6 days in siam
Day 1
3 p.m. ---- Refillable wine and choice of liquor aboard Thai Airways. Seems primary goal of flight attendants is to get passengers drunk. Not complaining. Food is scrumptious with my white wine. Three hours to Bangkok. Giddily copy down critical Thai phrases from in-flight magazine, Sawasdee, to my notebook while stewardess refills my glass.
Paeng maag – Very expensive!
Hong nam yoo tee nai – Where is the restroom?
Cannot find Thai translation to “Yes, I would like to live in your beach house and eat sweet mangustin all day for free”, so decide to fend off invitations from fabulously wealthy Thai men who cannot speak English for now. Should any come, I mean.
6 p.m. --- Bangkok airport looks and feels bigger than all our runways put together. Meet fellow media folk and attendees to Travel Mart. Affect air of bored nonchalance to blend in. Fail. Whip out camera and begin clicking at anything that moved.
9 p.m. --- Eddie, our tour guide, is cross at me for taking too long in the rest room. Was snapping pictures of the toilet. Siam Niramit, Thailand’s ultimate cultural show, set in the world’s tallest stage, was set to begin in a few minutes.
10 p.m. --- In awe at world’s tallest stage’s real river and rainfall effects. Dances largely similar to our own, except without people flying, half-rooster gods and real, live elephants padding about in the background. Decline having photo snapped with elephant trunk wrapped around torso, four feet in the air. Other eager tourists happily pay 20 baht for the momentous occasion.
11 p.m. --- Repair to Amari Watergate hotel. Spend 30 minutes jumping on bed after realizing entire deluxe room was to own. Sink deliciously in hot tub, dreaming of elephant trunks and flying buddhas, popping grapes in mouth.
Day 2
7.30 a.m. --- Eat everything in sight at breakfast buffet. Overlook sausage and eggs corner. Go on third round.
9.30 a.m --- Siam Ocean World. Only the cichlids, by virtue of their chubby cheeks, look cheery. Slightly depressed by caged animals, but impressed also at largeness and variety of aquatic displays. Bump forehead on glass trying to get closer look at predatory sharks. For a moment, feel like fish wanting to get out.
11.00 – 12.00 ---Ensnared in 60 baht store. Buy Japanese lantern and bamboo placemat. Had to restrain self from purchasing stainless steel soap and kitchen gloves.
12.00 nn --- Shabu-shabu at famous MK Gold store. Almost went to different MK store across the mall. Eddie tusk-tusks. “MK across mall not MK Gold. Not as good.” MK Gold good. Devour copious amounts of duck and three bowls.
7 pm --- Opening ceremonies of Thailand Tourism Festival at Impact Muang Thong Thani, organized by Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). Sight of another buffet table this time perplexing. Round of speeches are boomed out in microphones. Thailand’s Minister of Tourism is followed by parade of people and flashing cameras. Gather he is important man. Gather entire tourism industry in Thailand is. They’ve got 15M tourists to prove it.
9 pm --- Night Market. Can hear imaginary whistle and timer in head as ply winding avenues of stalls selling 100th version of Singha shirts, silk scarves and Muay Thai shorts. Momentary black out stops wild-eyed, shopping-crazed tourists (me included) in tracks. Confusion ensues. Lights return as I bring down price of dress from 350 baht to 280. Eddie later informs me of efficient cleaning agents as colors of dress likely to merge and/or completely disappear.
Day 3
9 am --- Scout around Travel Mart. Feign casual disposition whilst asking about resort prices. Island resorts incredible. Island resort prices likewise.
Scuttle to Domestic display at adjoining hall and purchase herbal balm for 15 Baht, inclusive of Thai massage.
12 nn --- Try to lose self in winding, whirling street markets of Bangkok. Purchase meat of unknown origins on stick and pure carrot juice. Food cart options fascinating and endless. Try to wander off some more. Alas, Amari Watergate tower too tall to miss.
