| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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Chulalongkorn offered a pardon
but the boatman always believed in the importance of the law and refused
the pardon, said good-bye to his family, and was executed.
There are two non-Western buildings in Bang Pa-In. One is a Thai-
looking building in the middle of a lake that houses a statue of
Chulalongkorn. The other is a building provided by the Chinese to
cement Thai-Chinese relations. If you know what to look for there are
subtle insults. All the dragons are four-toed; whenever they use a
dragon in art, it is a four-toed dragon. Imperial dragons are five-
toed. In China you could put five toes on a dragon only if the art was
intended for royalty. Curiously, there is something else wrong in the
architecture. There are Foo Lions guarding the building but they have
two Emperor lions and no Empress lions. Generally you get one of each.
The Emperor has his food on an orb; the Empress has her foot on a cub.
There are two orb lions and no cub lion.
This whole area would have been peaceful and idyllic but for the
sounds of motors running. There were speedboats running on the water
and the lawn was being mowed. Mowers here look like carts with two big
bicycle wheels on the side and smaller wheels toward the front. Inside
the cart is a gasoline engine.
On the way back, to demonstrate my origami, I folded the Truskes my
nicest origami invention, the bat with the moving mouth. They showed it
to the guide. Apparently the guide knew some origami also. He liked
the bat and said he had not seen the figure before. I explained it was
my invention and he said I should patent it. He also said he would take
it home and try to figure out how to fold it himself. The bat always
gets a good reaction. It even seemed to impress Lillian Oppenheimer,
who runs the Origami Society in New York.
The guide wanted to take us to a lapidary factory to see stones
polished (a very transparent kickback opportunity), but we were less
than interested so we skipped that. We threw in a little extra tip,
however.
We were going to try another Lonely-Planet-recommended restaurant
near the hotel when we met up again with Barbara and Binayak. Leaving
the hotel is always a bit of a bother. You run a gauntlet of people
asking you, 'Taxi?' I don't understand why a driver who has just seen
you turn down four taxis has to ask you, 'Taxi?' a fifth time. I
suppose you have to be an incurable romantic in that job. You have to
hold out hope that you will run into the right tourist, the one who will
say, 'Yes. Yes. I have just turned down four taxis because it is your
taxi I have been waiting to ride in all my life.' Then Mr. Right
Tourist enters the cab and cabbie and tourist would ride together
happily ever after with the tourist forking over incredible sums of
money. I suspect it doesn't work out that way very often. We were
walking.
The restaurant was not there any more. No surprise there. We ate
instead in the same cafe we ate in our first day in Bangkok. It had
been fairly decent.
After dinner we walked to the tourist night market. This was the
same street we had 'grazed' on the previous night after the weekend
market. This is all touristy stuff. Every half-block or so there is a
sand selling cassettes at 25B each. These look from the outside to be
the same cassettes sold in the States for many times the price. They
are, however, rather obvious pirated copies. You open them up and the
label on the cassette doesn't even tell you want is recorded. It just
says 'High Precission [sic] Cassette.' Many are in fact low-precision
cassettes that play with an obvious wow-distortion. But what do you
expect for a buck a cassette. I paid US$3 and got three volumes of the
score to Amadeus. I figure Mozart would make good listening. And I
figured that the music was in public domain so the cassettes might have
been a tad more legal than some of the others being sold. We also got a
couple of postcards at the surprisingly low 2B each. 3B was usually
considered a good price. There was even a used bookstore but their
prices were high. We repaired to our room to write in our logs and to
listen to Mozart. Amadeus I had distortion, but II and III plated fine.
October 16, 1990: Our last day in Bangkok. Several pieces of
administrivia to take care of this morning. The others are putting
together a box of stuff they are mailing home rather than carrying.
There is also the perennial quest to change money at a good rate. And,
of course, there is breakfast.
Walking through the streets there are a number of observations I
might make (not all observed this walk, but this might be a good time to
mention them). Traveling in Asia you are bombarded with sensory input.
Generally you report what you see, hear, and taste. Not much coverage
is given to what you feel and smell. Feeling? You feel hot. Just
about all the time during the day. It is hot and humid. The sun is
merciless. You walk someplace a few blocks away and you are drenched in
sweat. I sweat more than most of the others, in fact. Then at night
you freeze. I am not sure what it is but we have not been able to find
air conditioners we could adjust right for the night. Turn them to the
lowest setting and it is darn cold at night. If you turn them off it is
too hot to sleep. Smell? Smells are interesting here. Some are very
nice; many are unpleasant. The khlongs smell of raw sewage. There is
garbage in the streets and in the heat it rots quickly. There are lots
of insects in the air and often in the food. I was served soup at one
point with an ant in it. Little hexapods add protein to the rice.
Other things that seem to take Westerners aback a little is nose-
picking. Here it is just at about the same level of acceptability as
scratching your head. It is not at all uncommon to see industrious
nose-picking on the street. Hairy moles are a point of pride here. You
see people with hair six and eight inches long growing from a mole on
their face. The proprietor of the Shanghai-style restaurant in Hong
Kong had a long proud tuft of mole hair.
