Thailand was…..Amazing!

Elephants=Thailand. 

Thailand was never on my must see list. I’m so glad that I got some crazy idea one afternoon.  We decided to stop in three different cities over a two week period.  We started in Bangkok, then flew North to Chiang Mai and finally flew south to Phuket where we took an hour boat ride to a small island, KoYao Noi. We chose these different cities because they are geographically and socially very different. Jeff couldn’t stay the entire last week so he went back to work and left us on the island by ourselves. It was definitely his loss as we recharged our souls and bodies with total relaxation in our final week.

This post will just be about Bangkok. Gosh where do I start? It’s a bit like Vegas for me. I’m glad I went, but I found it stressful and seedy.

 We found a very nice hotel, which was really a two bedroom service apartment. We only had two and half days so we had a lot to explore in a short amount of time. We started by exploring on foot the area surrounding our hotel.  This part of the city was very busy, interesting and the people were nice enough. Two things I noticed right off, first they drive on the opposite side of the street as we do. This is mostly fine because we were taking taxis or tuk-tuks everywhere. Where it became a problem is when we tried to cross a busy street and it became difficult to remember which way to look before crossing. I kept almost walking out into traffic because I was looking for cars coming the wrong direction or around the wrong corners. It really messed with our minds. It seemed easy enough, but we were all messed up. The second thing that I noticed while walking down the street was many businesses had shoes piled out front. All of the customers removed their shoes before entering.  Having just left China, where you would never see that because they would be stolen by the time you left the store, it struck me as interesting.

Next we decided to take a long tail boat for a ride through the river to explore other parts of the city.

Long tail boats

  It seemed like when we entered the pier area we entered a whole new world. This was where the seedy portion of our trip began. It’s a little hard to explain, but the pier area had many small vendors selling their stuff or food items. Then there were long tail boats leaving the piers heading for other piers. The boards along the docks didn’t seem very safe and many were rotting. There was a loud speaker with announcements occasionally being made and all of them were warnings to avoid talking to strangers or being pickpocketed. There are beware of pick pocket signs everywhere.  We found the pier we were looking for eventually and realized that there wasn’t an exact place to get on a boat. There were many men with their own signs trying to negotiate a price. None of it was in English and most of their English was limited. We tried to negotiate a price and quickly realized that the man we were talking to was offering us a huge price for a quick ride. As Jeff was negotiating with the man regarding the boat ride I realized there was a man behind me who was holding up three fingers, but he was doing it in a very covert way. At first I was thinking he was trying to signal to the boat man something then I realized he was signaling to me the price I should pay. He finally got up and left the area, but at the last moment he was in my sight he showed me the three fingers again. At that point I was not sure whether he was trying to save me from paying too much or if he was friends with the boat man and he was trying to manipulate me. We finally settled on 300 Baht per person (we started at 800), which equated to about $10 each. We finally got on the boat. We headed down the river. We had a nice view of some of the city this way. Next we got off the boat at another pier. We tried to visit the Royal Temple, but by that time it was fairly late in the afternoon and there was a huge line. Many people stopped us and tried to “Help”. It appeared that they were being helpful, but eventually we figured out that each of them was trying to persuade us to buy something from them, or go someplace else or I don’t even know. The one thing that kept coming up was that that particular day was a special day and we should go to a particular temple for the day. Apparently it was only open for one day of the year and that was the day. After all the warnings and the too helpful people we were leery; we didn’t trust any of them. People would get upset with us when we wouldn’t go the direction they thought we should have gone or we didn’t take their advice. It was very strange and disconcerting. At one point we even had a “Security guard” with what appeared to be fake badge try to give us advice. Again, it just didn’t feel right. As we were headed back for the day a police officer approached us and handed us a laminated card with police numbers on it for when we had trouble. He talked about the pick pockets and other unscrupulous people; when he handed us the card it seemed like he was saying “Here, this is for when you need it, not IF you need it”. Great, what had we got ourselves into?? He spoke English fairly well and told us we should go visit this special temple that was only open that day and it wasn’t on our map because it wasn’t a tourist destination.  Crap, him too we thought for a minute. Eventually we came to trust him and decided to visit the “Special temple”. We crammed all five of us in a tuk-tuk. I think three people would have fit comfortably. Tuk-tuk’s are Thailand’s version of taxis. There were traditional taxis, but tuk-tuks were more abundant and easily accessible.

