From the Lavish to the Downright Lude, Bangkok

There are some things you have inevitably encountered in your life that you unexpectedly took a sudden disproportionate fancy to, with no apparent explanation as to why. At some moment in time, for some obscure reason that may be impossible to pinpoint or express in words, you have liked something or someone from the first moment you laid eyes on them- a painting, a person you happen to speak to on the street, a stray dog, a new café, a random tree, a pogo stick. That, for me, was Bangkok. 

Maybe it was the streets devoid of the eternal raucous honking vehicles, calm within its chaos, or perhaps the familiarity of recognizable names and commerce such as Au Bon Pain and Topshop. Maybe it was the charming demeanor of every Thai person we came across, full of smiles, gentle speech and mannerisms, unsolicited helpful kind eyes, a people who greet you with serene bows that make you feel humbled and honored simultaneously. Whatever it may have been, I instantly felt comfortable from the very first moment I stepped foot inside the city. What surprised me perhaps the most about Bangkok was that it taught  me to appreciate something I never thought would have been possible. Having always seen myself as an adventurous ‘old school’ type (I prefer to lug heavy books with me in my suitcase instead of resorting to a pageless Kindle, for example), I often tend to reject the mass globalization and commoditization that characterizes the time I have been born in. Yet, one of the things I loved the most about Bangkok was its huge shopping malls, acres of sanitized, shiny, and bright marbled luxury, oases of ease and air conditioned comfort, ranging from extensive food courts below harboring my favorite recognizable haunts, to floors upon floors of accessible trendy shops, to Madame Tussauds and luxury cinemas and skating rinks.

Pantip Plaza

It was in one of these malls that I went to fix my frustratingly inept $200 travel computer (it decided one morning that it would connect to the Internet no more; it has since been stolen. I mourn its loss). Pantip Plaza is the to-go place for technological purchases and woes— 8 floors of anything and everything electronic conceived by man and machine. I browsed through walking talking iPod-dock dogs, to millimeter thin television screens, studded fashion headphones, phone hacker stalls, and paused in front of a pirated DVD stand. I know, I know, scandalous… Right next to me, browsing through the TV series pile stood none other than a saffron robed monk. Despite months of being in Asia, every time I see a dressed monk going about his mundane chores I cannot help but to be startled, especially when said monk is browsing through pirated DVDs. On top of it, he about to purchase Season 3 of Lost. 

I could not stand by and let him commit such a grave error, and set myself a challenge- to try and convince him to buy the film I was had laid my hands on: Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle. I politely said Hello (‘sawatdee’) and indicated to the Lost DVD with a thumbs down, grimaced expression and a cut-throat gesture, then proffered him my film with a huge smile saying, “Funny, good! I like.” A moment’s tense hesitation (the monk was clearly not used to being told what movie to buy by foreign blonde girls) and… Mr. Monk walked away, the happy new owner of a pirated Harold and Kumar.

One of the monks browsing the aisles

My second mall experience took place the next evening when I went to go watch the new James Bond movie in the Paragon Mall Cinema. Now, some mood setting is in order to fully do justice to the Bangkok Airways Cineplex. Imagine walking into a large hall on the top floor of a colossal shopping mall, to be greeted by futuristic letters spelling out POPCORN BAR, blue lights a-dazzling and a golden glow of deluxe padded luxury. You proceed up soft red carpeted stairs, into the jewel-chandeliered and silver tabled lounge area, where a suited waiter kneels down next to you and presents an iPad with upheld palms, head down, as if it were sacred tome of the Bible, and asks you which complementary entrée you would prefer. Obvious choice- a glass of white Chardonnay with salted almonds. 

Paragon Mall Cinema

Promptly, another usher comes to ask you if you would now like to come have your 20-minute massage; not one to decline such a suggestion, I put my wine on ice and indulged in a painful but needed (kneaded) head, neck and shoulder pamper session. Then, pick up the drinks, order dinner, and proceed into the spacious cinema room. Four rows of double-seated sofa beds await, with unexpectedly soft duvets and reclining seats that even British Airways have not mastered yet- come to think of it, a definite sneaky enticement to fly first class with Bangkok Airways. Tucked in, wine at the ready and seat reclined, shoulders decompressed, anticipating the imminent arrival of your dinner… What more could any cinemagoer ever ask for?

