Thailand: preparing for the journey

When you want to visit a country, the first thing you need to plan is about which parts of the country you want to tour. This again depends on why you want to travel to that country in the first place.
Ok, so here is how I decided. I got Diwali holidays for a couple of days at office. Combining that with three days’ leave and 4 days of weekends, gave me a solid 9 days off. I decided to keep one day to myself to sorting and unpacking the mess post-travel before joining office from Monday.

So, what could be done in these 8 days?  Looking at Thailand map made me realize that the names of places that float around were at quite a distance from each other, two cities (Bangkok & Pattaya) in the North Thailand and two cities (Phuket & Krabi) in the South. A preliminary research made me realize that doing all four, plus travel in the given duration was tough.

Bangkok was, after all, just another city, like any other city in the world. Pattaya was a city famous for its night life. Could easily skip that. That means we devote our time to the South where the delightful islands of Phuket and Krabi lay. So, the plan was made: the briefest of times at Bangkok and the maximum time at Krabi.
Flights tickets from Hyderabad to Bangkok and back were booked. Extensive research done on which hotels to stay at, depending on the proximity to prominent landmarks, and booked. All these activities were done online and took about 14 days. By then, I was about a week away from travel and didn’t have the time to apply for visa from Hyderabad, as apparently, we need to show proof of to and fro tickets plus where we planned to stay during the entire duration of our Thailand stay.
Next, was applying for Forex. This was the easiest of all tasks as I could book the forex online and get it delivered the same day. I got it at the rate of Rs. 2.89 to 1 THB. I applied for 15000 THB, hoping it will do. The cards were always there, anyways.
We stayed in two 4-starred hotels and one 3-starred (where the 4-starred one wasn’t available). We didn’t travel by public transport and always took the cab. What I mean to say is that we definitely weren't on a money-saving mode. Yet, we only incurred a cost of 22000 THB for our sight-seeing, food and shopping expenditure. We swiped the card when we thought we might fall short of cash.

A vegetarian foodie in Thailand

In India, we vegetarians not only have access to a great variety of food from across the globe, but also find the assuring green dot marking all vegetarian food. We realize how blessed we are here when we go to countries where we aren’t as privileged.
When we speak of breakfast buffets in Hyderabad, the lavishness of the spread is incredible. Plus, any non-veg food is normally placed separately and at a distance from the vegetarian food. Such checks ensure that vegetarians get to eat only vegetarian food.
When I go to any place, in India or abroad, I steer clear of Andhra food. I have it at home every day, anyways. I try to eat Gujarati food in Gujarat, Bengali food in Bengal, Malayali food in Kerala…
In the same way, I eagerly looked forward to eating Thai food in Thailand.
Why getting Thai vegetarian food is not easy in Thailand
First, nearly 90% of the Thais do not speak English. So how do you make them understand what you want? Second, what is the definition of vegetarian food? All sea-food is vegetarian for them!
Okay, so how did I go about taking care of this challenge?

At the first hotel we stayed, I asked the receptionist, who seemed intelligent and knew more than a smattering of English, to write the above note for me. The note states that 'this person has below food restrictions: meat, eggs, seafood, mushroom'.
They may not understand the meaning of vegetarianism like we in India do but they take food restrictions very seriously. When I showed the above note at the hotels we stayed, I was cautioned about those items in the breakfast buffet (which, in short, is nearly everything on the table). We ended up having loads and loads of fresh fruits, croissants, bread, butter, cereal…
Back in Hyderabad, I always found non-local fruits expensive and flavorless. But here we could eat the freshest exotic fruits every day.
So, even if deprived of those 10-15 items on the breakfast menu, the restaurants generously offered to prepare 2-3 Thai food items exclusively for us.
Here is an instance to show how seriously they take your food restrictions. At a restaurant we ordered some pizza and fries. (Burger was ruled out.) We were cautioned about the presence of egg in the pizza base when the stewardess took the order, but the chef came out of the kitchen after a while saying that he couldn’t serve us the fries as they would be fried in the same oil that the chicken was! I wonder if, even in India, we find such honest confession!
Back here, we think that if nothing else is available, we have at least the Macs and KFCs. In Thailand the burger would inevitably be made of chicken, beef, pork…vegetarian burger in these places is totally unheard of…
At any restaurant, do not rely on the waitresses. Have the chef called. He will give you the true picture of what is veg and what is not. Basically, there is no veg food on the buffet. Don’t believe even if the waitress says so. It is simply because she doesn't know!
Almost every item has a base of fish sauce/oyster sauce. Even potato wedges which looked so tempting was forbidden as it was sprinkled with chicken powder!
Certain food being kept separate is something we experienced in Krabi only. Krabi has a substantial number of Muslims and here the pork is kept separately, far from all the other food.
Water is a premium here. Water is kept in one of the dispensers, along with the juice dispensers. The restaurant personnel may wink at your attempt to carry away a morsel or two from the buffet table but any attempts to fill your bottle with water is frowned upon.
Drinking water from taps is not available at any of the tourist spots. You must buy bottled ones.
Vegetarian food is construed as Indian food. The cab driver who took us about in Bangkok also attempted to take us to an Indian restaurant.
But when we insisted on a Thai cuisine, he took us to this quaint place which served only Thai vegetarian food! Can you believe that, in a country that thrives on non-veg food, we found this nugget...a small dining room attached to the home of a 60-year old home cook.

Those tastes still linger in the mind and I have found no match to them in my entire Thailand journey.
If nothing else, there are abundant 7-Eleven grocery stores which contain supplies of bread, butter, marmalades that helps you stay afloat.The labels, the ingredients, all product information is in Thai and then out comes the above note again to ensure that the food you just bought contains no meat. The 7-Elevens come to your rescue especially as some of the hotels close the kitchens at night times.

The bread, unlike the dry version we find in Hyderabad, was the softest and freshest I tasted in a long while.
With that note in hand, I got to experience the best of Thai vegetarian food in Thailand.
Yet, if you still want to eat Indian food in Thailand, Indra market at Pratunam, Bangkok has a couple of them in their food court. And when you come out of Indra market, you find at least 5-6 (as far as the eye could see) of Indian restaurants lined up on the main road. So, you have your shopping and food at the same place.
Two things I strongly recommend there: the sweetest and freshest pineapple that are found in abundance. Two, tender coconut and tender coconut ice cream. These are the best you’d ever taste.

To bottu or not to bottu?

               

I went through a hassle-free security check at the airport in India and at Bangkok immigration. 

The security system at Thailand doesn’t comprise frisking at any of its airports. Your luggage is scanned, and then you are let through a metal-detector. 

On one of their domestic flights, however, after I passed through the door, I was called aside by the female security personnel, frisked and then let through. I was the only one there with a bottu on my forehead. 

I was wondering how many of the security people understand this bottu culture of South India and that Hindus, identified by their bottu, normally do not give reason for suspicion at airports. 

As a South Indian, I was reluctant to do away with the bottu that I am used to from my birth. But, I did remove it, and then onwards I wasn’t stopped or questioned in any of the Thailand airports. 

It went back on through the duration of the trip but at airports, it came off.

So, on the last leg of my journey from Bangkok to Hyderabad, I was bottu-less. 

Okay, as a prelude, I am fair-complexioned, but I wasn't aware how it would, in combination with the bottu-less state, give rise to these interesting occurrences…

1) At the immigration center, I am asked my nationality as an answer to my query on filling the immigration forms.

2) A woman at the airport exit asking me if I was interested in foreign exchange.

3) The taxi driver asking me in English where I wanted to go.

A foreigner in foreign countries anyway, and in your own too?

So, to bottu or not to bottu?