Indelible Roots

I’ve been in Thailand a couple of days now and as the heading states, it’s different, but the same.

Different: Traffic flows in an orderly fashion, if on the wrong side of the road. There are people everywhere and the city is chock full of multistory buildings, neon signs, 7/11s, McDonalds. Cops are around, but individually, not clustered four to six at major intersections lounging around. They also write a lot of tickets, as opposed to sticking their hands out for a bribe.  There are moto taxis here, but they all seem to be licensed, wearing a green vest with numbers on them and you don’t run into the constant “sir tuk tuk, moto” as in Cambodia.
This reminds me of my next to last day in Phnom Penh. I had my large backpack on my back leaving the hotel for my uncle’s place. I waved at a guy wearing a ball cap and sitting on his moto on the side of the street and said “moto?” He nodded and I got on. He then proceeded to nearly drop the bike every time we stopped moving. He drove like I did my first two or three times with a passenger. Really I think he was just a regular guy with nothing to do who decided to make some cash money.

And things are much more expensive here, but that may be due to the fact that I am now a tourist looking to enjoy my short time here instead of being occupied with work and saving money. My good old $5 per day hotel room is gone for a $20 a day room that’s only marginally better. I’m sure there are cheaper places to stay and I’ll end up moving to those on the road.  And at night this place comes alive. There are a lot more tourists around from all over the world, Indians, Russians, US, UK, etc…

Same: Most of the sewage is underground, but there are a lot of open grating, thus the waft of sewage I so dearly enjoy catches my attention often. There are open stands selling all sorts of clothing and pirated movies and music. There are street vendors selling things out of their push carts. Extremely poor people begging on the streets, though no where near as aggressively.

We’ll see how long I last before hitting the road for less populated, greener pastures.

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 1:49 am and is filed under Siam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.