So, obviously, I attended a traditional Muay Thai kickboxing match at Bangkok’s classic Rajadamnern Stadium, first opened to the public in 1945. Because… it’s savage and uncivilized? Also, because it’s a thing here, and I should do the things here? Although that line of reasoning is dangerous, as it ends in a gogo bar with new friends and a noticeably lighter wallet.

Well, I’m here to learn about the local culture, and Muay Thai is quintessential Thai culture. So let’s carpe the fucking diem. Together, of course. I can feel you right by my side.

The Spectacle

Before we get to the actual boxing, there’s the context. Maybe this is what boxing matches in the west are like, wouldn’t know, but the bombast felt most to me like an NBA game. There were t-shirts thrown to the audience (by hand, no cannons), there were light shows and Dance Cams and Friend Cams and Kiss Cams. The Kiss Cam stopped on one couple. She waved at the camera and he, without a moment’s hesitation, lifted his shirt and played with his nipple. Like, “Kiss Cam, right. Better bust out the signature move.”

There was an emcee who spoke almost entirely in English, making the whole event feel like something staged for the entertainment of farangs. Said English was delivered with the exaggerated cadence I associate with WWE hype men. Plus twerking. He twerked. In a totally dignified way. Stop judging.

Of course, the legacy Rajadamnern Stadium has been updated to incorporate the full, necessary, and expected multimedia extravaganza.

The in between rounds action was almost as good as the boxing. Here we see the vigorous rubdown and the extravagant dousing with water. This clip stops short of the work inside the trunks, which seemed to be a consistent feature. Trunks pulled out, hands dipped in. I think it was like, “Sure, I’ll go risk permanent injury for you. But I’m getting the Happy Ending, motherfucker. Right here, right now!”

I think all the dousing is in service of the dramatic halo of water droplets they produce when they’re hit, the boxing equivalent of a cinematic lens flare.

The boxing itself seemed… weird? Not like I have a baseline, but it wasn’t at all clear what’s forbidden, as it had a more than expected flavoring of street fighting. Clinching, head kicks, noogies, kneeing, head locks, kidney punching, kidney kicking, wedgies, rolling on the mat like wrestlers, and, apparently, just throwing your opponent to the ground.

I’m sure twerking was reserved for the emcee, but other than that it seemed like a free-for-all. The only time the referee intervened was to pull the boxers apart from a clinch. And it didn’t appear they were permitted to clinch until someone broke a rule or crossed some ill-defined line. It seemed more like, “OK, enough. You’re boring the audience. Move on.”

The net effect was kind of like watching an NFL highlight reel with nothing but concussions (*sigh* – I checked, and of course that’s a real thing that actually exists). There were eleven bouts and I stayed for all of them. Because it was kind of fun. Not like the most fun I’ve ever had and a high I’ll be chasing the rest of my life. But I kind of expected that I’d watch a few bouts and leave, queasy but impressed with my open mind and stout heart. But I had fun. I found it hard not to get swept up in the crowd’s blood lust enthusiasm. Who knew I was that simple? Shut up.

But you’re here for the savagery and I’ve kept you waiting. I’m a very poor host.

If you find boxing and its brethren morally offensive or just difficult to watch, you can stop here. You have been trigger-warned.

The Sweet Science

I always assumed that description was a Mailer-ism, as if somehow we needed more proof that the man was a clown. Turns out it was coined in 1813 by a British sportswriter. People have been stupid for such a very long time.

The boxers ranged in age from 16 to 37 and were paired in bouts by weight, although the weight groups topped out at 140 pounds; these well-oiled gladiators weren’t carrying a spare ounce. The pairings showed no regard for age, however. Oldsters fought against youngsters, with winners on either side of the divide. The 37 year old lost to a 19 year old, and a 16 year old was flattened by a 27 year old. C’est la fucking vie.

Round One of the first bout was underwhelming, as the two teenage boxers circled one another like kittens, with only a tentative jab or kick breaking the routine. It was interesting to see the little timing steps they took before a kick, bringing an unexpected element of dressage to the proceedings.

Then they started boxing. By Round Four a cut had opened up on the Blue boxer’s forehead, offering the evening’s only blood. Despite that, it went the full five rounds and was won by Blue by unanimous decision.

Then it got serious. Of the remaining ten bouts, four ended in knockouts. This one features the 27 year old Italian taking out the 16 year old Thai in the first round. Not for the faint of heart. The excellent view, by the way, courtesy of my ringside seat. You’re welcome.

Yet another knockout, of an entirely different nature. This features the Moroccan fighter, who I thought was the evening’s best kicker, knocking out his overmatched Thai opponent in the second round.

To zero in on a specific technique, it seems perfectly legal to just grab your opponent’s leg and hold on.

Of course, no night is complete, boxing match or not, without women beating each other up. Here we have our combatants, a sneering Thai boxer and her pensive Eastern European counterpart.

The Thai boxer knocked the other woman’s mouthguard out in the very first round, foreshadowing her win by unanimous decision.

The final bout of the night just had to end in another knockout. This one featured the 19 year old knocking out the 16 year old in the second round.

Then there’s this. Not the final bout, but the most devastating knockout. I had just missed filming this, but my adorable, nearsighted French seatmate shared his video with me. Shout out to Hugo for this video.

I refer to him as both adorable and nearsighted for the same reason, by the way. We were chatting and I had made some reference to living in New York City in the 80s and 90s, and he asked how old I was. In response his eyes got big and he told me, no way, he’d pegged me for 45. I love you, Hugo. Never change.

And there you have it. I enjoyed that. Is there something wrong with me? Certainly. Is this evidence of what it might be? Maybe? Please vote in the comments.

