Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

I buy a mobile recharge card. The pretty salesgirl with flowers painted on her nails checks my balance. 170 baht. It had been 350 only this morning. She smiles, looks at me and asks “international calls?” No, “Internet” I tell her. She nods and keys in the recharge code.

Just in case I forget this, Thai girls == hawt.

The guide books will tell you all about culturally sensitive tourism and how you should wear full length trousers and skirts lest you offend the locals. That’s bullshit. Every second Thai girl I saw today was wearing a mini skirt—the kind that ends above knee level—and form fitting shirt, and had a body to go with it. The rest wore trousers. At least one guidebook got it right in describing Bangkok as the fashion capital of Thailand.

The cops, male cops, are all so impossibly wide shouldered and slim bodied, they hurt to look at. How they must punish themselves to keep such a shape. What a difference from Bangalore, where pot bellies are part of the uniform.

The mobile salesgirl points at the clock and says “6:30 closing time.” It’s 6:25. I’m lucky. I walk out and discover that the market lining Pahurat road is gone. The last few vendors are dismantling their shops and packing up. It’s still only 6:30. Even the lazy bums on Mumbai’s DN Road stay till 9pm. WTF?

I went back to Little India looking for a new place to try for dinner. One restaurant promised Pakistani, Indian and Nepali food, so I walked in. Two Indians were sitting at a table, sipping tea and ogling at Kareena Kapoor in a red bikini top on TV. Asoka, with Shahrukh Khan. A Thai fellow sat at the next table. No one was eating. ”Uh, is this place open?” “Yes, come in,” says the Thai fellow.

So I settled down and also looked at the TV. No waiter in sight. Nobody offers a menu. Kareena continues gyrating on TV. Several minutes later, the video freezes (audio continues) and I can no longer watch TV, so I look around. The others are still staring at it. Still no waiter.

“Can I get something to eat here,” I ask no one in particular. The Thai fellow gets up, comes over, and asks what I’d like to have. What does he have? He recites a menu. No vegetarian food? Sorry, no, only fish and chicken. Then he explains in perfect Hindi that they’re all sitting around because his cook isn’t there, and that I can get vegetarian food at the Punjabi place down the lane. I look at him again and think, maybe he’s not Thai, maybe he’s Nepali.

The food at the Punjabi place was terrible. I think I’m going to be sick tomorrow.

(Sent yesterday, updated for today’s details; irrelevant bits trimmed.)

Zee,

So I’m in Bangkok safe and sound. Getting here was somewhat interesting.

I told you about the 40 management students on board, right? Well, the entire flight felt like sitting in a school bus, with the students getting up to chat with each other and look out the windows all the time, the air hostesses and professor screaming at them to get back to their seats when the seat belt sign was on, and so on...

Once landed, I had the choice of taking a taxi, bus or train to the guest house. I chose train and am happy I did. The trains are just like Indian passenger trains. Same sounds, same sloth, similar mix of slums and high rises along the way. It took an hour to amble into Bangkok. Then I figured I’d take a tuk-tuk to the guest house, but the fellow asked for 200 baht. A taxi from the airport itself would have been 300. The train was 10. I went looking for the bus stop instead, found it, paid 6 baht, and walked the last bit to the guest house, all along asking for directions from people who didn’t speak English, and surprisingly enough, managing just fine with sign language and a printed map. I’ve seen a fair bit of the city already. :-)

Now it turns out all the restaurants close by 9pm, last order 8.30. It was 8 local time by the time I got to the guest house (flight landed 4pm) and by the time I had showered and headed out, everything was shut down. No food at all, leave alone vegetarian food. I went into a 7-Eleven convenience store, but all their packaged food is labelled in Thai. Can’t tell what it is. I picked up a couple of juices and sandwiches. The sandwiches have pinkish layers in them. Must be meat, probably ground beef. Guess they are going to be my dinner tonight.

