thailand day 3

DAY 3 – THAILAND COUNTRY SIDE

Today we went outside Bangkok, into the country side. And if you thought that it would be less touristy, you´d be dead wrong. Just a 90 minute drive outside Bangkok, in the … province, is the floating market. Once a traditional place for vendors to sell and trade their goods on little canoes in the Thailand Canals (built by King Rhama 4 over 150 years ago), now it´s a hotbed of tourist activity. Tourists get horded into motorized boats and driven through the canal, to the floating market, where vendors try to hock their trinkets, snacks and food to the tourists. The speedboats can´t go into the floating market part of the canal, so tourists who are willing to spend some more Bath can have the `authentic` experience of the floating market. It comes down to being locked in a traffic jam of canoes, while from all sides vendors try to sell you things from their boats. We didn`t think that looked like much fun, so we just walked around and looked on from above. The speedboat ride to the market was fun though, since you got to see lots of different houses along the canals, from rickety looking wooden shacks to housing developments. The residence must be pretty sick and tired of 100 of boats with tourists driving past very day. And the odd guy trying to paddle in the waves caused by the speedboats had my sympathies.
On the way to this ` traditional` floating market, we drove through the town near it, the place where the crops grown in the province are sold nowadays. This was much more interesting to see than the tourist floating market. The streets where bustling with activity, with Thai people for once outnumbering the western tourists. The stands were even along the train tracks, which had to be moved because a train was coming. Our guide told us something about the involvement of UKs Koscos in the agriculture of the province, but I´m not sure if he meant Thailand was exporting their products to the UK or that Koscos was importing to the city, actually competing with the Thai market.

On the way to the floating market our guide also took us to see an orchid and coconut farm (apparently another hot tourist stopping point) He told us especially coconuts where an important export product. At the farm you could have a look at how the orchids where grown and you could try various coconut products like coconut sugar (yugh) or coconut poffertjes (successfully avoided that one). Luckily, at the floating market we got some fresh fruit to eat (pre sliced mangos and mini bananas)

After the touristy site of the floating market, we couldn`t resists going all the way: we went to ride on an elephant. Well, Veronika and Silvia did, while Marcel and myself refused and just sat in the shade. The ride looked pretty strange, the elephants are wearing a sort of saddle, tugged with thick ropes, held under their tail. You get on the damn thing via a wooden house, built exactly for this purpose. You just sit there (you can even buckle in) while a guy sitting on the elephant´s neck rides you around and tries to hawk you some useless trinkets during the ride. Well, at least tourism provides an honest living to many Thai people, whit a never ending stream of tourists to be exploited. Sure you overpay, but if you´re only there for a few days, what does it matter? And we managed to avoid tourist traps like Snake & monkey shows and nightclubs.

After the elephant ride, our guide (Lio Rayoung I think is his name) had one last tourist stop for us: the royal handicraft center for woodwork, where you can buy life-size wooden elephants and wooden furnititure (all shipped for free to you home). The woodcarvings looked all pretty great, but in a business where the price is only listed in dollars (9.000 for a rocking chair) you know true traditional craftsmanship is watered down for tourist profits.

It was interesting to spend a day outside Bangkok. It shows that even 30 KM outside of Bangkok Thailand is in development, with big chain stores, shopping centers, housing developments and different kinds of industries located alongside the highway. New buildings often standing alongside old decrepit ones. It’s the same thing inside Bangkok itself, were ginormous billboards can overshadow run-down projects and new `eco friendly` buildings are built alongside old concrete housing blocks. It´s an interesting contrast.

We also saw this when we walked around our neighborhood (Sukhumvit) after we got back from the country side. We tried to walk by the Dutch embassy, but in the end couldn`t find it. We saw lots of other embassies and even the home of the US ambassador (complete whit large town house, tennis court and mote) but no Dutch embassy. Still, it was nice to walk through the streets and feel the atmosphere, however strange and polluted by tourism and westernization. (Silvia couldn´t help but see every white man with a Thai girl as a pervert and every pretty girl standing seemingly aimlessly at the side of the sidewalk as someone looking to make a dollar of these perverts) We ended our walk in style: drinking an overpriced beer (250 Bath) at Tony Romero’s and eating a dirt cheap burger (60 Bath) at burger King around the corner from our Hotel. So even from Thailand we are supporting American imperialism! Or maybe we were just too pussy to try something from a street vendor…