South East Asia on a Hamstring – February 9

By: Marie Javins

Bangkok, Thailand – February 9, 2000

Today was going to be errand day: drop off laundry, get my old clothes taken in to fit my new, lean travel frame, check up with Intrepid, and visit the salon.

The salon turned out to be an unusual experience. I highly recommend getting haircuts in countries where the dollar is strong – my last haircut cost me four dollars in Guatemala and today’s haircut cost me less than three.

The leg waxing turned out to be a harrowing experience though. A young woman took me to a private room. She disappeared for a minute then reappeared with an old, hot pot of brown wax. She put the pot in between my legs and proceeded to wipe the wax on my legs. She then used her fingers – no strips of paper here – to remove the wax once it cooled. She then threw the used wax back into the pot to mix it up and use again.

I watched with fascination as the used wax got hairier and hairier. I tried hard to not think about the obvious question – who else’s hair was in that wax?

Finally, she finished and then took me back into the public part of the salon for a pedicure.

I’ve only had a pedicure once in my life. It was on West Broadway in a Korean nail salon. The Korean women do the hands and their Honduran employees do the feet. You could tell who was in charge. I felt a little weird having this nice Honduran teenager massaging my toes – but then I got a look at the gross, dirty, long toenails of the man beside me and suddenly realized that my Honduran teenager had it easy.

The Honduran was much more skilled than the young Thai woman, who sliced up three cuticles on my right foot. I attempted to distract myself from the pain by watching several salon employees – young women in blue smocks – walk on and stretch their clients tendons. So that’s a Thai massage. I left with bloody toes and the mental note that you get what you pay for.

I checked my e-mail for a note from Intrepid. They apologized and offered me a discount on a future Intrepid tour. That put me in a good mood and I caught a metered taxi downtown.

The traffic was hellish and snarled and the air was filthy with diesel. Just like the guidebook said, some of the worst traffic in Asia. I’d go a step further and say the world – there is no subway. Buses and water taxis provide the transit. The water taxis have limited routes.

The aromas are the most distinct thing about the streets of Bangkok. Quite simply, being outside stinks. There is a faint rotting stench, overwhelmed by the smell of diesel.

I got out at the center of the shopping district and wandered from store to store, hunting for seemingly simple things like 400 speed Fuji film and Vidal Sassoon shampoo.

I didn’t have much luck with my missions but I stumbled onto Starbucks. I hesitated as I’ve never liked their coffee but I really wanted an iced cafe americano or whatever they called plain iced coffee, american-style, in this part of the world.

I went in. The atmosphere was identical to Starbucks everywhere. The easygoing, vaguely edgy music you hear in every Starbucks was likewise played even in Bangkok. First I head Linda Ronstadt singing with Emmylou Harris and then Lucinda Williams came on so I decided to have a seat and relax for a while in a big comfy Starbucks chair.

While I relaxed, I read through “Bangkok Metro” magazine. It’s the “Time Out” of Bangkok. The writing style is edgy but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to

be much to do in Bangkok. I read through the listings. If I were in Bangkok in March, I could see “The Gypsy Kings.” But since it was February, I would only be able to see “The Oldies Band” or “Headbanger.” Maybe I’d watch CNN instead.

To return to Viengtai, I needed to find the water taxi. On my map, there was an indication of a nearby stop. Longtail boats ply the small dirty canals of Bangkok and every guidebook and map suggests that the tourist take these. They’re cheap and fast. Of course, no guidebook gives explicit details on how one goes about catching these boats, but if it was difficult, presumably they would.

The hardest part was figuring out how to get to the actual boat. I could see it, and I could see lines of people queuing up, waiting to board. I circled the block and crossed the canal on two separate bridges before realizing that I had to go down the wrong side and cross over – just like a subway.

Two young men tried to hand me papers as I walked across the footbridge. I brushed them off, assuming the papers were just Thai flyers. But then I worried – what if this was a receipt indicating where I’d boarded? Even worse, what if I went back to get one and it was just junk?

I stuck it out and decided, “hey, I can always play ignorant foreigner.” This turned out to be the right move as the papers were irrelevant to the taxi ride.

A longtail boat pulled up and a man jumped off and roped the boat to the pier. Everyone scrambled on, oblivious to their own safety and the churning waters in between the pier and the boat. I positioned myself on a wooden bench, sandwiched in between Thai women office workers going home and the side. The boat took off, zooming down the filthy canal.

The boat attendants pulled up tarps so that we couldn’t see out the side. At first I thought, “what a pity, I can’t see the filth lining the canals,” but

then I realized that the tarps protected the passengers from diesel and water.

I asked the woman next to me, “how much is it?” I pointed at the coins in my hand and looked quizzical at the same time.

“Seven baht,” she answered in perfect English. I thanked her sheepishly and paid the attendant seven baht. He was precariously balanced on the boats ledge.

“Where are you going?” asked the nice lady behind me, the second English speaker within six inches of me.

I told her the name of the last stop on the route, the one closest to my hotel, and she conferred in Thai with the other English speaker. They pleasantly told me that it was the last stop and I thanked them profusely.

On the taxi went. It seemed like ages – then the boat slowed down. The roof sank to just over my head and the attendants crouched down. The overhead light went off and we crawled under a low-hanging bridge. On the other side, the roof went up, the lights went on and everyone sat up.

Whenever anyone wanted to get off the boat, they’d whistle. The boat would cruise slowly by the next pier and the passenger would jump off the boat while it was still in motion. I was relieved that my stop was last and when we did reach it, the boat came to a full stop and everyone got out. I could see Democracy Monument, a big garish statue in a traffic circle, and knew that I was near the Viengtai. Relieved, I thought that perhaps I’d visit Khao San Road after all. I could use a familiar setting after my busy day in Bangkok. In fact, Pizza Hut sounded real good.

I picked up my laundry from the old Thai laundress, noting with some distress that she ran an apparently lucrative side business of filling up plastic water bottles with boiled tap water and trying to make them look sealed. Had some pizza and called it an evening.