I Love Thailand, or, If I had a billion dollars, I would buy a holographic Charizard

Dearest readers-- I realize that you've heard little of our time in Thailand so far, so I'll do my best to fill you in.

I'll start with Bangkok. Now, I am a lucky guy. I've had the privilege of traveling to many of the world's greatest cities. But only two cities have really floored me with what they have to offer. Both are studies in contrasts, and both, understandably, draw tourists like neon lights draw flies. One is Istanbul, and the other is Bangkok.

Others have attested to Bangkok's chaos-- the maddening third-world-ity of the place, with its incorrigible hawkers and crumbling concrete buildings. But bear in mind that for me and Pramod, the baseline is India: Thailand seems to be doing miraculously well. Even the poorest of areas have a minimum of trash and human waste, and the drivers seem to at least grasp the concept of lane lines, as well as the abstract imperative of needing to respect them.

Our first day in Thailand contained two big adventures: the Weekend Market at Chatuchak and a trip to the Golden Mount temple. Chatuchak is the mother of all markets-- it truly defies the imagination. I am sure it occupies a couple of square miles, and, once there, you can buy almost anything you can conceive of, from food to furniture and from Ray-Bans to chihuahuas. It was my second time there, and it made me smile: thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs, validating capitalism in the developing world, and bringing us goods that we wanted at phenomenally low prices. And there was nary a scrap of trash to be found anywhere! Truly remarkable.

The second stop of the day was the Golden Mount temple, which was the first of four temple complexes we would end up seeing over a two-day period. Each was more spectacular than the last-- the Golden Mount was built high on a hill with wonderful views of the city, the Royal Grand Palace contained a complex of political buildings and beautiful and ornate Buddhist architecture, Wat Pho contained an enormous golden reclining Buddha (the Buddha himself would not have approved of such ostentation!), and Wat Arun contained huge pagodas that you could climb-- once again, with beautiful views of the city and the Chao Phraya river.

Thai art and architecture is breathtaking. A curious blend of Indian and Chinese in form, Thai monuments and murals have all the elaboration and grandeur of similar Western cultural products. In fact, Thailand is especially blessed: never having been colonized, occupied, or bombed by a foreign power, it has never had to deprioritize the upkeep of its traditional artistic heritage. Only in Thailand, among the countries of Eastern religious traditions, do you find such prolific monumental architecture, and in particular religious architecture. More than once, despite being pretty un-religious, I was moved to offer a few Sanskrit prayers in these magnificent houses of worship.

Thai food, let it be known, is also breathtaking. From green and red curries to noodle dishes to sticky rice with coconut milk and mango, our taste buds have been in a perpetual state of euphoria almost since we first arrived in the county. We found an absolutely epic restaurant in Khao San, the backpacker's district of Bangkok, where we have been staying, and which is packed with foreigners of all stripes. We could have visited this restaurant a third time tonight, but instead one of the brilliant hostel staff members led us through all manner of side streets to a Thai-Vietnamese noodle place, where we ate like absolute kings for 80 baht per person (a little under 3 dollars), including our main noodle soup dish, plus salad, pork sausage for the meat eaters, and drinks. Thailand is so cheap and delicious!

But enough of these side details-- there are also our adventures on the island of Koh Samet to discuss. Koh Samet is a good 3-5 hours from Bangkok by a number of means of transport, but it is well worth the long trek. It's a long, skinny little island topped with green hills and absolutely gorgeous beaches. The sand is fine and white, and the water at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit. We stayed at an establishment somewhat sketchily named Jep's Bungalows. I don't know who this Jep fellow is, but I can tell you that his bungalows resemble government rest houses in India, complete with the obligatory mosquitoes, bucket baths, and sometimes only semi-functional toilets (if you want them). But also like India, the cheap little restaurant attached to the bungalows (which were situated amid beautifully manicured tropical gardens) was delicious and featured an impossibly prolific menu featuring food from almost every major world cuisine. Needless to say, we continued to eat well, although this time we sat right on the beach and were comforted by a fine ocean breeze.

We only had two nights in Koh Samet, but we had an absolutely fantastic time there. Our time consisted of little more than eating, wallowing in the warm water, sitting on the excellent beach, and having very long and illuminating conversations. It was a perfect contrast to the sweaty hustle and bustle of the big cities we had been to.

The subtitle of this post is an allusion to one of the more light-hearted discussions that our Koh Samet sojourn occasioned. We were talking about what we would do if we had a billion dollars at our disposal. Pramod and I, ever the megalomaniacs, agreed that, among other things, we would drop a few million to buy out as many highway-side billboards across the world as we could-- depicting ourselves in inspiring positions, bearing the captions "Aseem Shukla: The Way of the Future" or "Pramod Thammaiah: He's Coming." But Mark's ambitions were somewhat more... modest. He said that he would buy a big trampoline. Pramod and I thought this was laughably unambitious, and had an excellent time coming up with other unambitious desires, such as the one above.

Anyway-- my brain is fried, and I realize this post is probably incredibly rambling. But here you go. Thailand has been wonderful to us, as I'm sure you can tell. It uniquely combines an exotic climate, culture, cuisine, and landscape with an openness to tourism, an accepting attitude to Westerners, and very little stress in getting and enjoying what the country has to offer. All in all, it is one of the most interesting, stimulating, and agreeable countries in the world, and I wish it well as its economic and political fortunes improve.

And on we go, tomorrow, to Cambodia, a much poorer country with a much less serendipitous history. I cannot wait to see how it compares to India, which is in fact slightly richer per capita, but far more diverse and chaotic, it seems to me. Cambodia is terra incognita, and I have no idea what to expect from it. I can only dream that it will be as pleasant and magical as Thailand has been, and that we manage to enjoy both the attractions and each other's company as much as we did there.