Thailand

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Beyond the Emerald Buddha

Grand Palace, Bangkok

Stifling crowds wait for a glimpse of the Emerald Buddha at Wat Phra Kaeo. Photo by David Lansing.

The crowds to see the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo, the final resting place for the sacred Emerald Buddha, perhaps the most important image in Thailand, are staggering. It’s like Disneyland on the busiest day in summer.

And yet if you allow yourself to focus on the smallest wonders of the complex instead of the largest, you’ll find there’s serenity in the details that are ignored by most tourists—the fabulous Ramakien figures lining the chedi; the stunning 112 small garudas (mythical beasts that are half-man, half-bird) encircling the exterior of the bot of the Emerald Buddha; the gilded apsonsi images (another mythical creature, this time half-woman, half-lion), around the upper terrace of the Wat Phra Kaeo.

Like everyone else, I took off my shoes and snaked inside the bot for a quick glimpse of the Emerald Buddha, being pushed and shoved from all side while chided by guards to keep moving. Except for the lacerating heat and blanket smell of a hundred sweating bodies in close quarters, it was a totally forgettable experience. A close-up view of the golden lion woman looking as if she were about to fly up into the sky, however, left me breathless.

Ramakien figures guard the chedi at Wat Phra Kaeo. Photo by David Lansing.

 

Angel guardians decorate the wall of the library of the Grand Palace. Photo by David Lansing.

 

One of the Demon Guards protecting the chedi. Photo by David Lansing.

 

Half-woman and half-lion, this gilded apsonsi looks as if she’s ready to take to the skies. Photo by David Lansing.

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Bangkok’s food on a stick

Bangkok street food

Food on a stick–it’s everywhere in Bangkok. Photo by David Lansing.

Everyday Ketsara gives me a new Thai word or phrase to learn. The first day it was sawatdee, which just means “Hi.”

Today’s phrase was Gin khao reu yang?

Ketsara told me that this is another way to say hello. “Depending on what part of Thailand you come from you might say sawatdee or you might say gin khao reu yang.”

I asked her what it meant.

“It mean, Did you eat yet? Where I come from, we don’t say sawatdee. We say, Did you eat yet? This is more polite.”

Thailand, which promotes itself as the “Kitchen of the World,” has the most amazing street food scene I’ve ever seen. You can’t walk more than a hundred feet in Bangkok without stumbling across a vendor selling some little snackable tidbit. The streets smell of garlic and chili and various cuts of pig or chicken grilling over charcoal. For around a buck you can get satays of duck sausages, fishballs, chicken hearts—whatever you desire.

Most of this stuff is food-on-a-stick. You smell something fantastic—duck tongues and dried fish on skewers with a garnish of chili and coriander—plop down your 30 khat, grab your food, and off you go. An urban hunter-gatherer. And if, ten minutes later, you run in to an old friend, you greet him with a cheerful Did you eat yet? Even if, like you, he had a little something-on-a-stick just a few minutes ago, he’ll probably be more than happy to join you at the next sidewalk stall for a skewer of pickled hard boiled eggs or some curried cuttlefish. In Bangkok, it’s all good.

Gin khao reu yang?

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Tuk-tuk

Tuk-tuks in Bangkok

Tuk-tuks make their way through Chinatown in Bangkok. Photo by David Lansing.

“Khun Ketsara?”

“Yesssss?”

“I want to ride a tuk-tuk.”

Ketsara shows no expression on her face. She is silent for a long moment and then says, “Okay. Maybe after lunch. It’s not good here in Chinatown. Too much traffic. Not safe.”

“Promise Ketsara?”

“I promise.”

Tuk-tuks are to Bangkok what gondolas are to Venice. And you can’t say you’ve really been to Bangkok until you’ve gone on a breakneck, murderous ride upon one of these colorful three-wheeled motor-rickshaws.

The thing about tuk-tuks is they make no sense. You don’t really get a good look at the city riding in one, particularly if you’re tall like me, because their curved canvas roofs black out a view of anything other than the potholes directly in front of you and the swerving motorbikes zipping by your side so closely that if you stuck your hand out, you’d knock the driver off.

They’re stinky and foul and, what’s even more annoying, cost just about as much to ride as an air-conditioned taxi.

So why do I want to ride in one? Because one senses that before too long tuk-tuks will go the way of the double decker bus in London. More and more they’re being seen for the noisy, polluting, dangerous vehicles that they are and certainly it won’t be long until they’re relegated to some sort of cultural tourism classification—you’ll pay $20 to ride a “classic” tuk-tuk two blocks along a designated area of the city and then pay another $10 to have your photo taken next to the driver who will be dressed in a sort of Disney tuk-tuk uniform. So I want to ride in a tuk-tuk that is as wild as its driver, driving up sidewalks, pulling a U-turn in the middle of heavy traffic, illegally going the wrong way down a one-way street. A real tuk-tuk, not a Disneyland ride.

As we are finishing our lunch, it begins to rain. Not a light rain, but thick, heavy plops of water. A typhoon is reportedly coming down from China and this is the first warning.

“I’m sorry,” says Ketsara, “but I think no tuk-tuk today. It’s too dangerous. But we will find a tuk-tuk for you tomorrow.”

“Promise, Khun Ketsara?”

“I promise,” she says.

Back in my hotel room I watch the rain come down across the city, hoping it stops long enough tomorrow for a ride in a tuk-tuk.

A view of the storm over Bangkok from my hotel room. Photo by David Lansing.

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Thai chiles and hairy rambutan

The Pak Khlong Market in Bangkok offers a wide range of Thai chiles. Photos by David Lansing.

Walking through the Bangkok flower market was giving me a headache. All those perfumey smells wafting in the hot, humid air. So I walked and walked and walked until suddenly the market transitioned into long, dark corridors with giant bamboo baskets filled with cabbages and ginger root and, of course, Thai chiles. Lots and lots of different Thai chiles. From “oh-my-this-is-hot” to “HOLY-CRAP-MY-MOUTH-IS-ON-FIRE!.” Some of the chiles were so hot that just walking past them made my eyes water and the top of my head sweat.

I turned a corner in the market and now I was in the fruit section: Thorny red rambutan, finger-size bananas, bumpy custard apples, mounds of unpeeled lychee and longon, and those baby Thai pineapples that, I think, are the sweetest and tastiest in the world.

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Bangkok’s flower market

Bangkok flower market

Bangkok’s flower market is open 24 hours a day but the best variety of blooms can be seen around 9am every day. Photos by David Lansing.

I’ve been to some of the biggest flower markets in the world—L.A., New York, Paris—but the Pak Khlong flower market in Bangkok just blew me away. It wasn’t so much that they had just about everything, from Dutch tulips to 5-gallon bags of rose petals, but that it was all so incredibly inexpensive. Big bouquets of orchid sprays, almost too large to hold in your fist, cost a little over a dollar; two dozen perfect pink roses were $3. And those big bags of rose petals? About five bucks. Imagine being able to toss thousands and thousands of fragrant rose petals at a wedding reception for the price of a Big Mac Supermeal.

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