Category: Thailand

March 10, 2014

Back in the Saddle…Rwanda and beyond

Ahhh, that was a nice little hiatus. Thanks for bearing with me. I know you were drumming your fingers impatiently on your desk all this time. While I hopped around to four different countries and completely wore myself out.

First, Peter and I went to Rwanda. As you do.

But really: Peter and I met a Rwandan (or Rwandese, as they say there) police officer a few years ago, and he invited us to visit. We figured we had better go before he forgot who we were. We also rounded up Rod, whom some of you may remember as our exceptionally great and extroverted travel partner on previous adventures.

It was my first visit to not-North Africa, and I can’t recommend the place highly enough. FWIW, Peter and Rod had been to Kenya before; they both liked Rwanda more. Which, I know, it’s not a contest. But in terms of traveling logistics and concerns, Rwanda has its act together: secure, clean and tasty food.

Don’t go to Rwanda if you’re a penny-pinching backpacker, though. Hotels in Kigali are pricey (we paid $50 for a private room at the hostel; everything else was $70+) and getting around by bus might be tricky. (We got escorted around in a car, which is just not like us.)

Another hotel we stayed in in Kigali one night. Peter and I got put in the penthouse suite–whee!

And, let’s be honest, Rwanda is not looking for backpacker tourists and doesn’t really want to help them out. Rwanda wants the tourists who will pay big bucks to go visit the mountain gorillas.

Which is not me and Peter. Our cop friend we were visiting did say the gorillas were amazing, and we should go. But it’s $750 per person, and besides, I just feel a little bad bothering them. My general approach to ecotourism is extreme: nature will be better off if I don’t go visit it.

Instead of visiting the gorillas, we just took a lot of photos like this.

I’ll do a separate post with some more details. Suffice to say for now, we thought we would have “done” it in a week, but I am already plotting my return.

From Kigali, Peter, Rod and I all flew to Addis Ababa. As you do.

This was partly because Ethiopian Airlines was the best way to get to Abu Dhabi (long story; it involves frequent-flyer miles, so I won’t bore you). But it was also because Peter and I have both loved Ethiopian food since forever. And Ethiopian music. So why not stop?

Before we left Kigali, our police officer friend’s wife warned us that Addis would be a rough transition. “It is very dirty,” she sniffed. “Lots of chaos.” After being in pristine and orderly Rwanda, I figured any place would be.

But, whoa. Addis felt like Cairo circa 1992. The taxis are Ladas. The pollution is bad. The street kids are frenzied and miserable and one of them yoinked Rod’s phone right out of his pocket (but was clumsy and dropped it, so Rod got it back).

The mean streets of Addis Ababa.

But our Bradt guidebook said of Addis that “its bark is worse than its bite,” which I think is a rather sweet assessment. And after a couple of days, I could see this was true.

It helped that, ohmygod, they really do eat Ethiopian food in Ethiopia. I will get to this in more detail.

From Addis, we flew to the UAE. In the morning, we were in a Lada taxi with smoke coming up through the floorboards. In the afternoon, we were in a leather-interior late-model Audi, being whisked along the smooth, straight highway from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Totally disconcerting. We were so wiped out, we slept through our entire Etihad business-class flight. Rats.

We landed in Bangkok, third and final leg of the trip. If there’s one thing this trip taught me, it’s that three countries is just too damn many. I don’t know how people do the steady-nomad thing and still absorb anything. I’m glad I’ve been to Bangkok before (was this our third trip? or fourth?), because if it had been my first, I would’ve just collapsed in the street.

Peter’s mother met us, and she kept us moving–without her, we would’ve flopped by the pool at the Atlanta Hotel.

Look at us, sightseeing!

But, as a result, I came home and needed to flop around some more. Traveling thoroughly accompanied for three-plus weeks was exhausting. I did a lot of sitting on the couch and staring into space.

Then I went to Costa Rica for about ten days and stared into space some more.

And here we are. Finally. More details to come, folks.

A very nice picture Peter took of his mother and me, near the end of a long and interesting day. Phew.

November 5, 2012

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #5: Be inefficient

On to more practical matters. Though this still relates to trip-planning.

