Thursday morning we docked in Laem Chabang in Thailand. Bangkok is a two hour bus ride from this port so we decided to take advantage of the overnight in Bangkok excursion offered by the ship. The ride into Bangkok was interesting. We saw the first field of rice that either of us had ever seen. We also saw multiple fields of a crop that we did not recognize. When asked, the tour guide told us it was tapioca. Turns out tapioca is a root vegetable. Given Tim's disdain for root vegetables in general he marveled that he has been able to choke down tapioca pudding all these years. Should tapioca pudding now be classified as a vegetable? As we drove through the countryside our guide pointed out numerous Buddhist Temples. We should have taken that as a warning sign.
Bangkok turned out to be an enormously spread out city with no sense of a centralized city center. It is known as the "Venice of the East" due to all the canals. All three site-seeing stops on Thursday were Buddhist Temples. It turns out that there are over 4000 wats (temples) in Thailand, over 400 of them in Bangkok. The first temple featured "the reclining Buddha." This Buddha was 150 feet long, completely covered in gold leaf. "The reclining Buddha" is said to represent Buddha on his death bed. It was quite impressive and a bit overwhelming. This temple, as with all the others we visited, contained areas with multiple small sitting Buddhas. The sitting Buddha is the figure most of us are familiar with. Each of these figures is constructed and maintained by individual families. Obviously, wealthy families. Each Buddha has the same pose, one hand in his lap and the other over his knee. However, each has a different face. We saw several that were black indicating that the family ran out of funds to put gold leaf on the Buddha. We were not told if this ultimately brought bad luck on the family. To see an upright Buddha is considered a rare sight but we did see a mammoth Walking Buddha (one foot slightly in front of the other) in the country side - again gold!
The second Temple we visited was located at the Grand Palace of the King of Thailand. This would be a good time to discuss the politics of Thailand. We think the Kingdom of Thailand, originally Siam, was establish around the 1780's or 1790's. The present King is the ninth in this particular lineage, hence his name, Rama IX. Rama IV is the king upon whom the musical "The King and I" is based and bringing Anna to the court to teach his children resulted in a the Western influence on Thailand. Interestingly, "The King and I" is banned today in Thailand because it depicts the King as human. The King now has little, if any, political clout. This past May a military Junta took over the democratically elected government and there is Marshall Law in effect in Thailand. Other than a military presence at the temples, we saw no sign of Marshall Law. While at one time the home of the King, today, the Grand Palace is for ceremonial use only. The Temple on the grounds of the Grand Palace features the only known Emerald Buddha. Unfortunately, the Temple closed just as we arrived. Evidently, this is a common occurrence according to our guide. Maybe if she had not been so verbose earlier in the tour we would have gotten closer to the Emerald Buddha
The Choa Phraya River cuts through the middle of Bangkok and is an important part of the economic well-being of Bangkok. From the Grand Palace, which sits on the banks of the river, we took a boat across the river to a restaurant where we had a wonderful lunch featuring Thai cuisine. After lunch we crossed back over the river, got back on the bus and went to a third temple. Traffic is horrendous in Bangkok so that it took longer to get to the various Temples then to actually visit them. This last temple was one of the newest built in Bangkok and featured a solid gold Buddha. When this particular Buddha was discovered it was covered in plaster. It weighed over 5 tons and during the moving of the statue it tipped over, breaking off a small chunk of plaster. This was when it was discovered to be solid gold. At this point in the tour all of us were a bit "templed out." Tim and a fellow passenger cynically decided that we had to take it on faith the this Buddha was, in fact, solid gold.
With a palpable sense of relief from everyone on the bus, we headed to our hotel, the Sheraton Royal Orchid, located on the Choa Phraya River. We had several hours to luxuriate in our room, at least four times the size of our cabin aboard ship. With a strong and fast wi-fi connection, we were able to catch up on e-mail and facebook as well as finally posting our last blog post. At the dock located in front of our hotel we boarded a boat for a lovely dinner cruise on the river. The dinner was a buffet, again featuring Thai food. It was also very tasty. Of particular note was dessert. We both enjoyed the sticky rice and mango and a concoction of coconut pudding over a layer of tapioca. Both desserts were served in a small bowl constructed out of leaves. After the dinner cruise, the boat dropped us off at the night market. When we were told earlier that we would be going to this market we were excited as we anticipated a market similar to the one we visited in Singapore. Unfortunately, this market consisted of hundreds of little upscale shops. It was really more like a shopping mall then a market. Of course that did not keep us from buying a few souvenirs. The evening was completed with Lynda having a Thai massage in our hotel room. (Tim is skipping over this massage as unimportant - he is wrong! For 90 minutes the woman gave a thorough massage - without a table. She simply put towels on the bed and climbed on it with me to work out my kinks! Of course this was from 10:30 - midnight and Tim sat reading rather than sleeping as he would have liked. For this great treatment I paid all of 1000 baht - $33!)
Friday morning we once again boarded a boat for a not-so-leisurely cruise on the Choa Phraya river. Our guide pointed out many interesting sites along the river; mostly more temples. Is there anything else to see in Bangkok? Actually, there is. Our first stop was at the Royal Barge Museum. All of the royal barges were on display here. They are all propelled by oarsmen. The larger barges used over 50 of these men. Originally, these barges were used to lead the Royal Navy in battle, repelling invaders. Later they were used only for processions, the last time to celebrate the 60th anniversary of King Rama IX's reign. According to our guide, it has become so expensive to use the barges for these ceremonial uses that they may not be used ever again. The Royal Barge Museum was located on one of the canals off of the Choa Phraya River. Once back on our boat we cruised on this canal observing the way the locals in this area lived. These houses were on stilts on the edge of the canal, most in not particularly good condition. Once back on the river we made our last stop at the Temple of Dawn. This temple featured a beautiful pagoda over 100 feet tall. There may have been a Buddha located in the pagoda but we don't know for sure as we did not climb it. It was too steep a climb and we had seen enough Buddhas. Of more interest to us was a small market next to the temple. This was more the type of market we were looking for. Lynda was in her element negotiating prices for the things that we purchased. From here our boat took us back to our hotel where we had lunch, checked out of our room, and boarded our bus to return to the ship. There was one last stop. We are finding that on most of these kind of tours there is always a stop at a jewelry/art store. At this particular shop we first passed through an area where we watched artisans making the jewelry. Once we entered the display area a young women followed us throughout and was at our side to answer any questions we had anytime we showed the slightest interest in a piece of jewelry. In all fairness, the pieces on display were quite nice and the prices were very reasonable. Family - that should pique your interest.
While Bangkok will not go down as one of our favorite cities to visit, never the less, we are glad we did. It was an interesting but exhausting two days and we were quite glad to be back aboard our ship. We have another day at sea before arriving at the first of three ports of call in Vietnam. We will report back in a couple of days.
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| Reclining Buddha |
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