Welcome To Bangkok
February 16th.
5 PM.
It’s been over nine hours in my seat, and with puffy feet and Christmas morning childish excitement I lean over and peer out the airplane window. The wing of the jet slices through the sea of clouds, and then I spot land below. Barely. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much hazy, heavy pollution before, almost like it’s swallowing up the earth and the sky. Squares of distant farmlands, tiny cracks of roads slithering throughout, a growing number of buildings, then finally a planet-size concrete jungle with infinite skyscrapers. The plane lands and I’m groggy and delirious, but happy. You know that moment you first step off of a plane and onto the jet bridge? You feel, for a few seconds, the air outside. I love that feeling because you experience a place for the first time. I was greeted with thick and wonderful humidity. Welcome to Bangkok.
February 17th.
11 AM.
It’s an intricate, never-ending maze of 15,000 stalls cramped together to make the biggest market in Thailand. Chatuchak Weekend Market. Street food vendors slicing and grilling and frying and serving. I smell the most delicious aroma around one corner, and then a putrid, mysterious stench around the next. Curries and fresh mango and coconut sugar, and then rows of aging fish and unidentifiable slabs of raw meat. I hear Thai music over loud speakers, kitchen tools drumming, grill flames sizzling, boisterous conversations; it is an urban symphony of city noises. My senses are at an all-time high. Jeremy and I try mango sticky rice drenched with coconut milk for the very first time and it is sweet, sweet goodness.
February 18th.
7 PM.
We are sitting outside a caged fence that encircles a lit-up Muay Thai boxing ring, sipping cold Chang beers. A Thai man suddenly sits beside Jeremy. He smiles sweetly, leans in and with spotty English says, “You need sit over there. Only Thai people here. We do betting.” We get up and move hesitantly, and suddenly notice a flood of Thai men crowding the nearby stands with papers in their hands. They are here to bet and they mean business. The opponents perform a dance to the beat of a band playing traditional music on the sidelines, and then the fight commences. Power kicks to the head and body, round by round, the fighters are tiring, and the crowd breaks out into complete mayhem. They are betting ferociously until one fighter gets knocked out cold. Silence sweeps over the crowd. The fight is over.
February 20th.
9 AM.
Floating slowly... along a floating market. Colors everywhere. Fruits, fabrics, a variety of foods I’ve never seen before, and hand-crafted goods, all sold from long-tail boats and tiny stalls lining the water. We are here before the surge of tourists arrive and the canals are calm and quiet. It is a respite this morning, a break from the volcanic chaos of Bangkok. I see a monk, with a cleanly shaven head, draped in orange cloth, peacefully steering his long-tail boat towards a Thai woman. It seems as though he takes a moment to bless her, as she bows graciously to him and says a soft prayer. It is the kind of sacred interaction I never witness in the States. We buy a freshly cut coconut from a local man, and with a straw to my lips and cold coconut water to my tongue, I know this will be a day that’s going to stick in my mind for a while... On this boat, drinking coconut water, floating, floating...
Cheers,
Tera
