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Vacation in Thailand

July 9th, 2007

Parissara had already moved back to Bangkok. I was welcome to come visit her before school started, so in the middle of June I packed and left for warmer weather.

Parissara even organized a birthday party on a river-cruise. She showed me around Bangkok for a few days, helping me avoid the permanent traffic jam that is downtown Bangkok. Skytrain and riverboat are key to getting around without sitting stuck in traffic.

 

We visited Wat Pho - home of the very large, very impressive reclining Buddha. This is just one of many many Buddhas in this temple, in all sizes. Paris also made the first of many attempts to explain how the day you were born determines your lucky colour, fortunes, special numbers and corresponding Buddha stance. None of it stuck the first time.

We also took time to see Phra Kaew Morakot - the temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the former royal palace. As a former palace, it oozes ostentation, wealth and power. Practically every surface is gilded, painted or covered in glass or ceramics.

Along the inner wall of the palace pictures illustrating the Ramakien appear. Paris walked along, explaining what Thotsakan, Hanuman and Phra Ram were up to in the story.

    

We arrived in Koh Samui and immediately set about exploring. We stayed at the quiet southern end of Chaweng beach at a place called Sans Souci. The room we had wasn’t a bungalow, but we had direct path to the beach (all of ten meters walk) with its sun loungers and massage tent. The beach was relatively quiet because we were there in late June. The hordes on summer vacationers had not yet arrived from Europe, so you could still find a place to lie down, even at the crack of noon.

 

Chaweng also offered us vast quantities of food - very good food. The Red Snapper dished up a marvellously tender beef. The Italian restaurant hiding behind the misleading name “Rice” had some delicious duck ravioli. The Thai we had on the beach was good and spicy. The beach-side lounge-bar was very good. Little tables and pillows you could recline against while you listened to the surf and sipped your Margarita.

There was also dancing.

Any self-respecting tourist-filled Thai restaurant will feel obligated to put on a traditional dance show. Typically dance students will trek from restaurant to restaurant, making a few Baht at each show, maybe a free meal, while getting some practice and experience in front of an audience. Parissara disappeared back-stage after one of these shows, and reappeared some 15 minutes later to show off her dancing skills. She wowed the surprised dinner crowd, and got a large round of applause for her efforts.

We happened across a show one evening - Christie’s Cabaret - a ladyboy revue. “Ladies” miming along to various pop songs in costumes - should be good for a laugh I thought. Turns out I under-estimated how good they were. The choreography and costumes would put many shows back in Oslo to shame. The drinks were delicious. A grapefruit, orange, vodka combo was very tasty.

Koh Samui also has funny rocks.These are grandmother and grandfather rock.

 

Giant yonic and phallic rock formations aside, the island has lots of features we didn’t get around to trying out: elephant trekking, jungle safaris, monkey circus/training camp. We didn’t make it off the island either - the full moon party sounded like it was more fun ten years ago, and Parissara wasn’t too keen on the ocean, not having learned how to swim.

So instead we had daily floating and swimming lessons in the shallow water just outside our room, with Parissara mastering the dead-mans float and the breast-stroke.

 

We did manage to get out and dance a bit though. The reggae bar was huge and empty (except for a stray dog sleeping on the dance floor) but Soi Mango was packed with clubs of all sizes, all deafening. The Green Mango had a dance floor big enough to dance on, but suffered from some nasty interference between its two halves. The hip-hop/r’n'b club at the front and the disco/techno club in the back seemed to be competing to see who could be the loudest, which did not do much for the sound quality.

We did manage to make a trip off the beach to see the Big Buddha statue. There we found a karmic slot machine that replaced the boring old sticks-in-a-jar fortunetelling with a more modern variation. My electronic fortune matched the one I had gotten by shaking sticks out of a jar. “Legal case defensible. Outstanding debts not likely to be refunded.”

 

Samui was lovely, and had I planned it better we would have stayed a few more days there. Instead it was back to Bangkok for the last week of the trip. Having gotten the hard-core relaxation out of the way, it was now time to master shopping.

