Sin City – Asia

After our Angkor adventures, we had an eventful night out in Siem Reap and set off to Thailand the next morning. The country once famed for its vibrant culture and stunning landscapes is now unfortunately more renowned for hosting thousands of inebriated western tourists. Troops of vest wearing men and packs of girls sporting elephant design harem pants descend on the country every year. They come away with hazy memories of overly romanticised and exaggerated adventures, when in fact the crux of their “adventure” was contracting an STD on a tropical beach to the chorus of stray dogs fighting. These memories anchor onto their very being, making Thailand an exotic centre from which the rest of their bland personality can orbit. This inevitably leads to a misguided and totally unsubstantiated belief that they have “found themselves”. What have you found? Something you can cling to so that you can convince yourself you’re not a lacklustre attempt at a human being? Or is it some erroneous medley of vaguely spiritual ideals that disappear when you deal with the much less transcendental reality of your unexpected thrust into parenthood?

Despite my cynicism and violent disinterest in visiting the country earlier in the trip, as we approached the border, I was getting excited. If I was ever going to join a hippy commune, pass out on a beach in a puddle of my own vomit or do something hilariously illegal, now was the time.

*        *        *

A city who’s name so blatantly instructs you to engage in the crude illicit activity for which it is famous, Bangkok quickly ensnared us in its urban sprawl. So, now as I begin this post in earnest, I believe this will be the first story you read that you’ll pray doesn’t finish in a happy ending.

We had heard tall tales of the city’s depravity and we were excited for it in the most masochistic way. We were on a tiny minibus from the Cambodian border that just stopped randomly in the city to let people off, so we exited with some of the stereotypes mentioned above and hopped into Starbucks to use their Wi-Fi. It didn’t take us long to order a Grab (Uber for Asia) but soon the sun had gone down and we were zigzagging into ever narrower streets. We stepped out into the deserted dimly lit area of downtown Bangkok that was crisscrossed with narrow alleys, so we were anxious to make our way to the hostel quickly. 

The Hostel

At street level this hostel was a minimalist, open and almost unused area that had a lift or stairs to reach the many levels above. Our continued distrust of lifts was still pulling strings in the old brain-case, so we took the stairs up a few floors to the reception. 

Luk hostel was like no hostel I had ever experienced. We had booked the cheapest room as per usual and were shown to a long dorm of 24 bunks designed to give as much privacy as possible. The beds were uncannily comfortable, sturdy and came with with big thick duvets to protect you against the blasting air-con. I defy anyone to struggle to sleep in that dark paradise. After being shown the large communal bathrooms, where I could actually stand under the shower, we were shown the pièce de résistance, the top floor. Up there was a full lounge, a bar-like area with stools, a games room with a PlayStation 4 and an outdoor bar/restaurant/terrace. We spent a lot of time on this floor, devouring the free breakfast, listening to the live music at night and being humiliated by a glorified piece of cardboard. The object in question was a board game, but its name is lost amongst the seething sea of things that make me irate, like people who take photos on iPads or serious adult responsibilities. The reason for my disbelieving rage was that after a long study of the instructions, without the influence of a drop of alcohol, neither Brendan or I could make a sense of what fairytale nonsense this game was trying to achieve. This defeat at the hands of a fine print pamphlet about a fantasy dominion had shattered any illusions that we might be intelligent people. 

One of my favourite days on the top floor area was our accidental day of blissful idleness. I had lost my debit card so we needed to extend our stay in order to ask for another to be sent. This extension meant that we were no longer travelling to Chiang Mai on a day that promised an awful amount of incredible rugby. It was the day of Australia vs Fiji, France vs Argentina and New Zealand vs South Africa. Quickly realising that this ‘losing my only way of taking money out for the next few months’ malarkey was a blessing in disguise, we let go of any guilt, put up our feet and stayed in all day. Hours upon hours of watching rugby followed and once all of the very entertaining games had finished we nipped out for dinner only to return and play 4 hours of PlayStation. Admittedly this wasn’t the most culturally instructive day we had had so far, but sometimes when you are on the road for a long time you do just need a day or two to forget about having wholesome experiences and just ensure you have a good amount of mind-numbing fun.   

Chinatown

One of my favourite parts of London and my first impression of Bangkok; Chinatown was our home for our week in the Thai capital. We happened to be only a minute’s walk from the main road which made our heads swim with memories of Taiwan. Every bustling inch of it was lit by the harsh lights of food stalls from street level or from above by the more gentle glow of stacked advertisement boards. As tuktuks swerved past and the smell of durian fruit lingered in the thick air, people were busy going about their lives. Obviously, people are always going about their lives, but the vibrancy and energy of Bangkok’s Chinatown really heightened my awareness of other people, seeing a snapshot of somebody’s life among the thousands. Maybe an old Thai man sat alone tucking into a soup, a group of tourists taking selfies on the roadside or a girl stepping deftly through the crowds with her shopping. Each with a whole life unknowable to me but the whole world to them.

