Honeymoon in Bangkok Part II

     After a wonderful night's sleep, we were up at 5:00AM, eating breakfast at 6:00, and in the tour van at around 6:30.  It also happens to be Eric's birthday today!  Happy Birthday, Eric!!  Happy Birthday to Emily, too!!  Wish you were here!!  Today we are headed for Ayutthaya (a World Heritage Site) to see the summer palace in Bang Pa-In, some temples, and ancient ruins of the grand palace at the second capital of Thailand (Siam). We would return to Bangkok via a river cruise down the Chao Praya river, which is the same river we travel on our hotel ferry boat.  We drove about an hour north of Bangkok on a bus with a tour group and arrived in Bang Pa-In, home of the King and Queen's summer palace.  This is a stark contrast to the opulence of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.  The grounds are sprawling, there are gardens and green bushes and trees throughout, flowers are potted beautifully all around the grounds, and some of the buildings seem quite modern.  The original buildings were constructed in the 1600's, and there is a great deal of Chinese influence throughout the palace grounds.  However, many of the buildings were constructed in the 1800's when the palace was revived by King Rama IV.  It is still used today occasionally by the King and Queen as their residence, and it is used for ceremonies and banquets.  Ayutthaya was founded in 1350, and by 1700 it was the largest city in the world with one million residents.  Because of its location between China and India, it became the trading capital of Asia.

So my top is sleeveless, and I had to rent this lovely green blouse for the day for 200 thb (about $6.50 USD) because we were going into a couple of temples.  I got it back when I returned the blouse at the end of the tour.  There is no doubt that I can be identified in every picture!

The grounds of the summer palace are lovely.  The entire area sits on kind of an island.  It sits in the middle of where three rivers come together.

European influence is evident throughout the palace grounds.

We love the traditional Thai style.  It's so distinct.

Beautiful detail.

Pagoda.

Chinese temple in the summer palace.

Bottom of the Pagoda.  One of my favorite pictures!  :)

 

     After leaving the summer palace, we headed to the ancient ruins of the Grand Palace of Ayutthaya.  This was the capital of Siam until the Burmese invaded and destroyed most of the buildings and statues and burned almost the entire city to the ground in 1767.  It was very surreal to see so many of the Buddha images made of stone without their heads.  It is also interesting to see the different styles of Buddha images.  In Western culture we mostly recognize the smiling, chubby Buddha image, but that image comes from Chinese folktales and may or may not represent a monk from long ago.  It is not a true Buddha.  Who knew?!?  There are many different versions that represent time periods, different postures that represent days of the week, and different hand gestures that symbolize specific meanings.  It is truly fascinating to learn so much about this culture, and we are more than excited to read and learn more about it! 

Most of the remains are from temples.

Several Burmese thieves stole the head of this image, but when they were surprised and chased by guards, they dropped the head.  It became lodged in the roots of a Banyan tree, and it is still there today.

 

One of the very few in-tact Buddha images.

During the Burmese invasion, the heads of many of the Buddha statues were either destroyed or stolen leaving only the body parts to be rebuilt.

Because the Queen's birthday was recently celebrated, many statues and buildings are bedecked in her lucky color, yellow.  Each day of the week is represented by a specific color.

It was truly incredible to see the ruins of this ancient city.  This was our favorite stop of the tour, and we both wish we had more time to explore there.

 

     Our next two stops on the tour were short.  One was visiting a few more temples and learning the Thai custom of making a wish to Buddha, and the other was a quick stop to see one of the country's largest reclining Buddhas. 

Our guide, Donna, and the golden Buddhas.  People rub gold leaf on the two in the front for good luck, and they pray to the large image in the back.

A Buddha image for each day of the week depending on the day of the week you were born.  There is also an 'everyday' Buddha image in case you do not know which day you were born.  Oh, and there are two for Wednesdays.  You can also almost see the Buddhist monk to the left of the picture.

Reclining Buddha decorated in yellow for the Queen's birthday.  Luck is very important in Thai culture.  They believe in lucky numbers, lucky colors, lucky rituals, lucky everything!  At one point we even sprinkled our heads with water using a lotus flower for luck!