The street market in chinatown in Bangkok has something for everyone. Guns and crossbows are sold next to the fluffy animals. In the maze of passages are tiny stores, some selling cloth, others selling only Hello Kitty products. Another sold only teddy bears and other stuffed animals.

While the food in Koh Samui was excellent, most of the restaurants tended towards a tropical island motif. Understandable, but in the long run it makes them all run together in your memory. Back in Bangkok we end up trying one of the coolest, hippest places I have ever eaten. Bed Supper Club is like something out of a movie.

 

You sit in bed, recline on crisp white pillows, while drinks appear on the little tray in front of you. Around you sit other couples. A DJ mixes cool, ambient electronica, while video-art plays on the wall. Sci-fi costumed waitresses glide around with ray guns, shooting bubbles. An ice-sculpture is being carved in the middle of the room, lit up with blue lasers.

The meal was delicious, the drinks divine. The ice sculpture shattered from its internal stresses ten minutes after it was finished, saying something deep and sad about the transitory nature of all things in the process.

We managed to make our way up to Ayutthaya, the ancient capital, thanks to Parissara’s brother giving us a lift up and back again. About an hours drive away, it is littered with temples, ruins, and Buddhas. The Burmese sacked the ancient capital, explaining why there were so many ruins.  I kept expecting Lara Croft to come bounding around a corner and to start climbing one of the broken pillars.

 

They also had elephant rides - and who can resist an elephant ride? Turns out its further down from the top of an elephant than it looks from the ground. I’m glad that no-one suggested elephant rides while I was in Sri Lanka. The thai elephants seemed smaller.

Back in Bangkok we did some more shopping. This time we went to the Pathip electronics mall. Geek heaven. Also nirvana for these Buddhist monks, who seemed to be looking for the ultimate gadget.

We stayed in Tarntawan Place in Bangkok - nice place, except for a small bit of unpleasantness when we checked out (false accusations of stolen bathrobes). It was nice and quiet, being down a little alley off the main street. It’s also about 100 m from Patpong, the tourist-trap gogo-bar strip. The gogo bars now have competition from a night market. In daytime the street is used for traffic. In the night time it’s chock-a-block with stalls selling t-shirts, cheap rolexes and D&G bags, and touts wondering if you’re interesting in a sex show. The moment of transition turns out to be 17:15. We were walking down Patpong-1 on our way back from the sky-train when a bell rang out, and dozens of people jumped up and started assembling the stalls for the night market.

Suddenly it was time to leave - the rains had started to make their presence felt, the hot season was giving way to July and the rainy season. One day while out shopping at JJ weekend market the rain started up, and the tin roof over most of the market sounded like an out of control drummer. I did manage to find some good presents for everyone, and a few interesting shirts for myself. Without Parissara to guide me through the maze of twisty little passages and rain soaked corridors, I woul still be wandering around the market, lost and bewildered. I would also be poorer, for her hard bargaining saved me 40% or so on most of the prices quoted to me.

At the airport, the airway out to the plane is decorated with praise and pictures of the Thai King. At this point I was starting to feel it was starting to cross over into cultish hero worship. “Supreme Artist”? He’s got an impressive resume, especially for someone born to the job, but I still get the nagging feeling that if the Thais focused a tenth of the energy they put into cheering their royalty into demanding a stable and uncorrupt democracy, they might see some actual results.

On the flight back you could actually see stuff out the window. Flying over Afghanistan was interesting, partly because you know there’s a war on down there, but also because the rugged, desolate mountains that make up much of the place are so clearly visible.

A bit after the rugged pointy bits of Afghanistan, the terrain turned flat, the clouds made interesting shadows on the blank canvas, and the names on the in-flight map display drip with stories and myths: Samarkand, the Silk Road, Bukhara.

The warm weather from Thailand did not follow me home - Norway has had one of its dreariest summers in recent memory. Ah well.

Vacation in Thailand: it was nice and warm while it lasted

Entry Filed under: Personal