Bangkok and the Beach

The trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok was grueling. Our southeast Asia guidebook, published in 2002, optimistically predicted that a government program to regrade the road between Siem Reap and the Thai border knocked “hours off the journey time” involved. Forty km or so outside of Siem Reap, however, the paving ended – leaving us bouncing around on a dirt road for several hours before we hit the border.

The border crossing itself was the most trying we’ve had so far. The bus let us out a ten minute walk from the Cambodian exit post, where we had to wait the better part of an hour in the blistering afternoon soon to get our Cambodian exit stamp. A five minute walk through an international no-man’s-land of casinos and tax-free shopping brought us to the equally chaotic, hot and lengthy queue at the Thai border post.

Once through both borders we met up with the tourist bus dispatcher on the Thai side, who had us wait an hour or so in a coffee shop before putting us on a military-style transport bus to travel five or six km to his bus station. There, we waited in a café for another hour before the bus departed. The point of this exercise was two-fold: First, we tourists bought coffee and other snacks from the bus company’s buddies (earning it kickbacks), and second, the delays meant we arrived in Bangkok after 9PM – when we were conveniently dropped off in front of a bus company-owned hotel booking office. The bus company tout even had the gall to suggest that we should let him book us a hotel “because you are very tired” – as if his company’s intentional delays had not been the cause of our exhaustion. We declined his suggestion.

A twenty minute walk brought us to Khao San Road, Bangkok’s legendary tourist ghetto, where the endless neon lights of western bars and shops (like Boots, the British CVS) and throngs of western budget travels defied even my expectations. Hotel pickings, however, were limited to uniformly grim blocks of dingy, overpriced rooms, one of which we eventually took.

Our days in Bangkok were mixed. We spent hours and hours sorting through financial aid offers and researching law schools – we have to make up our minds in the next couple of weeks! - as well as sorting out our future travel plans. Our first two days in Bangkok consisted almost entirely of internet time, a visit to a doctor’s office (I ate something that disagreed with me), and a visit to the American Embassy to get additional visa pages added to our passports.

Later in the week we also found time to see a couple of the city’s sights. On March 30, our first real tourist day, we toured Wat Po, the city’s oldest temple and the home of the Wat Po Massage School. Meryl let the students practice their trade on her for two hours, and cajoled me into giving it an hour go; my back was much better as a result and I agreed to a second visit.

On March 31 we toured the Grand Palace and its adjacent wat, home to the Emerald Buddha (actually a carved jade figurine), the holiest Buddhist icon in Thailand. The compound is an amazing field of gold-covered spires and brightly covered carvings.

After that, it was shopping. We browsed through some stalls and Thai craft shops in the Siam Square area, and then went to a Jim Thompson silk store in the Central Department store. Jim Thompson was an American expat who helped revive the Thai silk industry after WWII. He’s perhaps most famous, however, for his alleged CIA connections and disappearance in a Malaysian jingle in the 1960s. The silk his company makes is of an exceedingly fine quality; even I, with my meager knowledge of these things, could feel the difference between the Jim Thompson silk and the cheaper stuff we’ve seen elsewhere.

Dinner was at the Central Department store’s “food court” that blew away anything in an American mall by a wide margin: Good sushi, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Italian food, a full bar, and a jazz trio. About nine at night we caught a cab to the Patpong night market, a bazaar of souvenir stalls that drew us and thousands of other more demure tourists to a neighborhood best known for its stunning array of sex-show clubs and prostitutes. Even walking hand-in-hand, we had to turn away a half-dozen offers of “shows” that would be illegal in any American city.

On April 1 we decided to catch up on some long-delayed cultural tourism and strolled through the National Museum, the first real museum we toured since Hong Kong. Then we went back to Wat Po for another hour of massage; I finally got rid of a back pain that had been bothering me for a week.

Following that, we went down to the Peninsula, arguably Hong Kong’s classiest hotel, and had their set afternoon tea. The live jazz and piano music, and riverfront setting, made a wonderful atmosphere to while away a couple of hours. After tea we discovered another Jim Thompson outlet in the hotel, and loaded up on more souvenirs.

April 2 was our last day in Bangkok. My main goal for the day, other than getting to the beach before dinner, was to hit a post office to send off the 20 pounds of gifts and trinkets that we’ve accumulated since last dispatching a parcel in Hoi An. Unfortunately, we overslept, then decided to sell some of our excess books, and learned at ten of noon that all the post offices close at noon sharp on Saturday. We ended up buying a cheap piece of extra luggage ($1.50 for a collapsible bag) to stuff everything in.

We planned to save some money and take the bus down to a beach resort near Hoa Hin, on Thailand's gulf coast, to relax in the sun for a couple of days. But when we told the taxi driver in front of our hotel that we wanted to go to the bus station he asked where we were going, and offered to bring us here direct for about $50. After some haggling so that our cost was only about $13 above what it would have been by bus (and car between the bus station and the resort), we set off through four or five hours of stop and go traffic to get here. We arrived in time for dinner – HOORAY! – and enjoyed our first at the beach (April 3) immensely. Sun, and surf and beautiful mountain scenery.

On April 4, a squall came in from over the sea. It was beautiful to watch from the patio in front of our bungalow, but meant that we spent much of the day reading. On April 5 it began to clear up, and so we bicycled to the nearby Khao Sam Roi Yot national park, where we had a picnic lunch on a beach and walked up to a large cave that several Thai kings visited starting in the 1890s. The cave, which is actually two sinkholes with collapsed roofs, connected by a subterranean passage, was beautifully filled by sunbeams streaming in through the holes at the top. Just as good was a pina colada and mai thai, enjoyed beachside back at the hotel, to help us cool down after the bicycling and walking.

We’re heading back to Bangkok on April 7 to catch an evening flight to Penang, in Malaysia. We’ll probably spend the 8th in Georgetown, Malaysia, before heading to the cooler climes of the Cameroon Highlands on the 9th. But hopefully we’ll get at least one more post in before then; Meryl wants to get one up on our time at Angkor, and I’d like to post a couple of photos.