Next Stops: Vietnam and Cambodia

This will be my last post for a while. Rodney arrives in Bangkok this Friday afternoon – yay! We spend Friday and Saturday here and then leave Sunday morning for Vietnam and Cambodia.

We fly first to Hanoi and spend a few days there, including an overnight cruise of Ha Long Bay. Then, we fly from Hanoi to Hoi An and spend a few days there. Then, it's on to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) for three days.

On our way back to Bangkok we stop in Siem Reap, Cambodia for two days to see Angkor Wat.

We’ll be gone until Friday, November 5. It should be a fascinating trip and we are both really looking forward to it. The internal flights in Vietnam are all on Vietnam Airlines -- that alone should be an adventure!

Day and Night

On the way home last night, I stopped on Sukhumvit Road and bought a "som tam" from a street vendor. Som tam is a classic Thai dish -- it's a salad of green (meaning, unripe) papaya, with fish paste, tomatoes, and peanuts in a chili/lime dressing. The som tam maker puts all of the ingredients in a wooden bowl, pounds them around for a bit with a wooden mallet, mixes everything together, and then pours it into a bowl for you. There are some variations - with black crab or without, more chilies or less, peanuts or no peanuts -- but the basic ingredients are the same every time. And it is really, really tasty -- one of my favorite dishes here. I walk down that stretch of Sukhumvit every week night on my way back from work ("glap baan" - means "go back home" in Thai) but last night was the first time I noticed this vendor selling som tam. It made me realize just how much the street changes each day.

On my way to work each morning, there is a woman selling food at the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 10 (the side street I live on). Behind her, the gold jewelry store hasn’t opened yet but will later. On the way home, the woman is gone and the owners of the jewelry shop often have a table set up on the sidewalk and the family is outside eating dinner.

Past the jewelry store, the sidewalks are empty.

But on the way home, vendors have set up their tables and tarps and are selling t-shirts.

I used to wonder how they could put up with the traffic noise hour after hour until I noticed that quite a few of them are deaf. I see them using sign language to communicate with each other. (Is there a Thai sign language? And how would they communicate the tones?)

Further down Sukhumvit, I go up and over through the Asoke Skytrain stop to get to the other side of Sukhumvit. This fellow is always at the base of the stairs, selling pomelos – sort of a cross between an orange and a grapefruit.

In the morning, this is what the sidewalk looks like.

But on the way home, the pomelo guy is gone and has been replaced by these guys, who have set up their tables and tarps and are selling shorts, belts, and t-shirts.

None of these businesses seem “official” in the sense of having an address or a name but the same people are in the same place selling the same items every day. And they all have electricity – lights are on and there are TVs playing underneath the tables so the owners have something to watch when business is slow.

Siam Square – Sunday, October 17

Went to the Bangkok Center for Art and Culture in Siam Square today. I had read about a “national artists” exhibit there and decided to check it out. Some of the art really was interesting – a fair amount in response to the recent political protests here in April and May. Lots of images half in red, half in yellow. But, no photos allowed so I’ll just post a few pictures of the building itself. It’s sort of like the Guggenheim Museum in New York – a big open space in the center, with ramps of galleries all around.

Siam Square really is the nexus for Bangkok – it’s the major retail area and where “everyone” goes. A good chunk of the city's population probably passes through the area at least once every weekend. Two major streets intersect here – Thanon Phayathi and Thanon Phra Rama I.

And the two Skytrain lines intersect here too – if you need to change from the Sukhumvit line to the Silom line, you have to stop at Siam.

Siam is also the intersection of the high-end retail malls – like Siam Paragon and Gaysorn – and the low-end, like MBK. MBK is short for Mahboonkrong and is immense and crazy and absurd. There is an entire floor – the 4th – dedicated to nothing but cell phones. It’s insane. There are computer printouts of the available cell phone numbers – the “luckier” the number, the more expensive. I went in once before and lasted about three minutes. You really have to want to shop to go in there.

I saw this sign on the plaza in front of Siam Paragon. At first I thought it was just a sculpture, until I noticed the ".com" at the bottom and realized it's written in stylized Thai script. Not a clue as to what it says -- I can barely speak Thai and have no intention of trying to learn how to write it.

But while I’m talking about the Skytrains, one thing that I find amazing is how the Thais line up when they wait for the next train. Not sure that it's clear in these photos, but they do.

There are arrows painted at intervals on the platform.

You are supposed to wait at the two sets of angled arrows – those are for entering the train. When the train arrives, it stops so that the doors line up and open at the two straight arrows.

I’ve seen a few people jump the queue, but for the most part, the Thais line up and wait as indicated. Very civilized. Once you’re on the train, it looks like any other train or subway car. Except for the TVs, which broadcast only two things – the name of the next station and commercial for snack foods.

