Bangkok
Bangkok sprawls and honks.
Perhaps the Pope’s visit to Bangkok, which coincided with ours, caused the extreme traffic gridlock, but watching the way scooters and motorcycles slid between stalled lanes, making their own spaces, made us think that this is how the city runs.
At traffic lights, scooters would form their own lines between the marked lanes, advancing until dozens of motorbikes were arrayed in front of the cars, revving their engines. When the light turned green, they were off ahead of the pack, to the next block of stopped cars.
One popular rideshare and delivery service in Southeast Asia is called Grab. In Bangkok, GrabBikes will summon a driver on a scooter, ready for you to hop on the back. We weren’t brave enough to try this; we talked to one person who had been injured by a too-close encounter between a scooter and a car.
We had a guide, and a car & driver, but several times we left the car behind and hit the humid streets, making better time on the elevated train or subway. And there were a few tuk-tuks.
Our culinary adventures in Bangkok included both fine dining and market fare. At a restaurant called Gaa, we admired how Chef Garima Arora, the first Indian woman to earn a Michelin star, recreated Indian dishes using Thai ingredients and flavors.
(We met and dined with another Bangkok Michelin star chef, Andy Yang — but that’s another story.)
In Pak Klong Talat market, we were impressed by how many different prepared foods one food stand could offer. It’s typical for a Thai meal to consist of several different dishes.
We saw the Grand Palace of the Thai king — a ceremonial palace, not his residence — and two of the country’s most important Buddha images: the Emerald Buddha, just 66 cm / 26 inches tall and carved from a single jade stone, and the giant reclining Buddha, 46 meters / 150 feet long and covered in gold leaf, with intricate mother-of-pearl designs on the soles of its feet.
We also visited Jim Thompson House, a unique home crafted from six traditional Thai teakwood houses. Thompson was an American businessman and former military intelligence officer who retired to Thailand and is credited with revitalizing the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, on the bank of the Chao Phraya river, has an unusual design, with its Khmer-style stupa and mosaic patterns made from pieces of coloured glass and Chinese porcelain (previously used as ballast in trading ships arriving from China). Near the top are four statues of the Hindu god Indra riding on a white elephant.
Bangkok was known as the “Venice of the East” during much of the 19th Century and still has more than 1,000 khlongs (canals). Aboard a long-tail boat (basically a gondola powered by an automobile engine — loud and fast!) we passed little wooden houses perched on stilts, side by side with colorfully ornate temples and modern homes. Our guide told us that this is typical, that there are no “good” or “bad” neighborhoods in Bangkok.
