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Visiting Bangkok is an adrenaline-pumping experience, although not like in the movie The Hangover 2.
Visiting Bangkok, encounters between temples and night life
I made a lot of interesting acquaintances on this trip, but in some ways the number one was a gentleman in Bangkok. He told me I was mean and stupid because I didn’t want to believe that my hotel would close at 3 p.m. (by the way, he didn’t know which one it was) and I didn’t want to follow him to his friend’s hotel.
Also deserving was the lady who at all costs wanted to sell me a live chicken.
Bangkok is chaotic, going from soaring skyscrapers to slums; nightclubs and temples; markets full of colors and smells alternating with ultramodern shopping malls.
I could not miss the royal palace and the main temples, shuttling from one side to the other of the great river that runs through the city. But I didn’t have time to go to the famous floating market or even the one where the train passes every so often and shopkeepers have to move goods off the rails.
The way of fun
Unforgettable is Khao San Road, the Thai street food street, very touristy but really fun and with clubs with loud music.
There I was stopped by an American girl who, drunk in broad daylight, offered herself to me as a makeshift prostitute because she had run out of money. She was offended by my refusal. When I met her again shortly afterwards holding hands with an aging belly, she looked at me proudly.
One evening I did one of those things I really like to do when I find such a lively area, as Bourbon street in New Orleans or Jemaael-Fnaa Square in Marrakesh can be. I found an elevated spot from which to observe the life of that bustling little world, drinking a beer.
In the stalls I avoided fried scorpions, but as we should have done with the blond Parisian encounter, I took durian.
It is a fruit about the size of our melons and is very popular in those parts; you happen to find stalls with mountains of it, but it is forbidden to take it on buses because it smells too much. With the girl we met in Cambodia we promised each other we would try it together on a dare, I did it myself: disgusting! While in general I love Thai cuisine.
Try Thai antibiotics
Instead, the problem that emerged in the capital was a different one, although it had been caused days earlier.
In Romagna, at least when I was growing up, if you had a cut or one of the frequent wounds that happened to you while playing in backyards and sidewalks, they would tell you take a bath in sea water, that disinfects!
They explained to me many years later that this may perhaps be true in our enclosed and highly polluted sea, but instead the opposite is true in the oceans.
In the larger seas there are lots of bacteria (a sign of less pollution), and if they find where to squeeze in, they party.
So my petty cut, which I had gotten from falling off the bamboo bridge, and which at home would not have merited even a band-aid, with the bath at Ko Phangan, became infected.
This thing also happened to me later in Egypt, and without cutting as well in Australia in one ear.
Thai pharmacists go hard on antibiotic ointments, which they gave me without a prescription. Fortunately, after a while I settled down. Back home at the pharmacy they were amazed at the potency the medication they gave me had.
Home travel Travel to Thailand and Cambodia: Buddhist temples, stray dogs and a lawyer
Previous stop Visiting an island in Thailand
Tappa successiva Viaggio in solitaria in Thailandia e la solitaria
Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent
Countries visited in my travel stories
Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives
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