The guide books told us that sandals and thongs are considered rude
in Thailand. Actually it is not true. You see them worn on the street
a lot by Thais as well as by foreigners.
A very popular beverage, Vitagen, is a vitamin tonic sold as a soft
drink in a little rectangular amber bottle. I can't imagine vitamin
tonics being sold as a soft drink in the United States. I mean, it's
like seeing cold Geritol being sold next to Coke and Pepsi. I asked
around our group if anyone remembered the name of this drink and
apparently I am the only one who noticed that it was even being sold.
There were even television ads showing a jock exercising relaxing with a
refreshing bottle of vitamin tonic. I wonder what the stuff tasted
like.
One of the books told us that shorts and sandals were both
considered low-class in Thailand. That certainly doesn't seem to be the
case any more. That seems like standard apparel. A little more about
standards. The most common tour book used is the Lonely Planet guide to
Thailand. You see about five or six of these little devils for every
other tour book you sight. I have not looked in detail at the Lonely
Planet Thailand guide. We carry the Southeast Asia Handbook which is
heavy and covers a lot of places we don't need on top of the ones we do,
but otherwise I like it a lot.
One more observation. Esperanto was invented to be the universal
language that everyone would speak as their second language. Very nice,
very regular, very easy to learn. The one problem is that everyone
would have to learn it because nobody spoke it as their first language.
The experiment may yet succeed, but I have my doubts. One reason is
there already is a very widely used second language. That is, of
course, English. We have traveled reasonably widely and only in China
eight years ago could you not get along in English. I suspect you can
now.
Any country that seriously is trying to attract tourists teches a
lot of English. You can get along on English. We've head Germans who
speak German and English talking to Thais who speak Thai and English.
Neither speaks or understands the other's native language. They use
English. Barbara's fears the first night in Chiang Mai were groundless.
She has never really had a language barrier that was insurmountable.
It is plain rude to go to a country and not be able to say 'Thank
you' and 'hello' and a half-dozen phrases like that in the native
language. Also, you lose a lot of the friendly contracts you make when
you show the respect of learning the native pleasantries. But you can
travel to any tourism country without fear that there will be an
impossible language problem. (Note: the above statement may not be
operative in France.)
The Lonely Planet listed a good place to have breakfast and it
wasn't there any more. We picked a place called the Nat though perhaps
the Gnat might have been a more accurate description. It seemed to be
like most places, decent but perhaps not perfectly clean. Barbara
looked at one of the three people sitting in the restaurant and
identified her as an 'aging hippie.' One certainly wonders what these
people who have been living off Thailand's low prices are going to be
doing with themselves when they are 40 and the money starts to run out.
This lifestyle does not prepare one for much.
The Nat is associated with a guest house. Look through the back of
the restaurant and you see a doorway that has a Buddha shrine and a sign
that says, 'Residents are requested not to bring Thai ladies up to their
rooms.'
The breakfast was not really very good. Barbara, who had ordered
Muesli, was not happy that there was not enough muesli in the fruit and
yogurt. She end up talking to a waiter who had little English. 'Where
Muesli? There fruit. There yogurt. Where muesli? Just a little bit
of muesli.'
From there we went to the post office where the others were packing
boxes to send home. We had acquired only very little, so we borrowed a
corner of one of the other boxes.
And money got changed.
Binayak suggested I but some tamarind since I like sour fruit. It
was interesting and certainly sour enough but the flavor was not that
good. The seeds come cleanly away from the fruit in your mouth and look
like they are made of mahogany.
Back to the hotel, we packed up our luggage, observed that the trip
was now just about half over, and grabbed cabs for the train station.
We dropped off our luggage at the train station and headed out for our
last day in Bangkok.
Bangkok is very much a Thai Los Angeles. For one thing, the title
means 'City of Angels.' But it has the vitality, the crazy traffic, the
pollution, and all the strange architecture. It was founded in 1782 on
the Chao Phraya River by Rama I. He called it Rattana Kosim.
So that was the city we were seeing the last of. Our first stop
was Wat Trimit in Chinatown.
In 1932 Wat Trimit, a modest temple, got permission to move a
plaster Buddha from Sukothai to Bangkok. It was a cheap plaster Buddha
statue and if the truth be know a rather ugly one. But they needed a
Buddha statue and this was the one they were getting. Somebody at the
time probably noticed that the statue was also a real son of a ***** to
move. But nobody really commented on it.
In 1953 they were again moving the ugly plaster Buddha. Again it
was a real pain to move. The crane had a chain around it and lifted it,
but it slipped, fell, and it cracked.
In the 16th Century the monks of Sukothai had a real problem.
Invaders were coming. And the first thing the invaders would steal
would be their precious Buddha. They could hide their Buddha, but where
do you hide a Buddha? And Buddhas should be adored, not hidden. The
best place to hide a Buddha is in a Buddha. That way believers could
still stand before the Buddha. Only a few people would know the secret. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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