Boats, Bikes and SkytrainsBangkok isn't a city that's easily accessible with infant twins. There are basicly 8 modes of transportation each with its own shortcomings. In descending order of price these are: hired car; metered taxi; skytrain; tuk-tuk; motorbike taxi; long tailed boat; bus; and shanksmare. In the week that we spent there I tried all except the bus. The hired car costs about $5 an hour. Its great for peace of mind because there are usually (but not always) seat belts in back which allow the car seats to be secured properly. However there is not a lot of freedom of motion. You pretty much have to decide your itenerary for the day and traffic is so bad that it is one of the slower way of getting around. The boys and I took a hired car to the Grand Palace our first day out on our own. Our original plan didn't call for a hired car, but we got lost looking for a long tailed boat pier that would be somewhat accessable with a stroller. When the rains started (it is the monsoon season) we took shelter in the lobby of some swank hotel and while waiting for a break in the weather we got talked into hiring a car. An hour later we were unloading at the Grand Palace and I was working hard to convince the driver that I did not want him to wait for us. The Grand Palace is the tourist destination of Bangkok: 60 acres of various gardens and temples supported by gold painted garudas, filled with holy relics, statuary stolen centuries ago from outlying areas, temple guardians to keep the evil spirits at bay and murals galore depicting the greatest hits of Buddist history. Wat Phra Kaeo on the palace grounds houses Thailand's most revered, relic the Emerald Buddha.
 The Grand Palace also happens to be filled with tourists like me. And by "like me" I mean that they all seemed to find Gus and Zeke irresistably photogenic. The boys were photographed and videotaped about as often as the Emerald Buddha that day. I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of very bored friends and relatives in Tokyo forced to watch 5 minutes of video of the boys sitting in their stroller as the recently returned videographers try to describe the workings of the Podee bottle. We've had two other hired car experiences since then; one eventually successful, the other abortive. The first was a ride from the airport to the Mandarin Hotel on our most recent trip to Bangkok. The car service desk at the airport assured us that there would be seat belts when we arranged for the ride, but outside the airport a 12 seater van pulled up and needless to say there were none. We waited 20 minutes before a toyota arrived, which did indeed have rear seat belts, but as we were to shortly discover, did not have a driver that knew the location of the Mandarin Hotel. He drove to the neighborhood and then began to cruise the streets slowly. Both Amy and I spotted our destination and thought we had successfully pointed it. So when he took the next turn into an alley I thought he was heading for the back entranceway. As it happened he was still circling. He drove us around for another 45 minutes, stopped for directions twice and took us through the Patpong night market, just about the only place in Bangkok liable to have heavy traffic at 11:30 at night, before eventually stumbling across the hotel again. The Mandarin is a flea bag. It may have once been elegant but 40 years of faded glory have left so much grit in the carpets and cigarette smoke in the curtains that we decided to change hotels after our first night. This led to the third of our hired car experiences. The bell captain called a hotel taxi and when it arrived without rear seat belts we figured we could forego them as our destination was a mere 8 blocks away. After we had the stroller, the boys, our luggage and ourselves packed in the car the driver informed us that the fare would be 140 baht. At the time this seemed exhorbinate for such a short ride and as no amount of bargaining would get him to budge, we were soon piled out on the curb and hailing a metered cab. This one didn't have rear seat belts either. Nor did it have room for our stroller. A minor bit of McGyverism soon had the trunk strapped down to one of our bags, the stroller wheels dangling out the back, Amy and the boys wedged in the back seat, me and the driver up front and the rains pouring into the semi-open trunk. 140 baht wasn't particularly out of line. The ride took more than half an hour spent in bumper to bumper traffic while our driver filled us in about his life through a patois of english, thai, hand gestures and sound effects. He was from up country by the Kampuchean border. There he lived on an 80 acre rice farm which he ran with his parents. They have chickens (excellent sounds here), pigs (incredibly accurate pig noises) and some cattle (at least I think it was cattle, my barnyard sounds are a bit rusty). The place used to be planted by back-breaking hand labor but now they've got a tractor that both sows and reaps, so the 3 of them are plenty able to tend the entire 80 acres. He is just building up a stake in Bangkok, but finding it difficult to save money given the high cost of whiskey in town. He even serenaded us with a couple of modern kampucheann pop songs. He kept saying "no problem" but pronouncing it "no boom boom". Which was a bit confusing in the early exchanges like "Not married. No boom-boom." All in all perhaps the best 100 baht we spent in Bangkok. When we arrived in Bangkok we had high hopes that the newly constructed skytrain would move us around the city with a minimum of hassle. There were a couple of stops within spitting distance of our hotel and although there are only two lines, it would take us within a half an hour walk of most destinations. However Bangkok has yet to hear of handicap accessability. The skytrain is 4 stories up and only one stop has an elevator. Most do have an escalator but only for going up. Our first day there Amy and I toted the stroller and the boys up the steps and took a ride just to see how useful it would be. Not very;Carrying 60 pounds of kids/carseats/diaperbag/stroller up and down all those steps is a task that requires more than one person. That was the last of the skytrain for us. Tuk-tuks are three-wheeled two-stroke go-carts with a bench seat in the back. They are only slightly faster than a car in traffic but this benefit is more than cancelled out by the desire of the driver to take you to some gem, cloth or trinket market. You can hire a tuk-tuk for almost no money if you agree to an extra stop or two as each place they take you will give the driver a voucher for some gas. Riding in a tuk-tuk is little bit like playing sardines and hiding on top of running lawn mower that is stuffed under the workbench of your garage. They are all covered with a plastic tarp running over a pipe cage surrounding the back seat. The cage may be big enough for the average asian, but a fellow my size has