My brother Derek came to Thailand for a visit this month for a short nine-day holiday. For him, it was a planes, trains and automobiles experience... but in a good way... Criss-crossing the country, going from Bangkok to Phuket back to Bangkok to Lopburi to Chiang Mai and back to Bangkok once again. Fortunately, there were no break-downs or train wrecks.
The only new sight for me was to visit Lopburi. Known for its ancient temples (though less than five hundred years old) that are homes for a rather large population of macaques, we stopped for the day. The timing of it was perfect. We took the midnight bus out of Phuket and arrived in Bangkok early in the morning. A taxi took us to the train station, where we were just in time to catch an outgoing train to Lopburi.
The macaques were a huge presence in one particular temple. Not fearing the hand of man, these animals would go as far as jump on people in hopes of catching some food possibly located on their person. I saw a team of them sneak up on a seven-year old girl and take her bag of sweets from her hand that she just purchased ten seconds before. ("taking candy from a baby")
The final stop of Derek's stay was in Bangkok. We stayed at a friend's of his back in the college days. It was swanky apartment on the 13th and 14th floors, overlooking some of Bangkok's financial district. I think that this is probably one of the top five most luxurious homes that I have ever stepped foot in.
Having been in Bangkok three other times for only one day at a time, I was looking forward to being able to spend some time there. The city is very big (population-wise and size-wise), with traffic jams everywhere to underscore the point.
Our first day was spent doing probably what every other tourist does on thier first visit to Bangkok - check out the Grand Palace. While it houses the king, only the temples are open to visiters. When we got there, the area was elbow to elbow in tourists. Tour groups were walking around, being led by guides speaking German, English, Japanese, Russian and French. The number of Russian tourists was surprising. Just on observation only, I would estimate that a quarter of the tourists that day were Russian.
Next to the Grand Palace was a temple housing one of the biggest buddha statues that I have ever seen. He is laying on his side and stretches to about forty yards long. There were other buddha statues in other buildings in the temple, but well, I starting to get bored with all the temples in this country. While not all the temples are the same, they really aren't that much different.
After the day, we pretty much felt that we had seen all that we wanted to see in Bangkok. This was confirmed by talking to Derek's friend. Bangkok's tourist highlights for the world are centered on food, temples, shopping and raunchy sex clubs. Shopping seems to have gotten out of control. In the Siam neighborhood, I counted at least ten shopping malls in one intersection. One of these malls has a handful of car dealerships on the fifth floor: Ferrari, Lambourghini, Porshe, BMW (for the poor people) and Maserati.
Along a couple blocks in the Financial District are rows and rows of clubs (straight and gay). In the middle of the streets are merchandise vendors, hawking clothing, pirated DVDs and CDs, jewelry, crap and junk. This gives the area a weird effect of clean-cut tourists innocently walking around looking for stuff to buy and party people checking out the bars where touts are on the sidewalk holding cards with a list saying "pussy ping pong... pussy bottle rocket... " and other sordid acts. Some of the bars leave their doors open, allowing you a taste of what you are getting into - Handfuls of girls dancing on a ten-foot diameter stage wearing bikinis.
Three days in Bangkok was more than enough for me. I can't take the immensity of the city (it's hell getting from one place to another) and everything is so expensive compared to the rest of the country.
