Pang Pai, Pang Pai!



Still suffering from a cold and the effects of the heat, I changed my mind about a day trip to the Ancient City 30 Km outside of Bangkok, and decided to just play the day by ear. I caught the train and the Chao Phrya River express boat to Chinatown, sitting down to a dish of  soup at a street stall on the way. It was actually the best soup I've ever eaten in my life. Preparations for Chinese New Year were under way, and the streets were chaotic with market stalls selling charms and offerings, and long strings of firecrackers exploded irregularly, startling the street dogs and the skinny  Bangkok pigeons. I walked down narrow market alleyways selling food I couldn't identify, past braziers full of leaping flames, further adding to the intense heat as the offerings made their way to the heavens. I walked up to Wat Mangkonkamala, a Buddhist, Taoist and Confucianist temple that was thronged with students offering prayers in the hope of success in their exams, teenage monks in brand-new bright orange robes, and hundreds and hundreds of incense-bearing worshippers preparing themselves spiritually for the New Year.

 

Waiting for the river express I saw a girl throwing food to a seething mass of enormous catfish, and I bought a small bucket of fish food and watched the river heave with slippery flesh as they fought to eat their fill. As the heat grew in strength I made my way to the national museum, and after stalking the galleries for a few hours I was exhausted, and found a small pagoda to rest for a while. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, and woke up two hours later as the museum was closing, refreshed and amused by my sudden descent into such deep and unexpected slumber. While I sat on the wall outside, reading my map and deciding what to do next, a Thai man walked up and began to talk to me, asking how I was enjoying my stay, where I planned to go, and what sights I'd visited in Bangkok already. He suggested that I visit the standing Buddha at Wat Intharawihan, and took out his pen to mark it on my tourist map. He said I could walk, or take a tuk-tuk, before asking me seriously, 'You know how much to pay for tuk-tuk?' He said to pay 50-60 baht, and no more. 'If they want more, then you speak Thai: pang pai, pang pai! It means "Too much, too much!"'. He even wrote it down on my map, jsut to make. We talked a little about music, and he said to visit the museum, where he works, on Saturday or Sunday, when there are displayes of traditional Thai dancing and music. I thanked him and walked off to find the standing Buddha.

 

I arrived just as the sun was setting, gave some money to a Cambodian man whose lower limbs had obviously been mangled by unexploded ordnance. He told me I would have good luck at the temple. I also gave a woman money for a small cage full of chattering, terrified finches, which I released in the temple grounds in front of the huge Buddha, watching them fly away to the east in chattering, angry protest.

         



On the way home I stopped on a bridge to look down the canal, and to take a photograph of the beautiful white bridge stretching across the water in the distance. As I stood there I saw an enormous monitor lizard, at least five feet in length, swimming gracefully in the middle of the canal. I was shocked to see such a pre-historic monster only feet from the thundering traffic and busy crowds of the Bangkok street. I walked down the bank to take a closer look, and he changed his mind and began swimming back the way he'd come, testing the banks of the canal for a way out of the water, his tongue caressing the hot air all the time.