Bangkok
The journey to Bangkok was pretty rough, but I was more prepared this time. I started out very well rested and crushed vitamin C and zinc supplements for days before and after the trip. After 28 hours of planes, trains, and automobiles (with only a few short naps), I made it to Bangkok.
I took a taxi to the hotel and my driver was thrilled for the opportunity to practice his English. I didn't realize he was speaking English at first—I thought he was on the phone—but he kept turning around to smile at me and eventually I realized he was waiting for a response. I worked out a rhythm to participate in the conversation with an occasional "oh?" or "ah," but I was too sleepy to put any real effort into deciphering what he was talking about.
Despite checking into my hotel and going to straight to bed at 4:30 am, I only slept until about 7:30 am. I went to walk around the street and found nearly everyone to be just as friendly as the taxi driver. A tuktuk driver named Somchai offered to drive me around to tour a few local temples, and I resisted and told him I'd rather walk around until he quoted me a price that amounted to about $2 for a three hour tour. I decided to go along and I made the right choice.
A Thai man visiting one of the temples initiated a conversation about where I was from and where I was planning to visit and he gave me a few tips about the tuktuk drivers and the touristic policies of their new prime minister. He explained that a few of the local businesses offer the tuktuk drivers free fuel to bring visitors but that there was no obligation to buy anything. He also offered his opinion that there was no need to stay in Bangkok more than three days—I had initially planned to stay all week.
After we had seen a handful of temples Somchai offered to take me to a tourist office and a clothing market, but he was completely forthcoming about why he wanted to take me there. He smiled wide when he told me they give him a credit for fuel. The tourist office was so low pressure that I couldn't even ascertain what service they provided. I've since learned from other hostelers that they're travel agents who plan an itinerary on commission, but I suppose my trip was so well planned that they didn't offer anything. Instead we sat and had a friendly chat. The clothing market was another story. It wasn't actually a market but rather one custom suit tailor, which I have very little need for. It was much more difficult to get out of there politely, and eventually I had to just stand up and walk out in the middle of their pitch. I don't know whether Somchai was properly compensated for these fruitless visits or not, but he was all smiles when I left each business. When he offered to take me to the floating market (which I had heard about previously and considered seeing) we exchanged contact information and I agreed to meet him the next morning.
After the temple tour, I got some lunch from street vendors, got an incredible one hour Thai massage for about $7, and took a seven hour nap. When I woke up I decided to go explore the famous Khaosan Road which was a ten minute walk from my hostel. As a sober guy there wasn't much for me to do there, but I still appreciated the spectacle. Someone who partakes could have a hell of a time.
Khaosan Road
Cannabis was legalized a while back, but it's not regulated to the same standard as it is in the US. There are no specially authorized retailers—you can just buy it from a street vendor like you'd buy chicken skewers or a coconut. I don't know about the status of other drugs, but you can openly buy balloons full of nitrous oxide, and I must have passed a two dozen guys who offered cocaine either verbally or with its international gesture.
I've never seen such a high concentration of bars and nightclubs anywhere. Even in party spots in Spain, you see a few normal businesses, a nightclub, a few more businesses, a bar, a few more businesses, then another nightclub. Khaosan is nightclub, nightclub, bar, nightclub. It's one of the few streets closed off to cars, but it's completely packed with people. Some of the street food was delicious, and some of it was stuff I'd only eat to shock and entertain friends, such as scorpions or centipedes.
Peering into the various clubs, I saw that most of them had live performers singing or rapping, and a few had a live band. I've never really understood the appeal of clubs, but I'm a lot more attracted to live entertainment than a DJ who presses play. (Edgy opinion, right? Imagine being so brave.) The street just north Khaosan was also mostly bars, but it was a more relaxed vibe with cover bands playing CCR or Bob Marley. I was pretty impressed with the quality of the bands. I imagine those gigs are pretty competitive.
