A Rambling Writer Rerun: Thailand, part 2: Bangkok’s River Artery

From our hotel on the banks of the Chao Praya River, Thailand’s most important waterway, Thor and I go with the flow through the bustling Old Town of Bangkok.

NOTE: Due to health issues, Thor and I haven’t been able to do much travel the past few years, so here’s the start of our Thailand trip from 2020. We were lucky to squeak through the pandemic flight closures this February of 2020 as we returned from our three-week trip. Crazy times just keep getting crazier. So escape for a few minutes from our new American dystopia to a country as beautiful and colorful as a dream! I’ll interrupt the reruns with occasional book reviews or Geezer Adventures…. (This blog series began 3/15/2025.)

I was lucky enough to find a great price in business class for the very long flight from Vancouver, B.C., and since Thor is 6’6″ tall, it made sense. Being able to sleep in spacious, fully-reclined seating made a huge difference in reducing jet lag. The way the world is going with the pandemic, that may be the only time Thor and I experience that kind of flight, or any other, so we’re glad we got to indulge in that luxury. Landing in Bangkok hit us with the first of our culture shocks: This sprawling city of between 9.5 to 15 million people (depending on official or unofficial counts) reflects what a critic termed “uncontrolled expansion” that also applies to the previous decades’ push (since the 70s) to promote tourism without much planning. It’s an incredibly beautiful country, but also incredibly crowded. Coming from our relatively spacious Pacific Northwest, we took a deep breath and plunged in.

From my journal: “The taxi ride from Bangkok Airport to our Anantara Riverfront Hotel took an hour through a mind-boggling degree of sprawl and density. Super modern skyscrapers shoulder-to-shoulder with rusty shanties. Mobs of motos (scooters) with multiple riders buzz with apparent disregard for life and limb through crowded streets festooned with tangles of electrical wiring that make you hope for efficient fire departments.” This glimpse from our taxi was an unusually uncrowded street:

We were further disoriented when we climbed out of the taxi at our hotel. The muggy heat was a real body blow to our winter selves. I had booked what looked like a nice place convenient to the river water taxis, but as we arrived, we realized that we were entering a very upscale, luxury hotel (again, for a bargain price in U.S. dollars). The gracious doorman in traditional attire was the first to give us the wai greeting of joined palms to bowed forehead. We would soon learn that the reputation of Thais for sweet natures is very true. Such lovely people!

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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). It’s also a love letter to the breathtaking wilderness of Sara’s native Pacific Northwest. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com