On Thursday the 25th I woke up at 6am and went to work. After work I took a quick shower and packed a few last items before Victor picked me up to take me to Sam’s apartment. That week was a particularly hot week in Los Angeles. That means that in the SFV it is even hotter. As we rolled down Sherman Way I saw that the temperature at nearly 6pm was still 98 degrees. Victor had borrowed an old Accord as his new car wasn’t ready yet. This older car didn’t have working AC. I was sweating profusely in clothes I would be wearing for at least the next 20 hours. I ended up having time to shower again at Sam’s before we’d leave for the airport. Before that, though, on our way down Winnetka to the 101, Victor and I passed a big tour bus with a pink trailer hitched to it. The trailer had “pornstartweets” written all over it. This was interesting enough – but when we saw the trailer we read “AVN road trip.” AVN, of course, stands for Adult Video Network.
Victor dropped me off at Sam’s apartment and went to dinner with another friend while Sam and I rearranged our suitcases to make sure nothing was over fifty pounds. Sam had quite a few United States gifts to bring to her family and friends. Before Victor arrived around 8 to take us to the airport we shot over to Whole Foods for one last meal.
Our China Southern flight was delayed, of course, by about 25-30 minutes. So, our actual take-off didn’t occur till about midnight. I tried desperately to sleep on the flight, with no luck. I took a sleeping pill, but it seemed to have little or no effect. It isn’t that I wasn’t tired – I was plenty tired – but sitting in an aisle seat with no cushioning (not to mention the opposite of lower back support) left me too uncomfortable to do much but just sit there with my eyes closed. I may have got 45 minutes of sleep or so after 3am. After being on the plane for fifteen hours and 30 minutes we trudged off into China’s Guangzhou airport. The first thing I noticed was a vague sewer smell that permeated every inch of the airport. Sam told me that is just “China’s smell.” Yuck, not a good first impression. Once we got through transfer security (which took way longer than it should have for 5am local time) I tried to sleep on the benches at our gate- but they were, of course, the benches with metal armrests on every chair that couldn’t be moved. So, like so many other travellors across the globe, I did that weird scrunched-up-on-the-edge-of-the-bench-trying-to-sleep-but-not-really thing. I either slept for a few minutes or got close – as I remember suddenly becoming very aware of where I was and how silly I must look and sat upright. Our layover was about two hours and we still had an hour to wait.
Our China Southern flight to Bangkok was smaller (a 737 instead of 747), but still had the same horrible seats. However, these seats had more familiarly made seat back tables – which, if they had been on the 15 hour flight, would have allowed me to lean forward and sleep. This 2.5 hour flight felt like a short little hop after that rigorous 15 hour one. Before long we were in Bangkok’s new airport. The design is nice, sort of like a giant glass caterpillar, or wave. Sam had warned me that the air would smell similar to China’s, but I couldn’t smell anything. The first thing I noticed was, unlike Guangzhou, Thailand actually turns the air conditioning on at it’s airports. As soon as we found Sam’s friend and stepped outside the humidity hit me like a wave. The bad smell was absent though.
Before dropping us off at Sam’s other friend’s house in a residential area of Bangkok (Sukhumvit 39, the “Beverly Hills of Thailand”), we went to meet up with her other friend (and her friend’s mother and friend) at a restaurant called Coffee Bean. This was the first food I’d eaten in Thailand. Sam had warned me that Thai cooking uses a lot of fish sauce and coconut milk – but I couldn’t detect any of that in the delicious food we ordered at Coffee Bean. The first thing we ordered was a cold chocolate drink.
I soon discovered that due to the relative cost of food (perhaps two to three times cheaper than in America at most “nice” restaurants) it was common to order more than you’d actually eat just so you could try many things. This was, of course, to my benefit as I’d never had any of these dishes before anyway. The below dish was some kind of local vegetable fried and with a side dish of spicy shrimp in a tomato based sauce.
My pick off of the menu was the fried soft-shell crab salad. Delicious. It came with a white cream sauce to pour on the top. I was the only one that ate any of it, as all the women agreed that they grew up on crab so it was a rather boring dish for them. I certainly didn’t grow up on seafood and had never seen anything like this.
Next we drove around Bangkok looking for Sam’s friend’s place. The traffic was horrible, as advertised. One of the first things I noticed about Bangkok was the lack of attention paid to wiring. Everywhere there are electrical (and tv I’m sure) wires just strung up and hanging around. I saw a lot of clipped wires just hanging loose above people’s heads on the street. How the workers make sense of all of it I have no idea. I should have taken a photo that day – but I did not.
Another thing I noticed was that all construction is done in the open, with minimal “guarding” unlike in America. Here there are rarely cones. The only time I saw cones around the construction was in the photo below when someone was actually using a blowtorch in the street (we drove right next to this as the lane wasn’t closed). I’m not sure what they’re even doing here – hardening the blacktop?
