A Rabid Kiss Goodbye - Bangkok Diaries Vol. 5

Greetings from Bali!!! Yes, I am officially here living the dream with my fishy friends. There will be plenty of posts to come about my (mis)adventures here on the island of the gods but before I let loose with the dive talk and the Balinese dreams there is the need for one final Thailand tale.  Never one to leave without a Bang (or crash) I managed to spend my last week in Bangkok partaking in one of those fabled, often spoken of in terms of “you won’t believe what happened to a friend of a friend of mine in Bangkok” type urban myths of Asian traveller lore.

I got bit by a rabid dog.

Ya, this looks about right...

Yes, now you too can honestly say “hey that happened to a friend of mine” or if you are one of my more loosely associated readers, I am more than happy to be your “friend of a friend”. Yes faithful fans, these lovely Canadian legs proved just a bit too irresistible to the frothy mouthed, half bald, limping, scabby alley dogs of Bangkok. Chow down my lovely canine friends, chow down.

Now, those of you who know me know that I can be a smidge stubborn when it comes to certain situations.  Acknowledging the severity of a gapping, rabid saliva filled wound on my leg being no exception to the rule.  So, instead of proceeding directly to the hospital after my little run-in, I decided that a more suitable way to deal with the situation was to pretend it didn’t happen at all and go to the movies. Yes, clearly going to see The Great Gatsby is just what the doctor ordered. Rabies be gone! Leonardo DiCaprio will surely rid me of these foreign pathogens!   Unfortunately, Leo’s charms and F.Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless tale of lost love and the American dream soothed my soul and my thirst for something associated with my literary past but did nothing for my now swollen, bleeding and festering wound (dear Esplanade theatre, I am sorry for the blood stain on your cinema seat, I was in a state of denial…). So, after 7 hours of prime Princess Inaka style stubborness, I returned home to Momma Sammut’s stern glare and direct order to get my now rabid ass down to the hospital (thanks mom!).

Stop #1 Bumrungrad International Hospital:  Silly me, having not learned my lesson last time I attempted to get medical care at the country’s most expensive hospital where the emergency room nurse took one look at my leg and said “Oh my god” and looked like he was going to vomit.  After, that my wound was cleaned and I was told by the doctor that because I had a “stage 3” bite I needed not only a course of rabies and tetanus shots but also an emergency dose of “immunoglobin” .  I was then presented with a quote of 30,000 baht…that’s 1000 dollars CDN.

I quickly realized that denial is a much more affordable approach to the situation but having been told that it was imperative that I get this treatment or I could find myself at death’s door in a matter of months I realized I had no choice.  So, off to the public hospital I went with dreams of affordable medical treatment dancing in my head. 

Stop #2 Ramatiphodit Public Hosptial: My dreams of affordable health care soon became a reality when I was provided with a quote for 4000 baht (that’s 150 dollars) for the exact same treatment.  Not only did I save 850 dollars by rolling “Thai style” I also got hit on by a nice young doctor with impeccable English and had a gaggle of Thai nurses chronicle my entire ordeal on their mobile phone cameras.  Unfortunately my imunoglobin shot consisted of a 4 inch needed attached to a syringe the size of a turkey baster being injected directly into my wound. I didn’t scream, I didn’t cry but damn I wanted to. You would figure that after my whole “adventure in liver land” I would have an endless pain threshold but apparently that is not the case. Oh well, just another day in Bangkok…

Anyway, I am now rabies free and have even made it through a trip to the Balinese hospital for booster number 3 (30 bucks!) of 5 for my rabies shots and am eagerly awaiting #2 of 4 for my tetanus shots. Really, who needs money right? I’d rather spread it around the medical professionals of S.E Asia. Hey, who knows, maybe I’ll take a trip to Singapore for booster #4.

And with this final post, The Adventures of Rice Paddy Royalty Thailand Edition is officially closed (for now…)Stay tuned for the Bali Edition coming soon.  

Cheers from the pathogen palace

J

Love in a Hopeless Place - Koh Tao Chronicles Vol.14

Koh Tao is the island of many things, the island of diving, the island of buckets, the island of flaming skipping ropes and slightly scorched tourists. It is sometimes the island of blurred nights, blurred memories, blurred morals and sometimes the island of wild adventures.  It is sometimes the island of bliss and sometimes, it is the island of sweet nothing.

