Bangkok Part 2: The Search for Ladyboys

People said it couldn't be done.  That I couldn't tour Southeast Asia with only a tiny, dragon-bearing backpack, and without suffering some sort of food-related intestinal calamity.  Well, they were half right.  Petite Bertha and I have been very successful on our travels so far.  So succcessful, in fact, that I've been frequently mistaken for a 26 year old NGO worker living in Cambodia.  I choose to take this as a compliment, rather than as a criticism of my hygiene.  But sadly, my culinary luck ran out.  Let it be known: my last night in Phnom Penh I did select a resturant based on the advice of a dirty, pot-addled backpacker.  And furthermore I did eat a small portion of mystery meat.  I neglected to trust my solid gustatory instincts.  If something doesn't taste good, don't eat it!  But I was trying to prove something, I guess.  And prove it I did, to my toilet, at 5am.  Ah well, such are the vagaries of travel.

I was going to postpone my trip down to the coast to give myself a day to recover in the solitude of my guesthouse, but I was done with Phnom Penh at that point.  So I soldiered on through a 5 hour bus ride (the bus drver was playing weird Cambodian karaoke the entire time) and I made it to Sihanoukville.  Yesterday it was rainy and bleak, so I stayed inside my bungalow, pounded the imodium and cipro, and awoke today to a perfect tropical paradise, and a reasonably recovered digestive system.  And now, with the competing sounds of reggae and Otis Redding, I'll wrap up the Thailand trip.

After Cory and I departed Our Jungle Treehouse we headed back to Bangkok for 1.5 days of temples and mayhem.  The mayhem was compounded by the fact that my ATM card had stopped working at the start of the trip, and after numerous calls to my bank, during which I was assured that everything would be sorted out, I discovered that the people at TD Bank have their heads placed firmly up their asses, and that no amount of pleading and/or threatening would give me unfettered access to my account.  Ah well, such are the vagaries of incompetent Canadian banks. 


True, I flipped out a bit, but with Cory by my side I was able to rally and enjoy our jam-packed 36 hours.  We did a whirl-wind tour of Bangkok that included every Wat in the country, I think.  We saw palaces.  We saw Buddhas.  We saw decorative monkeys (I'm still not entirely sure what the deal is with the monkeys in Southeast Asia, but they seem to play a really important role in a number of religious stories.  I guess I could have asked our guide about this, but she was busy telling us about the Buddha's seasonal wardrobe, and I thought it would be rude to interupt). We did a whole lot of sweating.  And finally we ended the tour with a boat ride through the canals of Bangkok.  The boat ride was spectacular, and I'm not just saying that because we were dead on our feet at that point.  The parts of Bangkok that we had seen were so congested and they were all starting to blur together.  The boat ride allowed us to get a different glipse of the city: we saw villas next to shacks, floating noodle shops, and monks feeding catfish!  My mind is still trying to wrap itself around all that it saaw in Bangkok, but for now I'm perfectly content to hold onto this particular nautical memory.

Of course, our trip to Thailand would not be complete without a bit more curry.  Up until now I haven't truly appreciated the lure of yellow curry.  I always considered it the "mild" curry.  The also-ran.  But after brutalizing my tastebuds with a bit too much righteous chili action I was ready to mellow out.  Also, Cory made some amazing yellow curry at our Chiang Mai cooking class.  Far from bland, it was a delicate mix of spices and coconut that sort of caressed your mouth, rather than attacking it with a hot poker.  To indulge in this revelation I decided to make my last Thai meal deep-fried, soft-shelled crab in yellow curry.  Sure, I could go on and rhapsodize about the meal, but do you really need to hear more?  Deep-fried.  Soft-shell crab.  In yellow curry.  Yeah, it's exactly as good as it sounds.

 

Cory and I also had planned on checking out some of the more "risque" things that Bangkok has to offer, but every place that we came upon seemed hell-bent on selling us into white slavery, so instead the trip ended the way it began, with Thai cover bands.  We came across a bar that had only a few prostitutes and a band of middle-aged Thai men doing surprisingly good versions of such classics as "Smells like teen spirit" and "My Sharona".  Cory and I are both fairly uninhibited dancers, so we got right down to it, and joined a dance mob that included Italian lovers, Irish backpackers, Australian sugar daddies, and Spanish senior citizens.  Our moves were so groovy that they drove the few prostitutes right out of the bar. 

So Cory and I finished our trip with a dancing bang.  All items on the spreadsheet were addressed.  And thanks to her patient ministrations I also managed to make it my bus the next morning, and over the border into Cambodia, which is where our story continues.  But right now my drink is almost empty, and the beach beckons!!