Tomorrow I have to send off my passport for the Singapore visa and figure out proper Internet access and vegetarian food and schedule for the coming week here. Airtel has not enabled International roaming yet. Hope they do soon. I bought a phone card, but will have to go looking for a GSM card so I can use my mobile phone.

Take care!

Love,
Kiran

(For zainaburbanbawa, who, as a minor item in a significant list, found me accommodation in Bangkok.)

Day two:

Woke from pleasant dreams to find I’m alone in a cramped room in a country where no one speaks my language, where I have no friends, and where I’m not getting out of for a long, long time. Such mornings are exactly what make travelling alone so horrifyingly lonely. Zee insists I should stick to my itinerary and learn to deal with it, for my own sake. She has a point, but I can barely see it when I’m missing everything familiar.

And this is only the first morning.

So I breakfasted and walked to the Old Siam City Plaza across the road. At 9am, most of the place was still just lazily rolling up shutters and sweeping the floor. Business doesn’t start early around here. The mobile phone shop was closed, but the food stalls were already up. I couldn’t tell what any of it was, so I didn’t try. Walked around the streets, discovered a travel agent, found to my delight he speaks English, and asked for help with the Singapore visa.

The reason I don’t have one yet is that Singapore issues a tourist visa valid for one month from the date of application, but I’m going there at the end of a month of travelling, meaning the visa would have already expired by the time I got there. My first application in October was rejected for this (Malaysia and Cambodia grant three month validity). I tried again last week, planning to push Singapore up to midway in the itinerary, but the visa courier agency called my travel agent to say it would be delayed to Monday, 28th, the day I was leaving, because, of all possible reasons, there was a power failure at the consulate on Friday.

Now I’m here in Thailand with visa application in hand and a prayer that they won’t blow me away for not applying at home.

The travel agent found the consulate on the map and suggested I take a ferry down the river and walk up the road, which I dutifully did. So far I’ve taken the train, bus, ferry and motorcycle taxi. Regular taxi, tuk-tuk (aka autorickshaw in India, but these sound and speed like motorcycles), subway and skytrain left. The Singapore consulate said I have to apply between 9 and 11am, and have to submit proof of being legally employed in Thailand. I’m so screwed.

Oh, and I found Little India and had alu parathas for lunch. It’s walking distance from the guest house. At least I won’t starve. I also got a SIM card with GPRS, so I’m typing this from the comfort of my own laptop. Darned thing costs 1 baht a minute. More expensive than sitting at a public terminal. Message me at +66-6-0015280.

More later. I think I’ll go see some new place now.

So good to see a familiar menu. I got excited and started speaking in Hindi, then looked up and realised the waiter was Thai and couldn’t understand a word of it.

So I was bored and figured I wanted to see someplace new. Now I’m in Bangkok and wondering where to start. Suggestions? Longer posts will have to wait until I figure out my Internet access. I’m using a public terminal in the guest house lobby temporarily.

Red idlis! They taste great.

At the office of the World Information City local cable TV channel in Shivajinagar.

Press photographers from Hindu and Express hound Arundhati Roy. She’s scheduled to speak in the next few minutes. Incidentally, the Indian Express has been publishing my pictures of World-Information City but I’m not credited. Some more coming up this weekend.

The World-Information City conference is today and tomorrow at the Bal Bhavan auditorium, Cubbon Park. Entry is free for all. Program schedule for day one, Thursday, and day two, Friday.

For those unable to attend, a live webcast is available here (requires QuickTime Player). If there’s anything wrong with the stream, please message me at 99452 35123 and I’ll check. I haven’t had a chance to test it from outside the network. You’ll need at least 320 kbps bandwidth.

This bus has a horn controller, for highway, city, or driver’s choice of one of twelve melodies.

Real crack in the window, covered with a football sticker. As seen from inside.

This board is permanently attached to the gate. How convenient!

Someone rode all the way from Bangalore with a bag strapped to their tank.

Umm, who’s the beauty here?

These enterprising chaps discovered storm water drains are a great fishing spot. Such big ones too: they were at least a foot in size each. The chaps standing further at back are there to catch fish that jump the net.