I would definitely not have done this with Dorothy. I clocked over seven miles of hiking, which is well past her limit. While the path was okay, the ascents and descents were steps made of stones of variable height and pitch, which Dorothy would have hated. Plus, she doesn’t trust her joints enough to negotiate entry into the pools over wet, uneven rocks. All by myself I was free to frolic like drunken mountain goat, although I suspect I presented more as coked-up bear.

But before I got to enjoy that experience, I was subjected to a stop that made it clear that my lawn, all unbeknownst, extends all the way to Thailand. And those kids were stomping all over my rose bushes.

I’m sure that my invocations of Dyspepsia, Goddess of Bile, are amusing, but I don’t actually take pleasure in experiences that engender that response. The whole curmudgeon thing feels like a form of weakness, that I somehow lack the capacity to find joy in whatever situation I find myself in. But hear me out. I’m not sure joy was on the menu for this experience.

JEATH War Museum

So we have a tour group whose primary interest is hiking in the jungle and swimming in the pools under waterfalls. This activity alone, with transit time, is about nine hours. That’s a commitment. And you ask yourself, as a tour operator, “What can I add to that tour that will appeal to my ardent hiker/swimmer nature lovers?”

And you answer yourself, “Why, it’s obvious. A POW concentration camp museum! Genius!!!”

Weirdly, this is the standard tour. It doesn’t matter which tour operator you use, unless you hire a private car and driver to take you to the falls, your day in nature comes with a free side of concentration camp. Specifically, the camp the Japanese set up in Thailand to house British and Australian POWs forced to build, wait for it… The Bridge On The River Kwai. Or as it’s properly called in Thailand, Khwae Yai.

The museum is set up to simulate the housing for the POWs, and it includes exhibits and a video. There were photos, which I side-eyed because I couldn’t greet them face on, which looked like the liberation of Auschwitz, nothing but living ghosts.

When I was in high school, a history class showed Judgement at Nuremberg, which includes documentary footage from the liberation of the concentration camps. To which my response was, “You, yeah y’all totally need to watch this. It will be a character building experience for you. But I’m good.”

I know there’s a difference between bearing witness and misery porn, but I’m not sure I can actually tell them apart. I feel like I’m capable of understanding how fucked up humans can be without having my head held down and my nose rubbed in it. There’s a level of fact that just seems gratuitous.

I’m a big baby and a raw, throbbing nerve. I couldn’t watch the video. I spent the fifteen minutes of the video following this Majestic Beast:

I truly don’t understand the impulse. Is this their way of turning something horrific about their past into something positive? “That was bad, but at least we can charge tourists to see it.” Do they think we want to see? I had a driver in Kolkata who insisted on taking me to a colonial-era church because he wanted to show off the architecture. I stayed the minimum time necessary to avoid providing insult, but the space felt haunted by the brutality of the Raj. It made me nauseous, and it wasn’t even my own history. I don’t know how it was just architecture to my driver.

We had a driver in Cambodia who offered to take us to the Killing Fields. You can take tours in Vietnam of the guerrilla tunnels. I’ve also never been to Gettysburg. No. Just no. 

Here’s the deal. Every one of the yellow triangles on this map is a POW camp run by the Japanese with the Thai government’s forced acquiescence. “Nice country you got here…” It’s not really an offer you can refuse. And while there are protocols for housing prisoners of war, the Japanese couldn’t be bothered. Not when there was a train to be built and forced labor to build it.

This was the message given to the workers:

As befits my shallowness, my favorite display was this very Pugsley Addams recreation of the Allied bombing of the bridge.

Next stop: down the river to the infamous bridge itself. We could get there on the bus, or for a mere additional 150฿ we could take a boat down the lovely river.

My seat mate in the six-seat boat was a German tourist. When we landed at the dock by the bridge he informed me that there’s no way the bus could have beaten us there, as we were doing a brisk 40 km/h on the water. That is the most German thing ever. Lord knows how he snuck his sextant past me.

I figured once we were out of the faux POW camp I’d be fine, but the bridge had its own issues.

Its other side is where it’s problematic. First, there’s this:

But mostly, there’s this:

A POW-themed village, with food stalls and merch kiosks. And the same approach to verisimiltude as Hogan’s Heroes. Misery cosplay with a happy clown face donked on.

Thankfully, that concluded our Journey to the Past. Next stop: blessed immersion in the waters of life.

Erawan Falls

There isn’t actually a whole lot of incisive commentary available for this part of the journey. Jungle is swell, waterfalls are magic, and the water was… brisk. So, a little bit of travelogue for you. Enjoy the pictures.

These are the pre-falls. They don’t even merit an entire integer. Fall 0.5.

Fall #1.

And here it is, in action.

These guys were in all of the pools, and came in all different sizes. At first I thought they were just indifferent to my presence and comfortable swimming right into my legs. Then I realized these are the same fish they had in tanks all over Vietnam. Stick your feet in and they’ll eat the dead skin cells right off your legs, the world’s creepiest exfoliant. I was never tempted to try that, but those fish were at least tiny. These were fucking carp sized. I shudder to recall it.

Fall #2.

Fall #3.

More action.

Fall #3 was where I found a woman who apparently enjoyed the free spa treatment. She just stood there the entire time I was at 3, doing this:

The path up to fall #4 featured:

Fall #4 is called The Sea Ogress’s Breasts, because it features two large round rocks that the water falls over. And because everyone everywhere is twelve. It also features idiots. There’s one now, negotiating one of the ogress’s breasts. Oh, the stories he will tell his grandkids.

More beautiful half falls on the way to #5.

The walk from 4 to 5 was one of the longest, about 600 km, so I made 5 my personal peak. It definitely felt like I got the payoff.

And here it is, in all its glory.

Here, I think, was the real reason to stop. Would I be able to top the peak experience of seeing an influencer in her native habitat? Don’t be silly. Also, don’t make eye contact, and don’t extend your hand if you’re holding food.

