Bangkok: Big City of Contrasts I

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.    

It was dark when we landed at the airport, and we could see little (or nothing) during the shuttle ride from the airport to our hotel just outside the main areas of most interest (e.g., the Old City, China Town, and sights along the Chao Phraya River).  After a 21-hour, 36-minute (total) series of flights (3 different aircraft) — 3 legs (Detroit-Chicago, Chicago-Tokyo, and Tokyo-Bangkok) — we were dead tired and ready to check in to our Princess-cruise arranged, Four Seasons’ Hotel, which we did around 2:00 a.m.  We slept in until 9:30 a.m. the following day.
    
Although we were still a bit sluggish from our long trip yesterday and the day before (we lost a day in transit), we decided to spend the first half day staying fairly close to the hotel.  Out on the street walking, openly using our maps for direction, and looking unclear and confused, crossing the street at the first light after leaving our hotel, a woman asked if she could help us.
    
We didn’t know there was a hospital on this corner where we were standing, and this helpful woman was the wife of a physician, and she was just going to meet her husband for lunch.  She had a great deal of information to share, and when she heard of where we wanted to go (the Gem and Jewelry Trade Center), she recommended it.  (I wrote about her and professor Chanchai in a previous essay, “Orchestrating a Sale,” so I won’t repeat it here, except to say, this was our opening experience in Bangkok.  Although Bangkok was quite a contrast to anything we had previously experienced, meeting a woman fluent in English and so anxious to help us was really a sensational introduction — like being welcomed by a warm, friendly greeter into a department store in a new city.
    
Getting to the Trade Center we used a tuk-tuk.  One website writes this about the tuk-tuk: “So named because of the sound of their engine, these are motorized rickshaws and are popular amongst tourists for their novelty value. They are occasionally faster than taxis in heavy traffic as weaving in and out is easier, but generally about the same or slower.” The website, “Into Asia” writing about tuk-tuks, also says, “they expose passengers to the high pollution levels in the middle of Bangkok's roads and offer almost no protection in case of an accident.”  Despite these drawbacks, and having had the experience ourselves, any adventurous traveler to Bangkok should take a ride in a tuk-tuk.
    
Why should tourists take a tuk-tuk ride?  First, it places you down among the locals because, with the exception of the small motorcycles and scooters, it is a common and heavily used form of transportation.  Second, it offers a real look — through immersion — at the traffic congestion of which this big city is characterized.  Third, you see how much the pulse of the city depends on local sidewalk vendors for you travel through sections where these vendors form the side rails of the city streets.  You see the fruit and vegetable vendors, smell the charcoal grills cooking kabobs and small pieces of chicken, and absorb the pungent odors of deep fryers cooking chicken, pork, and fish.  Fourth, you get — first hand — the rich mix of odors that make up the material substance and grittiness of this big, active, thriving city.  Sure, there is the exhaust of the buses, trucks, and tuk-tuks, the acrid smoke from burning incense and cigarettes, the smoldering charcoal grills and deep fryers, but this is the rich, thick, penetrating flavor of this big-city’s life.
    
It was our second day in Bangkok when we experienced even more of the grit and texture of the city.  In a metered taxi secured at the hotel, we traveled to the Grand Palace, through China Town and parts of the Old City.  In China Town, there were small, open-front shops selling flashy (brilliant gold) Buddhist statues (—there is a Buddhist shrine, temple, or symbol on many street corners and 95% of Thai people are Buddhist ---), food, clothing, bolts of fabric, shoes, sandals, and all kinds of merchandise.  Once again, it was as if the street was the center thoroughfare of an active and thriving bee hive with worker bees moving here and there all with purpose and a destination — except for the shop owners who sat just outside their shops drawing deeply, one after another, on their Thai cigarettes
    
When we arrived at the Grand Palace we were told we couldn’t see the Emerald Buddha until after noon, and because we had over an hour a fellow who could speak some English sent us to see the White Stone Buddha (located in a small monastery), then a Happy Buddha, in yet another Buddhist temple.
    
One thing you can say about Buddhists, and you can say it without reservation and based solely on a limited experience in a Buddhist country, the temples and houses of worship, statues, and other testaments of faith, tend to be ornate, flashy (often adorned with small pieces of mirror or bright colored tiles (usually orange, red, green, and blue).  Their religious buildings and pagodas and other houses of worship are, too, ornate, with fancy, often gilded, roof extensions that bend upward to give the feeling of flight or lightness.
    
As we were driving by bus from Bangkok to Laem Chabang, the port closest to Bangkok, we could easily spot temples throughout the small villages.
    
It may reflect my limited travel experience or lack of traveling expertise, but the “gas coupon” situation was new.  When we negotiated the 40-baht (about $1.25 U.S.) tuk-tuk ride (for more than 1 ½ hours), from the Grand Palace to see the White Stone and Happy Buddhas, we had no idea what we bargained for.  40 bahts was extremely cheap for both the time and distance we traveled, but there’s a catch.  Because of previous agreements, numerous “high end” stores give tuk-tuk drivers gas coupons for bringing their customers to their stores.  
    
As we entered the first of these “high end” stores, we were told by our tuk-tuk driver we had to remain for 15 minutes in a store for him to receive his coupon.  When we entered the store, we were asked by an attractive hostess if we wanted a free beverage from a bar, before being ushered into a sales area. (Having encountered — endured — a similar sales situation the previous day, we refused the drink, left the establishment, and denied our tuk-tuk driver a coupon.)  In the next two stores, we asked how long we needed to stay for him to get his coupon, kept close tabs on our watch, and we immediately left when we could — in just five or ten minutes.
    
This essay will be continued in a second essay on Bangkok — which was not planned when the original essay was written.  Looking back on our entire Southeast Asia trip, both my wife and I agreed that Bangkok was our favorite city of the nine we visited.  Perhaps, this is the influence of first impressions; however, it could have been our freedom (and time) to explore the city on our own, the experiences we had there, the friendly and helpful people we met, or, as I most suspect, it could have been the exciting, interesting, and obvious contrasts this big city offered.
-----
At Lonely Planet , there is a wonderful paragraph which support my essay, “Big City of Contrasts”: “Of the famous and infamous attractions, Bangkok’s best feature is its intermingling of opposites. A modern world of affluence orbits around a serene traditional core. Step outside the four-star hotels into a typical Siamese village where taxi drivers knock back energy drinks and upcountry transplants grill chicken on a streetside barbecue. Hop the Skytrain to the glitzy shopping malls where trust-fund babies examine luxury brands as carefully as the housewives inspect produce at the open-air markets. Or appreciate the attempts at enlightenment at the city’s famous temples and doorstep shrines, or simple acts of kindness amid the urban bustle.”

“Buddhism in Thailand: Its Past and Its Present,” is an essay by Karuna Kusalasaya that includes this comment: “Thailand is perhaps the only country in the world where the king is constitutionally stipulated to be a Buddhist and the upholder of the Faith. For centuries Buddhism has established itself in Thailand and has enriched the lives of the Thais in all their aspects. Indeed, without Buddhism, Thailand would not be what it is today.”
-----
Copyright March, 2011, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC