Bangkok, day one (part I)

Not my photo. Obviously.

Travel Truth #5: Take time to take time.

For what? Well, to relax. Or to get stuff done. Either one. Don't be rushing around trying to see everything all the time. You have to slow down and sacrifice some of your precious vacation to housekeeping. Or precious oblivion. Either one. 

The first half of my first full day in Bangkok was devoted to errands. Administrative stuff, such as: 

1. laundry
2. acquiring a tourist map, a pen, a small notebook (for taking notes while I'm walking around), floss, and sunblock
3. get a tuk-tuk to take me to Hua Lamphong Station to buy tickets for Malaysia
4. find a bookstore and pick up some reading material to replace The Catcher in the Rye, which I'd finished on the bus from Cambodia
5. eat Thai food, as much as I can hold
6. buy and send postcards, if possible

The second half would be devoted to...well, whatever the hell I wanted. I have a couple of things I like to do when I first get to a city, like:

• climb some high thing and get the lay o' the land
• take a stroll in the neighborhood immediately surrounding my lodgings and get a feel for it
• find out where the nearest bus, train, and cab stations are
• eat local food and people-watch

I'd picked up floss and sunblock and notepads and pens when I went to 7-11 last night for water, so that was already done. I dropped off my laundry at the front desk for 100 baht, picked up a tourist map, grabbed a tuk-tuk to Hua Lamphong, and bought a second-class sleeper ticket to Butterworth, Malaysia (only 1200 baht, or $40). 

I walked out of the station, ignoring the cries of the ravening tuk-tuk drivers who yelled that it was too hot and too far to walk anywhere, and crossed the canal. I'd intended to trek northwest to find Wat Traimit, the Temple of the Golden Buddha. I found it quickly, but unexpectedly found that I didn't feel like going inside. You have to pick and choose your wats carefully, you know. But here's where the day began to turn frustrating. 

Nobody in Thailand, or all of Southeast Asia for that matter, believed that (a) I knew where I was going, or (b) that I was capable of getting there under my own power. I stopped a street corner to ask a portly man in a dark blue security uniform about the way to the Temple of the Black Buddha, and he pointed me in the direction with no fuss. But after wandering around aimlessly down Charoen Krung Road for 30-45 minutes with no temple in sight, I began to get annoyed. I sat down on the steps of the Robinson Shopping Center and consulted my map. After a few moments, an elderly Thai gent stepped up to me and asked in perfect English "Where are you going?"

I told my balding, liver-spotted interlocutor that I was trying to reach the temples near the Chao Phraya River. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You must hire a tuk-tuk. He'll take you around for the whole day for a very reasonable price. What did you want to see while you are here?"

I said, "I'd like to see the temples."

He told me that it was no good—today was a "Big Buddha Day" and all the temples would be jam-packed with celebrants and gawking foreigners. 

"You really must get out of the city," he admonished. 

"I don't know what's out th—"

"All of the most beautiful things are to be found there: the floating markets, the crocodile farm, the rose garden, and the ruins of the ancient capital."

"I don't think I—"

"You can hire a tuk-tuk to take you around the city for only 30 baht per hour!"

"I believe I'd rather—"

"You should also stop by the fashion district. You want to get new clothes, right? All the best tailors can  be found there."

"I don't need any—"

"Here, come this way. We'll hire a tuk-tuk to take you to a tour company where you can book a tour."

I tried to demur. I tried to protest. I tried to balk. All to no avail: the Thai gent took me by the elbow and steered me toward a waiting line of lime-green tuk-tuks at the curb, and fell to haggling in Thai with the driver, a young man with a shock of black hair and a paunchy stomach. Then, without knowing how, I was inside the vehicle and we were rocketing through traffic. A few minutes later I stood outside a blue-painted shopfront with five jaunty stone steps leading up to the threshold. In the dim interior I could make out other foreigners sitting at desks, and on the other side Thai clerks who were taking notes and making suggestions and gestures. 

Oh well, I thought. I don't really have anything planned for Day 3 anyway. 

I walked in. The kindly old lady behind the counter, her shoulder-length hair dyed ebony and her insectoid eyes magnified by thick spectacles, waited patiently while I pored over the catalog. I booked a tour to Kanchanaburi, the province northeast of Bangkok near the Burmese border: the River Kwai Bridge, the floating markets, and something called the "tiger temple." It looked promising and only cost 2,200 baht (around $70 at the time). The River Kwai Bridge was actually on my Thailand bucket list, but I hadn't figured it was so close to Bangkok. This was going to be exciting. 

Then the tuk-tuk driver took me to MBK, a fashionable men's clothing boutique in the tailor district. I didn't even set foot on the sidewalk. I'd been warned about this kind of thing. The doorman and the proprietor both came out of the glass doors to try to cajole me inside, but I stayed put. I looked my tuk-tuk driver square in the back of the head and said, "No way. I hate shopping. That was the old man's idea, not mine." I ignored every attempt by the driver and the shop owner to entice me from my entrenched position. Instead, I calmly and civilly requested to be taken to the nearest foodie neighborhood. That royally pissed off my driver. At the time, I wasn't sure why, but then I realized that tuk-tuk drivers usually get a commission from shop owners for delivering customers to their doors. I had just cheated my driver of his bonus, and now he was snorting and looking for any excuse to buck me off. Testily he drove me to the seediest, dirtiest, loneliest, most dubious-looking streetside eatery in all Bangkok: a few dingy tables with cigarette-scarred plastic tablecloths, meats fried into blackened oblivion, desiccated-looking vegetables, flies, heaps of refuse, scrawny women and sinister customers lurking in the shadows beneath rain-stained awnings. I was just glad to be out of the damn tuk-tuk, and the feeling was mutual. 

"After you eat, where you go?" the driver asked as I stepped out of his rig.
"Here," I said, pointing to my hostel on the map.
"Too far," he said.
Bullshit, I thought. I knew for a fact that we were in the Riverside district and it wasn't but a hop, skip, and a jump to Pretchaburi Road, my hostel's neighborhood.
"You get taxi," the driver continued. "I'm done with you."

That's fine, I was done with him too. I paid him the 100 baht he demanded was never gladder to see the back of anyone. Fuming, I walked a block and grabbed a (blue) tuk-tuk driven by someone who looked like the Southeast Asian version of Ernest P. Worrell. He was older than God and his rig in bad need of service. We coughed, wheezed, and lurched rheumatically through the streets back to Boxpackers, with me holding on for dear life and striving to hold back my temper and the contents of my stomach. The driver only gave me 40 baht change out of the 200 I'd given him, but I didn't care. I practically sprinted back up to my room and the air-conditioned sanctuary of my cubicle and my journals. My laundry was waiting for me, clean but stuffed unfolded into a plastic bag. 

It wasn't even noon yet.