People in the Phuket airport departures lounge were showing the aftereffects of different kinds of vacations there. Young couples pawed each other and giggled; and a 20 year old guy was passed out on the floor outside the washroom with two uncomfortable-looking friends standing over him. The flight had a couple of patches of amazing, roller-coaster turbulence. I saw him again waiting for luggage in Bangkok; conscious, but slumped into a chair and looking very unwell.
Near the unconscious tourist, there was a nook crowded with very bulky armchairs. They turned out to be automatic massage chairs; a sign said 'massage, 50 baht'. It ought really to read 'bizarre mechanical parody of a massage, 50 baht'. This would be more honest, but I also think there would be more takers. People scream at you to let them massage you on every street corner in Thailand, but the experience of being beaten up by a chair is pretty unique. I think part of the problem in my case was that the chair's designers had to make certain assumptions about where things would be, and they didn't expect their users to be 6'4".
I had a few things to take care of in Bangkok. One of them was getting a haircut. In India, barbers, or people who were willing to give it a shot, had chairs set up on street corners and roadsides everywhere; and if you wanted something fancier, there was a 'saloon' (which, disappointingly, is Indian English for 'salon'), on every road. In Sukhumvit, I didn't at first see many places that weren't fancy women's salons. I finally went to what I think was a chain operation in a shopping mall. The stylist and I communicated by holding our thumbs and fingers apart to show how long we thought my hair should be. In the end, he blowdried it into a hilarious three-inch flat-top, which I took to the old city to show off.
I took the canal boat again, but got off at the wrong pier. A lot of other people were getting off, so it seemed like a good spot. It wasn't. I had to get a cab to Wat Pho. The driver made up a song about Wat Pho and sang it on the way. It went like this: 'Wat Pho, Wat Pho, Waaaat Phooooo, Wat Pho, Wat Wat Pho Pho, Waaat Pho'. When we were stuck in traffic, he pulled out a large pink comb and teased out his long, wispy beard.
I'd asked to go to Wat Pho, but really wanted to go to the Grand Palace, which is across the street. Asking to go to Wat Pho had seemed easier at the time; I don't remember why. The front of Wat Pho faces the back of the Grand Palace, which meant I had to walk around the Grand Palace to the entrance. Along the sidewalk on the way, there was a really fascinating market. Many of the markets have themes or specialties; this one's was 'totally unsaleable objects'. There were old grooming kits, antique telescopes, and volumes 2, 3, 4 and 6 of a plastic surgery textbook.
Further on, there was a man with a red 'tourist police' badge who stopped me and explained that the palace was closed because it was a national day of prayer. If I spoke Thai, it might be possible to go in -- did I speak Thai? I believed him completely until he mentioned that a good alternative would be to take a tuktuk tour of some other temples. He may have been the most brazen tout I've met so far; I should have gotten a picture. The grand palace itself was festooned with signs saying 'The palace is open every day. Do not believe people who tell you the palace is closed.'
I took a riverboat back to the Skytrain. The water level was high, and to reach the pier you had to pass along a crowded floating walkway about a foot in width. To let someone pass in the other direction, I had to hold a nearby pole and swing out over the water. A local woman had given up on it altogether, and was wading beside the walkway in water up to her waist.
The flight to Siem Reap was a very short one. The scheduled length was 90 minutes, but this turned out to be 45 minutes of flying and 45 minutes of taxiing around Suvarnabhumi Airport. It included a meal, which was a sprint all around. The cabin staff had to spring into action as soon as the plane had leveled out, and the passengers had about 10 minutes to choke it down. There was time to show a single episode of some kind of 'funniest home videos' show on the cabin monitors. (There was also time to not show a single episode of this show, which I think is something Bangkok Airways ought to consider.)
Siem Reap has a brand new airport that, from the outside, looks a bit like a luxury beach resort. In the arrivals area, there's a raised platform where 15 men in stiff, navy blue military uniforms sit around a semicircular table. It looks like a council of war. It's actually the visa-on-arrival processing area. You give $20, the photo you brought, and the application you filled out on the plane to the first two men; they circulate it among the next 11 according to some inscrutable system; and the last two return passports to passengers.
I meet my driver outside. He has a tuktuk. In Cambodia, a tuktuk turns out to be a scooter or motorcycle drawing a small trailer with a canopy and a seat. We drive on smooth new roads into Siem Reap. Every hundred metres or so, we pass a man in a tan uniform squatting or sitting by the road, watching. People are fishing in ditches and flooded fields. There are roadside markets like those in India, but calmer and quieter. The most disorderly parts of Siem Reap are what India might be like if two-thirds of the people left and the rest went on tranquilizers.
