Bangkok was the last of our side trips, taken a week before returning
home. Our hotel was nice, the Indra Regent. Located in and near
several shopping areas, it was convenient for day trips, sightseeing, and
eating. Although we were warned many times of the crime (pickpockets and
petty crime type activity), we felt safe walking around day or night. At
least in the areas we strolled!
Shopping was composed primarily of flea market or bazaar type booths, selling
everything under the sun. Especially this one trip we took, to the
"largest bazaar in the world", advertised as 8000+ booths, spread over
20 acres or so. Only operates on the weekends. Massive crowds,
but still not quite as packed as Greenhills on a good day! Lots of
wonderful foods and major Stuff to buy. It would take a few days to check
out each booth.
We had a couple of organized tours there, mostly to ruins and temples.
Many, many Buddha images, large and small. It was nice to see a culture and
religion co-exist, without the feeling that the religion was oppressive or
foreign to the society. I could go on about Catholicism, it just felt like
the Philippines were operating under an occupying force, that force being
Catholicism and it's representatives. Never seemed like it was a
comfortable fit for them. In Thailand, or at least the parts we toured,
their life and religion seemed more natural partners. Perhaps that's an
aspect of Buddhism itself.
One drawback, neither page of pictures are organized very well. The
fever dreams, sleep deprivation and maniacal pace have subsided since returning
home, and with it the structural context of the environment. I'm very glad
to be home. So shots that should be side by side are spread all
over. Anyway, enjoy the pictures!
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| These are a few pictures from the dinner cruise one
night. A large, nicely appointed yacht, with 80-100 people.
Rode along a 10 mile loop or so of downtown Bangkok river, I forget the
name. There may be other pictures of that temple in the
daytime. And definitely a day shot of the bridge. Very pretty
bridge, an asymmetrical construction, elegant and visually arresting.
Unfortunately, I was not up to speed on night time photography in general,
and particularly not with a digital camera. All the night shots were
variously underlit, or blurry, or both. I practiced several with Liz
across the table, and the last is one she took of me, catching all the
folks gathered around our table. We had the best seats in the
"house", as we were the first table on the top deck in the front
of the boat (I'm sure there's some correct nautical term for
"front of the boat", and probably another for "top
deck"), and all the folks started gathering around and behind us to
see the views as we floated past the lit temples, bridge, etc. Much
later I discovered the wonders of a tripod, which the camera came with, a
cute pocket model complete with pen clip for pocket protected nerds. The
one of Liz is nice with your screen brightness turned way up. |
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| A shot of my hotel room in the Indra Regent.
Comfortable room, and you can see the results of my Michael Jackson
obsession on the table. There's a small fridge under the table.
These rooms had a neat feature I'd not seen before. All the lights and
other electrical items were controlled by a console on the bed side
table. It was all activated by putting your room key into a slot
beside the door. When you took the card out, the room "turned
off" after 30 seconds. Neat way of saving
electricity.
My Michael Jackson obsession? Let me include an excerpt from Liz,
gives a general idea of the mental conditions:
November
17th 2003-
I
am losing my spirit here. Ready
to come home. Tired of
working with people who don’t know how to communicate.
Tired of feeling like I am chasing my tail trying to get anything
done here. Tired of feeling
like I never hear the truth or sifting through words to get the truth.
Tired of seeing mice scurrying across the exposed electrical wiring
and the floor. Tired of
restrooms in the office that don’t have toilet paper, soap, or hand
dryers. Tired of packing a
bag every time I have to use the un-air-conditioned, filthy restrooms.
Tired of seeing that most people don’t wash their hands after
using the restroom. Tired of
a filthy office that has contagious people wandering around.
Tired of being surrounded by environmental and noise pollution.
Tired of long cab rides home in 20 year-old, blown out Toyota
Corollas with no shocks or cushions after 10 hours in the filthy office
(see previous sentences). Tired
of not having transportation so I can go somewhere, anywhere when I want.
Tired of eating out all the time.
Tired of upset stomachs. Tired
of being tired I guess.
November
21, 2003 –
Just
wanted to report that I am back in the game.
It was a rough 4 days, but I have recovered my sense of humor, my
spirit, and my normal, cheerful disposition.
“How did this happen?” you may ask.
Well, I have decided that fixating and obsessing are excellent ways
to make the time fly by. Apparently
Mark came to this answer as well because he is obsessing over Michael
Jackson. He is finding the
most terrifying pictures he can of the porcelain king of pop and using
them as wallpaper on his laptop. Not
always the whole picture, sometimes, he has just the forehead and eyes
blown up huge and taking up the entire screen.
