Bangkok

We arrived for our longest leg of this trip: six nights in Bangkok.  I’ve heard great things about Bangkok, and was eager to explore.

Our lodging was the Riverside Apartments - a VRBO style high rise condo complex overlooking the Chao Praya, Bangkok’s primary river.  At first, the river seemed to cut us off from from the interesting parts of town, but we soon discovered our building had a private ferry boat that would take you across at specific times.  From the other side, you could hop on the BTS - Bangkok’s public transit Skytrain - and get to many other parts of the city quickly.  The BTS also linked to the MRT - Bangkok’s underground. We bought “rabbit passes” which conveniently gave us 15 rides without having to pay each time.

View from Riverside Apartments

Our private ferry

The other side of the river is Saphan Taksin, a.k.a.  the “central pier”, where other ferry boats take you upriver to see other sites.  And when the private ferry didn’t run, I discovered a public ferry that would do the crossing for ten cents. (The public pier also had a pet pig, which the kids loved,)  

The Pig on the Pier

The roads in Bangkok are notorious for crazy congested traffic, and we occasionally had to deal with it, but public transit was definitely the way to get around. After three days of experimenting and asking questions, we had transportation nailed.

Bangkok is also fun because of the street food culture.  During our stay, we ate at a few restaurants, but the best food was from street vendors.  Across the river from us is a little known night market, with clothing vendors and a smattering of food stalls.  I went a couple of times, and ate delicious bowls of noodle soup for $1.25, some grilled chicken and pork, and pandam crepe for dessert.  Apparently Bangkok has over 100,000 street vendors, and it’s such a part of the culture that the government has given up trying to curtail it.   For the most part, our meals were from either mall restaurants or street/market vendors, and I much preferred the street food.

Wednesday

We had heard about Wat Pho, the “reclining Buddha”, so this was the first thing we visited as a family.  There are tons of Buddhist temples in Bangkok, but this one is special, as it contains a huge gold-painted Buddha in an unusual pose of lying on its side.  The statue is probably 80 meters long.  This was an interesting cultural visit, and the surrounding temple was very ornate as well, with some 400 plus sitting Buddha statues lining two courtyards. It was interesting, and well worth a visit.

Reclining Buddha

Since the weather can be hot and sticky, or rainy, a lot of effort has been out into building some amazing megamalls in Bangkok.  Tripadvisor had these as a good place to start, so we took the kids to the newly built, state of the art Siam Paragon and some related malls on the first day. Our teenagers are more interested in current culture versus historical and religious buildings, so we balanced out the day with a visit here.  We had heard about the Thai movie theaters being special, and we looked for an appropriate movie at a time that would work for all, but in spite of fifteen screens, there was a limited selection.  Cruising through the various Siam malls was interesting nonetheless.

Open layout of Siam Paragon

Thursday

Bangkok is very similar to Venice, as it is a trading center, with a port and a system of canals and waterways that penetrate into the city.  Instead of gondolas, you can hire a long tailed speedboat with a car engine and a single propeller that juts out 20 feet from the motor into the water.  The boat driver just moves the propeller to steer the boat, and they are quite fast. We hired a driver to take us on a Khlong Tour through the canals in inner Bangkok.  Not only was it cool to see how people lived on the canals, but we saw a lot of huge monitor lizards dotting the shores, and a few swimming as well. This thrilled the kids to no end.

Looking out the longboat

For me, I like to eat, so I dragged everyone to the Or Kor Tor Market.  This is a high quality covered outdoor food market, with many stalls for prepared food.  So not only can you get a delicious meal, but you know the food is good because the chefs have likely purchased their ingredients from one of the nearby high-end stalls.  I sampled an awesome Waygu beef noodle soup, an amazing curried fish dish wrapped in banana leaf, and a few other interesting things.  Dessert was fresh mango, with coconut ice cream, coconut milk, and sticky rice.  Sue is always a little more conservative with street food than I am, but even she broke down and had one of these delicious treats.

Fish thing in banana leaf - tasty!

No (stinky) Durian allowed on the metro

Waygu beef noodles - yum!

