Divanun Guide/ Bangkok

The Divanun Guide is a one pager of everything to eat, see, and do in Bangkok

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Historical

• The Grand Palace- home of the royal family

• Wat Pho- Temple of the reclining Buddha my fav temple in Bangkok

• Rattankosin Island (Old Town)- Historic district filled with tiny alleys and ancient beauty

• Temples Galore- so many temples to post about but you could fill many days exploring these beauties

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Cultural

• Chatuchak Weekend Market- Massive market filled with food and clothes galore. A must if you want to bring back souvenirs

• Festivals

  • Songrkran- Water Festival. I’ll probably never go because its set during one of the hottest month. April 12-15

  • Yi Peng- Lantern Festival. (I celebrated this in Chiang Mai but the festival in Bangkok is nice too). Full Moon of the 12th Lunar Moon, ( November)

  • Chinese New year

• Bangkok Arts and Culture Center- A free contemporary arts center in downtown. I saw a ton of art reflecting people’s feelings about the passing of King Rama IX

• MOCA Bangkok- A paid contemporary art museum further north then the Chatuchak Market

• MBK- A huge mall that has to be seen to believed. A great place to spend those hot summer months

• Khao San Road- The party district for foreigners in Old Town.

• Kathmandu Photo Gallery- Shows a collection of emerging artist and the owners work.

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Food

• Som Song Pochana- I had this amazing soup dish called Sukothai noodles. OMG it was amazing. Its in a random part of Old Town and you have to walk down some weird alleys but its definitely worth it.

• Kanom Beung Bang Mae Prapa- Had this amazing tiny Thai crispy crepes that are sweet called kanom beung. You see them everywhere in Thailand but they had the best

• Kim Leng- This amazing spot has Mee Krob which is this crispy rice noodle that has the best balance of spicy and sweet. They also have dishes that are rare in most Thai restaurants.

• Look Sao Kor Panit- this place has some of the best mango sticky rice. I got this recommendation from the cleaning lady at my favorite hostel and she did not disappoint.

• Beef Lady- this is not the best description but outside of my favorite hostel NapPark there was a lady who sold beef that is the best beef I’ve ever had. I still think about this beef from time to time its so good. She sells beef and sticky rice by the kilo.

• Krua Apsorn- This place has a delicious crab omelet and fish cakes. Also they have some bomb mushroom medley.

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Miscellaneous

• Accomodation

  • NapPark is my favorite Hostel in Bangkok. It’s more expensive them some of its neighbors but it is definitely worth it. It is always clean even though it houses so many people. They have a great atmosphere and I met so many people relaxing in their lounge.

• Transportation

  • Public

    • There is a bus and a train system that I used to get around pretty well.

  • Private

    • There are ride share apps like Uber and Grab. As well you can order motorcycles on these apps which is the cheapest and fastest way to get around the city.

Wat Pho

Right before Christmas I flew back to Bangkok, my time in Vietnam was at an end. I hadn’t planned on returning to Thailand at all but when some friends of mine told me that they were coming by to spend the holidays I had to return to the place that started my SE Asia adventure. When I landed in the airport everything felt different. I was more confident after spending the last 3 months backpacking around SE Asia. I was the tour guide instead of being guided around, there was still a lot that this city had to offer and much for me to learn but I wasn’t as naive. I rolled into my favorite hostel NapPark and gave my friend a hug after she got from behind the desk. After dropping my stuff off we caught up about my travels in Laos and Vietnam. Before I went to bed I wandered around my favorite food stalls and grabbed a couple snacks.

Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, is one of the most famous temples in Bangkok/ Thailand. Surprisingly, I had yet to visit it. When I first landed in Bangkok King Rama IX, was having his cremation ceremony and you were required to wear black in most of the Old City. So I avoided that area and then whenever I came back to Bangkok I was always passing through. Now that I had some friends here I was finally able to see this majestic place.

The Buddha is 150 feet long, and he barely fits inside the temple that houses him. As you can see from the header photo his head appears to be mere feet from the ceiling. I imagine they had to build the temple around him because placing this statue inside after the face doesn’t seem like an option.

The temple complex is 80,000 square meters making it one of the largest in Bangkok, and with over 1,000 buddha images placed across the site there is so much to see besides the main reclining Buddha. There are beautiful gardens filled with statues like the one above. I could have spent hours wandering and exploring all the cloisters and courtyards but sadly hunger called and so we made our way to a delicious dinner. I took my friend to a little restaurant which has this dish of fried noodles and ginger that my makes my mouth water just typing this out.

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Bangkok II

History weighs down social interactions, simple communications become soggy with innuendo. Sometimes you worry more about how you were perceived than how you felt. That's how I often feel navigating social environments back home. However, Bangkok was allowing me to live a more embodied life. Everything and everyone around me was so new. There was no past to rely on for comfort or information. I was one among many backpackers brought together by a common love of exploration and enough capital (social and financial) to travel. We were all the same yet different. We were on equal footing- the real world seemed so far away. 

