Chinatown Bangkok and Rain

(Written Sunday May 27)

I had the best day today!

It all started with a Thai foot massage, which I got to prepare myself for the large amount of walking I intended to do today. This was my first massage of any kind ever, and I loved it! After changing into green-yellow spa pants, I lay back in a recliner, and had my feet and legs rubbed, kneaded, and prodded for an hour. And even after that hour, my masseuse kept going, and gave me a mini 15-minutes arm, shoulder, and neck massage. The 15-minute thing was nice, but the 60 minute foot massage was so, so, so nice! I almost fell asleep—the guy next to me was asleep! Even after a tip, the whole thing cost only 350 Baht, or about $10. A 2-hour full body massage is not much more expensive, and is on my list for my June massage…

My happy feet and I grabbed some soup for lunch, then took the Skytrain to the subway connection that leads to Chinatown. The subway here is extremely clean, shiny silver and very well-lit, with no food or souvenir stalls and no panhandlers allowed. The contrast between this and the Bangkok streets, which are cluttered with traffic, people, carts, dirt, and litter, is pretty extreme. Going underground felt more like entering a hospital room than a subway. There are even sliding glass doors separating the platform and the train; these don’t open until the train stops, which is a good way to prevent the falling on the tracks fiasco that occurred in NY this year.

Although my map is usually extremely helpful, I couldn’t figure out how to actually get to the center of Chinatown from the subway exit. So I took my first tuktuk! It turns out it’s rather hard to get into those things—the seat is high, and the roof is low, so passengers have to fold in half and kind of hop to squeeze through. Also, once you’re sitting down, you can’t see outside unless you duck down to look under the overhanging roof. Still, there is something reassuring about having 3 wheels underneath me instead of 2.

Although my driver was full of smiles and spoke quite good English, he tried some traditional Bangkok tricks on me. After I told him I wanted to go to Chinatown, he quite earnestly told me that Chinatown was closed for the day. I’d been warned about that one! Instead of arguing, I said I wanted to go anyway and just look around. He then told me he would take me to a nearby mall first that had excellent shopping where he got good discounts. I had been warned about that one too! I told him I was a student and too poor to buy anything (not sure if he bought that one since I was paying for the ride). I finally convinced him to take me to Chinatown, where I was quite happy to get out and walk.

Although Chinatown most certainly wasn’t closed, one of the famous main roads that features silver makers was deserted. Perhaps because it was Sunday? This confused me enough to get me a bit lost, despite the map I brought with me. I ended up down by the river, which helped me get my bearings.

Chinatown Bangkok is full of red, dragon-covered souvenirs, traditional medicines, and food everywhere! Cooked food, raw food, rotten food (ugh, the smell), every kind of food you can imagine. The fireworks and Chinese herbs didn’t really interest me, so I stuck to the alleys where people were selling things that I assumed were edible: brightly colored gelatinous masses, entire dried birds, meat hanging from the ceiling on huge hooks, piles of fruits?vegetables?sculpted desserts?, and many more unidentifiable items. In some of the smaller alleys, I was the only non-Asian person there, and received many surprised stares. I hate taking photos when people are gawking at me, so I didn’t get a good chance to document the bizarre foods.

The day was still young after I wandering the alleys, so I decided to check out a wat on my map. The description in my guidebook was short, only saying something about piles of offerings of vegetables. This didn’t sound like the most thrilling view of Buddhism, but I was frankly a bit bored with the rest of Chinatown. But despite my skepticism, it turned out to be the best temple visit yet (and there were no signs of the alleged piles of vegetables). Past the entrance gate to the wat is a large courtyard. On the right was a fancy building that looked off-limits to tourists (roped off doors and guards). At the end of the courtyard was the main building. And on the left was a building open to the courtyard on one side. And milling about the open building and back and forth between the other buildings were maybe fifty or more monks! That’s a lot of orange robes. And a bunch of them were what I fondly refer to as baby monks, ranging from maybe 8-16! Very cute. There must have been a special event going on, because there were bulletin boards on display with pictures of the monks, and there were a large number of non-monk people sitting in plastic chairs chatting with the monks. I thought perhaps this was a training school for young monks and the people there were their families, but I really have no idea.

The temple building was quite small, with open skylights on two sides, several small rooms in the back, and a primary worship area in the center. When I walked in, a group of monks were in the middle area chanting a beautiful song to the slow deep beat of a drum. Visitors were lighting candles, then lighting incense from those candles on one side of the temple, and the clouds of perfumed smoke drifted over the people kneeling in front of the monks. I stood there and watched and listened for a long time. Right as the monks were finishing, the sun disappeared, and rain poured down! My first Bangkok rain. Water began dripping in the open skylights and pooling on the lilypad-painted tiles. There was a general rush to rescue shoes left there and move the burning candles and incense to a covered area.

When the initial downpour died down a bit, I scampered from the temple to the open-sided building nearby. A roof stretches past the open wall, and monks and visitors were still sitting there chatting and watching the rain. At this point, the storm felt just like a KY summer thunderstorm: thunder, lighting, heavy rain, and humidity. But just as I had that thought, the sky really opened up, and water began cascading down. Not in drops or even in curtains, but just in piles, with every space of air filled up with water. I really don’t think someone out in the downpour could have been able to breath without an umbrella to provide a pocket of air! I guess this is what it means to live in the tropics. There was no way I was going to brave such a beating, so I stuck around and watched the monks, taking occasional pictures (their orange robes presented endless photo opportunities). One baby monk in particular was adorable and kept grinning at me. He was brave enough to say hello to me in English, so I gave him a US dollar, hoping he had never seen one before and would find it as cool as I find Thai Baht.

When the rain finally died down a bit, I brought out my umbrella and braved the streets once again. I thought perhaps I could find my way back to the subway myself, so I started walking. I walked through Chinatown, stopping for more soup for dinner. I got to the edge of Chinatown, and took a road that I thought led in the right direction. When I got confused enough to pull out my map, I realized I had walked in the exact opposite direction, so I turned around. Back at the edge of Chinatown, I was wet, tired, sweaty, and frustrated. Feeling annoyed, I glanced up and saw an enormous brilliantly colored rainbow directly in front of me. A real rainbow like kids draw: I could see each color clearly as well as both ends of the arc. Incredible! I took a bunch of pictures of the rainbow as well as the beautiful post-rain light on the buildings. These are my favorite photos so far—definitely something I will consider blowing up and framing when I get back home.

After the soothing influence of the rainbow (yes, I sound like I fit in well with the hippie California crowd), I felt more resigned to my lack of map skills, so I hailed another tuktuk and headed back to the subway and home.