One night in Bangkok

Our trip towards New Zealand would be made in stages. There are, unsurprisingly, no direct flights from Kathmandu to Auckland, so you have to go to the nearest travel hub in-between; in our case, Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok holds the dubious world record for the world's hottest capital city. Bangkok would be a stopover for us, as we would be unable to make the next-scheduled connecting flight, which would prompt one of the air traveller's most famous questions; should I sleep at the airport, or make the trip into town?

But I get ahead of myself. The plane trip was actually quite entertaining. Amy and I sat next to a Nepali man, his first trip on a plane. Through our fragmented conversation in English and Nepali we learned he was flying to Indonesia (I think) to take a job in a relative's television factory. It wasn't a long flight, but he was just nervous enough to keep us from getting too distracted. My favourite moment though, was during the in-flight meal; it was dal bhat, ie., rice and a curry. As we finished our tv dinner portions, he flagged down a passing stewardess and demanded more rice, to which she responded that "she'd see what she could do," which left him very confused. Of course, for him, dal bhat just naturally comes with unlimited portions. He would, sadly, depart the flight disappointed.

Bangkok's new airport is very flashy; smooth finishes, rounded edges, and wide-open spaces. There is plenty of room to get around, and plenty of signs to make sure you know where you're going. After some thought and deliberation we decided it made sense to make the most of our short time in Bangkok and head into the city, rather than seclude ourselves in the sterile airport. Leaving the airport was fast and efficient; as well, we were unencumbered by our large bags, as we had elected to have them passed through to the Auckland flight.

As soon as we passed through the automatic doors to locate the downtown bus, I realized that Bangkok wasn't just extremely hot, but extremely humid. The airport is climate controlled, so every interior space is a brisk eighteen degrees centigrade and pleasantly dry. But outside, Bangkok was (at nine o'clock in the evening) around twenty-eight and you could feel the air dripping with humidity.

Kao San Road.

The bus took us through Bangkok's continual rush hour, and dropped us at Kao San road, the tourist epicentre of Bangkok's downtown core. The area is always bustling, and nighttime is when it truly comes alive. The road is probably only about four or five city blocks long, but the buildings are festooned with colourful signs, each reaching out a little further than its neighbour until it's just signs as far as the eye can see. The profusion of accents is impressive, but the language is almost always English. The area had a lot in common with Thamel, except it was just more efficiently laid out in a straight line instead of rambling lanes that went off in different directions.

We strolled down Kao San road, letting the crazy night scene play out around us. The average denizen was under the age of thirty, had a few piercings or tattoos, or if not that daring, necklaces or bangles. Lots of product in hair. Cheap party clothes and plenty of exposed skin. It seems this is where the foreign crowd comes to let it all hang out.

Standing out from the loud music (techno, rave and current American chart-toppers) at the other end of the road was a Christian missionary, his deep booming voice competing with stores' sound systems for peoples' attentions. He was very old school, dressed in black slacks, white short-sleeve Oxford shirt and black tie, bible in one hand and fist in the other. Like most street evangelists, it's hard to wander in to the sermon as it seems to ramble; however, to his credit, he did have a number of people tuned in to what he was saying.

As we passed him, a guy came up and offered us a place to stay, and we decided to go check it out (we really had very little to go on with Bangkok, not having a guide book to work from). It turned out to be perfect for our needs and we spent the night, paying a little extra for air conditioning. An air conditioner is in all the rooms, but your extra payment gives you the remote control that activates it. And given that we were already sopping with sweat by the time we got there, it would prove to be well worth the extra investment.

We slept the sleep of the jetlagged.

The next morning we had our whole day ahead of us, by now extremely pleased with ourselves that we had chosen to venture into town rather than hunker down in the airport, curled up on a bench. Even at eight in the morning the temperature had crept up to a balmy thirty-two degrees, but a light breeze kept it from being too terribly oppressive. The hotel restaurant was open-concept, seated on the ground floor. We were served by a pleasant young man wearing a t-shirt sporting the Starbuck's logo; at least, that's what it looked like, until you looked at it more closely to realize it said "Starfuck's".

Kao San Road.