Tuk-tuk

 We arrived at the “Special” temple and realized it was where all the kings of Thailand had been buried. It was only open one day a year to the public. It was open that day because the princess came to pray for her unborn baby.  The other very notable thing about Thailand that I have failed to mention is there is a king. He is much cherished. The current monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej, is 84 years old and has been the reigning king for 66 years.

Here is one example of many we saw of the king. He looks like a sweet old guy.

 He is the longest living reigning king in the world. He has been sick for quite some time and his son has been making political decisions for him lately, which apparently has created some controversy. There were signs EVERYWHERE with his picture on it; from huge bill boards to small images hanging from all the taxis driver’s rear view mirrors, you name it, the king’s face was on it. They love this guy! Apparently, you can be imprisoned for 15 years for being disrespectful toward the king, but I get the feeling that they really respect and love their leader. It’s so different than the way we think about our leadership in America. 

I cannot remember the name of the “Special” temple and I can’t find it on any tourist websites either and I believe it is because it wasn’t a tourist destination. I think we totally lucked out on the day we were there, in more than one way as you will read. We were greeted by the manager of the temple when we arrived.

This was the manager who posed for a picture with the kids

 The place was pretty much empty, unlike every other place we had been since our arrival in Bangkok. We were unable to enter right away because there was a ceremony or something so the manager sat with us for twenty minutes or so and told us all about the history of that wat. He showed us all the mausoleums where the previous monarchs were buried. 

These are two of the buildings for previous kings

He explained that the princess came that morning to pray for her unborn child and that was why it was open that day  He seemed very eager to practice his English, which he apparently hadn’t used in a couple of years. Finally we were able to enter the inner walls and we were stunned by the beauty of that wat. He spent several hours walking us around and telling us many details about the building.

Mother of pearl and other stones

 Everything was covered in real gold, mother of pearl, stones and hand painted. All of the pictures were individually done and hand painted. I snapped a ton of pictures, but I’m not sure any of them really did it justice. Eventually we are asked by one of the monks (who spoke perfect English and surprised us by answering our questions the manager couldn’t quite understand) if we wanted to witness a confirmation ceremony. We got to enter the very sacred portion of the temple to witness the ceremony.

 The young monk who invited us answered all our questions about the ceremony and his process for becoming a monk.

 He explained that all young men were encouraged to go through the process. It is a sort of coming of age for men around 20. The culture doesn’t expect everyone will stay with it, but that they will have a better understanding of themselves and Buddhism. He explained that they are allowed to carry phones, but they give up all other worldly possessions. They shave their head and all where the same two outfits so they give up their individuality and all look the same.  I was thankful that he approached us and seemed eager to share his experiences.  I was not allowed to stand too close to him and that was for his protection so he isn’t tempted, which also explains why they are not allowed to sit near women, take anything from a women or basically have much interaction with us. One of our flights in Thailand a monk had the entire row of seats to himself and he couldn’t eat or drink anything the entire time because the plane only had female attendants. I am glad we had our informative talk with the other monk so we understood what rules the flying monk was following. There are other rules regarding women too, but I can’t remember them all. It’s just fascinating to learn about other’s cultures and lives.

I find it fascinating that there were shrines everywhere. It seems like every restaurant, every house, every establishment has a shrine out front with offerings to Buddha.

This shows one of the hundreds of shrines that we saw outside people's homes.

The following day we spent visiting a few more temples and taking a long tail boat ride in the canal down to the water market. We see a slice of life that I have never experienced. Many of the houses along the canal are up on posts and I was shocked at how many of them were barely held up.

 Many of them have rotting, leaning pillars. They were many with open air and no windows and barely walls in some cases. I didn’t get any pictures of the really dilapidated ones (or the ones without windows), but here are a few of the ones I did capture.

On our boat ride we had a few other boats approach us trying to sell us their goods.

She was all smiles until we didn't buy anything.

  We saw huge water monitors, up to six feet long. We didn’t know they lived there so that was a bit of a surprise.

Water monitor on the rocks. This is a medium size one. It was a bit of a surprise the first time we saw one.