On my way back down, this guy presented himself. Perfect ending. To a weird but, on balance, rewarding day.

Maeklong Railway Market

Our story starts, as all good stories do, at the Maeklong Railway Market. Specifically, on the train that goes through the market. We took a bus to the train station. Which was this:

I am reasonably sure that when I am happy or amused I smile like a normal person. At least no one’s said anything. But when I am asked to smile for a photograph, that thing where you don’t know what to do with your hands happens to my face.

I may need to practice smiling in the mirror, so I can learn to simulate a human expression. This is why, despite the clamor for more selfies, there are so few pictures of us on the blog. In my case, at least, it’s because smiling makes me look like I’ve had a stroke. Dorothy, on the other hand, has lots of practice smiling and reliably crushes it. I just think she considers it none of your business.

The market is known locally as Talat Rom Hup, meaning the “umbrella pulldown market.” That’s because the market spreads out right to the train tracks, and everything needs to be pulled back when the merchants hear that lonesome whistle blow.

It’s remarkably similar conceptually to Hà Nội’s Train Street, where a train goes through a canyon of cafes built right up to the tracks. Nothing needs to be pulled back there, however, so long as you keep your hands inside the cafe at all times. Even though we were walking distance to Train Street in Hà Nội’s Old Quarter we affirmatively declined to visit, as it seemed like nothing but a mindless Instagram opportunity. Absent Dorothy’s more rarefied perspective, I appear to be precisely the kind of schmo who does stupid tourist shit. Who knew?

Pulling into the market was, I have to admit, pretty entertaining. People crowd the tiny space left between the tracks and the shops to wave at the train. We on the train return the gesture by crowding at the windows and waving back. It is silly fun.

Here’s what it looks like after the train pulls out: Awnings are dropped over the tracks, and merch is moved right back up to the brink.

While I found the setup adorable, the market itself was meh. The larger market, away from the train tracks, is one of Thailand’s largest fresh seafood markets, but the market right on the tracks is clearly meant for the train tourists. It’s full of the same goods you can get in any market in Bangkok, a mixture of food and tourist schlock. Since we were discouraged from bringing fresh seafood onto the bus for the next leg, there wasn’t much on offer that was of interest.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Next up: A floating market. We’d been to Kompong Khleang in Cambodia, which is a floating market on a lake, served with a side dish, like all of Cambodia, of genocide. Damnoen Sadauk is in a canal system, more like the one in Xochimilco just outside of Mexico City. The canal system in Xochimilco was built when artificial islands, chinampas, were created by piling mud on top of rafts, letting them sink, and doing it again until the rafts became anchored by the trees growing on them. This system is over 1,000 years old, and is why Xochimilco is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Damnoen Sadauk, on the other hand, was manufactured by decree. The 20-mile long main canal was built in 1868 to connect up a pair of rivers. Locals dug about 200 extra canals for fun, creating the Floating Market district. By the mid-60’s the market had largely been replaced by roads and stores, but it lives on. Damnoen Sadauk was built in 1981 specifically as a tourist attraction. It is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Typical Thai traffic, even on the water.

You should notice something right away. This is the opposite of what you think of as a floating market. You’d expect that boats will be plying the waterways hawking their wares to tourists on other boats. Here, the goods were all on the land side of the canal and the floating part was the customers in boats. See something you like and your skipper will pull over for you.

The weird side effect of this was that the shops were actually all on land that just happened to front the canal. So while you feel like you’re in the middle of this entire aquatic experience, just behind the Potemkin facade of merch booths is a parking lot with buses and roads and shops that don’t front the canal. It was disorienting to walk to our bus and feel like we were going behind a movie set.

A panoply of tourist goods.

Proof positive that I’m just another fucking tourist. I had my picture taken holding a lemur named Mai Tai.

The best part of this is that when I saw the lady with the lemur (and the man with the enormous albino snake, which I was not motivated to hold for a photo op) I texted one of our guides to ask whether it was ok (I know, for example, that you’re supposed to leave the elephants alone) and how much I should expect to pay for a photo?

She answered that the lemur whisperer would ask for 200฿ (about $6 USD), but I should bargain her down to 100฿. I had no intention of bargaining over a couple of dollars, so this is how the negotiation went:

Me: How much for picture? Her: 200 baht. Me: OK. Her: No, 150? OK, 100. OK?

It felt like she wanted me to have the bargaining experience but didn’t trust me to hold up my end, so she did all the work herself. Talk about a service-oriented economy. Also, honestly, the highlight of the experience, which was otherwise very, very touristy. There’s a reason we don’t tend to do that sort of thing, but that’s what I get for taking off and leaving my Jiminy Cricket behind. Being a real boy is hard work.

For those of you who have been following all along, you know we’re not big fans of tours. For the most part we prefer to make our way on our own. Because we’re rugged individualists. Or maybe because most of the tours involve a lengthy stop at an expensive souvenir shop that kicks a percentage of sales back to the tour operator. We’re too old to waste time.

There are exceptions. Like Mỹ Sơn in Vietnam, whose website cautioned visitors to stay on the paths to avoid triggering an unexploded bomb, the gift with purchase so graciously left by the US of A. That seemed like a good place for a guide.

No bombs here, but the solo math favors the tours. With two of us, a pair of tour tickets comes close to paying for a car and driver to just take us where we want to go. Not the case alone, so I’ve booked a handful of tours to make sure I see the sights. First stop: the temples of the ancient kingdom of Ayutthaya, an unsurprising UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Ayutthaya Kingdom was in charge from 1351 to 1767, and is considered the precursor to the modern Thai state. Siam, by the way, is what farangs called the country. They called themselves Tai, and the post-Ayutthaya capital of Bangkok was known as Krung Tai (Tai Country). So they’ve been calling themselves Thai since long before we named cats for them.

