Tribulations in Thailand

We certainly didn’t have a typical experience in Thailand: no beaches, elephants, parties, seafood, or shopping. What did we do for an entire month, you might wonder? 

Well, for our first 5 nights we stayed with Don, a medical school friend of Julia’s dad, and his partner Paul in their central Bangkok condo. From the 12th floor we looked out upon the enormous city and its skyscrapers. Bangkok is truly huge, with a population of 15,000,000 and rising. Knowing our dislike of cities, we had planned to spend as little time as possible in Bangkok but ended up spending more than half our time there under some unfortunate circumstances. 

But that came later. For our first few days, Don and Paul were great in helping us get oriented to the city. On our first full day, they took us to one of their favorite markets, which was full of all sorts of exotic sea- and river-dwelling creatures. Paul seemed to know all the names and how to cook them. Now we have a little more understanding for people who don’t buy vegetables because they don’t know what to do with them. We felt the exactly same way with the fish and seafood. 

Next, for lunch our hosts took us to a Chinese restaurant that was not Westernized Chinese, but actual Chinese. No sweet and sour sauce here! There were only two vegetarian items on the menu (written in Thai with pictures), but they were good. One was a brothy stew of bamboo pith (whose texture was like a loose cylindrical sponge), shiitake mushrooms, and goji berries. The other was a savory dish of taro root, water chestnut, ginkgo fruits, cashews, and this bizarre fruit that looked like a date but tasted entirely different. 

The next day Don took across town via sky train, subway, and river boat to see some of the top attractions in Bangkok - the Emerald Buddha and Wat Pho, as well as the Grand Palace. We were forever grateful that he speaks Thai and helped us navigate. Even in Bangkok, not many people spoke English, and in the rural areas almost all the signs were in Thai. Anyway, the sights were swamped with a United Nations of tourists, weighted heavily toward the Chinese. But nevertheless they were splendid! The temples were incredibly grand, with their architecture incorporating Thai, Khmer, and Chinese influences. We fell in love with all the gold, the brightly colored roof tiles, and fantastic detail work. The elaborate wall paintings made us remember Bundi, but were completely unique in style. It was hard not to take pictures everywhere we turned. 

As we walked between sights we passed the compound where the late King of Thailand had been cremated last October following a yearlong period of national mourning. The elaborate multimillion-dollar complex was constructed specifically for his cremation, and now that it is over, hundreds of volunteers come every day to help take it down. Thailand has a strong devotion to its King; under no circumstances must you insult him. The King appears frequently in everyday life: our airport taxi had “Long Live the King” lettered across the top of the windshield and a massive billboard of the King greeted us as we left the airport. Many people also have a portrait of the King in their home. 

Spirit House

In addition to the King, respect is also essential with regards to the Buddha. We learned that Thailand is 97% Buddhist, although it also has a strong history of Hindu and animist influence thrown into the mix. For example, we saw many shrines and spirit houses along the streets. A spirit house is often created near newly constructed homes or buildings to please the displaced spirits that once lived there and ensure protection and wellbeing. This tradition is based in Thailand’s deep-rooted connection with the interdependent energies of the natural world. These spirit houses are everywhere - near gas stations, parking garages, even in the courtyard of Don’s condo building. 

On the more commercial side, one day we paid a visit to Chatuchak Market, which is a massive indoor/outdoor market that extends for many blocks. It was a maze-like city of stalls offering everything: fake flowers, cheap clothing, puppies, fancy soaps, yard art, souvenirs, you name it. After walking around for about 15 minutes we were entirely wiped out and a little put off that all these cheap knick knacks would surely end up in landfills. We didn’t like the odors of the food smells that wafted from the stalls. We were hot and grouchy. 

Another afternoon, we visited a massive Thai cultural tourism festival in a park. Although it seemed like it would naturally be geared to foreign tourists, most of the signs and information were actually written in Thai. They played an interesting mix of background music on the main stage: an outdated American love song, then Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer, followed by an obnoxious high-speed techno number. It was all quite a baffling mixture. Bangkok in particular has a large Western influence that manifests in sometimes unusual ways. 

