Brett Chang’s Blog

“Thailand is not a third world country”
– Belle, friend of a friend of mine.

I took 4 days off work to dart down to Thailand from New York City for a family function. The flight was roughly 24-hours each way and was rather boring. However, I did notice that JAL’s(Japan Airline) aircrafts sport two external cameras – one being the nose camera and one sitting under the craft’s body. You can see what those two cameras are capturing from onboard personal TV by selecting the respective channels.

Pretty damn cool and scary.

The captain responsible for the flight from Japan to Bangkok was rather shaky and you could tell right from the camera. My heart was going up and down with the aircraft as the captain struggled the landing. Broke me a sweat, wheww.

Onward with the trip

The plane touched down at Bangkok 25 minutes early and I quickly found myself having a hard time dealing with the “Visa on Arrival” issue. At the time, I didn’t have any baht (Thai Currency, USD$1 = 40 baht) or spare passport photos on me so I was scrambling around to get money exchanged and have the photos done.

After another 30-40 mins, I finally was ready to go up to the “Visa on Arrival” window to get it processed. I had heard earlier from my ‘contacts’ that you can shove 100 baht under your application as a “token of appreciation”, and the officer would let you go easy.

And easy did I go.

The officer took the application and the money as-a-matter-of-factly and did not blinking an eye at all.

Even with my extended time spent at the Visa on Arrival counter, I was actaully quite early for my friend, who was coming to pick me up. I had time to kill at the arrival area and I saw me a few things:

1. Alot of white dudes (I think mostly western Europeans)
2. Alot of white dudes with Thai girlfriends/wives
3. The sales clerk at the newstand tried to rip me 20baht for exchanging a bill into coins. I outsmarted her and bought a pack of Green Wrigley’s gums for — you guessed it, 20baht and got my change. HA! 1 for Brett and 0 for Sales Clerk at the newstand. That pack of wrigley’s gums stayed in my pocket for the whole trip. At the end, they sort-of just got melted by the constant 95-degree-weather. Still, victory was mine to keep. *Does a little victory dance*

********************************************

My friend eventually came to the airport and we made our ways to pick up a friend of hers to have some food. Another few things I noticed[sorry, you have to get used to these lists, there are more coming]:

1. Hotels are on one side of the road and brothels/massage parlors are on the other.
2. A lot of hookers working on street at night.
3. Two transexuals sat at the table next to ours at this sidewalk food stand. Yes, I braved the sidewalk food stand on the very first night there. My stomach was a-Ok.
4. Bangkok is very much like Taiwan of roughly 15-20 years ago. If you replace the signs with Chinese, you’d think you were in Taiwan.
5. Singha [bottled] water is drinkable, dont touch anything else. Exposed ice, water, liquids — do not touch at all unless your stomach is up for the challenge.
6. Food is excellent, but that’s a given.

Be it known that Bangkok is not just about hookers and brothels, but they just.. stand out at night. It’s very hard to miss them if you tour around the city a bit.

The traffic in Bangkok can get rather bad at times. Bad might be a bit understated — you can often find yourself jammed bumper to bumper during morning, noon, and/or evening. Also, the concept of different lanes on a road is not as clear as here in US. I have to admit that NYC has its share of bad traffic, but at Bangkok, 3-lanes can usually translate into 4-lanes with ease.

The Tour Around The City

Since I was at Bangkok mostly for the hosted function, I didn’t have time to do any sight-seeing. However, on the very last day, just a few hours before I got to the airport, I hired a taxi to take me around.

I originally had planned to take the cab over to see Wat Po, the reclining Buddha, but the plan got changed a bit because the cab driver spoke certain amount of English! His English was enough to do some explanation on the sights and the city itself so I decided to hire him for 700 baht (USD$17.50) from 3:30pm to about 8pm.

The cab driver introduced himself to me that his name is Sit which is a shortname for Siddartha, Buddha’s princely name. Sit was quite chatty so we started to talk a bit about the city, the country and him in general.

As we conversed, I got to find out that he lives on the “outter-ring” of Bangkok. An area much like Queens, one of the NYC boroughs which I live in. He also has a 12-year old son and a wife.

