Bangkok: Badass Temples and Bustle

Gonna post briefer updates as I’m traveling, and longer posts as I have the time!

Day 6 - July 2: Going to Bangkok

• I’m super jaded about cab drivers after visiting Morocco, so I tried Grab, failed 3 times before someone accepted for 345BHT ($11), but was too far away. Ended up getting an official cab which wasn’t sketchy like a lot of my research warned - was metered and ended up being 250.

• Checked into my hostel room and killed 4 mosquitos within 20 min of walking in. Going to sleep knowing bugs can get in stresses me out. Ugh. Instead of moisturizer after showering I get to marinate myself in deet every night now I guess. Definitely appreciate not having a shitty climate at home, or having to deal with this in HK

• Kind of questioning why am I even going on this trip - how much of this is out of actual interest of these particular locations (maybe for Buddhism and muay thai) vs just wanting cool stories + the practicality of this being a well traveled destination? Or that whole idea of experiential consumerism again.

Day 7 - July 3: Hostel Angst

Just one of MANY beautiful buildings I saw.

Went to the grand palace, wat pho. The temples are pretty damn crazy intricate. There were so many Chinese everywhere though I felt like I was in HK again.

I’m staying at a hostel near Khaosan road, which is a popular backpacker’s area near the party street, out of someone’s recommendation. They had a pub crawl that night which I didn’t want to pay for, but had a few drinks and socialized.

Lots of small talk conversations - where are you from, how long are you staying, where else are you going - which gets tiring after a few times when you have to yell over the music. Met a Congolese girl who was working in Thailand for a bit and talked about Morocco - turns out she lived in Casablanca but didn’t like it because she couldn’t adjust to life with just restrictive gender norms. Also met a Polish dude who has lived in Chengdu for 4 years, owns an underground rap club there, and does freestyle in the local dialect (v impressive). Made in China by 88rising came up and he got real hyped - apparently Chengdu (where 88rising started) is the creative/arts capital of China, with lots of LGBT, artists, musicians, and a free-spirited vibe. Apparently this conflicts with the govt at times, who will shut down their concerts. Why? ‘Because they’re too cool man’!

The unglamorous parts of solo traveling
It’s always hit or miss solo traveling in terms of how your hostel ends up, and whether you meet people you vibe with. In this case, I underestimated how tryhard party it’d be. Lots of fucked up college looking kids. Wasn’t feeling it and literally hid in my bunk for awhile.

Downstairs they’re chanting - 

I say mad, you say monkey (the place is called Mad Monkey)

I say let's get, you say fucked up

...I'm too old for this shit. I mean I did this as recently as Barcelona in Feb, which was fun but also how I ended up drinking two whole bottles of wine, getting mugged at 5am, and breaking my wrist though.

There’s a Thai bartender badly mcing, mostly just singing along with Mask Off in accented, off key English now.

The music is literally shaking the ground below me on the second floor... Flashbacks to New Years in Budapest - probably the loneliest moment in my life.

Feeling like a foreigner regardless of where I go

There’s often an initial, subconscious discomfort with showing up to a hostel and seeing zero people that look like me. This is typically dispelled as soon as I begin conversing with people and finding things to connect over (cuz we’re all just one people mannn), but the first thing I notice is the stark whiteness I often find myself in. Regardless of how much more fluent my English is, or how easily I’m able to drive conversations with sufficient motivation or liquor, there’s a sense of foreignness that I’m not used to feeling, having grown up in the Bay Area. Most assume I’m a lost Chinese tourist until I open my mouth.

In HK there was an ease from looking like everybody else, but still a slight apprehension that I'd be pushed beyond my basic Canto at any point. There was one time there where the cashier asked if I wanted a receipt or not, but used a different word than I'm used to, causing me to stare blankly after an otherwise fluent exchange. Needless to say, my mixed identity is definitely something I’m still grappling with.

Eventually I stop moping and decide to check out Khaosan Road myself.

Khaosan Road

Didn’t end up drinking on Khaosan, but I did get this ice cream from this terrifying McDonald’s.

Restaurants/bars with live American music, massage parlors, and ppl offering scorpions, laughing gas, pingpong shows, and tourist knickknacks all blended seamlessly into one street.

• Noticed several families, unlike most nightlife areas

• Grateful I'm a dude and can walk these areas alone without much harassment, though Thailand doesn’t seem too aggressive. I also have the experience of ignoring people from the days of dodging fliers on Sproul Plaza lol.

