Banging Around BANGKOK Back Alleys w/ @JasonRuppVlog

The Chinese Buddha likes bacon, she said. I am in Bangkok, Thailand today with none other than the man, the myth, the legend, Jason Rupp. What's up everybody? And he is going to show us a side of Bangkok like you have never seen. Because this man is traveling the world having some of the most unique and interesting travel experiences all around the world. So we're going to hunt out for some unique experiences here in Bangkok today. Let's go see it. First is iced coffee. It's my favorite little coffee spot here. And you never see a tourist here because they always wonder, is the water clean? Is the water filtered? Is it bottled water? Well, it's boiling. So how much more do you want to kill the bacteria? It's boiling water in here. So we're in this area where there's all these warehouses full of Buddhas here in this part of Bangkok. It's the Buddha warehouse. What's up, buddy? Very nice. Very nice Buddhas going on. Can I look around? Can I look? Look. Just look? That's okay. Thank you, man. Thank you. Wow. Look at these Buddhas. Oh, this is the king, I think, or a monk right here. Very interesting. I'm here with the king of Bangkok. Or not the king of Bangkok, the mayor of Bangkok. I'm the deputy now. I got voted out. But yeah, this is where you can come and buy some Buddhas if you wanted to. Like if you wanted to make a temple. So is this just for temples? Or is this for like people's backyards and stuff? Or what's going on here? The official stance here by the Buddhas representatives and higher ups and everything is they don't want you to use Buddhas as decoration. Oh, okay. But you can buy these for praying. So you could buy this for your house or your garden or whatever? It still doesn't stop people from using Buddhas as decoration. Oh, yeah. Don't go to Hollywood if you don't want to see Buddhas for decoration. Exactly. You know what I mean? Because they have Buddha lamps and everything over there. But you can buy these and put it in your prayer room in your house. No problem with that. Right. But anyway, we can ask the price. Let's ask the price. Which one you want to ask the price for? I like these dragon ones. Like that one over there has like dragons on it and stuff. That's pretty cool. These are dragons. Yeah. Okay, so I asked about how much that is. This one is about 20,000 Baht and up. 20,000 Baht. So that's like what? So that means under 30,000 and over 20,000. So that means anywhere between 600 to 1,000 dollars. Not bad. I mean if you want like a legit authentic Thai Buddha statue. So what is it? What is it made out of? It's made of Tong Luang which I forgot the translation of what metal that is. Right. Just so you guys know out there, you never touch the head of the Buddha. Unless you're a mover. So a lot of you guys wouldn't even know what this is. But right here, this is a fortune teller. There's a sweet old lady in there. And doing fortune telling has been in her family for generations. And so she carries on the tradition in this really old shop house. I think actually I watched that video. That was interesting. Was that the one I commented on? Like you won't see this on any other travel channel? I can't remember. It's a very strange experience. Yeah, it was. And she went on and on and on. Yeah. About what I need to do and what's going to happen to me and all that stuff. And yes, she definitely... Oh, there she is. Sawadee krap. I think she heard me. She forgot about me already. I asked her, do you remember me? She said no. She said, what's your name? What's your name? I forgot. And now she's going in to check something. Oh, now she's checking the video. I think she remembers me. She's trying to see how many views you got. She just forgot my name. Yeah, she remembers me. She said, oh, you're the handsome one. She's like, that video didn't go viral. It didn't help my business. Words in her mouth. She says a Singaporean came from my video. Oh, so cool. Isn't that great? I feel really good when people follow me and go support the places that I went to. And so she's showing me a picture of a Singaporean that came to see her from my video. That's really nice. Oh, thank you. When you're with Jason Rupp, every experience you're going to have is going to be something you've never experienced before. I promise you this. Honestly, I know Bangkok like the back of my hand. But we take the buses around. We take the ferries that go on the boat canals, get around it. Last night, we took a dark back alleyway that George Michael and Elton John took when they were here in Thailand. Yeah, they made that alleyway famous together. Yes. It was an after party. They did a flute solo back there. Hey, should we just go down this alley and see where it goes? I think it's a great idea. Every time you see a tuk-tuk at the start of an alley, you want to walk down there. Honey, let's do it. Going down this alley. I always know what different balls smell like. You always know what what? I always know what different balls smell like. Hello. Oh, they're very friendly. Jesse, let's go see what they're making. Okay. Oh, wow. She's making red pork back there. They'll give us a look. Oh, look at this. This is a master chef right here with big pots. That is amazing. So they've got the charcoal fire. There's no electricity going on here. This is charcoal. And the fire is hot and strong. And then the fat pork slabs are attached to the sides of the barrel. That