More Bangkok

A few other fun facts and photos from the trip.

Being tall. For the first time in my life, I was tall. Amongst the Thai, I am tall.

Parking lot shrines. For every building we saw, there was a small dollhouse sized shrine. Many of them in parking lots. Apparently, these are spirit houses. I'm still not quite sure what they are supposed to do, but some of them are very intricate, complete with tiny buddhas and elephants.

Not all the shrines are for buildings. Our first day in Bangkok, Andrea and I found the "fertility" shrine near our house. It was essentially a garden of phalluses ranging from actual size to 8' tall. Some more realistic than others. Andrea, why haven't you sent me those pictures yet?

Giant buddhas. Then compared to the tiny buddhas was the largest buddha. Reclining, this buddha is still about 4 stories tall. And, we were required to take our shoes off and put them in the non-Thai shoe shelves.

Lady boys. Bangkok is famous for their lady-boys. Excrutiatingly skinny pre- and post-op transexuals who lip-sync to only the most popular English, Thai, Chinese and Japanese songs. Oh, and your ticket includes a drink!

Jenga should never be mixed with drinking.

Temples and Spirit Houses

Bangkok nights

Bangkok by day

It's beginning to feel like I'm losing momentum in my Thailand blogging. So here are a few experiences to share, before the memories wear away:


Shopping is an experience unto itself. The malls are enormous and there seems to be an endless supply of them. Even with our hearty western breakfasts every morning (I mean, can you really mess with such a good thing? Eggs and bacon are the perfect fuel for a mall, even if the bacon always had a bit of the taste of asia fried into it. Was that oyster sauce I detected), we would still get overshopped by mid-day. With entire floors dedicated to small stalls of tourist kitsch, furniture, electronics (aka. knock off cell phones and pirated DVDs) it's easy to get lost or to just give up on seeing daylight again. In the end, I'm hopeful that each of us picked up lots of good christmas items.


We also spent a day wandering around chinatown. Mostly these narrow alleyway markets which went from selling basic consumer items like purses, shoes and jewelry to selling a variety of chinese food staples to selling incense and paper items for use in the temples.

These markets were packed, and the flow of pedestrians would frequently get interupted by a motorcycle that had decided to "take the short cut" through the markets. And the food stalls seemed to be a lesson in biology. Was that just intestine floating in that jelley? I think that was a pigs foot. Lunch, any one?



And then there was my favorite day time activity: The Thai Cooking class. On the third floor of a thai restaurant, they had a classroom kitchen complete with desks and mirror over the cook top to watch the chef. Then across the hall was the student kitchen where we got to put the recipes to the test. By the end of the afternoon, we'd made 5 different dishes and had way too much food to consume for lunch. Now all I need is to find kaffir lime leaves in Australia...



The complete photo album from our daily activities (sans temples) is here:

Touring and Shopping

The Colorful city of Bangkok

Even getting to Bangkok is colorful. The official airline of Thailand, Thai Airways, is purple. Not just a bit here and there. All the seats, all the carpeting, all the uniforms, even the salt and pepper packets. We thought this was a bit much, but it didn't really prepare us for what we saw when we arrived.

Taxis in orange, pink, yellow, green, blue, red (sometimes sparkly red). This picture, though from Chinatown, was pretty typical of what we saw on every street, though smaller than most of the main Bangkok streets (and with more signs in Chinese).

Then there were the yellow shirts. Our first day exploring Bangkok, Andrea pointed out it seemed that a lot of people were wearing yellow. In fact about 70% of the people we saw were wearing a yellow shirt. Then we realized that actually about 60% were wearing the same shirt: a yellow polo with a triangular logo. Then we recalled that it was some sort of holiday. This must have something to do with the holiday.

We discovered later that they weren't wearing the shirts for a holiday. Turns out Monday is the King's day. And the King's color is yellow. It started last year when the king was sick, Bangkok(ers or ians or ese) started wearing yellow in solidarity with the King. Now, although he's returned to good health (and will be celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow), people still wear his shirts with his logo on them. That's some serious dedication to the crown.