Many Thai people making their wishes to Buddha: 1. Introduce yourself to Buddha and tell him your name  2. light incense  3. offer him a lotus flower  4. rub gold leaf on the Buddha image  5.  offer money  6.  make your wish

 

     At the last stop, we also had an opportunity to try Durian ice cream.  Durian is a very common fruit here; however, there is one problem with it....it smells like raw sewage.  The key is to not breathe through your nose while you eat (or are anywhere near) durian.  So that's what we tried to do.

Breathing through our mouths, we tried durian ice cream  It is sweet and creamy.  Really quite delicious!  Very refreshing on a hot day.

Then we smelled it.  After that it was impossible to eat any more of it.  Yuck!

 

     We finished with all of our tours and were taken to the river boat that we would take back to Bangkok.  It was a lovely ride.  We had a buffet lunch with all kinds of Thai foods, including spicy Tom Yum soup with prawns.  Delicious!  There were curries and Thai desserts (our favorite was the sticky rice with mango and sweetened condensed milk drizzled over the top), and there were lots of other international foods, too, like 'pork with American sauce'.  We still aren't sure what 'American sauce" is, though. :)  It was a relaxing, peaceful two-hour ride down the river.  There was even a coffee and tea break toward the end.  We took lots of pictures on our way.  When we finished with the cruise, we opted to be left at a shopping area instead of taken back to our hotel, so we wandered around there for a while, drank some more coffee, and somehow ended up in the Sheraton hotel.  We snuck onto their hotel ferry which took us to the main pier where we caught our boat ferry back to the Chatrium hotel.

The inside of our riverboat.

 

One of the buildings we saw on our cruise.

A passing boat.  This looks a lot like our hotel ferry boat.

 

One of the temples in Bangkok.

 

Just a few more sites along the river.

 

     We took a little time to freshen up and catch our breath back at the hotel before venturing out for dinner.  We found this place called Queen of Curry that was near the main boat ferry pier, so we thought we would check it out.  Our plan after dinner was to go back to the Asiatique night market we went to our first night.  We headed out about 6:30 for dinner.  However, just before we left, there was a knock at the door.  Much to our surprise, there was a hotel staff member delivering a giant piece of birthday cake for Eric's birthday!  We thanked him, checked out the cake, and put it in the fridge!  Dessert!  He had a cart full of special occasion pieces of cake to deliver.  When we checked into the hotel, the front desk took our passports, so they must check birthdays and anniversaries and surprise guests with cake!  What a nice touch!  Another reason we love this hotel!

This is a street or lane (aka Soi) near the main boat ferry.  Several restaurants and coffee shops line this side of the street, and vendors line the opposite side.

 

Queen of Curry Restaurant

 

We loved the blue and white china!  I ordered my favorite, Panaeng Curry.

This is Eric's Massuman 'special' Curry.  The lining of the coconut is scraped into the curry where it soaks up all of the spicy goodness. 

De-Lish-Us!!!

Can you smell it?  Best Massuman Curry either of us has ever had. 

 

We both said, "Wow, there's no way we are going to eat all of this" when we first sat down, but guess what?  Our plates were empty when we left!!

 

Birthday Cake from the hotel.  We ate it for dessert after dinner because both of us were too tired to go back to the night market.  It was an awesome day, but also a long day, and we were ready to call it a night.  We might be getting old, too.  :)

 

     The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and repacked.  And we ended up with an extra bag or two on the way home.  We can't wait to go back and do some of the other things we didn't get a chance to do this time like go to the floating markets, go to the flower markets, see the elephants in Chiang Mai, check out the beaches in Phuket.  Eat more Thai food!!

 

We got to the airport early and enjoyed exploring it!

 

     It was such a great trip, and we sincerely hope we get a chance to go back again! 