Take the train, especially if it’s slow.

I can’t tell you how many guidebooks I’ve read recently where they’ve said, basically, “Enh, there’s a train, but you’re better off on the bus/airplane.”

C’mon—how will you ever be better off squished in a bus barreling down a highway? On a bus or a plane, you’re just waiting till you get there—that’s 100 percent wasted time.

On a train, though, the adventure starts when you get on. Fine, maybe it gets a little boring in the last hour, but it’s still at least 70 percent quality time.

OK, so maybe don't take *this* train...

Moreover, the train makes the decision for you. Overwhelmed by all the wonders a country has to offer? It’s easy to narrow down your itinerary if you just go where the train goes. After three trips to Morocco traveling almost entirely by their excellent train system, I think I’m finally ready to rent a car or hop a bus to the farther-flung parts of the country. Peter and I still haven’t run out of entertainment on the Thai train line.

Yes, you’ll be missing some things—but that would happen no matter what. Why not enjoy what you can see by train, rather than showing up cranky and poorly rested to a bunch of other places?

...but definitely this one. (Photo by Peter.)

I could expand this tip to cover all kinds of odd transport: bikes, funiculars, pickup trucks with bench seats in the back. The weirder and more novel, the better. That way, the transit time becomes an adventure too.

In fact, maybe this tip should just be: Go the least efficient way. The slower you go, the more you see.

October 23, 2012

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #2: Ugly Places

Continuing my series of cranky travel tips, many of which have to do with how to plan your itinerary. This one’s related to Tip #1, but in the bigger picture.

Go to the ugly places.

I’ve argued this before, specifically about Cancun. But it has a broader application.

Any indie traveler worth his backpack shuns the place with concrete hotels, nor do most people go where there are zero landmarks. But you can learn a lot about a local culture in some random “ugly” city, more than you can at some remote beach where there’s exactly one local, who’s selling you weed and cooking your fish dinner however you like it. Cancun is very, very Mexican if you know where to look—and how to look at it.

Perfectly authentic Mexican sweets in supposedly soulless Cancun.

Another example: Pattaya, in Thailand, typically considered ground zero for hotel towers and prostitution. But to quote a guy I met in Bangkok: “It was great! There were Indian package tourists, and they were posing for photos with ladyboys on the beach!”

C’mon! How is that not heartwarming? I’m not saying you should go for a week, but one night can be fun. The nice thing about supposedly ugly, over-touristed places is that you will probably not be the tackiest person there, and you can gawp all you want–at prostitutes, at sunburned Brits in gold chains, at whatever.

The same logic applies to under-touristed spots with no major attractions. This summer, Peter and I took an exceptionally great trip to Thrace, the eastern fringe of Greece. According to guidebooks, and even most Greeks, there’s “nothing there.” That means no ancient Greek ruins–but there are very interesting Greek-Turkish towns and more recent history. One town–New Orestiada–is definitely un-charming: it looks like a midsize Midwestern town, with blockier apartment blocks. It was built from scratch on a grid system. But the very reason it’s that way is what makes it interesting.

Greece like you've never seen it before: New Orestiada.

Even if you don’t buy my argument, please take a moment to thank me — because every time I get held up in some ugly place, gawking and eating and laughing, I’m not making it to that pristine, off-the-radar beach. I’m one less person ruining the fringes. And the world could use a little more of that.

February 13, 2012

Terminal 21, Bangkok

OK, this is just total eye candy for travel geeks. I don’t even like malls. But Bangkok is a mall kind of town, and when Rod (yes, he met us in Bangkok again this year) told me that there was a new airport-theme mall, I of course had to go.

It’s at the Asok BTS stop (aka Sukhumvit Soi 21). You can enter from the SkyTrain level, but we arrived on foot.

At an airport-theme mall, the security setup even makes sense!

The info-booth girls wore adorable outfits. Two, in fact: At night, the stewardess uniform was black with green trim.

Airport-style signage was everywhere.

Each floor is a different “destination.” The London floor had a red double-decker bus. The floor with the movie theater was Hollywood, of course.