He changes the picture at least 10 times a day.
When I ask him a question, his response is “let me ask
Michael”. In all fairness, I am borderline obsessing over Mark’s
obsession with Michael. Is
that wrong? I sit at my desk
and watch Mark across the office cropping, pasting, enlarging, and
shrinking photos of Michael Jackson, all the while giggling to himself.
And if I haven’t been staring, if I have to go to a meeting, I
often find myself wondering, ‘has Mark put a new picture of Michael
Jackson on his wallpaper yet?’
|
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| One of the day time temple trips. Did I mention that
Thailand is Buddhist? Just kidding, the place is full of temples and
Buddhas. Or more correctly, images of Buddha. In several
places we saw groups of school children being lectured by monks. The
first pic is a group in front of a tiled tower. The conical towers
were both monuments, and mausoleums, as each typically held the remains of
a past king or important historical figure. The three behind Liz in
the second were from the ancient ruins in Ayutthaya. The last
picture is another reclining Buddha. This is also the place with the
bats, pictures elsewhere. Oh, that third picture is of a different
temple, the temple of Singha, makers of Singha beer. We floated by
it on another day time river boat tour. I was making an offering at
the time. |
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| More old ruins. The first is from a still functioning
temple school. There was a ring of small Buddhas surrounding the
main buildings. There were more than 120 of them, the tour guide
tried to get folks to guess how many. We passed some elephants,
fairly unhappy looking, stationed for tourists. You could feed them,
more of them later. The third was of the golden Buddha. The
Golden Buddha. This was 5.5 tons of pure gold, too heavy to lift so
they don't really guard it or have security for it. You can't touch
it, but that's about it. One of the largest chunks of solid gold in the
world, and about 22 carats. An interesting side note about the four
people in the left side of the picture. Two couples (the other woman
is sort of hidden, you can see the top of her head only, she was short) traveling
together from Manila, they were on our plane coming and going.
Stayed in the same motel we did. The women were from New York, the
guys from Manila. We did a few tours together, just from
coincidence. Liz remembers the names, I think the women were freshly
divorced and having a "good time". The guys were both
considerably younger. You might notice them in a couple other
shots. The last picture is some writing, cast into concrete and
painted, it just looked cool. |
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| The largest reclining Buddha is stored here. There
are seven basic Buddha positions, none of which is the commonly seen
and tourist recognized, seated and laughing, fat belly Buddha. [That
version may come from a different Buddhist sect, hey, what do I
know?] This building held the largest version of a relining one in
the world (at least in Thailand's world). A few more pictures of it
are elsewhere. But I was interested more in the amazing amount of
handwork that went into everything. For instance, the first picture
is a close out (about 8 inches away) of a section of column. It's hand painted,
not wallpaper. If you can, zoom in on the larger version and check
out the detailing. The second picture is a long shot of the aisle,
full of these columns. The columns were painted floor to ceiling,
with the same level of detail all the way up. And up was up to 50
feet to the ceiling, and the ceiling was painted as well.
Incredible!! The people at the bottom of the second picture gives an
idea of the scale of the building.
The third picture is of the feet of RB. The feet were inlaid with
mother of pearl designs. That is, dozens of pictures,
"drawn" by inlaying bits of mother of pearl to achieve the
result. The third shows the bottom of the two feet. The toes
had swirls of mother of pearl. Sorry for the blurries. But the
people give a idea of the scale. The fourth is a close up of two of
the images. I rotated them upright. It's about 24 inches away.
Again, try to zoom in on the larger version, the detailing of each little
picture with tiny pieces of mother of pearl is amazing. And each
little picture was different. And each little piece of pearling
inlayed. Okay, perhaps I'm easily impressed!! |
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| A small version of the entire Reclining Buddha. A
shot of part of the wall restoration, they were repainting or newly
painting a portion of the wall in RB's house. On one side of the
building was a row of pots, maybe 50-60 of them. You were to take a
pile of change, dropping a few coins into each one and saying a bit of
verse. It was for good luck or better health. Or
something. The last is a shot of some old paintings describing the
art of Thai massage. Shown are various places on the body, and what
is going on there, massage and healing wise. These pictures are
hundreds of years old. And of course, hand painted. There were
buildings that had these little depictions painted around the entire rim,
each with a different set of body points explained. |
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| More outside towers, and a close up of the tile work.
And a cute dog. For perspective and scaling purposes, the blue round
tile in the center of the flower of the second picture is about two inches
in diameter. And the first picture has two towers, the nearer one on
the left (with our traveling foursome buddies just below it) is the tower,
you can see the flowers on the side. These towers were tall, covered
with this tile work all the way up. |
