Thanks for reading!

We had an amazing trip in Thailand in August - here are some highlights.
If you have any questions about our trip , please email me (jrtadano@gmail.com). We'd love to hear about your travels too - or any ideas you have about where we should go next!

Some tips on reading the travel log: "I" is usually Juliana, except for Ty's two entries (which are labeled).

We entered these backwards, so you can read straight down to move through the trip chronologically. No backscrolling!

Ignore the posting dates - go by the dates in the title.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

8/21 Saturday: Bangkok and Heading Home

It was a good thing we planned to get up early and try to see some of Bangkok before we left, since the construction next door to the guest house began at 7:30am, even on Saturday! We had really good Thai breakfast soup (rice, chicken, and broth – very tasty!) for breakfast. The plan was to tour the old city for the morning, then shower, pack up, and head to the airport. I intended to negotiate a late checkout for this to happen. Turns out, another couple was checking into our room for the night, we had to pack before we left for touring around, but we could leave our bags and pay to use the shared shower in another part of the hotel when we got back. This seemed like it would work – but it meant we packed quickly and we later regretted that. We had liquids (including food we intended to share with friends when we got back) in our carry-on, which of course we had to throw away, and good shoes and medicine we wanted on the flight in our checked bags!

(daily life in Bangkok)

We took the boat ferry again, feeling like old pro's on our third trip. The ferries serve as buses – the traffic in Bangkok is so bad that the river is a great and expedient way to get around, at least for parts of town near the water. The boats were very cheap – 14 baht (around 50 cents) per ride, and very crowded with tourists, locals, and monks. As a woman, I can't touch monk without making him unclean – and this was a bit worrisome on the crowded, rolling boat rides! Mostly though everyone gave the monks room out of respect, so they could keep to themselves on all but the busiest rides.

(beautiful boats for tourists, not commuters!)

The city monks are very different than the country monks. In other parts of Thailand, the monks had a very sweet and open, if quiet, demeanor. They made eye contact and even smiled, although they were of course mainly focused on their activity and spiritual disciplines. The younger monks – from 6 to 18, would often be playing and horsing around like normal boys, in 2s and 3s or even larger groups. But here in the city, we saw only adult monks, and they were very aloof. They did not make eye contact, even when we had to go out of our way to pass each other. They did not welcome us to the wats with the subtle but kind head nods we were used too. They seemed to always be in a hurry to get away from the city and back to their temples. Presumably it is harder to live an austere and holy life in a bustling city than in a quiet forest or charming small town. I also read that the Bangkok monks serve more as community liaisons for Buddhism, presiding over rituals and holidays, and managing the busy temple life. Country monks tend to be more of the monastic, contemplative lifestyle.

(monk in the city)

The river was also different here than other cities. This was the grand Chao Phraya, the conglomeration of every other river we had visited, draining all of the north to the Bay of Thailand. It was wide and churning, brown and full of fish and aquatic plants, as well as boats of all types – barges pulled by tug boats (whole long lines of them – one tug pulling 4-10 barges!), long tail outboard motor boats, dinner cruisers, water taxis and other ferries. There is a beautiful modern bridge (Rama VIII bridge) over the river near our guest house, and there are wats and hotels and business buildings, the old palace and other government buildings all up and down the river. It is likened to the Mississippi for its size and commercial use, and to Venice for its banks lined with buildings and its many canals into the city. Diesel from the boat engines pours into the water, as does waste and sewage from the city – yet we saw hundreds of catfish swarming around one pier that was being chummed with bread crusts by locals. It was hard to know that much of the sediment coloring the river was coming down from the beautiful forests around Chiang Mai – no longer held back by tree roots, the deforested areas were being washed into the rivers by heavy rains and running out into the Bay. Likewise the beautiful green plantlife floating along the river is invasive and non-native, sigh!

(The Chao Phraya)

It was hard to say the river was beautiful – but it was impressive. The boats rolled and turn in the waters, but I never got sick. There was no smell to the water (besides the diesel engines of course), and not much trash. It was full of life – both its own currents and the business and tourists that crossed back and forth every minute.

Our attempts to see Bangkok on half a day were mostly a bust – although they made us happy to be heading home. We did love seeing the Reclining Buddha, which was really huge and beautiful. The wat that housed the statue was covered floor to ceiling with tapestry wall paper with scenes of Thailand life in historical style. They ranged from scenes of Buddha's life and religious life for the people, to someone picking his nose, a mother breast-feeding and a peek of a naked couple embracing through an open window. Again, there is so little separation from the divine and the daily life here.

(Reclining Buddha)

(reclining Buddha's mother of pearl feet and temple murals)

The Old Palace was closed to tourists for the morning, for some sort of festival. We were able to make it around the wall of the Palace and into some of the first courtyards, and decided it wouldn't be worth the steep entry fees (350 baht per person, when temple entries were only 50 baht per person!) anyhow. But the area was swarming with tourists, all as surprised as us by the closure, and scamming tour operators trying to make the most of the holiday by sucking us into other pricey trips with them while the Palace was closed. We tried yet again to get gifts at the market, but nothing new emerged and prices had gone up.

