Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

In December 2005, I spent two weeks wandering around the streets of Bangkok. I was being decidedly unadventurous, restricting myself to visiting street markets, shopping malls, foreign embassies and some historical sights, all in the name of experiencing local culture.

Then Klaikong decided to give me a taste of local hospitality too, and suggested attending a concert. I expected the Bangkok equivalent of Bangalore’s Palace Grounds, a large open field with temporary stage and sound arrangements. Instead we landed at this place called Saxophone Pub at Victory Monument, where popular reggae band T-Bone was playing that evening.

Not only were they very good, I was also impressed by the ambience at the pub. The typical live music-in-restaurant arrangement I’ve seen anywhere in India keeps a clear separation between performers and patrons. At Saxophone, as you can see in this picture, this is not the case. We were seated on the upper floor from where we had a great view of the scene.

When in Southeast Asia last year, I visited bookstores in each country. The magazine racks were particularly interesting.

In Bangkok, most of the magazines were foreign with their mastheads in English. I took this to mean they were direct imports and bought a couple, only to discover the contents were in Thai with only titles in English. Judging from the visuals, most articles were translated and a few locally produced. There were lots of foreign publications, all of them similarly handled. It appeared there was a thriving industry in translating magazines, with local content production slowly picking up.

In Kuala Lumpur, the magazines were all direct imports in English. There was no local production except a few independent publications that were clearly not up to international standards.

I thought this was rather telling of how the dominance of a language plays itself out. Let me explain.

The Thai language is closer to Chinese than to the Indo-European languages we are familiar with. In Thai, the tone with which a word is pronounced decides its meaning (see tonal languages). In Indo-European languages, intonation changes the type of sentence, usually between statement and question. For example, in English, a rising tone indicates a question, like in “You will come?”, while most Indian languages use a falling tone, like in “You will come-a?” or more likely “You will come, no?” The Thais have as much difficulty comprehending this as we have getting how the very meaning of a word can change with its tone. It is not possible to accurately transliterate Thai into the Roman alphabet because the Roman alphabet does not record tone.

Little wonder then, the Thais have so much difficulty speaking English, even in a tourist friendly place like Bangkok. English is no threat to the Thai language. It’s a curiosity that the foreigners use, and the foreigners have a lot of money, so one might as well indulge in it. Bangkok celebrates being hip with English. Signboards everywhere use it. Magazine titles and captions are all in English. The government encourages further use of the language. The local population couldn’t be more bothered. English is too inconvenient to ever be their primary language.

In Kuala Lumpur, everyone speaks English, with perfectly intelligible accents. It’s their first language (though to be fair, I did meet people who spoke Malay first and English second). The Malay language uses the Roman alphabet, so it’s all the more easier to learn English. The government goes out of its way to defend Malay from English. Signboards everywhere are only in Malay.

In Bangkok, my hostess Ton complained that Thai youth have no global outlook. They’re happy to limit their world to Thailand. In Kuala Lumpur, that was clearly not the case. If the magazine rack suggested anything, it is that Malaysians are so comfortable at being world citizens that their local media—and with that, their cultural traditions—are having a hard time holding up against imports.

Wikipedia’s entry on Bangkok says it is the largest city in Thailand, with an estimated population of 8,538,610 (measured in 1990). The second largest city is Chiang Mai, with a population of 250,000 (source unknown).

#1 Bangkok has 34 times the population of #2 Chiang Mai. Not twice or thrice as many, but thirty four times. What does this tell you?

The travel agent called back. He was open today after all. I made the trip and explained that I hadn’t stayed at the place he had booked in Siem Reap, so could I please have a refund? He made some calls, apologised that the place was not willing to refund, then made up for it by giving me another day at the current hotel free.

My hotel booking is up to the 11th. My flight out of Bangkok is on the 14th. My visa expires 12th. Half my baggage is with Klaikong, who returns from Chiang Mai 11th.

So I called Air Asia to reschedule the flight, paid three times as much for the new fare (original was a mere 499 baht plus taxes), then went down to the manager to tell him I was going to stay one more day. How much did it cost?

“1200 baht.”
But I went to a travel agent and paid only 600 baht, I protested.
“So you go back to T.A.T. tomorrow and get voucher,” he smiled.