However, we didn’t walk around this district just to take in the atmosphere, Chinatown comes with the guarantee of good food so we sought it out. Places selling shark fin soup were proudly displaying their speciality but we weren’t super keen on contributing to the decimation of, not only an apex predator that has been around for 400 million years, but an entire ocean ecosystem, just for a bit of soup (it wasn’t quite the vibe we wanted for a relaxed dinner out). Over our week living in Chinatown we got to know the place pretty well, one restaurant stands out in my mind though. It wasn’t a nondescript alleyway food spot like in Hue, or an extravagant dining experience like on that Panamanian rooftop bar, this instead was a simple restaurant, with small tables and stools. However, the queue for the place stretched down the street an impressive distance every night. Being incredibly impatient, we could never be bothered to wait but then one night with the recommendation from other travellers/ nomads/custodians of stories that no one wants to hear, we managed to get in quickly with our small group. The restaurant was known for one thing, pork noodle soup. Not needing any more information we all ordered it and the broth arrived. The noodles were handmade and enticingly chewy while the broth was deeply flavourful and very much soaking through my beard, however, the pork is what I think about in long nostalgic nights of food contemplation. The succulent bite-sized morsels of pork were marbled with veins of soft flavourful fat. This would usually be enough to make a meal amazing but each piece was topped with the crunchy crackling of pork belly. As the pig roasted, the fat in the skin rendered out, leaving this blistered and puffed up armour of delicious crispy skin to tackle alongside the tender pork. A textural battle and a blissful juxtaposition.

Mango dreams and wide eyed nightmares

Chatuchak market, not only the largest market in Thailand but also the largest weekend market in the world, hosts more than 15,000 stalls. After hopping on the wrong train there, then being unable to find the right train, we pulled ourselves together and eventually arrived to the market after dark. Unfortunately, lots of the stalls were closed for some reason but with two Americans from our hostel in tow we still had a good time. 

On this day, I spied a Thai speciality that I was keen to try, freshly sliced mango and sticky rice. Sceptical of the combination I bought it and gave it a go. Turns out to be one of my favourite sweet treats in the world. The sticky rice is coated in coconut cream and the chunks of mango cut through the sickly-sweet rice to give bursts of freshness. I’m still slightly unsure of how it is so nice but I found myself craving it throughout the rest of Thailand. When walking through the market, we had been intrigued by the enormous shopping mall that looms over one side so finishing up in the stalls we made our way inside ten minutes before closing time. Almost all the shops were closed and we were watched closely by security guards. However, it wasn’t the eyes of security that had me worried. I met eyes with something in this mall that made me scared to close my eyes ever again. Scroll down at your own peril.

Jurassic Park is real

Despite all the things I have already mentioned, one of the first things we do in any city is decide on a vague direction to wander towards and then go. This way you get a feel of the city before committing to larger sights of interest. On our Bangkok walk we decided to follow the Chao Phraya River south, aiming to walk along the river front. It was unfortunately completely impossible; however, it did mean we got to see much more of the city. We walked out of Chinatown and zigzagged through streets where oil soaked car parts were stacked seven feet high against the side of workshops and people sold vegetables in busy squares. After nipping into a few very swish galleries and a temple that all stood in the shadow of an enormous hotel skyscraper, we continued and made it to Asiatique.

Turns out we had stumbled upon an enormous riverside development project with shopping, dining, events and more. The only problem was that all of these shopping, dining and event opportunities were closed. The place was mostly complete but empty when we arrived but it seemed it was gearing up to become something huge. We stuffed our faces with chocolatey things on the long walk back and then I poked my head in a Muay Thai gym to get the details (so I could delude myself that I was back on the ladder to fitness).

So, excited to join a group session I walked for an hour to get there the next day. It was empty save for a young fighter who was sleeping on the floor, he woke up and got the head coach who welcomed me in. Training began but no one had turned up for the session, so I had a much sought after and expensive private tuition session for a group rate. I did Muay Thai religiously at university for three years and then kept up with basic fighting techniques by doing kickboxing at home for a year. We trained topless and I shadow boxed and hit a bag for a while he studied my form. He was impressed and decided I should fight in Thailand, won over by the fact I didn’t quite yet have a beer belly. I assured him once we started to train intensely the lack of any exercise for the last five months was going to work against me. I was right. At the height of my fitness at university I could’ve kept up but now, I was a sweaty mess sucking the air in like my lungs were worried it might run out. Eventually, we sparred and I knew this was my chance to impress him after his slowly creeping disappointment at my lack of fitness. Within the first minute I question mark kicked him perfectly on the jaw with my right leg, he pressured me and made me tired but my height meant I could keep him away fairly well and then I kicked him flush on the jaw again with a question mark kick with my left. A question mark kick is a kick where you feint that you’re going to front kick them down the centre of their body but then flick your leg over the top of the guard (that they’ve brought down to cover their body) and kick them in the head. He still dominated the sparring with incessant low kicks but for an unfit slob who had only trained 3 years of Muay Thai to this man’s 18 years’ experience I was proud of how I performed. Finally, he suggested just boxing sparring, where he didn’t land a single shot on me. Thank the lord for my strange spidery limbs. While the format was much like many other sessions I had done, the attention to detail on the form of my kicks and blocks and the flow of my combinations was on another level. He assessed the stiffness of my block, improving the angles needed to keep it tighter and taught me a drill to keep my feet in time with my legs. I was expecting him to be extremely critical of me but overall, he was impressed and wanted to train me more to fight, so I came away with confidence in my Muay Thai ability but also the knowledge that there was so much more to learn, so many nuances to fine tune. 

