| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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This was good, because
there was no way Barbara could have gotten her suitcase into her
upper berth.
The berths all had thin foam mattresses with clean sheets, a
small pillow, and a thin blanket. At first it seemed hot in the
car, and no one wanted to close their curtains because that would
block the breeze from the fan, but after the train got moving it
cooled off such that the blanket was, if not welcome, at least not
totally superfluous.
One of the other tourists in the car saw we had an English-
language paper and wanted to know what it said. He had heard a
rumor that we were at war. We tried to get something on the
shortwave, but couldn't inside the train. Oh, well, not much we
could do about it anyway.
October 13, 1990: We all slept very well; we were very tired,
but the ride also seemed much smoother than our sleeper ride in
Britain. In the morning, Mark bought a sweet bean bun from someone
in one of the stations selling them. We arrived in Bangkok about 11
AM.
The Bangkok train station is bigger than Chiang Mai's, but
still manageable. We had picked out a few possible guest houses
from the Lonely Planet book, but some were full and others didn't
answer the phone. Finally the Central Guest House said they had
rooms, so we piled all our luggage and ourselves into a (very
crowded) taxi and went there.
The Central Guest House turned out to be a fairly slummy-
looking place with a clientele to match in an alley off Khao San
Road. We took one look and pretty much knew this was not for us,
but Mark, Steve, and Binayak went to look at the rooms just in case
they were better than we expected. They weren't, and we resolved to
look elsewhere.
It was now about noon and the temperature was in the 90s. We
decided to have lunch at the Grand Guest House (it was there and
fairly large) and then Barbara and I would stay with all the luggage
and have coffee while the other three went in search of a reasonable
hotel. After about a half hour they returned. There were rooms at
the Royal Hotel for about 1000B (US$40) a night--well above the
rumored 80B-a-night rooms, but we had now discovered what they were
like. Maybe we're getting old, but a clean room in a real hotel
with our own bathroom and air conditioning sounded pretty good right
then.
We got to the hotel via taxi. The guys had brought one back
with them to bring all the luggage. We were a few blocks away, and
on the other side of a truly amazing intersection I would not have
wanted to try to cross with all our stuff.
After checking in and showering, we went out in search of an
ATM where Steve could get money. In Chiang Mai they all said either
his card was damaged or that they weren't on his network. Here it
worked. We were going to change money at the window but the guy
went on his break just as we got there, so we decided to wait until
we found an open window.
Then we walked to the Tourist Agency where we collected a large
amount of material. The hardest part of this trip was crossing the
street--the traffic in Bangkok is really astonishing. Walking back
to the hotel we stopped at the New World Centre, a giant department
store ten stories high. The top floor is an amusement arcade; the
ninth floor is a food court with all sorts of stands selling all
sorts of food. You buy tickets at a booth and then pay for the food
with those, meaning only one central location has to make change,
etc. The food was more or less similar to what we had eaten other
places, except for the ice cream. Barbara's sundae looked as if it
had whipped cream and a cherry on it, but the 'whipped cream' was
popcorn and the 'cherry' a tiny scoop of red Jello. Mark's
chocolate ice milk had corn kernels (cooked) around it.
All the drinks here are served with ice, but the ice seems to
be made with purified water, so we haven't been too worried about it
and it hasn't seemed to have bothered us.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel and went down to the
bar, where we heard some fairly mediocre Thai singers. Barbara,
Steve, and Binayak are planning to go to a jazz club, but we'll
probably pass.
October 14, 1990: After breakfast we walked through an area of
Banglamphoo along the river. Banglamphoo is the area in Bangkok
where we are staying, full of inexpensive guest houses and hotels,
and also close to the main tourist attractions. As a result, it's
also full of students and left-over hippies and street vendors
selling everything from silver jewelry to food. So much food!
Roasted corn, various meats on a stick, things like look like little
tacos, buns, ...--you can eat very well without ever entering a
restaurant. You just graze. Along the back streets we were now on
there were no T-shirt or bootleg cassette vendors, but there were
still lots of food vendors. Not just here, but everywhere in
Thailand people seem to be in a very mercantile frame of mind--shops
and street vendors abound, even in very poor areas.
We had planned on walking to the Grand Palace, but couldn't
manage to find the way and the heat, even at 10 AM, was getting to
us. So we took a tuk-tuk, a three-wheeled motorized open vehicle
(something like a samlor with a motor, though in a samlor the driver
sits in back and in a tuk-tuk he sits in front). This one was not
designed for five passengers but with me sitting on the floor we
managed to fit.
Immediately upon arriving at the Grand Palace we were
approached by a guide wanting to give us a tour. We expected this
(from the guidebooks) and since the Grand Palace is a large complex
of buildings we negotiated a price of 300B (US$12) for the five of
us for a one-hour tour.