Ping Pong Show
As I left Khoasan Road, I passed a tuktuk driver who offered to take me back to my hotel. I explained that it was within walking distance, so he pivoted and asked if I wanted to see a ping pong show. I didn't understand, so he showed me a playbill describing such obscene acts as "pussy smoke cigarette" and "pussy blow out birthday candle."
When I was a 12 or 13 years old, I remember seeing advertisements in the newspaper for a show called Puppetry of the Penis. A performance of this "genital origami" had first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a few years prior, and the group had since held a multi-year run in NYC and was opening in Los Angeles. The show had become a minor sensation with the Los Angeles cognoscenti. It was regarded as really hip highbrow stuff. I had been taking improv classes in Hollywood (with a group of adults for some reason—I suppose they don't have kid's improv classes) and I heard a few of my classmates describing the show. Basically, two very well endowed men manipulate their genitalia like balloon animals while delivering a stand-up comedy act. Ironically, the advertisements for Puppetry of the Penis were listed right next to The Vagina Monologues, so for a long time I assumed that that show followed a similar premise. Perhaps they glued some googly-eyes on and made it talk like a hand puppet.
The ping pong show had less erotic energy than a middle school pageant, but a few of the same dance moves. Between the acts, strippers listlessly shuffled around on the stage wearing pasties and panties. The more illicit acts must require decades of training, because those performers appeared to have been in the business a while. Most of the audience was couples in their thirties who seemed to be left alone to enjoy the show, but as a single man I was given a different treatment. They sat two women next to me who made a life project out of bothering me every 90 seconds for another overpriced round of drinks or a 100 baht tip. A few times the crowd broke out into uncomfortable laughter and applause and I completely missed what had happened because I was attending to my annoying companions. I left after about twenty minutes.
When it comes to obscene performance art, I've learned there's a difference between the two men who captivated educated crowds around the developed world and the nameless Thai women who probably aren't planning their next act for the Fringe Festival, but I haven't worked out what that difference is. I naively expected a surreal art performance, like a young woman in Brooklyn who's using her Kegel strength to blast paint at canvases in front of a small crowd of fellow grad students. I'm still not sure I understand what made the ping pong show feel demeaning. Does the legitimacy of higher status performances stem from the privilege of its performers? What would that say about any other art form? Sex workers in developed countries usually enjoy the money and the work. Why would sex workers in poorer countries be so different? If a burlesque club in San Francisco decided to put on a ping pong show, I imagine it would be a more artful experience. Was this demeaning simply because it was a lousy show or is there some socio-economic factor at play? Why is it that both art and sex work are only glamorous when the pay is extraordinary? I'm not asking any of this rhetorically. I don't have the answers yet.
Floating Market
When I met up with Somchai the next morning, he introduced me to his brother Thongchai and explained that it was actually his brother who drove a cab and would take me to the floating market. It started to sink in that this was a long journey and I hadn't previously clarified how much it would cost me, so I was relieved when he quoted me 600 baht. Considering this expedition would take at least five hours of Tongchai's time plus fuel costs, I figured I had gotten off easy.
After an hour and a half drive we arrived at an office that looked more like a national forest picnic area by US standards. It was an open air ramada with concrete tables and benches. The staff opened my door and lead me to a consultation desk (or picnic table) with a stack of binders. I winced realizing this was likely to be an expensive tourist trap.
Floating markets developed as agrarian societies channeled water from nearby rivers for irrigation purposes. Since nearly everyone was a farmer and irrigation channels led everywhere people lived, small boats became the most convenient way to travel. Over time, merchants set up shop along the channels, too, and floating markets were born.
There are floating markets all over Southeast Asia, and there are at least six near Bangkok. I hadn't arrived at the floating market or even a floating market. Rather I had been taken to a tour agency that facilitates boat rides along the floating village. The marketing binders stacked all over the desks had pictures of the various attractions you include in your tour: a tiger show, a crocodile show, and elephant show, a snake show, a shooting range, the long neck village (too deep of a rabbit hole to explain), and a tiny roller coaster. I asked for just the floating village, and they quoted 5,000 baht for a boat tour. I realized that my cab ride was probably affordable only because Thongchai earned a commission on this extravagant tour. I wasn't exactly sure how to leave, so I bit the bullet and paid up.
