The Life of Dogs

A Happy Temple Dog in Vientiene Laos


At first glance Bangkok is full of stray animals. Dogs nap on the streets and cats lounge in markets. Closer inspection finds round bellies and collars, some with rhinestones. These animals are definitely owned, but different than American style of pet ownership. Most Bangkok residents live in apartments so they have pets during the day at their shops, restaurants and food stalls. Rather than leaving their pets alone during the day at home, their pets live at their place of business and are left alone during the night, the way we leave our pets alone during the day.












This ferocious dog diligently guarded our hotel in Bangkok







It is hard to know for sure whose dog is whose because they don’t practice leash laws so dogs will roam and visit their neighborhoods while their owners work. However, over time, you will see which businesses have food and water dishes out so you know that one of the dogs probably belongs there or at the very least is a frequent visitor.





I just love this guy. He lives in a hill tribe
village and life is good for him.

This dog was in charge of security at a temple convenience store

Affluence has introduced more fluffy lap dogs to Thailand, however the prodominate dog is still the brown and black mid-sized mutt.

Cats are a little more camera shy,

but the markets are well populated

by sleek well fed cats.

Food in Bangkok

Food is good in Bangkok, great actually, but there are still a few differences from what we are accustomed to. Going out to eat is a little like cooking yourself in that you have to go before you are critically hungry, because the time between sitting down to eating can be long. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, menus do not necessarily list what they have, but what they can go out get without too much trouble. There are little markets everywhere, so rather than buying a fish in the morning, they may wait until someone actually orders a fish. Which brings us to the next reason, food is fresh in Bangkok, it is not cooked until it is ordered. I have worked in restaurants in Hawaii, and yes, sometimes they just take your dinner out of a Rubbermaid container in the refrigerator, dump it in a bowl and microwave it, that is why service is sometimes so darn fast. In Bangkok they actually cook the food when you order it. Today our lunch took so long to arrive that we were pretty sure they had to go hire a cook. The final reason is the “Farang Rule.” Nobody likes to go into an empty restaurant, especially in a strange town, therefore if a tourist sees another tourist in a restaurant, they assume it is ok and will go in. The longer the restaurant can keep a Farang in view of the street, the more likely more will come in, thus Farangs beget Farangs, which begets more business. So when traveling, it is important to keep in mind that the other tourists don’t necessarily know more than you do.

An interesting item to note in Thailand is that unless they are eating noodle soup, the Thais don’t use chopsticks, they eat with a spoon and a fork. The spoon is to put food in the mouth and the fork is to push food on to the spoon. Once you have eaten Thai food this way a time of two, you just want to say, “I sure would like to get my hands around the neck of the person who convinced Americans that they should eat Thai food with chopsticks.”

Good Night & Safe Sex

We were sort of in the neighborhood one night after dinner and Larry mentioned that he had never been to Khao San Road. Khao San Road is Bangkok’s Backpackers Ghetto, home of the cheap guest houses, cheap breakfasts, banana pancakes, and cheap package tours. You can get rasta hair extensions, a tattoo, a fake press card or a cheap bus ticket to Cambodia.

We took a tuk tuk to the target destination and were greeted by a giant sign saying “Good Night and Safe Sex” which is both good advice and appropriate on Khao San Road. The street is closed to road traffic at night, but this does not include motor bikes, so getting really drunk would still be really dangerous in terms of crossing the street.

We picked a bar that had tables right up to the street so that we would have a good view of the action. While we did see the occasional new arrival over-loaded with a gigantic backpack in back and a smaller, but still obscenely large day pack hanging on their fronts, doing the old ‘Guest House Hunt,” it seemed that there were probably more folks like us, coming to see the backpackers in their natural habitat. It was almost like mid-America going to see what’s going on at Height Ashbury. There were even families with young children wandering around and checking out the scene.

I could not help but wonder what kind of impression these people give to the Thais. The next morning we went on a bicycle tour. We were the first to be picked up and the other couple was to be picked up at a guest house in the Khao San Road area. This proved to be kind of an adventure because so many of the guest houses have similar names and our guides drove to several before finding the correct one. Now I will admit that despite the seedy reputation of the area, many of the guest houses in the area appeared to be down right cute (looks can be deceiving, see crappy guest house description in Lao section). Our unplanned tour of the Khao San area gave us the opportunity to talk with our guide who explained he loved the area because seeing all the foreign backpackers was like going to a foreign country. I refrained from telling him that when the backpackers get home their mothers will make them get haircuts and jobs and that this is not what backpackers look like in their natural habitats.

A Mani and a Pedi in the Land of Smiles

Sometimes I do things for the experience of the doing more than the actual thing. Case in point is manicures and pedicures in foreign countries. This is something I like to do when I travel for the experience and because it is usually cheap. One thing I always know, no mater what it is like, it won’t be like a Waialae Avenue pedicure.

Larry the Metro Man and I set out in search of nail services and compromised on a spot that was not too expensive or too uggy and it had a working, spinning, rotating barber pole out front (when in doubt pick a cool feature).

The procedure began with a towel being placed on my lap, followed by a pink tub of warm water. I was expecting the Palmolive commercial to begin, but instead the girl vigorously rubbed a nail brush on a bar of green soap, which was followed by the same procedure being performed on my hands. While my finger nails were attended to, another pink tub was placed on the floor and another girl began a similar procedure on my feet.

The girl doing my hands was very pretty and clearly did not speak any English, she smiled a lot, but never uttered a single word, so I was not sure if she spoke any language. If you are really really sweet you don’t actually have to talk. However, she eventually broke her silence when she presented me with a container of nail polish bottles and said “you pick color.” Kind of just like on Waialae Ave. As I do for all nail treatments, I picked the same red color that I have picked since I was fifteen years old. Both the manicure and the pedicure girl said “No!” simultaneously. Ok, so I made my second choice, an 80’s hot pink. This received a look of utter disgust followed by “here, I show you.” Ms. Smiley who was rapidly developing an English vocabulary in her effort to protect me from myself, proceeded to paint each of the fingers on my left hand a different mature, yet subdued, color of her choosing. We finally agreed on a frosty guava juice pink color that I never would have picked left to my own devices, but which both girls gave their seal of approval. Larry also liked it and told them he wanted the same color. To this Ms. Smiley said, “No, for you I have green.”

A Visit to a Fish Auction

We got a tip yesterday about a good fish market about half a mile down the street from us. The local market next to our apartment is good and we have been buying good quality fish, fruits and vegetables, but we are always game to see something new.

We set off at 4:45 this morning so we could see it in its full glory. Upon arrival, we discovered that it was a full on fish auction, very much like United Fishing in Honolulu, in fact if we were not familiar with United Fishing, we may not have known it was an auction. Like United Fishing, it was impossible to know for sure what was going on, but the fish tags were there, the girls in boots who were obviously integral to the process were there, buyers were taking fish away, tables were set up with some sort of cashier system, but we did not see any actual cash change hands and then of course a lot of fish, water and ice. Also, like United Fishing, I smiled, said hello (in Thai) and people were very nice to me and let me take a lot of photos. Also, like United Fishing, it was very quiet. There are no noisy mid Western style auction callers at fish auctions.

We know that some of the fish are some sort of grouper and some are snappers, but our local market only has signs in Thai, fish auctions have no signs. When we buy fish in Bangkok we are never certain what we are buying. When in doubt, we usually go for the more expensive fish, since in most markets that is a good indication of which fish is good.