is just cooking away. The fat is just dripping down, dripping down. And then it makes that, if you like it, it makes that delicious sweet smell. Just like barbecue and those picnics back in Kansas that y'all remember. Yeah, I said y'all. He's gonna add a stir fry. Mixing that with garlic and vegetables. And if you look at his tattoos on his shoulder, these would be made with a long bamboo stick. One by one, ink blots going, being placed into the skin. One by one by a month. That was definitely an interesting experience. It helps to just, you know, say hello. Yeah. And give a smile in Thailand. Because if you walk around with a frown in Thailand, it's a very different experience than when you walk around with smiles. Right, right. Thai people respond with smiles in almost every situation. It's really kind of funny sometimes, actually, when sometimes somebody did something wrong to you at the hotel. Like they shouldn't have done that. But they'll still smile at you so big. And it can be annoying. But that's just the culture here. They're smiling to try to make... Because they're sorry and they're trying to make you feel better. But sometimes that smile can really annoy us Westerners. Like when they did something wrong. But otherwise, you just throw those smiles around and you'll get great experiences. He repairs accordions. Oh, wow. He's an accordion repair man. Wow. So you'd be surprised that accordion players are actually not so uncommon here. The accordion players usually play at temples. And so when you want to celebrate something, you usually go to the temple and you hire a band with accordion players to celebrate that. So what somebody does is, if somebody wants something really badly, say they want to part in a movie so badly. So before going to the casting, then they might go to the temple. And they're going to pray to Buddha, pray to Buddha, pray to Buddha. And they're going to say, if I get this, I'm going to hire a band. And I'm going to dance around the temple three times. Just like with that music right there. And that's what they do. You pay, you pay. Dance, dance, you pay. I cannot dance. I cannot play. I can try. Okay, go. Yay. Okay, okay. I said I'll try. I'll try. Okay. I'll dance. I'm going to find an accordion repairman. Because you know what? My mom has an accordion repair. Oh, really? The benefit of being able to speak Thai is that you can get yourself in and out of these situations. My mom would be very ashamed of me. I think this is basically, this is his man cave right here. And it takes over the whole house. I told him that my mom has an accordion. And she actually really does need that fixed. It's in New York. But I think it's worth it to bring it along next time and have him fix it. Because then he can play you a solo on it after he's done. Yeah, that'll be a total video right there. Exactly. And have him fix an accordion in old Bangkok. You off to the side doing a little line dancing or whatever you call that. That was some funny dancing I was doing. I don't know what I was doing. Well, that totally tastes like Red Bull vodka. Because I've had a lot of those on some nights. And those were not good nights. But I'm still enjoying it though. I'm still enjoying it. Those were not good nights? No, those were not good nights. Those are really fun while you're drinking them. But when you're trying to go to sleep, it's hard to go to sleep. And your mind is still so... You know you need to go to sleep. But you're still going in your mind. But the next day is a slow day after that. So we haven't even had breakfast yet. And we're checking out this ice cream place. And I have a feeling, even though we're not setting out to make a food video today, between Jason and Sam and myself, three people who love to eat, there might be a lot of food in this video. It doesn't matter the order. When it's good food, you just eat it. Yeah. Just eat it. If this is convenient, we're here. This is homemade fresh ice cream. It's made all the time. Whenever a flavor runs out, they make more. And they're selling it all the time. And actually, no tourist knows about this place. I never see a tourist in here. It's all local. But it's also a brand new place. Like only a few months old. What's the name of it? What's the street? I have to look that up. Who knows what's going to happen with a caffeinated Sam and a caffeinated Jason Rupp. And I'm just hanging out for dear life here on this crazy ride around Bangkok. That's coconut that they're melting. See, we're going to use this bag. See, I'm totally recycling this bag right now. Dough with corn and taro. But you could choose one or mix. I don't even know if we're going to be making it to this restaurant because we keep stopping at every place as we walk down this street. Getting some fried taro now after the two other things we just bought. It's going to be an expensive day, I think. But the good thing is the street food is super cheap and it's really good. Tour guide. Yeah, we're touring the street food. The secret places that you might not know about. That you're very unlikely to read in the English blogs and everything like that. Oh, their mama looks beautiful. Beautiful. He already did a power party foul. He dropped the ball. Ball dipping with Jason Rupp. The balls taste so much better dipped in the sauce. It's really good. It's so soft inside. Have you ever had such a soft, tasty ball? No, I never have. Have you? No. First time I've ever had such