Adventures with the Local Tourist Trade
Bangkok, Thailand
It’s normal for the first day in a new city to be disoriented as travelers strive to navigate their way through strange surroundings. Bangkok does not disappoint in this respect. It’s a kaleidoscope of activity, swarming with people and traffic, drenched in pollution, saturated with exotic sights and smells.
After breakfast the first day, a clerk at our hotel told my wife and I it was quite a long walk to the Grand Palace and its adjoining temple, Wat Phra Kaew. So we decided to try a boat ferry. This has to be one of the great deals in Bangkok, as public ferries continually ply their way up and down the Chao Phraya River, picking up and letting off passengers as a bus would. One of the boat stops was just a few blocks from our hotel and it cost the equivalent of twenty-five cents for a ride upriver – a pleasant and inexpensive means of transportation.
A mild state of bewilderment and adventure always hovered over our shoulders. Our adventure began more in earnest when we disembarked. I knew that the boat dock was close to the Grand Palace, but that’s it. Of course, to hesitate even for a moment in a tourist area such as this is asking for trouble. Pulling out a map is the equivalent of hanging a sign on your chest and inviting harassment. Still, I thought I could sneak a quick look. Not a chance. Before I could get the map unfolded, people swarmed at us, giving us directions, trying to sell us food or souvenirs.
“Looking for the Grand Palace? Over this way.”
One trustworthy-looking person said the palace was just a block away. “Come, I will show you the street.” Then he proceeded to lead us through two quick turns that conveniently deposited us at the door of his tourist business, which sold sightseeing trips around Bangkok. After rolling our eyes at him and circling the block again, we finally came upon a tourist information desk. “Walk straight for two blocks,” they said. So we did, studiously ignoring all touts and hawkers in our path.
Lo and behold, two blocks later, there was the Grand Palace. Naively perhaps, we believed that we were home free when we saw the entrance sign. There was a soldier standing at the entrance, and a man in a suit. To our dismay, the man came over and said there was a Buddhist ceremony going on inside and that the palace was closed to the public until one o’clock. He suggested we visit some other temples and Buddha statues nearby and then return at one o’clock. We had no reason to disbelieve him. He got a bit too helpful, though. He began circling places on a map where we should go. Mysteriously in the midst of all those Buddhas, he mentioned something about a “Thai factory,” but I thought I misunderstood him.
Then a taxi appeared. When the man started telling the taxi driver which attractions we wanted to visit, I became suspicious. This smelled too much like a frame, so I started walking away. At that point the man and the taxi driver became very persistent about our need to get in the taxi.
“No,” I said.
“Why?” the man demanded to know, “Tell me why not.”
“Because I don’t want to go,” I said, walking further away.
Still they persisted, following us down the sidewalk. So I got angry.
“No!” I screamed. “I said no.”
I regretted losing my temper and raising my voice, but I didn’t appreciate their tactics. As it turned out, they deserved it.
We continued walking down the street, found another entrance to the Grand Palace, and – wonder of wonders – it was open. No holiday. No Buddhist ceremony. It wasn’t closed until one o’clock. It was all a scam to take us someplace where we would feel obligated (or perhaps pressured) to buy something.
Once we got inside, we enjoyed our visit to the palace and temple, which together comprise more than one hundred buildings. The Grand Palace is only occasionally inhabited by the king these days, as it is no longer the primary royal residence and is used mostly for ceremonial occasions. In and of itself, it isn’t all that dramatic.
But the adjoining temple is interesting. There is a long practice in Thailand of having palaces and temples attached to each other, as it enables the monarchs to more easily perform their ceremonial religious duties. The
Wat Phra Kaew, for example, is home to the Emerald Buddha, which, by tradition, has its robe changed three times each year by the king, with robes specifically designated for hot, cool and rainy seasons.
The temple is a feast for the eyes – vibrant and colorful with a dizzying array of statues and towers, decorated in shades of gold, green and orange. Every gate, it seemed, was guarded by some very tall, multihued and outlandish-looking beings. At some of the statues of gods and goddesses, small groups of Thai crowded around, made offerings and lit candles. Others went through a ritual blessing with lotus flowers, and others just prayed. Inside the most sacred building where we were instructed to remove our shoes and sit on the floor, was the revered Emerald Buddha, seated serenely above the crowd. This Buddha statue, which is actually quite small, dates to at least the 15th century. It has been housed in Bangkok for more than two hundred years now, after having spent several centuries making a circuit of southeast Asian capitals, depending on the whims of war and power.
From the Grand Palace, we walked just a few blocks over to Wat Pho, another famous temple, which houses a huge – and I mean huge – gold statue of a reclining Buddha. The pose is meant to show the Buddha just before he left this world and was entering nirvana. Before leaving, we spent some time enjoying the peaceful Wat Pho grounds, which are the largest in Bangkok and encompass serene gardens, a Buddhist library, and school buildings. Interestingly, in addition to an academy for Buddhist philosophy, Wat Pho houses a national school for Thai medicine and massage. It’s actually possible to drop in and get a traditional Thai massage while you are there.