 

Until Next Time,

Eric and Kim :0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honeymoon in Bangkok Part I

     Wow!  Did we ever think that we would go to such exotic places?  Yes and No.  We knew we wanted to travel, and over the past three years, we have talked a great deal about traveling and places we would love to go.  But now that we are actually traveling to some of the places we have fantasized about, we are finding that real life is even better than the dream!  Again, as we have said before, as wonderful as it is to travel to these amazing places, we both agree that it would be 100X better if our families and friends were here to enjoy with us!! 

     Last Thursday we left Ninoy Aquino Airport in Manila for a long weekend in Bangkok, Thailand.  Neither of us really knew what to expect once we got there.  We did a little research online and made a list of the places we wanted to see and the activities we wanted to do, but we didn't book anything other than the hotel in advance.  The only thing we really knew is that we loved Thai food!  We were anxious to find out if we really do love authentic Thai cooking, or if we really only love the westernized version of it.  It was time to find out, and (as usual) food was going to be an important factor in our trip planning.  We did, however, schedule one tour with a tour company at the Bangkok airport for the next morning.
     Flight time is about three hours from Manila.  We flew Thai Airways, and everything from stepping on the plane to landing at the Bangkok airport was wonderful!  The plane is colorful, the flight attendants are dressed in traditional clothing, and the Bangkok airport is huge, modern, and quite artsy.  We were both very impressed as soon as we stepped off the plane.  We arrived in Bangkok around 3:30 (we gained an hour) and after immigration stops and a cab ride, we arrived at our hotel at around 5:30.  I had told the hotel while booking that we would be spending part of our honeymoon there, and when we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised with the news that we had been upgraded to a one-bedroom corner suite since we were celebrating our honeymoon!  How wonderful!!  The staff could not have been nicer or more accommodating while we were there.  We stayed at the Chatrium Hotel Riverside, and if any of you are planning a trip to Thailand, we recommend it completely!  Five stars in our opinion from the staff, to the welcome drink, to the room, to the breakfast buffet, to the free hotel river ferry, and so much more.  It was a wonderful place to spend the weekend, and we can't say enough good things about it and do it justice.  Thai culture is very polite and respectful, and we experienced that first-hand at the Chatrium!!  We would both go back in a second!! 
     While we were in Bangkok, the Miss Grand International Pageant was going on, and guess who stayed at our hotel??  ALL OF THE CONTESTANTS!!!  They were always dressed to the nines with hair and makeup perfect, they always wore their sashes so everyone knew where they were from, and they always had on three or four inch heels.  We happened to be in the business lounge at one point printing some tour information one day while the contestants were entering a room one-by-one to be interviewed by the panel.  The finale will be October 7th.  It was pretty wild to see these beautiful women everyday throughout the hotel.

A demon standing guard at the Bangkok airport.

Miss Macau and Miss Myanmar in the lobby of our hotel.

Front desk of the Chatrium Riverside Hotel

Floral Budddhas in the hotel lobby

View from our balcony

We loved our room!

Felt like home!

Wish we had something to cook.  Love the little kitchen!

Selfie on the balcony!

Excited for our trip!  We just arrived in Bangkok!

 

     After we checked into the hotel and got ourselves settled (by settled, I mean unpacked and then walked to the Starbucks attached to the hotel and got ourselves each a $3 cup of regular brewed coffee), we decided to ask the concierge about where we should head for dinner and to walk around a bit to see the city.  Much to our surprise, he pointed us to a night market which was about a 15 minute walk down the street.  We headed that way!  Shops and restaurants and food stands and music everywhere!  There is also a Ferris Wheel, and it is all right on the river.  It has a kind of boardwalk feel to it, and it is such a fun atmosphere.  It's called Asiatique, and it's open every night from 5pm to midnight.  We had planned on going back again the last night of our trip, but, as Robert Frost would say: "...way leads on to way..." and we found lots of other things to do to keep us busy!  While we were there, we did eat dinner.  We settled on some street food from one of the food stands - grilled tofu on a stick with delicious peanut sauce and corn fritters and yam fritters with sesame seeds and some kind of sticky, sweet, sauce of deliciousness.  We shared a couple of 'slushies' (not what they are called here, but not sure of the name), one was strawberry and one was orange....orange with a green rind.  It was all pretty darn good!  We wandered around for quite a while and picked up a couple of things at a few of the shops.  We headed back to the hotel in a Tuk-Tuk and crashed into the most comfortable bed I think I have ever slept in.  The next morning we would be meeting our
tour guide for a tour of the Grand Palace.