And speaking of snacks, I saw these items in my neighborhood Villa Market. Don’t know how I missed them before, but just in case you can’t read them from the photos, these are three types of Pringles – seaweed, soft-shell crab, and blueberry/hazelnut. All I can say is….really?

Thanon Maharat and the Amulet Market

After I went to Wat Arun last Sunday, I decided to go back to the amulet market. The last time I was there it was at the end of the long, hot day and I just didn’t have the energy to really look at the amulets. But, I was actually more interested in the market itself. People just seem to set up a table or a cart on a little bit of the sidewalk and open up a business. And the street that leads to the amulet market – Thanon Maharat – is a perfect example. So I decided to document my walk up Thanon Maharat to the amulet market. Of course, I didn’t take a picture of every little shop along the way but these should give you an idea of what’s for sale on so many of the streets in Bangkok. Even after almost four months here, I am still stunned every day by the amount of “street life” here. Ready? Here we go.

This woman is selling lottery tickets, though it appears to be a “home-grown” lottery not the one run by the state. The price of the ticket depends on the numbers you pick, since some numbers are considered luckier than others.

This woman is making flower garlands that people will buy and put on altars when they “make merit.”

But there is some competition in the flower department, since these two were a few spaces down and cleverly positioned in front of a 7-11. Location, location, location.

This woman just amazed me. She was jammed in there, in this tiny little space between two tables and a tree, selling bags of vegetables. I can’t imagine how she planned to spend the entire day like that.

And if all your shopping has made you hungry, there are lots of places to have a quick lunch. Just pull up a plastic stool and dig in.

This guy was selling skewers of “meat balls.” Thais love these – either grilled on skewers like this or boiled and served in soup or with noodles. Personally, I find them nasty. The meat is usually ground fish or pork, mixed with a lot of flour. But you have to give this guy points for cleanliness – those pans are spotless. And he did have squid on a skewer. Don’t see that every day.


This guy is making desserts – very thin crepes with a cream filling, that he then rolls and serves on a stick.

This guy was also making similar desserts, only he had diversified and was also making “khamom buang.” Those are the desserts that look like tacos. The ingredients are the same but they’re folded, not rolled.

So, after all that streetside commerce, I finally rounded the corner and made it to the amulet market. It’s the same idea – lots of tables set up on the sidewalk. But the only items for sale are amulets – small images of the Buddha. Some are made of metal, some of wood, and some of stone. Since my first trip to the amulet market, I asked both Tewtip and Noon (my Thai instructor) about the amulets. The background is that amulets can cost as little as 10 baht or as much as several million baht. What makes an amulet extremely valuable is if it is a “first edition,” meaning that it contains some remnant of a service at a temple – wax from a candle, ash from a joss stick, or a bit of hair from a monk. And you do see buyers with small magnifying glasses scrutinizing the amulets, in search of a remnant that would make that amulet so valuable. Of course, the chances of a million-baht amulet turning up on a card table on a random side street in Bangkok are pretty slim, but you can always hope, I guess.

Wat Arun

I have been on the grounds near Wat Arun and watched the sun set over Wat Arun, but I had never actually been to the temple itself. So, I decided to go this past weekend. Wat Arun is across the Chao Phraya River (the main river in Bangkok) in the Thonburi section of Bangkok. Because there were political protests planned on some of Bangkok’s main streets, going by taxi seemed like a bad idea. So I took the Skytrain to the Saphan Taksin stop, got on an express ferry boat to the Tha Thein pier, and then took another ferry across the river to Wat Arun.

The cross-river ferries are small, white, boxy-looking ferries that just go back and forth across the river all day long. They’re slow, but it’s a short ride and they only cost 3 baht (about 10 cents) so you can’t really complain. Here are a few photos. That is Wat Arun in the distance.

I was happy to see a monk get on with us – figured that was a good omen that we wouldn’t sink mid-way across. (The Chao Phraya River is not inviting, especially this time of year with all the recent heavy rains.)

There are several outer buildings, including this one with two guards.


The name Wat Arun means “temple of the dawn.” The temple was built in 1809 and is famous for its central “prang” (spire), the four smaller prangs around the base, and because it is decorated top to bottom in bits of colored porcelain.

According to my guidebook, the porcelain came from Chinese trading ships that used the porcelain as ballast. It truly is stunning up close, with lots of interesting angles and intricate details.

Unfortunately, the sun was pretty strong that day and directly overhead, so the colors in many of my photos look more bleached out than they are in reality. But, I think you’ll get the idea.

You can also climb up to two terraces. The staircases are very steep and the terraces narrow and I’m scared of heights, but I went anyway, figuring… how many more times will I have the opportunity?

Here is a shot of Bangkok from the upper terrace. (You can’t climb all the way to the top – and I’m okay with that.) Bangkok truly sprawls and there isn’t a defined “downtown” area – more like several clusters of high-rise buildings all over the city. So, this is just one small section of Bangkok.