The Incident

Bangkok Day 2: Wake up and breakfast at the hotel restaurant. We have to check out of our room by 11AM so we're trying to cram in some good stuff. We don our more formal dress (or at least closed toe shoes) and walk the 15 minutes in pretty intense heat to the Grand Palace (seeing our friend The National Theatre Man on the way). The Grand Palace is many buildings, a lot of them temples, enclosed by high walls. It was very busy, filled with tourists and Thais alike, many of them there to pay their respects to the King's Sister. The buildings (we'll post pictures when we figure out how) are ornate, covered in beautiful, intricate patterns and gold. We prayed to a emerald Buddha and took a lot of pictures.

Then it was back to the hotel, but officers had blocked off the sidewalk on the way we came so we were funneled across the street into a park (by way of some cool elephant statues). The second our sneakers hit the pavement we were surrounded by poor Thais pushing small bags of pop corn kernels into our hands. "feed birds. yes. please. please. happy new year. you take. good luck." we tried to say no. we tried. when i tried to cross my arms and hand my arms, they pushed the bags into my chest. flabberghasted I stood, my hands full of kernels, completed surrounded by pigeons. they were standing on my feet, they were on my hands, scratching my arms with their dirty pigeon feet. as soon as those evil pigeons touched my skin i realized what a bad scene it had become. so i start to leave but of course now the people are asking for money. i toss someone 100B (4 dollars) and meet erica who is standing in the grass about 10 feet away. THEN. Erica says that one of the ladies took 2000B from her hand (80USD). (Erica edit: didn't just take, ripped out of my wallet 2500B, somehow shoving the 2000B somewhere else and showing me the 500B as if it was all she took. I was so shocked I didn't want to believe what had just happened and could only manage to argue paying 300B instead of 500B). Well Shit. Just this morning I had read that it you get mugged or ripped off, Don't Confront. Just report the theif to the Tourism Police. But 2000B. It was the middle of the day, in a public area and there were tons of police type officers around, so we went back and demanded 2000B. There was a lot of denying and anger and confusion. Two officers came over but of course neither of them spoke English. The "peddlers" didn't threaten us and the cops seemed to be on our side so we just didn't leave. We said 2000! over and over and gestured as to what had happened. And finally, a few small bills at a time, we got our money back. It was totally traumatic. I think I was mostly really angry and Erica was just shaken up and sad. (Erica edit: I could believe I had just argued with someone who had less money than me to give me my money back, but 2000B was 2000B and I needed it!) We sort of chalked it up to part of the Bangkok experience but it definetly left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I was glad to leave the big city behind.

(Final Erica edit: Julia is my hero.)