I Love Bangkok
I love Bangkok. I learned to say it in Thai on this trip, along with “I love Thailand”, but I have temporarily forgotten. Like many Thai words and phrases I employed successfully on this trip, I’m sure those words will come back to me when I need them again. This trip, after all, was only two weeks, and I have already been home that long when I write this. It was too fast and too shallow of an experience of Thailand. But, I knew what I was in for, and I acted accordingly, checking off as much of my list as I could, as quickly as possible.
I checked a number of things off my Thailand list that first night that went long into the morning: train from the airport, hot dish of Phad Thai, wild motorbike ride, nostalgic guesthouse, African dancehall party, late night Khaosan road, Soi Rambuttri at dawn, locating the place where Chelly and I first met. Then I spent 5 more days in Bangkok before flying to the islands down south.
Ellio Del Moss
While I was staying in a guesthouse off of Khaosan Road, the rest of my family was staying at Auntie Mandy’s apartment in a neighborhood about 30 minutes drive northeast of there called Pahon Yothin. The one bedroom apartment might fit three women on the queen bed and two boys on the couch and floor in the living room, but there wasn’t any room for me. That’s the reason for me getting my own plane tickets and my own lodging on this trip. It was almost like we were on two different trips, just intersecting for a while.
The complex where Mandy lived was something special, something I’d never seen before. While from the outside, it looked mostly like any other generic walled complex of multiple apartment high rises, on the inside it was quite different. The first clue was actually out front of the place, where there in the light of the 7-11, a ramp of grass rose up off the lawn at the complex entrance to join a green roof above the combination bus stop and taxi stand. A lone tree stood at the top, and thick bushes grew in a fence-like perimeter around any edge that might be a falling danger. It was a charming “green” feature, and a perfect place for me and Nathan to hang out telling made-up stories. It was also a clue to the green design concept used within.
Once inside the walls of the complex, and past the shaded parking stalls overhung by apartment balconies, one entered the lobby of a given building. Each lobby was of the same design, having one entrance from the parking area, some seats and a table for deliveries, with key-card access to reach the elevator in an adjoining room. On the opposite end of the room from the parking lot door was another door that led across the inner courtyard to the next building’s symmetrically identical lobby on the other side. And it was this inner courtyard that caught my attention.
The inner space of these buildings was made up of a series of swimming pools ringed by submerged steps and low walls crowned with greenery. Little islands dotted the pools, resplendent with trees and brush. At one end was a kind of treehouse with a platform and stairs, and in other areas there were showers for rinsing, and sun loungers for… well… lounging in the sun. It was the most beautiful use of the space that I could imagine. A little green and blue eco-paradise in the middle of all the urban monstrosities.
I enjoyed lounging by the pool in this green oasis, if only for the couple times I did it, and I imagine it makes life healthier and more tolerable for all those apartment-dwellers living in the heart of this crazy city.
St. Nicholas Church
I first heard of the Orthodox Church in Kenya in 2007, from the mouths of the Rastafari–and I’d first visited an Orthodox Church in Greece later that year–but since being baptized into the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Addis Ababa in 2018, I make it a point to visit the Orthodox churches wherever I travel. On Saturday night after visiting the family at Ellio Del Moss, I was on my way home (to At Home guesthouse) and decided to stop at a place called Sukhumvit, Soi Nana. This was where I remembered there being an Ethiopian restaurant, and I was planning to ask them where they go to Church on Sundays.
This strategy has worked for me in many other cities. Whenever I am on a trip that has me in a different city on a Sunday, I usually make a point of tracking down an Ethiopian Orthodox Church. And, if there is not an Ethiopian church in town, then I will find out where exactly the Ethiopians are going for worship, ’cause they always are. Sometimes it’s the borrowed premises of a Greek Church early in the morning before the Greeks have need of it, or it’s a classroom on loan from the Catholics for a couple of hours. In this case, they told me that they worship in the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, along with the Church’s normal congregation (not as a special Ethiopian prayer service, as is often the case).
This was at the second Ethiopian restaurant I went to. At the first restaurant they hadn’t brought me my mango juice after a very long wait, and when the man who seated me and who I’d taken to be my waiter–he’d asked my order after all–disappeared halfway down the dark street carrying someone’s luggage, I decided to give up on this place and go find another. As my luck would have it, just a block or two down the Soi I found another Ethiopian restaurant, in the lobby of a hotel. Unfortunately, the Ethiopian chef was absent that night, leaving a staff of other nationalities. It wasn’t a problem, though, because right across the street was the nicest Ethiopian restaurant of them all, and it was open and well-staffed. There I ordered a mango shake and promptly fell asleep in my chair, head tipped back to one side like an unmanned Muppet. After coming to and finding my lovely drink on the table in front of me, I struck up a conversation with some of the staff and customers, who told me about St. Nicholas Church.
Early the next morning, I picked up my sons in a taxi cab and we headed to the Church, making sure to arrive before 8am. It was like an island of Russia in a sea of Bangkok. A beautifully-appointed Church resplendent with golden details and hand-painted icons adorning nearly every surface, it was also meticulously clean. Russian churches don’t have pews, so we stood for a couple of hours as the room slowly filled with worshippers and the Priests and Deacons–some Russians, some Thais, and maybe other nationalities–performed their preparatory prayers and Eucharistic services in a mixture of English, Thai, Russian, and Church Slavonic (the equivalent to Latin or Greek used in many Eastern Orthodox churches). Amongst the worshippers were people of many different nationalities, impossible to identify other than the obvious Thais and Russians and a handful of Ethiopians.
