FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2003

The Pattaya trip has been delayed until tonight so I have some unexpected time to continue roaming around Bangkok and checking out the sights. There is a high tech looking food court in the shopping mall next to the condo I have been wanting to check out, so I began my day there.

From the outside it looks like an upscale food court that you could see in any mall. Two things set it apart – the spectacular view of Bangkok from the wrap-around windows and a unique bar code system of payment. When you enter they give you a card with a bar code on it, every time you order something they swipe your card which registers your barcode number at the cash register. When you are done they pull up your account and you pay one cashier instead of paying each vendor individually. I tried to explore the whole place and ended up with a bizarre variety of lunch foods – dim sum, a pizza slice, a small noodle soup and a Caesar salad.

Fuelled up and ready to go I set out for the first grand ad venture of the day. I have heard about the Grand Palace, and caught a glimpse of it from a cab last week, but it is really far from where I am staying and so far I haven’t had the courage to try and navigate my way over there. I had a Buddhist tell me the other day that I have long ears – just like Lord Buddha – so I will have a long and happy life. I am trusting her instinct on this, and assuming that everything will go well on my journey to the Palace. I start the trip on the BTS, transferring once and ending up at the National Stadium. From there I have to get the number 47 bus which should take me right to the Palace.

It sounds really easy, but there are 93,000 busses in Bangkok, some of them make regular stops, others are express busses. Express busses take longer runs and don’t stop at every bus stop. If you’re not careful you could easily find yourself on the outskirts of town, lost and traumatized. The other thing to note is that while there is ridiculous traffic everywhere in Bangkok, the bus drivers seem to have been trained at some Nascar racing school and drive as though they are being chased by a herd of wild elephants.

I get on the first bus with a 47 on the side and ask if it goes to the Grand Palace. The fare collector has no idea what I am talking about, so I give her some money – about ten cents – and sit back for the ride. The buses are large, with wooden floors and no air conditioning. Apparently there are busses with air con, but they are more expensive and they haven’t caught on with the hoi polloi. Traffic, or the rotit mak mah is extreme, but the driver seems to be able to keep the pedal to the metal and keep us careening forward. We cross several bridges, turn down dozens of side streets and motor on for about twenty-five minutes. I’m getting concerned (and a little sea sick) so I get off when I see some royal looking golden buildings in the distance. I figure I can walk there and get my sea legs.

The buildings that I thought were the Grand Palace aren’t even remotely royal. My fear has become reality. I am lost in some weird neighbourhood in Bangkok. It’s hot, so I decide to sit and try to figure out what to do. I buy a bottle of water from a street vendor. She didn’t have any ice and it was so hot the water was almost boiling in the bottle. I wish I had a tea bag. In the distance I see another number 47 bus weaving down the crowded street. I flag down the bus, and the guy barely even slows down. I am determined to get out of here so I run and jump from the sidewalk and make it on the back platform of the bus. Someone pulls me in and I get a seat. I feel like James Bond. The fare collector this time assures me I am almost at the Grand Palace, and I pay her ten cents.

As we pull up in front of the palace I see why it is called “grand.” It is a complex of dozens of buildings, mostly gilded with jade and gold. Intimidating armed guards with sub machine guns are everywhere. As I walk toward the entrance, which is jammed with people coming in and out, an attractive woman approaches me with her hand outstretched.

“I’m from the Grand Palace, and I wanted to let you know that we are closed today,” she said in perfect English.

“Really,” I said, “then why are all those people going in and out of the gates.”

“They’re Buddhists,” she said, “only Buddhists are being allowed in today. It is a holy day. Perhaps I could arrange a tuk tuk tour for you instead.”

This clearly is a scam to sell tuk tuk rides. Just then I see a bus of German and English tourists pull up and enter the gates.

“Are they Buddhists?” I ask.

“They must be,” she replied, and realizing she was caught kind of scurried away.
The palace is spectacular. Established in 1782 it houses not only the royal residence and throne halls, but also a number of government offices as well as the renowned Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It covers an area of 218,000 square meters and is surrounded by four walls, 1900 meters in length.