The Istanbul floor had a lot of booths selling crafts. They had some font confusion. Unless perhaps Terminal 21 also enables time travel back to pre-Atatuturk days of Ottoman Turkish script?

I also felt vaguely uncomfortable on the ground floor, the Caribbean.

They seemed to put the most effort into the San Francisco floor.

Just when I started to feel like I was in an even cheesier version of Fisherman’s Wharf, we found the food court. Ah, maybe that’s why there’d been so much care put into the SF floor. The food court–aka Pier 21–was an assemblage of some of Bangkok’s best-known street-food people, in spiffy mall style. But not too spiffy style–I like how everyone still operated out of plastic tubs.

We grazed and gorged.

Afterward, we stopped at the bathroom. The theme-ness started getting a little confused here, because the bathroom apparently had its own theme.

It was all set up inside like some rustic pizza joint, with brick everywhere and a wood oven (yes, in the bathroom), and a gargantuan rolling pin hanging from the ceiling over all the toilet stalls. I was a little lulled by the fancy Japanese toilets with the warm seats, so I didn’t take any pictures.

As Rod pointed out, they didn’t go quite as far over the top with the airport/travel theme as we would have liked–I mean, that woman dusting the San Francisco trolley was wearing a random French maid outfit, when she could’ve been wearing a depressing powder-blue polyester jumpsuit!

Why didn’t they consult the real experts before building? An army of frequent fliers could’ve over-designed the place. The Thais just have to focus on the food. Now that’s synergy.

April 25, 2011

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 2

So, all this, and I would love to say the Thais are my people, that I have found my true heart-home on the globe.

And yet. And yet… I can’t. There is a connection that isn’t happening, some part of me that doesn’t throw off sparks when I come into contact with Thailand. I have felt it scores of times in Mexico, and in Syria, and even occasionally in Egypt, when I can cut through the smog and the traffic and the tourist fascination.

Is it because there is just too much like-going-with-like in Thailand? There, I’m on board with everything already. In Mexico, I feel like I’m visiting what could be my better self, if I stretched—my self that’s quicker to laugh but also more polite, that paints the room in cobalt blue and rose pink, that drinks without fretting about it. Syria is the model me that has perfected the art of hospitality, developed my sense of taste without being snobbish about it and learned to live with dignity no matter the circumstances.

More practically, though, the answer may simply be language. I speak Spanish and Arabic. Except for the ten hours Peter and I spent in a classroom in Bangkok near the end of our trip, I don’t speak Thai.

Those five days of classes were thrilling, though. Why did no one tell me there are languages in which you don’t have to conjugate verbs? That pronouncing tones can be fun, and not impossible after all? Our teacher was a delight, and even if we don’t recall anything we learned*, we at least made a Thai friend.

I rely on words. Even as I’ve switched to more of a photo format on this blog, I’ve felt like I’m cheating. The sensation produced by a great picture somehow doesn’t count if I haven’t hashed it out in three too-long paragraphs, then pruned it all back to one tight one.

As much as I felt freed up last year when we went to Thailand and bumbled around, language-less and reduced to pointing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up, I also felt cut loose, bobbing along in the current and never mooring anywhere or with anyone.

A lot of people, probably most of them, travel like this. But a lot of people are simply better at this style of travel than I am—they’re more outgoing, and they can make a real connection with people by pointing at lines in a phrasebook. But coupled with my more passive style, my lack of fluency, or even functionality, makes me a pure spectator.

I would never say I’m fluent in Spanish or Arabic, but I can order in a restaurant, buy bus tickets and crack the occasional joke—all without thinking too much about it and worrying over what kind of impression I’m making.

I think this is the key: if I can slip off my cloak of self-consciousness (like an invisibility cloak—but the exact opposite), there’s a chance for me to really see the person I’m talking to and really listen to what they’re saying. Less me, more them—probably a lesson I could use in any language, in any country.

It appears the only solution to my Thailand quandary is…more. More visits, more study, more food. And plenty more time with my bootleg Rosetta Stone software.

And in the meantime, I won’t take my grasp of Spanish pleasantries for granted, nor my ability to read Arabic.