4 pm --- Shuttle to Pattaya, a.k.a. Sin City
7 pm --- There is hip tub inside white, red, black and gray hotel room. And hip piped-in music along hallways. Entire hotel screaming of hipness. Beach a few meters away. Hotel containing packs of foreign men in uniform. Immensely grateful to former self for great Samaritan acts performed in former life.
8 pm --- Dinner at Thai restaurant with a busload of Vietnamese. Discover sinfulness of tom yum (the soup, not some Asian man named Tom).
9 pm --- Refrain from any other sin, as might affect hotel standing in next life. Disappear in immaculate fluffiness of bed sheets.
Day 4
7.30 am --- Oh, lord. Breakfast buffet bigger and tastier here.
9.30 am --- Supatraland Agrotourism. Genius venture. Fruit farmers opened up farm and for a fee, tourists can roll around the land in a tram, stopping at certain points to stuff face with lovely fruit.
Stuff face with rambutan, lansones, dragon fruit, not so with durian, then papaya, balimbing and some unidentifiable ones. Old Japanese women most delighted out of our tour bunch.
12.00 nn--- Feast at Tamnanpar restaurant, with replica of Thailand’s 9 known waterfalls, forest trees and swans in the background. Possibly best sea bass, pad thai and tom yum in planet. In sheer elation, mistakably chew on chilli pepper camouflaged as kangkong. Rising panic quelled by spoonful of sugar (First inspect sugar as back in fruit farm, chilli was mixed in with sugar).
2 pm --- Sanctuary of Truth. Amazing. A tower made entirely of wood carved by Thai artists over a hundred metres high. Continuous building since 1981, with wood imported from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Feel sad over fate of giant trees, but at least not turned to politician mansions or replica elephants for sale.
4 pm --- Royal Gems. The world’s biggest jewelry store. Horror-train-ride-like into a moving presentation of the history of jewels before emerging into hall of craftsmen and jewellers at work until finally ushered into shop with message firmly implanted upon subconscious to buy, buy, buy! Too bad I don’t wear jewelry, and fairly opposed to mining.
5 pm – Curl up at beach with bottle of Singha beer, a bag of rambutan and Sherlock Holmes. Water not exactly enticing to plunge in.
6 pm --- Ask men in uniform if they came from war. “No, but feels like it,” one says. Turns out they’re aid workers trying to deliver supplies to Burma. “It’s slowly tricking in, but just barely,” cute soldier says.
“Why don’t you just fly over in a helicopter and drop food to those in real need?” I query.
“That’s what we’ve been saying, too.”
Apparently there’s a danger of getting shot down.
9 pm --- Explore sleazy, gritty, lively side of Pattaya down Walking Street. Souvenirs, alcohol, meat and flesh for sale. Note that San Miguel is usually most expensive among all beers. Hawker tries to deposit baby monkey in my hands and take picture for 150 baht. Am terrified but take baby monkey for few seconds as monkey happily nibbling on corn. Decided monkey would take wild nibble at my fingers if corn runs out, so immediately return primate to owner.
11 pm --- Inside hip tub, contemplating a round of beer out at Walking Street.
11.08 pm --- Bundled cocoon-like in wonderful sheets and refuse to get up.
Day 5
9 am --- Back to Bangkok
10 am --- Chatuchak Weekend market. Listen to briefing and solemnly clutch maps, as if holy grail. Chatuchak enormous and dirt cheap. Good, as left with meagre assortment of bahts to spend. Buy two 20 baht ties, a 180 baht dress, five ugly 10 baht keychains, two spiffy hats for 100 baht, and an Asterix comic book in French for 150. Will learn to read French later. Return to meeting point, smelly, spent but in record time.
12 nn --- Lunch at the largest restaurant in the world: Royal Dragon. Chinese and Thai food. Utter bliss. Waiters in roller skates. Heaping plates of lobster, lechon, tom yum, sea bass, vegetables on our table. Muay Thai match on TV. Getting amply used to such elaborate banquets.
6 pm --- Plan to skip dinner. Buy bag of deep-fried crickets from the street outside hotel and a liter of Yakult in 7-11. (Seriously. They have a liter).
