So after a tough overnight flight and almost no sleep we landed in Bangkok and headed straight for the hotel. We had gone all out for our first hotel – and luxury means luxury in Thailand, so on arrival we underwent the usual set of events which accompanies a visit to a posh hotel: I danced around the room, jumped on the bed, checked out the spa/ food options and eyed up the quality of freebies to see if there was anything worth taking home, while momma went straight for the balcony to get her first shots of Bangkok. I concluded the most exciting things to be found in the room were a free Nespresso bar and a Thai mobile with internet but we weren’t gonna take those home with us….ok maybe a few capsules…(joke)
It was Sunday and everyone knows Sunday is market day so our first visit of the day was Chatuchak market, one of the biggest and craziest markets in Bangkok. Apparently even if you wanted to buy a dead squirrel you could find one there. We didn’t need a dead squirrel on this occasion (maybe next time), but after our 12 hour flight and no sleep we wanted to eat and perhaps undergo some relaxing shopping.
I was starving so after passing some stands serving unrecognisable things advertised as tasty snacks and the world’s biggest mango smoothie, we quickly found a food joint on the road where we could actually recognise some of the ingredients. We ordered some papaya salad, spicy pork with basil, fried chicken and plain noodles (they were small dishes as Thais usually share small dishes at the table rather than eating one dish each western style).
The salad arrived first and we tucked in. After the first bite mama started having a violent reaction to the dish, choking and reaching for the water. Between croaks she tried to explain it was too spicy. This was the salad. Remember, we had ordered a dish with spicy in its name, so this salad wasn’t even deemed to be worthy of spicy status by Thai standards. It was gonna be a long week. Bravely though, she soldiered through and continued to eat it (I mean it tasted really delicious). Every bite would however be followed by an attack, which was proving more and more entertaining to myself and the 4 year old Thai boy sitting next to us who was chowing away at his meal, oblivious as to why this funny white woman found it so difficult to eat her lunch.
They brought over the rest of the dishes and I went straight for the spicy pork with basil. My years of Mexican training had led me to this moment. This dish was actually spicy by anyone’s standards but it was probably one of the best Asian dishes I’ve ever had. I mean it was insanely good. I’m still dreaming about it two days later. I gobbled it up (with the rest of the “spicy” salad), quite proud of myself at how I had handled a dish of Thai level spiciness. That feeling didn’t last very long because just as I was feeling really pleased with myself it hit me- the afterblow. Unlike Mexican spice, which hits you hard the minute you start eating and then you don’t feel it until the next bite, this was a secret and accumulative spicy- almost a sneaky spicy.
What was going on in my belly now felt like a wildfire ferocious enough to destroy a small Thai village. It felt like I had literally swallowed the fiery pits of hell. I must’ve been delusional because I convinced myself that I had swallowed something which was piercing through my stomach lining. I also asked my mum if my lips had doubled in size like in an allergic reaction because that’s what it felt like (ever seen that scene from “Hitch” when Will Smith has an allergic reaction?) My mum at this point had moved on to eating plain noodles and was feeling chirpy and fine (that’s what the Thai Buddhists would call karma). In the whitest possible way she was twirling her noodles around her fork with the support of the spoon as if it were spaghetti bolognese. At this point our little Thai neighbour was looking confused.
We paid our bill (around £5), and went to get some coconut ice cream to try to somewhat extinguish the flames in my belly and hopefully do some damage control so that I wouldn’t be using up all of mama’s diarrhoea medication on day one (you’ll be happy to hear it worked).
I was feeling sleepy earlier but this brush with death by chilli (or at least that’s what it felt like) had woken me up so I was ready to begin shopping and bargaining with the local traders. Luckily bargaining is my favourite thing to do. Fierce negotiation and confidence is what it takes – two traits handed down to me by my grandparents. My mother on the other hand, despite her extensive shopping experience in markets all around the globe, is just too nice to get the best deals. The Thai traders were experienced negotiators and it might be the only time you will actually see them not smiling. Challenge accepted. Everything would’ve been much smoother however if my mother hadn’t got involved in some of the negotiations. “Oh go on Maja give her 300”. I wondered at times whose side she was on and began to suspect at one point that she was getting commission from some of the tradesmen. Nonetheless we still managed to fill up our bags with shopping of all different types of Thai bits and bobs (including a couple of the obligatory gap yaaaa trousers) for a reasonable price. Luckily everything is so cheap even before you start bargaining.
Shopping and eating is hard work, so imagine our delight when just as we were about to leave Chatuchak market we came across “Enjoy corner” (they have very literal names here). Enjoy corner was offering a casual Thai foot massage, one hour for a mere £6. It had been over 30 hours now since we’d slept properly and a Thai massage is exactly what we needed. While my mum questioned the cleanliness of the joint, at £6 an hour I was tempted to spend the rest of the day here. Sadly, there was a whole lotta Bangkok to see.
We now needed to find transport to our next destination. We were told that Uber exists in Bangkok and is better than getting ripped off by a taxi driver, but Uber ceased operations earlier that year and was replaced by its Asian counterpart Grab (pronounced Glab).
We thought that would be very useful because we found ourselves in one of Bangkok’s busiest markets – a jungle of cars and people everywhere, most of which were talking thai in very loud and high pitched voices. Only problem when I ordered the Grab is that everything is in Thai. The only word written in English was Totoya which didn’t really narrow it down. As I tried to manoeuvre the app my mum was running around manically looking for our driver.
Mama (screaming above the noisy traffic) “What’s the registration?”
Maja (also screaming) “I don’t know it’s a Toyota”
Mama (screaming even louder) “Majo we’re in Asia, they are all Toyotas, what’s the registration number?”
Maja (screaming really loud now) “I don’t know mama [attempts made up Thai name] I don’t read Thai!!!”
Luckily I later realised that half the registration plate is in Thai, half in numbers which made it much easier to find Grabs going forward.
Another useful tool which seemed to be very popular with drivers was the chat function. The chat came fully equipped with automatic google translate (ie I would text in English and they would text me in Thai) which proved very useful on some occasions but extremely confusing on others. I would get random messages that didn’t make any sense. Sometimes I swear they only texted me for the sake of chatting. Sometimes when I ordered a Grab and it accepted and was on its way I would get messages like “I am driving” or “wait”. Either way it was much clearer than when we actually entered the cab and needed to communicate face to face. This would involve us asking questions slowly and loudly in English (because my mum’s theory is the louder you go the better they understand of course) and them smiling and answering either in Thai or repeating their pre-learnt English phrase which never answered the question. The highlight was a 20 minute conversation between us and the boy in the spa where we tried to explain we wanted to add a foot massage to our body massage and he kept answering that it was a very professional, very good Thai massage. I thought our acting out of me giving myself and my mum a foot massage would’ve explained well enough but I guess not.
Thankfully the location and costs of taxis appears on the app so we didn’t need to do much talking and we made it to our next destination in one piece and with more energy than we had at the beginning of the day!