The city of Ayutthaya, including the temple complex, was built on top of an ancient Khmer city dating back to about 850, when it was known as Ayodhya. We know that from historical records, as there don’t appear to be any Khmer-era ruins left behind. Ayutthaya was destroyed by the Burmese army in 1767, because that’s just what people do. But before that it was one of the most prosperous cities on the planet, with an estimated population of 1,000,000 in 1700, which made it one of the largest cities in the world at that time.

The city was built right on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, which runs all the way into Bangkok, making it relatively easy to move down river and establish a new capital, Krung Thep, when circumstances required. Like LA (legal name El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula), Krung Thep is a nickname, its formal name being Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.

There will be a quiz.

The tour operator issued a warning about my knees prior to the tour. Probably not just my knees. Knees in general, which were deemed an unacceptable accessory for the temples, so long pants would be required. When I boarded the bus our guide, Henry, pointed right at my knees, and I assured him that I had brought long pants to cover the offending joints.

As we pulled into our first stop, I unfurled and donned the elephant pants I’d been forced to purchase at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, double bagged over my shorts. I couldn’t help but notice that three of the gentlemen on our tour were wearing shorts, with knees fully exposed. A direct affront to the Buddha. I kept waiting for Henry to do something. Or for us to reach the temple where they cared.

By the time we hit the third of our four temples, I just sat down on a bench, stripped them off, and stuffed them back in my bag. I’m sure the locals had never seen a farang molt. But I’d had enough, enough I say.

Too hot for double bagging. Or even single bagging, if the one bag was long pants.

Wat Chaiwatthanara

We stopped at four temples on our tour, first stop Wat Chaiwatthanara. Like many of Ayutthaya’s temples, it was built in the ancient Khmer style, including the traditional Khmer prangs, distinctive decorative spires.

The contrast to the temples in Bangkok, Wat Pho and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in the Grand Palace complex, was striking. Although the Bangkok temples, at over 300 years old, aren’t exactly spring chickens, they have both been scrubbed to a New Temple sheen. Ayutthaya’s temples, thanks to the Burmese army, are legitimate ruins.

Wat Mahathat

Wat Mahathat is best known for a tree growing around a Buddha head. The story has it that the Burmese Army, them again, desecrated a 1600-vintage statue by lopping it’s head off. The head lay on the ground in the ruins until a bodhi tree grew up around it, its roots cradling the head and keeping it upright, yet never covering the face, which would be sacrilege. Bodhi trees, apparently, know better than that.

Plus, more Khmer-style temples.

Wat Phrasisanpethi

Temple #3 on the hit parade.

Wat Lokaya Sutha

There were a few tiny ruins, but this was all about the big Buddha. At 137 feet long and 26 feet tall it’s only slightly smaller than Wat Pho’s massive golden Buddha. It dates back to the beginning of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, but the brick and mortar structure has obviously been well loved.

Here’s a thing I wasn’t expecting. One of the apparent side effects of the solo travel is a hunger for human interaction. There were about thirty folks total on the tour bus, from all over: Russia, Portugal, Israel, India, Latvia, and Cleveland. I had actual conversations with about fifteen of them. But not in a desperate way. I’m sure I came across as exceptionally stable. It was, in many ways, the highlight of the tour.

Of course, that probably shouldn’t have been the highlight. We’ll see on subsequent tours if that was a notably lively group, or if the tour itself just wasn’t so much. Or if I’m just that emotionally needy.

Nah. The void and I are good, and neither of us would be pleased if I somehow filled it. But I am loosely tethered, and come by the gypsy feet honestly, having been subjected as an adolescent to my parents’ hardcore Wanderjahr.

So we’re doing what we’ve been doing all along: learning more about what works and what doesn’t and trimming to fit. We started with an idea, and we’ve been refining and redefining that idea on the fly ever since. No need to stop now, when the current iteration of that idea has me in Thailand instead of wintering in Chicago. Some ideas are objectively better than others.

It’s an interesting experiment, as Dorothy and I have never really been alone. We moved in together on my 18th birthday, directly from our parents’ homes. She waited until I was of age, which is kind of romantic, in a predatory sort of way. So this life is all we’ve known, and current circumstances will test our appetite for being apart and Dorothy’s appetite for my having fun without her.

Early returns are positive. We both conceive of Us as our atomic unit, but it appears that atom can be split. When we travel with others (my sister excepted, who will gladly have fun wherever you set her down) we’re always conscious of having to adjust our preferences to other’s desires. Not in an invidious way, just that we’re aware of the need to arbitrate across two sets of needs: Us and Them.

We’ve been doing it so long, it’s easy to forget that getting to Us also requires arbitrating across two sets of needs: Mine and Hers. It’s seamless and pretty unnoticeable, but now that it’s been stripped away it’s hard to be unaware of its absence. Not that the compromise is painful, but there’s something delicious and buoyant about just standing up and going somewhere, without any conversation required.

A steady diet of it would require living alone, which sounds like a punishment, but there’s no reason not to enjoy and appreciate it while we’re able. We’re thinking a few months off from each other every year could be an excellent thing for all.

On the emotional/psychological scale. On the practical side of the ledger I think it’s all negative, as we each have to replace the effort and expertise we provide one another. I have to feed myself and Dorothy has to do her own travel planning. Survivable (I haven’t gained any weight!), but measurably suboptimal.

The Neighborhood

The Airbnb is fine, its greatest asset being its location. It’s a one bedroom with a kitchenette. Like our place in Hà Nội, the kitchen sink is on the balcony. Also like that apartment and our Balinese apartment, the only source of hot water is the shower. Unlike those two, which had hose bibs in the shower, the shower head itself is the only place hot water appears here. I promise to never again take Western plumbing for granted. I believe it is our sole meaningful contribution to Civilization.

