Massage, The worlds DIRTIEST river, China Town, and muffler-sucking contest.
So it all started off nice, a walk down the main street, we are in some province that I can't pronounce, or even remember, in downtown bangkok. We are at the Ambassator hotel, if you want to look it up.
Anyway, we are walking around and decide to hit up the exceptionally cheap Sky Train, an overhead rail system that is fast, clean, and CHEAP. The rest of bangkok is just fast and cheap. Still being groggy, I'm not sure how it happened, but we ended up walking around after getting off the train at the end of the line, that lead us near a river. It seemed piller after piller, there was a strange dog licking itself, or a homeless man licking a dog, or perhaps the dog was licking the homeless man, I'm not really sure. Anyway, I cant tell you how DIRTY this area was, there were .. steps of some sort going into a small "bath" system under these pillers (pillers for the Sky Train) and there were cement slabs in the middle of the Baths, where these people were sleeping (homeless, one would assume) .. but all I could pay attention to were the steps that lead into these baths, and the pools of nasty, murky brown/grey water with enough trash to choke a billy goat. So at the end of these baths, one might even call them drainage cannals, but the steps make me think its some type of ..... dare I say it.. bath. Anyway, at the end of these baths, there are metal grates, typical of a drainage canal blocking the flow of trash in and out of the baths, and pretty much covered in polution/sea lillys. At the end of this system was a river. A very big river. Like, the main river. Wow. Now I know where the trash came from. We ended up taking a boat up the river, and thank god it was a high-walled boat. Sitting at the side nearest the water, I was terrified that a single drop of this FILTH would touch me, and I was quite prepaired to immediatly find a hospital and get every shot known to man if even a single drop touched me. My mom thought I was over reacting, but you have no idea how nasty this river is. Its.. nasty. I was quite pleased to hear our stop was #5, and came up pretty quickly, landing us smack-dab in the middle of Bangkok China Town. This is a very cool place, if your into that sort of thing. Strange fish/seafood vendors line the streets, selling soups that look like they were simply dipped into the river and had "meat" added. But I will say I had a great time. So to move along, we found ourselves at "The Princess" or something like that, a fancy mall/hotel/office space rental all in a 5 story building. After cooling off in the lounge for a bit, we wandered back outside and started looking for something to eat. I think what I mean to say is we started looking for something GOOD to eat. I had earlier eaten about 8 bird-eggs, cooked like chicken eggs usually are, and they were good, but much smaller. Great w/ salt and pepper.
So to get to the fun part of my story, we ended up hailing a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled vehicle with a centered driver and two back seats in "bench" form, ie just a long bench seat.
unknown to us, were were about to take a 30 minute drive with a large exhaust pipe shoved down either of our throats at every second. I cant tell you how much exhaust we sucked down. Every time a bus went by, we practally had our shirts over our faces. The equivelent of dirt-bikes line the streets, and drive in and out of traffic like a cross-stitch contest, no kidding. I saw 1 accident and Im shocked to hell no one died in our 30 minutes of muffler sucking. I wont be taking any more tuk-tuk rides longer than 5 min.
Anyway, we are walking around and decide to hit up the exceptionally cheap Sky Train, an overhead rail system that is fast, clean, and CHEAP. The rest of bangkok is just fast and cheap. Still being groggy, I'm not sure how it happened, but we ended up walking around after getting off the train at the end of the line, that lead us near a river. It seemed piller after piller, there was a strange dog licking itself, or a homeless man licking a dog, or perhaps the dog was licking the homeless man, I'm not really sure. Anyway, I cant tell you how DIRTY this area was, there were .. steps of some sort going into a small "bath" system under these pillers (pillers for the Sky Train) and there were cement slabs in the middle of the Baths, where these people were sleeping (homeless, one would assume) .. but all I could pay attention to were the steps that lead into these baths, and the pools of nasty, murky brown/grey water with enough trash to choke a billy goat. So at the end of these baths, one might even call them drainage cannals, but the steps make me think its some type of ..... dare I say it.. bath. Anyway, at the end of these baths, there are metal grates, typical of a drainage canal blocking the flow of trash in and out of the baths, and pretty much covered in polution/sea lillys. At the end of this system was a river. A very big river. Like, the main river. Wow. Now I know where the trash came from. We ended up taking a boat up the river, and thank god it was a high-walled boat. Sitting at the side nearest the water, I was terrified that a single drop of this FILTH would touch me, and I was quite prepaired to immediatly find a hospital and get every shot known to man if even a single drop touched me. My mom thought I was over reacting, but you have no idea how nasty this river is. Its.. nasty. I was quite pleased to hear our stop was #5, and came up pretty quickly, landing us smack-dab in the middle of Bangkok China Town. This is a very cool place, if your into that sort of thing. Strange fish/seafood vendors line the streets, selling soups that look like they were simply dipped into the river and had "meat" added. But I will say I had a great time. So to move along, we found ourselves at "The Princess" or something like that, a fancy mall/hotel/office space rental all in a 5 story building. After cooling off in the lounge for a bit, we wandered back outside and started looking for something to eat. I think what I mean to say is we started looking for something GOOD to eat. I had earlier eaten about 8 bird-eggs, cooked like chicken eggs usually are, and they were good, but much smaller. Great w/ salt and pepper.
So to get to the fun part of my story, we ended up hailing a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled vehicle with a centered driver and two back seats in "bench" form, ie just a long bench seat.
unknown to us, were were about to take a 30 minute drive with a large exhaust pipe shoved down either of our throats at every second. I cant tell you how much exhaust we sucked down. Every time a bus went by, we practally had our shirts over our faces. The equivelent of dirt-bikes line the streets, and drive in and out of traffic like a cross-stitch contest, no kidding. I saw 1 accident and Im shocked to hell no one died in our 30 minutes of muffler sucking. I wont be taking any more tuk-tuk rides longer than 5 min.
posted by Matthew DeWitt at 3:37 AM
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