Lessons from Bangkok

Greetings from Thailand! I have been here three days already, but it feels like weeks for all that has happened.  Even the 28+ hours we spent in airports and planes to get here has faded to a distant memory.  By the way, if you ever want to get to know someone really well really fast, travel with them to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language—this is my immediate travelling group, who now feels kinda like my family here: (from left) Vana, Mike, and Joey (<3 you guys!).

We’ve already had some crazy experiences to bring us to know each other really well in a short amount of time.  Vana, Joey and I flew together from SFO to Bangkok and spent a 7 hour layover together in Taiwan—a true test of one’s ability to stay positive in a less-than-ideal situation.  They were champs, I was definitely the whiniest one. I was really scared that I would have problems with homesickness for how miserably I was longing for familiarity in the Taipei Airport—but ever since then I have been fine. Once we got to Bangkok, we had only the name of a little hole-in-the-wall hostel to meet up with Mike. We were nervous when the taxi attendant had never heard of it, but luckily our awesome driver had—Mr. So! He was so kind to us and very eager to help us with our (awful) Thai speaking and practice his English as well. I wish I had pictures with So, he exemplifies the warm and welcoming spirit of (almost all) of the Thai people we have met here.

            Our family’s most significant “speed-bonding” experience was probably on Saturday, where in Bangkok we encountered the exception to the friendliness and felt the effects of travelling in a developing country. After meeting multiple Thai people eager to help with our on-foot exploration of the city, we were admittedly a little too trusting for our own good. When a friendly man on the street offered us a cheap took-took (10 baht or 33 cents each, about) to take us around to the various sites for a full day, we thought we were again benefitting from the kind and hospitable spirit of the Thai people—boy were we wrong!

         This was our took-took driver (by the way, a took-took is a type of motorbike type vehicle with a bench seat on the back—they are everywhere here. They’re not just for tourists, too, I saw lots of local people riding to work with briefcases on took-tooks.). He didn’t speak much English but seemed very nice, and eagerly took us to the sites that his “kind” friend on the street had told us about—mainly different temples and various monuments to Buddha. Things got weird, though, when he brought us to a place called Thai Exports—a tailor that specializes in business suits—promising the best quality in town.

            Telling the story now, you’re going to think we were really stupid but hindsight is 20/20, at the time we were simple victims of a very elaborate and well-executed tourist scam. We walk in the door at Thai Exports and are immediately bombarded by employees eager to measure us for suits and dresses(I was lucky that I was not looking to buy anything—I was just along for the ride and in a prime position to observe the chaos). We should have been tipped off by how quickly they asked my friends to put down a credit card—before even taking measurements or anything. Another warning sign was that they changed the price on them, telling them 1,500 baht (about $50) one minute and 15,000 baht (about $500) the next. They were very pushy and would go to any extreme to get my friends to agree. My friends realized after putting down their cards that they were paying too much, and tried to get the charges cancelled—the people at Thai Exports tried to tell us that they could not cancel them (false), that the fabric for their jackets and suits had already been cut (false), and that the measurements and fabric had been “sent off” to the factory already (false—and plus the place promised hand-made suits so what were they doing in a factory?). In the end, the boys got duped into buying a suit each but upon realizing the scam decided to talk to their banks and stop payment to Thai exports. I still haven’t heard whether they’ve been successful.

            We found out later that we were victims of an elaborate tourist scam where people on the street, took-took drivers, people at temples and monuments, and people at shops like Thai exports all work together to pressure you to buy overpriced goods so that all parties involved get a cut. We started to realize this when our took-took kept stopping at shops we never asked to go to, saying that he gets a gasoline coupon just for bringing us there. Like I said before, you are probably thinking how stupid we were because I’m telling it with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time everyone was very convincing, and we mistook their eagerness to work with us for the genuine hospitality that we had encountered elsewhere. On the bright side, though, our shady took-took driver brought us to some beautiful temples and monuments, my favorite of which were the standing Buddha:
 

And the Lucky Buddha:

Onto a more positive note than being victims of a scam, I am constantly awed by the beautiful architecture and ornamentation. Here are just a few of my favorite examples:

One other noteworthy experience was on the street in Bangkok, where we stopped in a spa to get a “fish pedicure”—where special kinds of fish eat off the dead skin cells of your feet. Being extremely ticklish, I was fighting the urge (and sometimes losing) to kick and scream with giggles the entire time. It felt really cool after a while though, kind of like a vibrating foot bath. If you ever get the chance, try it.

After being scammed in Bangkok and spending all of Saturday wandering around the huge city, with alternating smells of delicious street food to the smells of vomit and trash, we were ready to get out of the bustle of the big city and boarded an overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai, where our group of four met up with 6 other Cal Poly students on the program, where our 14 hours on the train together helped us get to know each other pretty quickly. We arrived in Chiang Mai about 1 PM on Sunday and crammed into the local version of a taxi—a kind of open-air truck with a covered bed and benches in the back. I can’t believe we got all 10 of us, and our luggage, on just one of these.

            Although I’ve only been here in Chiang Mai a day, I am already in love with it.  It is so much cleaner than Bangkok, there is less evident poverty and inequality (in Bangkok, shack houses that weren’t even fully walled stood within blocks of skyscrapers), and every single person I have encountered has been genuinely gracious and friendly. After checking into our rooms at the hostel, which is more like a cheap hotel with clean beds, a bathroom for each pair of roommates, two hours per day of free wi-fi, and air conditioning (hallelujah!), we ventured down the street to get food, where I paid less than a dollar for a delicious noodle dish and then, like the grown adults that we are, went to play in the park across the street from our hostel. Within the huge park area we found a wat, a University convention center, lots of lawns to do cartwheels and throw Frisbees on, and a beautiful “medicinal” garden—not sure if all the plants actually had medical benefits but it was beautiful nonetheless.

Our first day in Chiang Mai ended with a walk to the night market, which was a huge outdoor market where they closed down a main street so artisans and food vendors could come out and sell their items. I wanted to buy something from virtually every stall (and we did buy something from virtually every food vendor, passing each item around for everyone to try). I even tried a cricket! I made my friend take the legs off first to make it slightly less creepy but it really wasn’t that bad, it was salty and kind of chewy: it reminded me of eating the shells of sunflower seeds. I forgot my camera for the night market, but we are definitely going back next week so I will likely be raving about it again in later posts. Due to the effects of jet lag I’m up writing at about 5:30 AM on Monday, later today we will meet all the students in the program for our orientation at Chiang Mai University. In three days I’ve had more new and exciting experiences than I’ve had in my whole life, I can’t wait to see what the next 11 weeks brings.