Thai this and that and it’s all good!

Okay, the weather could be a little less sweaty. It is almost the coldest time they have it here and it feels to be warmer than in Finland ever. Sooo sweaty all the time, just basically walking a water bottle in the other hand.

Here we are in Bangkok enjoying this hospitable Thai-culture. Bangkok is almost as modern as e.g. Hong Kong, although the concept of “modern” is debatable. If it means that McDonalds and KFC have populated every street at least with three different restaurants, then Bangkok is not modern. In Bangkok I’ve seen 2 McDonalds’s, one KFC, one BK, one DQ. So at least those bastards have not conquered Bangkok yet. What is disappointing to see that almost every bottled water around here has the name “The Coca-Cola Company” on their cover. But, where was I. Yesterday we visited the biggest and the most interesting mall ever, which comprised of at least three different massive buildings. And the stuff on sale was well on view and the stuff itself was interesting. Of course, we did not buy anything but food, but the mall had a good atmosphere, if I dare to say this as an anti-capitalist :). The delicacy store was magnificent: me and Silja were just tasting all kinds of taste’n’go products for free, walking in our sandals amongst the native people. Well, at least nobody said anything to us :P. And I got to taste the Dairy Queen’s ice-cream thingy, a dream of mine since Tokyo \o/.

Here in Bangkok we have seen many unbelievably beautiful places, such as the Vimanmek Mansion (the biggest golden teak house in the world) with its charming old-school feel, and actually the whole Dusit Palace area, some of the stuff in there was amazing in terms of both detail and the assembly of all. Shivers… In retrospect I would say it has been definitely the most impressive “must-sees” I have seen on this trip. The Grand Palace in itself and its jade Buddha (there’s a story to it which helps to understand the whole Indo-Chinese history) are alone worth seeing.

The food here is absolutely fantastic! They use lot of lime, coriander, peppermint, garlic, onion, bean sprouts. The chicken curry is so good and so is the Tom Yum Goong spicy seafood soup. The street, which is near to our place (New Joe Guesthouse, it’s ok although electricity we had to literally get from the roof and make “patents” on how to attach the cord to the loose holes there in the roof), Khao San road, a backpacker haven (seems to be other folks as well), is filled with all kinds of sellers from clothes vendors to food stalls. And the food is plentiful, the Pad Thai is very good and cheap food, the pineapples one can get totally fresh are very good investment as well as this crepes kind of thing with banana and chocolate-sauce, it’s sooo good!

Of course we had to go and see some Muay Thai as well. Better known as Thai boxing, it is one of the most demanding combat sports known to man. Even though there are rules to it, it is painful even to watch. We went to a stadium called something like Ratchadamnoen to see this event of seven matches. The rounds were two or three minutes and in total there were from 3-5 rounds per match. The youngest of the fighters looked no older than 10-year-olds and according to the match sheet, they weighed only 40 kilograms. So basically the whole Thai nation is into Thai boxing and the practicing starts at very early age. Thai boxing uses lot of feet, it is the main staple of the whole show. In this instance it seemed the winner was the one who had the most energy to kick the other guy’s side with knee in at point-blank range. There were a few knock-outs as well. But what is very specific to Thai boxing are the rituals performed before the match. Every fighter has his own dance and way of making the “fighting gods” happy. There is a music band with drums, some kind of reed instrument and some percussion playing music both when the fighters prepare for the match and also during the match. The tempo and intensity of the music is varied according to the events on change..so you can imagine what it is when hundreds of crazy Thai boxing enthusiasts are chanting loudly for their own favourite while the band is making their best effort to make things as exciting as they can be. For every hit the crowd is cheering, everybody just trying to encourage their own favourite. It’s very unique and interesting.

To make things more uncomfortable, when it comes to the heat and the weather, we will travel down south with Silja, leaving on Tuesday evening in an overnight bus (I’ve heard lot of horror stories from this one, stuff being stolen when the passengers were unconscious because of something ingested through the ventilation system) towards Chumphon, from where we will take a ferry to Koh Tao, the small island in the gulf. My plans are to test scuba diving there and chill out, because on 1st of March I hear on Koh Pha Ngan there is going to be the famous (probably not as good as the legends tell, but we’ll see) full-moon party, which I will attend. This means I would have to travel to Pha Ngan with a ferry before the 1st of March.

Silja says also hi to everyone, hope everyone’s found this blog because hers has been rather silent… Elkää hajotko pakkaseen :)