Whether intentionally or not, for many Koh Tao also becomes the island of "love".  No, not a love free of quotation marks but a full fledged, "love" with many disclaimers. Like many things here in Thailand, "love" is open to misreadings and misguided interpretations and as with all things Thai, the rules that we follow ritualistically in the West are applied with a somewhat lackadaisical fluidity here. For some, the "love" they find here is a fleeting, foggy, alcohol soaked flash in the pan. For others it becomes something more or at least on the surface it appears to be something more. Over the past 5 months I've bared witness to "love"'s many incarnations here on Tao and have come out of it feeling slightly jaded, slightly frustrated and more that slightly angry. So my faithful readers, if you come to Tao and find yourself following the advice posted at the top of this page, make sure to take a pen and add a couple of strategic quotation marks in order to protect your heart, I've met far too many broken hearted women who haven't.

 There are three distinct types of people on this island and for each of them "love" seems to take on a different meaning with it's own set of rules, regulations and unspoken truths. Unfortunately when these different groups mix, problems are inevitable. Local Thais and Burmese have one way of looking at things, local foreigners another and those flash in the pan backpackers and DMTs yet another. Everyone seems to be looking for love but they are often looking for very different incarnations of it.

Now, before I continue I need to put in a little disclaimer so that some of my more sensitive readers don't get their knickers in a twitch.

1) I am commenting only of the state of things as I see them. Is this biased and far from a full picture? Yes, but it is the world on the Rock as I see it.

2) Some of my comments may seem rather harsh and "unfeminist" ...truth be told, I don't really consider myself a feminist and when I see women acting in ways that show very little self-respect, I tend not to blame it on the patriarchy but instead blame it on them being, for lack of a better word, stupid and having no self-respect.

3) I'm not naming names, if you read this and think "shit that's me" be aware that unfortunately, many of these issues are island wide and you  may not be the only one in a rather toxic situation. If you read this and think "Jesus that sounds like a horrible relationship" and 5 minutes later find yourself wondering if it was actually you I was talking about, might be time to reconsider your romantic choices.

4) I am not immune to Tao's relationship toxins. The only name I'm going to name in this post is my own because I got just as sucked in as the rest. - This has left me slightly jaded...this will undoubtedly flavour my writing.

5) There are indeed some wonderful, strong relationships on this island based in mutual respect and shared love for each other. Don't get me wrong, love is here and it can and does work. I know some amazing couples of all different incarnations, Foreigners, Thais, Burmese and every combination in between. It just seems the proportion of messed up shit here is high and I have spent a lot of time wondering why.

Many girls come to Koh Tao looking to enjoy a bit of diving, a bit of sunning and a bit of bucketing. Unfortunately, some also come here with the goal of hooking up with a local so that they can tick the "S.E Asian" box on their proverbial bedpost. More annoyingly, some come here with the goal of  simply hooking up with as many of the locals and they can fit down their knickers during their allotted stay. These are the girls I despise endlessly. No, slutting around with every fireboy and bartender on the beach does not make you "cool" or "wordly" or "exotic"....and it most definitely doesn't make you special because, sorry honey, your string of 6-packed, tattooed locals have slept with hundreds of girls. Being good friends with a lot of the local fire boys I've bared witness to their nightly escapades and heard their stories afterwards. They mostly consider their nightly conquests disposable and just because they took you home tonight does not mean that they are even going to give you the time of day when you show up doe eyed and eager at the bar the next night. I'm not exaggerating when I say these guys have bedded hundreds of women.  As unfeminist as this sounds, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that these boys treat their foreign- sex-tourist-one-night-stands as meat. If you serve yourself up on a platter that says "free drunken lay for anyone from Thailand or Burma who works in a bar or spins a fire poi" then you're setting yourself up to be passed around like the piece of meat you have decided you are.  You've made your bed, now lie in it and don't come crying to me when the next day your "lover" has his tongue down some other girl's throat. My question is where the hell did these girls' self-respect go? I've seen it get so bad that one girl, after showing up to the bar only to find the prior night's conquest wooing another girl asked him if she would be lucky enough to enjoy his company this night to which he replied "not sure if I want to go home with you or her tonight".... and she waited around to find out if she was the "winner"!!! What the hell?? Who does that? Why would you even ask to go home with him in the first place if he's trying to take home another girl right in front of your eyes!

Other girls come here, hook up with a local and end up sticking around (but only until their visas run out) to be with them. Some of these boys are good guys who genuinely care for their foreign girls but I think in the back of their minds they know that sooner or later the girls are going to leave so they keep walls up. From the stories I've heard most of them have had their hearts broken pretty badly at one point or another. Usually when they were young and too naive to understand that not too many girls are actually going to stay here to be with them. I can imagine for them it's hard and after realizing that every girl they are ever going to develop feelings for is going to leave them they begin to give up and resort to satisfying their physical needs rather than their emotional needs. I guess you can't be hurt by a girl if you refuse to see them as anything more than a one night stand. It's quite sad actually. There are of course a few cases where the girl does end up staying for their man but due to financial reasons and visa restrictions they have to split their time between their home country and K.Tao. 6 months here and 6 there or 9 here 3 there etc. Far from perfect, some couples still manage to make this work. That being said I've also witnessed men carrying on full-on relationships with one girl while their "girlfriend" of many years is back home scrapping together her pennies to come back to her one "true love".