*except the phrase paw dee, which means “just right.” But even that doesn’t really count because it turns out I already knew it, because my mom has been saying it for decades, to mean something more like “close enough.” I didn’t even know it was Thai until I took this class—it was jarring to hear a familiar phrase in a list of other non-cognates.

It must’ve worked its way into the family idiolect through my ex-stepdad, who was a monk in a Thai monastery for a while before he showed up on our patio when I was six or so. In my memory, he was wearing his saffron drawstring pants the first time I saw him, and he probably said, “Paw dee” right then, for all I know.

April 18, 2011

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 1

Ah, Thailand. The whole time I was there, I was making a mental list of all the ways in which I am totally down with Thai culture. The Thais and I—we are copacetic. For example:

1. Take your shoes off.
Aside from appealing to my sense of hygiene and aesthetics, the no-shoes thing is great as a traveler. Padding around on the cool stone floor of a museum in bare feet is lovely. And when a class of schoolchildren swarms in, they’re all soft and shuffling instead of crashing and stampeding like elephants.

And if you happen to stay in the nicest hotel in Phetchaburi, because it’s the only place that has a room, but it’s not like it’s actually a super-nice hotel, and that room has wall-to-wall carpeting—well, it’s nice to know that a significantly smaller number of people has walked on that carpeting in shoes, when compared with an American hotel of the same vintage.

And shoes-off culture supports excellent footwear. As someone who currently owns three pairs of Worishofers, I am thrilled by Thailand’s slip-on shoe scene. I apologize from the bottom of my heart for never starting that photo essay of all the ridiculous shoes I spotted in Bangkok. But I could never take the photos because I felt like I’d been gawking too obviously to then whip out my camera.

First in the photo essay would’ve been these spongy, Crocs-like things shaped like big, bulgy cartoon animal feet, complete with little claws. They came in pink and orange and blue and yellow, and I saw otherwise perfectly normal-looking people strolling around in them. One woman was all suited up in a gray pencil skirt and a white button-front blouse…and these bright-pink shoes. And not even in an ’80s-Working-Girl-high-powered-commuter way.

2. Kids are quiet.
Speaking of schoolchildren: They’re so good in Thailand. And they look cute in their uniforms. And their matching haircuts. Draconian? Nah—if those matching haircuts are contributing to their good behavior, I’m all for them.

3. Colors are fabulous.
Speaking of bright-pink shoes. And taxis the color of Barbie’s dream house, or an iridescent green beetle, or a turquoise sky. And monks in safety-orange robes (“saffron” is a euphemism).

Granted, it’s not color like Mexico has color. Everything’s a bit more muted. But it’s also much more broadly applied and non-gender-specific. The king dresses his dogs in little pink coats. And as you saw above, schoolkids wear lavender uniforms.

4. Conflict is avoided.
It’s a stereotype of Buddhist culture, but keeping your cool is valued in Thailand. Yelling is rude, as is pushing or shoving.

You never see people shouting at each other in the street, or someone having a one-way fight on a cell phone. I didn’t realize how relaxing this was until I was away from the hair-trigger freak-out zone that is New York City.

The no-conflict ideal trickles into the physical realm as well. If you stop in the middle of the sidewalk to snap a photo of some obscene-looking mannequins…

…no one jostles you, or curses you under their breath, or shouts, “Hey lady, getthafugouttathaway!” They just flow around you, barely breaking stride.

And taxis never honk. In a taxi one night, someone passed us too close, and our driver had to swerve out of the way. He briefly slowed down, but just kept driving. No horn, no fist-shaking. After about 10 more feet, he reached out the window and flipped his mirror back into place.

Plus, you’d never see a sign like this in the US:

5. OK, and: THE FOOD!
This is all I raved about after the last trip, so I was trying not to fall into that pit of oh-my-god-then-I-ate-that-and-that-and-that again. BUT. MY GOD. These people are insane. Everyone is eating at all times, no lie.

My analysis of Thai culture came largely from reading the Bangkok Post at breakfast every morning, then cherry-picking the quotes that seemed to illustrate my preconceptions. An academic I am not.

