Bangkok -- Once More into the Frey

"Sex Drugs, Rock and Roll" — well, maybe Rock and Roll.

It is completely out of character for me to love Bangkok. It has Beggars at your feet, pickpockets reaching for your wallet. Crazy amphetamine users (yaa baa it's called — "crazy medicine"). It has prostitutes: women who look like women, men who look like women, men who look like men and like  men who look like men, or women (this is not my specialty, in case I seem confused about this). The sex trade is so prolific that there is an acronym for its employees: "CSW" — Commercial Sex Workers. (Cambridge Sound Works is probably not too pleased about this).I'm not making this up. And it has world-class traffic jams, it goes at a frenetic pace. It is huge, polluted, relatively few green areas and little quiet. Did I mention con-men and Tourist Touts (people who offer absurdly-cheap taxi or tuk-tuk fares, then take you to shops that try to rip you off, from whom they collect a commission)? So,

What's not to like?

Everybody body hates Bangkok the first time they visit. It hits you at a visceral level. But after a few visits, somehow it starts to grow on you in a way that Los Angeles (similar size, less pollution) never has on me. I love Bangkok.

There's a physical challenge to it. It is almost always hot there, so it can be a bit of an endurance test just to stay hydrated. The language is foreign and the street signs often absent or incomprehensible, adding to the challenge. Maybe that's it: I love Bangkok for its challenges. Like the nearly two hours I spent on a public bus, to get to the Skytrain, to replace the 35 minutes a taxi would have taken to my destination — and gotten me to it rather than near it.

This trip includes two stops in Bangkok, which because you're such a nice reader, I won't bore you with twice, just once. If you came to Bangkok for the first time and did as I did, you'd go home saying "Why the heck did I come in the first place" — but you haven't been here two dozen times before, no?"

The First Visit

I actually hit Bangkok both coming and going; it's in the middle of the country and the center of commerce (and transportation). You can be going to hell, but if you're in Thailand you'll stop in Bangkok on the way.

During the first visit I was still a bit fogged in by jetlag; when you travel a lot you adapt more quickly, and vice-versa. It took several days before I felt "right", and those days encompassed the initial Bangkok days.

Like Singapore, I didn't really have a plan for what I'd do once I got to Bangkok. I hit some of the old spots (the IT Mall, some of the restaurants I've patronized in the past. Saw familiar sights (and sites) and experienced them again. What's the same is comforting (most of it anyway), and what's different demonstrates the progression of time in a far away place. One restaurant building I once frequented was gone — I mean the building was no longer there and they were erecting another in its place. 

The Return Visit

This is when it really dawns on me that no matter how long I spend in Thailand, it never seems long enough. A highlight of the return trip was connecting with "The Three and a Half Sisters", a story which merits its own page.