Thursday, November 16, 2006

Bangkok

Amazing how much you can pack into a couple of hours when you're motivated and have 8 hours sleep under your belt. All the motivation in the world still has to contend with the behemoth that is the rush hour traffic in Bangkok. When I got into the taxi at 7 am and asked to go to Wat Po, the driver looked at me in horror.
"2 hours".
Its less than 5 miles from my hotel.
"Head to the river"


This picture is lopsided because I was lopsided when I took it.

The river is like a highway and two hours was reduced to 40 minutes. It also offers much more interesting scenery than the bumper to bumper rush hour traffic.

In June I posted quite a few pictures from the river, as I cruised along it for a couple of hours. Today I simply used it to speed up my trip, but was rewarded with some cool images.







As you can see the river is a living vibrant part of the city. Commuters, tourists, commercial traffic and people living on its banks use it for transport, food, and probably as a toilet. It's dirty and muddy brown, but the breeze off the water is cool relief from the heat of the city.

If you've ever wondered how that teak table starts its journey from rainforest to dining room, here's an insight.

That can't be safe.

The boat docked at a rickety jetty which was really no more than a couple planks balanced on a pile of garbage. It was a rolling, swaying exit, camera swinging around my neck and worries of what swallowing the brown sludgy water would do to my guts.

As if by magic an oldish guy appeared and pointing to a handwritten sign, "Disempark (sic) and landing tax- 20 baht" demanded his money.

Twenty Baht is about 30 pence.

The "dock" was attached to a scary labyrinth of temporary lodgings in a warehouse on the river's edge.

If I was a nervous sort, I would have been shitting myself.

But I'm not, so I wasn't.



Tired faces peeked out at me from cardboard boxes, then disappeared to go back to sleep.

As impressive to me as the opulence of the temples I saw later that morning, was this little ornament spinning in the wind. Some inner creativity drove someone to make their little world a little less grey using whatever they had at hand.


That's it for now.

Tons more stuff to post later

T

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