February 15
On day 2, we went right for the touristic heart of Bangkok, the Grand Palace and the Wat Phra Kaew, which is part of a giant complex on the river. Both have been built and rebuilt over the last 250 years by the “Rama” kings, with each adding his own improvements to the complex. We very wisely chose to do the audio guide. At first, we did it just to make the most of our time, but who knew it would be the best audio guide ever. It was the only one I have ever done where I haven’t been all, waaiit, what am I supposed to be looking at? So, friends, life lesson, do audio guide at the Grand Palace.
The tour starts at the amazing Wat comlex, which is full a beautiful little chapels and relic-holding buildings and shiny statuary. The big ticket item (or little, wee, tiny ticket item really) is the very sacred Emerald Buddha. This little guy has been very well traveled over his life. He lived in Chiang Mai for a few centuries, was stolen by the Laotians and lived there for 200 years until the Thai defeated them in some war or another, and then moved around to a few different wats in Bangkok before settling here. It’s only about 50 cm tall and they have it waaay up on a tall pedestal in a huuuge building so that it looks eeeven tinier. The best part about this guy (much like Carrie Bradshaw) are the outfits. He has three outfits, one for each season, and the outfits can only be changed by the king. So, three times a year, the king shimmies up the pedestal to redress the Buddha. However, the current king gets a pass since he is, you know, 82, so the crown price has vestment duty.
Another exciting part of the Wat experience was trying to take pictures without people. Always a challenge, especially where there are throngs of people loafing around. I tried not to be the guy (of which there were many) who stood thirty feet from their friend to take their picture and got mad when people got in the way. It’s all about close ups and angles, people.
Onto the Grand Palace, which was the royal residence until, I believe, the current king. Our favorite tidbit: in one of the buildings behind the coronation throne room is the original king’s chambers. Each king must spend his first night as king in the royal bed to show that he can perform “all his kingly duties.” Ahem.
Brief interlude wherein we search for NY Times-approved street meats.
After the Grand Palace, our plan was to walk one of two “restaurants” that were in a recent NY Times article on Bangkok street eating scene. It’s just what you do. When in Bangkok, yo gotta go up to the road side carts and stalls and get some mystery meat. Of course, me being me, I can only go to places that have been okayed by someone who has eaten there and not died. Hey, I wouldn’t eat at a street vendor in NYC without such verification, so why would I do it in a country where people blow their nose on the street . . . I mean on the street. (Okay, to be fair, there was much less snot rocketing than in Vietnam).
Of course, this would be the day that I forgot the good map. The NY Times only gave us an address and a vague map, so I had to triangulate the locations based on the mediocre map in the Rough Guide and the down right crappy map in Frommer’s. Magically, we found both of them (1 point for my navigation skills), but they were both closed, one because it didn’t open until 4, which it clearly said in the NY Times article (minus 5 for not paying attention).
Another issue arising from my leaving the good map at home is that the guidebook maps have to fit in a book-sized frame and don’t really give you the sense that Bangkok is flappin’ huge. I think our walk in toto was 10 blocks and it took us probably 45 minutes, much of it spent on sidewalkless roads with tuk tuks, trucks, and everything in between whizzing past. Eep.
Finally, after restaurant failure number 2, we decided to grab a cab or tuk tuk to an area with lots of restaurants that would be open. At that point, I was still working on my tuk tuk negotiation skills, so I think I offered the first guy 10 baht. Or about 30 cents. Then this broke0down looking tuk tuk pulled up. The driver was pretty broke down himself: he was barefoot, dirty and had some sort of blistering open sores on his lips. He borrowed my pencil to write down that he would charge us 60 baht, but would be making a stop (for our benefit, of course) along the way. No stops, we said. Okay, 80 baht. No that’s too much. We would walk away and the offer would change. 50 baht with a stop. No. Finally, I got so fed up (and, let’s be honest, grossed out) that I just walked away. Maura was much nicer and worked with him a little while longer, but I finally said I didn’t want to go anywhere with that guy and Maura did not disagree. We ended up paying half again as much to a cab driver, but there were no stops and no open wounds. I quickly Purelled my hands and my pencil. Several hours later, I remembered the guy and his unfortunately interaction with my pencil and had to re-Purell. I am still a little afraid he gave me the herp.
After out lunch adventures, we went to the Jim Thompson House Museum. So here is a bio-pic just begging to be made. Jim Thompson was an NYC architect in the 40s who joined the military during WWII and was trained as a spy. He was just about to be sent into Thailand to “help” the Thai rid themselves of the Japanese (though the Thai pretty much happily surrendered to the Japanese and were saved recriminations after the war allegedly because the Thai ambassador to the US forgot to deliver the declaration of war), when the war ended. But he so fell in love with Thailand and its culture that he moved back after the war. Or was he an OSS/CIA operative working to stop the domino effect who set up shop as a front? At any rate, he became a huge fan of Thai textiles, especially Thai silk weaving, and helped get the West excited about it too. It was silks he brought to the US that outfitted the cast of the King and I, which won an Oscar for best costumes. Silk weaving was a dying art in Thailand, so he trained Thai women in the art and began a business exporting them around the world.
He also constructed a must beautiful house from six different traditional Thai teakwood houses and filled them with amazing Thai, Burmese, Loatian, and Cambodia crafts and antiques. 8th century stone Buddhas. Burmese wedding tapestries. 17th century Thai paintings on silk. 19th century Chinese porcelain. And, my personal favorite, antique Laotian drums he turned upside down and made into lamps. CIA or no, you cannot tell me this man was not gay. With such a such a fabulous house and such panache, he soon became the hub of expat activity in Bangkok. He entertained most Americans of note who came to visit from Truman Capote to Ethel Merman (that is absolutely cribbed from Rough Guide).
So the screenplay is coming along nicely. We have war and intrigue. The American imperialist learning to love a different culture, even fostering lost arts. Fabulous antiquing (just what every movie needs). Cameos by quippy intellectuals and entertainers. Then there is his mysterious death in his 61st years, just as foretold by a Chinese astrologist years earlier.
He was traveling in Malaysia when we went out for a walk one afternoon down a country road and never came back. After extensive investigation, no one ever figured out what happened. Theories abound. Some think it was his alleged work for the CIA that did him in. A more rational explanation is that he was the victim of a hit and run – that a truck or bus hit him, stashed his body in the bush and never reported it. Then there is my theory that he went the way of Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain. So we’ll see what Soderbergh can do with that.