 So many of these relationships, although in many cases faithful on both party's parts, are still ridiculously dysfunctional. I'm not sure if it's because these boys have "grown up" without parental boundaries (most come here in their teens, having left their families behind in Burma or in rural Thailand and work to send money home to their families) or because they have learned about love and relationships from their mentors who have become so jaded over the years after being left behind by their foreign girlfriends, but their idea of what a healthy relationship looks like is a bit askew. Now once again, I'm generalizing here and I know of couples who have made it work very well for years, if that is you I apologize, but I've been waist deep over the past 5 months in  those who haven't. I have some absolutely lovely girlfriends who have lived here on and off for years who have gotten themselves entangled with local men who don't treat them with the respect they deserve. I know girls who are continuously abused both physically and emotionally by their boyfriends here. I've had calls from friends who have just been beaten, whose boyfriends have destroyed their belongings, have been threatened, demeaned, humiliated, intimidated, followed and stalked. I have seen girls covered in bruises and others whose self-esteem is so annihilated by endless emotional abuse that they no longer know who they are. It is heartbreaking to see beautiful, kind girls in their early 20s entangled in the most dire of situations. Perhaps it's their young age and the lack of experience that goes along with it but I have found myself on endless occasions reminding these girls that this type of behaviour is not normal. Your boyfriend should not hit you and he should not destroy your home or attempt to humiliate you in front of your peers and coworkers.Your boyfriend should not come home and tell you he wishes you were dead and he hates you. He should not call you a whore. Newsflash: This is not normal ladies. But, without a doubt they always return to their men. A few "I'm sorry"s and a few "I won't do it again"s later and they are back together, excuses and "explanations" flowing as fast as the nightly supply of Sangsoms and coke. It's a really sad cycle and I see if happening far too often here on the island. 

These issues arent' just for the cross culturally inclined either. I've also seen it with foreign couples. The endless cycle of making up and breaking up. The teary phone calls late at night, the assertion that "this time is the it, the last straw I'm leaving" only to see them back together a day later. 

I've tried to figure out what it is that makes this such a common occurrence here and I can come up with very few explanations. I think perhaps it's the close quarters. I often refer to K.Tao as a "pressure cooker" so much intense shit squashed into a very small space. Shit boils over constantly and unlike home, there is nowhere to run to. When you "break up" at home you just don't see the person anymore but because we all live and work within a 5 minutes of each other, frequent the same bars, eat at the same restaurants, ride our bikes on the same 2 streets in town (probably because we only have 2 streets!!). It is impossible to avoid each other and often I think couples just settle back in with each other because constantly being faced with the fact that you aren't together but still only 10 feet apart is too difficult to bear. The only options seems to be stick together or leave the island because it's only a matter of time before you see your former partner with one of K.Tao's many drunken tourists dead set of getting their teeth into a handsome/beautiful dive instructor or a sexy DM. Seeing your former flame on the arm of a beach slag (either male or female) is not easy to handle I'm sure.  

As for me, well Myo was never even remotely abusive. He never said a bad word to or about me and he would never dream of hurting a girl. So in my case I was lucky. Did he treat me the way I deserved to be? Well, I think maybe not. But, like so many of the girls here, I found myself going back to him and putting up with things that I don't think I would have back home simply because my life here was completely entangled in him and, as I said before, there is no escape. You will see you ex endlessly on this island and it's hard to heal when you have to look at the thing that wounded you on a daily basis. I will openly admit that I am just as bad as many of these girls, desperately clinging to something that isn't right because I don't know how else to exist here. Luckily for me, I was never abused and I've got a definite and clear ticket out. I'm hoping that being in Bali will allow me time to heal and finally get over him.

I worry about my girlfriends here a lot and I think I will spend quite a bit of time in Bali wondering and worrying that they are ok. But in the end we all make our own choices and for many of them, the real repercussions of theirs have not yet sunk in. But they will and these girls are so young that they will have plenty of time to put themselves back together again. As for the boys, well, maybe they will sort themselves out as well. I would love to see some of my friends here make it really work with their partners. It would rekindle my faith in intercultural relationships and perhaps give me a little hope for my own future.

As so we return to the words of wisdom with which this post opened,

                                   

As for me, I have actually ticked every box on the list. I quit my job, bought a ticket to Tao, got a tan, fell in love and have no intentions of returning to Canada. I'm beginning to think it's time wipe the slate clean and start ticking anew. I've quit my job here at Big Blue, I've bought a ticket to Bali, I'm sure my tan will get even better and I still have no intentions for returning to Canada...maybe I should have no intentions of returning to Tao?? (we all know that will never happen!!)...so now....there's only one final box left to tick....