The first place he took us was the Coin and Regalia Museum.
While the books say this is certainly worth a look, it became clear
that our guide was devoting an inordinate amount of time to this,
the one air-conditioned building. So we firmly suggested that we
move on to the real area of interest.
After getting in to the Palace (actually Wat Pra Keo, the
temple area adjoining the Palace), the guide took us around to some
of the buildings--no one could have time for all of them in a single
tour anyway. We saw the Golden Chedi and the Mondop (library), but
from the outside, since they were closed to the public. We spent
more time examining the Ramakien murals (the Thai version of the
Ramayana). Unfortunately, the explanatory texts provided by King
Chulalongkorn (Rama V) are in Thai, so we couldn't follow the story
too well. But we were able to appreciate some of the story told on
these extensive murals.
The highlight of Wat Pra Keo is the Temple of the Emerald
Buddha. This is a misnomer, as the statue is actually made of jade
rather than emerald. Because it's still a real temple where people
come to worship it was quite crowded. In front, people were
lighting incense and leaving offerings of flowers and fruit,
undisturbed by the fact that a custodian was removing old flower
offerings and throwing them out. I'm not sure what else to expect,
of course, and I suppose it makes sense that the offering of the
flowers (or whatever) is the important part, not what eventually
happens to the physical substance of them. I do know that one of
the books says that flowers brought as an offering have to be
purchased especially for that purpose and the offerer is now allowed
to smell the scent beforehand because that would detract from them
as an offering.
The guidebooks talk about the perfect lines of the Emerald
Buddha, but even with binoculars it was difficult to distinguish
detail. Better, I guess, to say that the entire grouping of the
Emerald Buddha, surrounding statuary and decoration, and temple
itself makes a very impressive sight, certainly on a par with the
major religious monuments of the world.
After the temple area we saw the palace area, which showed more
Western influence in its style than the temple. By comparison, this
was a rather mundane section. We left the Palace about 11:45 AM.
The books said it closed at noon, yet people were still arriving.
Well, the books have been wrong before. I think having the guide
was useful, though if we were only two we might have thought the
cost high. He claimed the going rate was 100B (US$4) per person and
he was giving us a discount, but I suspect the per-person rates are
highly flexible--it's the same time to a guide for one person or
ten. They did hand out illustrated guidebooks with our admission
tickets and in cooler weather we might have tried a do-it-yourself
from the books.
From the Palace, we walked down the street to the National
Museum. Air conditioning! In the 90 8o 9+ heat it was wonderful.
After about an hour looking at various artifacts of the different
kings, we looked at the floor plan again. We had seen only one of
the twenty-two exhibit halls!
Some re-grouping was necessary. Binayak and Barbara decided to
do something other than the museum (something silly like lunch, I
think :-) ) and Mark, Steve, and I decided on a large subset of the
remaining halls to see. These included such varied subjects as
elephant howdahs, musical instruments, theatre puppets, and pre-Thai
sculpture. In the latter hall was a ten-foot-high stone lingam to
which I commented, 'Impressive.' (Look it up. What am I--a
dictionary?)
Only the first hall was air-conditioned. By the time we were
done we were very hot. Luckily our hotel was right across the park
from the museum (about two city blocks). The hardest part of
getting there was crossing the streets. There are signals, but you
could bake waiting for them to change so people just look for a gap
and run for it.
We all re-grouped and tried calling the booking agent for train
tickets, but as this was Sunday, we were told their computer was not
connected to the main one and we would have to try again Monday.
By now (5 PM) it was a bit cooler (2 PM to 4 PM seem to be the
killer hours), so we decided to go out to the weekend market by the
Northern Bus terminal. We were thoroughly decadent tourists by this
point so we took a taxi; 150B (US$6) split five ways is more than a
bus but still cheap and finding the *right* bus and getting all of
us on it at once seemed impossible.
The market was in an area which had permanent booths and such-
-nothing like real buildings, but concrete walkways, roofs, and
dividing walls. In these booths, all sorts of vendors set up shop.
There were a lot of clothing vendors, of course, selling an enormous
variety of counterfeit T-shirts. (We saw some which said 'Cololado
State University.') I didn't buy any because 1) most were not at
all representative of Thailand, 2) they came in only one size--
large, and 3) they tend to run. For the latter, my evidence is one
data point: Barbara bought a purple top in Chiang Mai that turned
everything she was wearing purple.
In addition to clothing there were areas dedicated to plants,
to housewares, to pet supplies, and to all sorts of other odds and
ends. There were also food vendors, both of the grocery sort and
the restaurant type. We wandered into one of the latter looking for
dinner, but couldn't tell what they were serving. Attempts to
communicate didn't work too well; they spoke no English and we spoke
no Thai. Then another customer (or one of the staff--we weren't
sure) came over to see what was going on. |
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