bangkok! i flew there from india on kingfisher airlines, one of the best airlines in the world, and definitely the best airline owned by a beer brewer. you may recall that downtown bangkok had a little bit of a civil war raging very recently – mere days before i got there in fact. i would have never guessed from being there though. well, except for the centrally located, massive burned out carcass of centralworld – what was the biggest mall in south asia, and a few other malls around it. but thankfully there are hundreds of undamaged malls still left in bangkok! i was absolutely amazed at the level of consumerism that exists there, and how nice everything was. bangkok would be one of the nicest and glitziest cities in america. there is always at least one well-stocked 7-11 within sight at all times. and they stock milk! i haven’t had some good milk for five months! and a pretty amazing fermented milk product too.
i went to this one mall – the siam paragon – and it just has to be the nicest mall in the world. it might be the first time in my life where i just wandered around for four hours: dazed, and completely in awe. and i was amazed at the relative lack of disparity in bangkok (although it is a very different story in rural thailand). even the people doing the most menial jobs are doing it while listening to their brand new ipods and while wearing their designer fashions. impressive, especially after coming there directly from relative squalor-filled india. in between the mall wandering, i went to some famous buddhist temples – one with a huge gold reclining buddha and also the biggest and most famous one in thailand, as well as the grand palace of thailand. i stayed on khao san road – southeast asia’s traveller’s mecca – which has a reputation for being dirty, sketchy and cheap – but is a pretty good place to hang out.
i also took a day trip down to pattaya, a beach town two hours south of bangkok (on really nice air conditioned buses and an elevated, ten lane toll expressway). it also happens to be the self proclaimed sex tourism capital of the world. but don’t worry, i went there solely for the beach. wow though, there were an unbelievable number of prostitutes. and surprisingly to me a lot of them were ageing thai women (with kids trailing along even), sipping their favorite sugary iced coffee drink bought for them at one of the starbucks that populate every corner of town by a old, fat, ugly, or all of the above caucasian male, before he took them back to his $400/night luxury hotel room. not really how i would have (if hypothetically i would have) imagined thai sex tourism. just a sad situation all around though. pattaya also had amazing new mall, right on the beach, one of the nicest in asia. it was here that i went to one of those all you can eat sushi places with the conveyor belt of raw meat coming by! well, i learned that the raw meat on the belt was to be cooked in a little soup bowl, and the sushi was over in the corner. but this was after i had sat down and eaten about five plates of raw beef, chicken, and who knows what else. tasty though! also, as has become my custom, i found my way onto the premises of a luxury property – pattaya’s hard rock resort, where once inside i was treated as a guest. so all in all, my four days in thailand were pretty funtastic!
