deco, but it wasn't very amazing to me. but i liked trains so by association i liked the train station. a sign caught my eye - there's a praying hall.. i'd missed quite a few prayers so i made a mental note to try visit the hall n catch up.
tickets were expensive, about S$20-30 for a six hour sleepeer train to sukothai, depending on the class and whether you sleep on top or below. they didn't have a lot of choices left, so we took it. next was our regular bout of almost getting conned by tourist savvy thais; some agency tried to persuade us to pre-book hotel n car in sukothai.. we got away, luckily. maybe it wasn't a con but i dunno, i just don't like it when people try too hard to sell me something, u noe? if it's something i want i'd buy it without u shoving it down my throat.
soon we made our way by train to the central area. now i have to say, the subway or train lines at bangkok were very modern, better than ours in fact. u bought tokens like little black coins, not very expensive but there weren't too many stations - the line is not extensive. the changing of stations was also quite confusing, sometimes u had to backtrack to switch trains to get to where u want. to get to centre world(it used to be called world trade centre), i think we went to mo chit station.
my first glimpse of modern bangkok in the thick of the city was bewildering. it didn't gel at all with the picture of exotic bangkok that i'd painted for myself before coming. basically it was orchard road and chinatown and oh, bugis and city hall combined, with all the crowd and clutter and vehicles it entails. it was a mass.. mess. then again it lent a busy vibe to the air, busy with what i duno, shopping, probably, for tourists, and busy earning money off us tourists, for the locals. we saw a few malls including centre world and gaysorn, a high class mall filled with boutique luxury brands and very little people (their washrooms are a dream, very clean and pretty). We also spent quite a long time at the famous Erawan shrine, like a huge spirit house built to appease angry spirits that held up construction of the Erawan Hotel until the shrine was built (so the story goes). i took lots of pictures of the dancers for hire, who performed short bouts of traditional dance accompanied by traditional musicians, whenever someone paid them a sum, in order to get merit. i gathered that a lot of the buddhism practise in thailand was based on accruing merit; a useful concept if it entailed doing good deeds.
but not so useful when it combined less than desirable practices... as we were leaving the shrine, which is just right smack in the middle of all the buildings, almost into the road intersection; i saw a lady sitting in front of the shrine's gate, with a few small red wooden cages stacked beside her. in the cages were a blur of movement and strange sounds, so i went closer to investigate. i was appalled to see the cages filled to bursting with tiny, tiny brown birds - about half the size fo your normal sparrow. they were piled in masses three and five deep, just clinging to the sides of the cage or stepping on each other's heads for lack of space. remember the ad in india with richard gear paying to let all the birds loose for the little indian girl? as i wasn't richard gere, nor with a credit card like his, i couldn't do anything; but as i stole the tip of a finger in to stroke the soft heads of the birds, i wished i had money to pay to set them all free.
anyway, we went on to centre world shopping centre after that, but the main areas of interest were actually outside the centre - the rows of makeshift stalls, more like a flea market than stalls, just wares spread out on low tables or even the floor on some covering; the long area of food stalls stretching several feet along the pavement next to the road, where people ate at crowded tables inches from road dust but with every apparent enjoyment, just like we would throughout the whole trip; and the enormous beer gardens, beer tents really, filled with merrrymakers and with blasting shows on stages up front to entertain the drinkers. rather like a wedding party, with no brides and no food - just beer.
starving, we decided to eat first, and the one thing that we kept seeing was this utterly grotesque fish, all white and crusted with salt, with a bunch of sticks? herbs, stuffing its mouth. it looked like pieces of brick coated with cement, to give an idea of how unappetising it felt. it didn't help that it was called serpent's head. i couldn't look at it without shuddering, but the guys decided to be adventurous and ordered it anyway. along with tomyum soup and vege and some other stuff, i forgot. surprisingly the fish was quite alright; a little bit oily and strong smelling, but it was firm and sweetish and we picked it clean.
shopping time. as the shopping centre was almost closed, we only visited the washroom in it before heading out again. WC & I were on a roll as we stopped at every other stall to browse and buy, and for the next hour we felt bad cos the guys were basically just standing around waiting. but when we told them to go ahead, they said they were OK chatting, so we left them alone and continued to shop.
after finishing the stretch, we went ahead to the famous patpong area in a cab.
to be continued..
posted by daa | 4:31 pm
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