Cheers from Heartbreak Hotel
J

Burn baby Burn!! -Koh Tao Confidential Vol. 13

Greetings Followers,

Almost a month without a post! Between working, marking and moderating IB exams, diving, Songkraning, a visit from Mr. James Miller and breaking up with my boyfriend (again...) I have been a bit busy and my blogging has, predictably, fallen by the wayside. As usual, much apologies my faithful followers (like a broken record, I  know...).But, have no fear my frosty friends in places less sunny, you can once again live vicariously through my endless beachy adventures.  Never a dull moment shall pass on these sandy shores without a little chronicling from the Princess (even if it takes me a few weeks to get my ass in gear to write about it).

Anyway... let's get on with it shall we??

Working at the reception desk of a popular dive school means I spend a lot of time answering questions. Actually that's pretty much all I do. Questions about diving, questions about travel, questions about whether or not divemaster A is single or Instructor B would be interested going on a date with a particularly keen student. Questions about where to eat, what  to drink, who to talk to, who to avoid. "Why does my toothpaste taste like salt?" "Have you seen my underwear?" "What exactly did I get up to in the Big Blue Bar last night?" "Is fire boy C is man whore?" "What exactly is this I'm eating?"  it's all in a day's work here at reception. I am the veritable tree of knowledge here on Sairee Beach. Ask and yee shall be informed! 
Quite predictably, a question I get almost endlessly is: "what is there to do around here?" 

well....you can: dive, Sleep, Eat, lie on the beach, go for a boat ride, snorkle, cliff jump, hike, get a massage....or, you could partake in one of Koh Tao's most popular pastimes: Getting absolutely hammered on buckets of mysterious composition then burning your face/legs/arms/back/ass/hair off jumping through a flaming hoop or attempting to do some fancy moves in the flaming skipping rope. Of course this is all done in the hopes of impressing the equally inebriated girls you've just met and luring them back to your cozy beach bungalow. Most people come to Koh Tao for the adrenaline rush of their first SCUBA experience but far too many leave having experienced that other adrenaline rush we do so well here: Burning yourself to bits in the fire show.   

Now, in order to understand this rather interesting phenomenon, we must first understand that at any given time this island is saturated in young men who, due to their age and the fact that they are on vacation in a tropical paradise full of topless Swedish beauties, are constantly in need of opportunities to demonstrate their "manliness" and puff their plumage for members of the opposite sex. Well, seek and ye shall find! Wanna look manly?? Well here, jump through this flaming hoop! Wanna show you've got balls of steel? Why not jump in a flaming skipping rope....hell, why not do it NAKED! Yes! that will surely impress the ladies! ...and so it begins. 

What makes the whole event that much more interesting is the fact that all the buckets these would be Evil Keneevils consume tends to make them believe three dangerous untruths

1) If you ask to borrow the fire boy's pois and spin them around you will not automatically look like this:

No, Alfie from Essex, Scott from Texas and John from Canada, your Western fed, haven't seen the light of the sun for the past 9 months bodies do not look like this. Even if you stand in the middle of a ring of fire. K.Tao fire spinners spend 5 hours a day working their asses off doing this and it shows...don't be a fool boys, don't be a fool.  

2) Just because the fire is attached to a hoop, skipping rope or limbo pole does not mean that it can no longer burn you.  If you get a flaming rope to the face/leg/arm/ass, your skin will melt off and hey, if you're lucky it will come off in a neat rope pattern to boot. A special keepsake of your time on Koh Tao. 

Jump through this! Don't worry it's on a hoop so it  won't burn a bit!

3) If you jump naked you will not be invincible to the flames and no, all the girls will not magically want your naked (now scorched) body. More likely you'll end up like this guy:

"damn my balls are burning...and where are my clothes? and what about the throngs of girls I have impressed with my mad naked jumping skills....????....d'oh!"

 Ahhh to be young, drunk and overflowing with lust and testosterone. 

I only wish I had videos of some of the more epic flaming rope meets stupid tourist moments. This will have to do (imagine if these guys keep drinking buckets and try again in an hour's time...naked)

 Cheers from the burn ward
J    

Where are my freaking flip flops? - Koh Tao Confidential Vol. 12

                                             


Greetings faithful followers and welcome back to the Koh Tao Confidentials. 

     It's been a while since you've been enlightened as to the many happenings here on the Rock. Thankfully, I am  finally able to satisfy your hunger for knowledge with yet another insightful posting on the secret and not-so-secret workings of Turtle Island. 

