1. Thailand - Where else to start other than Bangkok ?

covering 21 - 22 August 2019

There are several places in Thailand I’d like to see, Be Bop a Lula, Boom Bang-a-Bang and Wop Bop a Loo Bop amongst them.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate them on a map – yet, but I’ll keep looking.

the raised metro line above Si Lom

It’s hot and sticky at this time of the year in Bangkok but then I think it is all the rest of the year too.  Now though it has the added attraction of being the monsoon season which we understand tends to be an afternoon downpour rather than all day long unrelenting rain which is what I’d always thought monsoons did.  We’d arrived at 6.00am after an overnight flight and caught the airport rail link into the city.  It was the usual fun game of trying to understand a new transport system.  Here we bought black tokens which operated the turnstiles at the stations.  It was all very well signposted and no problem although rush hour was already in progress by 6.30.  Where we alighted, the metro runs on an elevated track above a main road with an unbelievably small distance between the edge of the raised level and the buildings either side.

MacDonalds Thai-style

After checking into our hotel and setting our alarm for two hours we had a quick shut-eye, then a shower and headed into the metrolops.  It was still hot and sticky and the Thais do like their noise.  Whistles are used frequently for what often just seems like the fun of hearing the shrieking.  Traffic is heavy and unbounded by many rules and regulations but none of this was unexpected or surprising.  Our first day was not to be too strenuous and got limited to lunch, looking round some shops and dinner.  Tomorrow was to be the day we got going.

The owner of our small hotel in the Silom area gave us a quick run though the sights to see but most usefully told us to catch the Orange Flag boat on the river.  The river is a major highway here with ferries, tourist boats, huge freight barges in chains of three or four plus the long-tail boats (fast, narrow and long) jockeying for position. 

jockeying for position

long-tail boat

The first kiosk was charging 100 Baht (about £3) per person for a trip up to the Grand Royal Palace and then we saw Orange tee shirts and headed that way.  They were charging 60 Baht and we were just about to buy the tickets when I realised that the tee shirt colour wasn’t as we expected, the colour of the flag on the boat (!?).  We were talking to the Blue flag boat people.  The Orange flag boat people were a little further on and we were charged 20 Baht per person for exactly the same journey as all the other boats.

care to search for an amulet treasure ?

The river is perhaps twice as wide as the Thames as it flows through central London.  Here passengers are hurried off and on at each stop.  Having been duly hurried off at our chosen stop we wandered along to the Amulet Market, one of the tourist spots and a huge puzzle to me.  It’s full of what look like thousands of mass produced trinkets with the aficionados checking them over with magnifying glasses before buying.  Baffling.  It didn’t detain us for long.

The biggest tourist attraction in town is the Wat Phra Kaew temple and Grand Palace, covering 300 or so acres and very impressive.  As we arrived they were changing the guard.  The soldiers looked faintly ill at ease in not particularly well fitting uniforms and didn’t march with any great precision.  Later in the same complex we heard more marching and looking round saw a much smarter and better drilled group of perhaps a hundred soldiers, to our surprise wearing bearskins, very like the ceremonial headgear of British Guardsmen.

enjoying one of the egg offerings at a temple

inside Wat Phra Kaew

one of those Guardians

Inside it was fantastical and gaudily coloured Buddhist buildings everywhere which are impossible for me to describe.  To a western eye they are just wildly over the top even compared to some of the Catholic extravaganzas we’ve seen in other countries.  Many of the creatures shown are mythical and apparently cobbled together with body parts from a variety of known animals, including humans. Since I was a child I’ve loved the Chinese dragons and they are featured in abundance so that was very satisfying.  We were both taken by the guardians of the temples which often stand either side of an entrance and are a strange mix of a human body and a fierce and not quite human face, often with staring eyes and a few pointed teeth.  As I know little about Buddhism, the significance and meaning of what I saw just meant nothing which meant that after a while it all started to look the same.  Even as a devout Atheist, I know more about Christianity than Buddhism and I can understand a Cathedral better.  That said, this location was the biggest Buddhist site I’ve ever seen.

Then we were off to Wat Pho to see the giant reclining Buddha and I realised I’d never seen a representation of Jesus that wasn’t basically vertical, certainly never reclining.  This Buddha was huge and golden, and lay in one of a number of Buddhist buildings on the site.  The whole place being brightly coloured and decorated.

the reclining Buddha

We were flagging a bit by now and decided to head back to our hotel.  Being in an area not served by the subway system we decided to walk back to the river and get the boat back whence we had come.  Now we often visit places that are closed or under restoration or covered in scaffolding.  Here we experienced a new surprise, the river was closed !  No transport running because of some Naval exercise. Ho, hum.  So we decided on a taxi.  Now one of the problems here as in so many places is that taxi drivers don’t want to use the meter, they want to quote a price way over the metered fare.  So after three or so taxis with ‘broken’ meters or just refusing to use one, we did get a taxi where the driver wanted to quote a price but agreed to use the meter.  After about two hundred yards, he pulled over and started shouting in Thai and we deduced that we were not welcome passengers.  So we got out having enjoyed a free two hundred yard taxi ride.  Unfortunately it was further than that to our hotel so we walked for twenty minutes or so to the nearest subway station ahead of some menacing looking dark clouds.  When we exited ten or fifteen minutes later the monsoon rain was in full pourdown and we dodged from shop awning to awning back to our hotel.

the domino-toothed Guardian

  

forbidden fruit - Durian, acknowledged
as the stinkiest fruit in the world