Day 8 - July 4: Getting Cultured

wat arun, amulet/flower markets, chinatown, arts and culture center, mbk

- ppl spend all day handmaking these beautiful leis and garlands to sell for 60 cents each. Barely any buyers mid day when I went, but apparently hotels show up at the end of the day with trucks to buy them out

- bkk traffic 'if it's less than 2 miles, just walk' is real. Roads were jammed solid, with even motorbikes struggling to push their way through traffic with maneuveurs that would get you ticketed in SF.

- chinatown even denser, with more street food, but still familiar jam of restaurants, grocers, cheap markets, except every sign is thai/chinese instead of eng/chinese. didnt get to explore it much bc i got stuck in a storm and went to indoor places instead

Bangkok Arts and Culture Center

This was a cool area to relax a bit. On display included architecture final projects modeling things from climate change adapted buildings, community malls, to homeless housing, as well as abstract art pieces and weird fan flash videos of some Gundam bootleg.

One of the reasons I love wandering areas is because you can stumble across things you weren’t expecting. I noticed a crowd forming at the arts center and checked it out - turns out there was an interpretive dance performance themed on bridging cultural barriers, hosted by the Goethe Institut and a few other organizations. It explored the motifs of gender norms, greed, and divisiveness, through labels of language, nationality, and wealth, all without speaking. The silence broke at the end when everyone started speaking in their native tongue to convey the unintelligible chaos that can arise when you smash different cultures together. It was cool to see this collab between people from 4 Asian countries, a South American director, and a German organization - all for free! You wont find shit like this in SF.

- Had bougie drinks with a work friend at a rooftop bar on the more developed side of town. Felt like a completely diff city, reminds of the drastically diff travel lives I live when work vs personal (esp solo) traveling

Day 9 - July 5: Finding Comfort in Change and Stillness

Yaowarat night market

Went to golden buddha temple, chinatown night markets, friendzone cafe, norn yaowarat

Felt kinda shitty about my experience thus far, decided to move hostels - lots of indecisiveness as a result of wanting to overoptimize (best location, rating, ability to socialize, etc) which often leads me to read reviews for like 2 hours and still not decide. Very happy with the place i got tho - there's no other solo travelers afaik but way cleaner, and nicer rooms.

The rigor of walking thru the entire city and plowing thru tourist sight after sight has been taking its toll - I need to shift away from the whole 'checklist' mindset of crossing as many locations as possible, and feeling fomo and regret if I didn’t get to all the 'must see events'. Hung out at a cafe (mostly for its name cuz friendzone lol) and at the hostel for awhile.

Chinatown Yaowarat nightmarket

• About as chaotic as taiwan/hk ones, except in this case it's split on two sides of a main road with tons of traffic surging through

• Broad mix of chinese and thai dishes and desserts

• Had some dank pad thai and a giant mango smoothie for 2 bucks. So good

Tinder date with ‘G’

Australian working in legal services for a merged company between an Aus and Chinese company in Singapore, mostly on belt and road development projects in SEA. Interesting take on the political implications of accepting Chinese investment money, and on Australian expats vs comfort of staying in country. Works crazy Asian work hours like everyone else. Checked out some cool bougie cocktail bars.

Day 10 - July 6: A Local Perspective

Friggin beautiful

Ate some food, checked out some museums, and went on a date with ‘F’, a Thai local born and raised in the area. Really fun and genuine personality - got some dessert toast (different from the HK style) and ‘butterfly pea’ drink, checked out a nice temple with a great sunset view, took some photos, and got dinner. She did exchange in high school and lived in Delaware, and explored a bit around the States with her host family. Talked about the differences of tones in Thai vs Chinese, job searching in Thailand leveraging her English skills, conservative Asian family upbringings. Some random tidbits:

• When at the temple, there was a sign that said ‘Way up’ to the roof view of the stupa - F mentioned that in Thai it was more like ‘ascend towards heaven’, which was much more poetic given the spiritual context. Finding out things that are lost in translation is always awesome.

• I had no idea wtf butterfly pea was. Apparently it’s a flower, also used as an ointment to promote hair growth.

• There are 44 letters in the Thai alphabet, with 5 tones. I found out she was taking Mandarin class (which has 4) but it’s still difficult because the tonation and pitch don’t match up. Cantonese has 6 or more, depending on who you ask, but comes natively to me so it was hard to visualize academically until someone showed me this site.