The first few minutes were miserable as the boat driver took me from one riverfront knick-knack vendor to another. I braced myself for two hours of politely refusing to shop. As we passed other boats filled with families, the other boat drivers laughed, held up their index finger indicating the number one, and called out to my boat driver. I must have looked rather princely all alone in an eight passenger motor boat meant for a family. The other motor boats' passengers gawked, laughed, or stared with awe and wonder as I passed by. After a while I gave in to the absurdity of the situation and started to genuinely enjoy the experience.
When we got to the actual floating market, I realized it was something I could probably have taken a bus to and toured on foot quite affordably. There were another class of smaller paddle boats closer to the market that fit about four people and traveled through a much smaller and more congested circuit of the canals. At this point the extravagance of my massive motorboat truly overwhelmed the crowd and many had started to take pictures of me. I leaned in to the situation and offered a regal wave.
It was only after seeing how crowded the real floating market was that I began to appreciate the tour I had ended up on. The surrounding jungle was beautiful and I was able to stop and explore at my leisure. I got out and had lunch at an empty restaurant with a jungle view, and I stopped to walk through a riverfront temple.
The driver eventually acquiesced to the reality that I wasn't going to buy anything and mostly quit stopping at the storefronts. I was better rehearsed at my end of the routine with each shopkeeper during the later stops. The shopkeeper would hold up some tchotchke, we would admire it and compliment it together, then the shopkeeper would put it away and find another object for us to admire. If I simply mirrored their pleasantness, I didn't need to refuse to buy anything. During one of these interactions, the shopkeeper's little daughter walked up to the boat to present her own object to admire: a heart she had drawn on a little piece of paper. The mother gently rebuked her daughter and the boat driver started to pull away from the shop when I waved him back to purchase the heart. After that the driver didn't feel the need to subject me to further retail experiences.
Ayutthaya
After overspending on the floating market excursion, I was looking forward to a more affordable experience at Ayutthaya. I had never heard of it, but my new friend Daranee was enthusiastic about going and offered to drive. She said she had taken a day trip with a Spanish guy a few months earlier and it was a great experience. I assumed subtextually that it was a great experience partially because he paid for everything, and I was prepared to do the same, so I was surprised when she very meekly asked if I could split the cost of gas with her.
Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 and served as the capital of Siam until it was destroyed by the Burmese in 1767. There are a few complexes of more intact ruins that give a sense of what the city may have looked like, but the one-off structures are seen for miles all over the area. There are so many remnants that you'll see a small tower or a monument attached to a crumbling wall in an open lot beside a gas station. Local farms still use canals built by the original occupants of Ayutthaya.
Daranee started learning English three years ago and has a remarkable grasp of the language for such a short time speaking it, but she was immediately intimidated by the pace of conversation with a native English speaker. She explained that when she had hung out with the Spanish guy they both had to carefully and thoughtfully construct each sentence, so the pace was much easier to follow. She was grateful for the opportunity to practice, but she gently persuaded me to speak slower and use fewer words. Ironically, that constraint led to deeper conversation.
When sharing my travel plans, we had to stop and use an app to translate "monastery" and "monk." It turned out that she hadn't misunderstood the word, she was just perplexed why any westerner would consider going to Thailand to become a monk. I assumed that she was struggling to understand why someone would want to give up so much privilege, but she completely understood that part. Instead, she was wondering why anyone would want to join an organization with such a bad reputation.
While the specific branch of Buddhism that interests me (the Thai Forest Tradition, specifically the lineage of Ajahn Chan) is a geographically isolated group of hermits exclusively focused on the earliest teachings of the Buddha, many of the monks in Thailand live in the inner city and practice very differently. Forest monks learn Pali and extensively study the sutras (the original text of the Buddha in their original language), whereas city monks often have no religious education whatsoever. It's very common for young men to be temporarily ordained as monks in Thailand, and there are very few requirements for taking monastic vows. There are also very few programs within the Sangha (the administrative body of Thai Buddhism) to offer any religious education to monks. While it was once unthinkable that monks would be involved in any kind of wrongdoing, the past few years haven't been good for monk publicity.
