Kris and I were lucky enough to recently have some fairly extended vacation, and we used it to explore some parts of two countries that we had not seen before – Thailand and Vietnam. Our first stop together was Bangkok. Most of our time spent in Bangkok was devoted to Bangkok Hat, which led to us only having about a day and a half to explore the rest of the city, split between a full exploration day and a morning/early afternoon spent trying to eat as much Thai food as humanly possible while not being late for our flight.
After spending a short time looking up where we should go, we settled on a preliminary plan of going to the city’s famous Chinatown in the late morning, eating lunch, then meeting up with a friend to see the Grand Palace together, eat dinner, and spend the evening as we wished. As we were walking towards Chinatown, we were stopped by an apparently helpful man, who stated that Chinatown is best seen in the afternoon, when the market was completely open. Mornings were rumoured to be the quiet times for the area. He suggested that we take a boat ride along the river that runs through the city, and even gave us the name of a place and grabbed a tuktuk for us. How helpful!
The boat ride was well worth it – for 45 minutes, we were driven up and down through the city, and we could see the diverse architecture and stark contrast of lifestyles that Bangkok plays host to. There were shanty houses situated directly next to majestic hotels, and ancient temples nestled between modern complexes. Bangkok is truly an ancient city that has managed to adapt to modern times.
After our boat ride dropped us off near the Grand Palace, we began to head towards it. We had arrived a little earlier than we had scheduled to meet up with our friend. Luckily for us, a local man came up to us and informed us that the palace was closed for two hours for a religious ceremony. He suggested that we should visit several other attractions in the area, including a smaller temple, a statue of Buddha, and a famous clothing store, and we would return in time for the Palace’s re-opening. He even managed to convince a tuktuk driver to act as our chauffeur for the entire round trip. How nice!
The temple was quaint but reverent, and the seeing a 40-metre tall Buddha statue was definitely the highlight of this small part of the trip, but by the time we reached the suit store, we became acutely aware of the true nature of our friendly helpers throughout the day. We had fallen for a couple of scams, designed to fill their friends’ pockets with extra money from gullible tourists. This was confirmed when our tuktuk driver insisted that, instead of returning to the Palace after the suit store, we stop past a jewelry shop instead. We were more than a little disappointed at this. This delay meant that by the time we returned to the Grand Palace, it was actually closed for the day, and we had missed our chance to see it.
What we had previously perceived as local kindness was nothing more than greed. This was further confirmed after we eventually made it to Chinatown later that day and saw the same man who had directed us to the boat tour in the morning standing on the exact same corner that we had found him earlier in the day. While the scams hadn’t taken too much money from us, as everything in Bangkok is relatively cheap, and we had particularly enjoyed our boat ride, they had stolen an equally valuable resource – time. We could have been taking in other sights instead of being shown around suit stores or asked to try on jewelry we would never by. So, if you’re ever in Bangkok, just be aware of this.
We didn’t let our naivete spoil our experience too much. The city had some marvelous things to see, and equally marvellous things to eat. Kris fell in love with mango sticky rice, and I tried as many different soups, fried rice, and meat dishes as I could. My particular favourite was Chicken Tom Yum, with its balance of sourness and deep flavour. Thai food is significantly more varied in seasoning than Korean food, and we appreciated the change from our normal regular dishes greatly.
All in all, while Bangkok was mostly our home to play in the Hat, we enjoyed our time spent exploring its streets. We will certainly be more aware if we return there in the future, but the beautiful buildings, bustling city, and the call of mango sticky rice definitely put Thailand in the realm of countries that we hope to return to some day in the future.