The day would be our oyster, as we didn't have to get back to the airport until after dinnertime. We decided we would just stroll the streets, leaving our bags at the hotel, and see what was worth seeing. We wandered through some shops; back down Kao San road, this time in the daylight; tried to find some markets. We weren't out for more than thirty minutes when a Thai couple started chatting with us at a crosswalk, asking us the usual questions: how long had we been in Thailand, where had we gone, what did we think of the country; and, in an unusual twist, which of the city's monuments we had seen. When we replied we hadn't yet seen any, the lady got quite animated, telling us that we were very lucky, for today was "Buddha day," a state holiday in which many local monuments were open without an admission fee. And moreover, if we took a government-owned tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaw) to tour us around to them, we would only pay twenty bhat as a flat-rate (around three dollars Canadian). Excited for us, she went on to hail us the appropriate tuk-tuk, spoke to the guy rather harshly and sent us on our way before we could even think twice.

Bunches of Buddhas.

Thus, we went on a Buddha sight-seeing spree. As it turned out I think the whole flat-rate tuk-tuk scheme had been underwritten by the city's larger jewellery chains, as part of the sight-seeing tour involved us making stops at various shops to ogle their beautiful (and relatively pricey) collection of gems and jewellery. Our driver was fairly chatty, and apparently he was supposed to be fed by the jewellers as part of his compensation, so for the few side-trips to the jewellers we acted as interested as we were supposed to act, but didn't buy anything.

The Buddhas themselves were quite impressive. The first monument stop we went to was closed temporarily for a service; we decided not to wait. The second was to the "big Buddha", a sixty-foot tall golden statute of the demigod, complete with a giant Buddha sun-hat. Regardless of the free admission, there were still plenty of people around the monuments, intent on selling us things, be it refreshments, souvenirs or caged doves we could release at the Buddha's feet for good luck.

Decorative carving.

The decoration on the Buddhist temples was exquisite; ornate carving decorates practically every surface of the buildings and statutes, and if it's not covered with gold leaf, it's decorated with inset gems and precious stones. You're required to remove your shoes whenever you walk into a holy space, if you're allowed at all; the floor feels luxuriously slick and cool, made out of marble. The roofs of the buildings have delicately structured curls at the ends, making you wonder how they stay intact, and more to the point, how the keep the water off.

Our final stop after yet another jewellery store was a temple on top of a large hill (it probably has a special name, but I can't recall it). Our tuk-tuk driver abandoned us, with our consent; I think he realized that we hadn't bought anything from the stores, and since I think the way they made this scheme work was that the drivers got a commission from sales, he was more than ready to find someone else with looser pockets than ours.

The hilltop temple was exquisitely designed, surrounded by exotic plants and flowering trees. You climb to the top via a circular staircase which ascends the structure on both sides; one for climbing up, and the other for climbing down (though plenty of people seemed to just take whichever staircase suited their fancy). The view from the top would have been particularly astounding, if not for the gloomy haze that covered the city. The sun still managed to pierce through, and without the benefit of my sunglasses (they had been thoughtfully packed away, en route for Auckland) it was one of the brightest afternoons I can remember.

Prayers before Buddha.

Another giant Buddha statue capped the temple on its roof, and a short set of stairs brought you to it. It seems to be customary to walk around the statute counter-clockwise, probably several times, and if you're particularly devout, you kneel and pray, and leave donations, at several points. Everything seemed to be packed into the space: prayer wheels, banners, small statues, candelabras; as well as non-devotional items such as coin-operated telescopes for seeing deeper into the haze.

After several hours of full-on Buddha sight-seeing, we reached our saturation point and decided we would head back to the hotel for a late meal, some caffeine and air conditioning. The walk back wasn't that hard - Bangkok, at least downtown Bangkok, is pretty well laid out and it's surprisingly easy to navigate with the usual crop of shoddy tourist maps - but the sunshine and humidity were taking their toll. By the time we piled ourselves into the seats in the hotel café, we were knackered.

It was a neat, whirlwind tour, and I could have easily been persuaded to spend more time in Thailand. But we were already anticipating New Zealand, and after a day of punishing heat and humidity, the relative cool of eighteen to twenty-two degree weather looked very appealing. Getting back to the airport was a fairly painless exercise, and the flight to Auckland was exceedingly cushy, with touchscreen televisions on every seatback. The hours spent crossing the Indian ocean passed quickly and entertainingly - and we were quickly touching down in Auckland.