As I look back on it, our first full day of Bangkok was an immense learning experience but only now, a day later, can it start to become funny.
The mission of our first day was to complete our travelling materials with an international phone, a converter, and our 2:00pm tour of wats. On our walk to finding a phone Elena graced a sweet Thai woman with a smile, who turned out to be a tourist advisor with T.A.T./police consulate. She directed us to an honest travel agency and set us up for our first tuktuk ride with Adul. When arriving to the agency we met Mint, who set up a month long tour plan complete with accommodations, train tickets, and tours. We left uncommitted so as to plan and compare, gathered back in the tuktuk to find this international phone. Adul drove us to the local mall, came in with us, helped us find the phone level, and carried our purchased bags. Elena started dusting off her bargaining genius, found the phone, converter, and a few extra goods for ‘cheapcheap’. Finished with the days list we were ready to go back to the hotel, eat lunch and tour.
But instead, experiencing our first of a couple miscommunications, Adul began a tour of the city. As I look back I think the unnecessary silent 2 hour tour of the city from Adul was sweet, and kind of endearing. We had our first helping of Bangkok traffic, but made home in time for our official tour. Reflecting, I wish our unofficial tour with Adul would have lasted just 10 minutes longer, to save us from Nancy.
We now know we could never name one of our future children Nancy, because we refer to her and the experience of her dripping with sarcasm and disdain. She met us at our hotel, a gremlin of little information and apparent undiagnosed epileptic she started our tour with a 3 minute history of Thailand and a nap. (Dad, after she started napping was when I called you for the first time in Thailand on our way to the temples) Our first wat was the golden Buddha, amazing and gorgeous. This is where I committed my first obvious faux pas. After circling the Buddha and in response to Nancy’s hissing, we were instructed by a Thai man to continue along the wall to the exit. There was a girl with her prayer offerings in the walk way, and as a running start to the exit would have been inappropriate, I slowly made my way to her, started to attempt walking over her things and was yelped at to stop---apparently it’s impolite and disrespectful to “cross” things in Thailand. So, feeling like a huge asshole in a place that renders respect even within me, I left in shame, walking down tall steps level with a dark sky to match my mood, my face burning.
Nancy took us to the reclining Buddha, which is spectacular and amazing in length and sheer structure. What was most beautiful was being able to awe at this statue and hear clinking beyond. The tradition being that 20baht awards you x amount of coins for you to place in metal containers, each releasing a blessing and metallic clinking noise. As tourists and locals walk through accumulating their blessings, the sound makes a sort of consistent music as the others on the other sideof the statue wonder at the Buddha figure.
Nancy rushed us in Thai rain to the marble temple, our favorite of all. At this point we were irritated at Nancy’s consistent snoring in the passenger seat and the hidden fees of entering holy places. But mostly irritated at Nancy. We walked into the marble temple to hear the chanting prayers of orange clothed monks, and all my irritation melted. The temple was amazing and abandoned.
Nancy then took us to the car and said we were on our way to the hotel. We were anything but on our way to our hotel. This is where the part of our day crossed from eventfully tiring to angry and exhausted. She took us to a jewelry shop, insistent of the historical content. All the sales women followed us like puppies chasing a biscuit, who at the gift shop became spiteful at us for not purchasing a thing. But if Nancy had asked, we would have told her that.
The second jewelry shop exhibited the same behaviors, but their gift shop had stingray wallets, and snake skin bohemian wallets for over 150$ dollars--the exact thing to win over my heart. (sarcasm)
The tailor shop is what did it in for us. Nancy felt the bite of our anger as we told her we were going home after being in the shop 45 seconds. The traffic jam 20 minutes away from our hotel topped everything off. Traffic jams in Bangkok, literally, do not move, not for tens of minutes at a time. We ended up leaving the car from traffic and walking a few blocks where Nancy was departing for her 730pm dentist appointment and where we were told that “Nancy (spoken by Nancy in 3rd person) needs a tip.” Baffled that she would even consider asking for a tip, but even more baffled that we were getting dropped off in the middle of the city at 9pm after a ridiculous 6 hour tour, we decided that if we threw any of our tempers or opinions at Nancy it would end in assault of a local.
Wandering the streets with decent but distant directions we decided to eat at a small Thai restaurant blasting Asian covers of current American hits. The tom yum soup was to die for. We took a taxi home, never having thought we would be so excited to be in our safe hotel.
I stood in the shower, rinsing off all the sweat and pollution of the day, wishing I were home, asking what the hell were we doing here.
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