    We are all taught from a young age that it is important to share with those around us. What you give you shall receive in return double-fold... is that not the way it's supposed to work? Well here on K.Tao "sharing is caring" is a way of life. In fact, I would not be surprised if we are the sharing capital of Thailand...hell,  perhaps S.E Asia!  What's the reason behind all this love and "what's mine is yours" mentality? Flip flops of course! 

    Koh Tao is a sandy place, anyone who's spent any amount of time here surely has fond memories of sandy beds, sandy clothes, sandy knickers and sandy luggage. In order to keep all this errant sand out of shops and hotel rooms/lobbies, many ask you to remove your shoes at the door. Flipflops are also pretty impractical on dive boats so divers are often asked to leave their shoes in "shoe parking" at the various dive shop receptions before boarding the boats as  well (I mean who needs flipflops when you can wear fins right?) What this tends to create is a type of flipflop chaos outside the doors of most shops and restaurants. Now what you also need to be aware of is that Thailand is the capital of ripoff counterfeit Havaiana flipflops so EVERYONE has the same shoes. Greeted with a sea of flipflop clones upon exiting, most people just take a guess and throw on a pair that looks like theirs. 

   It's flipflop Russian Roulette, sometimes you dodge a bullet and other times you end up with a pair 2 sizes two small or even worse, two different shoes. But unlike it's more dangerous namesake, all participants come out alive, although they may look like a bit of a git walking around in a pink size 34 Havaiana and and a blue size 40 Ripcurl shoe. 

This is only a small example of how chaotic the flipflop Armageddon can get. At least most of these people have manged to keep their shoes in pairs.

In general the flipflop sharesies is pretty tame during the day when people can see where they are going and usually are sober enough to tell the purple size 36 pair from the bright yellow size 42s beside them. After dark however, it's a flip flop free for all. Most of the bars here are on the beach and afterdark dance moves and fire jumping often launch flipflops off feet and into the night where they are swallowed up by the sea or the kerosene bucket or somehow end up under the steps or in the mouths of the bar dogs. If they manage to survive all of the aforementioned hazards, they usually don't manage to survive the hundreds of drunken revelers who are convinced that "THAT pair, yes, THAT pair right there is mine" even if that pair is 2 sizes too big and a completely different colour than the ones they showed up in. More often than not one usually returns to where they left their shoes to find them mysteriously missing. No worries though, this is Koh Tao, the land of sharing! All a shoeless, drunken backpacker needs to do is sneak off and take someone else's. Share and share alike right? By the end of the night everyone usually manages to make it home with some form of footwear. They may be two different colours or two different sizes but a shoe's and shoe right? 

During my first few trips to K.Tao I used to get annoyed at how my shoes seemed to houdini themselves out of every hiding spot I put them in but now that I'm officialy a K.Tao resident, I have embraced the shoe exchange. Never the hypocite, the princess always practices what she preaches therefore it's only fitting that as I write this I'm sporting pair of lovely black flipflops that I "borrowed" from someone at the bar the other night. 

Dear nameless flipflop donor,
 Thank you for your gift of footwear, I hope you "borrowed" and equally attractive and comfortable pair from another drunken reveler. 

Kindest Regards,
Princess Inaka

Remember travelers, when coming to Koh Tao, leave your expensive shoes at home and embrace the island's culture of share and share alike...your feet will thank you.

Cheers from the flipflop exchange
J

Plug your nose and soldier on - Bangkok Diaries Vol.4

Greetings faithful followers,

   2 weeks back on The Rock and I'm still finishing up the Bangkok diaries. I've actually been fairly busy since my return and haven't had much time to blog but have no fear, I am looking to change my laziness into verbosity and get back on the blogging train that I know you all wait so anxiously to hitch a ride on.  I think this is the last entry before I let Bangkok sleep until my return on May 20th for a few days of visa sorting and life sorting before I leave for Bali on May 27th. I must admit Bangkok was rather uneventful but sometimes a lack of excitement is just what the doctor ordered. Although I loved spending time with Carrie and my favorite little lady Abigail, I found myself missing my simple beach life and was more than ready to come back. Now that I'm back I feel a sense of serenity that I didn't feel before. I guess I needed that month to put things in perspective.

Anyway, as I mentioned when I first went to Bangkok, I was hoping to spend some of my free time in the Big Smog checking out the sights that I never bothered to when I lived there. Armed with my Bangkok Lonely Planet I ventured out over a few days to check out some of the more popular markets around town. When I lived in BKK I did most of my shopping for the first 2 years at the local Tops or Tesco Lotus surrounded by a shimmering cloud of "farang ignorance" as I paid 5X too much for my food simply because I  was trolling the aisles of a Western supermarket. That changed during my third year when I decided that the following year it would be a wonderful adventure to quit my job to become a dive bum and make no money. Time to cut corners and save some pennies. Goodbye clean manicured aisles full of perfect looking food, hello local market! From that point on I would take a weekly trip down to Huay Kwang market to by my week's worth of fruits and veggies (and since I'm a vegetarian that's pretty much all the food I needed). You can imagine the enormous kick in the ass I gave myself when I walked away with arms full of food for a fraction of the price I paid at the supermarket. I probably could have financed a pretty sweet vacation with the amount of money I figure I wasted over the first 2 years.

