Around the World in 330 Days: Brian's Fulbright Journey in China and Elsewhere: Days 199-200: Bangkok--Days 3 and 4

Wednesday, after a quick breakfast in the room, I was driven to go give my second lecture, on diversity in the American literary canon. It was very sparsely attended at first (only about 5 people or so), but then I had about 25 students walk in late. Oddly--and rudely--enough--they all got up and left at once when I was only about 2/3 done with my lecture. This was pretty disappointing, but I got through it okay. After getting back to the room, Kerry and I went to go eat, and ended up at a sushi place (Shoyu), which was outstanding: they had salmon sashimi, salmon rolls, calamari, fried chicken skin, shrimp tempura, and all kind of other good stuff. That was pretty tasty! In the evening, we decided to explore the nightlife of Bangkok a bit more. We first went to a bear bar called HUGs. It was nice, but not much was going on in there, so Kerry and I had rum and cokes and then left after about 45 minutes. The area we were at was pretty seedy. Plenty of women on stripper poles in the bars, and we were constantly asked if we wanted massages, and men kept shoving pictures of naked women in our faces and lists of girls, which were always topped off with "PUSSY PING PONG." One place we saw was called "PUSSY MAGIC," which blared in neon letters. However, Kerry and I really weren't in the mood for pussy magic...but we couldn't escape it. We walked down one street that had hundreds and hundreds of women sitting outside on chairs, with their pimps close by, or else the pimps were trying to come up to us, trying to entice us. "Want boom boom?", one kept asking Kerry. He declined. So did I. Eventually, we used an app called "Grab" (similar to Didi in China) to try to take a taxi back, but the taxi went right by us. As we waited, one little girl came up to us and asked if we wanted to buy some gum, but we declined. We ended up getting a taxi from off the street. Usually they tell us the fare that they want in advance (usually somewhere between 150 or 200 baht, about 4-5 US dollars), and, because it's pretty cheap, we don't argue.

Pictures from Wednesday:

Looking sharp before my second lecture.

Giving my second lecture.

Salmon sashimi at Shoyu!

Me and Kerry at HUGs.

Shrine in the road, Bangkok.

Thursday I had an early lecture, at 10 am, this time on teaching comics in literature and writing classrooms. It went better than yesterday's, even though I had only 15 people. It was a seminar room, very conducive to discussion, and the audience stayed the entire time and asked intelligent questions. Afterwards we changed clothes and went to the sushi place, Shoyu, again for lunch--although we didn't eat as much this time! Avoided the fried foods. They messed up the order a bit and forgot to bring one of the sushi rolls, but they brought more salmon sashimi by mistake instead, which I like even more, so I didn't complain! From there, we went to the Grand Palace of Bangkok. Kerry used the Grab app again. We got an illegal taxi--we know this because the driver kept telling us how worried he was about the police, and insisted we get in and get out "quickly." But we did get there, after a bit of walking. It's a glorious place, probably the most opulent place I've seen in all of Asia. It did cost about 1000 baht (around 32 dollars) for the two of us to get in. The ticket lady was really rude: she let a guy cut in front of me instead of being patient with us when we were slow to get out the money, and then when I gave her the money, she slammed it back down on the counter to me until SHE was ready to accept it. Whatever! One of the places we went to was the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, where shoes and hats were not allowed, nor were pictures. In fact, in all of the Grand Palace area, people had to wear long pants, no tank tops or flip flops. Nice short-sleeved shirts were okay, we discovered. Some people had to wear extra coverings in order to enter, so we saw lots of men walking around in silly-looking elephant pants. We took a taxi back (200 baht) and then rested at home a bit. We decided to venture back to the mall near us later in the evening, and we had some good success. I bought two Polo shirts for $12.50 each, and we bought some stuffed elephants as gifts (5 for about $17 total). Both places gave us discounts. We then tried in vain to find something to eat--it was around 9:45 by this point. We went to Burger King, waited in line for 15 minutes, only to be told they didn't have any "regular" burgers. Okay... So we ended up back at Kerry's favorite place, McDonald's, which was much more fast and efficient, even though this time we had to order at the counter, and they messed up Kerry's order. That's something we struggle with in Asia a lot--order accuracy at restaurants. Sometimes we order something and they don't have it, and then they don't tell you that it's not available, so you keep expecting it (like some sashimi I ordered today). Or they claim that you didn't order it, when you know you did. One of the challenges of being here.

Thursday pictures: