The Drowned City

Short Version:
Bangkok, even when flooded, partially evacuated, and judged solely by a manky airport suburb, is awesome.

Long Version:
Original Plan:
4 nights in Bangkok, 3 in a cool riverside downtownish hotel, 1 in an airporty transity one. Various excellent, exciting adventures, including riverboating, eating delicious foods, and table tennis action*.

Spanner/Fly for your Ointmenty Works:
Flooding. Visit timed to perfection to match the arrival of peak floodwaters. Bangkok partially evacuated, commercial activities suspended, mild panic ensues. Riverside downtownish hotel underwater and closed.

Revised Plan:
Leave Bangkok for Delhi earlier than planned, stay in Bangkok airport.

Actuality:
Leave Bangkok airport, eventually. En route to leaving airport, acquire the following:
- 6 passport photos each, to supplement existing collections, for Thai and Indian visas. Puppet looks like a jihadist. Nene looks like she's been photographed on the mortician's slab, or in the cells after a lengthy, enthusiastic, and eventful meth binge
- 1 mild heart palpitation when Visa-on-Arrival booth guy says "Where from? New Zealand? New Zealand no eligible Visa-on-Arrival. Go Immigration, get Visa." Fucksocks.
- 2 improved understandings of the difficulties involved in attempting to explain what a Samoa is to a Thai Immigration official who speaks little English, and who has interestedly thumbed through the Puppetpassport peering at the stampage.
- 0 visas.

We ended up in a riverside airporty hotel. Sandbags and pumps and other temporary flood barriers were abundant. So were fish. In the water, out of the water, climbing all over each other in pursuit of the bread being tossed their way by a variety of people**. Similar size to the salmon we saw in Canada last year***, but with catfish-style barbels sprouting from their mouthparts. Suspect they taste like mud, but a bunch of people were fishing for them, so I guess either I'm wrong about their flavour or mud's better than the alternative. Which is possibly nothing.

We, on the other hand, had plenty of food options at the cafe we found: duck with noodles, or duck with rice... One of each, please!

We napped, promenaded along the riverbank, were barked at by a grumpy dog, and eventually settled in to a riverside table to eat and drink well into the evening. Well, into the evening at any rate; 730pm saw us tired and drunk and ready to start the sleep that would take us through to 230am and airport o'clock.

We made a friend at the airport. He was sleeping on a bench, up to the point when a trolley loaded with puppetbags was driven into his legs with some force. Sorry! Maybe it's time we left...


Wait, not so fast, tourist scum!

First we had to experience some Bangkok airportness:
- A massive orchid display
- 50% of passengers on our flight were checking boxed flatscreen TVs in as luggage
- An angry passport control woman. She yelled at Nene. I'd be angry too, if I were that ugly, and that old, and had a zit that MASSIVE in the middle of my forehead.
- The space on the far side of passport control at Bangkok airport is HUGE. We wandered for ages, watching the high-end fashion stores coming to life for the day.
- Fresh-baked big soft pretzels. Why are all the pretzels in NZ the small, crisp ones? These ones are way better. So much so that we had two.
- Every security, passport, and airline staff member we spoke to asked us if we smoked
- Cheesy Thai pop music from every store, sometimes competing cacophonically with them next door
- Additional security check at departure gate. The woman with the wand**** became angered by the seemingly mild-mannered but ineffectual old man in front of us, who failed to understand that she was finished with him. We were pleased that we'd had the opportunity to observe, as we'd most likely have roused exactly the same ire if not forewarned.
- A middle-aged Indian woman made it as far as boarding the plane with all her luggage, which included a full-sized suitcase. When - finally! - challenged, she removed a large doll (a European-looking baby about 2ft long) from the suitcase, handed it to the airline staff, and tried to set off again into the plane. Eventually they repacked the doll and removed the suitcase from her possession for - I assume - transfer to the checked-in luggage compartment

...and then we were aboard, and the pianomuzak versions of "Love Lifts Us Up Where we Belong" and "Didn't We Almost Have it All?" were playing, and then we were airborne, and [CENSORED - see note ***** at own risk], and then the stewardess was walking up and down the aisle, spraying disinfectant from a pair of cans, and it was like we were arriving in NZ in the 80s! But we weren't, we were arriving in Delhi, and the madness was about to begin.







* = Use your imagination. Or google "Bangkok + ping-pong balls" with SafeSearch off

** = Our favourite was the older gent with the up-high slacks beltline, who was very seriously ripping hunks of stale bread and throwing them to the fish then gesturing as though conducting their movements

*** = The fish, not the people

**** = Not a fairy. Maybe a witch.

***** = One of the expectations of our Bangkok sojourn was that we'd see some nudity, and some unusual nude activities (see note *). The floods put paid to our visit to the centre of the perviverse, and by the time we were airborne en route to Delhi these things were far from our minds. It was with some surprise, then, that upon opening an unlocked, "Unoccupied" toilet, Puppetvision captured a Thai woman, urinating frenziedly. Who was more surprised? Possibly a tie. Puppet almost certainly more amused, although the steward who had watched the whole thing abruptly closed the curtain to seal off the kitchen area, and one suspects he may have been privately chortling, heartily.