Following 3-4 hours of sleep we woke up the first morning in a nice hotel on the bank of the river (I'm too lazy to look up its name) which flows through Bangkok, the New Siam Riverside, which Darcy had picked from the final lineup because it included breakfast. But this wasn't the "toast and cereal" type of breakfast I'd previously encountered at inexpensive US motels and was expecting, it was a full-on hot Thai dish and fruit and eggs and bacon PLUS toast and cereal (if you wanted it) breakfast. It was very nice and filling and we would find something similar every morning at our second hotel in Pranburi as well. So we started every day in Thailand with a yummy and filling breakfast.
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| View from room in New Siam Riverside hotel in Bangkok |
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| Breakfast first morning in Bangkok. It was fun and interesting to watch the river traffic which included mats of plants floating by, long narrow boats with outboard motors (looking like salvaged car engines) running small propellers at the end of really long drive shafts which could be rotated way around to the right or left to turn the boat on a dime (or maybe chop up bad guys in an action movie) - these appeared to be used for small private shipping cargo as well as public and private ferries and water-taxi services, and chains of large barges pulled by tugboats. |
After breakfast we decided to walk to the Grand Palace which wasn't too far from our hotel (maybe 1.5 km). Walking turned out to be a great idea and we did quite a lot of it. Walking allowed us to go slowly enough to see what we were passing by and to stop whenever we felt like it to look at things more closely or take detours that looked interesting. I think lots of our favorite times came when we were on our way to or from something and just exploring around. It was great that my companions felt the same way about that as I did. We were constantly pestered by cabbies to take a ride to wherever we were going but we steadfastly resisted (except when it was a long distance) because we liked exploring. We saw lots of cool alleys and shops and people and sights that we wouldn't have seen if we'd always gone directly from point A to point B in a cab or even a tuk-tuk.
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| Walking south along the river the first morning on our way to the Grand Palace. Note the long sleeves and pants. Though it was quite warm we were wearing long pants (and sometimes long sleeves) not only to protect against mosquito bites (though we had malaria pills there is also zika in the area) but also because you are supposed to wear long pants in the temples as a sign of respect. Because the former king had died only a couple months before our visit many Thai people, especially those going to official sites, were wearing all black. They are supposed to mourn for an entire year. |
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| Still on our way to the grand palace. Note the water bottle Max is holding. This was a recurring theme of the trip since we didn't want to drink tap water and therefore were constantly purchasing and carrying bottled water to stay hydrated in the heat and humidity (it was around 90 F in Bangkok, I think, and we sweated a lot). |
The Grand Palace itself, when we got there, was just ridiculously over-the-top gaudy splendor. We steadfastly resisted the offer of a local tour guide and clung heroically to our ignorance of what we were seeing. And I'm glad we did because it allowed us to wander around at our own pace, clowning with each other, reconnecting (for me) after 5 months apart, and not having to pay attention to someone telling us what everything meant. It would have been too much. It almost was too much! But it definitely set the aesthetic tone for all the official sites we saw on our trip. We got to the point, later, where we would speed past beautiful temples by the side of the road with a yawn. "Oh yeah, another one of those! Ho hum."
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| If the Grand Palace grounds were a mansion, this would be a coat closet in a spare bedroom. It's where we first walked in. |
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| Substitute a staff for Darcy's camera and she could be the original model for the statue behind her. |
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| It went on and on but this is still only the beginning. |
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| I'm glad we didn't have a tour guide because we were able to wander at our own pace, splitting apart and coming back together in different sub-groups to point out things and make jokes (in a very low-key and respectful way, of course!) |
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| Eddie had actually arrived sick with a head cold the night before but started off this morning strong. |
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| I have a picture of this same statue above but from the other direction. It just goes to show that no matter which way you looked you were met with amazing sights. |
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| Not all of the amazing sights were ancient and huge human creations! |
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| Did I mention it was over-the-top? |
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| I guess it redefines the top and relegates everything else I've seen to the sub-basement. |
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| I've run out of superlatives, but I just noticed the people with the identical tops. What's up with that? |
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| Owen called these "mini-bees". (Hmmmm?) Later we found even smaller ones we called "micro-bees". |
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| Maybe I'll be this for next Halloween. |
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| These guys are clearly not too happy about the task they've been given. It reminds me of Max and Owen's expressions when I used to ask them to take out the trash. |
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| Yow! Are we overwhelmed yet? |
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| Everybody in Asia makes the peace sign (or is that V for victory?) in all pictures so we look like locals here and blend right in! |
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| Eddie, I hope you're not relieving yourself on that bush! |
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| This is the actual current palace, I think, which wasn't open to the public (of course I'm not absolutely sure because we didn't have an actual guide). |
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| Well that was fun! |
Having overwhelmed our senses with the grounds and temples associated with the Grand Palace we decided to push the limits by checking out the other attractions afforded by our entry tickets which included a coin museum (ancient coins, medals, signature stamps, etc...) which I didn't get any pictures of but was, happily, air-conditioned and had some benches you could sit on, a textile museum (again no pictures) which displayed some gowns worn by the recent queen and maybe some other stuff, but once again I was focused on the air-conditioning, and a museum about the ancient dance form whose name I've forgotten but which was revived by the recent queen (I'm actually not sure if she's still alive or not) who also revived many traditional arts such as embroidery and exquisite model-making etc... by the general population as a way for the farmers to make some pocket money in their spare time. She is much revered for this.
