Thailand: Part 1 Bangkok and Sukhothai

SE Asia, Thailand, Bangkok and Sukhothai

Context Note: This travel was in 2019 December, before the SARS Covid-19 impact.

Bangkok

Our organized tour of Vietnam and Cambodia ended by dropping us in Bangkok, Thailand. We moved from the tour hotel to a smaller (cheaper) place in a local neighborhood on a canal. Really a difference. To put it mildly.

One of our neighbors, bit more rustic

At night, the canal bridges would fill with little hibachi-like barbecue grills, vendors selling all kinds of food on sticks. We sadly didn't try any.

BIG squid on a stick!

Local bus, young man gave his seat to Linda - manners!

We have found hiring a local tour guide to be the best way to get an overview of a city, efficiently, while also learning a little about the culture and customs. We  found Chatchai on With Locals, attracted to his profile description as being a food scientist! We were late for our meet-up with him, traffic and learning curve with Grab (= Uber), but WhatsApp simplified letting our guide know our situation. We had a great 6 or so hours traveling around Bangkok by foot, bus, tuktuk, and boat!

Love that tuktuk has stop lights INSIDE

Boat to cross river

Golden Buddha behind

Wat Traimit -- the home of the famous Golden Buddha. This is a fun story. In 1955, they were moving the very heavy 5.5 ton buddha statue, which was NOT golden. They accidentally dropped it, and chipped the stucco, and guess what?? ...it was gold underneath! (ranging from 80% to 99% pure). (Guess we foreshadowed that...)

Walked through Chinatown and a market...who knew fish stomachs were a thing to eat? huh.

Fried fish stomachs, in bulk!

Toes of equal length!

Wat Pho -- the home of the famous Reclining Buddha. And yes, a great opportunity for a bad English/Thai pun. He barely fits in the building! The best part is his feet. Note the toes of equal length. So this isn't buddha being sexy or tired, this pose is to represent him (Siddhartha Gautama) at the end of his life, before he died. There are over 100 different classic poses of the Buddha, including the various hand poses -- mudras -- that have different meanings. We only know about 4.

Bags of marigolds

The flower market was pretty cool -- Thais are right behind the Mexicans in their love of marigolds! They use them for offerings at the wats, in bowls, and strung together sort of like a lei.

Mark checking out the jackfruit

We also saw a lot of interesting fruits and vegetables. Jackfruit is like a cross between bananas and mangos, tasty!







Wat Kallayanamatra was a smaller, more local temple on the other side of the river. We sat and played with a little boy and Chatchai showed us how to shake the fortune telling sticks to get our fortune.  Mark told our guide it sounded just like a martini shaker and made him thristy!

No sermon, just a Mount.

climbing climbing

Next we went to the Golden Mount (Wat Saket,) an impressive temple on the hill with amazing views of Bangkok. It was the Thai version of Monty Python's Holy Grail "swamp castle!" The original wat that King Rama I attempted to build there kept falling down due to the soft soil. It took until Rama V, about 1910, to finish it, but in the 1940's, concrete walls had to be added to keep it from crumbling. (BTW, Rama V was apparently the inspiration for the "King and I" musical, which was and is STILL banned in Thailand for being...silly.)




We then invited Chatchai to lunch, and he picked a local food place that was quite tasty - and cheap. We discussed utensils as well -- Thais use spoons as the utensil of choice, chopsticks are ONLY used for noodles. And a fork can be used to push food on to the spoon or cut. "Won ton soup" spoons are used for soup-like things, and are usually stamped steel. Rama V apparently introduced utensils (versus fingers) but excluded the knife as superfluous since Thai food is already bite-sized.

Typical lunch: stir fry with egg and rice

Giants as temple guards

While in Bangkok we also visited the Grand Palace, no longer inhabited by Thai royalty, but used for ceremonial events. IT WAS A ZOO (human). Completely crammed with Chinese tour buses. We couldn't even hear the pre-recorded audio guide over the shouting people. In retrospect, we are lucky we didn't have any health issues, given how close to the outbreak this all was. Amazing buildings and statues though.

Siam Discovery Museum had a GREAT exhibit on "What is Thai?" covering many aspects of Thai culture and its evolution. It is very interesting that while surrounding countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma were colonized by Europeans, the Thais managed to negotiate and partner their way around colonization and hold on to much of their culture.

Sukhothai

With bus attendant

Working our way north, we took a VIP bus to Sukhothai, which is roughly halfway to Chiang Mai. VIP class got you a snack and a bottle of water. But not bad for a 3.5 hour air-conditioned trip for $12 USD each. 

The "snack"

The White Buddha who talked

Sukhothai is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is considered the first "capital" of the kingdom, CE 1238–1583, (a bit after Angkor Wat's heyday). The ruins here are both more spread out and MUCH less crowded, however, and reflect styles of the Khmer, Lanna, Tai, and Burmese.





We had a tuk tuk tour of the ruins, led by the Sukhothai Cycling owner, Miaow. (We have decided we really don't like bicycling anymore!)

How do they do the hand thing??

Across the street from the actual Park is the Museum of the Historical Park, the highlight of which was the scale model of the entire park with buttons you pushed to light up the various sites!

We really enjoyed the Sukhothai ruins, the food, and the kind people! 

Next stop, Chiang Mai!

2019 December (posted 2020 April)