bangkok

my family and i spent the long weekend at bangkok recently. we left the morning of october 31 and arrived here in manila on wednesday night, november 3. it was such a refreshing feeling to be out of the country (finally!) after some years of not being able to travel abroad. and even if it was just for a short time, it was another cookie in my cultural experiences jar.

true to form of a certified cabigas family member, my mom informed us of the trip just two days before we left. even my dad didn't know until that time that we were going to travel! medyo nagulantang lang naman kaming lahat 'coz we all had to fix our schedules immediately since we had no choice but to go with the purchased tickets and all. my brother even literally had to beg his boss to allow him to leave. apparently, my mom had been planning this trip all along but didn't know exactly when it would be. so when she realized the long halloween weekend was coming up, she decided that it was now or never.

bangkok is such a great place to visit. one would think that the city and the people looks the same as manila but it's really not. for one, bangkok is less depressed. you know that it's more developed in many ways. almost every major road has their own version of our skyway and their rail network is much better which makes traffic a breeze. i don't remember seeing squatter's areas or people living under bridges or beside railroad tracks. and the fact that you could see other foreigners in every corner of the city, be it japanese or american or german, makes you wonder where the heck manila went wrong. the tourism industry there is just booming! -- (hindi naman obvious na economics major ako noh?)

anyway, since i could probably write a whole mini-novel on bangkok, i'll just write some things i loved about it the most based on the places we visited.

patpong district
think two long parallel streets of tiangge stalls with the vibe of the makati ave/jupiter area and malate combined. i mean, while you walk and look at the things you could buy from the tiangge stalls to your left, you'll see dancing women in bikinis beside ubiquitous poles to your right. talk about a night market! my mom even wanted us boys to go inside one of the thai pok-pok bars and have a beer or two! tempting, but we wanted to be syphillis-free when we got back to manila.

being the fatties that we are (the lightest in our family of seven weighs 165 lbs, go figure) we decided to check out the food! there are a string of nice little restos filled with caucasians (which naturally turned us off 'coz the good food would most likely be where the locals are) so we decided to eat it in this tiny little roadside carinderia slash turo-turo. it was all i imagined a thai carinderia to be: small, sweaty, and noisy. but the food was just great! i wanted to try everything but i settled with a vegetable dish and a spicy papaya salad. we were enjoying our dinner up until we tasted what one of my brothers got. that dish, whatever it was, reached the limits of our anghang-meter! damn! hindi mo pa ningunguya, nalusaw na dila mo. kakaiba i swear! to think we all like spicy food. because of that, we re-charged our burnt toungues at the mcdonald's just a few steps away. hehe.

what i regret not doing in patpong was not trying the fried scorpions, worms, and grasshoppers though. i already felt like anthony bourdain and ian wright of discovery channel just looking at those things but no one else wanted to eat with me so i decided not to do so. oh well.

temples
we went on the tourist route one morning and we visited the temples thailand is known for. i've always loved our centuries-old churches so seeing these temples gave me a different perspective of the same kind of appreciation i have for buildings like these. it just says so much about the culture of a country. champion yung enormous buddha image na naka-higa, it was so huge that i was shocked at how the whole thing was made in the first place. tawa kami ng tawa kasi narinig namin sa guide na the buddha was made of semen! apparently, cement pala yung gustong sabihin! hahaha! 'di talaga marunong mag-english ang mga thai.

suan lum night market at lumphini park
of course, i don't think anyone goes to bangkok without doing some major shopping. this place was the place for all of us to do our necessary shopping spree since we weren't able to visit the mbk shopping center or the chatuchak night market which are said to be THE places to shop. as in pagbalik ko ng manila, ang tanong sakin lagi: "nagpunta ka ng mbk?". hasslehoff! eh kasi naman, we went to bangkok not knowing what to do or where to go so we didn't know that chatuchak was a weekend market that closes at 6 PM and mbk was a mall that closes at the same time. what kind of country has malls that close at 6 PM anyway?

back to the night market. all i can say is that ang ganda dun. all the stalls literally 'look' great, unlike your typical greenhills stall na ang panget at parang kiosk lang na tinambakan ng mga ibebenta. the whole place practically encourages you to buy stuff with the low prices and the organization of the stalls. it's so easy and nice to walk around. the place is huge! we stayed there for like 3 hours straight but we only explored like half of the entire area.

thai massage
since we were all tired from the shopping and walking and eating one night, we all decided to have an authentic thai massage. what the heck diba, they invented it, might as well try it out. laughtrip 'tong gabi na 'to 'coz only my sister knew how a thai massage felt. everyone else were thai massage virgins. verdict after the massage: "i feel so violated!" hehehehe! hirap i-explain but we were all just laughing when we were talking about it afterwards.

pratunam area
we stayed at baiyoke sky hotel, the tallest building in bangkok daw. we were a bit lucky with where our hotel was located 'coz right outside the hotel was a whole web of streets with stalls. looked so much like binondo and divisoria to me. shopping nanaman! just walking around that area was a great experience for me, i really don't know why. haay.

other things i loved or will never forget:

1) commuting on their mrt and taking their cabs without knowing where you're going
2) that asshole waiter at the hotel coffee shop that almost ruined our entire trip and my idea of thai hospitality
3) wasting time watching friggin' elephants and crocodiles
4) the floating market. it's overrated but i'm still glad we visited.

i'll definitely visit bangkok again in the future. i feel like ang dami pang pwedeng gawin dun pero kinulang lang kami sa oras. but i'm glad we all had a chance to experience it and i'm thankful that my entire family was with me, the best travel companion ever!