• When I asked her about the role of Buddhism in education, she told me she had to memorize all the Buddhist chants, which you hear monks reciting in temples, in primary school. She also had to practice meditation for 30 minutes at a time (while professing she couldn’t deal with more than 10 before getting sleepy). Her school taught most classes in English, so she had to learn the chants in English too.

• She watches a reality show about talking to dead people. I initially laughed thinking this was junk tv/fake but she said she cries every episode 1. because she's sensitive but also 2. because it brings closure to families that want to speak to a lost relative, and makes her appreciate people in her life more and treat others kindly. V wholesome.

• Her English teacher was Thai, a non-native speaker, so it wasn’t until she did exchange that she learned proper emphasis for a lot of words. Despite being non-tonal, there isn’t really any way to know how a word is stressed (like history being on the first syllable HI-stor-ee, instead of hi-stor-EE) unless you hear it pronounced correctly. Also called out how randomly knowledge is nall-edge instead of know-ledge. I guess all those unemployed humanities students who come teach in Asia actually do have a lot of impact.

Hong Kong: Catching up with Canto

June 26 - July 2

Days 1-5

Note: the format will probably change for future posts, since this is written fully in retrospect rather than covering my agenda as it goes. Still figuring how to present content out as I go!

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Thoughts

I visited here a few years ago with my sister but wanted to come back before heading into Southeast Asia - partially because of convenient flights from the states, and partially to experience more of the city itself, rather than just the tourist sites. It’s also one of the few foreign countries where I don’t feel like I stand out. As an Asian-American who speaks Cantonese but defaults to English for anything beyond a 10 year old’s vocabulary, it’s a familiar culture but still friendly to my Western self. Anywhere mainland, even in the south, has standardized on Mandarin, and pretty much every other country just assumes I’m a Chinese tourist until I start talking.

For logistics, I was fortunate enough to have Jacob, a British friend that I met in Marrakech, move to HK recently and host me. It’s a rare but awesome example of being able to reunite with someone you met during travels. Travel friendships, especially those met while solo, can be fast and deep. You’re strangers passing by in the lobby one moment, and two days later you know each others’ life stories, have a whole host of shenanigans and inside jokes you’ve shared, and are probably headed to different countries, never to see each other again. 

While in the city, I spent time with a few distinct groups, which was a cool way to get unique perspectives of the same city. 

• Jacob and a few other expats

• a HK native friend who went to high school/college with me but went back for work, as well as a few of his banking/finance friends

• a HK local, born and raised

But for most of the time, I wandered around by myself, eating alone and hiding from the the stifling, damp heat as much as possible in the many shopping complexes. The city itself has a frenetic pace and not a lot of traditional tourist sites to experience as a solo destination, outside of eating and shopping. I do wonder what a staying in a hostel, which is how I usually solo travel, would have been like since I could’ve led people in social situations instead of being lost like I usually am. Rooms probably would’ve been bad though, given how scarce real estate is.

That’s not to say there weren’t notable experiences. Aside from food (which I could do a whole dedicated post on, to be honest), some highlights included:

Hong Kong History Museum

Surprisingly thorough, going from the formation of the island and biome through the country’s history, up until the (suspiciously abstract) exhibit on reunification with China. I spent like 3 hours here absorbing information and AC. 

Sai Kung -> Ham Tin beach

This was the first time I had visited the New Territories outside of the main city. I was totally not expecting to speedboat, beach, take a scenic (but sweltering) hike, and hop into waterfall pools this early into Asia. It was dope.

Brokeback waterfall shenanigans

Tinder date in Kowloon

Yes, I Tinder pretty frequently when solo traveling abroad. More for conversing with locals and breaking up otherwise solitary days than strictly romantic pursuits, but I’ll write a future dedicated post on this, since people tend to have strong reactions or many questions. 

In any case, my Hong Kong date with ‘S’ consisted of a few bars, skyline views at a park, 7 Eleven wine, and over eight hours of conversation. I ended up staying in Tsim Sha Tsui that night, in no small part due to the protest on the anniversary of Chinese reunification leading to rioting where I was staying.

Day trip to Shenzhen

Visited a good friend in the area and ate, got a massage, and saw some dope city lights. At night their skyline practically turns into a Disneyland light show, with music/animations from different artists. The bullet train from HK takes < 20 minutes (though immigration a bit longer). It was cool to see the little bit of the ‘Silicon Valley of China’ that I could. All of the mobile/QR based payment and services is cool to see, but also meant I was totally helpless without WePay or a Chinese bank card.

