Fun Facts: There are several day-to-day differences between going around Thailand vs. America, of course.
1) Probably one of the first that I found was that people carry around their own tissues - tissues being a combination of napkin/facial tissues/toilet paper/etc.. Restaurants and bathrooms generally don't carry their own supply. This can become an issue for some. At lunch I usually have a lot of spicy food and it makes my nose run but I tend to forget to bring around tissues. Fancy places or conventions that I've been to usually have them available in some limited way as well as hotels and places tourists would stay. You can buy large packs, usually with some kind of cartoon characters on it or some decorations and it should last a while. Paper towels in bathrooms are pretty scarce. You might find tissue for sale in machines (3 baht), an air dryer, or what's probably a pretty nasty thing that just using a long rotating towel.
2) Utensils in Thailand are primary forks and spoons. Fork in the left and spoon in the right, depending on your handedness. You use the fork to prepare food into the spoon and eat it with the spoon. Eating noodles this way becomes less messy, actually. Chopsticks are also available in noodle places and can replace the fork or both fork and spoon sometimes. For lunch with the research group one day we went to a fancy hotel with the standard fancy restaurant silverware setup and I was pretty confused. I felt more out of place in that hotel than being several thousands miles away from home. This hotel was pretty interesting as it's well-hidden and where all the politicians go to avoid being seen. My professor pointed out one of the gentlemen behind me was part of some large company.
3) Going around Bangkok I haven't been able to find many garbage cans. I've had to walk several blocks before I could find a can to throw away cups/etc. With the street vendors selling food and drink everywhere you can end up with a ton of trash in your hands and pockets. One time I ended up waiting to get to the sky train station before I could toss out my trash. Despite this the streets are very clean. There's a crew of street sweepers that use straw brooms and long woven baskets to clean the streets. Sometimes a street sweeping vehicle will come by. With nine million people in Bangkok, it's rather clean. Pollution still seems to be a problem and today we saw a bus which was covered in soot and pouring out dark smoke from its exhaust.
4) Thais use a lot of spice and sugar in their food. Entrees are very good but adapting to the very sweet deserts has been difficult - they just don't have the same variety as Thai dishes. These deserts usually have coconut or fruit with flour and sugar. They can be wrapped in banana leaves (krathong, when they didn't have plates back in the day) or packaged up in boxes or bags. The squishy white coconut things are way too sweet for me. One of my favorite deserts though, depending on how it's made, are these gelatin covered green-pea-filled 'candies' which are often painted to look like fruit or different shapes. The fruit ones are amazingly convincing. Some of these are too sweet though. Apparently Thai people don't like very sour things. The cafeteria has two juice bars with far more exotic fruits than you could think of without a botany degree (for 6 baht a cup) and I ended up ordering what I was told would be very sour but it was pretty mild. Spicy, salty, and sweet are dominant flavors here. It's hard to find American style salt and pepper; you can find fish sauce or spicy vinegar and chili powder.
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We just got back from Chatuchak Weekend Market, which I'm told is the world's largest outdoor market. It's only a short bus ride from CRI where we're staying. You can find pretty much anything here. A lot of nice traditional stuff, things from other countries, and also some things you'd find in a Spencer's Gifts... There's a lot to see here. I was able to explore some of it on my own and found what has been called 'Pet Land' where you can buy rabbits, dogs, cats, and more. I didn't ask how much because then they'd be obligated to try and sell one to me. The animals are all in good shape from what I see; they're fed, have plenty of room to move about, and look healthy but I wouldn't be surprised if I was told otherwise. I even saw one vendor grooming a few dogs (you'll only find puppies and kittens, actually). They do try to crack down on poaching and selling of exotic animals so you probably won't find ivory or tigers and such. I have heard from someone in another group that you can find more exotic pets for purchase if you look harder here.
I did see a lot of Brits (I don't know if they were going to buy a dog or something) and some French and German people around. There's also a lot of people from China. Everyone is pretty friendly but it's the tourists that tend to be rude. I can see being a little rushed, feeling overwhelmed and then forgetting your manners if you're just here for a week, but I'm here for two months so I try to be as easy-going and polite as I can. Public transport is pretty cheap so you can always come back later.
I found a place that sells swords starting at 1500 baht, which was lowered to 1300 baht (31-32 baht = $1; Google says 32.4 but good luck with that). A lot of people like to look at them but I doubt the store moves a lot of them. Among their selection are small katanas, Chinese longswords, and something like a small claymore. I'd like to get one, but then comes the issue of getting to CRI via bus/taxi, then the plane, etc. And for 1300 baht that's about what you could get it for at some places in the USA. From my own research in the past it seems like any sword worth buying is an 'investment' rather than a casual purchase. There's also a few antique places with scimitars going for 4000 baht and up.
