Travels: Thailand/India 1997

Travel Letter #3

Bangkok

But that's enough wired talk for this time, I think. The rest of this letter will be dedicated to a summarize of our days in the megapolis of Bangkok and Calcutta, the latter double the size of the first. After the last letter of April 1th, we stayed another week in Bangkok. After all those lazy and inward-bound weeks at Koh Phangan, we just couldn't leave Thailand without having seen and learned at least _something_ of its culture and tradition. Since the city is only 200 years old, there is not very much of old history and monumental ruins. Our more or less mandatory touristing included the Grand Palace and its royal temples, which today is only used for rare ceremonial purposes and otherwise as a cash-earning museum. It includes the most important national symbol, a Buddha statue maybe 40 cm high made in a whole, green emerald stone. It's placed in a big temple, inside a glass monter on a high alter maybe 10 m above the floor. Covered with silk brocade it's just about as visible as Greek icons so covered with sliver, gold and jewels there's nothing left of the painting itself to be seen. If the Emerald Buddha is a bit out of distance, the monumental alter with all kinds of gold flowers, gold trees, gold Buddhas, gold this and gold that, is so overwhelming that we almost got nauseatic by the all the national-religious wealth. Why is it that religions so often spend more on buildings and symbolic periphernalia than on the people which it is supposed to serve and offer systems of meaning?

Further down the list of tourist sites were the temple of the reclining Buddha (Wat Pho), also called the Parinibbana Buddha, i.e. the dying Buddha. It's another impressing gold statue, 46 m long and 15 m high, but the large monastic compound around it also definitely worth seeing, with hundreds of different Buddha statues, quiet gardens, a traditional Thai medicine school and monks reciting the old Pali scriptures in the temples. Next stop was the National Museum, overfilled with old items as national museums often are, and fuller of nationalistic propaganda than sober science of history and art. Add to this the wooden pillar made as a foundation stone of the city (Lak Meuang), all covered with white marble, worshipped as an Indian lingam, and a picture of a very proud people where the Royal family, Buddhism, and pure superstition make up the ingredients, comes to mind. (Maybe some similiarities to the Norwegian society here?) That's enough of tourism to mention Vianmek Mansion, the worlds biggest teak building, used by the king for 5 years only.

But this was just the surface of what Bangkok offers tourists. We tried also to dig just a little bit deeper. First was the amulett marked, full of Buddhas, phalluses of all sizes, pictures of the King and his families as well as numerous objects and symbols that we didn't recognize or understand. Everything used for various degrees of superstitious behaviour that is just as much prevailant in Thailand as other places.

Second, the weekend marked offers just about everything for sale that can be carried away in a car, included all kinds of pet animals like squarrels, cobra snakes, geckos and more ordinary birds, fishes and dogs. The sensory impressions of such a marked is guaranteed to leave some impact on even the most blaze mind!

Third, at the Dusit Zoo we tried to imagine ourselves being a busy Bangkok family going to the overpacked park in the weekend to enjoy the sights of Fierce Creatures in small cages and have a Coke on the grass. Lastly, an evening at a Thai boxing stadium is not as violent and barbarious as it may sound. Thai boxing is not so much about kicking and knocking as punching the knees into the kidney region of your contestant. The ceremony of respect to the teachers and the audience before each match, the screaming oboe-playing accompanying the development of the match, as well as the almost hysteric betting-rounds during a match with open outcome, makes it all a fascinating study of a true martial art.

Everybody who've been in Bankok lament the traffic and the pollution, with good reason. There's not nesessarily too _many_ cars, the road system is just not made for many cars at all, and the result is cars that hardly moves, only emit deadly exhaustion. It's quite amazing that a city of 6 million people claiming to be modern metropolis, still hasn't build a Rapid Mass Transport System. There is a huge, very delayed and extremely expensive construction of an elevated highspeed railway going on, though, making the traffic problems even more desperate. Of course, this is also affecting two Norwegian tourists who struggle to find ways of transport to get from one point to another. Tip: Take the river or canal boats, there's no traffic jam on the water - yet.

So, after having filled our lungs with the lead-infected air of Bangkok, the evenings mostly spend at different eatingplaces in the travellers area (Kao San Rd.), too exhausted after the adventures in 36 humid degrees but to gaze over the shoulders of other travellers at some video screen/monitor, we were about ready for a change in enviroment and climate.