Bangkok: Temples & Prawn Soup

We were not exactly in the mood for discovery but the thrill of landing in Bangkok, regardless of a long red-eye flight, won us over. We sludged off the plane and straight to a tour counter to book a day tour of the city. A friendly Thai man named Chai, who was flamboyantly gay, booked our tickets while staring distractedly at Tariq. We met our guide Sawnee, who taught us the two phrases we’d use all week: “Kop koon kaw” (thank you) and “Sawadee kaw!” (hello). Our first stop was a Buddha statue that was five tonnes of pure gold, swathed in burning incense. It seemed a bit odd to me given that Buddhism does not advocate materialism. Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand seems quite ritualistic, with emphasis placed on daily offerings to shrines with requests for good fortune and good luck. Some temples we visited were gaudy, embellished somewhat foolishly with flashy colored plastic bits and pieces. Others were breathtaking: we visited the 46 meter long (and 15 meter high) Reclining Buddha and the lovely Marble Temple (see attached picture). I enjoyed the architecture but mainly I appreciated the peace and confidence of the Buddha’s face in the icons we visited: the expression itself is what resonates most with Siddhartha’s teachings of freeing the mind and opening the heart.

Basking in the sunny, 30 degree weather, we stopped to try a jackfruit for the first time. It has the texture of Styrofoam and the taste is something like a cross between a potato and a mango. Needless to say, it was a one-off. The rest of the tour was an introduction to Thailand’s stable dynasty of Buddhist kings, or the Ramas, as they are called. Sawnee took us to some porcelain-decorated pinnacles that the early Ramas built in their honor. He informed us that there is a different “auspicious” color for Thai people to wear every day of the week. The King was born on a yellow day of the week, so on this day people wear yellow. I think I found out that my birth-day-of-the-week is purple color (the Thai queen’s birthday) so I’ll have to make a point of wearing purple on Fridays. We noticed as we drove along that slogans of “Long live the King” decorated most billboards, car bumpers, and any other read-able surfaces in the city. While Thailand does have a democratic structure and a Prime Minister as authority, the beloved Rama IX remains a figurehead and inspiration for the people. I’m not sure if it was our tiredness, or the pink taxis everywhere, but there was something of a happy “Barbie-land” feel to the place.

After a delicious lunch of green coconut prawn soup in a simple café, Sawnee brought us back to the Suvarnabhumi airport. Back to the protective gaze of the grotesquely masked angelic statues that guard the airport halls, and a rodeo-drive strip of stores with designer jewelry and purses over $1000 a piece. We found the famous city of thrills to be quite relaxed and slow-paced. The neighborhoods we drove through looked shabby, but not disconsolate, tangled with greenery and livened by lounging locals. There’s a toney modern downtown and a frenzied nightlife in Bangkok, but we didn’t see it. Back at the airport, we waited semi-comatose with crowds of Russians and Australians for our final flight to Phuket Island. The air was as heavy as a wet blanket when we landed, and just after we checked into the Golddigger’s Resort, the sky heaved into a major downpour. Not even the cracking thunder could keep us awake!