(Thursday, February 4th, 2016)
Yesterday, we docked at the Laem Chabang port in Thailand, and I wanted to get out and about. I also wanted to find a good wifi connection for a couple of hours, for some Dropbox uploads, some email, and some blog posting.
Laem Chabang itself is just a port. The town itself is only maybe a thousand people, and reminded me of a small Mexican border town. If we were staying for a few days I would probably have gone up to Bangkok, maybe a couple hours by public transit.
The realistic choices were Sriracha or Pattaya. Sriracha is a small city, or a big town, not sure what the Thai consider “big”. Pattaya is a resort town, beach, bars, girls. For the young seamen, Pattaya wins in a landslide. “Girls!” “Bars!” Well, I grew up in a resort town. And I am not a 20-year-old seaman. As you can tell by this post’s title, I decided on Sriracha. All I wanted to do was some online work and some walking around. I wasn’t worried about food. I just wanted to get a feel for the place. I thought I could visit Pattaya the next day, if things worked out. As it turned out, we completed our loading earlier than expected and left early. No Pattaya. No problem.
In the middle of the afternoon my taxi driver dropped me off in front of a major mall. We agreed that he would pick me up at the same place later that evening. I took photos in all directions, in case I needed to show them to somebody to help me get back there in case I got lost. Not that I have ever gotten lost.
The place at which I got dropped off was a huge mall, in the middle of a very busy downtown area. The mall was nothing special to a Westerner. It had a major retailer, many small stores, all familiar except that the exact brands weren’t familiar, and there wasn’t much English. The major retailer’s entrance was the usual perfume counters, all that stuff, so it was especially uninteresting to me. But they had an air-conditioned Starbucks, which had wifi, and so I camped myself there for a bit.
After getting my online stuff out of the way, I packed up and went for a walk around outside. The sun had gone down and so the temperature was more reasonable. The streets were very busy, crowded enough so that generally the cars were moving slow, just poking their way around. There were a lot of motorcycles, and a lot of scooters, especially those scooters with motorcycle-sized tires. Two schoolgirls on a scooter was a familiar sight. Scooters with sidecars (carrying three people total) were common. The reincarnation (maybe it never died!) of the old Honda 90 lives in Sriracha. Left-side driving. Look both ways!
There were tons of street vendors selling everything. Clothes, shoes, phones, bags of all types, food of all types, watches, jewelry, hats, you name it. It was very crowded. I am not that big and I felt huge and in the way, and more than a bit claustrophobic. But it was also fun. I priced a bag, an old Swedish schoolbag design, one that I know the price of in Phoenix and in San Francisco. It wasn’t cheaper in Sriracha. That was a surprise. And since the currency, baht, are about 35 to the dollar, it seemed more expensive. “Only 2000!” Ha.
The street vendors completely consumed the street space all the way around the mall on three sides. I am sure that a lot more buying and selling went on outside the mall than inside, but it wasn’t empty inside, either. Just much more interesting outside.
I noticed colors. Inside the mall it was glass and metal and black and white, and careful colors that were part of various stores’ identities – their logos formed the basis of their color schemes. That’s just like in the US. Outside, however, it was so much more chaotically colorful. Bright colors. I wish I could describe it better, but the difference was noticeable. And all over. Billboards. Painted dump trucks. Storefronts. The whole street vending scene. Much fun. It was night, and my photos weren’t working well, a regret. I mostly gave up on photos for the night.
The people all seemed intent on their shopping, busy going places. It was a mid-weekday afternoon and evening at the center of a shopping district, so this is expected behavior. I didn’t get a chance to visit beaches or parks or temples, that sort of place, where the people might seem more relaxed. Everybody who I dealt with was friendly, and I had quite a few language challenges – English is known, but not universally, and not that well, at least not in this town. But no one showed animosity or frustration at me. Got lots of smiles and lots of help. People were patient with me, which tells me a lot about them. I sure hope I am that way with strangers to our town when I have the chance.
I ended up at an outdoor area close to the mall, with a guitar/guitar/bongo trio playing and singing, cold beer (Chang) on sale, and a projection screen showing highlights of last week’s English Premier League soccer matches. I understood none of the lyrics, none of the comments on the TV (it was in an Asian language), but totally understood the beer and had a nice mellow time. I ended up having a snack from a street vendor, meat on a stick. I have no clue what. I bought based mostly on smell. It tasted good. I also had watermelon and yogurt, also nice because the meat was very spicy and I needed an extinguisher on my tongue. Then back for another set from the trio, and another beer.
There were little (well, ten feet tall) Buddha shrines in various places. In my increasing-radius spiral away from the mall, I saw four or five. One of them was in the middle of the street vending area. They were ornate, clean, lit by both artificial light and candlelight, and noticeable to me because of their juxtaposition with ordinary commercial enterprises.
That’s about it, a short little visit, but fun. The ship looked huge, bathed in floodlights as loading was in progress, as we approached it up a long causeway to the dock. I had forgot that it was large, and that my cabin was only a tiny part of it. The “busy” dockside seemed almost serene compared to the street scenes I had just left.