Bangkok (7/29-8/1)

Read below for fun tidbits of our 3 days in Bangkok: markets, tailors, and a "Touchy Feely" heart-to-heart with one of my dad's Taiwanese business partners.

For photos, click here.

Arriving in Bangkok was a huge culture shock for us, and we weren't expecting it! We hadn't realized how acclimated we had become to the third world conditions of the other countries we had been traveling. When we first arrived at the hotel (the beautiful Sofitel Silom), we both stared at the high-rise building in awe....it was like when small town little kids visit New York City for the first time! The service is on a level like you wouldn't believe: people rush to open all the doors for you. We couldn't even press the elevator button ourselves; there was a man whose job it was to specifically do that!

Other than the wonders of high speed elevators and tall buildings, the other thing we noticed very quickly were the large numbers of people wearing these yellow polo shirts. At first we thought they were part of some company picnic in the park, or maybe a group that was traveling together (in Japan, they wear matching jog-suits). Then, we saw a store selling the shirts and discovered that they are all to honor King Bhumibol's 60th anniversary on the throne. Apparently many people have been wearing different variations of these shirts every day, all year. Others only break out the yellow shirt on Mondays, which are special "we love the king" days. It was quite a sight to weave through a sea of yellow "we love the king" tshirt everywhere we visited.

On our first night, we were really excited to see our good friends from Stanford? Ed & Eugine, who just happened to be passing through Bangkok on their own round-the-world adventure. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and had a great time comparing stories of our travels and catching up.

We specifically timed our visit so that we would be in Bangkok during the weekend to visit the famous Chatuchak Weekend Market. !This has to be the most amazing market in the world: there are over 9000 different stores, selling everything from clothing to art to furniture to animals. We saw so many things that we wanted to buy, but couldn't bring ourselves to deal with shipping things home by sea in a container. The antique furniture and art that they had was simply amazing: from Burmese puppets to Thai carved doors to Khemer statues; we want to plan another trip to come back here just to decorate our house one day. Our other favorite part of the market was where all the animals and pets were for sale. You could buy a puppy, a snake, a goldfish, and even a hamster to feed to your snake. It was just crazy to watch.

We did do some traditional sightseeing to appreciate the beauty of Thailand's capital city. We visited Wat Po, also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, which is famous for just that--an enormous Buddha, measuring 151 feet long by 53 feet high. The statue is actually made of brick, but completely covered in gold leaf. The most interesting parts are its feet, covered with mother-of-pearl illustrations of 108 inauspicious laksanas (charateristics) of the Buddha.

Nearby, we went to the Grand Palace, built by Rama I when he moved the capital from Thonburi to Bangkok in the 1780s, served as the official residence of the kings until 1946. Today, the palace is used only for royal ceremonies, which must be spectacular. We couldn't see much of the Palace itself, but we did get to explore the beautiful Wat Phra Kaeo on its grounds. When Rama I built the palace, he included this temple with its famed Emerald Buddha. The Buddha is 2 feet tall and made of green jasper, sitting atop a towering gold altar.The statue actually wears a different costume for each of the three seasons of Thailand, which are changed by the king himself. Note that because the image can be lowered for no one, the king actually climbs up the tower to change its clothes (something which will be rather difficult for its next costume change, given the King's recent operation.)

Two other interesting facts about the Buddha. First, it was actually hidden inside a plaster Buddha image until 1434, when it was accidentally dropped and people discovered the beautiful gem inside. Second, the Buddha was taken off to Laos by a king from Luang Prabang...the statue then moved to Vientiane when the capital of the country was changed. There are two stories for how the Buddha was returned to Thailand. 1) Rama I recaptured the statue during a successful invasion of Laos. 2) It was deemed bad luck for both the Emerald Buddha and the other famous Buddha to be in the same city. Now that the Emerald Buddha had been brought to Vientiane, it was bringing the king of Laos bad luck...so he let Rama I take it.You decide which version of the story is more believable.