7 pm --- Position hapless crickets on plate as if toy soldiers marching off to battle.
7.05 --- Run over possible consequences of ingesting bugs. Slightly repulsed.
7.06 --- Take mad crunch and dismember a soldier’s head.
7.07 --- MMM.
7.30 --- Plate is empty except for few pieces of cricket legs.
8 pm --- Dave of TAT manages to get me off my content little ass to join them for Japanese buffet at DAICHI. Restaurant playing Tiffany songs and sappy Thai tele-drama at once. But food fantastic; sushi just bursting with roe.
10 pm --- Still digesting entire day’s food intake.
Day 6
8 am– Feel guilty over ridiculous amounts of food ingested at time of world food crisis and eat only small piece of toast in protest. And cereal.
12 nn – Scared for huge possibility of going over baggage limit at check-in counter. (Scared more for own self’s weight rather than luggage’s).
5 pm – Drink 3 glasses of red wine along with scrumptious airline meal as protest is momentarily adjourned.
7. 15 pm – Touch down at NAIA. Feel glad to be back home and be rejected by taxi drivers and read signs and food labels I can understand again.
Day 7
11 am--- Miss the buffet.
Barring politics, religion and puffy-sleeved colonizers, the similarity between Thailand and the Philippines is uncanny. As even Eddie, our sometimes cheerful, sometimes surly Thai guide told us over bowls of shabu-shabu at a Japanese restaurant inside one of many gleaming Bangkok malls, “In terms of looks, Thai people and Filipinos are the only two races in the world you cannot tell apart.”
I concur. That, tight traffic jams, little pockets of commerce and a shared passion for tacky evening soaps make Thailand our likeliest Southeast Asian Siamese twin. Last week I was navigating the bustling bellies of Bangkok , and I may have been anywhere in Central Manila. The scene---hordes of splayed-out wares, and hordes of people unflustered by the blazing tropical sun---was so Filipino I half expected the stalls to bust out Flo’ Rida.
Unlike us (and our hip-hop-blaring habits) however, Thailand has their King, street shrines, a staunch belief in the Law of Karma, barely any English translations for their signboards written in Thai, blissfully fat birds and street dogs (who happily consume food offerings left on the sidewalk) and the entire cast of Antz deep-fried as snacks. They also have a tourism industry fuelled by billions of dollars in investments and revenue, a hotel, a mall and presumably something exciting being built in every corner, and close to 15 million tourist arrivals just last year alone. (The Philippines welcomed 207, 272 arrivals --- a sum slightly bigger than the number of Filipinos who went shopping in Thailand in 2007).
In the several instances I’ve seen their proud culture on display, references to our country’s own automatically surfaced. They had the tinikling, the bao, the bobbing, dancing, oversized paper-machê heads. Their dances were our dances, their instruments were our instruments, and their rituals --- at least in terms of agriculture--- were our rituals. The islands and beaches touted in the domestic and international Travel Mart were our kith and kin. The fruits, the rice fields, the smiles---they were mirror images of ours. Even the laidback Thai mentality, translated as “Mai pen rai (‘never mind’),” is curiously akin to our notorious “Bahala na.”
Only, in Thailand, everything looked better produced, more efficiently executed, more developed, more understood, generally bigger, better, and altogether sweeter.
For all our conviction in Pinoy hospitality, the Thais own the title “Land of Smiles,” not us.
One stall I came upon sold atis fruits as large as melons and mangoes as long as my feet. (I literally held one against my size 8 foot).
Moreover, Thailand’s baht, although higher than our peso, buys clothes, shoes, electronics, and pretty much everything cheaper there when you compute it.
Fact of the matter is that the Philippines and Thailand are so alike that the differences therefore quadruple in size and sprout gargantuan wings, impossible not to notice. And for the rest of the world, these differences spell out which tropical country wins their bid ultimately, to plunk their euros, dollars and yens in.
Sadly for us, Thailand---undecipherable street signs and all--- remains the undisputed choice.