 

Night Market right down the street from our hotel.

We ate our dinner on the steps leading to the Ferris wheel.

So this is apparently the latest thing in pedicures - put your feet in the tank and let the fish nibble off all of the dead skin.  These kiddos were giggling the entire time!

Love elephants!!

Street food for dinner hanging out on the steps of the Ferris wheel.  So fun!

We took a Tuk-Tuk back to the hotel

    
     The next morning we headed down to the breakfast buffet which was amazing!  I never thought I would eat green curry for breakfast, but I did.  Twice.  There was every kind of baked good you can imagine and all kinds of breads to toast with mango jam, pear puree, blackberry jam, strawberry jam, and our favorite of the trip tangerine-lime.  Yum!!  Chinese dumplings, omelettes made to order, all kinds of juice, pasta, Chinese donuts, fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and so many more things I am not remembering right now.  We sat outside and watched the boats float down the river while we ate our breakfast and drank our coffee.  It was a perfect first morning! 

The view from our hotel ferry boat waiting area.  We ate breakfast each morning outside just to the right of this area.

Did you see the movie Hangover 2?  (We have not)  Apparently, this is the hotel from the movie.  It's right down the road from our hotel.

     We then headed into the lobby to meet Kanung, our tour guide for the day.  We decided on the Grand Palace which covers 218,000 square meters and is surrounded by four walls, 1900 meters in length.  The palace was built in 1782 when King Rama I ascended to the throne, and each king since then added more to the palace until 1925 when a new residence for the king was built. The current King, King Rama IX became King at age 18 (he just celebrated his 83rd birthday), and he was actually born in Boston and grew up in Switzerland.  His father lived all over the world and at the time of his son's birth, we was a doctor in America.  Some royal offices are still kept at the Palace, and the Palace is still used today for important functions like royal birthday celebrations, coronations, visiting dignitaries, etc.  The entire palace is breath-taking.  The ornate detail is incredible with so many bright colors and so much gold.  The stories behind so many of the buildings and statues are fascinating, and we both said we could listen to them for days.  The culture of Thailand (formerly Siam) revolves around a mix of Buddhism and Hinduism (Buddhism is thought to be one of the many strains of Hinduism - many parallels, but some major differences, too).  The stories of their gods and kings make us want to learn so much more about their beliefs.  And the rules!  The rules are fascinating as well....take your shoes off when entering a temple, of course, your feet cannot point toward Buddha, do not touch the head of a Thai woman, your head must never be higher than the head of a Buddha, and so many more.  There was so much information and so much to learn!  We loved every minute of our time at the Grand Palace.

Walking into the Grand Palace.  There is a dress code at most of the temples - long pants (or skirts), shoulders covered, no cleavage showing for women, no hats for men, nothing see-through.  There is actually a changing room where you can rent clothing if you're not prepared.  We saw lots of men and women with wrap-around elephant skirts and genie pants!!  :)

Kanung (our guide) and me in front of the entry

A demon standing near the entry.  The story goes that a demon complained to a god that he had been doing good deeds and felt he should be rewarded, so the god gave the demon a special power; however, the demon used the power for wrong-doing and destroyed a great deal of things on earth.  The god, believing himself responsible for the destruction because he gave the demon the power in the first place, made himself mortal and no longer a god.  Instead, he became the king of Thailand.

 

King Rama I - King Rama IIX lived at the Grand Palace, and each added structures and materials to the grounds as he explored more and more parts of the world.  There is Indian influence, Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Cambodian, and eventually European influence, among others.  It is fascinating to see the evolution of the grounds.

Traditional Thai Spire

Buddha image in stone

 

Demon on the left and monkey guard on the right.  These images are all over throughout the palace grounds.  You can tell them apart because the monkeys do not wear shoes, and the demons do.

