Thailand: Where Am I, and How Do I Know?

I love walking around cities. The sights, sounds, scents. Getting a feel for the pulse of a place in its people, shops, businesses, traffic, etc.

Have spent various hours strolling around different parts of Bangkok over the last couple of days. It's a large (9-10 million), modern (high rises, clogged expressways, urban transit lines), and busy city, even on a weekend. There are some particular places of interest--the Grand Palace (formerly the monarch's home, now just a tourist attraction) with magnificent temple and other buildings and an emerald Buddha and gold-leaf sleeping Buddha, Lumphini Park (a quiet oasis in the heart of the city, where you can get a respite among plantings, benches, a lake where you can take a swan boat ride, cycling and walking paths),Silom Road and endless streets filled with shops and sidewalk vendors selling everything imaginable (and many things, foods especially, that I have no idea what they are), representatives of our global economy (JPMorgan, Toyota, Subway, KFC, Starbucks), shopping centers and rows of little individual shops. Pretty much the norm for major cities that I've visited in many parts of the world.

So as I've been wandering around, I began to think "what have I seen that makes this distinctive--something different from other cities? How would I know I was in Bangkok rather than any other place I've been? Language, of course. The sight is particularly different because the alphabet is not ours so all of my visual clues don't work, even when they've printed the Thai word in the Roman alphabet, since Thai isn't a Latin-based language. And size and appearance of people. I'm aware of standing out on both counts, just in case I thought I was invisible. But I've found a few other things so far that together, make this a very different place in my mind.

No litter. Amazingly clean streets, everywhere, not just in the park. Yet no visible sign of trash cans (except in the park.) I finished a bottle of water, tried to figure out where to put it. Knew I couldn't litter even I wanted to (no littering breeds no littering) so I carried it for a while. Then a woman sidled up, got my attention, signaled for me to put it in the bag of trash she was collecting. Don't know whether she was employed or being entrepreneurial. But problem solved.

Motor scooter taxis. Scooters buzzing all around, then notice ranks of scooters along various streets, with drivers having the same colored vest over their shirt. Person walks up, negotiates destination and rate, hops on the back...and hangs on. Seems like an efficient way to get around. If I were more adventurous, I'd do it, just for the experience.

And endless massage parlors. Seemingly every storefront, every poster, shops in shopping centers, every street-hawker, all parts of the city where I've been, offering massage services. Printed papers, calls, whispered offers, etc. Can't decide whether everyone here spends all of their time getting massages, or whether there is a tremendous excess supply with a paucity of "happy endings."

And older Caucasian men, walking along with young Thai males. A friend who had been in Thailand recently said she found this to be one of the most offensive things about Bangkok. I don't have an opinion about it yet, just an observation.

And a stray dog bit-and-run. Another friend of mine some years ago had one of those annoying little dogs. It was wagging its tail, so I reached down to pet it. Ellen quickly said "don't pet it if it's wagging its tail--it bites then; pet it if it's not wagging, then its friendly." I hadn't even noticed the dog here, just was strolling past, so I don't know whether it was schizophrenic like Ellen's, or just a random biter. Regardless, a quick bit-and-run, and it was gone. A couple of street vendors hustled to a store, bought some saline solution (I was rinsing it down with ice, they said "no, dirty water") and a bottle that looked like mercurachrome, applied it, and off I went.

And so ends Bangkok for now. Up early tomorrow morning for a 10-hour train ride to Udonthani, where we'll be doing what we came to do--helping build a house. More then.