Bangkok, Thailand

We've been to Bangkok twice since arriving in South East Asia, and would love to go back. It's a fascinating city and a very different experience from Singapore. Where Singapore is clean, orderly, and efficient, Bangkok is dirty, crowded, and chaotic. The streets are crowded with people working, shopping, and watching the world go by. There are many stray dogs. The traffic is awful, and seems to be dominated by tuk-tuks (three-wheeled, open air, two-stroke engine taxis). We found the people to be very friendly, although the touts are quite aggressive! Bangkok is very full of life, and there are many sights to see.

Bangkok is actually a fairly young city. It was founded in the early 18^th century after the former Thai capital of Ayutthaya was sacked by the Burmese. Today, Bangkok is the political capital of Thailand, which is a constitutional monarchy, as well as a business and cultural center. The skyline of the financial district, with some of Bangkok's many Buddhist temples in the foreground, is in the picture above.

On our first trip to Bangkok, we met Albert's parents, who were in town for a convention. We spent several days seeing the sights, including the Royal Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Wat Po, the National Museum, and Jim Thompson's house. At right, Albert is standing in front of the giant reclining Buddha at Wat Po (wat means temple). Sight-seeing is very easy in Bangkok. There's a lot to see, and transportation is generally easy to come by and inexpensive. Tuk-tuks, although not the smoothest ride, are everywhere, and most drivers speak enough English to get you where you want to go. Another interesting way to get around is via the river. Bangkok is built on the shores of the Chao Phraya River, and the express boats and ferries are important means of transportation. They're also extremely inexpensive - a two mile express boat ride was about US$.18, and the ferry across the river was just under US$.03!

The vast majority of Thais are Buddhists, and many are very devout. There are an incredible number of temples, or wats, in Thailand, many of them very ornate in design, and all with innumerable statues of Buddha. Our first trip to Thailand was during the Thai New Year, a time when many people go to the temple. We saw many interesting religious rituals. In the picture at left, worshippers have lit candles and incense, left offerings of lotus flowers, and pressed bits of gold leaf on the statues. Other rituals we witnessed were buying strips of orange cloth in order to dress statues in the garb of Buddhist monks, ringing gongs and prayer bells, and our favorite, buying small bottles of some sort of detergent to "give Buddha bath," according to our tuk-tuk driver. Another Thai New Year tradition we experienced first hand was that of soaking passers-by with water. Given the heat in Bangkok, and the fact that we were doing a lot of walking, we enjoyed our regular dousings.

Not all of the statues in Thai temples are religious in nature. Returning cargo ships often used rough stone statues as ballast, and many of these ended up in temple courtyards. Betsy is standing next to a Chinese statue in the courtyard of Wat Po in the picture at right.

We took our second trip to Bangkok when Betsy's cousin Stephen Sipos came to visit. On this trip, we got to see some of the things we had missed the first time around, like The Golden Mount (from which the skyline picture at the top of the page was taken) and Wat Traimit. Wat Traimit housed the largest solid gold statue in the world for a couple centuries without anyone knowing it. It was made elsewhere, and encased in stucco for shipping. The stucco-ers did such a good job that the recipients didn't know to take it off until an elbow was chipped hundreds of years later! We also took a canal tour of Thonburi. Bangkok had so many canals that at one time it was called the "Venice of the East." Most of the canals in Bangkok have been paved over, but they remain the primary form of transportation in Thonburi, just across the river from the Grand Palace. We did not manage to get up early enough to go see a floating market, so there are still things to do on our next trip!

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