We also pass a long strip of new luxury hotels, and have to brake for a stretch SUV that pulls out of one of them in front of us.
Near the unconscious tourist, there was a nook crowded with very bulky armchairs. They turned out to be automatic massage chairs; a sign said 'massage, 50 baht'. It ought really to read 'bizarre mechanical parody of a massage, 50 baht'. This would be more honest, but I also think there would be more takers. People scream at you to let them massage you on every street corner in Thailand, but the experience of being beaten up by a chair is pretty unique. I think part of the problem in my case was that the chair's designers had to make certain assumptions about where things would be, and they didn't expect their users to be 6'4".
I had a few things to take care of in Bangkok. One of them was getting a haircut. In India, barbers, or people who were willing to give it a shot, had chairs set up on street corners and roadsides everywhere; and if you wanted something fancier, there was a 'saloon' (which, disappointingly, is Indian English for 'salon'), on every road. In Sukhumvit, I didn't at first see many places that weren't fancy women's salons. I finally went to what I think was a chain operation in a shopping mall. The stylist and I communicated by holding our thumbs and fingers apart to show how long we thought my hair should be. In the end, he blowdried it into a hilarious three-inch flat-top, which I took to the old city to show off.
I took the canal boat again, but got off at the wrong pier. A lot of other people were getting off, so it seemed like a good spot. It wasn't. I had to get a cab to Wat Pho. The driver made up a song about Wat Pho and sang it on the way. It went like this: 'Wat Pho, Wat Pho, Waaaat Phooooo, Wat Pho, Wat Wat Pho Pho, Waaat Pho'. When we were stuck in traffic, he pulled out a large pink comb and teased out his long, wispy beard.
I'd asked to go to Wat Pho, but really wanted to go to the Grand Palace, which is across the street. Asking to go to Wat Pho had seemed easier at the time; I don't remember why. The front of Wat Pho faces the back of the Grand Palace, which meant I had to walk around the Grand Palace to the entrance. Along the sidewalk on the way, there was a really fascinating market. Many of the markets have themes or specialties; this one's was 'totally unsaleable objects'. There were old grooming kits, antique telescopes, and volumes 2, 3, 4 and 6 of a plastic surgery textbook.
Further on, there was a man with a red 'tourist police' badge who stopped me and explained that the palace was closed because it was a national day of prayer. If I spoke Thai, it might be possible to go in -- did I speak Thai? I believed him completely until he mentioned that a good alternative would be to take a tuktuk tour of some other temples. He may have been the most brazen tout I've met so far; I should have gotten a picture. The grand palace itself was festooned with signs saying 'The palace is open every day. Do not believe people who tell you the palace is closed.'
I took a riverboat back to the Skytrain. The water level was high, and to reach the pier you had to pass along a crowded floating walkway about a foot in width. To let someone pass in the other direction, I had to hold a nearby pole and swing out over the water. A local woman had given up on it altogether, and was wading beside the walkway in water up to her waist.
The flight to Siem Reap was a very short one. The scheduled length was 90 minutes, but this turned out to be 45 minutes of flying and 45 minutes of taxiing around Suvarnabhumi Airport. It included a meal, which was a sprint all around. The cabin staff had to spring into action as soon as the plane had leveled out, and the passengers had about 10 minutes to choke it down. There was time to show a single episode of some kind of 'funniest home videos' show on the cabin monitors. (There was also time to not show a single episode of this show, which I think is something Bangkok Airways ought to consider.)
Siem Reap has a brand new airport that, from the outside, looks a bit like a luxury beach resort. In the arrivals area, there's a raised platform where 15 men in stiff, navy blue military uniforms sit around a semicircular table. It looks like a council of war. It's actually the visa-on-arrival processing area. You give $20, the photo you brought, and the application you filled out on the plane to the first two men; they circulate it among the next 11 according to some inscrutable system; and the last two return passports to passengers.
I meet my driver outside. He has a tuktuk. In Cambodia, a tuktuk turns out to be a scooter or motorcycle drawing a small trailer with a canopy and a seat. We drive on smooth new roads into Siem Reap. Every hundred metres or so, we pass a man in a tan uniform squatting or sitting by the road, watching. People are fishing in ditches and flooded fields. There are roadside markets like those in India, but calmer and quieter. The most disorderly parts of Siem Reap are what India might be like if two-thirds of the people left and the rest went on tranquilizers.
We also pass a long strip of new luxury hotels, and have to brake for a stretch SUV that pulls out of one of them in front of us.