 

This group of tourists wanted their picture taken with me for some reason.  Maybe they do not see a lot of super-white blonde peeps?

Ornate detail around the walls of the chapel that houses the Emerald Buddha.  The pictures don't do it justice. 

Paintings depicting the stories of gods and kings. 

The paintings are all along the walls.

Restoration in progress.  There is no new construction going on in the Grand Palace, only restoration of existing structures.  The entrance fee of 500 Thai Bhat per person (about $16 USD) is supposed to go toward restoration expenses.

We love the various spires/steeples that show the different influences.  I think the one in the back (white) is Cambodian, and the one in the front is Traditional Thai style.

Emerald Buddha.  This Buddha figure was found in northern Thailand in 1434, and it was covered with plaster and thought to be an ordinary Buddha image, but when some of the plaster on the nose flaked off, it revealed the green color beneath.  Initially, the abbot who found the figure thought it was made of emerald which is how it got its name, but it is, in fact, carved from a solid block of jade, and it is very beautiful. 

 

So many beautiful structures and statues!

     After we left the Grand Palace, we stopped at a jewelry and porcelain shop where we picked up a few hand-painted Thai pieces and then we visited a tailor shop with all kinds of beautiful Thai silk and other materials.  We could have had anything made to order that we wanted - suits, dresses, blouses, etc.  But we chose to pick up a few meters of a beautifully patterned Thai silk, and we will figure out what to do with it when we get back home!  It was such a lovely tour!  Instead of having our guide drop us off back at our hotel, we opted to be dropped off downtown at MBK, one of the larger shopping areas.  We wandered around for a while and settled on a restaurant for a super late lunch or a super early dinner.  We finally had a chance to order our two favorite Thai meals (we are curry lovers) massuman curry and panaeng curry.  Yum!  Nope.  We are not just fans of the western version of Thai.  These curries were absolutely delicious!!  And it would not be the last time we ordered these meals in Thailand.  :)  After lunch we grabbed some coffee and headed out in search of the Jim Thompson House.  Jim Thompson is an American credited with creating the popularity of real Thai silk.  He lived in Bangkok and his house has been made into a museum.  We left there and took the BTS Skytrain (overhead subway) to the Sathorn Taksin Pier where we caught the shuttle boat to take us back to our hotel.  While waiting for the skytrain, we also had a chance to try Thai coffee for the first time.  We are fans!  They add sweetened condensed milk to espresso and we had ours over ice.  A refreshing sweet treat!  What a wonderful afternoon it was!  And we were exhausted, but we also knew there was another night market we wanted to check out, so we took an hour or two to relax and freshen up and then left about 7:00 to head to the Patpong night market.  This market was very different from Asiatique night market and probably more like most Bangkok night markets with lots of vendors grabbing you and calling to you as you walked by trying to make deals.  It was also in a bit of a seedy area with neon signs and men handing out menus of 'services' provided.  It was not the fun atmosphere of the night market the night before.  We took the shuttle boat and BTS skytrain again, and we must say that it really is a breeze to get around in Bangkok.  No need for a car.  We wandered around and bought a few things for some very cheap prices, but we didn't stay too late.  We knew our tour guide for the next morning would be picking us up at 6:30AM for an all day tour! 

The yellow flags mean they serve vegetarian dishes.  The Vegeterian Festival was going on while we were in town.

 

Panaeg curry on the left and massuman on the right.  Yum!  No vegetarian meal for us!!  :)

 

Jim Thompson House.  Raw silk cocoons.  The yellow is native to Thailand.

Doesn't she look just like the woman in the picture behind her?  She is unwinding the silk from the cocoons.

Our shuttle boat ferry port.

Shuttle boat dock.

Sathorn Taksin pier.  Boat ferries on the ground.  Up the stairs to the skytrain.  Lots of venders selling things and people playing music in the evening.

Trying to figure out skytrain fare and which route to take.

Just like home.  Everyone is on her phone on the skytrain.

So that's the end of our first two days.  We will finish the last two days soon!!  We are still recovering!  :)

Until Next Time,
Eric and Kim :)