But how can you not extrapolate a whole wonderful worldview out of a news story about some white-collar criminal who is required to turn himself into the police but gets waylaid, and then produces the excuse “I was on my way to the police station, but I got hungry, so I stopped at the mall.”

Then we were in the Jim Thompson House museum, reading news clips from the 1950s, when the World Bank imposed austerity measures. (No one imposes austerity measures anymore. Did we just decide they don’t work? Or did we forget about them?) Women were asked to refrain from wearing makeup and stockings. Men shouldn’t go out drinking. And everyone was asked to eat only three meals a day, maximum. Please. If they could. That would be great, thanks.

So, Thailand, I love it and all its crazy eating and dressing and sweetness and shyness…but.

(to be continued…)

April 11, 2011

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 2

(read Part 1)

This trip to Bangkok, Peter proposed exactly three activities:

1. Stay at the Atlanta Hotel and maybe write a little at their funky old writing desks.

2. Eat at Soul Food Mahanakorn.

3. Go to that crazy market that the train goes through.

I said, “OK, fine, but we have to go to Nahm too. And what market?”

“Watch the YouTube video,” he said.

Having so few goals for our trip is another “signature” of our travel style. Less is more, we tell each other, as we order another coffee. Even the train market sounded a little active for us, but that was trumped by the fact that it involved a train. Trains trump everything.

We scheduled the train market outing for a day with Rod. The trip required leaving our hotel at the ghastly hour of 7:30 a.m., so we were counting on his energy to propel us there.

The train market is in the town of Mae Khlong, aka Samut Songkran. To get there from Bangkok, you take two separate rinky-dink commuter trains, with a ferry in between.

Or, if you’re like us and get lost in the transfer town, you take two ferries, because the first one is the wrong one. Once it became clear how inept we were, a nice man walked us all the way to the proper ferry dock, past grilled squid, a live elephant and papasan chairs of shrimp paste.

The train market is a phenomenal two-in-one excursion, just made for Jack Sprat-ish spouses. She likes to shop? He likes trains? The Mae Khlong train market saves your marriage! I don’t really like to shop, and I don’t dislike trains, but we still made this joke a lot.

If you didn’t click over and watch that YouTube clip, here’s the gist: the train goes straight through the middle of the market. Before it does, everyone packs up all their stuff and pulls back their awnings and presses themselves back against the wall. What’s amazing is how quickly they put everything back and get back down to selling live eels, hacking up fish and all the other standard business.

So we lined up with the handful of other rail fanatics and watched the train go back out through the market, vendors standing frozen to the side, like stagehands waiting in the wings. We marveled and took a million photos. And then we walked around town for a few hours, got a foot massage, ate some fried chicken, as you do…

(As Peter points out, it just doesn’t seem fair that Thailand has this tremendous rich food culture, and they make perfect fried chicken on top of it all.)

Half an hour before the last train was set to leave, we took a spin through the rest of the market, the non-train-tracks part. It was late in the day, so it was almost deserted, but we could hear music coming from one end.

We rounded a wall, and there was a somewhat rowdy crew gathered around chatting, toasting each other and watching a delicate man in a crisp white shirt crooning karaoke. A few people were swaying to the tune.

We stood at the edge of the group for a moment, Peter and I settling easily into our hang-back-and-observe groove.

But Rod grabbed Peter by the elbow. “Let’s go talk to the tech guy. See what we can sing.”

The karaoke MC was just what you want in a small-town AV guy: curly hair, half-tint sunglasses, a couple of big amulets on gold chains dangling over his satin-finish shirt. Within seconds, he and Rod were scrolling through his library of songs in English. The delicate crooner soon reached the tear-jerking climax of his song, and Rod and Peter stepped up to the mike. A momentary hush fell over the market.

“Dancing Queen” has never been so warmly received. The crowd surged in close. Men pressed drinks, fresh peanuts and plates of spicy pork into my hands, and lined up cups to wait for Peter and Rod. Two people started a coordinated line dance in front.

Women advanced one by one to drape Peter and Rod in garlands or bashfully hand them long-stem roses. One of them poked me, nodding toward Peter, clutching her chest in a swoon.