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| Max, Darcy, and Owen dressed up in the costumes of the traditional dance. |
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| Ditto plus Eddie |
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| Update: one more shot from the collection of Darcy and Eddie. |
At this point we were ready for lunch and after some debate we decided to hoof it to an open-air street joint reputed (according to some source known to Darcy and her electronic advisors) to have the best Tom Yum, or Tom Ka, or whatever the chicken soup is that we like so much at J's Noodles on Federal in Denver. (Aside: J's Noodles still has the best Thai food of anything I've tasted anywhere in every category. If you haven't been you must go. No need to cross oceans, just 6th Avenue. Make sure to get the Tom-whatever and if you want to blow your head off with hotness get the papaya salad.)
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| Walking northeast-ish from the Grand Palace toward the soup place. This was in the middle of a roundabout and still struck me at this point as unusual and interesting though by the end of the trip I would probably have thought: Oh, another outlandishly crazy sculpture... Yawn! |
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| Trying to figure out where we are and where we're trying to go (not always in that order but usually those same two components). |
I'm sorry I don't seem to have any pictures of the common street scenes, just the magnificent vistas. I guess at the time the common street stuff seemed mundane since it was everywhere and I was somewhat accustomed to it from Korea so it didn't register as particularly picture-worthy. That included stuff like the little street-food vendors, the alley-markets, the crazy overloaded electrical poles with bazillions of wires on them, etc...
We finally found the soup place we were looking for but didn't end up eating there for a complex broth of reasons including a longish line, some confusion (mostly on my part, apparently) about whether or not they served soup at all (all I saw was fried stuff) and the lack of indoor air-conditioned places to sit down and eat, which we all sorely craved at that point (along with a cold beer).
I don't remember what we actually ended up doing for lunch that day...
Update: this is where we had lunch that day, and it turned out to be Darcy's favorite restaurant we went to in Bangkok. It was practically right across the street from our hotel.
...but I remember we lost Eddie at this point because he had arrived sick the night before and the morning had taken its toll and he wanted to rest at the hotel (sensibly) for the afternoon. However the rest of us went off to see the Jim Thomson house, utilizing our first tuk-tuk ride to get a fair distance across town.
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| First tuk-tuk ride. |
The Jim Thomson house is the former residence (turned museum, obviously, duh!) of a guy named, you guessed it, Jim Thomson who came to Thailand after serving WWII (if I remember correctly) and eventually began promoting Thai silk products and built himself a really cool home which we toured. I'm sure you can find much more (and more accurate) info about him on the internet if you care. He was eventually abducted by aliens in 1967. (Actually he disappeared without a trace on a trip somewhere in Asia I forget where.)