Complimentary massage? Yes please

The cinema "lounge"

Last, but not least, what visit to Bangkok would be complete without an outing to its infamous ping-pong shows. Just to enlighten those poor souls who are yet uninformed about what these red light shows entail, here is Wikipedia’s definition: “The show consists of women using their pelvic muscles to either hold, eject, or blow objects from their vaginal cavity. Such objects include: long string, whistles, pens, cigarettes, candles, darts, razor blades, chopsticks and, of course, ping pong balls. Another activity is the shooting of goldfish into a bowl, or stuffing a rather large frog inside to see how long she can keep it in.” Clarified... However, our story went somewhat differently. We arrived at Patpong street, an area lined with different strip clubs and sex shows, where a fervent gesticulating local promising us a good show pushed us up a dirty flight of stairs; here, we fell right into the typical tourist scam of Patpong. “Come up and see show, look for free, first drink 150 baht, then you decide!” – sounds like a good deal? We should have known from the moment we walked into the dimly lit room and were greeted not by sexy strippers but by whales who had misplaced their underwear and washed up flailing on shore, that something was very amiss.

The show itself consisted of a woman shooting darts from her nether-regions to pop several balloons. A formidable achievement, granted, yet nothing happened after that two minute performance. As we tried to pay for our drinks and leave, the patrons asked us unblinkingly to pay the 2800 baht (around $100) that we owed!! Shocked, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, we amusedly asked them to explain this cost and they broke it down for us- 800 per adult, 500 for the show, and 300 for our two drinks plus a complimentary tip. We refused, point blank, and headed for the door, paying only for our drinks and the tip. A threatening beefy lesbian tried to block our exit, and for a split second I was scared I was about to be beaten up by a Thai sex bar bouncer. 

Luckily, we managed to escape with the only damage being a few flying insults and decided a tamer option would be to bar-hop a few strip clubs. The girls inside the clubs sobered up my mood, as many of them were clearly around 16 years old; a particular one with fake blue contacts and leopard print underwear came up to me and asked me to buy her a drink, placing her tiny little hand on my lap. She could not have been older than fourteen. My heart went out to her- not being educated to know any better, growing up in the environment of Bangkok where sex becomes an open transaction. You cannot reprehend groups of friends who come here to have some fun between themselves, but what did disgust me were the lone old men who troop in led by a girl and sit with leering expressions and drooling mouths, eyes rooted to the objects dancing in front of them. Leaving Patpong to go to a nightclub, we temporarily stopped by another ping-pong show, possibly more pathetic than the last. When I went to the bathroom, I returned to find my friend buried under a pile of hookers, who were violently grabbing his arms (and his groin) as he tried in vain to rise and flee their hungry mob. I wish photographs had been permitted so I could have documented this evening; you would now be looking at the delightful picture of one of these strippers shooting a banana straight into his face.

(Getting to Bangkok: I would perhaps not recommend the arduous journey we undertook to anyone who is neither on a slim budget nor who does not cope well with awkward travel conditions. Overall, between switching buses, waiting several hours to pass customs at the Thai border, and a series of minivan rides, the journey from Siem Reap took us over 12 consecutive hours. The one and a half hour flight may indeed be advisable).

In photos: Bangkok Oddities and Mysteries

I don't know what psychedelics these lobsters are on but...

Casual

If anyone can explain to me what these roadside
semi-psychotic numbers are about, I would be forever grateful

Astrological predictions maybe...?

Catuchak Sunday Market: "Get me
outta this place!!"

Taking the lazy eye thing to a whole other level

Just chillin'

In photos: The Temples at Angkor

Jungle trees swallowing the temple remains..

Marveling at the temple colors at Banteay Kdei

Early morning monks in Angkor Wat 

Weathered away

Local children swimming at sunset in Sra Srang ablution pool

Textures and colored moss at Angkor temples

Absorbed by the forest

Bayon Buddha faces

Local village children- no camera shyness here

Reverse screen

Intricate wall carvings

Into the Killing Caves, Cambodia

In 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea seized control of Cambodia, abolished the previous government, and began a rule of terror that was to sweep through the country during the next four years, eventually culminating in the deaths of approximately 2 to 3 million people. Similar to Mao Zedong’s China or Stalinist Russia, any person suspected of belonging to a category of supposed enemies was arrested for torture and probable execution. Anybody in contact with former or foreign governments, all professionals and intellectuals (to fall into this group, you needed to simply be literate or just unfortunate enough wear glasses), artists and musicians, ethnic groups like the Chinese, Buddhists and Muslims, former urban dwellers deemed guilty “by their lack of agricultural ability”, and others, were all targeted by Pol Pot’s government. After being detained and tortured in prisons like the infamous S-21 Tuol Sleng, a high school in Phnom Penh converted into a maximum security jail where electrocution was order of the day and women were forced to confess by having their breasts ripped off their bodies, “traitors” were then taken to obscure sites, far from public eyes, called killing fields. Here they would be routinely executed, often by pickaxe or other garden tools in order to save money on bullets, and buried in mass graves which were only discovered after the Khmer Rouge fell from power due to the Vietnamese invasion of 1979. 