I was sitting on the cots in the lobby of Nap Park while The Brothers Grimsby played on the large television when I struck up my first conversation with a fellow traveler. His name was Jack from the UK and he was staying in the same dorm as me. After chatting for a bit I asked if he wanted to join me for lunch. I had looked up places to eat in Bangkok and found this amazing restaurant serving noodles that you rarely find on restaurant menus. We walked North away from the commotion and sanctity of the upcoming cremation and made our way down various alleys and side streets that were flooded from the previous days rain bursts. Making friends hasn't been this easy since college. Which made me wonder why making friends has to be difficult at all. Histories both personal and cultural have a way of wedging themselves between us and new experiences/people. 

Jack and I found the tiny restaurant the side street of a side street nestled around shuttered businesses. Four people were currently sitting inside two military men dressed in full regalia, an older woman fanning herself, and a man sitting on a stool. We were the only non-Thai people in the small restaurant, a strange pair for sure. I tried to mime for a menu but the waiter shook his head and pointed to the wall were items were written in Thai. My friend and I exchanged confused looks and I pulled out my phone to find the soup from the online article. The man nodded and asked how spicy we wanted the soup. I said very spicy despite the fact that it was a furnace outside and the only thing cooling the tiny restaurant was a fan that was pointed in the opposite direction. Ten to fifteen minutes later the sukothai noodle soup, pictured above, was brought to us. The soup contained the hallmarks of a delicious Thai soup was spicy, the flavors were sharp very fresh, and the broth had such a luscious but light taste. The best part the soup only cost me 40 baht which was a little over $1. 

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Sadly my new friend was ending his experience in Thailand just as I was beginning. I said goodbye to him a couple days later as he made his way to Cambodia. I asked a dude named Keiran to watch my laptop in the lobby and when I returned we started talking. I later met a red headed American named Rika who worked as a boat captain in Alaska. These random interactions built on top each other. Days later, the randomness connected like lego blocks. I was sitting on a rooftop with Keiran, Rika, and others talking about the efficacy of Unions, the politics of Brexit and Trump, the downfalls of ideological purity, and the role of dating apps in modern day romance. We differed in tactics and beliefs we but had interesting, civil, and challenging discussions with each other. 

We hung out for a couple more days before Rika and some other people headed north to visit Thailand's ancient capitals and then eventually go to Chiang Mai for a lantern festival. I had a few more days booked in Bangkok and then I was heading south so I said goodbye. I started to get into the rhythm of backpacking the constant stream of hello's and goodbyes, the origin stories of the people you just met. New people arrived in the city and I found another group to exploring with. We headed to the Chatuchak Market by tuk tuk and wandered among the food stalls, boutique jewlery vendors, and piles of thai silk scarves and other accoutrement.

I kept running into travelers who mentioned going to Chiang Mai for a festival called Loi Krathong and I started to rethink my plans. The goal was to go with the flow and see where SE Asia takes me and I was feeling the wind blowing me north. I reached out to my friends to see which hostel they were staying and at and thankfully it wasn't booked.

With my plans to leave Bangkok set I head out on a walkabout around Old Town to take photos and eat at a few more restaurants before leaving. I was given so many warnings about how horrible Bangkok was but I had come to like the city. It wasn't my favorite city ever but I appreciated the energy, Bangkok's ability to surprise, and the food's expertise in tantalizing the tongue. I needed to educate myself about Thailand.  This city was full of complexity and I was excited to learn more about it. I arrived with this myopic understanding of its cuisine and culture and this trip was opening my eyes. 

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Bangkok

Cities like people develop reputations. Whether they are deserved or not they spread from mouth to mouth influencing how people receive them before they even experience it. Bangkok, unfortunately, has a bad reputation among travelers and backpackers. The first time I heard someone bad mouth Bangkok I was in Seoul and someone was telling me about how smelly and dirty the city was, how they got ripped off, how... I heard the refrain so many times during my travel that when the plane landed in Suvarnabhumi I wasn't sure what to expect.  I was worried about going to Thailand. It was the first truly foreign place that I was going and I was afraid. 

Physical safety, food cleanliness, and infrastructure all fears because we label Thailand a 3rd World country. I attached deficiency to that, without any thought to where that framework for thinking about the world came from. I learned while writing this that The Three Worlds model was developed to classify Cold War Allegiances and the 3rd world were countries that were not allied to either side. How that term came to represent backward, less than, uncivilized is a product of racism and imperialsim. And I'm upset with myself for falling into that kind of colonial ideology.  Traveling through Thailand was really going to challenge my assumptions and I was ready for it. 