As we sat in the traffic we heard the plop plop of thick raindrops on the cabin. The truck that we’d been picked up in was a pick-up truck and our luggage was sitting in the bed. Before long the plops turned into what reminded me of a regular Ohio thunderstorm. Complete with thunder and lightning (although not as much of that as in Ohio). Suddenly we skirted out of traffic and raced down back alleys (I would later learn that most “normal” residential streets in Bangkok are about the same width as alleyways in America). Within fifteen minutes we were backing into a parking space of a tri-level upscale home.
Sam’s friend had just had a baby boy about a year ago, and she was generous enough to let us stay in her nursery room (which has a real bed) for our stay in Bangkok. After we showered and got situated it was about 6pm local time (which would be 4am Saturday in Los Angeles) and Sam wanted to get dermatological treatment at a nearby clinic. I was dead tired, having been up for almost 48 hours with no “real” sleep. However, I agreed to go with Sam and experience this thing for myself. The treatment was in a very clean upscale clinic. We were lead upstairs into separate rooms and told to lay down on a bed. A dentist’s light was hovered over my face in the dark room. Soon a woman started sticking a needle in my face and started injecting my zits with something (Sam said this was some kind of antibiotic). I won’t say it was painful, but it was extremely uncomfortable. They must have stuck me at least 12 times, and I would have liked to stop after the fifth, but my “doctor” didn’t speak (much) English so it soon became apparent I’d have to sit there and take it until she was done.
Before long we were back in a cab on our way back to the house. When we got back we said we were kind of hungry and wondered if Sam’s friend and her husband would like to eat. They took us to dinner, but because of traffic it ended up being a two hour affair. I was too tired to grab my camera and take any photos of the food at the restaurant. When we finally got home around 10pm local time (8am in Los Angeles) I’d been awake for a full 50 hours. Probably the longest amount of time without sleep in my entire life. I shut down as soon as I hit the bed and didn’t wake up for ten hours. Because I stayed awake so long I completely adjusted to the time difference and really didn’t feel any jet-lag the next day.
Sunday, August 28th
In the mid morning we went with Sam’s friend to the local supermarket and checked out the interesting food at the bakery. We bought a bunch of stuff to bring home just to try out.
We bought four of the other kinds of bread things from this shop, but not the Tuna.
The above was described as “pizza”, but didn’t resemble anything close to a pizza to me. The dough was kind of like pizza dough, but the filling was ham, pineapple and some other things, topped with what the store described as “margarine” but I swear reminded me of Kewpie. It was still good, though.
This was a local version of cheesiebread, that has all the stateside pizza parlor cheesiebread beat.
We also bought fresh flavored soymilk for dipping the pastries in. I would have liked this better cold I think. I was expecting a different taste (I drink soymilk at home now instead of regular milk), but Sam’s friend explained that all the “sweets” in Thailand are bland compared to in America. I suddenly felt a tinge of shame, it only tasted “bland” because, as a fat American, I’m so used to having everything injected with 3 days worth of sugar in one serving and a ton of artificial flavoring.
The above thing was a bread piece with ham inside and cheese and “margarine” on top.
The above pastries are where we really noticed the blandness of sweets. These were supposed to be chocolate banana and maple syrup flavored, but they really just tasted like bread with a hint of the above flavors. In America the chocolate flavor would have been overwhelming I’m sure.
In an hour or so we left the house again to meet Sam’s friend’s husband for lunch at a very upscale sushi restaurant called Isao. Apparently, this place is the best Sushi in Bangkok. It was very good, unfortunatley I didn’t get more than one photo of the sushi as they have a strict no-photos policy. The prices were actually on-par with better sushi restaurants in America (and the quality just as good).
Above is a shot of the overcast sky and exterior street sign of the restaurant. You can see some of the electrical work I mentioned earlier – although what you see in this photo is extremely well kept compared to what you’ll see on a normal street in the city. Below is a sly shot I snuck of the Caterpillar sushi.
After lunch we were dropped off at Health Land Spa for massages. I’ve never got a massage in the states, so I’m not sure if this is normal – but they wanted me to wear a teeny tiny fishnet speedo/g-string type of thing. I tried to just put on my regular underwear, but my massage therapist took a look and said “no no no” and left until I put on the little black thing. After the massage I took a photo of it, so you can see what I mean.
After the massage we went back and prepared for the wedding reception we were to attend later that night. Sam’s friend (a new one I hadn’t met yet) drove us to the reception. It was held at Audrey’s, an Audrey Hepburn themed restaurant (very upscale). I didn’t bring my camera – so the two photos below are stolen from on of Sam’s friends that has already started putting some photos up on Facebook. I still don’t have a “camera ready smile”… which sucks…