Afterwards, we completed our mission from the day before and found Now You See Me 2 playing at one of the mall cinemas.  Sue and I opted for a “sofa seat”, which was a lovely way to sit close during the show.  It was great. One weird thing about Thai movies is that there is a tribute to the king that plays before the main feature, and everybody is expected to stand through it.  We obliged.

Friday

Sue and I ducked out early to let the kids sleep in to go do another cultural adventure.  We went upriver to see the “Golden Buddha”.  This is a 5.5 ton solid gold Buddha statue (about 10 feet tall) in yet another temple.  Guiness says this status has the largest raw material value of any artifact in the world.  At one point, it was covered in plaster to hide it from invading forces, and it was rediscovered by accident a few hundred years later.

Under the Golden Buddha was a historical exhibit chronicling the relationship between the Chinese immigrants and the Thai people and government.  The temple was built by the Chinese, and it’s on the edge of Bangkok’s Chinatown.  What was striking is that during certain periods, immigration was tightened or relaxed, depending upon the needs of the Thai.  The Chinese migrants were instrumental in forming trading relationships with China, and they helped make Bangkok a rich trading capital.  But there was also concern that they were taking opportunities away from the Thai residents, so sometimes immigration was restricted.  This is an interesting parallel to the immigration debate in the USA today.

The Golden Buddah

For the afternoon, I took Bryce to the Jesada Teknik Car Museum, while the girls went for a spa day. (See Bryce's post on Jesada Teknik.)  The Jesada museum is an individual’s car collection, with about 400 unusual cars, as well as motorbikes, bicycles, tuktuks and more.  The cars aren’t all in pristine condition, but they did have some legendary autos, as well as a lot of weird three wheeled vehicles and more.  Bryce was totally in his element.

This is not a trick - actual size car

Bond Bugs - My Favorite

While we were there, a large group of middle-schoolers also came to visit, and it turns out the main attraction was… Bryce.  I guess the Thai people - particularly the girls - really like westerners, and he must have had 30 selfies taken with various kids, as well as a few handshakes, and a couple of hugs and a few girls calling out “I love you”.  He handled it well. It was really funny.

10 minutes of celebrity in Thailand

Driving back into town, we arranged to meet Sue and Laurel at Terminal 21, a travel themed mall. Each floor represents a particular famous city, so it was natural to meet in San Francisco by the Golden Gate Bridge.  (They even had a Swensen’s ice cream shop). This mall was also tastefully done, and even the bathrooms in the Tokyo area were authentic, down to the butt washers.

Back in SF? Not really...

Saturday

To get a better feel for Thailand, I had wanted to take a day trip outside of Bangkok.  We chose a tour that offered a variety of experiences.  First off, we got to tour a Thai food market about 60 minutes out of town, and learned what some of the various weird fruits and concoctions were.  We even got to sample a few things as well.  Next, we visited a farm, where we helped cook a Thai meal, and rode an ox cart around the property.  

Bryce doing some cooking

Riding the ox cart

Afterwards, we drove into a national park, and hiked to a beautiful waterfall, and saw some monkeys and a “barking deer” (which doesn’t really bark).  The featured attraction was last - an elephant ride!  All four of us got on, with Sue and the kids on a seat, and me holding on for dear life while riding bareback on the neck.  It was a little terrifying at first, but eventually I relaxed a little and enjoyed the feel of the elephant. I was saddle sore for several hours afterwards, but it was great fun.

Ele-fun

Sunday

I had read about the Chatuchak Weekend Market as a “not to be missed” experience, so on our last full day we paid a visit.  Unlike other markets, they don’t really specialize here.  It’s an endless array of everything: clothes, souvenirs, food, kitchen stuff, candles, bags, postcards, etc. It’s divided into sections, but there are still surprises on every turn.  We wound up spending four hours here, buying various unique knick-knacks for cheap. We broke for lunch at what turned out to be a really good restaurant on premise.  Dessert was from an ice cream vendor who served delicious ice cream in coconut shells, with a variety of toppings like sticky rice, coco jelly, peanuts and a few other things, We all had some and went home fully sated, with most of the market still unexplored.

Fried rice in a pineapple

Chatuchak shopping feast