Arriving in Bangkok from Pakistan was great. As much as we enjoyed visiting Pakistan, there were some parts we didn’t enjoy. We had reliable internet connectivity for maybe a week tops and the power went out at regular intervals (The weather was around 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and at one point the power went out every hour). Plus we rarely had privacy. So you can imagine how relieved we felt when we arrived in Bangkok. It was a modern haven full of wonderful internet connections, reliable electricity to combat the heat, and the freedom to make our own schedule. I know, shouldn’t I be pointing out the exotic smells of food stalls parked on every street corner, the golden temples, and the buzz of a city housing 11 million people? Perhaps but Karachi too had all of the above (actually, not exactly since the temples replaced some of the shrines and the number of people in Karachi is nearly double but it had more similarities than differences in my view).

Buddha statue at Grand Palace

Initially, we decided not to go sightseeing in Bangkok. Instead, we practiced ‘Americanism’ for a couple of days. Don’t judge. We had been away from the U.S. for over three months; I think we were a bit homesick and wanted to be immersed in familiarity.

Grand Palace

On our first day we barely left the apartment. We were glued to the internet, fervently catching up with emails, blog writing and useless information gathering. We ate at an Italian restaurant across the street form our building called Pizzazo at least three times that week for its  convenience and food (we hadn’t had Italian food in ages). Dumpty then made the mistake of downloading the TV series Homeland. Doesn’t he know by now that we have addictive personalities and he shouldn’t have us watching sit-on-the-edge-of your-seat type T.V. shows? We started watching Homeland late one afternoon and finished season one by 5am. By the way, Claire Danes did an amazing acting job. I wanted to smack her in every episode.

No American experience is complete without a visit to the mall. The Terminal 21 mall was awesome. The prices were reasonable and everything was in my size (I’m 4’11”)! But the best part about the mall were its toilets. Each stall had wipe sanitizers to clean the seats, and it had a fancy toilet outfitted with a heated seat and temperature and pressure controlled water jets to wash the front and back private parts. It was a spa toilet! I have seen these before but never inside the public bathrooms of a mall.

Pictures of the Grand Palace

We then completed the Americanism phase of our trip by watching two movies in the mall: Ted and Taken 2 (tell us what you thought about them). Now watching the movies was our first cultural shock experience in Thailand. A movie clip came on (Ted hadn’t started yet) in Thai and everyone in the movie theatre stood up–it was the national anthem and the entire clip was showcasing Bhumibol Adulyadej, the longest reigning King of Thailand. Of course we stood up too. We had read that the Thai monarchy takes its national pride very seriously. Just stepping on Thai currency with the King’s face on it lands you in jail.

After a few days, we finally got TV and movie watching, internet browsing, sleeping, and lazying out of our system and were finally ready to explore Bangkok.

Our first order of sight-seeing business was getting to the Grand Palace. In the hopes of being frugal, we hopped onto a bus to later discover we had to switch to a tuk-tuk. A thirty minute trip turned out to be over an hour. I muttered, “this place better be worth it” as we unglued ourselves from the sticky seats, wiped the dust from our faces and got “rewarded” by the blazing sun.

Buddha statues in the Grand Palace

My jaw dropped as we entered the Grand Palace. The palace’s roughly two million square feet area housed various temples and buildings. Originally built in 1782, the King of Siam used it as his official residence. Future kings continued using the Grand Palace as their royal courts up until 1925. Although it’s now a tourist destination, it’s still used for official events.

The brilliant colors, the mesmerizing artwork and the intricate craftsmanship of the Grand Palace took me world’s away from everything familiar. The exoticism drew me in. I had no clue where Dumpty was as I aimlessly wandered the temples and wondered what it must be like for the monks who worship here daily. Does this place every become mundane for them?

A house on the Chao Phraya River

We next took a boat trip on the Chao Phraya River, which flows through the city and out into Gulf of Thailand. The breeze felt great. In most cities, homes along the water always command steep prices but here the river banks were crowded with shacks, farmers on boats selling their produce and hopeful locals sitting with their fishing rods cast into the brown river. This was an entirely different culture for me and I wished we hadn’t bummed around as long as we did.

We ended the ride with a super quick visit to Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn. One of the most recognizable landmarks of the city, Wat Arun’s peak gives off a pearly glow in the morning as the first rays of the sun hit it.  The centuries old structure symbolizes Mount Meru, the center of the world according to Buddhist cosmology. The four-corners of the temple has statutes representing the guardian gods of the four cardinal directions, reinforcing Wat Arun’s symbolic and mystical architecture.

Pictures of Wat Arun

Wat Arun

Wat Arun

It was scary walking down the steps of Wat Arun

We ended our Bangkok trip with a fight. Muay Thai to be more exact. Every Tuesday the Lampini has arena has a big fight night and draws hundreds of Thais, expats and tourists like us. The majority of the locals stood in the back area. I felt like we were at the NY Stock Exchange–the red-faced Thais were yelling at the top of their lungs trying to get their last minute bets in before the start of one of the seven matches.

I was fascinated by the pre-fight ritual the fighters performed on stage. It looked like slow modern dance; I thought it was either a signature “dance” to tell the audience which Muay Thai house he trained at or some sort of meditation technique. Either way, it looked paradoxical with its calm, bizarre and in some ways feminine movements. The fights themselves were bloody (one guy was knocked out in the second round) and I wanted to look away at times but I didn’t. My eyes were uncontrollably glued to the ring. After each fight, the two opponents would hug each other and even smile at each other. That took me aback  because they were mortal enemies on stage. Maybe that’s perfectly normal at all fighting matches, but this was my first time watching a fight and I had nothing to compare to.

The boxer in the middle won the big championship of the night. No clue who the other two people are.

There was more than meets the eye in Bangkok. As much as you saw the modern malls, the touristy sights and trendy restaurants, there was also a mysterious and dark undertone to it as well. On any given late night, the sidewalks were full of drinking stations selling rum, beer, vodka etc; these weren’t bars at all but rather people selling drinks by a small table from a cooler. If you stopped, like we did, and were a single guy, you were immediately flanked my women and transvestites trying to sell you more than just a drink.

I would have loved having a local take me to some of these hidden back-ally places and experienced the city’s edgier side–the side not written about in travel guides. It would have contrasted nicely with the meditation ashram, the next leg of our Thailand trip. Looking back I do wish we had spent more time on foot exploring the city; there were a ton of bizarres and interesting neighborhoods we missed. However I think we needed those first few days to “normalize”. For now we were done being Americans and were ready to embrace whatever came next.

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