a soft, tender, tasty ball with Jason Rupp. As if it's your first. So we finally made it to the restaurant and they have this tamarind kind of soup thing here that Jason recommends. So that's what I'm going to get as well. I'm going to see it on the menu. Yeah. Check it out. It's hard to get Gang Som so rich and spicy like that. Some places will just make it thin and just get it out on the table. But here, that sauce is thick. You see how many herbs are in there? That's a good size. Those aren't cheap shrimps. And look at this. That's an egg omelet with dark green vegetables. So nice and healthy. So dark like kale. It's bitter too. It's bitter. So it mixes well with the sweet and sour tamarind soup that you got here. Just full of herbs. This isn't a quick soup to make. So that's why some places, they get the soup out quick but thin. So we're just at lunch and they were filming like a Thai TV show there. And so we made friends with the crew and the producer and the makeup artist. And actually ended up being like kind of extras in the front of the restaurant as we were eating. They didn't ask us. They just kind of shot us as B-roll eating the soup. And I think they got a funny shot of Jason because he was sweating, really sweating. And it made it look like the soup was really spicy. So another interesting Bangkok experience be it inadvertently being an extra on a Thai TV show here. Yeah, we were unpaid extras and we were glad to help. Yeah, glad to help the Thai people. I'm gonna get my agent on that. See if I can get residuals. We're gonna get it. It's somehow, we're gonna get that penny. So of course we just ate. So now we're looking at, what are we looking at here? Like a coconut. It's like a cold coconut soup type thing, right? With different things mixed in. With shaved ice and different ingredients. Real fresh. Like jellies and beans. They put beans in their desserts here. It's really interesting. Adds a different... Broad beans, red beans. They'll put that in the coconut milk and the shaved ice. It's similar to a thing, a Filipino dessert called Halahalo. I think they just call this coconut dessert though here in Thailand. So I ordered this one, which is kind of gelatin herbal with water chestnut and kanun. That's jackfruit and coconut. I asked her for a little more coconut milk. She gave me the tiniest little bit of extra coconut milk. Like not all places do it quite as fresh as others. Look at that. Fresh coconut meat. Fresh coconut milk with shaved ice. Oh, that is so refreshing. Are you refreshed, madam? It's very hot. It's hot here. It's hard to cool Sam down. Once she gets hot, there's no cooling her down. Gotta throw her in the cold pool. This is actually pretty good after that spicy soup we just had. It's actually good to... I feel the cooling in my stomach after that spice. Yeah, exactly right. It's a perfect combination. And there's specialty little shops for everything. And they just do one thing, and they do it right. I can't eat for at least another couple hours. I'm feeling pretty full. You're the rookie eater in Bangkok. You just eat non-stop. Not everyone can binge and purge like Jason Rowe. Well, you know, from my supermodel days back in New York on the runway, I learned a lot of tricks. He is 6'2.5", guys. That half inch. We won't talk about that half. There's another half inch that we won't talk about, but that's not safe for YouTube. My supermodel name in New York is Sergei Rodriguez. And I can walk that catwalk like nobody. What do you guys think of that posture? Buddha likes bacon. Buddha likes bacon? Really? See? Like what? Chinese? The Chinese Buddha likes bacon, she said. The Thai Buddha, you know, you get flowers and other stuff and boiled eggs, but if you want to give to the right Buddha for the right thing for what you believe, you give them bacon. The Chinese Buddha likes bacon. That's what she said. It's not me. I'm just repeating. So we're spending most of today in this kind of old Bangkok area, which is kind of south of Khaosan Road. Most tourists, the Khaosan Road is kind of like the backpacker central of Bangkok. A lot of people don't leave Khaosan Road. If it's like their first time in Thailand, they're a little shy. They don't get in these back alleys and go to these local spots we're going to. There's actually a temple right here, right near Khaosan Road. And there's a ton of temples in Bangkok that are free. Only the real popular ones, the real big ones like the Grand Palace and there's a couple others that you have to pay for, but most of the temples are free here. Go for it. After a full day of exploration of Bangkok with Jason and Sam and filling my belly, my feet are feeling pretty tired. I think we're going to get a foot massage now so I'm going to end the video here. But if you want to check out that foot massage, that'll be over on Jason's channel. Link is in the description. Get out there, find your adventure and be infamous. Well, since I don't play accordion, Jason is asking me to do a freestyle rap. I don't know where to start. Freestyling in Bangkok, Thailand. Accordion and I'm not piling. I'm buckwilding, I'm styling. Accordion style, here we come. Jason, he's running the gun. He's the son of a gun. He's the man of the world. Jason Rupp, he's no squirrel. Jason, Jesse, running the show. Running around Bangkok with Sam in tow. We're running the show like we're a couple of pros. Act like you know it's the Jason and Jesse show. Infamous.