New Adventures in Bangkok

After a few weeks working as a research assistant at Oxford, I had the good fortune of finding a job to bring me back to Asia. My position began online towards the beginning of the month, and my visa was approved shortly afterwards. I arrived in Bangkok on the 27^th of June. Careful as I am never to let myself form idealistic expectations of my travel destinations, I was surprised when – in the land of smiles – one of the guards at immigration hit me on the arm and pointed in front of me. He only spoke Thai, and the gesture meant to convey the simple and unnecessary instructions that I should move forward in the queue by about five centimetres. Thankfully, my carefulness not to form idealistic expectations of countries is matched by an equally strong resolution not to judge them by first impressions.

This was the only unpleasant experience of the evening. It could have been much more troublesome, for I had been sternly warned to make sure the stamp on my passport matched the electronic visa I had received. Leaving nothing to chance, I slid the immigration official my electronic visa before I gave him my passport and loudly stressed both the type and duration. That done, I picked up my luggage, exchanged some money, bought a month-long phone plan, and queued up for a taxi. Nothing very remarkable happened that night, except that when the taxi arrived at my hotel, the security guards immediately rushed towards it and checked the interior with flashlights.

My first day in Thailand was a Friday, and although that would usually have been a workday for me, my boss was very understanding of my request to take a day off for errands. I had forgotten my shaving cream and belt at home, and I would also need to buy more sunscreen and exchange more money. The biggest priority, however, was to find long-term accommodation. Stopping by a 7-Eleven to buy my necessities, I made my way to an apartment complex that had not responded to my earlier email enquiries. I discovered the reason in person: the rooms were hopelessly booked out until next year. I thus moved on to plan B – walking around various sights and doing the rest of my errands while leaving the apartment hunt for the afternoon.

From where I stood, the closest attraction was the Golden Mount, a stupa (or chedi, in Thai) perched on a massive white pedestal. The Golden Mount was initially conceived by Rama III in the early nineteenth century as a giant chedi. However, the structure was never completed and dilapidated into a hill, on top of which a smaller chedi was build by Rama IV. In later years, the smaller chedi was covered in gold and the hill itself received concrete fortifications. The larger complex of Wat Saket, within which the Golden Mount is located, is also famous for its grimy history. Located just outside Bangkok’s city walls, this is where dead bodies used to be taken for cremation. In times when cholera outbreaks ravaged the city, however, the crematoria could not keep up with demand and the corpses were eaten by vultures instead.

After climbing the mount (whose very top was undergoing renovations), I started returning north when I was stopped by a local. As I would learn over the next few encounters, many tourist sites and busy intersections are populated by a class of people who channel tourists towards tuk-tuks. The story I have heard from them is that the government is trying to incentivise tourism, which has enabled tuk-tuk drivers to follow long itineraries for the negligible sum of 50 baht.

My own experience has cast a little doubt on this narrative. I agreed to take the cheap ride, as the driver suggested taking me to Wat Intharawihan, which would otherwise have been rather out of the way for me. To pad out our itinerary, he made a stop by Wat Sunthon Thammathan – a minor temple tracing its origins to a relic brought from Ayutthaya – after which we drove on to a clothes store. I was initially reluctant to include this stop, but the driver persuaded me to stay for ten minutes, as the owners of the store were giving out free petrol to tuk-tuk drivers. I also figured that I would be able to buy a belt there, and this assumption proved to be correct.

Finally, we arrived at Wat Intharawihan, a royal temple famous for its 32-metre-tall golden Buddha statue. Begun in 1867, the statue took sixty years to build, and the topknot houses a relic gifted by the government of Sri Lanka. It occurred to me at this temple that either some Buddhist celebration was going on or Thai people are extraordinarily devout. Many temples, with Wat Intharawihan being a good example, were receiving a steady flow of visitors and had marquees set up to shield them from the sun.

For a small tip, I asked my driver to drop me off at Wat Chana Songkhram Ratchaworamahawihan, a temple best known for its lavish interior and historical significance. Its origins date to the eighteenth century, when it was set up as a temple for resident monks of Mon ethnicity. Its name became Wat Chana Songkhram (or War Victory Temple) following several Thai victories against Burma after the latter had destroyed Ayutthaya in 1767. The temple is close to another religious centre: Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, which houses a golden chedi and serves as the final resting places for the ashes of Kings Rama VI and Rama IX of the currently reigning Chakri dynasty.