With a guidebook and a breakfast of coconut milk porridge with bananas, I no longer felt at the whim of the city. I was back in control, ready to conquer the city.
First, it was a walking tour of Banglamphu. This is wear the famous Kao San road is located, the backpackers ghetto. With a great aversion to hippies and pickpocketers, I avoided this area at all costs and wound my way along the Chao Phraya river instead. (The Chao Phraya is the main waterway that cuts through the city. It pours into smaller canals and waterways that snake through the city and are crossed by small footbridges.) I found a nice little pier by the water where people lounged on benches, a gaggle of schoolgirls gathered, and two artists painted in the shade of a tree. The breeze was spectacular and the river was not giving off the odor I had heard so much about.
I kept walking, eyeing up all the street food that I was still too afraid to order. I finally broke down and got awaffle stuffed with raisins. Mmm. I visited my first Wat. A wat is a buddhist compound used for ordaining and teaching monks, or maybe not. I have no memory for guidebook trivia.
Anyway, a wat is made up of several buildings, but I haven't a clue what they're for. You can tell you are at a wat because there will be a collection of buildings, men in orange robes and flip-flops wandering about and buildings that have ornate rooves rather than the typical rusting sheet metal rooves native to Bangkok. Unfortunately, my first wat was closed, which a tuk tuk driver informed me by pointing out the CLOSED sign on the closed doors.
I smiled and nodded (my standard gesture) and offered to take me somewhere. I smiled and backed away (my 2nd standard gesture). Further in the compound (the part that wasn't closed), I found a shady bridge away from any tuk tuk drivers. There was a man standing there and he dumped a bag of black pellets into the water and pointed to the enormous catfish that rose to the surface, their whiskers poking through the surface and flat mouths gurgling up the food. The breeze was cool and the noise of traffic faint.
Later that day, I visited the Grand Palace. I think this is a Wat. Then again, I'm not one to read the guidebook. I prefer to hold it and allow the knowledge to soak through my palm.
The Grand Palace is very gold and very grand. Number One in the tour brochure is the Emerald Buddha, marked with a circle just to the left of the entrance. I spent most of my time at the Grand Palace in search of this buddha. I looked in every gold palace for that damn buddha. He completely alluded me.
The biggest structure was the most ornate of all. Gold buddhas flanked its exterior walls, flakes of gold with rubies and emerald covered the entire building. To enter, you had to remove your shoes. Inside, it stunk like feet. Everyone was kneeling or sitting facing the altar and pretending that it did not stink like feet. I quickly exited.
I wandered into markets that were endless stalls with no seeming end. You walk deeper and deeper, the rows barely big enough for two people to walk between, and there are only more and more stalls and no end in site. It's stifling inside, darker and cooler as you move deeper into the center. I kept on walking, determined to find the end, afraid that it would be a dead end to backtrack through. Finally, the row I walked poured out onto a street. A street not on my map. I backtracked.
After that, I tried my luck with the water taxi.
When the water taxi pulls into the dock, a man blows a whistle to signal that it's coming and that it has arrived. This is akin to the "mind the gap" in the London subway or the "stand clear of the closing doors" in the NYC subway. Definitely louder and ear piercing, probably more effective. I guess if you don't pay attention, you're taking a dunk in the
moss colored water where dead leaves and unidentifiable debris float on the surface.
Along the river is typical Bangkok housing -- small one and two story barracks with rusted steel grooved rooves and walls, rags hanging in windows; clothes hung out to dry; food vendors and market stalls along the banks and narrow roads leading away from the water. The houses lean into one another, built one after another and then a few more squeezed in between (not unlike the malls). They are beaten and worn, form that follows function, function that rusts and is repaired but not replaced.