For me, after living in Asia for years, the market wasn't a very exotic or unusual place so I never really made special efforts to photograph it (or in that case blog about it) so I thought that my return to BKK warranted a little market photo trip and write up. I decided that if I was going to share the markets of BKK with market virgins I should probably head down to the holy grail of all markets to do so. So off I toddled to Klong Toei Market for bit of photographic scavenging. Klong Toei market is one of the biggest markets in the city, catering not only to local families but also to restaurants and food stalls. People come there to buy in big quantities so there is plenty to see and .... unfortunately smell...but we'll get to that later.
For the time being, you can take a break from my blathering and look at some pretty pictures (complete with clever captions of course).

When you first hit the market it's not the sights that first overwhelm the senses but the smells. "Marketing" in Asia is not for the weak stomached or for those with weak gag reflexes. Unless you can handle the combined smell of curry, rancid meat, old fish and dirty canals you should probably stick the the supermarkets. 

Ever wonder where the chicken in your Gan Kiaw Wan Gai comes from? How did they get the "moo" in your ka pow moo? Well it probably came from somewhere like this...in fact it may have come from this very stall! Keep in mind faithful readers that the outside temperature at the time this picture was taken was close to 40 degrees Celsius. There is no refrigeration, no ice, not much of anything beyond the small breeze blown up from the beating wings of the many flies that swarm around these piles of baking meat. Now close your eyes and imagine the smell of this stall multiplied by 50. Yum!!

How about some tasty frog? Only 85 bht!! What a steal! Much to my nose's relief the dead frogs baking in the sun didn't smell nearly as putrid as the baking chicken and beef a few stalls down. 

Here in Bangkok we make sure that only the highest food safety standards are followed at all times. Have no fear weak bellied tourists, that fabled "Bangkok Belly" is merely an exaggerated myth created by the makers of Dukoral to make you buy their drugs. See, we keep things "so fresh and so clean, clean" here in the land of smiles!

  

Of course if meat isn't your thing, we also have a wide selection of unrefrigerated seafood and shellfish for you to choose from. 

Softshell crabs with a side of salmonella?

Or perhaps we can interest you in some octopus tentacles that were put on ice 4 hours ago but now are just sitting in warm water since the ice melted in about 3 seconds. 

In Thai crabs are called "poo" which is a very suiting name considering the smell of them at the market and the looks of that tantilizing fish/crab sauce in the bowl behind them.

These poor fishies were still alive on their metal tray flopping and bouncing around in the midday sun. A few of them, as you can see, decided to take a fateful leap off the display in hopes of hitting water. Unfortunately they were greeted with nothing more than burning pavement and a swift kick from the boot of the stall minder. The suicidal tendencies of fish were present in most of the fish stalls along this row. Poor fishies. 

The best way to convince the picky consumer as to the freshness of your product is of course to make a clever "before and after" display by placing live chickens under the corpses of their dead brethren. 

Live chickens: Now you see 'em, now you don't

Of course if you're looking for something more exotic you could always just go straight to the pig head aisle. Although it's a bit hard to see, the tray behind these piggies is full of snouts, ears and other interesting eats. Hello Lord of the Flies flashback!

Besides the vast array of putrifying meats and seafood, there are also rows upon rows of the most beautiful looking vegetables at Klong Toei market. For a veg head such as myself this place is heaven on earth. YUM!!!

Kaffir lime leaves, banana flowers and jackfruit. Can't get much more Thai than that!

Don't forget about the fruits!! Papayas and bananas by the truckload.

And of course what would a Thai market be without the chillies!! Every size, colour and variety you can imagine

Any spice for any price. I'm not sure how the different costs are determined whether it's spiciness or quality or variety.

Limes, limes, limes

Of course there is not need to cook your own noodles over here either. Just go to the market and have someone else do it for you!

The honey man was also at the market. This was pretty amazing honey, still had bees on it and everything. Just grab a hunk of honeycomb, pray you don't get stung and enjoy!