The textbook protocol for what we do is to take a place for a week on arrival and then use that week to scout neighborhoods and be certain of where you want to stay. We’ve never done that because it sounds tense and hard. Hitting the ground and having that kind of existential task in front of you with the clock ticking just seems nasty. So we do our homework in advance, learn about different neighborhoods, make our commitments and takes our chances. We’ve only had one fail so far, where we didn’t really enjoy our location, but our track record’s been pretty good.

Bangkok has been no exception. I’m in the Sukhumvit district, a ten-minute walk from stations on two of the main train lines. I’m a ten-minute walk from two hypermarchés. There’s a convenience store on the corner, a laundry a few doors down, and a weed shop directly downstairs. There’s two major malls, including an Ikea, within that same ten-minute radius. And food fucking everywhere.

The streets here are filled with weed shops (four just in the half block from the apartment to the main street), massage spas (eight in that same half block), bespoke tailors (only three, but that would be ridiculous density on any other half block on the planet), and more restaurants than can be counted. I have all the amenities I could want right at arm’s length, with trains able to take me to whatever isn’t right at hand.

I had to get to the Immigration office to extend my visa and there was no gracious public transit method, so I took the scooter version of Grab, the local Uber. It was faster than a car and a quarter the price. What I didn’t factor in was that the streets around my apartment were constantly clogged with traffic and moving at a crawl, but other streets were open and moved at full speed. That was a harrowing 30 minutes. That I won’t be repeating. I took a car home.

I have no idea how the ladies sidesaddle the scooters. That’s just nuts.

Those trains, by the way. First, always nice to have your train station look like a pagoda. But one of the lines has a positively brilliant innovation. You can buy a ticket or a pass, but if you’re a casual traveler you can also just wave your credit card at the gate and it will open up. Do it again on departure and the system will calculate your fare and charge your card. I think it’s new and hasn’t been rolled out across the entire system yet. It is the most friction-free transit system I’ve ever encountered.

Add bilingual signage and Google Maps directions that tell you what entrance to use and what platform to wait on, and it couldn’t be easier to get around like a local. Literally, as I’ve yet to see another farang on a train.

The extreme walkability of my neighborhood has led to extreme walking. In my first seven days here I’ve clocked 43 miles. That is not a typo. Thank goodness massage is so cheap and plentiful.

Neighborhood Wonders

OK, don’t pretend you weren’t about to google it. I did, and once I saw the pictures I had to go. For you, dear readers, always for you.

It turns out, which would have been my very last guess, that Cabbages & Condoms is the front end for an NGO, the Population and Community Development Association, focusing on birth control, education, and AIDS safety. It was founded by a retired politician interested in improving lives by promoting sexual health, and all profits go to the NGO.

It’s actually a lovely space, although the condoms are everywhere, once the eye adjusts. The food was OK, nothing to write home about, but the bowl of condoms on the table was a nice touch.

That was entirely my pleasure.

And then there’s this. This was just occurring outside an entrance to the MBK mall. No explanation was offered and, frankly, none was expected. I watched it until just before it got creepy and I was asked to leave.

Medical Tourism

I saved $850 today. I needed a root planing, but didn’t have time to take care of it before I left. I figured that I’d get it done in Bangkok, since my Balinese tooth cleaning had been such a positive experience. I saw this place in a mall (within my ten-minute radius), and walked in to inquire about rates. All four quadrants would be $250, as compared to the $1,100 I’d last paid in the US, so I asked to be scheduled.

They had me wait a few minutes then took me into a practice room for what I figured was a conversation with the dentist. Nope, they sat me down and started in. The dentist had excellent English (they even had forms in English), and asked me if I had any problems with my mouth. I told her that I couldn’t make it speak Thai.

She was super deft, and even the anesthetic was administered gently. I don’t much care for needles, whether they’re depositing or withdrawing, but of all of the places I hate needles, needles inside my mouth are the worst. The entire process was gentle and impressive. Although leaving the hearing aids home was a solid decision.

She did the first two quadrants and scheduled the finish in a week. Elapsed time, from walking in the front door cold to leaving with a slab of meat where my face had been: an hour and fifteen minutes.

Sometimes I just never want to come back.

Fun Fact

Thailand is the very first place we’ve been that doesn’t have some kind of brutal colonial hangover. Because it’s never been colonized, one of only a handful of countries that have avoided the master’s whip hand. There are a few we’re unlikely to visit (Afghanistan and Iran, although I’d love to see both), but we could wind up in Nepal or Ethiopia. It could happen.

Frankly, it’s a delight. Wading through the colonial aftermath, especially in Southeast Asia, has been illuminating but rough. Whatever fuckery they’ve inflicted on themselves is a rounding error compared to what the West would have done to them. Except, I suppose, Pol Pot, who colonized his own country. Anyway, I’m happy to have the break.

Massage Culture

There are two distinct and largely mutually exclusive massage cultures here: the traditional Thai massage and the traditional Happy Ending massage. Tradition! The trick is telling one from another, as each is only good at its specialty. If you’re looking for a real Thai massage and stumble into a Happy Ending place, you’re going to leave disappointed. And vice versa.

Some of the Happy Ending spas are easy to spot, as the photos of their “therapists” are alluringly posed, often including measurements and specialties, and their menus are a matrix of duration and granular variations on the Happy Ending. Just right out there in front of god and everyone. Unashamed. Easy, however, to avoid mistakes.

Real massage shops tend to offer masseuses in uniforms, rather than low-cut dresses. Although that’s a sort of uniform, too. A masseuse is assigned, rather than selecting one from a lineup. Some of their menus even say No sex, which is pretty clear. But not dispositive, since some of the Happy Ending shops are camouflaged, with uniformed girls and innocuous menus. By the time you’ve suffered an indifferent massage and been offered a Happy Ending, you’re already way past the desired experience.