The center piece of the whole complex is The Emerald Buddha. Enshrined on a golden traditional Thai-style throne made of gilded carved wood, known as a Busabok, in the ordination hall of the royal monastery, the sacred image is clad with one of three seasonal costumes (summer, rainy season and winter). The costumes are changed three times a year in a ceremony presided over by His Majesty the King. The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from a block of green jade and was first discovered in 1434.

Now I have to get back. I figure if I just go in reverse, that is, take the number 47 bus on the other side of the street, I’ll be fine. I wait, and wait for about an hour until the right bus comes along. Same deal, no air con, wooden floors and a driver who seems to be on a race against time. The traffic is thick and so is the air. You can actually see the smog hanging in the air today. It looks like a low hanging blue cloud that envelopes the street. I develop a sore throat from the pollution on the ride back to National Stadium.

Once safely in an area I am familiar with I was able to find my way home, stopping first for some delicious noodles at a street vendor. The whole meal, with noodles, chicken and a drink cost me about one dollar Canadian.

That night we went to an English pub to meet some ex-pats who have lived in Asia for decades. Each of them told me a similar story. They had all come to Asia to work for a year or so on contracts and never left. One man, originally from Toronto, had just moved to Bangkok after almost twenty-five years in Hong Kong. He was asking me about Yorkville, and if there were still coffee houses there. The hippies moved out decades ago I told him, and the only coffee houses there anymore are Starbucks. We stayed at the pub until eight o’clock, just long enough for the traffic to die down. It never goes away, but it will be lighter now.

The designated driver got the car and off we went to Pattaya. Well, off we went around the corner. It took us almost an hour to round the corner to get on the highway. I’m told the traffic here is really unpredictable, and part of life in Bangkok is planning your day around how long it will take you to get places. Apparently everyone is always really late or really early for everything. No one is ever on time. I can understand why. We were stopped at one red light which didn’t change for twelve minutes. Then when it did, it only went green for about two minutes. In the two minutes we managed to move forward about two feet.

Once we got on the highway the driving was easy breezy, and in two hours we were in Pattaya. After checking into the Hard Rock Hotel we took a walk downtown. Did I mention that Pattaya was a favourite spot for American GIs to go and blow off steam during the Vietnam War? It is a still a pretty wild place, with hundreds of open-air go-go bars lining every street in the downtown core. It is pretty intense. There are hundreds of bar girls who approach you as you walk down the street, grabbing you and trying to get your attention, and they will follow you for blocks if they think you are interested.

Occasionally you see a go go bar that is indoors. If what I am seeing outside is any indication I can’t even imagine what happens behind closed doors.

We finally find a place that looks reasonable and order two beers. Almost immediately a street vendor approaches me and tries to sell me a cage of small live birds. No thanks. By the time we were ready to order another round people had tried to sell us jewellery, ornate traditional Thai hats, postcards and a Lemur (small monkey-like animal). The Lemur was cute, and I believe, endangered, but there was no sale.

We stay until the end of the night, and make our way back to the hotel. I’m staying in the Beatles Room, and have large portraits of John Lennon and Paul McCartney hanging over the bed. It’s been a long day – the kind of day that would kill an ordinary man – so I crash out under the likeness of Lennon and dream of Lemurs.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2003

Saturday is spa day! For the next eight hours or so I plan to lounge by the Hard Rock Hotel pool in a rented cabana, sipping refreshing fruit cocktails and soaking up the sun. It’s really hot, so I’m staying in the shade, but I’m sure I’m getting a suntan through the thatched roof of my cabana.

The pool is massive, with a man-made sandy beach all around it. On the other side of the pool is today’s “entertainment,” a lounge band from Malaysia. They drone on for an hour or so, massacring everything from Sultans of Swing to Something Stupid. Their show coincides with the beginning of the final World Cup soccer game. From the bar inside you can hear cheering and shouting for the game, which at some points thankfully drowned out the band. At the end of their set the singer thanked us for listening (like we had a choice) and mentioned that “we’ll be in the lounge tonight…” I know I WON’T be in the lounge tonight.