T.A.T.? I recalled noticing that travel agents had a ‘TAT Authorized’ statement on their shop fronts. Tourism Authority of Thailand?

This didn’t make sense. If I went back to the travel agent, he would take a commission, so the hotel gets lesser than 600 baht. Why not just take that amount from me? The manager didn’t speak enough English to get this point across.

This morning as I prepared to leave, it dawned on me it was a Sunday. Most of the Pranakorn neighbourhood is closed on Sunday. I called the agent. No answer. Phone’s switched off. Shop’s shut too, likely.

I’m going to have to pay the manager what he wants.

I went to the lobby again to ask about laundry. I have a Cambodia-trip worth of clothes needing washing. The rate card said 50 baht per shirt. If I submit before 12pm, I’ll get my clothes back tomorrow at 6pm. If I want my clothes today, there’s a 100% surcharge. I leave at 4 in the morning. At 238 Guesthouse, Ton charged 100 baht to wash all my clothes and returned them dry in under two hours.

If there’s a clear message in this, it’s that guest houses are far more economical than hotels, even if the hotel is offering a substantial discount. I think I’m carrying my laundry to Kuala Lumpur.

The travel agent I got my tickets to Siem Reap from also booked me a hotel for my return. It cost the same as the guest house I was in earlier and offered better facilities.

When I checked in, the porter who carried up my luggage showed me around the room, then said “Girlfriend in Bangkok?”

“No, no girlfriend, don’t want,” I hastily responded. It took him a moment to register. As he prepared to leave, he turned and asked again, “Should I send massage girl?”

Truth be told, I sorely wanted a massage. Having spent three hours standing in line at the border with two heavy backpacks (and having stupidly used the waist belt on the lighter one), my shoulders now ached so bad, they hurt to even touch. A shoulder massage was just what I needed.

The porter waited expectantly. “No, don’t want,” I said. I didn’t trust him. Even this hotel looked downright seedy.

It is the day after tomorrow now and having not been solicited since, I am starting to get accustomed to the place. It is located a kilometre from MBK Center. The building’s visible out my 9th floor window. Establishments around here don’t shut shop at six. I can eat dinner at a comfortable ten. It was a pretty nice deal for 600 baht.

This afternoon I encountered the porter again in the lift. He didn’t remember what floor I was on.

“Where you go today? Shopping?”
“No, stay in room. Busy today.”
“Girlfriend come back?”
“No, no girlfriend. Don’t have.”

I think I will not be staying at Tong Poon hotel again.

Cambodia was awesome. I have a good mind to lop Singapore from the itinerary and spend that week in Cambodia again, starting in Phnom Penh and taking a boat up the Tonle Sap to Siem Reap.

Pictures and longer write up coming over the weekend. Have to be up at 5 tomorrow for a trip to the old Siam capital of Ayutthaya.

For a country as sexually permissive as Thailand, what is the porn magazine scene like? Paris Hilton, nearly naked on the cover of FHM, is currently sitting at bookstores across skytrain stations, alongside such publications as National Geographic. Magazine’s tame, I figured.

So of course I was a bit startled to discover Penthouse next to FHM at a store today, a store where school kids milled around carrying ice cream and buying stationery. Those who have seen an issue will know Penthouse hardly classifies as soft. And yet, there it was, on open display, accessible to anyone who wanted it.

Now I had to look between the covers… and came away disappointed. If you can get off on Cosmopolitan, the Thai Penthouse will appeal to you. Those needing a stronger dose will have to look elsewhere. Bangkok’s real sleaze must sell in better demarcated locations.

Today’s Bangkok Post newspaper has an interesting report from Singapore:

Read on...

The Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Bangkok. Because of the surrounding pillars, this is the only point from where you can see the entire structure. The resulting accumulation of tourists makes it appear like paparazzi hounding a celebrity.

At MBK Centre yesterday, I wandered past a music and video store that was heavily promoting a Thai action movie. A poster covering the entire storefront, television screens playing the movie continuously, even a PC video game and plastic action figure on sale. So of course I had to see it. How could I skip a movie in which a fellow picks up an elephant with his bare hands and tosses it aside? Even if it was only a baby elephant?

