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My experience with border crossings was scant to say the least. On a student exchange program in 1987 – during which kissing girls and enjoying my newfound affection for beer took priority – I’d crossed the Salzach River from Bavarian Germany into Austria. My nascent fascination with traveling to new and foreign lands murmured like a volcano ready to erupt as we rolled over the green-blue waters and onto the undulating Austrian landscape. In the end, though, the ride offered no more climactic intrigue than a detoured school bus. On a cross-country road trip in 1995 I gunned my 4Runner, Mordecai (don’t ask, that was just his name), onto a ferry to get from Port Angeles, Washington to Vancouver. Though I imagine the scenery was quite nice, the fact that I don’t remember much perhaps tells a story in itself. Vancouver was attractive, if not exactly exotic. We might as well have still been in the States if not for the funny technicolored money. A trip over the US border into Tijuana, Mexico one sticky June day was the only place I’d ever witnessed any significant change of atmosphere in the space of one passport control gate, two chain link fences and a row of machine guns in blue uniforms.
Add humidity and a ditch for the machine guns to patrol and you’ve got yourself the Poipet, Cambodia – Aranya Prathet, Thailand border area.
Once on the Thailand side I found myself immediately preoccupied with the joys of finding a way to Bangkok without feeling like I was being taken for all the Baht I was worth. As if I knew how much my Baht actually was worth. A bunch of backpackers were loading themselves onto the closest option: a large clean white van, the likes of which I hadn't seen anywhere in Cambodia. Too easy, no adventure, I decided. I walked past, to the amusement or disdain or indifference of the driver and his assistant I couldn't tell. The main road stretched out before me. I ducked down the side street to my right. I was a blind man without so much as a dog to help me out. My instincts were redeemed in the form of an old man and his tuk-tuk, waiting to take a guy like me to the bus terminal in town a couple kilometers away. For him to station himself down along this obscure, desolate sidestreet to nowhere seemed to breathe with all the sense of standing in the subway station hoping to catch a glimpse of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I thought of a white van full of backpackers, noses in their guidebooks. I jumped into the old man's tuk-tuk.
In all of five minutes - traveling at tuk-tuk speed - Cambodia had managed to disappear. The road was smooth and one consistent shade of macadam; the trash littering the countryside approached non-existence; even the trees looked different. A half hour later, nestled comfortably in a seat that couldn’t have felt any more regal if it were the Thai King’s throne, I stared out the bus window, wondering how it is that extremes come to exist side by side.
We roared into Bangkok, the city towering and clattering and groaning like a mix of Tokyo and LA, worlds apart from the Southeast Asia I had come to know. But maybe that was just it. I still didn’t know. Didn't know what this new world was really like. Didn’t know what to expect. Mainly because I didn’t want to. I didn’t stick my nose into a guidebook before coming here for a reason: I don’t want someone else to tell me what I’m going to see. If I do there’s no wonder, no surprise. There’s only a comparison of reality to someone else’s ideas. Instead, I want to see things for myself, going in with nothing but my own ideas which, truth be told, are often close to nil. Then maybe I’ll have an outside chance to begin to see things for what they are.
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Our long-distance bus morphed into a city bus once inside the city limits, and the locals soon outnumbered us foreigners or so it seemed from the conversations suddenly flying around in Thai. A few school children, eleven or twelve years old I guessed, made a valiant attempt at engaging me in a little back-and-forth in English. Japanese kids rarely will do this. Once they had asked where I was from though, they were pretty much out of material. Sadly, I knew not a lick of Thai and our budding friendship ended there. By the time our bus reached the terminal the locals had all but disappeared. I hopped off, the sweltering afternoon air hitting me like a wet plastic bag.
My mouth had been watering at the prospects. Reviews of Thailand were all about the fantastic scenery, the friendly people and an unforgettable time. But stepping out onto the pavement of the airport parking lot and toward the waiting welcome wagons the taste on my tongue quickly soured. "Man, you crazy!" The guy's greasy hair swung across his face as he turned to his friends, all leaning against their motorbike taxis and laughing at the tourist trying to skimp a cheap ride into town. I bumped my offer up a dime, but he was squeezing me for dollars. "Good luck, man!" His laughter continued to ring in my ears as I headed for the street, a feigned confidence in my step.