We were dropped off at the water market for a bit of time to check it out before the rest of our canal ride. Again, new experiences I wasn’t expecting. The first portion of the market is a restaurant, sort of. There are different vendors selling food. Most of the cooking was done in long boats over barbeques on the side of the pier. 

Yummy! They've got multiple bbq's going at the same time. Nice looking water huh?

There were several of them and the food smells fabulous. Everywhere we walk I was tempted by the smells and look of the food. We didn’t want to get sick so we decided to have some fruit that we chose ourselves from one of the little vendors. We also had some very yummy coconut ice cream with nuts and other toppings that are not identifiable, but delicious served in a coconut shell.

 They were feeding the fish and so the fish come in huge schools trying to get the tasty treats all around the dock.

Fishy, fishy, fishy.  Notice the dock. Pretty much what we saw everywhere we went.

 The water was disgusting and many of the vendors were selling fish that had been recently caught from the canal. It really did look delicious. I saw they were washing the dishes in a huge garbage can with cold soapy water. There were no indoor facilities. All of this means we got to admire the food, but not eat it.

The floating dock or pier had many vendors selling their handmade crafts and jewelry. We did enjoy our time looking at all the crafts.

Our final night we decide to take the kids to a Lady boy show…. hmmmm, another new experience. It was a cabriole show with only men who were either in the transition of becoming women or had made the complete transformation. The entire show was lip synced, except the MC who had quite a  masculine voice, but a very shapely body. While it was very entertaining and nothing was inappropriate about the actual show I did question what the kids were thinking and whether it was a good idea to expose them to this. They weren’t the only children there, there were at least three other families with children even younger than mine.  I found myself staring at the performer’s pubic area during most of the show wondering where they hid their packages or who had already had surgery. There were actually a couple of them that I would have never known they weren’t women, they were quite feminine and petite. I found myself also paying attention to their hands, wrist size and general musculature also. Many of them danced quite well. When we were done I asked the boys what they thought and Riley specifically said he was quite “Confused” by the whole thing.

These are a few of the "Ladies".

 He apparently had spent much of the show also staring at their pubic area. I would imagine it is a little confusing for a 13 year old boy just starting to become a man and watching these men give up their masculinity.  After the show we went to one of the local night markets. We went to the “Appropriate” night market (or we were told that anyway) and still had to keep reminding the kids to not look certain directions because there were so many seedy, sleazy shops on the side of the market. We made our way into the center and looked at the crafts for a while and then called it quits. There was obviously a lot of prostitution and from what I was told (I didn’t look in the shops either, I was too busy trying to distract everyone) there are live acts going on with open doors right on to the street (and it wasn’t just dancing!). Bangkok, it’s a unique place.

Final day before we took another plane North to Chiang Mai we decided to check out the Bangkok zoo. It is apparently the best in all of Thailand. I figure it was a nice wholesome thing to do after the previous night’s adventure. The zoo was nice. We saw many animals. The exciting part was a gibbon monkey escaped while we were there. I didn’t know anything about gibbon’s at the time so we went and hid in the caged eating area. Now that I think back I do think it is interesting that the food area is caged, maybe it is to keep the birds out, or maybe this type of things happens more often than not. And I don’t think we needed to hide from the gibbons, but there are other animals that I would want to hid from. No one spoke English so we weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do so we went in and ate lunch. After a while we got bored and decided to go explore the rest of the zoo. Everyone else stayed behind to watch the capture. The zoo staff continued to hunt the monkey with an air gun with a  tranquilizer in the tip. That monkey was amazingly fast, I assume they eventually caught it.

Here are the zoo keepers trying to capture the monkey. You can see the man on the left is pumping up the air gun.

I know this was a long post, it was three days’ worth of exploring. Thanks for reading.

 Overall I am glad we went to Bangkok, but it is one of those places I have no desire to revisit. I found it stressful and I was always worried someone was trying to trick us or steal our money. I was never worried about my personal safety, but you can only see so many videos of pick pockets or scooter drive bys taking your purse before you start to feel vulnerable (these videos are shown on animated bill boards all over the city).

This is the sign in the taxi on the way to the airport. It pretty much sums up my impression of Bangkok.