My idea of hell used to be an endless loop of Britney Spears singing a duet with Barry Manilow. Now I know who the back-up band would be.

I have heard a lot about Thai massage and wanted to get one, but most of the places in Bangkok looked like brothels disguised as massage parlours so I took a pass. Here at the Hard Rock I felt comfortable, and it is my spa day…

The massage is unbelievable. It took about an hour and cost the equivalent of $20 Canadian, but is worth so much more. I haven’t been pulled and stretched like that every before. The woman giving me the massage looked like she only weighed ninety pounds, but she had hands like vice grips, and at one point was crawling around on my back like a spider. After we were done I tingled for the next couple of hours. I haven’t felt this relaxed since 1982.

The idyllic spa day in Pattaya came to an end when the sun went down at six pm. Hopped in the car and drove back to Bangkok. I have to pack as I am off to Hong Kong in the morning. Somehow I seem to have more room in my bags for the trip home than I did when I arrived. Don’t know how this is possible, when I have been buying things left and right. Dirty clothes, I guess, don’t take up as much room as clean ones…

For my last night in Bangkok we have decided to go to a place called Admakers. It’s not far from the condo, has live music and is open late for food. The place is packed when we get there, filled with Thais drinking and eating, waiting for the headlining band to begin. It has been so hot that mostly I have been drinking juices and beer, but tonight I felt like a gin and tonic. When I ordered it the waitress asked if I would like a bottle. In Thailand it is customary to buy an entire bottle, and if you don’t finish it, they will put your name on it and keep it until the next time you come in. The people next to us were working on a sixty ounce bottle of Johnny Walker, and putting quite a dent in it. My friend is a regular at the bar, so when I declined to buy an entire bottle of gin he and the server decided that it would be OK to give me the bottle of another regular and they would settle up later. Apparently I’ll be drinking some stranger’s gin.

The band were taking the stage just as a group of English soccer fans came in. England won the World Cup earlier, and they were out celebrating. In tribute the all-Thai band played We Are the Champions by Queen, although they pronounced “champions” like the French word for mushrooms. No matter, the Brits were happy to be the “mushrooms” of the world.

Later the band played a note for note cover of Bohemian Rhapsody and a long passage from The Wall. If you had closed your eyes you would have sworn (except for the occasional lapses in lyrical accuracy) that it was 1978 again, and you were at an all-star classic rock concert.     

The band were still head banging when I left, off to bed to get some rest before an early morning flight to Hong Kong.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2003

It’s too early to be awake, and the car I hired to take me to the airport is late. Quite late. Repeated phone calls to the Airport Associate car agency don’t seem to be helping, so I have to resign myself to the idea that the car will arrive when the car arrives, and if I miss my plane, I’ll just have to get another one later in the day. I sit outside the condo waiting and I can hear lizards crowing and birds sounding-off. Bangkok is almost relaxing at this time of morning before the hustle and bustle of the day starts.

When the car arrives the driver assures me we will make it to the airport on time. Much like the bus drivers I had earlier in the week, this guy was apparently looking to set a new land speed record for driving in the city, and we seemed to get to the airport in mere minutes.

I’m kind of back on schedule, which is good, because Bangkok airport is chaos. So much for the relaxing sounds of lizards and birds. Now I am surrounded by confusion, crowds and crazed travellers. There are line-ups everywhere, none of which seem to go where I need to be. I spot an executive class wicket with no line-up, and give them my ticket. Soon everything is good. Someone comes and grabs my bags while another helps me find my way through customs and to the Thai Airways Royal Orchid Lounge. I’m going to make my flight, and I have time to chow down. I grab some tea and a weird assortment of dim sum and sandwiches and wait.

The flight is packed, but whizzes by and soon we are in the Hong Kong International Airport. It is a massive place, probably the biggest airport I have ever been in – you have to take a train from customs to the baggage carousel – but also one of the best designed. It’s very modern and quite beautiful, despite the large photos of martial arts legend Jackie Chan that seem to be everywhere.