As the song reached its crescendo, I checked my watch. Just about time for the train. In the wild applause that followed, Peter and Rod waved to the crowd, I gathered our belongings and slugged my Pepsi-and-whiskey and we all hustled for the exit, with cries of “Happy new year!” in Thai and English ringing out behind us.

We bounded onto the train, flushed and giddy, draped in flowers, already recounting the highlights.

“Did you see the guy doing the motorbike-revving dance?”

“That lady selling the fish was so in love with you!”

“And how did they refill my drink so fast?”

The train chugged out, and we squeezed into the rear cab to watch the market fall back into place as we passed, like the teeth of a zipper clicking together.

Soon we were out in the farmland between towns, rice paddies and shrimp ponds stretching away to either side. The conductor never came to kick us out of the rear cab. We felt very VIP. A man and his young son sat next to us, and we all watched the bumpy, narrow tracks unspool behind us.

When they got off at a small village, we gave the boy one of our garlands. The train pulled away, leaving the father and son walking together, each balancing on a rail and holding hands across the pebbled bed between them.

Peter and I sat back and watched. The pair on their parallel balance beams grew smaller, and eventually dissolved into the bluish haze. Even Rod was quiet.

“This was the best day,” he finally said. “The absolute best day.”

*Read Part 1
*Thailand photo set on Flickr

April 4, 2011

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 1

I’m very lucky that I happen to be married to someone whose travel style meshes perfectly with mine. (It might be that I got married only because I found someone I could travel with.)

That travel style is awfully particular, as it involves a lot of sitting and watching people go by. I didn’t quite realize how rooted we were in our ways until we were traipsing around Bangkok with a good friend of ours who’d come to meet us for a few days. Rod is an excellent traveler as well, but…he is just not like us.

He goes up to people and talks to them! I mean, he just asks them questions. And dumb questions, even. Like at the mall, when we’d already gotten our feet nibbled at the fish spa, which was really just a couple of tubs of fish stuck in a hallway toward the parking lot.

(Excruciating. Like having a million mosquitoes attacking your legs. Worse: the attendant thought she was being nice by not starting the 30-minute timer until I’d stopped squawking and shuddering.)

Rod marches up to the girls at the info desk, grins and says, “Soooo, what’s fun to do in the mall?”

Meanwhile, Peter and I are averting our eyes, looking utterly disinterested and pretending like we don’t know Rod at all. I discover I’m clutching Peter’s arm in desperate embarrassment.

I am 38 years old. What is wrong with me?

The girls just giggle, look confused and say, “Shop-ping!” in that Thai way, where each syllable is given equal weight. Only after Rod has fully stepped away from the desk can I sidle up and say, “Oh, well. Nice try.”

So we went upstairs and sang karaoke.

At least here I’ve made a little progress. When a friend’s Japanese roommate in college explained the concept to me, I was horrified. Karaoke sounded like the absolute most horrible experience in the world. You were really singing?, I asked, incredulous. All alone? At a party?

But at the kinda dumpy coin-operated karaoke booth on the fifth floor of MBK mall, I felt very mature. We sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and tried to ham it up as much as Rod did. Impossible.

The next day, we all got on a canal boat just for the sake of riding the boat. It was the most phenomenal form of public transit I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been on a lot. (It sounds like I am independently cool/nerdy enough to do this, but Peter really gets all the credit.)

We barreled along at terrifying speeds, rooting for the tiny ticket-taker girl who walked up and down the edge of the boat, occasionally winching down the roof so we could fit under bridges. When we got off, we didn’t know exactly where we were. My guidebook was at the bottom of my bag that I was still clutching to my chest in half-terror, half-glee.

While I was digging around in my bag for a map, Rod disappeared. I was just finding the right page in my book when he came back.

“The woman at that tourist-info booth said there’s a temple on a hill over there, and we can climb up and get a nice view over the city.”

I spend a great deal of my professional life talking to people at these tourist-info kiosks, asking them obscure questions about bus routes and opening hours. But it had not even crossed my mind to use them the way god intended, as Rod had just done.

“Yeah, I just asked her what there was to do around here,” he said with a shrug and pointed us off toward the Golden Mount.

