Bangkok on 10/3/13: More Wats, a Festival and Final Recollections

After resting for a bit from our half day tour of the Train and Floating Markets, we decided we were up for more wat viewing after wandering up and down Bangkok’s Khao San Road, famous in the past especially for its being a hangout for hippies.  Then walked to Wat Chana Songkhram, on to Democracy Monument – again saw more massive photos of the king and queen nearby – then on to Wat Bowonniwetwhich was certainly the highlight for us both.

·        We were so very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time as they say b/c we just happened to be at Wat Bowonniwet when there was a festival honoring the wat’s monk’s 100^th birthday that day; the monk unfortunately has been in the hospital since the spring but a gala celebration took place while we were there.  We saw no other foreigners at all even though the wat was just steps away from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok.

·        Watched for ages as the parade participants were lined up and inspected to make sure their hair and ceremonial dress were all ticketyboo, another English expression from my mother!

·        In honor of the monk, there was free food and drink for all and  the Post Office had a large booth selling commemorative stamps.

·        Beautiful sculptures of animals all in gold at each corner of the wat.

·        Sungsung is the sister of the owner and in charge of the Khao San Baan Thai guesthouse where we stayed in Bangkok and she was a huge help our entire time which made a world of difference to our stay in Bangkok; we were leaving the next day to take the bus to the Thai/Cambodian border towns of Aranprathet/Poipet respectively, and needed her assistance with information written down in Thai about getting a taxi on the street at 5:30 am to take us to Bangkok’s Mo Chit Bus Terminal in the northern suburbs of the city, and then buying 2 1^st class tickets in an aircon bus to Aranprathet, known as Aran for short.

·        Sungsung had lived in Toronto for 8 months a while back; I asked about the Thai written language b/c it all appears to be one word with no spaces in between the words – can you imagine learning to write Thai as a child?  It must be very hard for the teachers as well, I’d think.

Final recollections about our visit to Thailand in no particular order: we saw a fair number of mostly male, blind Thais sitting generally with a group or band and either singing Thai songs or playing Thai instruments and requesting donations; otherwise saw few beggars.   

 Saw a number of very gaily painted mammoth buses that were actually mobile toilets – I think they serve Bangkok’s homeless population as there were many people near the buses that appeared to my to be homeless. 

All animals are considered sacred in Thai culture so special attention is given to keep them safe; stray dogs were everywhere you looked all over Thailand, even on the busiest streets.  But I was so amazed how extraordinarily quiet, as in never barking, and tame they were – they were never aggressive.  How is it that even leashed dogs in the US you encounter when out walking are so totally dissimilar to dogs in SE countries, I wonder?

Cars and vans run on LPG in Thailand – liquid propane gas; each time we were out on a tour and the driver needed more gas, everyone on the bus would have to troop out of the vehicle and go a considerable distance away.  To fill it up, the driver has to pop the hood and the LPG nozzle goes into a reservoir near the driver’s seat.

Because we were there during the rainy season, it meant that you always needed to be prepared for the heavy drenching downpours that would last for short periods of time.  For us, it was easier and lighter to always have in our backpacks, our 40thb ponchos we’d bought at Doin Inthanon National Park up in Chiang Mai, rather than our fancier and far heavier LL Bean raincoats we’d bought for the trip.

Thought it was fascinating that, so often, specialty stores were lumped together by type of product sold; for example, all stores selling exclusively flags were on one block so you if you were shopping for flags, you just needed to walk up and down the one block in Bangkok to compare sizes, prices, etc rather than having to travel from one end of the city to the other.  It was the same we saw for baskets, hardware, etc too.

Bangkok was often hazy, perhaps due to the massive numbers of vehicles on the streets but it was not nearly as polluted as Beijing, Xian or Kunming, China, thank goodness.