On the surface Bangkok reminded us a lot of London: skyscrapers, traffic jams, fancy stores and fancy condos. But at the same time, just below the surface it was not at all like London. This disconnect between looks and reality gave us a slightly unsettled feeling. During our time there we learned more about the authoritarianism and corruption that make up the fabric of politics and society. In recent years there have been massive political protests shaking Bangkok. We also learned a little about Thai culture’s orientation toward conformity, obedience, and hierarchy. Finally, its etiquette is much more strict than any we had experienced before so we were always a little on guard. 

Thailand and India: A Comparison 

One of our main goals in coming to Thailand was to observe another non-Western culture to compare and contrast with India. Although we didn’t accomplish a lot of sightseeing, we did achieve this goal through lots of small observations. 

For our first few days in Bangkok we couldn’t stop marveling at its relative orderliness. Instead of swarming the train doors and pushing like crazy, on the subway in Thailand people actually lined up in the marked yellow side boxes and waited until everyone had gotten off. Even in the massive traffic jams nobody was honking. There were sidewalks and crosswalks. Although the heat, humidity, traffic fumes, and engine noise made it not exactly pleasant to walk around, neither was it entirely dreadful. One of the most striking features was that trash was nowhere to be found. This remained the case almost everywhere we went in Thailand - it was really clean! 

Near Don’s condo was a park with an artificial lake circled by walking and biking paths. Both women and men were out jogging in shorts and exercise tops. It sounds mundane, but arriving from India it was quite a sight to us. We hadn’t seen anyone jogging our entire time in India. Nor had we seen a place where one would jog if one wanted to, for that matter. Nor any bare female legs. We love that aspect of travel - how it makes us look at things we take for granted with fresh eyes. 

Of course, there were also some aspects that we preferred in India. For example, Thailand had an even more commercialized feel than India, with mega billboards lining the highways that were about the size of 8 US billboards put together. People on the subway were completely glued to their smartphones like they are in the US. Even more than in India, despite Thailand’s relatively modest income levels it seems like consumerism has taken off. With Don we visited a massive mall that is themed like an airport, with each level styled after a particular destination city (Paris, Istanbul, etc.) and a gigantic food court on the top floor. Despite this surge in “prosperity,” it seems like many people are still just trying to scrape by. We had trouble reconciling the minimum wage of 300 baht/day that people like the cashiers at the grocery store make with things like the 120 baht box of museli we bought or our 40 baht subway tickets. Of course, this trend is not unique to Thailand - wealth rarely seems to be spread equitably. 

Another striking difference between Thailand and India was the look and feel of the slums. Despite a few trashy corners, the slum in Bangkok we walked past was incredibly clean. Although the buildings were made of rusty corrugated metal and built on stilts above the canal, they had homey touches like potted plants and some were even two stories tall. If you see satellite dishes and laundry drying, it’s safe to assume that people live there. Surely there are worse slums as well, but it was interesting to see how relatively put together it looked.  

In terms of similarities, street food was just as popular in Thailand as in India. All along the streets, vendors wheeled carts of grilled meat skewers or carved fruits or fish dishes. Lots of informal restaurants with a few tables popped up along the streets. Food aromas were certainly in the air - some pleasant, some not so much. In contrast to India, street food in Thailand is generally thought to be safe, exemplified by the lone meat griller along the slum canal we spotted wearing plastic gloves. 

To the Lake

After a few days soaking in the sights and sounds of Bangkok we packed our bags and hopped into Don and Paul’s pickup truck to go to their lake home in the mountains about 4 hours away. 

Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

For all that you hear of its beautiful beaches, the majority of Thailand is not particularly scenic. A good portion of our drive was through urban sprawl along a dusty suburban/industrial/agricultural strip. We passed an endless series of gas stations, warehouses, big rice fields, chicken factory farms, and open air storefronts selling things like plastic chairs and construction materials. We shared the road with a ceaseless motorcade of big trucks piled to overflowing with sugarcane, tires, and other wares. 

But still, seeing the “real” was just as interesting as seeing the “pretty.” And to be honest, that is the world which many people spend most of their time in. Thailand’s economy has been surging as one of the strongest in the region for the past decades, with a lot coming from heavy industry. It reminded us a little of the look of Gujarat with all its factories. Why does “economic success” so often correspond with the desecration of nature and culture? Industrialization is assumed to increase quality of life because of the money it brings in, but in Thailand and India (and throughout our travels) we have seen that it often does the opposite for the common person. 