The next day… Well, the next day it got even crazier. But I’ll leave that for another post.

*Thailand photo set on Flickr

April 1, 2011

Bangkok Smile Bike

The world needs to know: You can get free bikes in Bangkok!

On our trip last January, Peter and I had read about these in our guidebook, but when we went to find them, the kiosk was abandoned.

Imagine our excitement then when, on this trip, we saw a crew of people zip down a street one day on very touristy bikes. Last time around, apparently, the system was way too broad–you could go anywhere. Now you’re supposed to take the bikes on only two set routes–one on the east side of the river, and one on the west. You can pick them up and drop them off at any kiosk along the route. And did I mention they’re free?

We hit the east side (EAST SIDE!) first. That’s where all the big fancy temples are, and the bike route takes you in a big loop past all of them. But Peter and I were so excited to be riding bikes that we didn’t bother doing any of the sightseeing at all.

We did cruise past our previous point of disappointment. Now much happier:

The bikes are well designed for city use, with just one speed (Bangkok is totally flat) and a nice integrated basket on the front. Only trouble for Peter was that the seats didn’t go up very high. These bikes were not made with American tourists in mind, much less Dutch ones. They have this cool built-in prong that ka-chunks the bike into place at the kiosk rack:

There were a lot of buses and other things in the way on the bike route, as well as mobs of schoolkids (next time, I’d make a point of being off the street by 3pm). But it was far less strenuous than riding in NYC. Traffic moves more slowly, and drivers are on the lookout for more crazy behavior, having to deal with mopeds zipping between lanes, and tuk-tuk drivers, and food vendors biking along with their carts full of sizzling whatever. We even got big smiles and thumbs-up from some drivers.

A couple of days later, we took the west side (WESSIDE!) (sorry, can’t help it) bike route. This was much niftier, because it was more residential, and we felt no obligation to sightsee at all. We followed a spur route to the royal barge museum, which was just closing (fortunately, or we might’ve been obliged to go in it!), and wound up in a neat little warren of canal houses, where we were riding along narrow little paths right next to the water. These women were sitting near a bridge.

Later, back on bigger boulevards, we cruised past some dudes unloading pig carcasses. They were stacked so beautifully. They could teach a thing or two to the halal-meat delivery guys around here.

And, don’t tell the bike people, but we got a little lost and off-route, and while we were at it, we passed these girls, raising money for a charity.

And then Peter got transfixed by some locks.

And then we finally got back on the route, and found the guy we’d been looking for, a candied bael-fruit seller. He was marked as a destination on the bike-route map. I had a dim memory of seeing some travel-show segment about him, on some flight or other, and this magical fruit that was so rare and odd-tasting. We rolled up, and there was no sign of any real commerce. But we asked around, and a guy turned up and took the cover off his display, which seemed to draw customers out of nowhere.

We’d been biking for a while, so we took a breather, on the tumbledown couch in the alley.

The fruit was strange, slightly numbing, and so intensely candied that my teeth hurt just thinking about it. He also sold dried slices of the fruit, which I wish I’d gotten, but they were big bags, and they weren’t cheap. I don’t think being in a tourist brochure has gone to this guy’s head.

Down the alley a bit, we found we weren’t the only ones out for a sunset bike cruise.

We were just getting a little tired when we passed a guy by the side of the road with an old-fashioned projector.

Peter stopped to take some photos for our friend Katie, and next thing we know, people were pouring us shots of booze, offering us Cheetos and giving us high-fives.

One woman realized I was never going to drink all my hooch, and so took it back and poured it back in the bottle. I like that kind of sensible hospitality. We took a tour of the back room, where we finally figured out they were getting ready for a dragon parade. Oh, so that’s why the kids outside had been playing around with boxes on their heads!

We left them some bael fruits (a little went a long way), gave some more high fives, and wobbled off down the road. Fortunately, it wasn’t too much farther to the next bike drop-off point.

We’d almost done the full circuit (it’s a straight line on the west side, not a loop). But we were somehow almost more pleased to be able to drop our bikes at the penultimate stop–because we got to use the word penultimate.