to slouch down and keep his head tilted to avoid banging it against the diesel-soot covered roof. Anyway, the boys end I did end up taking a long-tailed boat back from the Grand Palace. I was a little bit nervous. Amy had told me in no uncertain terms that if anything were to happen to her children it would be best for me if I drowned as well. But a fellow stopped me to ask about the kids and he was more than happy to help as he was going the same way. He even paid our fare as a gesture of Thai hospitality. I did notice a few worried looks as I passed the kids over the gunwales, but I took that to be a reflection of my general physical ineptness rather than a condemnation of the idea of putting two boys who were essentially strapped into sinking weights on a rather ramshakle boat. I hear Bangkok used to be a city like Venice (which I've never been to) in that it had hundreds of canals which served as the main means of transportation. In a very successful effort to modernize, Bangkok paved over the vast majority of these, leaving them with traffic jammed streets and a drainage problem which would make the Army Corps of Engineers shudder. The klong itself is a stinking runway of fetid grey water. It runs between a string of dusty cement brick houses only marginally improved by the potted bougenvilla outside most back doors. Aside from its transportation uses the klong also serves as the household waste disposal system. So much so that the Thai government has to constantly dredge the bottom to keep the water deep enough for even these shallow drafted boats. Blue plastic tarpulin strung along the sides of the boat is quickly lifted by attentive passengers to keep the spray from splashing on us. At most stops along the way the boat merely drifts up near the pier and nimble footed passengers hop on and off, but when we arrived at our destination the boatmen kindly brought the boat to a complete stop so that we could unload all our complicated gadgetry. I did not take the boys on a motorcycle taxi. Even I am not that irresponsible a parent. But Amy kept them with her one day and left me to my own devices, so I hopped around by motorcycle taxi to see some of the sights and to swing by the electronics market in hopes of getting a 220 volt ac/dc transformer for Amy's breast pump. A motorbike taxi costs about a buck and a half for an average ride. This is twice as expensive as a xe om (as they are called) in Ha Noi. But as they are at least 4 times as dangerous in Bangkok the fare seems worth it. Bangkok traffic is western; bumper-to-bumper most of the day, heavy on the gas and heavy on the brake. Cars sit while motorcycles zip through narrow holes, dart across lanes and everybody runs the late red lights. Traffic patterns in Ha Noi are very different. Here things are much more civilized. The vast majority of the traffic is motorbike, with a good percentage of bicycles and a smattering of cars. There are fewer stop lights but they are for the most part respected. Driving around is like playing a slow paced game of chicken. A hole in the traffic that might let you through is not jumped through as it would be in the states. Instead you slow down and crawl through it. As you can't really be expected to see all the traffic at any given time you maunever by one obstacle at a time. And as long as nobody veers too sharply this works fairly well. But in Bangkok the motorcycle taxis are hair raising experiences. They fly through nearly closing gaps and zip their way into on coming taffic with the optimistic notion that there is always room for one more motobike. I spent most of my time white-knuckling the seat post, adjusting my stance on the foot pegs, and envisioning the best way to grab the driver to haul him between me and whatever danger seemed most immenient. By far the best way for us to get around was by foot. Despite the fact that the sidewalks are often non-existant and the few that are there are guarded by high curbs and moatlike pot-holes and jammed with makeshift stalls selling everything from fried chicken feet to knock-off rolex watches, pushing the boys around the city turned out to be a real joy. Everywhere we went we were met with broad smiles and cries of "faed?" To which I would nod and respond "faed". This was followed by much arm waving, hand pointing, and shouts to friends, relatives and neighbors of "Faed! Faed!" Loosley translated this exchange is: "Are those twins?", "Yes they are twins.", "Look everybody, twins!" (In Viet Nam the exchange, which happens with equal frequency, is "Sinh doi?"."Ca. Sinh doi." "Sinh doi, sinh doi!".). We walked almost everywhere. We walked to the leather shop to have a pair of boots made. We walked to the department stores to get cell phones and diapers. We walked to the bike store to try and find a part for the stroller. We walked to the snake farm to learn about Thailand's poisonous snakes, the Red Cross's methods for making anti-venom sera (which entails milking the venom, injecting it into horses, and then collecting the sera from the horse blood) and to hold a huge burmese python. We walked to the park to swing on the swings. We walked though the narrow roads and alleyways to get a taste of local life and to meet the ever present fruit sellers in quieter surroundings. And everywhere we walked the boys were the huge attraction. As soon as the stroller wheels stopped turning we would be surrounded by a crowd of people asking their age, their nationality and attempting to determine their gender by grabbing at their johnsons.
 Meals were particularly interesting as the boys would be quickly cut loose from thier car seats and passed around from person to person. At first it was a bit disquieting to have them disappear to the kitchen and back rooms to be displayed to the cooks and managers. But we soon realized that they were not being whisked off to be sold into slavery. Eating at more upscale resturaunts often provided us with a uniquely Thai service, that of the prostitute baby-sitter. The sex industry of Thailand is of course a flourishing trade. Everywhere we looked there were western men holding hands with young Thai women. Their grip strangely possesive despite its light touch. At establishments that catered to the tourist crowd there was often a small cadre of currently unattached women who were excited to take the boys off our hands while we sipped our beer and ate our pad thai.
 Although navagating the city with the boys presented some challenges it also provided a measure of protection. The tone of my interactions with people was very different when I did not have them with me. With the boys in tow I was met almost exclusively with smiles and talk of them. Without them I became just another western tourist liable to be interested by cheap watches, sexy movies and thai massage. Needless to say, it was much more pleasurable to have them with me. |
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