At this point, we were about halfway through our trip and needed to pick up a few things and get haircuts. So, the first morning we got up and went to a nearby mall to get our haircut. A very nice transvestite was there who called her friend to come and translate for us. We got quite serviceable haircuts and were on our way to explore the city. The first thing we did was go to the national museum to see the treasures of the royal family and learn about the history of Thailand. Who knew that they fought so much with the Burmese? Many people surely, but not us. Then, it was late enough that everything closed so we found a tasty lunch at a roadside booth.
The next day we were up late and decided to go to the grand palace. When we got there, we walked right into a scam. They directed us to the wrong entrance and then said it was closed for lunch and only Thais were allowed in. Then they suggested we see some sights and go to a store for a very low price in a tuk-tuk. We bought it in one sense that we thought it was closed, but we didn’t want to give them any money, so instead we walked to the infamous Khao San Road to find some lunch. Khao San was as touristy trappy as we had heard, but we had a very nice lunch and made it back to the grand palace and made it in easily this time. The grand place is amazing- lots of glass mosaics, the emerald Buddha, and lovely murals. Afterwards, we headed to Wat Po, which has a really massive reclining Buddha.
Detail of the Buddha's feet.
For dinner, we went to Cabbages and Condoms. Kristen has been a fan of the founder Mechai Viravaidya since she saw him speak at a global health conference in 2007. He and his organization, Population and Community Development Association, have done a lot to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand and address poverty.
We decided that we would take a day trip to Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Siam that had been sacked by the Burmese. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to go, because there was had been so much rain in Thailand that many of the roads outside of the city were flooded. Fortunately for us, the water dropped enough that we could go, but it was quite clear that there was lots of water where it shouldn’t be.
Upon arriving at Ayutthaya, it was clear that it had in fact been sacked. Many of the stupas were in ruins and all of the Buddhas were missing heads. This was in part because many of the original Buddhas were gold covered in clay, so the Burmese cut the heads off to see if they were gold on the inside. If they were, they were melted down and carried back to Burma. The rest of the heads were taken by people who sold them on the black market. It was very sad to see all of the headless statues, but the ruins were fascinating.
We got to take a big boat down the Chao Phraya river to get home. However, the river thought otherwise. The water level was so high, the boat couldn’t fit under one of the bridges! They tried a few times, but the hull kept bumping into the bridge, so they had to get a couple of smaller boats for us to transfer to in order to get home.
We headed south from Bangkok at the end of our visit to Khao Lak to go scuba diving (see separate post about Thailand underwater). After that adventure, we headed way north on two different trains to visit Chiang Mai. The first train was an overnight that put us into Bangkok at 3:00am. We took turns sleeping and buying breakfast. Mike settled a donut debt from a bet with Kristen at the Dunkin Donuts in the station because apparently, even in Bangkok, Bostonians run on Dunkin’. We then boarded another train at around 7:00am to go another 12 hours north. Kristen read all of the books she had and Mike listened to his iPod and we enjoyed the scenery. When we finally got to Chiang Mai we just crashed without any supper and caught up on sleep.
We spent our first day wandering around the city and taking care of a very important errand- buying Thai silk to use for the table runners for the NevKo wedding. We saw a lot of temples and went to the city museum to learn about the history of Chiang Mai. We also stumbled upon a parade. We had no idea what the parade was celebrating, but it was fun to watch.
We read that there was a place that had the best burgers in Southeast Asia in town, so we headed there for dinner. They were quite tasty, though the shitake mushrooms on Kristen’s burger gave it a distinctly Asian flavor.
We made up for our momentary weakness for American food by taking a Thai cooking class the next day. The class was taught by a Thai TV chef who had the showmanship aspect down. He would look away while cutting things extremely rapidly, and make pretty garnishes. He also had a lot of assistants who would hover and yell whenever we were too slow to get things done. We made several dishes- pad see yew, yellow curry with chicken, spicy shrimp salad and steamed fish.
We also had bananas in coconut milk for dessert. There were some very nice people in the class and some that were not so nice. Mike’s neighbor to the left was a French woman who made it very clear she was not fond of American cuisine. However, we met a very nice American couple who were our eating buddies.
Since we were now on the last legs of our trip, we started shopping. Our first purchase was some delicious four ply Thai silk and then we hit up a night market to work on our Christmas shopping list. When we went to leave, it started to make things more interesting with the packing. We turned Kristen’s pack into the gift bag and Mike’s into the functional bag.
We also went to see a very old temple at dusk. It was the first time we had done this and it was a great experience. The stone carvings were beautiful and mysterious looking in the fading light and we could hear a monk giving a sermon in one of the more modern temples in the compound.
Our last morning we went to church, ran some errands and did some emailing. Mike observed a game of chess between two workers at the hotel. And then we were off for our flight to Siem Reap. Our one word of caution for others who will go to the Chiang Mai airport- there is nothing to eat once you get past security, unless you want cup o’ noodles. So, we suggest you eat before you go through immigration. As you can guess, we didn’t get the memo.
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