We wandered over the bridge back to the east side and found ourselves smack in the middle of the wholesale flower market. Which took us a little while to figure out. “Gosh, there sure are a lot of marigolds here…”

Stupendous, and so much better than if we’d made a special trip.

Thank you, Bangkok, for your wonderful free bikes. We’re smiling still!

June 21, 2010

On “Vintage” Hotels

This past winter, when we were in Bangkok and staying at the totally fabulous Hotel Atlanta, I realized there’s a very particular kind of lodging I like.

For want of a better term, I think I’ll call them “vintage hotels.” [Edited in 2014 to add: Now we have a popular common reference point, thanks to Wes Anderson: The Grand Budapest Hotel, circa 1968.] “Antique hotels” might also work. “Nostalgia bivouacs” are what they really are. And the funny thing is that Peter, he of the Edison bulbs and steam trains, thinks I like these hotels more than he does. Maybe he’s right–I sure have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes one of these hotels exactly what it is.

These hotels must be old-fashioned. But not self-consciously so. Certainly, the owner may have a “things were better in the old days” attitude, but he can’t be out scouring yard sales for old telephone switchboards and other doohickeys to create a “ye olde” decorating scheme. No–that old telephone switchboard has to just be left over from the old days, hulking behind the reception desk.

These hotels usually have old and cranky owners. Years of watching standards slip all around them have strengthened their resolve to do things the right way, even if the desert sands are blowing in, the drunken yahoos are crashing into the bars next door or the country in which they’re situated is finally shaking off its colonial shackles.

But enough generalizations. Perhaps it’s easier to explain the concept with some examples.

In Cairo, Pension Roma is the quintessential vintage hotel. The owner is a French woman (despite the fact she was born in Egypt and will die in Egypt), and she rules the place with an iron fist. The sheets are crisp, the furniture is shiny, there is no dust in the corners, and she even sews little cozies to cover up the propane tanks for the hot-water heaters. Of course there are chandeliers and a rattly open elevator.

I don’t have a picture of the Roma, so here’s a photo from the extremely vintage Cairo Agriculture Museum instead:

In Bangkok, the aforementioned Hotel Atlanta is at the end of one of the main Sukhumvit sois for sex tourism. The facade of the hotel is covered with cranky “no sex tourists!” signs, but inside, the crankiness is dispersed into all kinds of details: a book full of cynical travel tips, drink coasters with mean-spirited quotes from the previous owner, and a theoretical ‘guests only’ policy in the hotel restaurant. This would all be oppressive, except the writing desks have little fans in the bottom, to keep your legs cool, and there’s a giant swimming pool ringed with photos of it being used in more glamorous times. The rooms are nothing special, but that barely matters, when you’ve got counter help this charming:

In Campeche, Mexico, my absolute favorite hotel in the world is the Hotel Colonial. No one’s very cranky here, fortunately, but there is an old patriarch who sits in a chair dozing all day, and the business cards look like they haven’t been reprinted since 1964. The rooms may be slightly smaller than they used to be, because they’re covered every year or two in a fresh layer of glossy paint in Easter-egg colors. And eff Frette–the sheets here are the best ever for hot weather: crisply starched and almost rough like muslin. The owner buys them from somewhere special in Mexico City. Rooms cost less than $20 per night.

Here’s a montage I made last summer, after my at-least-fifth visit:

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Garden City House, also in Cairo. Long, echoing hallways with patterned tile floors, rooms with high ceilings, dreary salmon-pink paint and enormous bathtubs, and of course the requisite old telephone switchboard–but overall a little too ratty to count as a proper vintage hotel.

Then, the day I checked out, I was sitting by the desk, chatting with the guy there, and the chintzy plastic phone on his desk rings–this little horrible made-in-China ‘tinky-rink-rink’ noise. He answers the phone, nods, and then gets up and walks around the desk to the switchboard…where he casually moves the plugs around to transfer the call to a guestroom!

My eyes nearly fell out of my head.

Damn. If I had known, I would’ve been giving people my phone number there right and left! That’s why I made sure to sit at the writing desk in the Atlanta and write some postcards. Vintage hotels are like museums you get to live in.

Do you like these kind of hotels? Have any recommendations for me?