After Wat Pho, we decided to make it a temple hat trick for the day with a visit to Wat Arun, which is also nearby but requires a crossing of the Chao Phraya River. Wat Arun is a well-known sight in Bangkok, towering over the Chao Phraya River in numerous postcards and picture books. Up close, one can see the exquisite artistic detail of the exterior which is decorated entirely in Chinese porcelain. The temple also provides a nice vantage point from which to look back across the water at the bustle of Bangkok.
We were feeling more confident and adventurous by now, so we decided to go to dinner via another traditional mode of Bangkok transportation, which is the tuk-tuk. This is a small open-air taxi, really a motorized rickshaw. We had seen them all over the city, dodging traffic and speeding past larger, less maneuverable vehicles. They are not metered so you must bargain for each fare with the driver before you get in. In this instance, after we settled on a fare, the driver asked if we wanted to make a stop first, at a great club that he knew about.
“No,” we said.
“Yes, yes,” he insisted, “It’s right on the way to where you are going. I’ll show you on the map.”
Here we go again, we thought. We got out of the tuk-tuk and started walking away. Now it was his turn to be upset.
“Hey!” he yelled, “O.K., O.K., no stops. Jeez. Get back in.”
We hesitated, but decided to trust him in the end. He took off with a jolt and we flew through the streets, weaving between other cars and through the madness of Bangkok traffic, wind blowing in our faces, holding onto our seat, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. We arrived, thankfully, in one piece and without any stops along the way.
After dinner, it was time to visit our friend. Sean is an expatriate living in Thailand and the brother of one of my good friends at home. He had given us the address to his apartment when we arranged a time to meet. No boats went in that direction at this time of night. We weren’t ready for another tuk-tuk experience, so we flagged down a real taxi.
We bargained for the fare. The driver said that Sean’s apartment was a long way and would cost us two hundred and fifty baht. I knew from looking at a map before that it wasn’t all that far, so I said I wouldn’t pay that much.
“O.K., how much you give me?” he asked.
“One hundred baht,” I said, figuring I should start at less than half of his asking price.
“O.K.,” he agreed immediately, and so I knew even then that I was paying too much. Still, since one hundred baht came out to about two dollars and fifty cents in U.S. currency, it’s not like the cost was breaking us. I looked at it as part of the experience. Sure, these touts and taxi drivers could be infuriating at times, but it is their culture and we chose to travel here. Not only did we tour some of Bangkok’s most interesting temples during the day, but we were also getting an education in public transportation, right?
Whatever the cost, this taxi ride was actually sort of fun. The driver was a natural comedian. His name was Noi and he spoke limited English, but he managed to be quite funny with just a few words. When he heard we were Americans, he asked if we liked George Bush.
“Only sometimes,” I said.
“Me, too,” he laughed. “Only sometimes.”
Then he asked about the friend whose apartment we were going to.
“Where your friend from? Thailand? America?”
“No, Ireland.”
“Ireland? You been Ireland?”
“No,” I admitted. “Have you been to Ireland?”
“Me? No!” he laughed uproariously, as if I had just told the funniest joke. “No, only travel Thailand.”
Later, he heard we were considering a day trip to Ayuthaya, an hour or two north of Bangkok where there were centuries-old ruins of an old Thai kingdom. So he offered to take us. He quoted a decent price, although we weren’t really sure we wanted to spend that long in a taxi. But just in case, he wrote down his name and phone number for us, and asked for my name.
“Bob,” I told him.
“What?”
“Bob.”
“Oh, Bom,” he said. “O.K., Bom,” he wrote on a piece of paper. “Bom, just call me. Say, ‘Hello, Noi. This Bom. We go Ayuthaya.’ And I come with taxi.” Then he roared laughing again.
We eventually made it to the street where Sean lived.
“Where he live?”
“Where? I don’t know the actual building. It’s the address I gave you.”
“O.K., this the street,” said Noi.
This actually was an amusingly common occurrence during our time in Bangkok. We would give an address to a taxi driver, who would then navigate us to the correct street and either try to drop us off at a random place on that street or ask us where exactly the building was. Heck, we’re tourists. How should we know? Typically, we would end up pressing our noses to the taxi window, searching for building numbers until we found the right place.
In this case, though, we forgave Noi. When we arrived at our destination, he asked us where in the U.S. we were from.
“Boston.”
“Boston?” he asked, confused.
“Near New York,”
“Oh, I sorry”.
Sorry? We thought he was sorry that we lived near New York. But then he made a gesture with his hands that mimicked a plane hitting the World Trade towers.
“I sorry. I sorry.”
Maybe these touts and taxi drivers weren’t so bad after all.
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