I take the high speed train to Kowloon, it takes about half and hour and costs a fraction of what a cab would cost. From there I transferred to a free shuttle bus that dropped me off in front of my hotel, The Sheridan in Kowloon.

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels, but I have never seen a bathroom like this one before. All the fixtures (except the toilet, thankfully) were made of see through glass. The sink was transparent, so was the counter and the tub. Very cool. The room also had speakers wired throughout the place so you can listen to music or the television no matter what room you are in. I need that at home. This hotel room is way nicer than my house in Toronto.

I loved Hong Kong. It felt like New York to me, only amped up about twenty times. I didn’t do anything special, just walked around and took some photos of the hundreds of signs that hang over every street, overlapping one another. It looks like a giant movie set.

Buying some postcards almost ended up being a traumatic experience. I turned down a small alley toward a vendor selling souvenirs. As we did our business I notice more stores further down the alley. When I get down there I see even more stores up ahead. I explore and poke around. Do you remember the giant maze in the movie The Shining? That’s kind of what this strange underground mall was like. Hundreds of tiny little stores and booths situated in this mind bending maze that went on forever. I got lost for quite a while, and just when it seemed like I was never going to see daylight again I exited into a smelly lane lined with garbage cans and populated by mangy looking cats who were feeding on the trash. I ran the gauntlet toward the street, avoiding the swipes and hisses of the street cats.

I haven’t been feeling well for a day or so, ever since my bus ride in Bangkok where I breathed in enough toxic pollution to make Keith Richard feel queasy. I head back to the hotel and transparent fixtures to get ready for dinner. I’m just grabbing a quick bite from the buffet in the hotel restaurant. I’m not even particularly hungry, but I should eat something. Here’s where Hong Kong and Bangkok differ. In Bangkok I could grab a bite to eat for next to nothing, in Hong Kong my buffet and a green tea cost almost $70. It was good, but after spending so much time, and so little money in Bangkok it was kind of a shocker.

After dinner I bought some cold medication from the pharmacy across the street, loaded up on codeine and watched some TV.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2003   

That’s it. The trip is over. All I have to do now is get home. Getting from the hotel to the airport is easy, it was just everything else that seemed really hard. I knew there was going to be big trouble in little China when I tried to check my bags through to Toronto, only to be told that I only had a ticket as far as Vancouver. Don’t get me wrong, Vancouver is beautiful, but I didn’t want to get stranded there.

To buy a ticket from the west coast to Toronto was going to cost about $2000, which was more than I wanted to pay. After several phone calls to the airline it is discovered that it was them who made the mistake. I’m told not to worry about it.

“Great,” I said, “let’s check my bags through to Toronto.”

“Well, we can’t actually do that for you,” I’m told. “We’re not sure when you’ll be leaving Vancouver.”

At this point I realize that I should be worrying about the latter half of my travel plans, but the plane is about to take off. I get onboard for a thirteen hour flight, not sure if I will be stranded in Vancouver or on my way home on the other end.

I decide to enjoy the flight as much as possible, after all there is nothing I can do now but wait. After some artery-clogging pasta I sleep for a time, watch several movies, have snacks, read and try not to think about the frustration that lies ahead.

We land in Vancouver. I speak to the inappropriately named courtesy desk people. They refer me to another desk about twenty-two miles away. Remember what I said about the Hong Kong airport – how well run and well designed it is? Well, the opposite is true of Vancouver. It is a rat’s nest of corridors and ill conceived design. I find the desk, and after a really annoying conversation with the attendant I manage to get a ticket for the flight I was supposed to have been on all along.

On the final leg of the journey I let my mind drift back over the past ten days. Asia was everything I hoped it would be – chaotic, exotic and stimulating – and several things I didn’t expect it to be – highly Westernized, hotter than blazes and strangely serene. I learned a lot and took hundreds of photos, but now it is time to return to real – or maybe that should be reel – life.

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