I had a nice day today with my old friend Bank. We met about 11:30 at Silom Complex, had lunch, hung out a bit and then went out for a snack later (since neither one of us really enjoyed what we had for lunch and didn't eat much).
As we were sitting in a little restaurant on Soi 3, up the street from my hotel, I told him how much I like this little neighborhood where my hotel is located. Since it is located on a soi off the main streets, it feels like my own private piece of Bangkok. There are a lot of foreigners staying in my hotel (of course) and there was some sort of hotel/residence right next to the place we were eating, yet, the life on the streets outside of the restaurant was unmistakably Thai. I like that I get to see a little bit of Thai life that is not altered or distorted for tourists' eyes like on some of the main streets.
I watched as people went to and fro, most of them returning from work, but others going or returning from shopping or running other errands. Directly outside of the window of the restaurant was another little soi and we observed several guys horsing around. It looked like they were fighting, but they were just playing. Life in the sois seems so much more relaxed and playful than life on the main streets.
It is interesting to see the way the city is laid out. I consider the two main streets, Silom and Sathorn Roads, to be the outer rings of my "block", and between those two main streets, there are several smaller streets that run parallel, but are not for cars or other vehicles that are not traveling within the boundaries of the block. I mean, it would be very difficult for anyone who was trying to go anywhere else in the city to travel through the sois. Often they end in dead ends or are blocked by pedestrians, bikes, parked cars, or vendors selling food on the streets.
So there are the two major streets and then some minor streets and within them a bunch of alleyways that get no vehicle traffic at all, but where there are various markets that come and go during the day. It's quite a web of life all within this "block" of the city.
Because I've always stayed on the main roads, I never really ventured into the sois unless I had a destination that was located on a soi. But now, since I am staying on one, and I find life on the main streets to be a bit overwhelming at times, I'm enjoying just hanging out in this inner world, and I feel like this veil which has always existed for me as far at Thailand goes, is intermittently pierced and I get to see inside the real Thailand a bit more.
I doubt that as a foreigner I will ever really experience or come close to knowing the real Thailand. I don't know if any outsider can ever really know the true essence of any other foreign culture. But I can see that by only sticking to the main touristy areas and only going to places where menus are in English and I can get by without speaking Thai, I have limited myself to only one aspect of life in Bangkok, and there is so much more to it that I cannot even begin to imagine.
After traveling around to so many different places, I think I have a much deeper appreciation for Thailand as a place to visit. The people are incredibly sweet, gentle, friendly and easygoing. They have an expression they often use that translates as "never mind". I never feel they are in any way judgemental of the many oafish foreigners (myself included) who traipse around their streets sweating, looking incredibly uncomfortable and making all kinds of cultural faux pas. They either pretend not to see us, or when they have to deal with us, it is always with a smile and a sense of total acceptance.
And then there is the food. After so many trips to Thailand I am completely ruined when it comes to eating Thai food anywhere else. From a makeshift cart on some alley to the fanciest restaurants, the food is incredibly delicious, varied, healthy, fresh and often very cheap. Other than our lunch today (we had a hot pot in this Chinese-type chain restaurant), everything that I've eaten here has been incredible. I had a delicious serving of sticky rice with mango that I picked up at the market next to the place where I got my laundry today. Later with Bank I had a really yummy pork salad with garlic, chili, lime juice, shallots and mint, and tom kha gai, coconut milk soup with chicken, galangal, kaffir lime, lemon grass and this one had some really yummy mushrooms (I took what we didn't finish to my hotel and just had it as a snack).
Between eating, there is either shopping or massage. The shopping opportunities are endless, and my quest to find a good Thai massage nearby was finally realized today when I went to a little place that just opened down the street from my hotel. I got a 2-hour massage - 1 hour foot massage which was really good, and 1 hour traditional thai massage which was not at all painful and really helped to stretch some of my tight joints. I wish I had tried it sooner and will be going back every day if I can until I leave on Monday.
I guess what I was trying to express when I started this post kind of got sidetracked, but it brings me back to an earlier thought I had before I started writing. I was thinking of my experience eating with Bank earlier and then having my feet massaged in a place that was filled with foreigners. I had gone from one side of the veil to the other. But I think one of the things I am really appreciating about Bangkok is that it allows me to do that. When I was with Ken yesterday eating I-san food and being the only foreigner, no one took a second look. No one acted like "what is HE doing here?" - I was there and no one seemed to care. And yet, I can go and pamper myself and do things that Thais might not do (in the same way). Sure they get massages, but not in fancy places like I was today (with fancy prices, that are cheap for me, but not for them). I have the ability to move between these two worlds easily, at will, as much as I like.
It's easy for me to love Bangkok because I have only done it in short doses. Unlike Seville, where I eventually got bored and tired of the heat and the noise in my neighborhood, I never get to that point with Bangkok because I am never here long enough. But I am thinking that I would like to try staying a little bit longer to see what the experience becomes like for me. I'm guessing that given the openness of the Thais and the ease with which I seem to meet people here, I will find myself having more opportunities to get to know the real Bangkok, on the other side of the veil.
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