A particularly gory news story from 2020 about the abbot of a northeastern monastery who (while drunk and high on meth) chased down his 8-months-pregnant former lover in his pickup truck, crashed into her van, and stabbed her to death as she crawled away from the wreckage, started a wave of journalistic and legislative scrutiny into the corruption among the ranks of monks. Since then there have been many rounds of arrests of monks involved in money sex trafficking, drug trafficking, and financial crimes including money laundering. Thai temples receive close to $3 billion per year in donations but aren't subject to the same accounting requirements as any other organization in Thailand. Many high ranking and well respected monks have been caught with massive stockpiles of personal wealth. One cache discovered in the quarters of a deceased monk was worth $10 million.
I lamented to Danaree that the Buddha's teachings interest me, but most of what I see practiced in Buddhism completely confuses me. I identify with the fundamental concept of the Buddha's teaching—that suffering is inevitable in an ever-changing world but that there is a way out of that suffering through enlightenment and virtuous living (The Four Noble Truths, abridged)—and I'm developing my understanding of The Noble Eightfold Path as a prescription for virtuous living and eventually enlightenment. This conversation required extensive use of the translation app and it revealed that while Danaree had heard of The Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path, she wasn't really familiar with these teachings.
The first few temples we visited in Ayutthaya were small and constructed relatively recently. The entrance of one temple was surrounded by rooster statues, ranging from eight foot painted metal statues, to very small wooden ones. Danaree explained the custom that if you pray to this temple's Buddha statue to grant a wish and that wish comes true, you're obligated to bring a rooster statue as repayment.
From what I can glean from my various interactions with temple-goers in Thailand so far, Buddhism is mostly a folk religion here. It seems to involve a lot of idol worship and superstition. There's no institution that proliferates the Buddha's teachings to laypeople or even lower level monks. It's a little disappointing to have no one to talk to about Buddhism in a country that's 93% Buddhist. I can imagine someone in North Korea becoming inspired by the teachings of Jesus, traveling to the US, and meeting Christians who know more about Santa Claus than the Beatitudes.
Somehow, though, Thai culture reflects many of the principles of Buddhism, and the precepts (basically rules) are taught explicitly. Danaree and I accidentally went the wrong way through one of the temple compounds and only passed the ticket booth as we exited. Danaree walked right up to the counter and I thought she was under the impression that the tickets were for something we hadn't experienced yet. I explained that the tickets were for the area we had just gone through and she agreed. I couldn't understand why she wanted to buy a ticket for something we had already done, and she was confused why I couldn't see that we owed the money. I broke down and paid for the tickets because they were so affordable (about a dollar for foreigners and twenty cents for Thais), but I didn't come around to Danaree's way of looking at the situation until later in the day. Of course we needed to buy a ticket. There's a nominal fee for entry and it's not waived simply because we evaded their collection of the fee.
Lunch was incredible. Danaree works as an assistant chef for a company that provides cooking lessons mostly to groups of foreigners, frequently Japanese or Australian business people on a corporate team-builder. She says the job requires more skill with English and patience than culinary ability, but she still knows her food and made great recommendations. One of my new favorite foods is a dish with minced chicken, a ton of basil, and a fried egg. It looks simple enough that I'm going to try to make it at home, and it has perfect macros for bodybuilding. I had to beg Danaree to let me pay for lunch, and she agreed when she realized that I would have spent the same amount if I had eaten alone. With her company I was getting the Thai price, which is usually half of what foreigners are charged. Lunch for two was 130 baht—about three bucks.
Next stop: Siem Reap, Cambodia. Actually, I'm already here. I toured Angkor Wat this morning and it was incredible. That blog will be forthcoming.