I'm off to see the wizard

A Lession in Taoism from the wise Bangkok

Well I'd really want to write a huge blog entry all about yesterday but my time is limited because today I am really busy and have to get on the road soon. So to begin I must say how different a city like Bangkok is, by noon I was ready to say forget the Jazz festival and leave right then and by 3 pm I decided I need to stay an extra day or two before I move on. I woke up at 8 am and headed out to check some emails and got lucky catching some people on msn then I went and got some breakfast before heading to my first destination. When I went to get a taxi/tuk tuk to my first destination they all tried to rip me off, charging me 3 times as much as I should have paid to get there so I decided to go back to my room and check how far it was on a map. It turned out to be really close, maybe a 20 minute walk so I decided to try my luck but after and hour of wondering in a figure 8 I realised Bangkok isn't like anyother city I've been to. Normally I'm really good at finding my way around but here I think it is impossible. I stopped and asked 2 two different people and they both gave me two different sets of directions, on included taking a bus that I waited for 10 mins for but never showed up. So I decided I need to take a tuk tuk and flaged on down. Now the problem was that he didn't speak or read english so he got off and took the address to another Thai who gave him some directions and then we agreed on a price and were finally on our way, so I thought. About 5 mins later he pulls up to some random buildign and looks at me like "is this it?" I shoke my head no and he got out and asked another person for directions. That guy seemed to know where it was and the tuk tuk driver seemed really excited when he got back in and we were off again. About 3 mins later, he pulls over again looking lost and asks one more person where it is. After a minute of looking at the address and thinking about it the guy points up the street and the drive gets back in and fires up the tuk tuk and we are off again. Then two seconds later we are there, it was actually just on the next block. When we see it we both laugh and I pay and get out. After that I had to go to a Thai Ticketmaster to get tickets for the Jazz Festival so early I had made a list of all of the locations and so I jumped in a taxi and asked him to take me to the closest one. Now I lucked out and got a taxi drive who not only spoke a bit of english but was also hilarious. He told me about his beautiful children and his fat wife and many girlfriends, he pulled out one of those brochures for the "massage parlours" and told me how he likes to go there and get the big bretheted ladies. He made me laugh the whole way there. When I got to Central Chit Lom I was amazed when I walked in. It is a 7 floor huge deptment store/mall with amazing stuff. Anything and everythign you could want they had there and all of it was good quality not like the crap you see all over the streets here. They also had a huge christmas tree, I think it was about 5 stories high. So all of you who know me well know how much I love shopping, ha so I went directly up to the 6th floor to get my tickets but I found out I had 4 hour to kill until the Jazz festival started so I decided to try to kill some time by walking the mall. I walked around for a long time, it felt like at least 2 or 3 hours to me but when I went to check the time it had only been 45 mins so I bought a magazine and went to one of the Star bucks in the place. Its good to know that that place is a rip off all over the world, normally I get a 1 leter bottle of water for 5 baht and there I got a 500 mL bottle for 45 baht. I sat there for I think a half an hour and then decided to go walk around and see what was around the mall. I think I was in the buisness center b/c there lots of nice hotels there and I still need to kill a few hours so I thought about getting in a cab and heading to Lumphini park to relax or getting a hair cut. I walked down this one street for about 20 mins and decided after the next convence store I'd get some thing to drink and hope in a taxi to the park. Well as I kept walking I started to recongnize the street and realised that I was right at Lumphini park and as I crossed the street I noticed a little hole in the wall barber shop. It was just two chairs and a bed in the room, which the barbers wife was sleeping in. He was cutting some old mans hair when I walked in an he motioned for me to have a seat. It was very interesting watching him cut the guys hair, it seemed very random and at the end he cracked the guys neck. Then it was my turn, now he didn't speak any english I doubt many foreigners go there but I just sat in the chair and he pulled out the clippers and went to work without a word being said. So now I'm nice and bald again and it only cost me 2 bucks this time plus I got my necked cracked. After that I went next door and got a red bull and a bottle of water and went into the park. I spent about an hour sitting there reading my mag before headin over to the Jazz festival. The ride there took about an hour and it was only 10 k away, you've got to love Bangkok traffic! When I got there I was very surprised at how big it was and how nice the set up was. It was very well organized with two huge stages bands came on one after another and it was so funny to watch the people in the front run from one stage to the next. The only had one bathroom so the line up for that was huge and something confused me the whole night was there were no garbage cans, the only one I found was right beside the washroom and yet the place was soo clean. The had a food tent set up selling all kinds of things that I don't know what they were, I ended up with some wonton soup w/ bbq pork and a phad thai luckily. The festival was sponsered but heinekien so the beer was really cheap about a buck and a quater per can. All the bands were great and the last guy was just amazing, I was soo tired I wanted to leave but I just couldn't. Well I'd love to give some more details about the night and the line up but I must run to start my day, hopefully I'll wake up earlier tomorrow to be able to write all about today before starting off the day.

posted by Brandon Share @ 11:31 AM