Another tell: do they offer nuru massage? Nuru, if you don’t know (and if you do you probably shouldn’t admit it), is a Japanese invention, because of course it is. It involves a slippery, seaweed-based gel that’s applied by a naked masseuse using herself as a loofah. Like if a Slip ‘N Slide® and a succubus had a baby. It’s hard to conceive of anything more Japanese than that particular combination of innocent and depraved. That’s not just my opinion, by the way. These are the people, after all, who gave us anime tentacle porn. Anyway, as delightful as it sounds, nuru’s intentions are completely different than that of an actual massage.

Or this. The emphasis is probably not on the quality and integrity of the massage.

Online reviews are their own minefield, as coy verbiage makes it unclear exactly what experience is being reviewed. I found a forum where men traded intel on Bangkok’s various Happy Ending spas and posted a question: where do you go when you want an actual, real Thai massage? I figured consumers of the one would be able to tell them apart, and sure enough, I got a handful of recommendations right within my ten-minute radius.

Wat Pho? I Don’t Know, Stop Asking…

My first stop, counterintuitively, was the temple at Wat Pho. Wat Pho is actually the thankfully shortened nickname, its full name being Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan. But everyone knew her as Nancy. No one knows exactly when it was built, but sometime during the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which places it anywhere from 1351 to 1767, a pretty wide range. The current footprint appears to have been established right around 1700. Which is notable because it still has that new temple smell, like they just removed the tape.

We’ve been in plenty of places (Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Hagia Sophia, the Medina in Marrakech, Tunisia’s El Jem colosseum…) so deeply infused with their own antiquity that their age had a seat at the table. And ordered for you. Not so Wat Pho, which has been buffed so hard and maintained so diligently that it could have been built yesterday. But it wasn’t.

These days, Wat Pho is known for several things. One is a 150 foot long, 50 foot high golden Buddha statue. If you had one of those, that’s what you’d be known for, too.

But I’m not fooled. You came for the stupas. And you’re not wrong. They are splendid. Enjoy.

It is also Thailand’s first public university, teaching traditional Thai arts and sciences. In 1955 they opened a school for traditional medicine, including Thai massage. It’s still operating, and there’s a massage center on the grounds of the Wat. No appointments, but I walked right in. I figured I’d baseline Thai massage at ground zero and have a yardstick for judging how good the massage was at a more convenient, less expensive location.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Massage

I’d never had a Thai massage before. It’s on the menu at most of the places I’ve been in Southeast Asia, but I didn’t know enough about it to know if I’d like it, or what it was for, or even if what was offered was an actual Thai massage, so I’ve never requested one.

What surprised me most was how intimate it turned out to be. Not in the Happy Ending sense, obviously, but in the sense that it’s a full contact sport. Elbows, knees, legs, feet, all used to stretch this limb or that, to bend me, rotate me, and generally tie me into a pretzel knot.

Rather than standing up and addressing me from a remove while I lay on a table, like an autopsy, the massage therapist was on the same surface as me, climbing, rolling, circumnavigating, and doing anything a squirrel can do to a tree. She was a preposition. We were engaged with one another, rather than my being the supine recipient of the kneading of muscles.

It was a lovely, intricate dance (I followed), and a fabulous massage, so much more actually therapeutic than a traditional massage. I staggered to my feet feeling noticeably better, more limber, able to move more freely. I am an official Thai massage stan.

Armed with my newfound expertise, I went to one of the shops from the suggestions I’d been given. Truthfully, I picked it on price. There were a number of ladies sitting in front in branded masseuse uniforms, and I wasn’t given a choice of therapist, so that was promising. One just grabbed me. I did notice that most of the masseuses were aunties, but the young cute one had picked me. It’s all the charisma. Not my fault.

I then proceeded to get the very best massage I’ve had in my life. In fact, had I done this one first I think I’d have been disappointed in the Wat Pho massage. In the interests of full disclosure, I was high. I’d stopped at one of the many dispensaries on the walk there and scarfed down a 10mg gummy on the way. No paperwork or ID, by the way, more like a convenience store purchase. It was harder to get a tube of cortisone cream.

I don’t think that harmed the experience in any way, but I also think, my condition notwithstanding, that it was an objectively amazing massage. I’ll be going back, for sure, and will do it sober, so I can report if the experience in that condition is less ecstatic, more quotidian. What I suffer for you all…

In addition to massage, the Me Time options here include a smattering of Vietnamese-style barber shops, like the one I visited in Hà Nội. 700฿, by the way, is about $22 for 90 minutes of service.

Weirdly, the one thing they don’t offer is the haircut. I guess the claw grooming makes up for it.

Bangkok

Bangkok feels most like Istanbul to me, with echoes of Mexico City. It’s a dense capital city with plenty of historical flavor and a strong modernist streak. But our view of the cities we’ve visited is inevitably colored by where we’ve chosen to stay. Hà Nội undoubtedly has much in common with Bangkok, but we stayed in the Old Quarter, which felt more like a LARPing arena than a modern capital.

Here’s one of the strangest things I’ve noticed about Bangkok. In every other place we’ve been on the planet, sidewalk traffic patterns mirror roadway traffic patterns. If the cars drive on the left, pedestrians walk on the left, and vice versa. Not here. The cars drive on the left but pedestrians walk on the right. The only pedestrians walking on the left are farangs, desperately trying to rationalize the chaos. And only making it worse. It’s a gift.

It makes crossing the street even more disorienting than usual, for those of us used to cars on the right. I feel like a meerkat, swiveling back and forth, never certain in which direction lies danger. All of them, I think. Danger lies in all of the directions here.