A voice with a completely different flavor turned me around again. A guy with a floppy green hat and a face that had seen plenty of travel was walking toward me - with a purpose. "Hey my friend, you want to share a cab?" He introduced himself as Vladimir From Poland Who Doesn't Like Being Screwed With and told me he was heading for Koh San Road too, which was impressive since I didn't know myself where I was going. A moment later I stood behind him on the sidewalk outside the airport entrance as he told the cabbie at the front of the line how much we were going to pay him to take us where we were wanted, and we were off.
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Koh San Road, the epicenter of foreign infiltration in Bangkok, was immediately uninspiring. It could have been the tourist strip in any warm city in the world as far as I could perceive. Yet even the theoretically simple task of finding a place to stay held a certain promise of intrigue. Vladimir had a place in mind – from his guidebook most likely. After a series of shadowy, grimy alleyways and entrances we found the place, only to find out they had no beds available. The next three places had beds, but for three bucks we passed - which says a bit about what the rooms looked like. Again I thought of Cambodia, the only country I knew to compare with. How can a run-down place like Phnom Penh offer such comfortable options for the backpacker crowd while this model of modernity called Bangkok sat infested with rooms barely fit for the bugs inhabiting them? This, I decided, listening to the ruckus of voices and music outside, watching the faces of these jaded guesthouse types, was the magic of Koh San Road. As we finally settled into a room – with no soap, toilet paper or towels, I promised myself if I ever came back to Bangkok I would steer clear of this block of backpacker hell. After a shower I felt marginally better. Good enough, anyway, to decline Vladimir’s offer of a hit from the small bottle of whiskey he was carrying.
The street, closed to traffic, was positively swarming. Regardless of whether Koh San Road is your kind of thing, it does possess a certain degree of aura. Similar to that of, say, a fistfight. Between two girls. With Down's Syndrome. Vladimir took the lead as we waded through the swirling flow of human bodies, striding ahead with unmistakable purpose. I peered through the milling crowds, eyeing the open-fronted restaurants and patio cafes. Tables of unsmiling foreigners sat packed under neon signs and fake palm trees. Was this what they traveled across the ocean for? I was looking at the very un-Thai name of a loud, busy eatery when I caught a sharp shoulder in the arm. I turned to the culprit – a short, skinny black-haired guy who, from the back, seemed much more local than tourist. I kept staring as he walked away, waiting for any acknowledgement if it was coming. He glanced back finally, a scowl on his coconut face, and continued on his way. Was it something I did?
Vladimir and I wanted the same thing: out. We ducked down a side street and, within a minute were transported to another world – or a completely different face of Bangkok anyway. A two-wheeled cart sat at the edge of a wide empty parking lot, offering no lighting, a rickety plastic table and mismatched plastic chairs, a fair bit of smoke and the aroma of Thai food, at least as I had imagined it. Vladimir and I didn’t speak as we pulled out our chairs.
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Bellies sated with spicy chicken and coconut milk, we made a wandering circuit around the Koh San Road neighborhood. The fruit shakes were cold and good; conversations with the ‘businesspeople’ on the street were enjoyable if not pointless. I felt myself falling into the lighter side of this eternally dense vortex of backpacker transience; good times could indeed be had here. But not by going off to shoot automatic weapons or gawk at sexually-disoriented Thais, though this may float other people’s boats. My good time was entirely comprised of messing around with the locals – the shopkeepers, the street vendors and the pamphlet-tossing twenty-somethings. Attributable perhaps to my budding ability (or willingness perhaps) to simply take Koh San Road for what it was instead of spinning my judgmental wheels in order to keep it all at a manageable arm’s length away, I found myself having a ball.