Of course it's not all about rancid meats and veggies at the market. There are also walls of cookies (a personal favorite)

All joking aside, I love Thai food and don't let the smelly markets deter me from feasting in Thai restaurants and on the street. Like all newbies to Thailand I went through my few weeks of liquid innards (lets not forget my "welcome back to Thailand" food poisoning escapade when I arrived this past January). However, once you've adjusted to the food here you slowly develop an iron coating on the inside of your stomach that not only allows you to eat all of the above foods but also drink cheap Thai whiskey by the bucketful and live off pot noodles for a week if you have to. 

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Of course not all markets are of the smelly, rancid meat variety. Problem with your gag reflex? Not interested in perusing through pig heads and snouts? Have no fear, Bangkok has a market for you too! Welcome to Pak Klong Talad, the Bangkok flower market. This market runs 24hours a day on the outskirts of Chinatown along the banks of the Chao Phraya but is most interesting in the evening when the flowers arrive by the bushels from all over Thailand along the river. Here is where all the flower shops in Bangkok come to get their wares but also where the people who assemble the flower offerings for monks and temples and the roadside goodluck wreaths come to get their flowers too.

At about 5pm the flowers start to arrive on the street corners wrapped in paper to protect them on their long journey down the river

Roses, roses, roses. The street is literally lined with thousands of them in every colour imaginable. The price for one of these giant busshels? About 6 dollars.

When the time comes for me to move back to Bangkok I'm going to come down here and buy flowers to decorate my house. Orchids sell for literally a dollar for a bunch and they come in every size and colour imaginable.

Pretty Pretty! 

Lotus flowers waiting for new homes to bloom in

Marigolds for offerings by the cartfull.

If you're too lazy to string your own offering together you can also get the ready made 




Unfortunately, now that I'm back on K.Tao there is not a market to be seen. Instead I live off takeaway and 711. Ah the life of a diver...

Cheers from a less smelly place than Klong Toei Market

J

The Ins and Outs of Bangkok - Bangkok Diaries Vol. 3

When people think of Thailand, they most likely think of lazy days in the sun, tuk tuks down palm tree lined roads and a generally laid back way of life. For most of Thailand this is in fact the case (of course I’m generalizing here but, in general it’s the case). This is not however the way things work in Bangkok. Like any major cosmopolitan city Bangkok is fast paced and ever changing, and like any major Asian city, it is full of a middle and upper class folks desperate to follow the latest trend, purchase the latest gadget and show off their wealth (whether real or not). So I wasn’t surprised to see how things have changed in Bangkok. In a city that never sleeps trends come and go in the blink of an eye but not before every person with an income above 100 dollars a month has attempted to buy into it. Once it has permeated every inch of Bangkok’s existence, it then quietly (and quickly) sneaks off into obscurity just in time for the next big thing to appear and the endless cycle of consumerism to continue on unabated.

So without further ado, I bring you the “ins” and “outs” of Bangkok. Having been away from the Big Smog for almost 7 months, I found myself having to readjust to a whole new world of “must haves” and say goodbye to a few things I thought would never leave.

IN: EST

Apparently Thailand has been invaded and slowly taken over by EST cola and its affiliated beverages. No longer can you pop into any local restaurant or 711 and buy a bottle of pepsi (not that I was a fan in the first place), instead, the shelves are packed floor to ceiling with EST. Apparently the Thai company that was the holder of Pepsi’s bottling license in Thailand decided it was time to give the “taste of a new generation” the boot and start their own soda company. Because they hold the license to most restaurants and many shops in town, pepsi just suddenly began to disappear and EST appeared in its place. In this way, it was more of a soft drink Coup D’etat then an actual shift in consumer interest but now that the everyday cola drinker can no longer quench their pepsi cravings, they have migrated, if by nothing more than force, into the waiting clutches of EST. Being clever business people the EST people have accompanied their cola Coup with a inescapably ubiquitous advertising campaign splashing is sugary cola coated catch phrases and celebrity endorsers across every billboard, MRT station and TV in the nation. It’s marketing at its finest and Thailand seems to have eaten it up.  Curious about the merits of this new cola kid on the block (and unable to find anything else to drink) I bought a bottle and must admit I was rather disappointed.  Coke or Pepsi it is not, but when there is no other options available, I guess it will have to do.  Luckily for me Coke Zero is still pretty easy to find, hallelujah.