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| Apparently this is the only picture I took at the JT house and it has nothing to do with JT or his house, but it's a pretty nice picture, no? This kind of thing was as common in Thailand as a free real-estate advertising paper box on the corner in the US. |
Update: Darcy sent me this picture of the actual Jim Thomson house, which was quite nice, being several separate traditional Thai houses JT had bought and joined together, and which had nicely landscaped grounds and was set right beside a canal:
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| Jim Thomson House |
After touring JT's former crib we returned to the hotel. We returned, again, by tuk-tuk, but it was an entirely different tuk-tuk ride this time. Whereas our first tuk-tuk ride had been only at the medium spice level of craziness due to the insane Bangkok traffic (cars, buses, taxis, motorcycles, scooters all weaving in and out of traffic seemingly at random, but probably in accord with some complex laws of physics still to be discovered, along the road and through the intersections) our return trip took us to the level of "insanely hot Thai tuk-tuk spice" as our driver popped wheelies several times while passing other traffic in the oncoming lanes. Needless to say the boys loved this and egged him on while all I could do was pray to any and all gods and idols known and otherwise that we would conclude the journey safely as there were no seat-belts, helmets, roll-bars, air-bags, or anything else which would lead you to believe you had an ice-cream cone's chances in Bangkok of surviving any kind of accident.
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| Stopped for gas at a filling station on the "Thai hot" tuk-tuk ride. Apparently the tuk-tuks (or at least this one) run on propane. Our driver was Ping (Darcy says it was Pin, pronounced "Peen". Sorry, Pin, if you're reading this!), whose name will be sung in praise on the streets of Denver for at least as long as my boys draw breath. I suspect he had a non OEM tuk due to its ability to transport its occupants on two wheels for short distances. |
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| Update from Darcy: "Tuk-tuk!" |
Above is a fairly calm tuk-tuk video segment.
This segment, too, is misleadingly calm. I think during the white-knuckle nail-biting segments (sometimes both at the same time) I was too tharned (anyone besides me remember that word from Watership Down? Which I never read but heard about incessantly from other people in 6th grade?) to be taking videos.
As far as the tuk-tuk wheelies go, I guess you had to be there but should be glad you weren't (unless you're a 17-20 yr old male).
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My goodness, I'm not even done with day 1 in Bangkok yet. I had meant to encompass all 1.5 days in Bangkok in a single post but have worn myself out already and still have the night bike tour to finish. I guess I'll have to change the title of this post to "Bangkok Day 1" and finish up Bangkok Day 2 tomorrow. At this rate it will take me as long to recount our adventures as it did to live them (and maybe longer!). What a great trip this was.]
I don't remember what we did for dinner this evening. Eddie was zonked out at the hotel when we returned so unfortunately he missed out on the nighttime bike tour. But when you're sick you gotta do what you gotta do. Happily he recovered completely shortly after this and was 110% for the rest of the trip.
Darcy and the boys and I set out next for the nighttime bicycle tour of Bangkok she had previously arranged. This involved another fun and interesting and adventuresome walk to the bike shop, "Grasshopper Adventures". We made it just in time. We had a nice local guide and there were only two others besides the four of us who were on the tour so it was a small manageable, friendly group. I don't remember our guide's name but whereas I had been glad we didn't have a guide at the Grand Palace earlier in the day I was really happy to be on the tour with this guide because he was a young guy who injected his historical commentary with a lot of his own personal memories and reflections. The tour lasted about 4 hours and took us right past our hotel and across the river on a ferry to another temple (the temple of the rising sun; the first palace when the capital of Siam was moved to Bangkok from further north, if I'm remembering correctly) then downriver to the all night flower market (very cool) and back across the river on a bridge to the temple of the reclining Buddha ("The Buddha is for respecting." "The Buddha is not for decoration." These are some of the signs we saw reminding us to respect the Buddha, though regarding the latter he sure looked like decoration in a lot of locales to me) which, while we could wander the grounds we couldn't go inside to see at night.
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| Start of night bike-tour. Very near our hotel at this point. I wish I'd turned off my bike light! |
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| Update from Darcy: all-night flower market, where we were treated to some refreshing drinks and fruit and where we bought a couple of mangoes to take with us because those were the most delicious and perfectly ripe! |
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| Temple of the rising sun (seen at night). Max, you look like you've been possessed by the guy with the green face on the left! |
At this point we were less than half way on our night bike tour. We wouldn't get back to the hotel until about 10:00 at night. It was on this tour that I was trying to remember how many days I'd been in Bangkok and realized this was still our first day. Wow what a week that was!
Update: Darcy reminds me that we stopped for another bite on our way back from the Grasshopper Adventures shop where we dropped off the bikes. Wow, I can't believe we still squoze one more experience into this day!
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| Our final stop the first day (now turned to night) for some much-needed refreshment! Wait, I'm wearing a different shirt. This must have been another time. Oh well, the point is the same. |
Tune in next time for Bangkok Day 2!
-- Chris
