Evil Taxi Drivers and Ancient Cities of Gold

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

This is the view from Phaya Tai Skytrain station, where I get off the train to go to work. That's not a skytrain in the picture. It's a groundtrain.

Some of my parents have been here for the past week or so. Ninety-nine per cent of Bangkok is good clean living and the Thai people are a modest and straightforward bunch of Buddhists. But as soon as you step into the tourist areas it's easy to assume that Thai men are largely occupied with lying in order to part you with your money, and when Thai women aren't cooking in the road, they are trying to sleep with you to part you with your money.

The strip of Sukhumvit Road from Soi (street) 3 to Soi 23 is not really an area for family fun and certainly not the kind of place you want to walk around with your parents. It's not a bad place to stay as there are a lot of decent hotels and a good price range and as long as you jump right into a taxi when you exit the hotel doors you won't notice the lascivious farangs (foreigners) squinting at the daylight with their temporary girlfriends or get accosted by touts who want to help you find one of your own.

Though even then you have to be sure to get into a moving taxi. If a taxi that is parked in front of your hotel starts up as soon as you exit the doors you should pass him up and wait for another. It's the basic rule of the international spy: don't get into the first taxi that drives up, and the rule applies to international tourists too. If the driver can afford to wait around doing nothing it means he's got something up his sleeve. No matter where you want to go, he is going to try his best to get you someplace where he can collect a commission for bringing you there: a gem shop, a massage parlor, a tailor or some other place where he has friends. And if you steadfastly refuse to go where he wants you to go, he'll mysteriously forget the location of the place you really want to go and drive you all over town trying to 'find' it.

How do I know? It happened to us of course. We were trying to get to the Chao Phraya Express Boat in time for our reservation at 7:30 am. When the driver took us to the wrong place after I finally got him to shut up and stop trying to show pictures to my Dad, we just got out and found another cab to the pier. We arrived at 8am, still in time for the boat, but when I burst into the office of the boat company, they informed me that the boat had been cancelled due to flooding. As we found out later, this was a lie. There was flooding in the south of Thailand but not in Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok. The fact was that we were the only riders they managed to book and they cancelled the trip because it wasn't worth the money for them. This is pretty bad since they are a big company and we had a reservation. It was kind of like if they cancelled an airplane flight for lack of customers. Though come to think of it, that happens all the time.

Not to be daunted, we caught a taxi to the train station and rode in a 3rd class car an hour and a half to the ancient site. Nice Thais got up from their reserved seats so my parents could sit down. When we arrived we were pretty wiped out from our complicated sojourn so we went to a riverside cafe. Sure enough there were no floods to be seen and children were playing in the muddy canal. Two kids were having a royal time grabbing onto the back of a ferry as it rode back and forth across the river and letting it tow them through the water. I hope they stay away from the propeller when they do that.

We cruised around the town for a while in tuk tuks. Ayutthaya was great and my favorite part was the beautiful ruins. They're just artful piles of bricks and crumbling towers now, but the scene is so quiet and peaceful and ancient-feeling one can't help but be infected by a sort of profound silence. A web site had advised us to imagine the ruins completely covered in shining gold as they had been before Burma attacked and pillaged the city. It was good advice and definitely added to my appreciation for the age and beauty of Thai culture. One of the coolest things for us Americans in our little adolescent country is to see places and cultures that are really really old. It was hot as a plate of beans and we were all relieved to get into the cool temples and museums to look at some indoor old stuff.

My parents took off to the resort town of Hua Hin the day before yesterday. I couldn't go due to work. I haven't heard from them yet. I hope they're doing OK. Probably they're not calling just to give me a break from the parent thing. Thailand is pretty safe, especially Hua Hin, and they're savvy to the touts and stuff now.

I had a birthday this week. They gave me a big cake at the office and my parents took me out for some good Cajun food.

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.