I did get to practice using Thai numbers. If they don't speak too fast I can do basic purchases all in Thai. If you buy things in sets you've got a better chance of some discount (usually just rounding it down to the nearest ten or twenty baht). Many of the things are marketed as at sale price, so it's hard to ask for a discount. Most numbers are written in Arabic but they also have Thai characters for 1-9. As I've said before, they do have calculators so you can see the final price. Bringing along your own might impress a vendor if you seem like you know what you're doing (I might try it some time). I ended up spending about 1900 baht, $60, on about as much stuff as I could carry. If your in the search of t-shirts, know that sizes are much smaller here. I'm somewhere between a medium/large (once squeezed into a small) and 34 waist (little baggy) but here I'm like an XXXL in pants and just barely a large. For a t-shirt, you shouldn't really be paying more than 99 baht for a basic one, 120 for something cool, and maybe like 140 for a soccer jersey (World Cup is big here, but Thailands team didn't make it in; a lot of the high school kids are out doing surveys with English speakers as an assignment). But if you want it, get it. You'd be paying 320 baht ($10) or more like 480 back home. You can also get some pretty good deals on bulk t-shirts, and I think someone in our group got like three basic t-shirts for the price of two. Denim jeans, however, are pretty expensive here and are found in the fancy malls for $60 or up.
For day trips and simply going around town, I use a drawstring bag. It has a lighter profile and is better for going through crowds. If you keep a water bottle in it it'll keep your back cool. You can also ball it up and stash it however you like when it's empty. And if you lose them they're pretty cheap (I've gotten all of time for free from my university). You'll also sweat into anything you've got on your back so keep that in mind. At this point I don't seem to be sweating salts or anything but more like just water in itself. A backpack would be good from bringing along clothes. We haven't had any trouble with theft but I still do a pocket-check every couple minutes or so. As for clothes, I've been sticking to t-shirts and shorts as much as possible. Sandals are nice for not having your feet sweat - and everyone seems to where them, even on motorcycles. Polo and jeans are fine for going around the university (Mahidol). People at CRI have to wear slacks/skirts and nice shirts as the princess sort of presides over it.
We were only at the market from 10am to about 3pm today. We've got a cultural show to go to, and even perform at, tonight. Apparently several colleges have teams competing like in a talent show. I think CRI won last yet. We'll be doing 60 seconds of Thai dance that we kind of learned last Friday as well as some macarena at the end. It should be fun.
Yesterday, we gave our introductory presentations that detailed our previous research and some of our cultural background. After that we went out to eat at this great hidden noodle place. Pretty much everyone had ten bowls each (at 9 baht a bowl) for something like 200 bowls. The shop must have thousands of them because it sort of runs in a buffet style. They have a ton of noodle sizes and compositions which all have a different word. The noodles come with beef, pork, or vegetables. It was all really good. I added a bit of sugar and some chili powder to each.
Bangkok has also been a great place to get drinks on the street. Green tea is pretty big and I just had this black pearl green tea (it's like bubble tea) today. As a blueberry fan, I like that they've usually got a blueberry option. Plus, they have many more fruits than you can typically find in the US and at very cheap prices. Dragonfruit, longan, durian (hard to find, it's very smelly), mangosteen, mango, small bananas, coconuts (they grow all over), and more. They also use flowers like crystantheum and there was another that gave this light blue drink. With all this unique food, I haven't really been ill at all. My diet as certainly changed to something like 60% noodle and rice, 20% meat, 10% fruit, and 10% other. Everything is very light so it's easy to get hungry again.
The water/ice problem with foreign travel isn't as much an issue in Bangkok. The city overtreats the water so it's very chlorinated in some parts. I washed my face at a restauant and it kind of burned my eyes like in a pool. It seems like restaurants have a lot of bottled water and use that instead. When you do get a drink, they'll usually fill the cup with crushed ice and then add the drink. If you're worried about the quality of the ice you could just drink it quickly before the ice melts. The word for water is 'nom' and ice is 'nom kang' (something like "hard water", they use adjectives after nouns like in Spanish). Pepsi is pretty popular over here (it's doing a lot of World Cup promotions and I had some kind of orange ginger ale soda, Pepsi Cheer, as a sample on the way back from the market) and it's easy to order. Coke is also around but more in the stores than the restaurants.
I'll have pictures up later when I get time to go through and process them.