But our steps were taking us back toward our guesthouse. Vladimir, I gathered, had had enough. I was wavering on the idea. This time tomorrow I’d be on my way to the airport, perhaps never to see Bangkok again. I looked around at all the blank foreign faces sitting at their tables, dirty plates and bright drinks and beer in front of them. There was no life in their eyes, no fire of new experience in their expressions. Maybe because it wasn’t new. Same Spring Break shit, different place. Same with so many people walking around. Of course, there were plenty of cheery carousing types roaming Koh San Road, but somehow they seemed the minority. Maybe they’d just arrived. Maybe they were drunk. Maybe they simply knew how to have a good time. I listened to their laughter, soaking up their vibe.
Vladimir was disappearing into the swell of people. I glanced around - and saw a familiar face crossing the street. I looked closer. No way! My mind was blitzkrieged with images of the guesthouse dock in Phnom Penh where we first met; our dinner date that evening; my pathetic inability to go ahead and invite her up to the roof for a moonlit view of the lake. This was barely a week ago. It seemed like years. She slid between two parked cars and up onto the sidewalk in front of me. ‘Masae, hi!’ She almost fell over when she saw me. I took that as a good sign. I wouldn’t have bet Vladimir’s whiskey I’d ever see this girl again in Japan let alone Bangkok. Then again, if we were destined to meet again, this might be the most logical place. For a moment we talked, and I thought the gods were granting me a second chance with her. ‘Got any plans for the rest of the evening?’ She looked around, everywhere except in my eyes.
Thirty seconds later I was telling Vladimir to wait up, Masae headed off in the opposite direction.
‘I’m going back,’ Vladimir said, face almost as devoid of emotion as all those other faces around me. I wandered around for another half hour by myself before calling it a night. I wanted a little more time with the locals, to end my evening with a smile on my face.
A Chance to Breathe
Even the most cramped and desperate of cities have oases scattered about, tangible places of respite from the urban chokehold that restore the traveler's faith in the tenacity of tradition in the struggle against the Goliath of global urbanization. Koh San Road was hectic, electric, and unabashedly devoid of cultural spirit, all about sucking in anyone with a backpack, feeding them a glazed and grimy evening and then circulating them out for the next mob of dollars and twisted dreams. The hordes were certainly out in force, celebrating the wonders of getting drunk in a place that, though thousands of miles from home, was anything but foreign. The locals were swarming too, proud eyes and pearly-white smiles offering the visitor a chance to fire an M-16 into a mound of dirt or perhaps sit and stare at a group of self-aggrandizing men prance about dressed up like women. Granted, I've never felt the urge to spend a couple hours of my time - let alone a minute - watching a 'new-half' show, but I can't imagine the point. "Hey, look at me! I'm a man and I look like a woman! Isn't this great? Woo-hoo!" Vladimir and I, similarly-minded, banked left and headed down a side street, away from the blind stampede and the pamphlet-waving cowboys trying to corral more sensory-bound sheep. A mere block away we were walking amid the dim humming of single, bare lightbulbs and stumbled across the well of reality we were hoping for...
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Friday, March 21: The silence in the early morning light was surreal. Where did Koh San Road go? Not that I would have been disappointed. Another shower and Vladimir and I hit the lightly-populated streets, appreciating now all the late-night revelers as they slept the morning away. Across a sweeping park the rooftops, spires and stupas of the Golden Palace rose up behind the perimeter of trees. The park was deserted. We were either doing something right or something very wrong. We hoped for the former and walked on.
Apparently the Grand Poobah isn’t much of a morning person; the sign outside the gate told us his Golden Palace didn’t open until 9am. Same for every other place on our short list of sites. Okay, Vladimir’s list; I still had nary an idea about this town other than what I’d already seen – which, outside of Koh San Road, wasn’t much. As we walked down the quiet sidewalk, morning air heating up, I looked at Vladimir’s long pants and figured that about some things he was a bit clueless himself. We did get lucky and stumble on a temple that, as impeccably-cared for as it was, orange roof with its golden flames sparkling in the morning sunlight, entrances and windows caked with gilded ornamentation like a woman wearing too much mascara, would soon seem quite ordinary. It sat proudly on a swath of cement. The altar floated inside a gaping portal that reminded me of a one-car garage. Miniature palms stood in white pots nearby. Metal fixtures held the beginnings of another day of Thai tourist fare, plastic tables and chairs waiting sullenly by.