Ty was finally successful in sampling “Thai hot” food – a challenge posed by a friend that had eluded us. We had tried several times to get food not watered down for foreigners, and every time the meals came back more bland than the Thai food we ate at home. I guess when you know most tourists can't handle the heat, you learn you'll make more money by lowering the risk of a burnt tongue for your patrons. Sadly, to say one does like spicy is a very subjective thing, so its hard to convince a restaurant to up the heat again. We finally found premade food at a street vendor that was already cooked, and Ty ordered up a spicy plate. It was by far the best food we had eaten there – and I realized why I hadn't liked the Thai food we had been eating like I thought I would.


(note the chili flake on Ty's tongue and the sweat pouring out!)

Thai cuisine is based on balancing several types of flavors in each dish – spicy, sweet, bitter, sour, etc. The spicy is mitigated by the sweet and the pungent, such as basil or cilantro. When the Thais lowered the heat for us tourists, they did not change the amount of sweetness or other flavors in the recipe, they just left the chilies out. Thus, all of the dishes tasted strongly of sugar, or basil, or lemongrass. Once we had a dish with the chilies still in, those flavors became part of a varied palette, instead of the dominant taste. I wish I had realized this earlier in the trip – I would have pushed harder for the chilies! The dish WAS hot – we have a funny photo of Ty's sweating face after he ate it, but if you balanced it with rice it and ate slowly, it wasn't bad. And, we were soaking wet from sweat and humidity anyhow, so what would it matter if we sweat a little more at our meals anyhow?

I was also humbled – I had been rolling my eyes the whole trip at Ty's quest to eat spicy food. I figured the food would be wasted when it was too hot to eat, or I'd have to put up with his upset stomach afterwards! It turns out we were missing out on the best part of Thai cooking, and we wouldn't have realized it if Ty hadn't been obsessed with his goal.

(roof tiles at marble wat)

After lunch we took the ferry upriver from our hotel to try to see a popular marble wat and standing buddha in the neighborhood called Dusit, which is also where the current king and queen reside. We got pretty good and lost coming and going – which would have been fine had we not had a taxi ride to the airport already scheduled a few hours away. We found the current palace during our mysterious trekking, and it was very modern and European. That is to say, it looks a lot like a European palace from around the 1800's. The marble wat was full of people – presumably we had missed the end of the same celebration that closed the Old Palace. It was gaudy and very 1980's kind of marble (not the beautiful marble I had pictured from my trip to Italy!). But as always, we were appeased by unexpected surprises. Inside the wat was a large golden Buddha set with beautiful lights and a lovely blue wall behind it. In the prayer area were many floor fans, encouraging us to rest a bit, and a woman was alone praying with her bags of groceries at piled up. It was a fitting closing visit amongst the many temples we had seen. The buddha was perhaps the most inspiring from an artwork perspective, with the blue relief and fancy backlighting giving a halo to the statue. But the woman praying was the most real-life and humble – stopping in for some real life spiritual needs on her way home from errands. I can't recall seeing anyone praying in American churches with grocery bags in hand!

(groceries, check. prayer, check.)

We got lost again trying to find our standing buddha. We hadn't seen this posture before and weren't quite ready to end our touring – but Ty was feeling light headed and we were loosing time to take a shower before our taxi came, so we got pretty stressed. After wandering down quiet but confusing side streets, we finally circled around to the wat with the standing buddha. He was outside, and 45 meters tall – quite huge! It was hard to believe we couldn't see the statue amongst the buildings as we circled around the neighborhood! We were so tired – both of walking and of seeing buddhas, we decided skip entering the temple and headed back to our hotel for a muggy shower, just in time to catch our cab.

We had read about increased security when we checked in online for our flight, so we got there 3 hours early, only to be whisked through with plenty of time to kill at the airport. Outside of security there are great restaurants which are reasonably priced and cover the spectrum of asian food – thai, sushi, chinese, dim sum. We skipped these on the advice of our check-in counter to get through security first – only to have plenty of time to kill and only a few, far more expensive options at the gates. We did get decent Thai food for dinner, but at exorbitant prices. We laughed at the price of various fruits we had just seen for sale on the streets of Bangkok, marked up 3-6 times in the airport. We had lost some of our souvenir food due to packing liquids in our carry-on (we had bought cans of fruit to bring home packed in liquid), so were very sad and frustrated. We bought some dried fruit instead but it won't be nearly as good.

Our flight to Hong Kong was fine, and our layover there was quiet. HKI is a huge airport and I had horrible blisters – then our gate got changed from one end to another so my blisters got worse! I ended up wearing Ty's extra (read: old and worn out) sneakers with my girly plane outfit, and looked pretty silly. The flight from Hong Kong to SFO was much better than coming out – we had learned the creative positions to sleep in Cathay's horrible plastic chairs. Sadly, I got the traveler bug somewhere in our last hours of travel, and it hit around 8 hours away from SFO. I had a pretty rough flight home and trip to my parents’ house – but fortunately we only had to get as far as Alamo (less than 1 hour from SFO) before we could crash. I am still recovering – but at least it made carrying the Cipro along for 2 weeks worth it!

(heading home - bye Thailand!)


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