City of extremes will change world view
Senses feast on colour, scents and flavours in Bangkok
BANGKOK, THAILAND— Watching disco lights illuminate the spires of Wat Arun temple from a rooftop bar over the Chao Phraya River, it dawns I am one exceedingly bland farang.
This white foreigner, a blob of plaid and blue jeans, is a virgin of the world. Delicious irony, given Bangkok’s promiscuity.
It’s been 14 hours since Smiling Albino guide Kob Kachonsittinoppakun melodically greet sme“sa- wadee-ka,” like the do-re-misc ale. She and Canadian expat Andrew Clark, Smiling Albino’s marketing director, take me on the Canadian-owned company’s multi-transport tour, compressing the city’s tourist sights and hidden spots into just one day.
Her chatter crescendos as she orders pineapple and fried banana from street stalls. Each conversation bursts with sincere exuberance. There’s no menu; they’re too organized and impersonal.
“People don’t spend time inside,” Clark says. “I’m never depressed here because there’s so much more interaction. Everything happens on the street.”
Transport routes, which Kachonsittinoppakun negotiate s far easier than I can alone, are resplendent. Gleaming hot pink taxis. Lime tuk tuks zigzag and sputter fumes. Rainbow tarpaulin protects rickety, grumbling long-tail boats.
“In Bangkok, you have to guess a lot,” she says. Without her, this farang gets lost more than Waldo. Google Maps offers little respite. Bargaining with tuk tuk and boat drivers takes more patience than I can muster. K ac hon sit tin o pp akun does it for sport.
On the khlongs (canals), the main highways when this was Asia’s Venice 100 years ago, dismembered juice cartons become DIY mailboxes nailed to lonely island trees. A wide straw hat wearing a tiny woman floats past offering beers. For VIPs, Clark plans to have Champagne flutes delivered. Outside shimmering temples that emerge with no warning, where it’s forbidden to fish, throngs of catfish thrash for morsels and soak tourists.
At the Golden Mount, Wat Saket, crystallized flames flick from the roofs. I climb 344 steps beside orange-robed monks to strike a gong three times, hoping to summon a mythical beast. Beneath a 58-metre chedi, a giant bell tipped like a skyscraper, I look over the structureless city.
Aromas U-turn from stagnant protein shaker to fresh jasmine and coriander at Pak Khlong Talat market. We walk single file and I become a poor man’s Indiana Jones. Instead of dodging rolling boulders, it’s stampedes of chuckling Thais wheeling baskets giant enough for them to sit in. Inside a “sterilized” mall next door, Clark mourns the former lofty dock warehouse destroyed to build another Starbucks.
We reach Chinatown. At a decadent spirit house, red Fanta bottles and intricate figurines are offered to the land’s former inhabitants.
“We show clients a lot. Sometimes they need a place tot hink,” Kachonsittinoppakun says. The 17- year veteran tour guide and former archeology students wings open clunking doors to uncover a fossil, a 240-yearold ancestral home that’s now a café and scuba school. Cheerful owners look surprised we’ve found it. It’s the kind of down-an-alley-round-acorner-through-a-door-knocktwice secluded spot everyone loves to call their own.
Sheets of corrugated metal reinforce the roof. Like the strangler fig, new layers suppress old.
“You need a whole life to see Bangkok ,” K ac hon sit tin o pp akun says. “Five years later, everything’s different.”
By night, our guide treats Chinatown food stalls on Yaowarat Rd. like an all-inclusive hotel buffet to be abused. I struggle to finish noodles and make the delightful mistake of mentioning I love duck.
K ac hon sit tin o pp akun wheels and orders a plate of it, crispy-lined and pink inside. One of the benefits and faux-curses of this intimate tour is how rapidly K ac hon sit tin o pp akun customizes experiences to guests tastes.
“When you meet friends, you ask ‘How are you?’ We ask ‘Are you hungry? Have you tried this?’ ” she explains.
I try bird nest, apparently a dessert delicacy. For me, an ice-cream flavour other than strawberry is bold. Under gentle protest, I slurp the sugary soup of dried bird saliva. It could be worse. It could be the sulphuric durian fruit. Coconut and mango sticky rice cleanses my palette.
We eat midstride except at Krua Apsorn. The menu is laminated plastic and dishes cost roughly 160 baht ($6).
Eating family style, I reluctantly share the masaman beef. “Cooking this is the test of a Thai woman,” K ac hon sit tin o pp akun says .“Fifteen spices. I cannot do it.”
It’s a comforting Sunday dinner stew and punchy Asian curry in one spoonful. The spices don’t compete, they complement to an equilibrium. “Thai food is all about balance,” she adds.
Extremes coexist everywhere else. Massage parlours and Buddhist temples. Murky khlongs and bright decorations. Even our last two stops clash — Khaosan Rd., a year-round student initiation party, and the tranquil bar atop Sala Arun Hotel.
Exhausted, nursing a ginger and lemongrass Thaijito, I look to Wat Arun, a mash-up of the Eiffel Tower and a Giza pyramid by night.
Like a virgin partaking a bewildering new experience, Bangkok changes your world view. Colours seem bolder, innocence is lost and you just want to do it again, a little better prepared. David Bateman was partially hosted by Smiling Albino, which did not review or approve any aspect of this story.