For those of you familiar with Bangkok, you are probably wondering if we spent any time at Patpong...well, of course! It wouldn't be right not visit and not see the "racy" side of the city. We did not take in any of the famous "ping pong ball shows" (I'll leave that to your imagination for those of you unfamiliar), but we did walk around the famous red-light district at night time and watched several sketchy old Caucasian men running off with Thai women young enough to be their daughters. After much deliberation, we even decided to go into one of the strip clubs to check out the scene. Having never been to a strip club in the US, I can't really make any comparison, but I really hope it's more exciting than what we saw. There were 30 or so Thai women all wearing red bathing suits and vinyl boots just standing on the bar. Few of them were making any effort at dancing, and most of them looked so bored they just wanted to go home and go to sleep. It was not at all what I was expecting. On the plus side, we met a nice Israeli couple (who was also curiously checking out the scene) and spent a little while discussing the situation in Lebanon (this was the day that the Israelis bombed a town in Lebanon with a high number of civilian casualties). I also managed to successfully negotiate down the price of two rather posh looking purses at the Patpong Night market: a Gucci and a Tod's....most deinitely knock-offs, but very high quality ones.

There were two restaurants we ate at in Bangkok that were just phenomenal. At Baan Kanitha we enjoyed a very affordable, but quite upscale dinner with the best yellow chicken curry either of us has ever had. (The Mango with sticky rice was pretty amazing too!)

Our favorite part of our stay, undoubtedly, was meeting up with my Dad's business partners who run an export business in Asia. As we had collected quite a bit of stuff over the past month, we had been looking for the most efficient way to ship things home to the US. My dad suggested we get in touch with Peter, the Bangkok representative of a company my Dad has worked with for years. I emailed Peter to see what he suggested, and to my surprise, he offered to take care of everything for us and wanted to take us to dinner. Given our inability to successfully explain that we don't like spicy food in Thai, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to enjoy the local cuisine with a Bangkok resident. When we returned back to the hotel after our first day of sightseeing, we discovered an enormous fruit basket in our room. We assumed that it was a present from the Sofitel, congratulating us on our marriage--but no, it was a welcome gift from Peter and the people at Test-Rite. Now this kind of hospitality, I could get used to! As we searched through the fruit basket, it seemed to never end, apples on top of bananas on kiwis on mangoes....I finally took everything out of the basket and counted: there were 52 pieces of fruit in the basket. I am not exaggerating: 52 pieces of fruit. It was crazy!

The next day, we went out to dinner with Peter and his two assistants at a nice Thai restaurant. I got to ask lots of questions and now finally understand what this company does and how my Dad got involved with them many years ago getting them a contract exporting goods to Home Depot in the US. When we first arrived at dinner, Peter was really excited because by random chance, the head of the company (and my Dad's close friend) Tony, was visiting and had just arrived that night. Apparently Tony hadn't been to Bangkok in years, so our timing was incredibly lucky. Tony wasn't able to come to our wedding (his daughter Robin did make it), so he was eager to see us and congratulate us on our marriage. I haven't seen Tony since I was probably 5 years old, so really, this was quite funny luck.

So after dinner, we went over to the Peninsula to have a drink with Tony and say hello. Now, I am not always quick to pick up on things, so it wasn't until half way through our conversation that I even started to suspect that Tony was a little intoxicated. He was telling all sorts of great stories about my dad and how I need to sit him down and ask him to tell me all his business wisdom, about how he isn't always very talkative, but if I ask the right questions, he'll teach me a lot, and about how proud he is of me and how Tony has been hearing about everything I've done for the past 15 years. However when Tony started giving very passionate marital advice I began to suspect that he may not have been completely sober. The highlight was when he waxed on and on about how communication is very important, and we should learn to say things like "when you do this, it makes me feel like this"....it was literally a lecture that Dan and I had both heard from our "Touchy Feely" professors earlier this year....but instead it was coming from a middle-aged Taiwanese businessman in broken English....who says that Asian men don't know how to communicate their feelings?! Oh, and he was also adamant that we keep things exciting in our intimate life so we don't get bored with each other....good advice!

Lastly, it wouldn't be fair to leave you without telling you about our wonderful experience with Kevin at the Majestic Tailor. One of my colleagues at Bain had used him when he lived in Bangkok and highly recommended him to us. The clothes that Dan had made are just beautiful...and were a steal! (600 USD for a cashmere suit, 2 pairs of slacks, and 6 dress shirts) Should any of you be visiting Bangkok, definitely pay him a visit: 110-110/1 Sukhumvit Road (Between Soi 4-6), South Nana
Bangkok 10110, Thailand Phone: +66 (0) 2656 8220 Email:majestic@loxinfo.co.th