There were also many lovely moments during the drive. Elegant waterbirds inhabited the rice fields. Shrines and temples appeared almost endlessly, tucked into every nook and cranny. Women walked around stoplights selling jasmine flower garlands to hang from rearview mirrors. Tons of small open air restaurants lined the roads along with little street stalls and shops cobbled together from whatever materials were on hand. 

Along the way we stopped to visit the memorial cemetery for the thousands of Allied POWs in WWII who died as they were forced by their Japanese captors to build the Death Railway between Thailand and Burma. It made us sad to contemplate all these lives wasted, most of them our own age or even younger. Moreover, there were multiple times as many Southeast Asian civilian laborers (90,000) who also died alongside them. We also stopped to see the famous bridge they constructed, which has become a major attraction. All the souvenir shops that had sprung up next to it were an irritating distraction from what should be a sobering reminder of the consequences of war.

We were happy to arrive to the peace, cool air, and quiet of the lake and houseboat. Now we could take a deep breath in nature! We sat on the porch, watched a beautiful sunset over the lake and mountains, and got ready to settle in for a while. 

Our hosts had a fluffy pampered pet dog named Chivas who had been a little wound up at our arrival but eventually quieted down. Later, as we were cleaning up dinner, Colby happened to be in between Chivas and her bowl of dog food when he stopped to pet her. And in the blink of an eye there was blood spurting everywhere! Colby prepared to discover that half his face had been ripped off. Fortunately that wasn’t the case, but the injury was still bad - a deep tear completely through both the lower and upper lips all the way down to the muscle. Julia was even more wound up than Colby, trying not to cry and panic too much. We were absolutely grateful that Don was trained as a doctor. We managed to clean up the wound and stop the bleeding, and made plans to go to the hospital in the morning. Guess we’d be going back to Bangkok a little sooner than expected...

Once it was finally all bandaged, we were ready to head back up to our little guesthouse and get a few hours of sleep before the journey back to Bangkok. Julia followed shortly after Colby out of the houseboat only to see Colby standing by the gate asking, “Was that the only key to the guesthouse?” “Yeah...” “I just dropped it in the lake.” Oh great. Why do things always go wrong all at once? Absolutely all of our stuff was inside the guest house. Of course, for whatever reason we had locked the glass windows shut before coming down to the houseboat for dinner. That meant no easy fix by cutting through the screen. Along with Don and their houseboy we searched the guesthouse for any way we might be able to break in but there was none. Smashing the glass didn’t sound fun, so wrenching off the doorknob would have to do. Unfortunately Don and Paul had recently invested in a high quality German door knob/lock which was almost impossible to destroy. Thankfully their houseboy had some incredible muscle power, heavy duty tools, and metal-wrenching determination, so after about 15 minutes the doorknob mechanism slowly disintegrated into its parts and we successfully broke into the house. 

The next day was just as hard. Don drove us all the way back to Bangkok to a top notch international hospital. After a little while in the emergency room, they referred Colby upstairs for plastic surgery. The surgery itself was very quick and smooth, although Colby spent a lot of it in a nasty state of fainting while laying down, which is hardly even physically possible but utterly miserable nevertheless. The surgery was a must, but then a more ambiguous question arose. Should he get rabies shots? The dog had been vaccinated at some point but had not had boosters within the recommended period. So it was probably okay, but rabies is quite common in Thailand and not something you want to mess with. Additionally, it was a deep wound in close physical proximity to his brain, which means higher risk for the virus reaching the brain quickly. Otherwise, you can wait 10 days to see if the dog is okay. Given his potentially bias-inducing phobia of needles, Colby put Julia in charge of making the decision. 

Risk is weird. Driving from the lake home to the hospital was undoubtedly more risky than the chance of Chivas having rabies. But Julia decided to play it safe and go with the shots. This decision was soon regretted as they stuck massive needles repeatedly through Colby’s lips and nose to inject the immunoglobulin. It was the worst pain Colby had ever felt and there were tears streaming down his face. Julia rattled off random story after story to distract him and keep him from fainting or crying out in pain. Then came the excruciating shots into the thighs, and finally into the arm. Now Julia felt terrible for this because it was all probably unnecessary overkill in terms of safety. 