OUT: Methol Inhalers

When I lived in Bangkok there was seldom a moment that passed without me noticing a Thai person walking around with a plastic inhaler sticking out of their nose. These small white tubes (similar to a lipstick tube in size and shape) were so often nestled in the noses of Bangkokians (on the street, on the train, on the subway, walking down the street, at the convenience store…you name it) that  it no longer seemed strange to look across the train car and see someone with a white tube sticking out of their nose. No hands needed, simply let it dangle – all the cool kids are doing it. Much to my pleasure, this trend seems to have died out. I have only seen maybe 2 people stealing quick huffs from their inhalers on the train and they seemed to be doing so quite discretely. I never tried one myself but I guess it wasn’t as good as it seemed since the craze is apparently over. Nostrils of Bangkok can breathe a sigh of relief (no pun intended)

IN: Furby

Yes, you read that correctly, Furby, that early 90’s furry little toy has finally made it to Bangkok and has created an absolute Maelstrom of consumerist frenzy. People are paying hundreds of dollars for them and then taking endless amount of photos of themselves with their newly acquired furball and posting them all over facebook. I don’t get it, even my tattoo artist has pictures of himself with a freaking Furby online. Considering the absolutely ridiculous nature of this trend I feel it will die out sooner rather than later and Bangkok’s elite will be left with nothing more than their “furby and me” albums on Facebook and their overpriced, collection of 90's throwback toys.

OUT: California WOW Fitness Centre

As many of you know I became a bit of a gym rat while living in Bangkok. Seldom did a day go by that I couldn’t find me at the gym kicking the crap out of a Thai man half my size. Like most of the exercise minded foreigners in town I worked out at one of California WOW’s many fitness clubs in town. These were posh 5-star gyms that offered pretty much everything you could want in a gym. Several floors of cardio, boxing rings, 1 or sometimes 2 aerobics suites with classes running every hour, yoga, steam rooms, etc. etc. What they also offered were “lifetime” memberships. Pay 300 bucks up front and you would be welcome at almost any California WOW club in Thailand for the rest of your life as long as you paid the 3 dollar renewal fee every year.  Now remember ladies and gentlemen, this is Thailand, the land of absolutely NO foresight so California WOW soon found itself in a situation where their clubs were packed full of people, none of whom were actually paying any monthly membership fees. You can imagine where this is heading. Pretty hard to pay the rent, wages and bills on yearly earnings based on 3 dollar membership renewal fees. As I was leaving last year the clubs were slowly starting to shut down one by one. Upon my return, only one remained and it was in pretty paltry shape. Long gone were the days of a VIP fitness experience, now all that remains is broken down equipment and barely there air-conditioning. That being said, I was still carrying my lifetime member card and felt quite happy doing my daily run on a somewhat broken down treadmill since it was still…you got it, free.  My friend Op who has, along with most of California WOW’s clientele, migrated to the much more expensive but equally posh Fitness First signed me in as a guest one night so that I could at least get a taste of what it was I was missing. No doubt about it, I’ll be signing up when I move back…whenever that is.

IN: Velvet Bowler hats with ears

Now this is a weird one. Apparently the latest fashion craze among Bangkok women are velvet bowler hats that come with little kitty cat ears built in on top. This is clearly a very Asian craze (since it’s all about looking cute…and by cute I mean, ridiculous). I wouldn’t be surprised if Japan has jumped on this one as well (or perhaps they even invented it). Regardless, the streets of Bangkok are now crowded with “cat women” in velvet hats of various colours. The markets are full of them and everyone and their grandma are crowded around the “cat hat” stall clawing and scratching to be the next velvet eared minx on the block. To all the farang men who are looking to score yourself a lovely Thai lady, be warned, she now comes complete with kitty ears.

IN: Cars, cars, cars and more cars

If you thought Bangkok traffic couldn’t get any worse, think again. Apparently around about the time I left last summer the government changed some laws that pretty much enabled a whole new strata of people to purchase cars. I’m not quite sure what it involved, something to do with a tax break or grant or something for first time car buyers. Regardless of what it was, there are now approximately 1 million more cars on the roads in Thailand. Considering a huge chunk of the population lives in and around Bangkok that means close to 1 million more cars crammed into the already plugged traffic arteries of the world’s most congested city. Thank goodness for motorcycle taxis…that being said, even they get stuck in traffic now. As with all things Thai, these changes in laws were clearly passed with a great deal of forethought on the part of the government. Sigh….some things never change.

IN: Mansome

Well it’s about time that some of these trends were geared towards the “fiercer sex”. Mansome is some kind of new drink on the shelves of local convenience stores that is clearly geared towards men looking to self improve. If the name has any truth to it, apparently this tasty elixir will make you both more manly and more handsome…it will make you “Mansome”! I have yet to try it since I’m afraid it may make me grow a moustache so we’ll just have to take the advertising for truth and praise this new gift to women of them world. Gentlemen, get your mansome on.

OUT: protests, natural disasters, social chaos

This year has been very quiet in Bangkok. No floods, no red shirt riots, no coup d’etats, no news worthy illnesses affecting the King. The poor chaps at The Regent’s School have actually had to work a full year without an unexpected holiday.  Now there’s a first!

And so there you have it, a few of the ins and outs of today’s Thailand.  Hope you enjoyed.

Cheers from the trend setting capital of the world

J