Monday 4 April 2011

Day 1 Sunday 3rd April

Dominating the skyline from the view from my hotel window is the Lake Radjada office building. It is a magnificent glass panelled building that would look at home in any major city in the world. With blue panels separating the floors and a angled roof, it is a stunning sight.  Diagonally opposite it is a dilapidated car park. The car park was partially finished years ago but never completed and is a sorry sight. These two buildings provide a perfect example of the contrasting sides of the city that is Bangkok.
Sections of Bangkok are as classy as any city in the world, which makes the difference between the haves and have nots so stark. Marble filled shopping centersthat rival anything in Australia have beggars stationed outside them. 
Bangkok is not always a comfortable place. The first warning you get is that taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. [To divert briefly, the taxi ride was an adventure, including 130kph in an 80 zone, unsignalled lane changes, a seatbelt less driver, and, perhaps most disappointingly of all, a Toyota Camry acting as the Taxi.]The trip is a dark one, both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there just isn’t the street lighting that exists in Australia. There was also a seedy side to the journey; it didn’t take an expert to identify the careers of the multitude of ladies in little black dresses beside the road.   This was at 4:30am. It’s clear that, even as the countryside skips past at 130kph in the dark, there are some fairly depressed areas in Thailand. Think the difference between Toorak and Broadmeadows, then take a similar sized step downwards from Broadmeadows. The darkness helps - one cruises past shanty houses in a sort of semi blissful ignorance – not seeing the details makes it less real.
On the plus side of Bangkok, the public transport system is brilliant. Efficient, clean (bizarrely there are no rubbish bins anywhere yet the streets are generally clean) and simple.  Everything that Melbourne’s should be. The only blight is that the subway and the skyway require a separate ticket using a separate ticketing system. Nicole & I used it to go to the Chatuchak Market. The Chatuchak Market is like Melbourne’s Queen Victoria market, but bigger, cheaper and more confusing to navigate. It’s the kind of place you can buy some real bargains – everything is cheap, and you can generally barter down.
In particular, the market features an endless supply of T shirts and silk scarves. Food is available, but by Australian standards, the preparation methods are somewhat dubious. Plates of uncooked meat sit in the open air in stalls a bare meter from the edge of a busy road. The desire to experience as many of the local desires as possible is offset by the desire to avoid food poisoning. The locals clearly have stomachs & immune systems strong enough to cope with such delicacies, but I’m not sure I do. Notable also is the absence of any bugs. In extremely humid conditions, with lots of food around, it’s a pleasant surprise to not be bothered by them.
And, the roads are busy. An enormous traffic jam on a Sunday afternoon suggests that the weekdays will be very ugly indeed. The traffic is actually a reasonable spectator sport, watching the Taxis (almost exclusively Toyota Corollas), the TukTuks (three wheeled motorcycle engined buggies), scooters, motorbikes, cars, buses and utes with trays full of passengers do battle. Crossing the road is an extreme sport. Crossing lights are rare, and ignored anyway, and right of way seems to be dependent on the mood of the driver and obnoxiousness of the pedestrian. “They will never run over a tourist” says a fellow road crosser as he steps out in front of traffic. Perhaps, but I’m not that brave to find out.
A seemingly endless army of traffic police control the pedestrians and powered vehicles as they attempt to join the main roads. There whistle like mad men, but don’t really appear to achieve much. The footpaths are choked with people, and have more changes in step than a drunk soldier. The footpaths are, by Australian standards, appalling. At one point there is a 50cm drop from footpath edge to the road! Changes of height and obstructions are common place. Many a sign post or other obstacle is erected in the middle of the footpath, forcing pedestrians onto the road or to adopt a contortionist pose to squeeze past.
Lunch is at a café near the hotel called the Parrot Café.  The place has the feel of Ricks Café, from the classic movie Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart. The Parrot features an assortment of guests of varying nationalities, each of them killing time like Humphreys mates. I suspect the café has a deliberately more western feel to attract such types. Still, the food is good.

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