I enjoyed the flight to Thailand, but then I like flying. I'm not sure that Colin enjoyed it as much in transit to the Land of Smiles. But land of smiles it is, and Colin found his grin soon after we landed. Our flight had been delayed so we didn't get into Bangkok until around 1pm and we decided to eat lunch in the Airport. It's funny that we went someplace as "authentic" as Bangkok and then got Subway and Baskin Robbins for lunch, but there you are. It was the first time that we'd had turkey in months and ice cream is always a nice treat.
It took several maps and talking to several people that did not speak English to finally figure out what metros (called the BTR in Bangkok) we needed to take to get to the closest to our hotel. Once we got on the BTR Colin and I boggled at the green. GREEN! There were trees and grasses and plants. And they weren't all landscaped. But more than that - it was overwhelming. There was an overwhelming oxygen in Bangkok that is just lacking in Hong Kong. I have been told that the forest trails in Hong Kong give this effect as well, but I have yet to experience it.
The BTR stop Chong Nonsi was about five blocks from our hotel and easily walked. We stayed at the Luxx Hotel, which was lovely and modern. The floors were all dark hardwoods and everything form clean visual lines. It was also blessed with air conditioning. I've not yet experienced the serious heat of Hong Kong, but I am now prepared for what is coming in a month's time. It was humid and hardly ever dropped below 80 degrees our entire time there.
We were surprised to find on arrival that we got a complimentary breakfast each day of our visit. This was no ordinary continental breakfast of dry cereals and toast options. No No. This was your choice of eggs (boiled, omelette, scrambled or fried) with or without bacon AND sausage, cereal with chocolate or plain milk, your choice of fruit (banana, orange, pineapple, apple), either french toast or a croissant, a side of toast, a choice of fruit juice (tomato, pineapple or orange) and your choice of breakfast drink (coffee or tea). It was insanely huge and it caused us to not to have to eat a lunch meal both weekend days we were there.
After living in a tiny Hong Kong apartment with a mattress on the floor for a few months, the room itself was all the vacation we could have asked for. This hotel is particularly known for it's very modern bathrooms, which include bathtubs made like wooden barrels. Very relaxing.
The first night (Friday) after taking a brief nap, we headed to Siam Paragon, the most modern shopping experience in all of Bangkok. The food court (if it can be called that) was amazing. Yes, it did include a Burger King and KFC, but there was also a gourmet grocery, and sit down locations ranging from mid-level to expensive budgets. It was very impressive and we settled on Mexican (since we haven't been able to get that in Hong Kong either). The conclusion we came to after two days there was that if there is a style of food in existence, then the Thai can make it. After burritos and a shared margarita, we went to the basement of the mall complex to the Siam Ocean World Aquarium. We may or may not have pictures from this event. We discovered upon our arrival at the aquarium that the battery in Colin's camera was nearly dead and that he had forgotten to pack his charger. That being said, we did get a few pictures in before it died. This is also the reason for the video (2 posts previous to this). Colin had the bright idea of taking video with his iPod since we did not have the camera, which allowed us to get some images of our time there.
We had a very relaxing night of sleep and a HUGE breakfast (as described above) Saturday morning. Though one of the travel guides I had read said that people try to walk in Bangkok, but they should really just take a taxi, we decided to walk anyway. Colin and I are both keen on hiking, so why not hike through the city and get a glimpse of some real street culture. We hiked somewhere between four and six miles (our route not being the original intended and therefore not plotted for distance) from the center of Silom to Rattanakosin (see the map) to the Grand Palace. Along the way, many people offered to help give us directions and two of them tried to convince us that the palace was closed (one for construction and the other for a protest). This is apparently a common occurrence. I read that people will tell you this and sure enough they did, giving us their suggestions of other places to visit while in town. Nevertheless we persisted and found our way to the Grand Palace.
Luckily we had both planned to dress appropriately for our visit to this most auspicious location, which meant that we'd worn long pants and a long dress to walk 5+ miles in nearly 90 degree weather, but this saved us the trouble of having to rent appropriate clothing at the door. No shoulders, nothing above the knees, no chest were allowed to show and no holes in clothing permitted. We managed to get a disposable camera at one of the shops and so should have a few pictures (eventually) of our trip there. You can also see the video Colin took of our time.
One of the most fascinating things about the temples, burial chambers and buildings there is the sheer weight and volume of the materials used to build them. The walls of the buildings were all made of mirror, ceramic, or gold mosaics (each piece never exceeding the approximate area of a square centimeter) that were often layered and all of the roofs were made of ceramic tiles. I don't know if it is just the archaeologist in me that finds this amazing, but the sheer weight of the structures themselves means that the buildings must be exceedingly sturdy and well supported, and while they gave the impression of a gravity of permanence, they also were surprisingly delicate to behold. Perhaps it is the nature of the small tesserae or the intricate floral and geometric designs that they created, but it was an extremely impressive display of architecture and artistic craftsmanship.
We got to go into the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which is actually made of a solid piece of jade rather than emerald. Photography and videography were not permitted in this temple as it is an active place of worship and considered disrespectful (even as a tourist attraction), so Colin and I sketched our impressions of different parts of the altar.
Colin's sketch is of the main structure that housed the Buddha and the Buddha itself.The drawings on the right are mine and on the left are Colin's. I drew one of the golden statues (in pencil) that form part of the processional of the Buddha and one of the two trees dedicated (in blue, seen sideways here). There are two trees that are dedicated, one in gold and one in silver.
After our tour of the Grand Palace, we dodged raindrops on our walk to Khao San Road. For some reason (and a lot of that reason had to do with maps that do not accurately depict the roads in this are of the city), it took us a good two hours or so to walk to and find Khao San Road. Let's just say it involved two torrential downpours, some arguing over how to read the map, asking directions of people with no common language to us, wandering in circles, some hair-pulling frustration and two fresh fruit smoothies.