The whole experience was extremely traumatic for both of us. It was definitely Type III fun: not fun in the moment and not fun to think about afterwards. For the next few days we were completely sapped of energy and recovered in Don’s condo. There were some serious moments of just wanting to go home. Julia had a lot of anxiety problems and began to feel like the world is full of death and injury around every corner, which we only escape by an endless series of lucky misses. She was sick of making endless decisions with incomplete information and having the decisions always seem to turn out wrong. We felt trapped, not knowing what we should do next in Thailand or where we wanted to go. Everywhere seemed really touristy and tacky and swelteringly hot, not to mention mostly accessible by scary roads. Thailand has the second highest road fatality rate in the world after Libya, so we weren’t keen on spending much time on them. Another factor was that we would have to come back to the hospital for days 3, 7, and 14 of the rabies vaccine schedule so that meant we would be centered around Bangkok. 

As a short term solution to our dilemma of what to do next, we found a rental condo near the hospital where we stayed for 5 nights. We spent a lot of time sleeping, lapping up our air conditioning, and peering out our 17th story window at our view: skyscrapers, slums constructed of corrugated metal sheets, and a small canal down which public ferry boats moved at impressive speed. During our walks out to get food, Colby enjoyed bonding with the extremely friendly street cats. Now that he had rabies shots, he had a green light to make friends with them! 

Once Colby had gotten his day 3 and day 7 shots and had his stitches removed, we were ready to leave Bangkok for a while. We found a cottage in a rural area about three hours by train outside of Bangkok, near the town of Pak Chong. It wouldn’t be very conducive to sightseeing, but we were eager to settle in for an extended period of rest and reflection in a beautiful area. 

Leaving Bangkok the Second Time

Under a Bridge

The train ride to Pak Chong was hot, but gave us another glimpse into the rural landscapes of Thailand. The ratio of temples to population was surprisingly high. The temples were huge, with soaring pitched roofs covered in colorful tiles and corners with spiky golden flares. Across the landscape, massive Buddha sculptures would rise out of the forest or appear on the mountainside. Again, there was a lot of industry in the sprawling metro - cement factories, warehouses, incinerators, infrastructure projects. The farm fields, mainly rice fields bordered with banana trees and palm trees, had a more scenic look that made it easier to forget their own dark side: debt, poverty, exploitation, chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Except for the “postcard picture” places, a lot of the human-dominated landscapes of the world are actually pretty yucky these days. 

Playing in the Rain

We originally planned to stay in Pak Chong for 5 days but ended up extending our stay to 10 days because it was really pleasant and there was nowhere else in Thailand we would rather be. We had a little guest cottage with an outdoor kitchen, a view of the mountains, and dark quiet nights listening to the crickets (as well as the parrot-like croaks of huge geckos). Our hosts were an older married couple named Graham and Kitty; he is British while she is Thai. Kitty was extremely hospitable, continually bringing us gifts of food (mostly fried Thai snacks purchased from vendors that unfortunately weren’t our favorite). However, we did enjoy the traditional Thai green mango salad she made for us to try. 

One of our favorite parts of Thailand was feasting on fruit: pineapple, pomelo, jackfruit, papaya drizzled with lime juice, mango, oranges, dragonfruit, mini bananas, mulberries, and soursop from Graham and Kitty’s tree. Thailand was a fruit lover’s heaven. Another common delight you can find on any roadside are fresh coconuts, whose tops the vendor hacks off with a machete. After you drink the coconut water with a straw, you can then use a spoon to scrape out the meat. These were always very refreshing on hot days. 

Soursop

We spent our days at the cottage delving into the big question of what comes next after the trip. Coming into the trip, we had hopes that it might provide us some insights on our future. We have some vague ideas now, but still feel a significant amount of floundering and uncertainty when looking at the future. Colby spent many hours researching materials, construction techniques, and designing what our potential tiny house on wheels would look like. We also delved into various websites such as Good Food Jobs to look for opportunities in the arena of food hubs, food justice, and sustainable agriculture. We even applied for a few jobs. 

After 10 days contemplating life, we headed back to Bangkok for a few days before flying to Argentina. Colby got his last rabies shot, we caught up on some chores, and we thought back on our time in Thailand. You could call it “lame,” but we prefer to think of it as low key. We didn’t do very much. But at the same time, we don’t feel like we “missed out” because there is nothing in particular that we regret not doing. Similar to India, we don’t have a burning desire to come back but we are still glad we came. Next stop, Argentina - the finale to our trip.