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‘Well,’ said Vladimir, flipping through his guidebook. ‘How does the Marble Palace sound?’
I shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t be Bangkok without it.’
We flagged down a tuk-tuk.
‘Marble Palace,’ Vladimir told him, sounding like a man in complete control. Coming out of my mouth it would have sounded more like a question.
‘Okay.’
As we were climbing in the guy hosing down the sidewalk nearby walked over to us. ‘Wait,’ he said to all three of us. The driver obeyed, blank-faced. Vladimir and I glanced warily at each other and at our mystery cement waterer. He stared back. ‘Where do you want to go?’ And he proceeded to scrawl out ‘Marble Palace’ and two other places in English and Thai on a pink scrap of paper. Then he looked at us with dark, serious eyes. ‘I will tell the man to take you to these places only,’ he assured us. And our guardian gardener proceeded to chastise the tuk-tuk driver in advance before explaining our three-point itinerary to him. He nodded silently and pressed the paper against the steering wheel under his fingers.
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The Marble Temple was an oasis of landscaped gentility set comfortably among the concrete Bangkok wilderness. Either that or the result of a guy with an empty plot of land and a hobby-turned-obsession. A high gateway with a cryptic sign and blue, pink and red bunting welcomed us, drawing us into the neatly-trimmed temple grounds. Disciplined shrubs stood spaced among neat squares of grass, a yellow garden hose lying like a snake sunning itself. The whitewashed marble, decorated with the now-obviously requisite gold red and orange, capped with a roof with more layers than the most ambitious of wedding cakes, lion creatures standing guard at the door, daggers of fire shooting themselves toward the cloudy, slowly-clearing sky. A bell hung from a similarly-ornate roof atop a four-meter high stone pedestal. I had no idea how anyone got up there to ring it. Inside the temple, Buddha sat serenely atop his sculpted golden sandcastle, looking over a polished, empty floor, kept cool by as single oscillating fan humming away in the corner.
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Next on our agenda was the Lucky Temple.
We climbed aboard our tuk-tuk once more and our faithful if not disinterested driver, who we now knew as Rikom, took off down the road – and was duly pulled over for crossing over the solid yellow line bisecting the street while passing another vehicle seemingly powered by a gerbil, maybe two, in a wheel under the hood. He paid his fine on the spot. The day would be a wash at best. Unless he could recoup his losses another way.
‘You want to go to a specialty shop, yes?’ He was suddenly animated.
It was here Vladimir lost his head.
‘I want to look at some rubies.'
In minutes we were staring at the dark gaping doorway of an ‘Export Center.’ One glance inside at the racks of expensive suits and rows of glass-encased gems and well-dressed Thais with stern faces and we were out of there. Undaunted, Rikom sped and swerved through traffic and lurched to a stop in front of another, similarly-suspect shop. ‘Go in for fifteen minutes please. I get one liter free gas.’ Which sounded reasonable enough. We went in. A short woman with a dark patterned silk shirt accosted us. ‘Come this way.’ And she proceeded to walk us through the shop in strict fashion, pointing out what we should buy in order to avoid being summarily executed by the king. I strolled off her prescribed route to take a gander at some crystal figurines of royal elephants. ‘No sir, this way!’ Like the building was on fire and I needed to follow her so I wouldn’t be burned alive. Or executed by the king. I kept walking away, whistling a made-up tune meant to antagonize her. It worked. ‘What are you doing? Walk this way!’ The game lasted another minute until she got up on her toes and shook a finger in my face, scolding me for being ‘unreadable.’ When her finger stopped moving I stared, whistled another chord and turned away, heading for the door, damn the king.
