Amazing Bangkok Experience

Everytime the dreaded last-day-before-my-scheduled-flight-back-home arrives, I get to unconsciously slip in a state of despair. On Saturday afternoon, while on board the Sky Train to Siam for more stuff-buying, my friend asked why I am so unusually silent the whole day. "Kasi uuwi na tayo bukas ('cause we are already going back home tomorrow)," I replied. Insert melancholy face here on cue, while I stared blankly outside the window of the speeding train. A very dramatically pathetic thing to do, I know, so I took on to shopping and just swore I'll come back. And soon.

From the moment our plane did a flawlessly remarkable landing down the runway of Bangkok International Airport, I knew that the next four days would surely be one great adventure with, of course, the remote and marginally slim possibility of me getting laid with some unsuspecting cute local chick who would actually fancy cool non-Thai Asian geeks who like to dream of actually getting ridiculously lucky with some unsuspecting cute local chick who's head-over-heels and so very into cool non-Thai Asian geeks. Yeah,right!

The City of Angels in Asia is what the Tourism Authority of Thailand more aptly calls Bangkok (or Krung Thep). The Thais, by the limited interaction I had with the locals in the four days I was there, are genuinely helpful, hospitable, warm, friendly, and caring. Though not everyone speaks fluent English, you would sense their urge to try and understand and help you out in as much as they can. Even the cab drivers are nice. So impossibly nice that it would seem the city was once hit by a "niceness plague" where its inhabitants never ever recovered from. Quite unbelievable.

Ever tried Thai food? I mean THE real deal? Thais have perfected a way of subjecting willing tourists to the ultimate adventure in dining experience at very affordable or fairly reasonable prices. Never had I imagined chicken with green curry to have the district balance of several tastes: mildly hot and spicy while hinting a trace of sweetness with a pleasant bitter touch of native peas. A seemingly familiar dish would often catch first timers off guard with unexpected bursts of delicately balanced palatial assaults on the first spoonful. Even desserts, either hot or cold, have an uncanny way in making you want to close your eyes to let your mind focus more on processing and savoring the decadent tastes (other than the normal sweetness) as they unravel in your mouth.

Much like our neighboring countries, Bangkok's sights could easily be accessed by a modern train system. They have the sky train for much of the urban area and the subway for the near situated outskirts. Most of the locals who live far from their work places drive towards the nearest train station and park their cars in the expansive parking lot (down at the end stations) for the entire day. They then take the convenience of the rail transport to save on gas and avoid the traffic. There's also the tuktuk, their much spacious version of our tricycle, running on thicker (and thus more stable) wheels, that you would not even be embarassed to let it take you back to your posh 5 star hotel (I have seen it with my own eyes: tourists taking the tuktuk and alighting in the driveway in front of the main lobby of the hotel). Take the regular cabs and you will find they have left-hand drives, making you feel like you're in Europe (or at least that's how it made me feel like, ha ha!).

I did not have the luxury of time to go to the tourist attactions the beautiful city has to offer but I did get to go shopping at the Suan-Lum Night Bazaare, Siam Square, and MBK. The night bazaare is set up in the big tianggue fashion where you could get lots of really neat stuff for souvenirs or personal domestic decour (easily accesible by the Sky Train). Siam Square, on the other hand, is a place where the hip-and-trendy generation shop around for inexpensive yet good quality apparels. Boutiques line its streets (there are 6 when viewed from the map) and a larger structure in the middle houses hundreds upon hundreds of store spaces carrying clothes, shoes and accessories both for the young and the young at heart. MBK is a really HUGE mall-like building with 7 or so floors each as big as the floor area of Shoppesville in Greenhills! Imagine how much time it would take to cover everything!

My four-day stay had thus ended and left me wanting to go back for more. Special thanks go to my great friends Big and New (with her husband Tiger) for taking time out from their busy schedules to make us feel safe and home.

What the pictures are (from top to bottom):
1. flower in a vase at the Holiday Inn (Chit Lom) hotel lobby
2. the Intercontinental Hotel at the heart of Bangkok's CBD
3. shrine outside the Holiday Inn
4. dinner over at Erawan on our first night
5. tuktuk taken while stuck in heavy traffic at Suan-Lum
6. pseudo-park in Siam taken while resting my feet after walking the whole day

All photos on this post are proprietary to the author. Copyright 2005 by Fritz Tentativa. Click on the images for a larger view.

posted by Fritz @ 11:16 PM