The VCD cover was all in Thai. No DVD until next year, the store clerk said. “But what about subtitles?” “English speaking, Thai subtitles,” he said.

The movie’s name is “Tom-Yum-Goong”. No, seriously, that’s the name. It was also the name printed on the cup of noodles I had in the morning. I took the disc home, played it, and discovered it was in Thai after all. However, I didn’t need to know any Thai to understand it. I could have been deaf for all that it mattered. The storyline was straightforward: boy grows up with elephants, elephant gets kidnapped, boy goes on killing rampage ending with destroying the abductor’s empire, or at least all the henchmen it was built of. Simple.

The action choreography, however, was excellent. Well worth 140 minutes. Better than any Jackie Chan movie. Even Chan himself makes a cameo appearance.

“I have cup noodles for breakfast today!” Ton happily announced as I descended yesterday morning. I was rushing to the Singapore embassy and was glad for her offer of a no-frills get-done-quick breakfast. At least it would be better than the previous day’s omelette and toast. “I have three varieties (all described in Thai)… this one’s spicy, this one is not… and this one is not either.” I took Spicy. Five minutes later, I discovered the white stuff among the noodles was shrimp. Should have checked the cup. It had pictures of seafood on it. Having paid for it now, I ate it.

At the Singapore embassy, they dismissed me again saying I need a local address in Singapore. Either a hotel booking, or if I’m staying with a friend, a copy of their work permit and a signed declaration from them on my visa application. The nice lady explained that it was simpler to get a hotel booking. Lesser documentation. What she didn’t reveal was that this is a standard tactic: book a hotel, apply for a visa, cancel hotel booking. If you go to a reasonably expensive place, they won’t charge for cancellation. She said visa processing takes three days, so if I could come back with a hotel booking the same day, I may be able to get the visa by Friday. But sometimes it takes up to seven days, so she couldn’t assure me anything. It was already 10.30am. They stop taking applications at 11am. No way I could go out, find a place to get online, book a hotel and print a receipt, and get back in time. If I returned Thursday, my passport would be stuck with them until at least Monday, maybe even later.

I didn’t look forward to being in Bangkok for another week, so I called Colin and Sham in Kuala Lumpur to ask if I could apply there. Colin didn’t know. Malaysians don’t need to apply for a visa for Singapore. Sham said yes, I could. I’m staying with Sham in KL. At least I’ll have the comfort of familiarity if I have to spend a full week there.

Hence rendered activity-less, I took the skytrain to Siam Square where MBK Shopping Centre is located. The skytrain is an elevated railway system. It has a fairly small footprint on the ground—about ten feet across—but a significant turn radius, making it deployable over only major thoroughfares. Bangkok’s skytrain has been in operation since 2000.

MBK Centre is, for lack of more descriptive words, stupendously huge. In fact, that probably doesn’t convey a sense of its size, so let me try again. MBK is so huge that I spent all day wandering inside and by evening had only covered two of six floors. MBK is where you go when you’re bored and lonely and want someplace comfortable to wander around.

MBK is also the place I saw the most disturbing sight so far. I was resting my weary legs at a food court and across from me was this white man being served by a Thai girl. Nothing out of the ordinary, probably a waitress. But she was pregnant. Maybe working as long as she could? Then she sat down and shared the man’s meal. Then she got up to get him something else. She was pregnant. There was obviously some intimacy between them. He just sat there waiting to be served. I couldn’t get it off my mind the rest of the evening.

For dinner, I went to The Atlanta off Sukhumvit road. Sukhmvit road is the tourist corner of Bangkok. The place is crawling with them. I saw a white man with a Thai girl on his arms every 50 feet or so. They all looked like perfectly normal, respectable men. Perhaps it should be no surprise then that the Atlanta features this sign at its door:Post dinner, I took the metro. Bangkok’s metro is exactly like Delhi’s metro, down to the last detail. Perhaps this is where Delhi’s authorities did their research. But wait, there’s a difference. In Bangkok, tracks are separated from the platform by glass walls with doors that open only when the train has halted. In Bangkok, they also don’t perform an airport-class security check before letting you on the train.

From Hua Lamphong station, I took a bus back to the guest house. I’m glad I didn’t take up accommodation around Sukhumvit.

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 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.