Rikom seemed satisfied and drove us to the Lucky Temple. From the name I thought we were going to end up at some kind of prefab holy house-cum-casino. What we found was an entire complex of glittering, glazed temple buildings cascading down a large hill rising up amid the crunch of the modern city. Thick tangles of trees kept the sun and the city at bay as we wandered among the gold-encrustations and sparkling mosaics of the temple walls and facades. Vladimir unzipped his pants legs, turning them into shorts for the walk to the top of the hill where more ostentatious worship opportunities awaited, along with a wide panorama of the surrounding city. Buddha, it seemed, could still manage to keep the encroaching city at bay, at least to some degree.
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Observing Unobserved
The downside to traveling is that just about wherever you go, you're a foreigner. By that I mean you stand out, an unnatural part of the natural order of things and therefore inescapably detached - to a degree correlated to how you present yourself to the land you find yourself in. Hanging out in Linz, Austria, sipping coffee in the Hauptplatz or relaxing on the banks of the Donau, nobody will give me a second glance - until I whip out my ear-splitting German. But going for a walk through the neighborhoods of Siem Riep, Cambodia, I don't have to try to speak Khmer to turn the heads of everyone on the street. The advantages and disadvantages to both ends of the spectrum and every point in between can be debated until the day Angkor is abandoned once more, but in the end, that's just the way it is. In a strange land, you are a stranger.
Given the choice, I'd rather blend in. I travel not to be guided to points of interest and sold pre-packaged experiences; I want to watch people as they go about their daily business of being people. I don't want to be approached or treated as a rich Westerner. I'd rather eat 5-cent soup out of a plastic bowl while seeing what it takes for a man or woman to make a living on the side of the road. I'd love to look like I belonged there in that lunch room with all those kids. Maybe I'd be allowed to stay for a while anyway, if they were so inclined to let me in. I wouldn't understand what anyone was talking about, but it would be magical, really, to be invited to share in a part of their day - to see up close what it is to be a schoolchild in Bankok, Thailand. No doubt it would be an unforgettable few hours. The kids might enjoy it too, though they probably see foreigners all the time. But in the end, there would be that lingering detachment. I'd still be a foreigner.
Then again, if I weren't, it wouldn't be so interesting.
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Back down the hill we discovered Rikom had decided he’d had enough for the day and was gone. We hadn’t even paid him. Maybe he couldn’t wait any longer and went to get his liter of gas. He was, however, considerate enough to send his brother or cousin to take over. That was the story the kid gave us anyway. Vladimir showed him our magic pink paper.
‘Okay,’ he muttered and drove us directly to another specialty shop. Vladimir still wanted a ruby. I wandered around the shelves and wall displays, a woman tailing me like a soft drink vendor in Angkor. Or a hungry cheetah. She was intimidating in a quiet way, though she couldn’t hold a candle to the finger-shaking Admonisher unless she pounced on my back. The painted eggs were actually quite nice, but I didn't want to stop moving and increase my vulnerability to an attack. I turned my body back and forth slightly as I walked, keeping my exposed surface area to a minimum. Vladimir couldn’t bring himself to fork over a day’s pay for a shard of red stained glass (which I would bet they were) and we escaped under verbal fire for not buying anything.
By this time Vladimir was possessed and had our guy drive us to a third shop. We were ambushed with barbs and bayonets at the door. ‘What are you going to buy?’ The woman was already pissed off at us. ‘You going to buy something? You tell me now, don’t waste my time!’ We stood on the top step, wondering what it was she was even selling. ‘You buy something! I hate you!’ (Okay, she didn’t say that last bit but she might as well have.) Her entire body seemed about to launch itself off the floor like a bottle rocket when I tossed her a totally hilarious comment about a pepperoni pizza. Then our tuk-tuk kid got all bent out of shape because our thoughtless little stunts weren’t going to get him any free gas.
