If the title of this post put that awful song in your head, I apologize. My first night in Bangkok was as grating as that song, and the first day was kind of a wash, but things picked up for the latter half of my stay there. Including infuriating political discussions on a street full of escorts.

Wat Po

I arrived late at night and wandered around Khaosan Road, and the next day I moved across town to a quieter hostel. On the way, I stopped at the central train station to buy a ticket out of town, and not only was the ticket I wanted not available, but I had to change transit three times just to get to the train station and then twice to carry on to the new hostel. All with a 30-pound backpack on and the tropical heat making me dizzy. My mood didn’t improve when I checked in at the hostel and learned that the Grand Palace closes at 3:30pm and there’s no way I’d make it in time, so I’d have to try to go the next day, although I’d have to go early in the morning because I needed to leave town by noon so I could get my train out of Ayutthaya in the evening. Ugh, just writing about my poor planning and the inconvenience of the sprawling city is frustrating me all over again!

Buy coupons for your every need

I decided the solution to my bad mood was ice cream, so I went to the Magnum Bar downtown. I bought an electronics converter for $5 from one of those odds n ends stalls near the train station, the kind of stall probably entirely stocked with stuff that fell off a truck somewhere. But that converter is still working today, keeping my electronics from frying in the changing voltages in new countries, so I’m not asking any questions.

That night, I went out with two women I met at the hostel; H and K* are both teachers in China, in a “small” city about 2 hours west of Beijing. (“Small” in China means only a few million people, of course.) We thought we were going to a ladyboy cabaret, but K’s phone directed us to Soi Cowboy, which is a street that combines all the stereotypes about the seedier side of Thailand: neon everywhere, girls wearing next to nothing idling outside their clubs, lackluster table dancing inside the clubs, old white men at all the clubs, and a general sense that everyone is trying really hard to pretend it’s all normal and not sad.

Soi Cowboy

We walked the length of it–the only tourist women there except for a few middle-aged women we spotted with their husbands–and ended up on the patio of Cowboy, which had a cover band inside instead of dancing girls. H had a lot of uninformed things to say about gender and sex work, which frustrated me to no end. She kept asking about ladyboys: “What are they, women or men? What parts do they have? What are they, really?” Do your homework. Even a cursory glance at a guidebook will clarify for you that ladyboys (who usually refer to themselves in other terms, actually, like “kathoey” or “a second type of woman”) are usually biologically male, but their chosen gender expression is female. Asking what gender someone is “really” is hugely insulting, no matter the culture, but especially in a place like Thailand, where information is readily available on this prominent part of the population, it’s inexcusably ignorant.

Her other favorite topic for the evening was whether the women working here had chosen this life. She’d read all sorts of stories about the “white slave trade” in Southeast Asia, which… what. But she also thinks that some Thai girls, while not kidnapped for the sex slave trade like white girls from America (WHAT), are still forced into the job. If they chose the job, though, she was okay with it. I did a little “choosing from super limited options isn’t a true choice” (my main line when encountering “feminism is about choice” defenders), but mostly I was irritated that she insisted on talking about this while we were sitting right there. If this scene bothers you, that is perfectly understandable, but there’s no reason you have to stay here. As soon as we arrived, we could see it for what it was; babbling about how worried you are for these women as you drink cocktails they bring you is useless and almost insulting.

Medical diagrams at Wat Pho

Anyway, when we steered clear of those conversations, we had a good time, and I was glad to have gone out for one night in Bangkok. (Oh no, I did it again.) The next day I went to the Grand Palace, but by the time I got there, every tour group in Thailand was shoving its way into the gates, and it was too overwhelming. I walked along the outer wall and crossed the street to Wat Pho instead.

Reclining Buddha in Wat Po

Wat Pho (or Po) is a beautiful complex. It contains the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand, covered in gold leaf and housed in a building barely big enough for it. Pillars hold up the roof and split up the view of the buddha, which is too bad for taking in its magnificence in one look, but did give intriguing glimpses as I walked down toward the feet. The soles of the buddha’s feet are covered in intricate mother-of-pearl decorations, which were lovely. The rest of the grounds contain a massage school, a shrine to a seated buddha, and small stupas. There was also a small display on President Obama’s visit to the temple in November 2012, including the gift he brought with him–a candle from Chesapeake Bay. A candle? Really? A candle is what you get someone when you don’t know them well enough to know what to get them. Surely someone on the team could’ve tried a little harder.

The feet of the reclining buddha

After I walked around the wat, I collected my luggage, spent far too long finding a minibus, and got to Ayutthaya for a few hours of sightseeing before headed farther north. A whirlwind trip to Bangkok.

*Usually I use full names in my stories, but since I dwell on the negative parts of my time with H, I thought that imprudent.