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Date: November 14, 2004
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Hola, amigos and amigas...
So, last time I left you in the literary sense, I was still in Bangkok, getting fitted for suits... Victor and Jesse kept the cold Heineken flowing while we got fitted, and, properly lubricated, the other lads headed off for a night of debauchery. I returned to my hotel to do a little writing, get a little rest, and prepare for a day on foot in the city on the morrow...
As you can see, I didn't get a lot of writing done before the combination of jet lag, tiredness, and a few days of heavy drinking put me to sleep, but I awoke early, much refreshed, and enjoyed a good workout and a swim before meeting my friend JP at 9:00 am and setting out into the city armed with a map, a smile, and the general plan of making our way to the Chao Praya River and taking a boat tour.
(Author's Note: It is damned difficult to keep up with these things if you get a day or so behind, and I'm running about 3 days back now... Sigh...)
I'm sitting in the Aussie Bar in Phuket at this point, by the way, waiting for the Wales vs South Africa rugby union match to begin, drinking a Heineken, and chatting up a local hasher name "Mule Arse" for directions to next Saturday's run... Which I probably won't be here for, but oh, well... It's always good to know these things.
Anyway, so there I was, walking out the door of the Siri Sathorn, headed for the Saladaeng Skyrail station... With my friend JP in tow, we navigated our way, using the map and our wits (such as they were) - and following the old TBS maxim that the best way to avoid being lost is to stay found. As we boarded the train at Saladaeng, headed for docks at Saphan Taksin, a very attractive woman in a light blue, sleeveless dress boarded the train a car-length ahead of us, and I nodded to JP, saying, "Now, that's my kind of girl!" - See, the lads have been giving me a hard time because I'm just not into Asian girls, so I never miss an opportunity to point out the truly cute Western girls that turn my head.
...anyway, as luck would have it, she ended up on the same long-boat tour of the canals and the Chao Praya (Bangkok was once known as the "Venice of the Orient" due to its historical reliance on a large network of waterways for transportation. This reputation has faded in the last 50 years with the advent of express-ways and monorails).
Her name was Ulike, from Frankfurt, Germany... Fortunately, her English was far superior to my German, and we managed to have an enjoyable conversation in the course of our tour, which included not merely the waterways, where we fed swarms of silver-sided catfish who made the water boil as we tossed bread to them in front of a Buddhist temple (you can't fish in front of the temple, because it would be unlucky, but it's good luck to feed the finny creatures!) but temples, palaces, and gem shops...
As we slid through the dark water, we saw a water monitor, which is a smaller, aquatic cousin of the komodo dragon, and a myriad of temples, gorgeous flowers, run-down waterside buildings on stilts, reminding me of nothing so much as rural
Louisiana bayou architecture... A vendor in a passing boat sold us beer, chips, sodas, and bamboo fans - I bought a Singha beer (along with Chang, it's one of the official Thai beers) for our boatman- Joe, you will be happy to know that in
Thailand, we can still drive boats drunk. Yay!
OK, so, back to the tour... We mad our way to the Grand
Palace, and spent about 2 hours wandering though 200 years worth of temples and palace buildings, all covered in porecelain, gemstones, and gold... Some of the massive spires, minarets, and other buildings were plated entirely in gold, others intricately patterned in small pieces of colorful porcelain... My words can really do little justice to the beauty of these buildings, so I'm attaching a few pictures to this letter, and will try to get in the habit of doing that with all these little notes in the future. The highlight of the temples was the one housing the "Emerald Buddha", which is not really emerald, but a four-foot high statue carved out of a single piece of nephrite jade (you Contiki-ites will probably remember that stuff!) Anyway, the Buddha has an interesting history, no one knows who originally created it, but a few hundred years back, some clumsy young monks dropped a plaster statue of Buddha and the nose broke off. The old monk who rush to chastise them noticed that something green was revealed. Chipping off the plaster revealed the beautiful sculpture that had been hidden underneath, probably to hide the statue from marauders in an earlier age... Since that time, the Emerald Buddha has been considered one of the most treasured and luckiest Thai representations of the progenitor of the religion. Other highlights included watching the changing of the guard at the Grand Palace, a tour of the ancient weapons museum (these guys liked billhooks, halberds, and pikes) - it's an interesting note that despite their open and friendly nature, Thailand has never been conquered, and has in fact had a history steeped in conflict - some of their victories relying on subterfuge, rather than force, like the story of the
Phuket's historical heroine sisters, Khunying Muk and Khunying Chan, who convinced all the other women on the island to masquerade as men, wearing armor and carrying weapons to fool an attacking force of Burmese invaders into deciding that the island was too heavily garrisoned to be taken.
The final leg of our tour was a stop by a gemstone carving center and showroom. Thailand is renowned for the quality and price of its sapphires and rubies...
Anyway, afterwards, Ulike and I went out for a bite to eat at a local pub, had a lovely conversation about world affairs
(Bush won a second term so the mood was a bit glum at the table, but oh, well...) Walked her to her hotel, traded numbers and talked about meeting for shopping, but never got around to it...
Instead, I went back to Sukemveti (the big shopping street) got the final fitting for my suits, and did a bit of Christmas shopping at the many booths lining the streets. A final night of dancing at first the Hard Rock, then the Novatel, and it was time to rise early and catch our flight to
Phuket...
Which seems like as good a place to end this little narrative, and begin the next...
-- Edward
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