 When I got off the plane I marveled at how clean and white the airport was. It was like the entire facility had just opened and I was the first passenger.  I picked up my luggage and navigated my way to the underground rail system. They use actual tokens which I thought was very retro. I slipped my token into the stall and made my way downstairs to the rails. I settled down in my seat and the train began its journey across the city. A mix of families, tourists, and strangers packed the car. The train left the underground tunnel and was briefly filled with the bright light of the midday sun. My first sight of Bangkok was lots of green leaves on trees with buildings towering in the distance. I saw buildings, some dilapidated others pristine. I saw grass waving at the sky and streets  lined with empty cars. As we got closer to the heart of the city the buildings grew taller and the land more metropolitan. What I saw was a city like any other. The marked differences were the ornate red and gold shrines and the beautiful curvature of the Thai language written across billboards. Otherwise, I could have been anywhere. I was filled with a sense of familiarity when I was anticipating something foreign. The true power of dehumanization is its ability to mark the familiar foreign. 

 My stop was coming up and since I arrived in Thailand, I was in cool embrace of air conditioning. Once I stepped onto the platform the humidity and heat enveloped me all at once. I almost ran back to safety but the doors closed and the train continued on its journey. I went to the taxi stand and hopped in the first car. One of Bangkok's reputations was revealed to be true- the traffic is abhorrent. Bumper to bumper for nearly the entire drive. Sometimes the street lights would go from red to green to red again and the car wouldn't move. 

My hostel Nap Park was located in Old Town and was a few blocks away from Khao San road. The entrance was recessed creating a narrow pathway filled with couches and a mini stovetop before the main doors. Shoes and flip flops lined the floor and shelf in front of the glass sliding doors that took you inside. Bags were strewn around the interior along with the bodies of weary travelers. I checked in and took a refreshing shower. It was to hot to chill in the sleeping area- the AC is turned off in the dorms during the day to save power. The lobby was the only air conditioned place but I wasn't in the mood to socialize nor did I know how. This was a new environment that I only briefly experienced in South Korea. I forgot to pick up soap and sunscreen before I left London so I took this time to eat and run some errands.

As I explored the various stores and shops I had my first bit of culture shock. Almost every product for sale contained ingredients to bleach your skin, even the sunscreen. As a fierce protector of my melanin i scrutinized every option until I found some that wouldn't erase me. I left one store and walked  halfway down the block before I heard someone making a commotion behind me. When I turned the source was a middle aged Thai women. She came up to me holding a 500 baht note worth about $15. She pointed to the ground and handed it to me before walking away. I reached into my pocket and low and behold I had accidentally dropped this note while paying for my goods. I walked back to the hostel thinking the city I was warned about was not the city I was currently experiencing. 

One big reason for this is that the city, no the country was ending its period of mourning. Before arrival, I asked one of my Thai friends about things to do in Bangkok and she said that I was coming to Bangkok at a tricky time, the beloved King Rama IX was set to be cremated ending a year-long period of mourning. The normally bright and vibrant city was muted for this ceremony. I got to see a Bangkok that most tourists don't normally see. A reserved and more toned down city. Khao San road known for its debauchery was not allowed to sell alcohol for the entire week; as well all concerts and events were cancelled and postponed. As an outsider, seeing this amount of deference to a head of state was really surprising. I saw grandmothers crying in the street, people with sorrow in their eyes. So it was beautiful and humbling to see how much people truly cared about King Rama IX and all that he did for his country. I spent some time reading the public murals that detailed his life accomplishments.

 Many of the tourists who came to Thailand do no research about whats going on, which created tension between them and the community. So while I took this time to talk to the people who worked at Nap Park about what this time means and how to best be respectful many other white and male back packers would loudly complain about how quiet the city was. They came to party they didn't come for this ceremony. They said their vacation was ruined- as if the whole country was supposed to operate on their schedule. The worst offense was this American girl loudly proclaiming that she didn't understand why the city was still in mourning if King Rama IX had died a year prior. I was shocked that someone could be so callous cause there was a Thai woman sitting next to us as well this person was Mexican American so you'd think she would be more sensitive to other cultures. I apologized to my friend and she said she's used to Americans being rude or ignorant. 

In my short time in Bangkok I was beginning to see the strong ways in which colonialism influences travel to this day. The ways in which Bangkok operates just like any other capital city but we come to fear it because of its location or reputation. People are just trying to live their daily life just at different rhythms with different intentions. Thats why a lot of the photos I choose look inconspicuous. They were taken in Bangkok and only existed in the time before my camera shutter closed but they could also be any city full of cabs or buildings in  need of electricity. We focus on what makes us different rather then everything that connects us.  

Thats's what these rifts do they blind us to the truth that we are similar. The question i started to ask myself was, "how does one travel ethically?"  I wasn't sure of the answer but I was excited for what I would learn along the way.

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