We hit traffic jam on highway fairly quickly and was more or less parked there.

“I must be unlucky and hit bad traffic“, I said to Sit.

“Don’t ever say you are unlucky. Thai never say that.” Sit urged.

“Someone tell me you should feel lucky parking on highway for free!” Sit added.

Lucky indeed.

As we drove on I asked about points of interest outside of Bangkok. Sit recommended Phuket, Pataya beach, Chiang-Mai, etc. etc. He also mentioned a great amount of westerners heading down to Phuket and that some of them go down there looking for “leetle boys.”

“They stupid. Why they want leetle boys?! I dont understand!? They are men too!” Sit excalimed.

Uh, I don’t really know, Sit, and I don’t think I want to know either. I was just rolling on the backseat, dying, from laughing and listening to his complaints.

We then chatted on several other topics, including local traditions, women, food, and beers. He likes Singha beer and told me that sipping a Singha while fishing by a river is the best feeling on this world.

Sit and I then shifted into more serious issues such as how Chinese[descendents] controlling quite an mount of the economy in Thailand, yet they are not despised or marginalized in the society or without much of the citizen rights; quite unlike those in Muslim-dominant countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia. HOWEVER, it seems that Singaporeans[also of Chinese descendents] are not well-liked in Thailand.

“All they have is mouth. Talk, talk, talk and make money” suggested Sit. “They smart. Very smart. What Singapore have? Nothing. And they are very rich. Smart businessmen.”

To that I had no comment as I am not well versed in political and business climates of Southeastern Asian countries.

********************************************

After hitting traffic after traffic, we reached Wat-Po, the reclining Buddha. I roamed around the place and took as many pictures as I could. We immediately left for the Flower market, which is right by the river. I was too late to see the famous river market because it was past the opening hours — 6AM to 12PM.

“You are like a teacher.” Sit stated while waiting on a red light.

“What do you mean?” I was puzzled by his words.

“You like to ask. And why this and why that. It’s good.” Sit answered.

I just chuckled. Yes, I am a boy with questions, I like to know the local customs and traditions. It’s very fascinating, to me at least, as how different people live their lives than mine.

Passing by Chinatown, Sit added that Chinese people are strange in the sense that we like to open same type of shops on one street. Like one street would only have gold shops and one street with all motorcycle shops. Strange, without a doubt.

Toward the end of the tour, we were discussing where to take me to as the final destination. He kept on suggesting Thai masseur to which I really had no objections as long as it’s “clean” and not sexually-oriented[not all of them are]. But I was very low on baht and couldn’t really afford much anything else other than the cab fare and perhaps a meal so I declined. Instead, I suggested that I should go get a quick dinner before I head off to the airport.

Sit drove me to a bazaar type of place and I found myself sitting by the outdoor bar of a restaurant sipping on a tropical virgin drink, having a fried rice with eggs and river prawns and a plate of extremely spicy salad. The whole meal costed me USD$5, it would’ve ran me $20 and upwards in NYC.

On the way to the airport, Sit, fully knowing that I didn’t have much baht left, asked me for a US$1 bill. I didn’t have one on me, and he seemed disappointed. We arrived at the airport and it was time for me to say goodbye to Thailand and of course, Sit. Though Sit appeared to be a bit avaricious at times, he is still a genuinely good person at heart. Knowing that I didn’t have any baht to give him as a tip, he said it’s ok, he would like to do my business next time and he is in it for the long-run. Very smart businessman, I applauded him.

“Sit, I don’t have one dollar, but I am going to give you an ‘One’ and a ‘Zero’.” said as I opened my wallet to take out a bill.

He seemed puzzled at first by what I said. After taking the bill to look it over, his eyes just lit up and his disappointed expression transformed into a big smile — I gave him a USD$10 bill.

“Haha! Thank you my friend!” He laughed. “I know what you mean now! I know what you mean!” He cried, regarding the “one” and “zero”.

He raised his right hand and shook mine wholeheartedly and said “I will see you next time!”

“Definitely.” I answered with a smile and we bid goodbye to one another once more.

Finally, just before Sit got on his cab, I yelled to him:

“Hey Sit! Go home and go get yourself a Singha beer!“

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Photography, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.