Bangkok has never been my favorite city but the street food balances out the scales. Wonderful things are available night and day from sidewalk vendors very cheaply. A new favorite are fried coconut custard balls, which are difficult to describe but delicious. The old favorite, and still number one, is sticky rice with a whole, freshly cut mango topped with a coconut cream. Mmm... But I wont wax nostalgic over the meals Ive loved before. No this is about classy Bangkok, not the street culture I have grown to love.
It started with dinner the night before at a proper restaurant in the Patpong section of Bangkok. Those of you familiar with Bangkok are already sneering but to let the everyone else in on the local color, Patpong is the center of the sex tourism industry--and the chosen site of the Latvian consulate, strangely. I was sitting alone having a very good dinner (forgive me if I slip back into talk of food) and noticed another lone diner sitting at the next table over. We struck up conversation and I discovered that she had just moved to Bangkok from Paris--she is technically French but spent much of her life out of the country--to take a new job at a branch office. Anyway we chatted away for quite a while. By the end of the evening we had decided to check out the most happening jazz bar in Bangkok the next night.
Had I known that the Bamboo Bar was actually in the Oriental Hotel I would have aborted the mission. This is one of the swankiest hotels in Bangkok where average rooms go for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a night. I had tried to go there the day before on the suggestion of my friend Ensley who said they are famous for their Singapore Slings. Thinking I was due a dose of high-brow culture I showed up at the gates. One of the guards (there were many, plus another handful policing the neighborhood for the protection of their guests) gave me an intense once over and then just looked at me. It was quite apparent I was not welcome in my present, backpacker state sandals included. All there was for me to say was 'Oh, I see' and move on. I have never been subject to the velvet rope even in NYC, of course if this had taken place in NYC the guards would have all been fantastically dressed cross-dressers.
As I searched for the bar on the street of the Oriental Hotel, it became quickly apparent that it was indeed inside the immense grounds of the hotel itself. Having already attracted the attention of the guards by my repeated passing back and forth in the fruitless search all that was left to do was walk up to one of them and ask. Being only marginally better dressed than the first time I came knocking at the gate I got the same once over. Before he could finish his x-ray scan I quickly confessed my obvious dress code sins (caught wearing sandals once again) and explained that I hadn't realized that the Bamboo Bar was inside the hotel and that a friend was waiting for me inside. Giving my apologetic nature and self-censureship he relented and let me in!
The hotel was as fantastic as you would expect. Manicured gardens pressed up against seamless plate-glass windows overlooking the Chao Phraya River. Costumed doormen ushered guests in with a flourish, even a guest as bedraggled as myself. I walked into the bar filled with smartly dressed patrons and found my friend, Ingrid, quickly. The music was fantastic, the singer sublime (an American from Detroit), and the Singapore Sling superior perhaps from the effort involved in getting to it. It was a perfect and greatly appreciated send off and a welcomed respite from the poverty so apparent.
Returning to my monastic cell-sized room on Khao San Road (again more snickers from the Bangkok-initiated--this street is the epicenter of the backpacker trade for all of Southeast Asia and generally attracts Frat boy types) was a jarring jolt back to my personal reality. Puddles of vomit like checkers on a great concrete game board greeted me as I stepped out of the taxi. There were tourists passed out here and there, many still drinking at the many bars and cafes that lined the street, and prostitutes grabbing at all of me asking if I wanted company for the night as I tried to get back into my hotel. My response was 'My hotel doesn't allow me to have guests' as I broke past them and up the gritty green-carpeted stairs.
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