Can’t directly upload videos of the light show here, but I’ll add it to my IG highlights.

Things I Learned

A compilation of things I heard during my stay. Note these are typically from a single data point and are my interpretations, not verbatim quotes, so take em with a grain of salt:

Expats/Wan Chai

On Sunday there are tons of Filipino women just picnicking on cardboard boxes on random (not particularly pleasant) streets and subway stops. Apparently they work as maids and only get Sunday off to socialize. Makes me grateful for SF parks and public gathering spaces.

I stayed the same area, Wan Chai, last time as well, but never realized before it was the red light district. There were lots of Southeast Asians in general, with every bar in the area featuring a  Filipino live band. One of the streets I walked past was filled with strip clubs with Chinese grandmas sitting out in stools soliciting people in. It was a lil weird to see women who could’ve been my aunt or grandma working that kind of job, but they likely don’t have the luxury of choice. Central island hosts most of the expats, and I definitely saw more than a few old white dudes in these bars, sometimes talking to afore-mentioned Southeast Asian females…

Banker Lifestyle

I know Asian work hours are notoriously bad, but it was still a bit jarring to see it firsthand. My friend mentioned working till 11 or 12 is normal during live deals, and two of his friends we were getting dinner with missed it because they worked past 10 (on a Friday too!) One guy had to ask for a computer at 1130pm to jump on work things mid-drinking. I can imagine this is similar for finance elsewhere too, I’m just too bubbled up in tech lyfe in SF though.

I also heard that club culture was very materialistic - I mean as a concept it inherently is, but with the crazy price of liquor in HK especially you have to spend a lot if you’re trying to table or go chasing ladies. I mentioned that this sounded like an unsustainable lifestyle, working endless hours just to drink off the stress on the weekends, but someone mentioned it’s one of the only ways (the other being real estate) to live a comfortable life in HK. 

The 1 bedroom we were drinking at also apparently was ~$5500/mo rent! It was in a nice area, but made me balk at how one person, my age, could afford that. I know HK also has crazy wealth inequality, but even those at the top are worked to hold their positions.

From the history museum

I go to a lot of museums when I solo travel. It’s nice to be able to linger or skip areas based on my own interest, and not worry about how others feel about pacing. That being said, I try to take at least a couple bullet points when I see interesting facts.

• Yue people originally, assimilated into dominant Han from North

• South generally more peaceful, many migrated there fleeing invasions in North

• HK was evacuated for 8 years during Qing dynasty

• 4 different native ethnic groups from different migration waves, including boat dwellers

• Trade inequity and restrictions were reversed with opium, its seizure+tensions led to war in 1840, China got rekt in all its major cities, signed treaty of Nanjing ceding HK, opening trade in more cities than just Guangzhou, paying reparations

• HK was one of the last Chinese cities (under British) to fall to Japan, was occupied for 4 years, ppl interned/imprisoned, Japanized, food shortage

• Post war industry grew in plastics, clocks, toys, flashlights

Reunification section was weirdly abstract, playing just a bunch of Chinese pop songs, video clips of happy children, and the recording of the British ceding the territory. They probably can’t take any concrete stances since it’s still a controversial topic.

From the date

From ‘S’ I’ll spare personal details, but I did hear:

• There are a mix of different schools offered, such as private, half sponsored, full sponsored, with each category requiring different tuitions and govt standards

• From her previous job, there’s a work culture of needing to hang around the office for the sake of being there, even if you have nothing to do. She didn’t see it really valuing creative approaches vs raw knowledge.

• Her Mandarin wasn’t great, but she did well in English, which she stated many people valued the most as an indicator of smartness

• TST is full of shopping malls where a lot of mainlanders come to. Apparently people buy a lot of baby supplies in HK because there was some controversy where one died from baby food in China?

• People protest on reunification anniversary day every year. This time was much worse with the breakins to the assembly chamber due to recent tensions.

Ladies Market in TST

Overall, I enjoyed my time in Hong Kong and was happy to have a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, but the last day was a little tough with heat fatigue, everyone I knew busy with work, and nothing left I wanted to see in the city. I’ve considered living there before to reconnect a bit with cultural roots, but it would definitely have to be short term in such a busy, expensive city. The next time I visit will probably be with friends or family - there’s something that just doesn’t feel right eating dim sum alone :)

View from the apartment - an unflattering but realistic pic of the city.