By this time it was already close to 5pm, so we directed our path toward a restaurant called Ethos. What wonderful food! We shed our shoes at the door and sat on pillows next to the low tables of the restaurant. We shared a local beer, discussing our impressions of the day and Colin's current philosophical project. I ordered the more middle eastern style pita and hummus and fresh veggie salad served with falafel and a lime tahini dressing. Sooo good. Colin order the more local cuisine of yellow curry, a curry soup full of freshly stewed veggies, including cauliflower, potatoes, snow peas, carrots, tomatoes and tofu. Yellow curry is one of the less spicy, more tourist friendly curries and while still involved a little heat was quite enjoyable. For dessert, we had hot chai with a multi-grain pancake served with banana, mango and cream.
Dinner took us a good two hours to eat and enjoy, meaning it was dark by the time we left the restaurant. We got turned around when walking through a protest (against censorship) and could not convince a taxi to take us back to our hotel (and not for lack of trying). It was very odd. In my planning of the trip, I read up on the customs of how to get around. I read that taxi were really common and not difficult to find. Tuk-tuks were even more common than taxis, but more of a rip off and, because of their open sides, exposed you to more traffic pollution. Water taxis/ferries were also available along the river. We attempted several times to get a taxi, but when we stopped and gave them our desired destination, they refused to accept us as fare and drove away. We decided to take a water taxi back to a dock near our hotel, but couldn't find our way to the river. Though a significant portion of the population in Bangkok speaks English, we ended up in a neighborhood that was too local/residential to find people that did. We ended up roughly communicating with two women in a closing restaurant that essentially played charades with us in order to give us directions to the river. Colin got really nervous as we continued to walk and not find the river, though we seemed to be headed in the right direction. Instead of finding the river, we found our way back to the Grand Palace, which was helpful as we finally knew where we were. Still no taxi would take us as fare and the traffic was picking up for its busiest hour as we tried to navigate crossing traffic. Strangely enough, most intersections have marked crosswalks for pedestrians, but no pedestrian lights to signal that they ever get right of way. As we nervously stood awaiting a break in traffic in the dark, a saffron-robed monk took Colin firmly by the hand (who took me by the hand) and led us into the traffic safely to the other side. He asked us where we were going and we explained our taxi problem.
We had debated taking a tuk-tuk, but had been wary of doing so. The monk convinced us this was the best course of action and, thus, we ended up taking a (very comparatively expensive) tuk-tuk ride that was worth every cent. Our driver was not the man whose picture graced the license to drive the tuk-tuk (seemingly younger by several decades), but was enthusiastic to take us to our hotel and knew where it was. The ceiling of the vehicle was strangely covered in spiderman logos. We got in as he finished his sandwich and he climbed in after us, finally turning to ask us how much we would pay him. Smiling (both with the grin of knowing the game I was about to play and the one that is customary when taking up a complaint in Thailand in order to ease the tension), I haggled him down 50 baht in his price before we began our journey. Colin has used the descriptors of "raucous" and "better than any roller coaster he'd ever been on including Space Mountain". It seems that every tuk-tuk driver in Bangkok wants to both be on his motorcycle (the most common form of transport for locals) and also be driving the Indy 500. He swerved and dodged and negotiated and corralled and gave way to and slipped through traffic in ways that I had not imagined those little vehicles could achieve. To our great amusement, about halfway through the trip the driver pulled over and stopped the engine. I started to worry (as we were nowhere near our hotel) that he was going to push for more money for the fare, but instead asked if we cared that he stopped for a drink of bean water. Not minding at all and being more confused and amused than anything else, we agreed and waited a few minutes for him to offer patronage to a place he knew. Bean water imbibed, we continued on our journey, finally arriving at our hotel. Colin had enjoyed it so thoroughly we ended up giving him the extra 50 baht he had wanted anyway, which made him laugh.
Sunday was much more laid back, being the last day of our trip. We breakfasted at our leisure and walked around the neighborhood a bit before heading back to Siam Paragon to try some of the desserts from the plethora of bakeries we had seen. The video features me eating fudge brownie cheese cake, while Colin opted for strawberry yogurt cake. By the time we got back to the hotel (early) our arranged transport vehicle (a black Japanese luxury-size sedan) was waiting to take us to the airport.
We had hoped that the flight back would not have the same delay as the flight there, because we were already supposed to be getting back at 8:30pm (and had another hour before we could expect to be home), but we had no such luck. Not only was our flight delayed, but after checking us in at the gate, we were informed that we needed to rush to a different gate that the flight had been moved to. So we rushed through the airport like that scene from Home Alone 2 and arrived to find an empty gate terminal that was locked. Many other people arrived rushing to the gate as well and found themselves similarly annoyed. We ended up having to wait about hour for the plane and did not make it back to the apartment until 10:30 that night.
While the flights at either end were slow and delayed, the vacation itself was terrifically wonderful. Both of us had been pushing hard to edit Colin's most recent chapter of his thesis and our general projects and had frankly just been cooped up in the apartment for too long. Getting away and taking the time to relax and enjoy a place helped us to unwind. And the food. Oh good gracious the food. You may have read about our previous entries concerning food, but let's just say there is a world of difference (and enjoyment) between the food cultures of Hong Kong and Bangkok. While eating in Hong Kong is an activity that is generally treated as a mere necessity, Bangkok allowed us to appreciate our palettes and vegetables proved to be the rule rather than the exception.
Overall the honeymoon was interesting, relaxing and extremely enjoyable. Bangkok has made our list of places to go again.
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