The Old City

If I’m staying in the heart of modern Bangkok, I owe myself a visit to the Old City to compare the experiences. Little did I know that I’d already been, as Wat Pho is in the Old City. I did a little more homework before venturing back, and learned that the area, properly known as Rattanakosin, is also home to the Grand Palace, the ferry piers of the Chao Phraya river, ancient forts, and Phra Athit Road, home to some of Bangkoks oldest structures.

Truthfully, Phra Athit was a little underwhelming. Yes, there were some old buildings, but they were leftovers that have been individually repurposed as shops and restaurants. There was no sense of the history of the district or what it had once been like. Hà Nội’s Old Quarter, Marrakech’s souks, Istanbul’s Sultanahmet historic district… You could trace their history directly back from their modern iterations in an unbroken lineage. Phra Athit, on the other hand, was some old buildings still in use. Not uninteresting, but not the living history I craved.

The Grand Palace

This was definitely the highlight of the Old City, especially viewed in tandem with Wat Pho. The grounds of the Grand Palace hold two distinct attractions: The Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace itself.

Before I could cross the threshold, however, my exposed calves were deemed insufficiently respectful. Thank goodness they couldn’t see my musclebound thighs. The horror! I was forced to both purchase and wear a pair of long pants. In their defense, they were light and gauzy and were gaily festooned with elephants. In my defense, I was wearing long pants in 90° heat. I appealed to Buddha directly, but was met with stony silence. Fucking Buddha, amIright?.

Like Wat Pho, every one of the buildings here seemed scrubbed raw and built yesterday. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha was built in 1783, but you’d have to carbon date it to tell. As advertised, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha holds an emerald Buddha, high up on a platform, orders of magnitude smaller than Wat Pho’s massive golden Buddha. In addition to pants being required, there was a sign at the entrance admonishing: Do not point your feet to the Buddha. Not entirely sure how that was supposed to work in practice. Crab walking?

No photography was allowed, so let’s thank Wikipedia for this image.

But that’s OK, because the temple itself had plenty to offer on the outside, having a, how do I say this, distinctly Liberace vibe, all gilt and polished mirror tiles.

The Grand Palace was built in 1782, and served as the royal residence until 1925, although it’s still in use for official events and state functions. Which is probably why this was as close as I could get.

The grounds also held the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. She seems to have been much beloved, and had just died in October of 2025, a few months before my arrival. Memorials to her are all over the city.

Just hanging out in front of a metro station. The guest book on the table was completely full

Finally, I ended my tour of Rattanakosin with a walk to Phra Sumen Fort, right on the Chao Phraya River. Dating from the late 1700s, Phra Sumen is one of only four of the original forts still intact. The rest were demolished to make room for roads and buildings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It was a peaceful way to end my visit, but I was truly knackered by the conclusion. The easiest way to get home from the fort was a water taxi to a train, about an hour-and-a-half total transit time. I buckled, and took a Grab back to the apartment.

The Dainty Elephant In The Room

While there are Happy Ending massage parlors everywhere on the planet, Thailand stands tall as one of the globe’s sex capitals. Much of it is tourism-based, but there’s a considerable portion of it that’s local. It seems only lightly stigmatized, as it enjoys a quasi-legal status and is a substantial contributor to Thailand’s economy.

Prostitution in Thailand is legal so long as there’s no coercion or trafficking involved, no pimping, and so long as solicitation isn’t undertaken “openly and shamelessly.” That’s a vague metric, yet no one seems to have run afoul of it.

In July of 2016 the then Tourism Minister announced that the government would be abolishing the sex industry to make Thailand a more wholesome destination. He lasted just over a year after that proclamation. Instead, there’s a substantial movement in Thailand, led by human rights organizations, to fully legalize and regulate prostitution. Which would bring Thailand up to par, human rights-wise, with the rural parts of Nevada.

The Happy Ending massage parlors, because they blend into the landscape and are everywhere, are actually the underneath of the iceberg. The more visible tip is the overt red light districts: Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza, and Patpong in Bangkok, Bangla Road in Phuket, Soi 6 and Walking Street in Pattaya. Unsurprisingly, given my central location, I’m close to two of them, Soi Cowboy within my ten-minute perimeter, Nana Plaza just outside it.

All of these areas are combinations of gogo bars, hostess bars, and ladyboy bars. Soi Cowboy has a ladyboy bar called Cockatoo. That’s just excellent. Thailand’s ladyboys are legendary, and if it was just a cabaret show I would totally go. Why not? But all of the bars, ladies and ladyboys alike, are hard-sell hustles. Entering a ladyboy bar is implied consent to being hustled, so no. Also, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about beautiful women with unusually high testosterone levels. I just feel like I’d be on the wrong end of that. I am a gentle woodland creature.

One of the bars just off Soi Cowboy is called Bush Garden, which also warrants calling out. It’s not even their language, but they use it awfully well.

I’ll confess that I walked Soi Cowboy’s single neon-lit block intending to check out one of the gogo bars. First, because why not? And second, because sure. I’m here. It’s a thing. Life’s rich pageant. But the drink hustle is supposed to be fierce in those places, and if you’re not vigilant you can wind up with a substantial, padded tab and large men insisting it be paid in full. The level of effort required to avoid being hustled just seems to exceed the likely entertainment value.

In general I consider myself a pretty intrepid traveler, hardy and capable of taking what the universe throws at me. Unless it has tentacles. Then I’m out. But if I’m being totally honest, it’s not just the effort to avoid being hustled that’s keeping me out of the gogos. I don’t consider myself easily intimidated, but they intimidate me. I’m probing that feeling like a sore tooth, and the only solution may be to man up and cross the threshold. Or I can just be a weenie. Also a perfectly reasonable option.