Due to an old and imminently obsolete schism between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, we were not able to participate in Confession or the Communion service, but we were welcomed to join in prayer and in the Agape meal (or Love Feast) held afterwards in the small dining hall. It was a joyous experience and a wonderful opportunity to teach my boys about the universality of the Christian Life.
Deck of Cards
I woke up on Monday and went for a run from Khaosan Road down towards the banks of the Chao Praya river where there was an old military fort covered in crosses. There I set up under the shade of the trees and did my deck of cards workout, while the staff of the park kept the grounds meticulously clean and the policemen chatted and played with their kids. The “deck of cards workout” that I’m referring to is otherwise known as the “Karl Gotch Bible”, named for the mid-20th Century German wrestler who invented it. This is something I started doing back in 2013, when I was living in Thailand, in a rural area of Lop Buri Province, and looking for workouts I could do with limited equipment available. I actually still have the same Thai deck of playing cards that I bought for this purpose way back then.
When you do the Karl Gotch Bible, you shuffle the cards and deal them out one at a time, doing a certain set of exercises for each card that is revealed. Hearts are “Half Moon Push-Ups”, while diamonds are “Hindu Push-Ups”, spades are “Hindu Squats”, and clubs are “Hindu Jumper Squats”, four peculiar exercises taken from the training style of Indian wrestlers competing in Dangal or Pehlwani. Red cards count for their number, with Aces being 11 and all face cards being 10, but black cards count for DOUBLE. The first Joker you deal is 40 Hindu Squats, while the second Joker is 20 Hindu Push-Ups, making for a total of 420 squats and 210 push-ups within the workout. Then, you finish with a 3-minute Wrestler’s Bridge.
I love this workout, but doing it in Thailand’s mid-day heat is brutal. I was soaked with sweat by the time I finished and just looking for a shower, some water, and a fruit smoothie. I picked Dragon Fruit with yogurt and ice, and it was amazing.
Chao Praya River Boat
After the workout, a smoothie, and some office work in a local coffee shop, I did a bit of bulk clothing shopping near the river (40 pieces for about $200), and took a ride on the ferry. Bangkok has a number of riverboats that run up and down the Chao Praya River. Some are for sightseeing and others for local transit. While it might not be quite as fast as getting around by other means, such as car, motorbike, bus, train, or tuk-tuk, it was definitely more pleasant, and there were never any traffic jams on the river.
This was certainly not the fastest way to travel this time, because while I was waiting at the Ferry terminal, I got into a long conversation with a German traveler interested in tips for Southeast Asia. His next destinations where Laos and Cambodia, two places I know about, and so I gave him some of my best advice, laying out a trip itinerary from Sihanoukville in southern Cambodia to Luang Prabang in northern Laos. And my boat came and went without my noticing it. So, I had to move a little closer to the loading ramp, listen a bit more closely to the conductors on the dock, and make sure I was the first one aboard the next Orange Line heading north when it came.
When I finally reached my destination of Wat Soi Thong around 3pm, I desperately needed some real food. I found sticky rice and preserved eggs and even took some pictures of it to food-brag.
Meal with Seth
Carrying on with the food-bragging theme, I will now describe the epic meal we had with my old friend Seth Newman on Tuesday. I have known Seth since the Savage Land days, nearly twenty years ago, when he came to me Karate Kid-style looking for someone to teach him how to fight. I accepted the role as his Mister Miyagi and helped shape this wimpy teenager into someone with confidence and courage. He has since grown up into a fine man, a sometimes schoolteacher, sometimes professional Muay Thai fighter, married to a Thai girl and raising a family in Bangkok.
I drank a coffee topped with ganja-infused oil at The Bangkok Stoner on Monday that had me high as a kite all night and into the next day. We also went out partying on Khaosan Road until dawn (again) that night. But somehow, Chelly and I still got up in time on Tuesday morning to catch a train and meet Seth for late breakfast around 11am. We enjoyed a fantastic and fabulous seafood meal, the very stuff of fantasies and fables…
I had very little to do with the ordering of this meal, with Seth (the local) and Chelly (the chef), going to town pointing out this or that and calling out orders to the staff. When it came, it was a feast the likes of which I’ve only seen in those travel food shows. We had everything at our table, and it was all delicious. I ate some of this, and some of that, but some of it I avoided for religious reasons. The food was amazing, just dripping with flavor and super fresh, mostly seafood. We had a great time and it was awesome catching up with Seth, hearing his take on being a foreigner living in Thailand.
And I’m pretty sure this is where I got food poisoning. If it wasn’t something in the meal, then it was just the normal Traveler’s Diarrhea that inevitably catches one after a few days traveling abroad, usually from unfamiliar microbes in the water. Anyway, I was sick for about two days.
Funny & Random & Unpictured
There’s no pictures of me suffering two days of traveler’s diarrhea, getting skinny and losing weight, wanting to lay in bed and be close to the toilet, but having to travel across the city doing stuff all the time anyways. There are no pictures of the very fun trampoline park called Bounce that Seth and I went to with our kids, where I got to meet his lovely wife Jasper, where I spent half the time in the bathroom, where Nathan got concussed when his brother collided with him on a trampoline, then threw up multiple times afterwards while we were getting dinner. There are no pictures of the Livotel near Mandy’s placed that I moved into after 3 nights at At Home, which was a dump. I realize that sentence was confusing. They were both dumps.
There ARE, however, pictures of the “no farting” sticker we saw in the back of a taxi cab, the logo on the “Angry Daddy” toy vending machine in Mandy’s neighborhood that kind of looks like me, and the random Greek skinhead sticker that might have something to do with a football team, but could just as easily be from a band, and kind of looks like me as a teenager. I love Bangkok.
Nic Nakis 