Note: While I was training, Brendan went for a walk to a park, Lumphini park to be exact. It is a 142-acre park offering plenty of lake side public space for the city’s people. After a decent walk there, he also (whether he wanted to or not) got his heart pumping as he discovered the other things dwelling in this park. Hundreds of enormous monitor lizards roam this park and Brendan was definitely not prepared to be face to face with a prehistoric creature on his leisurely day out.  

Buddha has nice feet, who knew?

We decided that it was high time we saw some standard Bangkok fare, so once again we left our hostel and headed out with only the power in our mighty legs propelling us forwards. The alleyway in front of our hostel was dead straight and during the day it was a cacophonous flow of people. On each side, tiny shops had open fronts and people were ducking out of the alleyway of intense bodily contact and into the stores only to jump back into the fray soon after. This alley continued for almost a kilometre which is a long way when you are side stepping wooden carts, ducking stupidly low signs and swiping groups of children to the side with unwavering malice. We made it out and continued past seemingly endless electronics repair shops until the buildings grew grander. 

On one occasion, we made the decision to go and see as many Buddhas as we could in a day. What better place to start this endeavour than Wat Pho? This temple is one of the oldest in Thailand and contains the largest collection of Buddha images in the country, including the 46m long reclining Buddha. We went from building to building looking at golden depictions of this Indian dude who sat under a tree thinking for a bloody long time. Whether he really experienced a “full awakening” through meditation is unknown but after getting up from under the tree he was henceforth known as Buddha or “awakened one”. After waking up to the reality of the world, achieving the bliss of deliverance, he was wary to teach people what he had learned, worried that all the mental intoxicants of greed, hatred and ignorance would hide the path to enlightenment. But then a deity Brahma Sahampati came to him and said, “You know what mate, I tell you what would be really cool, if you started a major religion.” Not needing any more convincing he did exactly that. He walked around the Gangetic plain (Northern Indian subcontinent), telling folks about the utterly confusing details of Buddhism but it worked, people were mad on it. The monastic community following his teachings (sangha) grew exponentially and so did the prevalence of men in monotone orange robes. 2420 years after Buddha’s death, his followers make up 7% of the world’s population making Buddhism the 4^thlargest religion in the world. 

We walked around the temple complex some more and came across my favourite area which was a courtyard with four 42m high stupas (a sepulchral monument important in Buddhist architecture housing human remains or religious objects). Each one of these stupas was dedicated to a different king and each had different colours, they were an impressive sight and their grandeur provided me with a good enough excuse not to read things. 

Out of the temple we felt no more enlightened but a lot hungrier so headed towards restaurants and bars. On the way, we nipped into an art gallery that turned out to be free for only one day of the year (the day we arrived) so we had a good gander at the ancient portraits of royalty, the contemporary sculptures and vibrant art work in a new exhibit.  

Luckily, this gallery was almost next to Khao San Road (the centre for all backpacker activity in the city and somewhere full of places to eat). The road itself has a reputation among backpackers as the place to be, a road of depravity, a good road to make terrible mistakes, but in fact it just seemed like a road full of bars and restaurants with young backpacker groups wandering around. I think after already experiencing the madness of Ho Chi Minh City’s and Hanoi’s walking streets Khao San Road was just a standard tourist street. We weren’t complaining, the beer was still a decent price and the people watching was enjoyable. So, we got steadily more drunk, smashed a decent meal nearby and hailed a tuktuk home. 

Final thoughts

All of this action was just within our first stay in Bangkok before jetting off to Chiang Mai in the north. We did so much in the city that I didn’t deem important to mention like a completely fruitless journey to Dusit Palace/zoo which were closed and slightly less grand trip to a small Indian mall that was almost empty except for the thriving industry in Sari shopping. Overall, Bangkok threw a strange feeling upon us, we kind of felt there wasn’t much to do and there wasn’t that much to see but we still had a good time. We didn’t experience the utter madness that had been promised to us from every travel program or first-hand account of Bangkok. In fact, in reality the city struck us as just a thriving metropolis with a crazy number of motorway flyovers, that shaded the streets in dark concrete shadows while the rich zoomed by above.

Finally, I will provide a disclaimer for all those who have made it this far. Many of you may have been shocked or offended by what I said in the first paragraph of this post and while what I said is undoubtedly true for many people that have been to Thailand, it’s not true for all… Indeed, Thailand is a kingdom so rich in opportunities that an even lower standard of person can arrive on its soil and enjoy themselves by riding elephants or exploring the shady underworld of Bangkok’s sex industry… Sooo, I’m happy that I’m safely within the category of insufferable dullards who have returned from Thailand and won’t stop banging on about how transformative it was. In a sense I’m actually worse, I’ve got the conceited, self-regarding, narcissism to assume that others might want to read about that time I went in a temple.