I think the most dangerous thing we can do, as travelers, is to apply our lens to other cultures and judge them on their fidelity to a foreign point of view. We’ve been able to see positives in everything from one-party rule (Cuba, Vietnam) to state religions (Morocco, Tunisia), although, looking through a US lens, those things are just objectively wrong. Even though plenty of Americans, it seems, would be happy with a state-sanctioned religion. So long as it’s theirs.

So I’m not about to tell Thais that their approach to prostitution is wrong. If that’s how they felt about their own country, they’d abolish it, not work to legalize and formalize it. There’s an argument that in a perfect world prostitution would probably follow the abortion mantra: safe, legal, and rare. In that perfect world, every man would have a partner he loved and who loved him in return, and every woman would have a wealth of career opportunities. But that’s not this world.

Say what you will about the underlying economic conditions that make this true, but prostitution in Thailand pays better than many of the available options, allowing women to send money back home and support their families. Until there’s equity in access to education and career paths, I’m not in favor of shutting the industry down because it’s morally dubious. To us.

I remember the last time I went to a strip club, 20+ years ago. I went for Pretty Ladies, but that’s not what I saw. I saw a room full of men desperate for connection, with, for a multitude of reasons, no other options for achieving it. It wasn’t at all obvious who was exploiting whom. And it was sad.

I think I’ll skip the gogos.

Shopping

I’ll be doing a separate post on craft shopping, as I do, but there’s still plenty to discuss short of that. The big reveal here is that local shopping is incredibly mall focused. I suspect that’s because of the weather. Mall shopping means air conditioning, which seems to be everyone’s first choice.

My host came over the other evening to drop something off, and I was very proud of the fact that the AC was off and the balcony doors were open. Living like a local. I thought. Until he asked if the AC was broken. I’d assumed that living here inured you to the heat, but they hate it just as much as we do. Thus, I believe, malls.

Because they’re the dominant form of retail, they exist in a dizzying range of variations. Unlike the US mall monoculture, which is nothing but chain stores, and where the physical relationship of Hot Topic : Auntie Anne’s : Victoria’s Secret seems to be an immutable law of nature. Or at least building code.

Sure, they have their fashion malls here. There’s Chanel, YSL, Tory Burch, and both Dolce & Gabbana. The usual suspects. But the malls distinguish themselves primarily in the small one-off shops that make up the bulk of their rosters. In fact, in hunting for Thai silk I found Old Siam Plaza, whose entire massive second floor is given over to small silk shops, most of which had room for a sewing machine. We tend to have a negative view of mall culture, but it means a completely different thing here.

One of the malls nearby is the EmSphere, which is where the Ikea is located. It also has a robust first floor food court, which has both Subway and Krispy Kreme kiosks, but is primarily made up of small one-offs, just like the retail tenants.

The other mall right nearby is Terminal 21, which has a very odd conceit. Each floor is assigned a geography, so there’s a Rome floor, San Francisco, London… The shops aren’t specific to the location, but the site design traffics in unsurprising stereotypes. San Francisco has a faux cable car, Rome has classical statuary, London has inedible food…

I took an entire afternoon one day to tour a mall complex with four (or more?) malls all connected by sky bridges. My research told me that one of them specialized in indie fashion and the other in crafts. I did find a few non-branded clothing vendors in the one mall, amongst all of the LV and Vans and Levis shops. Hardly a concentration. Likewise for the place that was supposed to have crafts. I found a few shops tucked in a corner, and that was it.

What I did discover was that mall layout here is so non-linear as to be effectively non-Euclidean. I did an entire tour of the first mall, Siam Paragon, without seeing any clothing stores, except the high fashion brands on the lower floors. Then I did a second tour and there was an entire wing of the mall that I swear hadn’t been there on my first go-round. Same thing happened at the second mall, Siam Discovery. The Discovery being, I suppose, that the laws of physics have been suspended on premises. Every mall here is a Harry Potter tent, bigger on the inside than the outside.

The Fucking Language

I thought Vietnamese was the worst. With an honorable mention to French, for, you know, all that French. But Thai takes the cake. It has the worst elements of every language we’ve tried to learn, plus a unique fillip all its own.

First, the alphabet. It’s pretty, like Khmer in Cambodia. But put all those letters together into words and sentences and it’s just a soup of loops and whorls. Here’s an example.

ผ้าพันคอสวยๆ ที่หน้าต่างราคาเท่าไหร่ and ฉันสามารถมีเพศสัมพันธ์กับภรรยาของคุณได้. The first is “How much is that beautiful scarf in the window?” The second is “Can I fuck your wife?” It’s a minefield.

Then there are the vowels. Thai is tonal, like Vietnamese. No one can agree on the exact count, but Thai’s five tones interact with the basic vowel set to create well over 100 distinct vowel sounds. To put that into perspective, English has 19 vowel sounds. Your mouth can’t make a sound your ears can’t hear. That’s fucked up.

What’s really fucked up? Thai has taken the worst elements of both Khmer and Vietnamese and added… duration. Yep, how long you hold a vowel completely changes its meaning. It’s like the anti-Esperanto, a hash of phonemic fuckery whose sole purpose seems to be tripping up farangs. I’m sure it is a constant source of amusement to them. Or they wish we’d just stop shitting on their language. Or both.

The vowel stretching is also why Thais always seem to be singing, but that’s not enough. Beautiful, yet incomprehensible. That about sums it up.

Any final indignities? Oh, right. No cognates to speak of. Sandwich. Awesome.

I think we may have learned three words in Vietnamese, which is three more than I’ll be learning in Thai.

The only upside, such as it is, is that none of the farangs, no matter their country of origin, are able to learn Thai. Which makes English the official language of tourism, leaving everyone else to struggle with a non-native tongue. There is something delicious about making French people butcher another language, since they’re so snooty about theirs.

It’s the small pleasures that make life worth living.