The view from the top of Phnom Sampeu

During these years, Cambodia was subjected to a radical experiment in social re-engineering— sealed off from the outside world, newspapers and television stations shut down, money forbidden, religion banned, all businesses closed, health care eliminated, and unsupervised meetings between more than two people punishable by death. The major urban centers such as Phnom Penh or Siem Reap were completely emptied, with their citizens forcibly “evacuated” to the countryside; this was because cities, in Khmer Rouge eyes, were hotbeds for dissent, alliances to the previous regime, and bred dangerous associations between people. Millions were now made to work in slave labour, toiling the countryside (including any child old enough to walk), living in collectives and only allowed one meager ration of rice every two days; hundreds of thousands deaths during the regime were due to disease and pure starvation.

On our visit to Battambang, a sleepy rural town in northwestern Cambodia (a six hour bus ride from Phnom Penh), we were taken by our charming tuk tuk driver Mr. Kim to Phnom Sampeu, a picturesque limestone hill several kilometers outside of town and surrounded by verdant green countryside and towering palm trees. However, this cheerful approach hides a much more sinister side to the mountain—at the top of the hill were discovered killing caves, used by the Khmer Rouge to push their prisoners to death. Told they were going to work in the fields, victims were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs before they were pushed over the edge of the steep cliffs into the dark caves below. Eyeing the caves from above, I shuddered as I imagined what happened to those who survived the fall, tumbling bodies slowly starving away with broken bones amongst decaying corpses, or suffocating to death as more and more bodies piled up above them. 

Inside one of the killing caves

Up until that moment, I had felt oddly disconnected from the shattering history of Cambodia, finding it difficult to really picture what had taken place in its recent history. But peering down into the depths of these gloomy caves, and later looking above at the openings where people had been forced to kneel down before their impending graves, it suddenly hit home. The crumpled bodies, the cries, the eerie quiet and dripping of stalactites. Skulls and bone remnants had been collected by a monk and placed in a small stone cage on one side of the cave, each identical set of sockets and jaws illuminated, some with bullet holes piercing the smooth bone. 

Skeletons gathered from the murdered "traitors"

The air around was thick with clinging humidity, stale and eerie, drops falling from stalactites above, and a solitary monk sat in prayer in front of burning incense. A separate cave next to it had also been used to kill children, babies and mothers. If a woman was pregnant, she would have been pinned against the wall and had the fetus sliced out of her before she and her baby were both killed.

The ominous pathway down into the cave

Even today in Cambodia, it is difficult to meet someone whose life has not been touched by the ruthless regime of 30 years ago. Our tuk-tuk driver had spent the first fifteen years of his life growing up in a refugee camp in Thailand, when his family managed to escape Cambodia but had nowhere to go. We visited an old lady’s traditional stilted Cambodian home (designed in order to optimize space, keep cool during the day and to reside far above the jungle animals below), and throughout her smiles, musical demonstrations and perfect French, we could never have anticipated the story she would tell us next. “This house was used as a communal kitchen under the Khmer Rouge regime, with 200 people eating downstairs every day; my three sons and daughter were sent to work in the fields. They are dead. I have never seen them since, they never came home… As my parents were lawyers and I was a French school teacher, I only survived by deserting my house and moving to a region far far away where I pretended to be a fruit vendor for many years.” Such a past is something that may have fallen to the backdrop in modern day Cambodia, where Western organic restaurants, shopping malls, stable village life and increasing development make the traumatic events of the preceding decades almost impossible to fathom. Time has moved on, thankfully, but dig a little deeper and you will invariably find that scars still remain.

 A peace monument erected in Battambang to commemorate
the end of Khmer Rouge rule. It is shaped in the form of the
mythical Naga god, symbolising peace and development, and
is symbolically made from melted weapons used during the war