We left them all standing there and walked on down the sidewalk. A tuk-tuk pulled up. ‘Royal Palace, five Baht each,’ Vladimir said, sounding vaguely like the woman at that last store. ‘Okay,’ he said and we climbed aboard. Around the first corner he pulled to the side of the road and turned around, handing us a laminated spiel about a specialty shop. ‘No, just the Royal Palace please…No, thank you...No! The Royal Palace!...NO GOD DAMN IT TAKE US TO THE ROYAL (POLISH EXPLETIVE) PALACE!’ The kid was unfazed. 'One specialty shop. I get free gas.' ‘Take us to the Royal Palace or I will (something very violent-sounding),’ said Vladimir through clenched teeth. ‘No, you said one shop okay!' the kid cried. 'You said! You said!’ He seemed to really believe himself.
We got out – without doing the violent Polish thing – and found the city bus.
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We reached the Royal Palace in time to be told it was closing. Apparently this wasn’t acceptable to Vladimir. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, pulling me with him against the waves of people filing out through the gate. The guys in uniform posing as guards didn’t see us, or care to as far as I could tell. The late afternoon crowds were swarming in circles and loops around this outer courtyard, where several rooftops, spires and stupas rose up just behind one wall. As we approached an arched gateway Vladimir pulled out his pants legs and zipped them on. ‘I’m going inside, this way,’ he said. I didn’t know if he was talking to me or not. It was at this entranceway that I finally understood why Vladimir was wearing long pants that hot, humid day. ‘No shorts inside the Palace,’ someone official-looking told me as I tried to follow Vladimir into the guts of the Royal Tourist Suck. And there I sat on the curb, watching the crowds stream by in every direction, admiring the sight of some extremely beautiful women, relegated to my courtyard view of the Palace. I’d never get any closer. And I’d never see Vladimir again.
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With the few remaining hours of daylight left I explored the multitude of stupas forming a veritable forest of man-made beauty among the grounds of Wat Pho, doe-eyed my way into a large building to see a reclining Buddha up close for free and wandered through a market that had by that time all but been deserted. As the sun fell toward the horizon on the far side of the Chao Praya River I watched the docks bob slowly up and down on the murky water. My time in Bangkok, for all the trials, would draw to a serene close.
Or so I thought.
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Evening over the Chao Praya
This park was deserted when Vladimir and I passed through in the late morning hours, on our way to Wat Pho there in the distance. Not surprising considering how hot it was already. If I lived in Bankok that wouldn't be my first choice of hangouts. So it was even more surprising to see how the scene had transformed.
The market I stumbled upon down by the river had all but shut down. If I had known I would have skipped the Palace altogether. I suppose that's where planning your days comes in handy. I wandered the riverside - the only outsider hanging around anything not resembling a palace or a temple it seemed - until it was time to head for my 8 o'clock van ride from Koh Sanh Road to the airport. And that was when I came upon the throw-down happening in the park. Desolate and baking in the sun mere hours earlier, it was now pulsing with a life and a soul not to be found anywhere near Backpacker Road. Music blared from twelve-foot stacks of speakers. Women, and a few men, sweated through a hectic aerobics session up on a huge steel pipe platform. Children ran wild, shrieking in delight. Balls bounced; balloons floated.
Finally, I had found a Bankok I could live with.
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I spent my last free moments in Bangkok hanging around the grimy guts of Koh San Road. The bus shuttle service was still there, operating out of the same small office as the day before - as if they had set up all those posters and tables and schedule books in hopes of swindling me for five bucks and then disappearing. 'Okay, this way please!' A young man in a crispy-clean polo and a fresh haircut led a group of us backpacks through a maze of dark passages and alleyways, darker with the onset of night. After several minutes, all of us sharing our mild concern without a word passing among us, we were spit out into a parking lot and a large van waiting with its big side door open.
All the way to the airport I stared silently out at the highway, the speeding, swerving cars, the gloomy buildings behind the high cement walls lining the road. I'd spent twenty-four hours in Bangkok. I had yet to see Thailand. I wanted another chance.
I closed my eyes and thought of Japan.
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Peace among the Lucky Temples
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